They’d pushed Brynmawr to the limit.
He’d no idea what to say.
“I’ve no idea what to say,” he said, and then he said it. “Mr. Novotny called me personally. Was I trying to provoke the Russians? Was I trying to start a war? Said something I didn’t quite understand about poking the bear with a stick. It almost beggars belief. A Soviet cultural attaché—a specialist in nineteenth-century Czech music, I am told—knocked out in a public park by the wife of a British diplomat! And the language. What was it you called that chap?”
Part of Ben Crosland hoped his wife might feign ignorance. She didn’t.
“I called him a motherfucking bastard, Ambassador.”
Brynmawr turned the colour of freshly sliced beetroot. Ben doubted he’d ever heard a woman swear quite like that and was pretty certain he’d never heard the neologism “motherfucking” before. It could hardly be in common use in the House of Lords or the valleys of South Wales.
“There’s only one thing we can do,” Brynmawr went on. “It’s come to this—you’ll have to be recalled. You’ll have to go home.”
Ben Crosland’s inner voice said “yippee.”
“Both of you, I’m afraid.”
And “yippee” all the louder.