Lord Foxbridge Butts In

by Manners, Robert

  “Good morning,” came a richly accented voice from across the courtyard. I looked over in some surprise, as one does not expect to be addressed through a window in Town; perhaps they do things differently in Poland. It was Count Gryzynsky who’d called out, standing in his window opposite, quite nude. I had thought myself brazen for sleeping without pajamas; but the Count, whose nakedness was completely visible to anyone in the back part of the building, even in the winter-garden below, was so brazen that the word ‘brazen’ just wasn’t strong enough.

  “Good morning,” I replied after a long moment, having to recover from the combined shock of being spoken to across a courtyard like an Italian and getting a good look at a rather spectacular physical feature the Count possessed which would have been hidden by trousers.

  “You are a late riser, I see.”

  “I suppose so,” I admitted, “I don’t even know what time it is. It’s heaven not having to be anywhere at any particular time.”

  “I find it very depressing,” he said with a great deal of seriousness, which was rather undermined by his accent: the way he said ‘werry deprressink’ made me smile, “It means I have no work.”

  “I’ve been told you’re touring,” I leaned against my windowsill.

  “Touring, yes; working, not so much,” he shrugged his magnificent shoulders. His torso was beautifully muscled, rather bulkier than other dancers I’d seen; but then I’d never seen a ballet dancer any closer up than the dress circle before, “A dancer without a troupe is a difficult act to put on a bill. Your English music halls have little appreciation for the solo artiste.”

  “Perhaps you could find another troupe?” I suggested, admiring the way his dark hair curled up at the ends, giving him a lovely Grecian look. It was very like talking to an animated statue of Antinoüs, with his undraped form and his curly mane and his lush handsomeness.

  “I am too old, they say,” he shrugged again, a tragic acceptance, “I have too much experience, they say. I cannot be integrated into a troupe, they say.”

  “They say quite a lot,” I tried to commiserate but didn’t really understand what he was talking about. He didn’t appear to be more than twenty-five, how could he be too old?

  “Eh, they are fools and bastards,” he did a another kind of shrug, a dismissive one. He had quite a repertoire of shrugs, “May I come over there instead of shouting at you across the yard?”

  “Of course,” I said, thinking that he was going to get dressed and come down the hall; but he simply stepped out of his window onto the narrow decorative ledge underneath; without so much as a pause to catch his balance, he tiptoed over to the gallery, which was about six feet lower than his ledge but barred three feet up with little wrought-iron balconies that he balanced on like a tightrope; he ran along the rails onto the ledge beneath my windows, and finally leaped over the sill with the gravity-defying ease of a house-cat. I was stunned.

  “Much better,” he said, stepping close to me and looking up at me seductively. He was a good deal shorter than I’d thought, the top of his head was just under my nose; he was also a good deal older than he’d appeared from a distance — little wrinkles around his eyes and mouth gave him away, he was at least thirty if not thirty-five. Even so, he was a beautiful man, and so close to me that I could feel his excitement against my leg. Of course, his excitement would have brushed my leg from halfway across the room; up close it was a little frightening.

  But I am not one to let a little fright turn me from my path. Nor, apparently, was Count Gryzynsky in any mood to brook hesitation on my part; in less time than it would have taken me to ask if he’d like a cup of coffee, he had me out of my dressing-gown and sprawled across the sofa in a most indelicate posture.

  To spare my blushes, I will regretfully draw a curtain across the scene that ensued. It was some little time before our activities devolved to a nature that a gentleman could possibly discuss outside of a brothel.

  “Would you lunch with me this afternoon, Count?” I asked when I had finally caught my breath. I wanted to keep him by me for a little while longer, at least long enough to get a repeat performance or two of that extremely enjoyable matinée, and feeding people does tend to make them stick around a bit.

  “Call me Andrzej,” he murmured into my collarbone.

  “My name is Sebastian,” I said, a little surprised that we’d skipped that basic courtesy; but then, we’d been rather busy, “Will you join me for lunch, Andrzej?”

  “I cannot, I fear,” he sighed, sitting up and looking down at me sadly, “I must go to meet an agent today. I am hoping he can give me a job.”

  “I’m sure he will,” I smiled encouragingly, “You’re absolutely ripping, I bet you’re a wonder on the stage.”

  “You are sweet,” he said with the saddest smile since Camille coughed her last, “But I am not expecting this meeting to be fruitful. I hope, but I do not expect.”

  “Golly, I wish I could help,” I tried to remember if any of my circle of acquaintance was involved in the theatre and could give Andrzej a leg-up.

  “You could give me a hundred pounds,” he said, as if it were the most negligible kind of favor, like asking for a cigarette.

  “A hundred pounds?” I gaped at him. I’d never in my life heard anybody say such a thing, and I was young enough and sheltered enough for it to shock me to the core.

  “You have a hundred pounds, do you not? You are very rich, they say.”

  “I’m... I mean... of course I have, but...” I sputtered. One simply doesn’t say such things. But then, one simply doesn’t climb across courtyards in the nude and leap into strangers’ windows, either, so I suppose it was all relative; still, I knew fellows who lived a whole year on a hundred pounds’ allowance, “Why a hundred pounds?”

  “Why not?” he countered, leaning in to kiss me in a very persuasive manner, “I am well worth it.”

  He had a point, there: the last hour had been more fun than buying a lot of silverware, or losing on a racehorse, and I could certainly afford it. After letting him persuade me a little while longer, I got up and went into my bedroom, hoping that I actually had a hundred pounds in my note-case. I wasn’t used to carrying such sums at Oxford, but in London it was rather expected: you never knew when a chap might make a bet with you. I’d drawn two hundred the day before, but I’d spent a lot while I was out.

  Fortunately, I had just enough, with a fiver and various coins to spare. I folded the notes up in thirds and gave them to him as if they were just bits of paper, a letter or a love-poem. He thanked me very nicely (about fifteen pounds’ worth, at the going rate), then clambered out the window and across the courtyard the way he’d come. He waved and said something in Polish that sounded very sweet but could have meant ‘what a chump’ for all I knew, and disappeared into the darkness of his room.

  Andrzej had given me quite a lot to think about, and so I went into the bath to have a soak and ponder the oddities of our encounter.

  It was lovely having one’s own bathroom, and I found myself spending a good deal longer in that room than I had ever done before. Though I’d had my own bathroom at Foxbridge Castle (merely because I was an only child and had the entire nursery wing all to myself), the plumbing wasn’t what you would call modern. It and the electricity had been modernised upon Pater’s receipt of Mummy’s hefty dowry when they married, but modern plumbing prior to the Great War wasn’t really very modern at all, requiring a great deal of coal to run the water heaters; Pater didn’t think his son and heir required a large allowance of coal for this purpose, so hot baths weren’t as plentiful as one might like.

  The bathing facilities at Eton don't bear mentioning, and Oxford hadn't been much better: a grim little chamber shoved in under the stairs, shared by all eight sets on the staircase, so a soak was a luxury one only got once a week or so; the rest of the time one had to make do with the washstand in one’s own bedroom or the showers at gymnasiums and Turkish baths.

  After three years of that
, you can imagine how much I was enjoying having a whole tub to myself for as long as I liked, smoking cigarettes and reading the latest Punch, adding more hot water whenever it started cooling off. Utter heaven. But eventually I heard Pond moving about in the bedroom, and thought it must be about time to dress for lunch. I got out and dried off, gave my damp hair a good brisk brushing, and stepped into the bedroom to be strapped into my armor for the day.

  “I think I’d like to go to Savile Row after lunch, Pond,” I said a little later, when he was linking my cuffs for me, “I want some more Town-appropriate suits.”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  “I’d like you to come with me, if you’ve time.”

  “My lord?” he looked up sharply, scandalized.

  “I suppose it’s not the done thing,” I conceded, turning to the glass to examine my necktie, “But I value your judgment. You know so much more about clothes than I do; I only know about the fashions, but you know about fabric and workmanship and all that.”

  “If your lordship wishes it,” he was still disturbed, but seemed to at least be trying to come to grips with it as he slid my jacket over my arms, “However, my assistance cannot be of much necessity if your lordship goes to a reputable house. The quality will be certain.”

  “I suppose so,” I was disappointed, but could see the sense of what he said; besides, I would look a frightful ass towing my valet behind me like a nanny, “Perhaps you can steer me to the best tailor’s, then?”

  “Your lordship cannot go far wrong at Poole’s, who served my former employer, though perhaps Anderson & Sheppard would better befit your lordship’s youth,” he told me, clearly relieved.

  “Very well, thank you, Pond,” I smiled at him to show no hard feelings, took a last satisfied look in the glass and headed into the sitting-room, “I’ll be lunching downstairs, then, and off to the Row after.”

  “Very good, my lord,” he trailed after me, swiping at my back with his brush.

  “Where do you eat, Pond?” I wondered.

  “Guests’ retainers are made very welcome in the kitchens and staff rooms, my lord,” he told me, unperturbed by my inane questions, which I suppose were rather easier to stomach than my other eccentricities, “And I take a pub lunch on my afternoons off.”

  “Do they do good lunches here?” I almost asked him which pubs he went to, but guessed that I’d be trampling yet another sacred boundary if I did; being valeted was more fraught with pitfalls of etiquette than I’d ever imagined.

  “The fare is most satisfactory, my lord,” he answered.

  “Good, good,” I smiled, “I’ll see you later, then.”

  The public dining room was only nominally public — so-called to distinguish it from the small dining room in back where one could hold parties — since the only people who ate there were the hotel guests, and sometimes their friends. The room was lovely, though, the walls oak-paneled up to eye level and painted the rest of the way in a soothing butter yellow, topped by an elaborate ceiling alive with plaster cornucopias spewing plaster produce in every direction; several small tables for two were dotted about, with a few larger tables for four or six standing proudly in the center; there were two tall windows as well as big glass doors opening into the winter-garden, which was full of nodding palms and twittering birds and splashing fountains.

  The food was rather Frenchified, arranged artistically on separate plates and carried out on trays, instead of the usual club lunch where the carver goes about with a cart so one can choose one’s cut, and the waiter serves the rest of the food from another cart. But under the pompous names and fanciful garnishes, it was actually good plain fare, pork cutlets with turnips and peas, preceded by mushroom soup and followed by a strawberry trifle.

  Thus fortified, I swallowed a spot of port and set out in a cab to buy suits. The visit to Anderson & Sheppard was a great deal of fun, being fawned over and shown fabrics and buttons and sketches, stripped to my shirt and shorts so I could be measured all over, and making a sensation by bespeaking a dozen suits at fifty guineas a throw. I continued up and down Savile Row, ordering two dozen silk shirts in one place and a hundred silk handkerchiefs in another, sitting for an hour trying on hats, having my feet measured with calipers for shoes, examining clocked socks and considering avant-garde neckties.

  By the time I turned my steps toward home, I’d spent so much money that the Count’s hundred pounds seemed a pittance in comparison. I stopped into an anonymous little tea-shop just outside the Burlington Arcade (I love tea in the afternoons, just not the mornings), where I restored myself with cucumber sandwiches and a sugared orange, surrounded by elderly females who twittered like starlings disturbed from their tree the whole time I was there.

  I had another bath when I got back to the Hyacinth, as shopping in the summer is rather hot work, and I wanted to be fresh for the evening: I was invited to Lady Paxton’s great ball, the first of the high holy days of the Season; I was rather looking forward to it, while at the same time rather dreading it.

  The thing with Society balls is that, while affording the opportunity to meet new people and catch up on old acquaintances, and giving one an excuse to dance and to look well in white tie (both of which I enjoyed immensely), there was no escaping the fact that such balls are designed to present marriageable young ladies to marriageable young men with a view to getting them paired up and out of the way.

  With a grand title and an even grander fortune, I was going to be one of the prize cocks of the Season, and the matrons would be throwing their girls at me with the energy of a strong-armed bowler. And of course one has to flirt with these girls, lest one give rise to whispers — whispers that, in my case, would eventually lead to suspicions, which would lead to talk, which would lead to certainties, which finally would lead to my having to resign my clubs and remove myself to France.

  Flirting with girls is good fun, but I sometimes feel sorry for them, doomed to failure of catching me in their pretty traps; and when, after I accede to my titles, one of them does appeal to me sufficiently to become my countess, she will have a hard row to hoe with a husband who needs heirs but doesn’t love women. The futility of it all cast a slight pall over the gaiety of dancing and drinking.

  After my bath, Pond put me into the old stiff-bosomed and tails, which, though very well-made and flattering, I found rather shabby after the splendors I’d seen in Savile Row earlier. I didn’t think of ordering evening clothes when I was out, having much too much fun with day clothes; I’d have to make another trip to the Row sometime soon.

  I told Pond to not wait up, heading down to the lounge to have a cocktail and kill a little time before I could decently turn up at Paxton House, the Marquess of Paxton’s stately pile on the Green Park; now that I was of age and preeminently eligible for the marriage mart, it would be fatal to arrive too early at a ball, depriving the butler of a good audience to thrill by announcing me. Peeving the butlers of influential hostesses is social suicide.

  “You are looking very fine this evening, Lord Foxbridge,” a middle-aged gentleman with a difficult-to-place accent leaned against the bar beside me, “You must be going to Lady Paxton’s ball.”

  “Yes, I am,” I agreed, turning a little toward him; he was a handsome old buffer with a leonine mass of gleaming white hair, a matching Imperial beard and mustache, and immaculate evening clothes tarted up with a glittering Order of some kind on a red ribbon hanging just under his old-fashioned narrow white tie. He was short and a bit circular in shape, but not so unattractive for it.

  “I am Baron van der Swertz,” he bowed stiffly, giving me to understand that he and his accent were Dutch.

  “A pleasure to meet you, sir,” I replied, “What are you having?”

  “A small cordial of Chartreuse would be most welcome, thank you.”

  “Are you in London on diplomatic business, Baron?” I asked after we’d raised our glasses to each other.

  “I am, Lord Foxbridge,” he bowed again, this time mor
e deeply, apparently pleased that I’d placed his profession without having to be told; but really, the Order and the Imperial were dead giveaways, “I am attached to a small commission having business with your government.”

  “That must be jolly good fun,” I considered, imagining myself in the Diplomatic, a not-unheard-of profession for one of my rank, “Traveling and meeting people and whatnot.”

  “Fun?” the Baron seemed to shrug without actually moving his shoulders, rather a neat trick, “It has some attractions and amusements, but also many long tedious hours of arguments, suspicions, and contracts. One does not always see mankind at his best in a conference room.”

  “How tiresome for you,” I commiserated off-handedly, “Would you care to walk with me to the ball? It’s only one street away, and a lovely night out.”

  “Is it that close?” the Baron raised his eyebrows, “I never know how far away things are in this city. But, with the reputation of my country in my hands, I cannot arrive at a ball on foot. I have hired a car. Perhaps you will join me, instead?”

  “I’d be delighted!” I laughed, amused by the silliness of hiring a car to drive perhaps a thousand feet just so you don’t look like you couldn’t afford to hire a car. After finishing our drinks, the Baron took my arm and we strolled out of the hotel, encountering a very shiny Daimler manned by a very shiny chauffeur who gave me a naughty little wink when he handed me into the back.

  When we arrived at the ball, after fifteen minutes in traffic when it would have taken five minutes to walk, the Baron very courteously but very firmly distanced himself from me, indicating that I should go on up while he idled away a few moments in the cloakroom. I supposed, in his position, it wouldn’t be quite pukka to show up with a pretty boy on his arm, no matter how well-connected the pretty boy might be.