Thursday 6^th May 2010

The Multis voted at 7.30 this morning. Through the twenty-two years they have been united, it has always been at this time and together. ‘Conservative gain’ is what they want to hear on the TV this evening.

I’ve voted too – but I’m not telling, yet.

But I must go back to Tuesday, to perhaps the last great event of the Labour era, as well as a sudden burst of joy and instructive triumph.

Lord Arrowby told me some time ago that the Maggi Hambling opening was on 3^rd May. He was on the list of course, as an art buyer and connected,  going with that friend of his who’s got his ex-boyfriend living at the other end of his flat.

Maggi Hambling, as you may know, is an important artist. Her show is at Marlborough Fine Art in Albemarle Street – grand, grand,grand.  She is grand too, with fog-horn voice, but very badly behaved.  Keen on smoking in all the wrong places and upsetting Royalty; general warrior mentality; huge feuder. Were she not an uncompromising lesbian with left-wing tendencies, you can imagine her hurling out of the gates of some Big House and terrorising a neighbourhood from a Landed Gentry pinnacle.

I do actually know her, but too scared to ask for an invitation. It got to Monday and panic mounting – how to get in?  I tried Joshua Baring, that coming young man who knows everything, but Robert Nevil told me that they were going to the cinema that evening. So that was that. What with Lord Arrowby likely to scratch, owing to 16 hours a day steering the ship of state in the absence of government and social life thus nearing extinction (except for Queer Question Time at the Vauxhall Tavern: see earlier post), I was beginning to think: shall I stay in my lovely home and prick out some seedlings?

Then suddenly, on Tuesday morning everything changed. Robert Nevil and Joshua Baring not going to the cinema, RN remembers getting invitation to the opening but had thrown it away, anyway is going, I can ride on coat tails.

All the same, I arrive alone, ahead of RN. Do I cower weakly in the street and wait for him or do I boldly forge?

I boldly forge. This is the miracle. This is what you must learn. Just nothing to it. Straight in, no questions asked, glass of champagne acquired – and away.

You might try having on a Prada mac and a certain air.

Then – more miracles. How happy we were! As if one act of will had joyously disturbed the universe. Robert Nevil arrives, not run over as is always a danger given his tiny size and absent-mindedness. All our favourite people – Shena Mackay. We are received by Maggi Hambling herself. ‘Sebastian not here?’ she booms. That’s RN’s elusive partner. ‘Thank God for that!’ There was a row about a book jacket years ago – never forgotten. ‘So sorry,’ she says, departing, ‘have to talk to a perfectly ghastly old friend.’ After that, who should waft through the door, but Joshua Baring himself, like me, uninvited, and Robert Nevil, despite their abandoned engagement, not expecting. Then, as if risen from the dead, Lord Arrowby himself, with his friend, in radiant form, his skin tone utterly superb – he swears natural, not bronzer – the ship of state presumably parked outside in the street. Actually he had come direct from his Sloane Street dentists; last summer’s £3000 new tooth has failed, had to be dug out, start over.  He showed the gap and his exquisite tiny other teeth. Finally, finally, finally, not seen for ages, Virgil Grayson, architect of international reputation, and his partner, Cedric Partridge, full of the latest bizarre encounter between Miriam Margolyes and The Queen and lavishing invitations to his house in the South of France.

So there we all were, unexpectedly together in vast London.

Now Joshua Baring, you’ll be interested to hear, is looking at country properties, in the Wisbech area. Another Massivebury? Another Charleston (I hope not)? I said, do pick a sheltered spot, fearsome winds straight from Siberia in East Anglia.