MASH 09 MASH goes to Vienna
Page 3
“Wesley St. James is an evil man ...” Mr. Taylor P. Jambon said, making a guess. He had done very well in his career making wild guesses.
“You bet your blap he’s an evil man,” Miss Worthington said. She looked closer at Taylor P. Jambon. “I didn’t catch the name, Fatso.”
“I am Taylor P. Jambon,” he said modestly.
“Never heard of you,” Miss Worthington replied. “But a friend in need is a friend indeed, as I always say.” She extended his flask to him. “Have a little snort, Jawbone.”
“Jambon, Miss Worthington,” he corrected her.
“Whatever,” she said. “Save some for me. You wouldn’t believe how dry it’s been in here. What’s on your mind, Jawbone?”
“Miss Worthington,” Taylor P. Jambon said, “in addition to being the famous television gourmet, I am the founder and executive director of APPLE.”
“You don’t say?” Miss Worthington said, sitting up with a grunt to snatch the flask from his hand.
“You know, of course, about APPLE and the APPLE Crusade?” Mr. Jambon pursued.
“Not the first bleeping thing,” Miss Worthington confessed. “If you’re some kind of a bleeping evangelist, Jawbone, I think I should tell you you’re wasting your time in here.”
“APPLE is the acronym for the Association of Pup and Pussy Lovers in Earnest,” Taylor P. Jambon said.
“You’re kidding,” Miss Worthington said. “Well, what’s that got to do with me? I can’t stand bleeping animals of any bleeping variety.”
“Not even puppy dogs and pussycats?” Taylor P. said, disappointment in his voice.
“Especially puppy dogs and pussycats,” Miss Worthington replied. “They give me the bleeping hives.”
“I understand the allergists can do wonders these days.” Mr. Taylor P. Jambon said. “Dear lady, if you would be good enough to give me a few minutes of your precious time, I have a business proposition I would like to make to you.”
“I was afraid it would be a business proposition,” Miss Worthington said, somewhat sadly. “You smell like a Parisian pansy. But what the bleep? At least you brought a jug. Let’s hear your bleeping proposition.”
Chapter Three
Six months previously, Brigadier Montague Fyffe (Royal Army, Retired), chief of staff of Folkestone Castle, Ltd., and as such in charge of the Folkestone Castle Zoo (Admission two Shillings, Children Under Twelve Half-price) watched with genuine regret (and, if the truth be known, tears in his eyes) as a veterinarian labored long and hard and fruitlessly in an attempt to save the life of Princess, a black Bengal tigress who had experienced fatal complications while delivering two cubs, one of which was born dead.
Finally, the veterinarian had gotten off his knees and turned to face Brigadier Fyffe.
“She’s gone, I’m afraid,” he said. “God knows, I did everything I know how to do.”
“And the cub?” Brigadier Fyffe, oblivious to the damage he was doing to his rather elegant suit, picked up the small, wet black bundle of newborn life and cradled it tenderly against him.
“So far as I can tell,” the veterinarian said, “it’s healthy. I’ll leave a formula with the cat keeper, and you can try to keep it alive. Keep it warm, try to get it to eat, and we’ll see.”
“You don’t really hold out much hope, do you, Doctor?” Brigadier Fyffe asked.
“It’s hard enough to raise cubs in captivity when the mother’s around,” the veterinarian said. “Now ...”
“Such a pity,” Brigadier Fyffe said. “I had such high hopes. Black Bengal tigers are so rare. And we tried so hard.”
“I’m sorry, Brigadier,” the veterinarian said.
“I must,” the brigadier said as much to himself as to the doctor, “bear these sad tidings to Her Grace.”
He straightened his shoulders, flexed his mustache and marched erectly out of the Cat House. (For some reason, the 75,000 or so American tourists who visited Folkestone Castle. Ltd., annually reacted rather oddly to the perfectly innocuous and certainly quite simple nomenclature. The brigadier understood, of course, why the blue-haired-lady element among the guests might tend to be disappointed to learn upon entering that the cats were behind bars, weighed several hundred pounds, and frankly had a certain odor. But why veritable hordes of American men should practically rush the premises, beaming from ear to ear, only to emerge moments later downcast and/or furious, muttering about deceptive British advertising, he didn’t pretend to understand.)
He climbed aboard his in-grounds transport vehicle, unfurled the flags, and switched on the radio.
“Control,” he said, sharply, “chief of staff from the Cat House to the Castle.”
He then engaged the clutch and moved swiftly and smoothly out of the zoo itself, through the Folkestone Castle Game Park, past the Duke’s Taproom Number Six, the Ducal Roller Coaster, the Bus & Van Parking Lot and up the footpath leading to Folkestone Castle itself. He rolled across the bridge over the moat, drove across the courtyard and stopped the in-grounds transport vehicle before the private entrance to the castle. He saw the black Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow saloon motorcar of Mr. Angus MacKenzie, V.C., parked in the space which a discreet sign emblazoned with the Folkestone coat of arms announced was “reserved for her grace.”
Her Grace was the dowager duchess of Folkestone, formerly Miss Florabelle Jenkins, who had been executive castlekeeper of Folkestone Castle Properties, Ltd., until the previous year. Following the untimely death, at ninety-four, * of Vice Admiral Lord Hugh Percival, the Duke of Folkestone, at that time, the announcement in His Grace’s last will and testament that Miss Jenkins had been the fruit of a somewhat clandestine union between himself and a Mrs. Ernestine Jenkins, had both caused something of a stir among the upper aristocracy and seen Miss Jenkins assume, rather belatedly, her rightful title.
(* The Duke expired of coronary failure while being pursued through Hyde Park by Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Sommersby (Royal Army, Retired), aged eighty-eight,' who, armed with a shotgun, was attempting to shoot His Grace, whom he had discovered in flagrante delicto with Lady Summersby, aged sixty-four, in the duke’s apartment in the Dorchester Hotel. The details of this affair, for those interested in the fine points of noble accession and/or of hanky-panky among the hoi polloi, are available in the scholarly tome M*A*S*H Goes to London (Pocket Books, New York, 1975), which is generally to be found offered for sale on the better paperback bookracks, at a very nominal price indeed.)
Mr. Angus MacKenzie (Royal Marines, Retired), a longtime friend of Miss Jenkins, had also been the boon companion of the late duke. There had been some raised eyebrows when, shortly after the demise of the duke and the elevation of Miss Jenkins to dowager duchess, the two announced their marriage. Some spoilsports said that it was absolutely unfitting for the dowager duchess of Folkestone to marry someone who, in thirty years in the Royal Marines, had never risen above the enlisted rank of company sergeant major. It was suggested that Mr. MacKenzie (often described as the “awful Scotsman”) had married the dowager duchess for her money.
Mr. MacKenzie’s defenders, and there were many, including Brigadier Fyffe, pointed out that Mr. MacKenzie had been for years managing director of East Anglia Breweries, Ltd., one of the late duke’s many commercial holdings and had received all of the stock of the breweries as a bequest in the duke’s last will and testament. He didn’t need the dowager duchess’ money.
Mr. MacKenzie, furthermore, had enjoyed the full trust and confidence of the duke during the last thirty years of the duke’s long life, an association which had begun when Mr. MacKenzie, then Marine orderly to Vice Admiral His Grace the Duke of Folkestone, had earned the Victoria Cross for keeping His Grace afloat and alive when HMS Indefatigable (of which the duke had been captain) had been torpedoed and sunk in the opening days of World War II.
Truth to tell, however, it had been at first difficult for Brigadier Fyffe, and others of his ilk, to accept Mr. MacKenzie as the consort. One simply was taken a bit ab
ack at the spectacle of a dowager duchess and a former Royal Marine company sergeant major walking hand in hand through the castle grounds, billing and cooing like a pair of fourteen-year-olds, addressing one another as “Dumpling” and “Snookums” and taking frequent pulls from the neck of a quart bottle of Royal Highland Dew Straight Scots Whiskey.
And then there were the dogs. Mr. MacKenzie had been known throughout his long Royal Marine Corps career as “Black Dog” MacKenzie. This did not make reference, as some alleged, to his being a black-hearted Scotsman but rather to the fact that he had rarely been, since his days as a Marine guard at Governor General’s House, New Delhi, without the company of a canine companion.
His first dog (known, as were all the others, simply as “Wee Black Doggie”) had been an Indian mongrel of unknown pedigree. He had acquired it while on guard duty, a small, black starving puppy who had followed him on his rounds around the Governor General’s Rose Garden. Then Private First-class MacKenzie had taken the puppy back with him to Marine barracks, bathed it, wormed it, and watched it with delight as the small, ungainly pup grew to maturity.
At maturity, the first Wee Black Doggie stood three- and-a-half feet at the shoulders and weighed just under ten stone.* He went down with HMS Indefatigable, having given his all for Crown and Country. A photograph of him hangs in a place of honor (above the bar) in the Sword, Crown & Anchor Hotel, traditional off-duty gathering place of the Royal Marine Corps in London.
(* A stone is the rather interesting (some say odd) manner in which the English describe the weight of a man or a large animal. One stone is fourteen pounds. The first Wee Black Doggie, thus, weighed approximately one hundred forty pounds.)
As soon as he was able to do so (after he got out of the hospital, a year later) Vice Admiral His Grace the Duke of Folkestone had naturally considered it his duty as an officer and a gentleman to replace the animal his orderly (and savior) had lost in the sinking of HMS Indefatigable. Since it was impossible at the time to scour the alleys of New Delhi for a replacement mongrel of suitable size and color, His Grace did the next best thing. He scoured the Scottish Highlands for the largest, meanest Scottish wolfhound he could find. (Most canine geneticists believe the Scottish wolfhound is a cross between the Irish wolfhound and the wolf. It is, in any event, the only animal from which the Irish wolfhound will invariably flee in absolute terror.)
When the duke presented the replacement animal (then just a five-month-old pup weighing hardly over six stone (or eighty-four pounds), it had been appropriate, of course, to raise a wee cup in the memory of their comrades-in-arms (including, of course, Wee Black Doggie) who had gone down with HMS Indefatigable. One wee cup led to another. The duke and the sergeant major came to realize that they, despite the vast difference in social position, were, so to speak, birds of a feather. Three days later, when the ducal Rolls-Royce bounced back down the rocky mountain trail from the MacKenzie cottage, Angus MacKenzie and Wee Black Doggie were in the back seat.
Two weeks later, Mr. Angus MacKenzie, V.C., The Brewer’s Gazette reported, had been unanimously elected general manager of East Anglia Breweries, Ltd., following the resignation “for personal reasons” of the incumbent, Vice Admiral His Grace the Duke of Folkestone. The vote was unanimous because the duke owned all the stock.
For the next thirty years, the two retired gentlemen were practically inseparable. There was grouse shooting in the highlands, deerstalking on the moors, and, it was none too discreetly bandied about, the pursuit of certain two-legged short-skirted French game in Monte Carlo and other such watering places.
They were always accompanied by Wee Black Doggie. Not always the same Wee Black Doggie, of course, because the Grim Canine Reaper took his regular toll, but always a Wee Black Doggie and sometimes as many as two or three Wee Black Doggies at once. At full growth, Wee Black Doggies generally stood about four feet at the shoulder and weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty to twenty-two stone (280-308 pounds), stretching, nose to tail, anywhere from eight to ten feet.
Wee Black Doggie was always a boy Wee Black Doggie, the idea of having a girl Wee Black Doggie never having really entered the mind of Mr. MacKenzie, and certainly not that of His Grace, at all.
Marriage, as the reader may him or herself have noticed, frequently changes long-standing, even sacrosanct tradition. Such it was with the gender of Wee Black Doggie.
Immediately following his marriage, Mr. MacKenzie found himself, for the first time in forty years, without a Wee Black Doggie. The incumbent had been presented, in a moment’s emotional weakness, to a Miss Beverly Chambers, a young American friend of the new duke of Folkestone.*
(* On the death of Vice Admiral His Grace the Duke of Folkestone, the title passed to his grand-nephew the Honorable Hugh Percival Woodburn- Haverstraw, then serving as a midshipman aboard HMS Insubmergible. The subtle nuances of the situation may be found explored with some skill and finesse, and at great length, in M*A*S*H Goes to London, and it will suffice to note here simply that His Grace, then eighteen years old, had become rather friendly with Miss Chambers, also then eighteen years old, while he was a patient in the Spruce Harbor (Maine) Medical Center. At the suggestion of B. F. Pierce, M.D., who with Miss Chambers medically attended His Grace during the internment rites of the late duke in London, and with, of course, Her Majesty’s permission, Midshipman His Grace the Duke of Folkestone was appointed to the United States Naval Academy, at Annapolis, Maryland, by Congressman Edwards L. “Smiling Jack” Jackson (Farmer-Free Silver, Ark.) and Congressman Anthony J. “Tiny Tony” Pasquale (Liberal-Republican, N.J.) in exchange for Dr. Pierce’s promise that he would not release certain photographs of the distinguished solons that he had in his possession to the press.
At the suggestion of Her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Folkestone, Mr. Agnus MacKenzie presented Wee Black Doggie to Miss Chambers to keep her company while His Grace was at Annapolis. Mr. MacKenzie’s unexpected generosity in this may be fairly attributed to three things. He had just married the dowager duchess; Miss Chambers was the second female in his memory (the first being the dowager duchess) whom Wee Black Doggie had not tried to eat; and thirdly, he was rather in his cups at the time.)
He did not notice the absence of a canine companion immediately, it must be reported. He had been married three whole days before he woke with a start to realize that the body against which he was warming his feet was not covered with heavy black fur but rather nylon lace.
“My God!” he cried, sitting up in bed. “Wee Black Doggie!”
“Snookums gave him to Woody’s sweet little friend,” the dowager duchess, sitting up herself, replied. “Has Snookums forgotten?”
“Of course not, Dumpling,” Mr. MacKenzie replied, not entirely truthfully. “I was under the impression, however, that it was more in the nature of a loan than a gift.”
“It was not,” the dowager duchess said. “You gave that sweet child that animal, Angus MacKenzie, and don’t try to worm out of it.” She paused and wilted at the sight of his face. Tragedy was written all over its somewhat ruddy and worn contours. “Snookums,” she said, “you can always get another.”
“Right you are, Dumpling,” MacKenzie had replied, swinging his feet out of bed. “I’ll be back the day after tomorrow. Behave yerself while I’m away.”
“You’re leaving our ... nuptial couch ... on the third day of our marriage to buy a dog?” the duchess queried.
“Not any old run-of-the-mill dog,” Mr. MacKenzie replied, slipping into his long johns. “A proper wee black doggie.”
“I’m going with you,” the duchess replied. “You must try to remember, Angus, that you are no longer a poor companionless bachelor, all alone in this world. I am, and will be, henceforth and forevermore, at your side.” And with that, Her Grace got out of her side of the bed. Thirty minutes later, after having braced themselves for the rigors of the journey with about four fingers of Royal Highland Dew Straight Scots Whiskey, the dowager duchess and her consort rather re
gally descended the main staircase of Folkestone Castle, entered the ducal Rolls-Royce and set out for the Scottish Highlands.
They returned four days later with not one but two Scottish wolfhounds, of differing genders. The male wee black doggie, despite a rather awesome appearance, was frankly something of a disappointment to Mr. MacKenzie. Not only did it make it quite clear, almost from the beginning, that his heart belonged to the dowager duchess, but also that he lived in deep, unquestioned fear of the female wee black doggie. The latter (since two names were obviously required) was immediately dubbed Babykins, the dowager duchess having decided that Mr. MacKenzie’s suggestion for a name (Wee Bitch), while technically correct, was somewhat unsuitable for an animal which would, after all, be residing in the ducal apartments of Folkestone Castle.
Babykins turned out to be, as she grew, something of a mixed blessing. On one hand, she manifested most of the character traits of her breed which had endeared her predecessors to her master. That is to say, she grew both enormous and fearless, and was never happier than when she believed she was defending her master against the enemy. There were some problems with this (for one thing, she formed the idea that the in-grounds transport vehicle provided for the chief of staff was an infernal device intended to harm Mr. MacKenzie. She took great delight in biting the tires, ripping the shredded rubber from the wheels, and carrying it proudly into the castle to drop at her master’s feet), but nothing that, considering the breed, was really unexpected.
What really did annoy Mr. MacKenzie was that Babykins did not display, at all, what Mr. MacKenzie considered to be the appropriate dignified decorum of a wee black doggie. All of her male predecessors had been quite content to manifest their affection for their master with nothing more than a slow wag of the tail at his sight and by laying quietly at his feet. Not so Babykins. She deeply loved her master and didn’t care if the whole world knew it.