Chapter 7 Advice From Great-Aunt Matilda

Great-Aunt Matilda looked at him. She had a very sharp and shrewd eye.
Stafford Nye had noticed that before. He noticed it particularly at this mo-ment.
‘So you’ve heard that term before,’ she said. ‘I see.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘You don’t know?’ She raised her eyebrows¹.
‘Cross my heart and wish to die,’ said Sir Stafford, in nursery language.
‘Yes, we always used to say that, didn’t we,’ said Lady Matilda. ‘Do youreally mean what you’re saying?’
‘I don’t know anything about it.’
‘But you’d heard the term before.’
‘Yes. Someone said it to me.’
‘Anyone important?’
‘It could be. I suppose it could be. What do you mean by “anyone im-portant”?’
‘Well, you’ve been involved in various Government missions lately,haven’t you? You’ve represented this poor, miserable² country as best youcould, which I shouldn’t wonder wasn’t rather better than many otherscould do, sitting round a table and talking. I don’t know whether any-thing’s come of all that.’
‘Probably not,’ said Stafford Nye. ‘After all, one isn’t optimistic when onegoes into these things.’
‘One does one’s best,’ said Lady Matilda correctively.
‘A very Christian³ principle. Nowadays if one does one’s worst one oftenseems to get on a good deal better. What does all this mean, Aunt Matilda?’
‘I don’t suppose I know,’ said his aunt.
‘Well, you very often do know things.’
‘Not exactly. I just pick up things here and there.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve got a few old friends left, you know. Friends who are in the know.
Of course most of them are either practically stone deaf or half blind or alittle bit gone in the top storey or unable to walk straight. But somethingstill functions. Something, shall we say, up here.’ She hit the top of herneatly arranged white head. ‘There’s a good deal of alarm and despond-ency about. More than usual. That’s one of the things I’ve picked up.’
‘Isn’t there always?’
‘Yes, yes, but this is a bit more than that. Active instead of passive, asyou might say. For a long time, as I have noticed from the outside, andyou, no doubt, from the inside, we have felt that things are in a mess. Arather bad mess. But now we’ve got to a point where we feel that perhapssomething might have been done about the mess. There’s an element ofdanger in it. Something is going on–something is

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