by Simon Brett
He could not even share Twinks’s amusement at the antics of Harvey. In the guise of the Dowager Duchess of Framlington, the Tawcester Towers housemaid was on the SS His Majesty with them. Somehow a personal wedding invitation to her from Luther P. Chapstick III had evaded the Dowager Duchess of Tawcester’s censorship system. Given the offer, Harvey was not the kind to let a little detail like the illegitimacy of her title stop her from accepting. When informed of her plans, Grimshaw found his facial tic flickering like an early cinematograph film.
On board ship in her assumed role, Harvey behaved appallingly. With great relish and even greater insensitivity, she was rude to all the liner’s staff unfortunate enough to come in contact with her. She wreaked a very personal revenge for all those years of slights from her betters. At times it seemed the very crassness of her insults would give away her subterfuge, but none of the SS His Majesty’s staff cottoned on. They’d seen far worse behaviour from genuine British aristocrats.
Whereas Blotto would normally have shared Twinks’s glee at Harvey’s disgraceful demeanour, nothing on that transatlantic trip could make him smile. Even going down to the hold, where his Lagonda was stored, and giving it a stroke, did not have its usual comforting effect. Nor did the old ritual of hugging his cricket bat before entering his bed for the night work its customary soothing magic.
Then, just when it seemed that nothing could make things worse, he received another body blow. He was sitting one evening over cocoa in Twinks’s stateroom bemoaning his fate and saying, ‘I think the only way I’m going to survive life in the States is by taking on copious draughts of the hard stuff. Maybe if I’m permanently wobbulated, I won’t notice what a treacle tin I’m in.’
‘Ah,’ said Twinks.
His sister had quite an extensive repertoire of ‘Ah’s and Blotto recognized that this one didn’t bode well. She had bad news to impart.
‘What is it? Shift your shimmy. Come on, the rope’s round my neck. Release the trapdoor.’
‘It’s about the hard stuff in the States, Blotto . . .’
‘What about the hard stuff in the States?’
‘There isn’t any.’
‘What!’
‘You cannot purchase alcoholic beverages in the United States of America.’
‘That can’t be true. Come on, Twinks, you’re jiggling my kneecap, aren’t you? And I may say I take a pretty dim view of you making a joke out of something so important.’
‘I am not joking, Blotto. On the twenty-eighth of October 1919 Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, better known as the Volstead Act, forbidding the sale and manufacture of alcohol.’
Blotto’s lips opened and closed like those of a beached goldfish. The enormity of what he had just heard robbed him not only of speech but also of breath. He was in too advanced a state of shock even to say, ‘Broken biscuits’. He’d known life in America was going to be bad, but it had never occurred to him that it might be that bad.
In fact there was only one event on that ship of sorrow which brought the slightest brightening to his mood. One evening when he was out on deck smoking a post-prandial cigar, he heard a loud report and felt something tug at his shoulder.
When the scene was examined by Twinks with the equipment from her reticule, she discovered a bullet-hole in the padding of her brother’s dress coat. And from the wooden bulkhead in front of which he’d been standing, she used her penknife to extract a bullet.
A bullet from an Accrington-Murphy PL23 hunting rifle. Just like the one that had killed Briscoe Daubeney-Vere, alias the Duke of Godalming. And the one that had been aimed at Blotto on the Tawcester Towers cricket field.
That discovery did bring a pale smile to her brother’s careworn features. But not for a good reason. The fact that he was still the target for some crazed assassin cheered him by offering a means of escape from marriage to Mary Chapstick and a life without cricket or hunting.
Blotto was in a very bad way.
10
From Cattle to Can
The guided tour that Luther P. Chapstick III gave Blotto of the Chapstick Manufacturing Plant started at the top of a high tower, above which tall chimneys belted out thick, foul-smelling greasy smoke. His prospective father-in-law wore a tweed suit whose checks must have been designed by the makers of Battenburg cakes. Though it should have done, this garment totally failed to diminish the meat-packing magnate’s enduring likeness to a warthog.
Chicago, Blotto had by now realized, was a city of very tall buildings, but the scene at their feet was low-rise, perhaps a square mile of stockyards from which arose a cacophony of confused lowing and a smell that was pure farmyard.
Blotto had been in the Land of the Free for less than a week and he was still adjusting to the strange habits of its citizens. So many things had surprised him – like the flamboyantly unnecessary height of their buildings, their obsession with iced water, their habits of driving on the wrong side of the road and saying ‘gotten’ when they should have said ‘got’ – that he had by then resolved not to be surprised by anything.
He had therefore made no comment when he and his host were greeted at the ostentatious gates of the Chapstick Manufacturing Plant (two giant statues of longhorns rearing up on either side) by a pair of thick-set gentlemen in double-breasted suits, each of whom was carrying a violin case. They were introduced as Jimmy ‘The Moose’ Fettuchini and Toni ‘Nostrils’ Linguini and they kept very close to Luther P. Chapstick III all the time he was on the premises. They did not speak at all, but let out growls of laughter every time their boss uttered anything that could be interpreted as a joke.
Blotto, trying without complete success to act like someone who wasn’t surprised by anything, couldn’t help himself from asking what the violins were for.
‘You never know when you’re going to need a little music,’ Luther P. Chapstick III replied. This was clearly a joke, so far as Jimmy ‘The Moose’ Fettuchini and Toni ‘Nostrils’ Linguini were concerned, and was greeted by appropriate growls of laughter.
‘Good ticket,’ said Blotto. ‘No, I suppose you don’t . . . when a boddo wants to do something impromptu . . . you know, like that impromptu dance we had when you were staying at Tawcester Towers.’
‘Oh, the music Jimmy ‘The Moose’ Fettuchini and Toni ‘Nostrils’ Linguini make ain’t as upbeat as dance music.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s more like the kinda music that puts people to sleep.’
This too was identified by the two men in double-breasted suits as a joke.
Luther P. Chapstick III led his guest to the guard-rail of the tower and pointed to the far end of the stockyards where there was a sizeable railway station. ‘That’s where they come in,’ he said.
‘Where who come in?’
‘The cattle. The heifers, the steers. They’re transported by trains from ranches way out west.’
The pause left after this suggested to Blotto that perhaps some response was required, so he offered a ‘Hoopeedoopee!’ Then, attempting to show an interest, he asked, ‘So you buy the cattle from the boddos out there . . . the cowboys and cowgirls?’ He’d seen enough moving pictures to reckon he’d got the terms right.
‘No, Deveroox.’ Luther P. Chapstick III had proved very resistant to the idea of his daughter marrying anyone called Blotto and insisted on using his proper name. Unfortunately, he had seen it written before hearing it spoken and, in spite of many attempts to correct him, insisted on pronouncing the final ‘x’. ‘That,’ he went on, ‘is how mollycoddled milksops do business.’
Blotto wasn’t quite sure where the conversation was headed, so he just said, ‘Good ticket.’
‘I don’t pay other folks to raise cattle so’s I can buy from them. I raise the cattle myself.’
‘What, here in Chicago?’
‘I don’t do the raising with my bare hands. I own the ranches, I own the cattle, I own the railroad, I own the stockyard.’
‘Do you own Chicago too?’
asked Blotto in a tone that, for him, was almost acid. From the nursery onwards he had been taught that, if there was one thing that was really beyond the barbed wire, it was showing off. And since he’d arrived in America he’d heard rather more showing off than he would have wished to.
But the warthog’s skin was impervious to such jibes. In fact, he took what had been said as a compliment. Slapping his prospective son-in-law on the shoulder, he roared, ‘I like your style, Deveroox. No, I don’t own Chicago yet, but that’s only a matter of time . . . only a matter of time.’
This sally prompted growls of laughter from Jimmy ‘The Moose’ Fettuchini and Toni ‘Nostrils’ Linguini, but then there was another of those silences. Feeling he should fill it with something, this time Blotto opted for a ‘Toad-in-thehole.’ This prompting no response, he looked down to the stockyards below and observed uncontroversially, ‘That’s a lot of cattle down there.’
‘Sure is,’ Luther P. Chapstick III agreed. ‘And tomorrow this lot’ll be gone and the pens’ll be full again.’
‘Erm . . . when you say “this lot’ll be gone”, what exactly do you mean?’
The meat-packing magnate clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I will show you, Deveroox. I will show you exactly what I mean.’
Now Blotto could never really be described as squeamish. He was far too heroic and brave to give in to such weaknesses. Nor was he particularly sentimental about animals. Like any countryman of his class, much of the entertainment he enjoyed involved the wholesale slaughter of wild birds and mammals. But he still found the rest of that morning’s guided tour of the Chapstick Manufacturing Plant challenging to the stability of his stomach.
His host, Luther P. Chapstick III, didn’t understand the concept of self-effacement. Indeed his natural instinct was for self-aggrandisement. So everything that Blotto was shown that morning was not only the biggest in the world, but also the best in the world.
From their overview of the biggest stockyard in the world, Luther P. Chapstick III pointed out the alleyways that ran between the cattle pens, main thoroughfares in this city of beef. Along them men on horseback, armed with giant whips, would drive each newly released penful of livestock towards the grim complex of buildings at the end of the stockyards.
From the foot of the tower Blotto and his potential father-in-law (accompanied of course by Jimmy ‘The Moose’ Fettuchini and Toni ‘Nostrils’ Linguini) travelled to this complex in a small but luxuriously appointed railcar. There the guest was shown the broad ramps up which the cattle were driven and the chutes down which they slid and stumbled into the building.
Inside, Blotto was conducted on to a viewing gallery, surrounding a long room where the approaching drove of cattle were funnelled into a single metal-railed passageway, full of toiling men and bewildered lowing. As each animal reached the end of the queue, it was brained by a huge man with a sledgehammer. Then even while it staggered its last faltering steps, other men fixed to its legs chains that were attached to hooks on a giant metal wheel. As this turned, each dangling beast was lifted up off the ground before having its throat cut by another team of experts.
The carcasses were then detached from the wheel by more specialists and dropped down another chute to the floor below for further processes of skinning, scraping, beheading and eviscerating. Here again there was a team of experts for each noxious task. Their work was relentlessly repetitive, applying the same actions to each slab of meat, without pausing for a moment as the carcasses were endlessly replaced.
‘Don’t they get a bit bored, those boddos?’ suggested Blotto as he looked down from the gallery. ‘Pongling on at the same rombooley all day?’
‘Who?’ asked Luther P. Chapstick III.
‘The men.’
‘What men?’ He genuinely didn’t seem to know who Blotto was talking about.
‘The workers. Don’t they get bored?’
‘They get paid. Who cares if they get bored?’
‘Good ticket. I just wondered—’
‘Well, don’t wonder. I can do widdout a son-in-law who wonders.’
‘Hoopee-doopee,’ said Blotto in a conciliatory manner.
At the doorway through which the processed carcasses were moved on to the next procedure a bleary-looking man in a suit sat behind a desk. He was the first person in the plant who seemed to have nothing to do, so Blotto asked what his function was.
‘He’s the government inspector,’ said Luther P. Chapstick III.
‘So what does he do?’
‘He checks the carcasses for disease.’
‘But he doesn’t seem to be doing anything.’
‘No.’ The meat-packing magnate roared with laughter and slapped Blotto heartily on the shoulders. ‘Good, isn’t it? We don’t want to lose any of our precious beef to petty regulations, do we?’
Jimmy ‘The Moose’ Fettuchini and Toni ‘Nostrils’ Linguini thought that was funny too.
As they passed above the inspector, Blotto encountered the first promising thing since he had arrived in America. From the bleary-looking man emanated a strong smell of spirituous liquor. Maybe it was possible to get a drink in this godforsaken country.
The next cavernous room found a new crew of men working like automata. There the headless carcasses were split in half and further chopped up. Substantial parts of them were carted off for more refined butchering techniques, while the residue, unrecognizable chunks of flesh and organ mixed in with blood and sawdust from the floor, was tipped into the vast mouth of what Luther P. Chapstick III referred to as ‘The Great Grinder’, from whose splattered interior a ghastly crunching of cogs sounded.
A little unwillingly, Blotto found himself asking in which product of the Chapstick range those particular remnants ended up.
‘They go into our Beef Extract,’ his host replied. ‘Mixed in nourishing soups and drinks and spread on toast at breakfast tables all over the US of A.’
The rest of the guided tour encompassed pickling rooms, salting rooms and smoking rooms (though not of the genteel kind Blotto was used to in his London club). He saw carcasses hung in huge refrigerators and even in refrigerated trains. He witnessed the construction of crates and cans. He saw machines sticking on brightly coloured labels for Chapstick’s Canned Beef, Chapstick’s Corned Beef, Chapstick’s Dressed Beef, Chapstick’s Beef Sausages and a thousand other beef-derived products.
Blotto also saw what was done with the less edible remains, the ones that had escaped even The Great Grinder. The hides were taken to the on-site tanneries. The fats were turned into lard and soap, intestines used to case sausages, hoofs melted down into glue. Even the horns were transformed into combs and buttons. All the processes witnessed that morning seemed to bear out Luther P. Chapstick III’s assertion that: ‘We use every bit of the animal except the moo.’
The tour finished in the same building where it had started, but on a lower floor, in a lavish boardroom. This too gave a splendid view over the expanses of the Chapstick beef empire. As they stood side by side at the window, his host clapped a hearty arm on the younger man’s shoulder. ‘Treat my Mary right, Deveroox,’ he said, ‘and one day all this could be yours.’
Blotto couldn’t find words to express his reaction. The Tawcester family had been involved in some pretty unsavoury businesses over the years – not excluding the slave trade – but meat-packing . . . A shudder ran through his godlike frame.
Needless to say, Luther P. Chapstick III misinterpreted this reaction. ‘I can understand you’re dumbstruck, my boy, at how wonderful it all is, but you’ll get used to the idea. And now . . .’ he clapped his hands ‘Lunch!’
At the signal, Jimmy ‘The Moose’ Fettuchini and Toni ‘Nostrils’ Linguini took up position on either side of the door with their violin cases at the ready (almost like soldiers on sentry duty, thought Blotto), and the boardroom was suddenly full of uniformed waiters. Blotto and Chapstick sat at opposite ends of the huge table on which fine linen and silver cutlery appeared as if by magic.
To Blotto’s disappointment, the only liquid on offer was iced water. In the middle of the table was placed a salver on which were displayed three plates and a bowl of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and coleslaw. On a silver stand at the centre stood a can of Chapstick’s Corned Beef.
Ceremoniously the can was opened by the head waiter. He let the gelatinous slab slide down on to one of the plates, then carved it with all the respect that would have been accorded to a Thanksgiving turkey. He placed two slices on each of the plates, garnished them with the cold vegetables and ordered lesser waiters to place them in front of the two diners.
‘After what you’ve seen this morning,’ said Luther P. Chapstick III, ‘I’m sure you’re gonna wanna taste some of the Chapstick goodies.’
Blotto looked down at his plate and felt the bile rising in his throat.
‘I’m frightfully sorry. You must excuse me,’ he managed to utter as he dashed past Jimmy ‘The Moose’ Fettuchini and Toni ‘Nostrils’ Linguini and out of the room.
But then Blotto had never liked salad.
11
A Heart to Heart for the Engaged Couple
Blotto and Twinks thought that calling the mansion Chapstick Towers was a bit of a liberty. Granted, the place did have towers, but then it had every other feature that the imagination of architects had devised over the centuries. Palladian columns, Assyrian reliefs, Tudor beamed frontages, Rhine castle turrets, cathedral-scale vaulted ceilings, ecclesiastical stained glass, nothing had been omitted in the construction of Luther P. Chapstick III’s home, set in a thousand acres of land on the shores of Lake Michigan. Nothing, that is, except for taste.
