Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion

by Howard, Jonathan L

  “Brassworth?” The incredulity was also meant for Moggy, so it gave me quite a start when someone else replied.

  “Yes, sir?”

  I half jumped out of the old epidermis. The drink sloshed nearly to spilling, which would have been a crime, so I reduced the risk level with another tip to the lips. Then I boggled at that impassive metal face and those tint-glass eyes.

  “I say!” I said. “You talk?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His — that, I think, was the moment I ceased thinking of Brassworth as an it and began thinking of him as a he — his voice was low and modulated, with a hollow-ish undertone, as if some miniature fellow spoke from inside a metal-lined chamber. It was a steady sort of voice, if you take my meaning, a soothing one, a trusted banker’s voice, unflappable, an anchor in a storm, a rock in a crisis.

  “I say!” I said again. I held up the semi-depleted tumbler. “And you made this?”

  “I took the liberty, sir, whilst familiarizing myself with the layout of your residence, to note the location of the bar. As it is also sir’s usual cocktail hour …” He let it do the need-say-no-more trail off, with a slight inclination of the head to the exact proper angle.

  My own eyebrows shot ceiling-ward. This was actual talk, as well, not just rote yes-sir and no-sir responses.

  “Well then!” Moggy slapped his thighs and got to his feet. “I’ll be on my way. I can catch the next train if I step lively. Thanks again, Reggie. Means a lot to Gertrude and me, really it does.”

  But he couldn’t and didn’t mean to just leave it at that, did he? I tried to muster the vocal cords to say as much and found them still too flummoxed to speak.

  While I boggled, Brassworth showed Moggy out as if he’d always done it, and then the two of us were on our own.

  I boggled some more. Brassworth stood waiting with what seemed infinitely polite expectation.

  “Well,” I said at last, having by now lost count of how many times I’d said it. “Right-oh. Here we are.”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  I looked at him, rather nonplussed. He looked at me, rather impassive.

  “What, ah, what do you do?” I asked.

  “I am designed for a full range of domestic service, sir, with particular emphasis in gentlemen’s personal valetry.”

  “Bravo.” I finished the drink and tipped the empty at him. “Superb, quite.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “So … ah …”

  “If you would permit me, Mr. Wilmott —”

  “Hang on,” I said. “You know my name? None of this ‘Lord Bramford’ rubbish?”

  “Mr. Moglington was so kind as to enlighten me with certain corrections and amendments en route, sir.”

  “Jolly good. Carry on?”

  “As I was saying, sir, if you would permit me, it is, I believe, your usual habit to go out of an evening?”

  “It is indeed. To some club or another. The, ah, Westfallon tonight, I think.”

  “Very good, sir. Shall I lay out your attire?”

  I considered this, and decided, what-ho, why the devil not? If he made a ghastly bungle of it, I’d simply make the necessary amendments myself.

  Imagine, of course, my reaction upon entering the inner sanctum a while later to find it all set out with absolute precision! If my trousers had ever been steam-pressed to such a ruler’s edge sharp crease … and my shirt-front, starched crisp but not so stiff as to be a chafing discomfort … the shine of the shoes … if I might not have chosen that specific cravat to go with that specific waistcoat, the combination once donned on the person proved a smash hit, getting me more flattery at the Westfallon than I’d had in many a night!

  And a night it was, a night to remember! Provided I’d be in any state to remember it, that is, after possibly imbibing a few more than was normally advised, even for a fellow of my experience and blessed with the Wilmott iron constitution.

  Celebratory rounds, don’t you know. The Westfallon installed a Clockey-Jockey Racetopia Speedway recently, one of those miniature slot-spring horse-tracks, and I could not place a wrong flutter if I tried. My winning streak had me with a bouncy girl on each arm wishing me luck, and chaps buying me drinks right and left … we were in a high and jovial mood all around.

  It isn’t the money so much as the thrill, don’t you know … the whirr of gears, the flash of the shiny horses streaking about the oval, the little jockey figurines ratcheting up and down … almost as good as the genuine article, and without that whole messy matter of being outdoors with sun, flying dust, and real horses.

  When I reeled in at the wee-small-hours, the flat was in such flawless order that I first wondered if I’d let myself into the wrong one and was about to have an unfortunate encounter with an irate neighbour upon doing the late and unannounced. A moment’s further inspection showed that I had in fact come to the correct address.

  It forced me to slightly re-think my earlier insistence that I may have merely been letting a few things slip by, here and there, the way a bachelor will. Not that I’d go so far as to agree with my aunts, what with words like ‘slovenly’ and ‘deplorable,’ but … the difference was striking, to say the least.

  I found my bed turned down, the pillow plumped to perfection, even with a spritzing of some sort of scented herbal stuff from a misting humidifier. I went face-first into it and there I stayed until the peeling up of the eyelids next morning.

  Would you believe, I hadn’t been conscious for five minutes and Brassworth glided in with a breakfast tray? As if he’d just known. With the tea done to a T, as it were, and the toast as I like it best but am almost never able to get it.

  “Brassworth, you are a wonder!”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Uncanny how, in less than a week, I could barely fathom how I’d ever gotten by without him.

  Oh, now and then I’d have the uncomfortable twinge — a mechanical valet? what next? — or worry over what the aunts and the blue-bloods would think. Tradition versus the mod cons, and all that.

  It got put to the test soon enough, when those selfsame aunts paid a surprise call. They weren’t usually much for the metrop, those two, but some auction or estate sale or the like had drawn them hither with the hopes of adding to their collections of curiosities. Naturally, it would hardly do for them to not look in on their favorite nephew, now, would it? To say a hearty hello-hello-hello and make sure he wasn’t living in squalid debauchery, hey-what?

  Squalid debauchery, they did not find. Instead, they were met at the door by the unctuous politeness of Brassworth. Shrink though I do from the thought of such dear but aged relations’ unmentionables, I daresay he soon had them charmed to the very stocking-garters. They were full-on lavishing his praises by the time they cleared off after an admirable luncheon.

  And, really, even the bluest of the bluebloods aren’t so bunged up with tradition that they still use candles instead of gaslamps or teslic bulbs, are they? When you could travel by steam-engine, automotive, luxury liner or airship, who’d pick a lesser conveyance so dependent upon the weak and fallible flesh?

  Why not, then, a mechanical valet?

  It was the wave of the future, as they say! The coming thing, the household staff of tomorrow, be the envy of your friends, the pinnacle of innovation … and I was at the very cutting-edge forefront!

  So, it came as a rather nasty shock some weeks later when the entire Plimsby company took a drastic nosedive.

  I don’t mean literally; the airscrew-propelled factory didn’t crash and burn in a spectacular fireball of smoking metal, debris and destruction, tragic losses of life, or whatnot. Oh, it was devastating enough, make no mistake … damages into the millions, jobs lost, fortunes ransacked …

  Anyone who knows me will tell you that Reggie Wilmott is a stand-up fellow when it comes to his chums, but he’s never been one with much of a head for business, and I’d be the first to agree. I won’t even pretend to understand the ins and outs of what happened
.

  What I do understand is that it all went toes-up, and Moggy took it in the neck.

  Something to do with those laws and regulations old Plimsby had been trying to avoid catching up with him in a big way … something to do with corporate rivalry and proprietary information … threats of lawsuits from domestic service agencies … orders cancelled, investors jumping ship, stocks plummeting … the new line of automated house-help scrubbed …

  Was it all Moggy’s fault?

  Dashed if I know. It didn’t seem likely even he could have wreaked that much havoc in so short a time. Regardless, the Cyril Moglington who shuffled into my flat one evening and flopped onto my sofa, heaving the most dispirited sigh I’d ever heard, certainly seemed to think it was. He didn’t even notice the drastic changes about the place, or spare a single complimentary word.

  “My life is over, Reggie,” he said. He looked it, too … unshaven, hair a fright, clothes so rumpled he must have slept in them.

  “There now, old bean! It can’t be as bad as all that, can it?”

  “Gertrude gave me the boot.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! The only girl I’ve ever loved, my light, my angel, my sweet sugar dumpling, and she pulled the beating heart from my chest and stomped upon it!”

  I rang for Brassworth to bring us a drink. Not that I needed to ring; he must have been lurking just the other side of the door, awaiting the summons. He slid in with that unobtrusive manner of his, tray in hand, decanter at the ready.

  Moggy carried on for a while in the heart-stomping sweet sugar dumpling vein — women, don’t you know — while making a fairly serious attempt at drowning the sorrows.

  The real pinch came when he informed me, in an oh-just-by-the-way sort of footnote, that, what with these unfortunate circs being what they were, the whole arrangement with Brassworth was probably off.

  “Off? What do you mean, off?” I asked, more than a trifle alarmed.

  “Well, and they won’t be making any more, will they? Whole line’s been shut down.” He poured himself a generous knock. “There were only half a dozen other finished prototypes to start with, and the rest have already been deactivated.”

  “I say!” I said. I glanced at Brassworth. His metal features remained impassive as ever, but there was something in his manner I’d stake the house and lot hadn’t been there before. “Deactivated?”

  “Liquidated.” Moggy regarded the tumbler of whiskey, snorted, and commenced to further liquidate himself.

  “I say!” I said again, appalled.

  “Scrapped.” Moggy downed another gulp. “Melted to slag.”

  “Show some respect for the dead, man!”

  “The dead?” He reeled, blinking at me. “Reggie, they’re machines. Lish … lishsten … listen to yourself.”

  “Machines!” I looked back at Brassworth. “What’s your take on this?”

  “While it is a technically accurate description, sir,” he said, “I do find it a rather mournful, even dismaying turn of events.”

  “Dismaying? Downright ghoulish, if you ask me.”

  “To be sure,” Moggy said, or slurred, listing to starboard as he was by then, “since yours was a gift, there’s no contract to be revoked … but the guarantee, and the continooa… continuee…”

  “Continuance, sir?” supplied Brassworth.

  “Continuance, yes, that’s it,” Moggy said. “The continuance of terms. Scrubbed. No terms, no contract, no guarantee.”

  “And he’ll be deactivated? Not to mention … liquidated?”

  “Weren’t you the one going on about how you didn’t need a valet?”

  “Well, pff, bah, yes, I might have said, but … dash it all, Moggy!”

  “Don’t blame me!”

  “Was I?”

  “You might as well,” he said, slouching with a sulky cross of the arms. “Everyone else is. My uncle … Gertrude …” He did another of the heaving dispirited sighs and stared into the depths of his glass as if hoping to read the future in there instead of in tea leaves. “I’m only the messenger, after all, just a message-boy, probably get my allowance cut into the bargain…”

  I found myself with a marked lack of commiseration for my old school chum, and turned to Brassworth with a doleful but brave buck-up-laddy kind of stiff-upper-lip, the best I could muster. Words utterly failed me. Dashed if I didn’t find myself choking up, even going a bit misty around the corners.

  The very notion left me staggered. To say I’d become accustomed to him was an understatement that put all other understatements to the pale.

  “I do trust my service has been satisfactory, sir?” Brassworth inquired.

  “Ra-ther!” I said. We shook hands, his brass-fingered grip firm and cool. “But this can’t just be it, can it? Got to be something that can be done!”

  I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I had in mind by that remark, however fervently heartfelt. That he go on the lam, or whatever it was that people were always doing in adventure novels, was laughable. A life-size brass automaton would be anything but inconspic, don’t you know.

  “As my initial placement was in the form of a complimentary gift, it could perhaps be argued that I am no longer, technically, Plimsby property. However —”

  Moggy scoffed, loudly. “Like to see you tell old Plimsby that!”

  “Very well, Mr. Moglington. Shall I see to the travel arrangements?”

  “How’s that again?” I asked. “Travel arrangements? Where to?”

  “To Bristol, of course, sir.”

  I was glad to see that Moggy also had a baffled look, though in his case being well on the way to pickled also had something to do with it.

  “What, you mean, go back? Turn yourself in, as they say? Firing squad and all that?”

  “I would hardly expect a firing squad,” said Brassworth with a mildness that I could barely wrap the bean around.

  “No, dismantled and melted, more likely,” Moggy said.

  I shot him a look, finding this remark far less than helpful, not to mention considerably lacking in tact. He ignored me, going for another drink. I directed the look to rest once more on Brassworth’s tint-glass eyes.

  “You’ve got something percolating, haven’t you?” I asked.

  “Sir?”

  “I can hear the wheels turning in that head of yours!”

  “Do pardon me, sir.” He began to raise a hand to that head of his with what seemed like contrite consternation.

  “Not literally,” I said, giving a roll of the orbs in their sockets. “You’ve thought of something. You’ve got a plan.”

  “I may indeed, sir.”

  Moggy scoffed again. Even more loudly.

  “One which,” Brassworth continued, “may possibly stand a chance of restoring the company’s good fortune. Not to mention perhaps even affecting a reunion between Mr. Moglington and Miss Plimsby, if all goes well.”

  At that, sozzled or not, Moggy was off the couch like it was spring-loaded. “Gertrude?” he cried. “My little sugar-dumpling?”

  Then, as might be imagined, there was nothing for it but to go with all due speed. I hadn’t seen Moggy so motivated since our school field days when there were prizes in the offing.

  We caught a steam-trolley from my flat to the station. Brassworth proved a smash sen-sashe on the GWR to Bristol; the news had been all over the papers, wired, and wireless for weeks now, and to see the sole surviving Fine Plimsby Product up close was an uncommon treat for our fellow passengers.

  The trip went by for me in something of a blur, not only the blur of the countryside as the train sped along but a blur of anxious conversational babblings from Moggy such that I could barely get a thought in edgewise, let alone a word. The one prospect that did snag in my mental net long enough to worry me was in regards to old George Plimsby and whether or not he remained under the impression that I was Lord Bramford. But, in the greater scheme of things, it seemed far down the list.

  Brassworth maintained his
impassive silence as the chug-a-tug carried us out into the harbour. We rode the liftavator up the spire to the platform, and although I’d reconciled in my brain the fact of another gondola ride, my innards remained far from sanguine, if that’s the word I want.

  Plimsby’s behemoth continued its airborne circuits above Bristol, though once we’d disembarked the gondola, it seemed more a flying metal ghost town than the busy factory I’d seen before. The workers had been laid off, the great machines shut down except for the airscrews and propellers, and the clashing industrial din I remembered no longer drowned out the howl and whistle of the wind.