by Simon Brett
The thing that Blotto and Twinks found rather pitiful was the way their host kept going on about how old everything was. They realized that no one in America really understood the word. No building in the entire country had been around for more than 400 years, for the love of strawberries! And most of the structures they saw had been created in the last fifty. Chapstick Towers had only been started in the previous decade, following its owner’s specifications, and it was still in many ways a work in progress. Luther P. Chapstick III was clearly capable of adding any number of new features to it, as his familiarity with foreign architecture increased. During his recent visit to London, he had been mightily impressed by Marble Arch and was proposing to build a full-size replica for the main entrance to his estate.
What he seemed unable to understand, though Blotto and Twinks very patiently tried to explain it to him, was that using old materials in a building did not make the building itself old. Luther P. Chapstick III kept boasting about the antiquity of the architectural features he had sourced in Europe and had rebuilt brick by brick on his estate. The fact that the Elizabethan chimneys came from a genuine English stately home, or that the rose window in the dining room had once graced a German cathedral did not impart the dignity of history to the new edifice on to which they had been grafted.
Another detail that distinguished Chapstick Towers from a genuine English stately home was the fact that everything inside the place was so aggressively clean. People of Blotto and Twinks’s background knew instinctively that the patina of good furniture was dust. In just the same way that the leadpenny aristocrats who had been set up at Tawcester Towers for the Chapsticks’ visit had looked too smart and needed to wear clothes that had been scruffied up a bit, so Chapstick Towers looked far too pristine to pass muster.
The mansion had other features that showed it not to be the genuine article. The plumbing, for instance, was not only efficient but also silent. Many of the bedrooms actually had en suite bathrooms which featured showers. (Blotto reacted against such abominations; knew from birth that the only proper place for a shower was in the changing room after a sporting encounter.) Also some kind of central heating system kept the entire interior of Chapstick Towers at a constantly pleasant temperature. And everyone who knew anything knew that you couldn’t have a genuine stately home without draughts.
So Blotto and Twinks, though far too polite to let anyone guess their feelings, were distinctly unimpressed by their host’s home. The thought that he might have to spend the rest of his life there appalled Blotto. And the thought of all the fine hunting in England that he was missing that November caused him a constant pain, like an abscess on a tooth.
His mood was not improved by the fact that all Mary Chapstick could talk about in his presence (or indeed anyone else’s) were plans for their wedding. And references to things she’d written in her letters to him (which of course he hadn’t read).
Blotto tried to escape the onslaught by keeping out of her way as much as possible. The scale on which Chapstick Towers had been built made it possible to find lots of out-of-the-way wings in which to hide. The trouble was, though, that having watched the mansion virtually grow up around her, Mary knew its geography very well and there was nowhere he could remain undiscovered for long.
One afternoon he was looking moodily out of a window which had once graced the frontage of a Venetian palazzo and entertaining most unBlottolike thoughts. His mood was down because, although he wasn’t actually dependent on the stuff, he would at that moment have sold the family silver for a drop of alcohol. Just a brandy and soda . . . with maybe the bottle and siphon left beside him for a few top-ups. But so far the only evidence he’d encountered of alcohol in the United States had been the whiff on the breath of the inspector in the meat-packing plant. He certainly hadn’t been offered even a small sherry since his arrival at Chapstick Towers.
Maybe the lack of alcoholic comfort was the reason for his uncharacteristic thoughts. In spite of his strong in-built sense of honour, he was actually contemplating ducking out of the current obligation. Suppose he just upped and left Chapstick Towers . . . drove down to New York in the Lagonda and caught the first ship back to England . . . ? What was the worst that could happen?
The image of his mother rose fully formed in his brain, and he knew immediately what was the worst that could happen.
This gloomy reverie was interrupted by the appearance of Mary Chapstick, who had once again discovered his hide-out. She was, as ever, looking the complete breathsapper in a tiny dress of violet silk. No doubt about it, Mary was a spoffingly fine piece of womanflesh. The boddo who got her as his bride would really have won the raffle. Just so long as that boddo wasn’t Blotto.
Feeling guilty about his unworthy yearnings for escape, he still thought it was worth seeing whether he could find a chink in the armour of her certainty that she wanted to marry him.
‘Mary me old cushion-cover . . .’ he began.
‘Yes, Blotto?’ she responded, with a look in her eyes that did look ominously like love.
‘Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that you could have a better chance in the old matrimonial stakes if you’d saddled up a different donkey?’
‘No, Blotto. It’s never occurred to me. Not since I’ve met you.’
Was there a little chinkette in what she’d just said? Worth probing. ‘Not since you’ve met me?’ he echoed. ‘Are you suggesting that, before you clapped your peepers on me, you were looking for something different?’
‘Well, of course I was, Blotto.’ That was promising. ‘Before I met you I didn’t know I was going to meet you, did I? I didn’t know that I was about to meet the love of my life.’ That was less promising.
‘But,’ Blotto persisted, ‘when you were younger, wasn’t there some other poor thimble on whom you’d set your beadies? Didn’t you have a childhood sweetheart?’
‘Well, there was someone . . .’
Promising again. ‘Toad-in-the-hole,’ said Blotto. ‘And who was the lucky pineapple in question?’
‘His name was Sophocles Katzenjammer.’ As she said the words an encouragingly misty look came into her eyes.
‘And what you felt for this poor old greengage was real love, was it?’
‘I thought so at the time,’ Mary replied, again raising Blotto’s hopes. Before dashing them again by continuing, ‘But that was before I’d met you and found out what real love is.’
Blotto had another go. ‘I suppose it’s possible,’ he said, ‘that if you met this Sophocles Katzenwhatever again, you might find the old embers of love rekindling a bit . . . even flickering up into a spoffing great conflagration . . . don’t you think . . . ?’
‘No,’ Mary disagreed forcefully. ‘Not after the way he treated me.’
‘Why? What did the stencher do?’
‘He pretended he loved me. He said he wanted to marry me. But of course my father would never have consented to the marriage.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because Sophocles Katzenjammer was a Katzenjammer.’
‘Sorry? Not on the same page. Are the Katzenjammers some kind of religious sect?’
‘No. Sophocles was a Katzenjammer of the Katzenjammer Beef Extract family.’
‘Ah, rival business to your pater’s?’
‘You can say that again. The rivalry between Chapstick’s and Katzenjammer’s makes the Great War look like a kindergarten scuffle. There’s no way my pop would let me marry a Katzenjammer.’
‘But some young droplets when they’ve been in love,’ suggested Blotto, ‘have found parental opposition made them even keener to twiddle up the old reef-knot. Happens in some play of Shakespeare’s, I seem to recall. Called “Somebody and” . . . er, “Somebody” . . . An example of a family feud turning up the toaster of love.’
‘That was how I reacted with Sophocles at first,’ Mary Chapstick admitted. ‘I said I’d marry him in spite of my pop. To spite my pop, in fact. I agreed to elope with him. We were going to go to Florida to get m
arried.’
‘Buzzbanger of an idea,’ said Blotto. ‘So what went wrong?’
‘I was waiting for him at the barrier of Chicago Union Station on the night when we’d agreed to run away together . . .’ The memory was still painful; it brought a tremble to her lower lip ‘. . . and he never showed up – the two-faced coyote!’
‘Tough Gorgonzola,’ Blotto sympathized. ‘Maybe this Sophocles pineapple got delayed, or . . . I mean surely you can forgive a boddo for—’
‘No woman can ever forgive being stood up!’ asserted Mary, sounding for the first time unnervingly like her father. Which really put the candle-snuffer on Blotto’s thoughts of catching the next ship back home. It just wasn’t in his nature to behave like that kind of toadspawn.
‘He probably had some perfectly reasonable explanation,’ he struggled on hopelessly. ‘Next time you see him, you might suddenly realize you’d just got your mitten-strings tangled, and the flipmadoodles might drop off your eyes and you might realize that you love the old pongler after all.’
‘That could never happen,’ said Mary Chapstick.
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because since I last saw Sophocles Katzenjammer, I have met you. And now I know what real love is.’
Blotto squirmed inwardly. And he would have to squirm a lot more – inwardly and outwardly – if he was going to get off this particular hook.
12
Wedding Plans
The Chainey Hotel in Chicago was new and big – really big. Too big, to Blotto’s mind. What was the point of a building having so many floors, except to give a boddo neck-ache? Come to that, what was the point of even having a hotel in a country that didn’t serve alcohol?
The night when Luther P. Chapstick III took his prospective son-in-law to the Chainey, he acted like he owned the place. Though Blotto was getting used to the cattle baron’s habit of acting like he owned everywhere, he still couldn’t help asking, ‘Do you actually own this?’
Chapstick thought the question was funny, funny enough to justify a hearty laugh and a resounding slap on the younger man’s shoulders. ‘I don’t exactly own it,’ he replied, ‘but let’s say I have an understanding with the management.’
He chuckled and nodded acknowledgement to two dark-jowled men with violin cases who stood in the hotel’s enormous crystal-encrusted lobby. When Blotto looked around he saw more and more men with violin cases, all eyeing each other suspiciously.
‘Lot of musician boddos in Chicago, aren’t there?’ observed Blotto. ‘Is there some kind of big concert coming up?’
‘In Chicago,’ said Luther P. Chapstick III, again chuckling, ‘there’s a big concert every night. The violin cases get opened and the evening always ends in fireworks.’
‘Hoopee-doopee.’
‘Now listen, Deveroox, I said we’d come here this evening to check on the catering arrangements for Mary-Bob’s wedding.’ Increasingly that was how her father referred to the forthcoming celebration. The identity of the man she was marrying had become an irrelevance. Blotto in fact didn’t mind this. It comforted him, offering him a momentary hope that nobody might notice if he wasn’t actually present at the ceremony. He knew that sadly it wasn’t true, but he enjoyed the illusion.
‘But as it happens,’ Chapstick went on, ‘I have other business to conduct in the hotel tonight, so I’ll get one of the staff to show you the doings.’ He stopped a passing flunkey in a smart suit. ‘Get the Catering Manager!’
‘Of course, sir. Who shall I say wants him?’
‘Tell him it’s about the Chapstick wedding. And he’ll be meeting a very important guest from abroad, to whom he should supply everything he asks for. The boofer in question is Lord Deveroox Lyminster.’
‘I’m not actually a lord, to be correct, in—’
‘Lip it!’ snapped his prospective father-in-law. Then, seeming to lose interest, he moved away. ‘When you’re through, get a cab back to Chapstick Towers. I’ll see you in the morning.’ He crossed to the reception counter.
And there, except that it was so unlikely that Blotto knew it couldn’t be true, he could have sworn he heard Luther P. Chapstick III ask whether the Dowager Duchess of Framlington was in her room and expecting him.
Though the Chainey’s Catering Manager was dressed in immaculate tails, he had the thick-set body and dark jowls of Jimmy ‘The Moose’ Fettuchini and Toni ‘Nostrils’ Linguini . . . and indeed many of the other gentlemen in the hotel lobby. All he lacked was a violin case. Instead, under his arm he carried a folder tasselled with silver silk.
He shook Blotto’s hand as though he were trying to squeeze all the juice out of a grapefruit. ‘Great to meet you, Duke.’
‘I’m not actually a duke. I’m—’
‘Never mind that, Earl.’
‘Nor am I actually—’
‘Who cares? You’re a member of the British aristocracy.’
‘Yes, I am, but—’
‘And hey, I hear congratulations are in order. You gonna marry old Chapstick’s daughter. That’d be good news for anyone. The guy who gets that dame is also gonna get one helluva lotta beef.’
‘So I gather,’ said Blotto, for whom the attractions of beef were quickly waning.
‘Like I say,’ the Catering Manager went on, ‘you two getting hitched is good news. Chicago could do with a bit of class.’
For the first time since his arrival in the United States, Blotto found himself agreeing with something that had been said.
‘Let me show you the Banqueting Suite,’ said the Catering Manager, leading him to a crystal-encrusted door at the far end of the lobby. ‘And I can assure you, Duke—’
‘I’m not actually a duke . . .’ Oh, what was the point? Blotto gave up.
‘I can assure you that security in the Chainey is always very tight. You won’t have no worries about that on your wedding day.’
‘Why should I worry about—?’
‘We check everything out. The Boss insists on that. We even check out the inside of the wedding cake.’
‘But what on earth could be inside—?’
‘Dwarf with a Tommy gun. Has been known. But we find a dwarf in your wedding cake, don’t worry, he’ll be taken for a ride before it gets to the table. That’s all part of the service here at the Chainey.’
‘Good ticket,’ said Blotto, unwilling to admit to being slightly confused.
The Banqueting Hall that they had just entered was an exact replica of the Galerie des Glaces at the Palace of Versailles. Lights twinkling from the many chandeliers were reflected back by the high mirrors. Blotto could not fail to be impressed by the sight.
‘Not a bad little chicken coop for a wedding reception,’ said the Catering Manager. ‘Kinda place you’re going to remember for the happiest day of your life, wouldn’tcha say?’
Blotto was struck dumb, appalled by the thought that the next time he entered this room it would be as a married man. ‘Happiest day of his life’ . . . what a ghastly gluepot. Oh, biscuits shattered into an infinite number of pieces!
‘Now, Duke . . .’ The Catering Manager opened his elaborate tasselled silver folder and produced an elaborate tasselled sheet of fine card. ‘I have here some menu suggestions from our chef, Monsewer Dewboyes, who is French. Maybe you would like to take them home to discuss with your betrothed?’
Blotto, thinking it very unlikely that he’d be able to eat anything at the reception, wordlessly took the menus.
Another tasselled object was drawn from the folder. ‘And here is the wine list. If I know Mr Chapstick, I’m sure he will only want the best champagne, but maybe that’s another thing you and your betrothed would like to discuss.’
It took a moment for Blotto to take in what he was hearing, but then, in the voice of a man who has just crawled thirstily for two weeks across the Sahara, he echoed the one word: ‘Champagne?’
‘Sure.’
‘But . . .’ Blotto went on, still hardly able to believe his ears, ‘I thought the
sale of all wobbulators was prohibited in the United States.’
‘Yeah, but . . .’ The Catering Manager shrugged his heavy shoulders evocatively. ‘Listen, the Boss has ways of managing these things. And when the host of the party’s Luther P. Chapstick III . . . Besides, the Police Chief and his mob are all going to be guests at the wedding – they’d be real soured up if they didn’t get their hooch.’
The implication of these words was so wonderful that Blotto was still tentative about accepting it. ‘You mean it is possible to get a drink in this country . . . ?’
The Catering Manager chuckled. ‘Everything can be fixed if you know the right people. And the Boss sure is the right people.’
‘Would it be possible,’ asked Blotto, still scared that the Saharan oasis forming in his mind might be a mirage, ‘for me to get a drink right now?’
Another chuckle, and Blotto was rewarded with the most welcome word he’d heard since his arrival in the United States. ‘Sure.’
13
Twinks Alone
It was rare that the barometers of the two younger Lyminster siblings were set to ‘Cloudy’. Like Blotto’s, Twinks’s customary disposition was a sunny one. So long as Blotto had uninterrupted access to his hunting and his cricket, he thought life by and large was a pretty good ticket. Twinks too generally found that most situations were ‘Larksissimo!’ And on the rare occasion when either experienced some kind of setback, the other could normally be relied on to provide adequate jollying up and bolstering until the benign status quo was restored.
But that process of mutual regulation was not happening during their stay at Chapstick Towers. The cause of Blotto’s disquiet was too obvious to need spelling out, but Twinks was also uncharacteristically subdued. Part of the reason for this came from witnessing her brother’s unhappiness. It hurt her almost physically to see him so crabwhacked.
But, even more than that, she felt Blotto’s condition reflected her own inadequacy. Twinks was acknowledged as the family brainbox. However dire the situation, she could normally be relied on to negotiate a way out of the treacle tin. And yet here she was, with her brother closer to the precipice of matrimony than he’d ever been, and she was proving to be an empty revolver.
