"I am extremely busy, Mr Stevens. A written note if the message is at all

complicated. Otherwise you may like to speak to Martha or Dorothy, or any

members of the male staff you deem sufficiently trustworthy. Now I must return

to my work and leave you to your wanderings."

 

Irritating as Miss Kenton's behaviour was, I could not afford to give it much

thought, for by then the first of the guests had arrived. The representatives

from abroad were not expected for a further two or three days, but the three

gentlemen referred to by his lordship as his 'home team' - two Foreign Office

ministers attending very much 'off the record' and Sir David Cardinal - had come

early to prepare the ground as thoroughly as possible. As ever, little was done

to conceal anything from me as I went in and out of the various rooms in which

these gentlemen sat deep in discussion, and I thus could not avoid gaining a

certain impression of the general mood at this stage of the proceedings. Of

course, his lordship and his colleagues were concerned to brief each other as

accurately as possible on each one of the expected participants; but

overwhelmingly, their concerns centred one single figure -- that of M. Dupont,

the French gentleman -:and on his likely sympathies and antipathies. Indeed, at

one point, I believe I came into the smoking room and heard one of the gentlemen

saying: "The fate of Europe could actually hang on our ability to bring Dupont

round on this point."

 

I t was in the midst of these preliminary discussions that his lordship

entrusted me with a mission sufficiently unusual for it to have remained in my

memory to this day, alongside those other more obviously unforgettable