THE COALITION OF 1950.
"Aren't you being rather badly hit by the price of tobacco?" I asked Charles, whose pipe is a kind of extra limb to him.
"I have just been composing the plot of a novel," he replied with apparent irrelevance. "It begins something like this:—
"'Slowly and softly the violet dusk set in. The beautiful young Première stood at the window of her yellow-and-black boudoir, gazing a little wistfully at the almost deserted pavements of Downing Street. A white pigeon perched—'"
"They aren't white," I said; "they're a sort of purply pinky grey."
"All right," said Charles, unmoved, "only it rather spoils the sentence. 'A sort of purply pinky grey pigeon perched pompously—'"
"Never mind the pigeon," I said, "tell me what was the trouble with the B.Y.P."
"A change in the leadership of the Opposition. The old leaderess had just retired and her place had been taken by a new one, a man this time, young and handsome as Apollo, who had thrown up the Chair of Cinematography at the London University to plunge on to a political platform."
"What was the programme," I inquired, "of this—er—furniture-remover?"
"He was a reactionary," said Charles. "The Première's party had won a not too sweeping victory at the polls on prohibition (not of alcohol, of course—that had been done long ago—but of tobacco)."