Free The Edge of Madness by Michael Dobbs Page B

fishing rods, hats and umbrellas stuffed into old barrels, just like any old country house, so it seemed, although the illusion didn’t last long. Jeans and dungarees might be the order of the day, much as it was at Camp David, yet by evening things grew more formal. Dinner jackets and evening dress were required, and there were servants in a livery of long blue jackets and red waistcoats. This might be where the royal family put aside theircrowns and codpieces and let their collective hair down, but evidently some traditions were worth clinging to. Perhaps those traditions included her bathroom, which was across the corridor from the rest of her suite and where the hot water seemed to be taking a detour via the village. She took a whisky while she waited.
    An hour later, freshly bathed and dressed in something long and turquoise, she joined the throng as they assembled for dinner. Martinis in the drawing room first, stiff ones, mixed by an equerry. Franklin Roosevelt’s favourite tipple and also, evidently, Elizabeth’s. Blythe began to feel she might regret the whisky. As the Prince accompanied her into the dining room she passed a mirror, freckled with age inside an ornate Victorian frame. Her reflection stared back at her, somehow older than she had expected. Was that why Arnie had got his hooks into the tart? Was she past her best? No, don’t buckle, Blythe, don’t stop believing! The Harrisons were fighting folk–Indian-fighters in the old days–and she was the third member of her family to make it to the White House. It wasn’t in their makeup to go down without a fight, but as the first of their Presidents, William Henry, had discovered when chasing Indians, you had to pick your battle, and right now she felt as though she were surrounded by hostiles and down to her last couple of bullets. She prayed she’d be able to save one for Arnie.
    That got her thinking yet again about how the world would remember her. As the third Harrison? As thefirst woman President? Perhaps even as a great one? Or simply as a wife who had stumbled over her responsibilities, dragged down by sex and gossip and trapped in the same tar pit as the Clintons? Right now, she realized, the jury was out and her reputation was hanging not so much by a thread as from a pouting lobbyist’s bra strap. She stopped and scolded herself. She was getting herself hopelessly distracted.
    Once more it was Elizabeth who came to her rescue, appearing at her side. ‘Now, my dear, how are you?’
    ‘Fine,’ Blythe replied, trying to recover her wits. ‘Thinking Chinese thoughts.’
    The Queen’s eyes widened in surprise.
    ‘Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese strategist. He once said that if you wait long enough by the river, the bodies of your enemies will float past.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Heavens, we sat there all afternoon. No sign of Arnie.’
    There, a joke. A slip of humour. Perhaps she’d survive, after all.
    ‘You know, you should take up fishing, like me,’ Elizabeth replied, smiling conspiratorially. ‘It will increase your chances.’
    Blythe couldn’t resist a smile. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘I am old, my grandchildren think I’m practically pharaonic, but my memories are fresh. I still remember what it was like for me, all too vividly.’ Suddenly, unexpectedly, she took Blythe’s arm, woman to woman. ‘I’llteach you to tie a trout fly,’ she continued, ‘it will help to pass the time down by the river, while you’re waiting.’
    ‘Just so long as you don’t teach me the rules of cricket.’
    ‘But they are so very simple. You must do what my own mother taught me. You wear a hat with a hideously large brim to hide your eyes, so you can nap. And make sure that whatever you are drinking is extremely well chilled.’
     
    The two women sat down and the others followed, twenty of them in all, an array of royals and presidential advisers. From a little further along the table, Warren Holt, Blythe’s chief of staff, was nodding at her in