Belchester Box Set

by Andrea Frazer

  ‘And may I suggest, now, that you return to the drawing room where I have left a further cocktail to uphold you in your time of shock, and will sound the dinner gong in approximately fifteen minutes.’ In these few sentences, Beauchamp went up even further in Lady Amanda’s opinion, for not only had he been her saviour, but was willing to rid that part of the house of any other invading horrors before she had to go back for another look.

  Back in the drawing room, cocktails awaiting them on the usual silver tray, Hugo took a gulp of his and announced, ‘I say, Manda old bean, that was rather hairy, wasn’t it?’

  ‘So was that dratted spider,’ she replied, draining her glass in one; something that had become a bit of a habit, of late. ‘My goodness! That frightened the life out of me. And to think, things like that have been living in there for years. It’s about time it was all rooted out and cleaned up. I’ll give Enid a ring after we’ve eaten.’

  Lady Amanda was so taken up with Hugo’s plans that she had completely forgotten about the possibility that her mother might leave, and was, therefore, surprised when she came down in the morning to find the hall filled with suitcases and trunks, her mother sitting on the top of one of the latter and looking at her watch.

  ‘You off then, Mummy? So soon? And what’s all that stuff you’ve got in your luggage? You certainly didn’t arrive with much.’

  ‘Just a few bits and pieces I couldn’t take before, given the circumstances of my departure,’ replied Lady Edith, haughtily. ‘I could hardly take more than a fraction of my possessions when I had to run away as I did, could I?’

  ‘Well, as long as you haven’t half-inched anything of mine,’ replied her daughter.

  ‘I have taken what was mine when I lived here. If that should include anything you thought you had subsequently inherited, you will just have to wait until I’m decently dead and buried again, won’t you?’

  ‘The second part of that could be arranged first, if you’ll pass me a shovel,’ replied Lady Amanda, but she said it under her breath, so that her mother couldn’t hear her and pick her up on it. ‘As long as you haven’t taken anything I really like,’ she concluded.

  ‘I’m hardly likely to do that, am I, my dearest daughter. You have the most appalling taste, in my opinion, and I should be unlikely to reclaim anything of which you were fond.’

  As Lady Amanda’s face began to show the unmistakable signs of one of her outbursts, Beauchamp appeared, to defuse the situation, and announced that the taxi had arrived at the door, and the driver was awaiting his fare.

  The parting of parent and child was so disgustingly insincere and two-faced that Hugo was lucky not to have witnessed it, and even Beauchamp had to go to have a little sit-down after witnessing it. It was, therefore, to a slightly emptier house that Hugo appeared for breakfast that morning, intrigued by the sight of Lady Amanda apparently dancing a jig just inside the front door, and carolling, ‘Ding dong! The wicked witch is gone.’

  Then, like a machine which has suddenly been switched off, she paused in mid-jig, her face became a mask of horror, and she rushed up the stairs yelling, ‘The ear trumpet! The ear-trumpet! She mustn’t have taken that! Oh God, please don’t let her have taken the ear trumpet!’

  Three minutes later, she descended the staircase at a more ladylike pace, cradling the silver ear trumpet in her arms and gazing at it fondly.

  ‘Was all that fuss about an old ear trumpet?’ asked Hugo, perplexed as to her motives for this sudden attachment to an inanimate and not very interesting object.

  ‘Do you know how much these things are worth these days, Hugo?’ she asked, looking at him in a pained manner.

  ‘Not a clue. Going to enlighten me, then?’

  ‘In the right auction, the best part of two grand, given the company that produced this one. And it’s mine! All mine! And I intend for it to stay that way!’

  Chapter Five

  Actually Getting Right Down to It

  Up in the attics the next morning, Lady Amanda, attempting to bounce on a mattress on one of the long-departed servants’ beds, winced as she predicted a bad case of bruised buttocks. ‘Surely they didn’t sleep on these things?’ she enquired of Hugo.

  ‘Have you really never been up here before?’ Hugo asked her, looking scandalised. ‘Mind your h …’ But he was too late. Lady Amanda had risen without due care and attention, had not remembered that the bed was tucked into the eaves, and was now rubbing the top of her head, her face crumpled in pain. That’s heads and tails for me, and it’s only nine fifteen! she thought. Who would have thoughts that servants in this house had such daily dangers to face as giant spiders, mice, rock-hard mattresses and low-flying ceilings?

  ‘I really don’t think I’d have liked to have been in service,’ she declared, moving to a part of the room that was tall enough for her to stand up properly.

  ‘I don’t think anyone would have employed you,’ was Hugo’s retort.

  ‘Why ever not? I’m strong and hard-working!’

  ‘When it suits you. You wouldn’t have survived the daily grind for more than a week. No, make that more than a day,’ Hugo added, as Lady Amanda did an unrehearsed little dance routine to avoid some sort of insect or another that had scuttled across the floor.

  ‘I fear you’re right, Hugo, but it doesn’t mean I can’t exploit the past for the profits of the future. Now that I will be good at.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, but, as I said before, you’d have been an absolutely useless servant. You’d’ve been forever swooning and having to have your corsets loosened.’

  There’s no answer to that!

  Enid turned up just before lunchtime (quelle surprise!) and graciously accepted Lady Amanda’s offer of joining them for a bite. Fortunately Beauchamp usually listened in on all telephone conversations, because his mistress could be a little forgetful at times, and it helped if he had the information with which to prod her memory. He had, therefore, prepared sufficient lunch for three people, and let Lady Amanda suppose that he had forgotten that Lady Edith had already left them.

  After coffee, Enid was given a guided tour of the servants’ quarters, and expressed shock, not only at how much there was to do, but also at the conditions they had lived in, which was outrageously outspoken for such a timid character.

  ‘Never mind all that weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth about things that are in the past and can’t be changed. Do you think it could be done?’ asked Lady Amanda, her foot tapping impatiently, while she waited for Enid to consider this.

  ‘If I called in the Mothers’ Union,’ she eventually replied. ‘They’d be glad to help out, to get some insight into how people used to live without it having to be on the telly. Why don’t you see if they’d let you be an honorary member, Lady Amanda?’

  ‘I’d rather eat my mother,’ was her terse reply.

  ‘Did you never want any children of your own?’ asked Enid, puzzled that anyone could survive without the martyrdom of motherhood.

  ‘Now listen to this, Enid, and listen good. When you die, they put you in a box and bury you, don’t they? No, no, no! This isn’t about cremation or burial. But am I right? Yes? Good! Now, as far as I’m concerned, when you have children, they put you in a box, and you bury yourself. Me? I want a life, and an unencumbered one, at that. I’m too selfish for a family, and I’m honest enough to declare it.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ declared Enid emphatically.

  ‘Of course she does,’ Hugo gave as his opinion, but with a smile on his face.

  ‘If they’d be happy to muck in, though, I’d be very grateful,’ accepted Lady Amanda, in as humble a manner as she could muster up at such short notice, and with the thought of volunteer (free) labour, she could muster up quite a lot of humble.

  ‘We’ve got our monthly meeting on Friday, and I’ll put it to them then. I’m sure they’d love to have a look inside this place. They’re always asking me about it,’ Enid confirmed with the smug smile of one who is sought out
as the fount of all knowledge on Belchester Towers.

  On Monday morning, the ladies of the Mothers’ Union turned up in their best pinnies, scarves tied around their heads to protect their hair-dos from dust, all of them seeming full of vim and vigour. Lady Amanda was as pleased as punch as she surveyed the eager (and nosy) faces that turned to her as she greeted them. If they were full of vim and vigour, she had just the right cleaning products for them: Vim and (from France) Vigor, a very effective spray liquid cleaner.

  She was holding a clipboard as she stood before them in the hall, with all the jobs neatly parcelled out into lots. Having explained the rooms she would like ‘bottomed’, as Enid referred to the thorough cleansing of a room, she handed the clipboard to Enid, chirped, ‘You’re in charge,’ and made to walk back down the hall.

  ‘Where are you going, Lady Amanda? I thought you were going to lend a hand and supervise; not me,’ Enid called after her, her face falling. She had rather been looking forward to showing off to her friends in the MU just how friendly she and Lady Amanda were.

  ‘Too much to do, Enid, my dear. Got to get the Christmas decorations down from the loft, hang the darned things, get the trees sorted out, write the cards, write the invitations for this Boxing Day fling – you won’t mind helping out as a waitress, will you?’

  ‘Of course not, it’s just that I thought you were going to be working with us.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Enid. I’ve got much more important things to do,’ this called over her shoulder dismissively, as she once more disappeared into the bowels of the house in search of Beauchamp. She’d need him to help with all the boxes and things to be retrieved from the attics. And all the dashing about from floor to floor. After all, why keep a dog and bark yourself?

  Hugo was waiting for her on the first floor by the lift, Beauchamp on the second floor landing by the door that led to the attics. Standing half-way between them on the second flight of stairs, she addressed her troops.

  ‘Right! Today is “Operation Christmas Decorations”. I shall retrieve them from the attics, as I know exactly where they are all kept. I shall bring them to Beauchamp,’ here she nodded at the manservant, like a dowager acknowledging a peasant, ‘Beauchamp will take them down to you, Hugo,’ (again, the regal nod), ‘and Hugo, you will load them into the lift.

  ‘Give us a yell when it’s full, and send it downstairs, so that Beauchamp can trot down and unload it, then send it back up to you. It should only take three or four trips, and we shall be done.’

  ‘Three or four lifts’ worth? Exactly how many rooms do you decorate at Christmas, Manda?’ Hugo called up to her, a look of alarm on his face, at all the work to come.

  Finger on forehead to promote thinking, Lady Amanda intoned, ‘The drawing room, the dining room, the morning room, the library, the study, the snug, the hall …’

  ‘OK, Manda. I get the idea. It’s lucky you thought to get them down today. It’ll take until Christmas Eve to get that lot done.’

  ‘Nonsense, Hugo. We’ve got our little entertainment to sort out, invitations to send out, cards to write, and food and present shopping to do yet, so you’d better stop wasting time asking silly questions, so that we can get started.’ And she whizzed up the final half-flight of stairs and disappeared through the door that led to the attics.

  Only half an hour later, she had left the door to the steps to the attic open, and was sitting on the bottom step puffing and blowing like a grampus. Between gasps for air, she complained to Beauchamp, ‘I seem to have aged ten years since we did this last year. I don’t know where all my energy’s gone.’

  ‘May I suggest that my lady has had a rather busy time of it, this year, and that events have somewhat sapped her normal energy levels,’ offered Beauchamp, sympathetically.

  ‘Somewhat pompously put, but I do believe you’re right. We have had some rather taxing and exciting times.’

  ‘What’s going on up there? I’ve been waiting ages for the next lot,’ echoed up the stairwell from the floor below.

  Beauchamp took over, knowing that he would have to rearrange things for the sake of efficiency and Lady Amanda’s health, and called down, ‘We’re all going to go downstairs now, and I’ll sort out a different team, using a couple of women from the Mothers’ Union. We should have it done in no time, and I know you’ve got lists, and lists of things, to make.

  ‘You’ve got the invitation list to work out, and you’ll have to do a route for the tour, a script for the guide, and menus for those who are staying to tea. That should take at least this afternoon, and be sufficient work for both of you.’

  ‘Beauchamp to the rescue as usual,’ puffed Lady Amanda, struggling to rise to her feet. As she clumped heavily down the stairs to meet up with Hugo, a ghostly echo floated down behind her.

  ‘That’s Beecham!’

  Hugo was more than willing to swap activities, especially since Beauchamp’s suggestion involved quite a lot of sitting down. He definitely felt up to that, but he was fed up and aching from moving boxes into the lift and stacking them. The whole exercise was playing merry hell with his back and joints – one knee in particular was giving him problems – and he knew he would enjoy sitting around planning things, which would go much easier with his arthritis.

  With the two of them back in the drawing room again, Lady Amanda got herself a notepad and pencil (so that she could excommunicate with an eraser, any guest she changed her mind about) and they put their minds to those of sufficient social status to be honoured with an invitation to this exclusive gathering.

  ‘You go first, Hugo. You’ve lived away a good long time, so we’ll start with anyone you might like to see again – provided they’re still alive, that is,’ she offered, knowing that it would be her who had the final say, but she might as well let Hugo feel that he was having it as much his way, as she was, hers.

  ‘What about Bonkers and Fluffy?’ he asked, after a few moments of thought.

  ‘Nice one, Hugo! They’re connected all over the place. Just the sort of people we want to talk about our new little venture,’ and she wrote on her notepad: Colonel Henry and Mrs Hilda Heyhoe-Caramac. ‘Now, whom shall we have next?’

  ‘Umm. Er. Got it! Blimp and Fifi. They were always good for a laugh.’

  ‘Bulls-eye for the second time. You’re good at this,’ and she wrote again: Sir Jolyon and Lady Felicity ffolliat DeWinter. ‘My turn now, I think. What about Monty and Maddie?’

  ‘It would be good to see them again. I haven’t seen them for, oh, must be thirty years, now,’ Hugo agreed with alacrity, and Lady Amanda’s pen moved again, as she wrote: Major Montgomery and Mrs Madeleine Mapperley-Minto. ‘You can have another go, now, Hugo, old stick.’

  Hugo scratched at his forehead, wracking his brains to come up with another name from his past. Finally he looked up and said, ‘Popeye and Porky. Not long married when I lost touch with them, as I remember. Rather good to see how that worked out. They any good?’

  ‘I’d say. I didn’t even know you knew them. Although there are all those rumours about a book … No, forget I said that.’

  ‘Met them last time I visited the area, at old Stinky’s, but that was an age ago.’

  ‘I’ll put them down. I don’t know that I trust him very much, but she’s all right, and their presence ought to cause a bit of a stir – not the most popular of guests in the area.’ Again, she wrote: Captain Leslie and Mrs Lesley Barrington-Blyss.

  ‘Why’s that?’ asked Hugo, curious.

  ‘No idea,’ she lied, having listened to all the gossip she found available to her, ‘but I mean to find out, and Boxing Day will give us the ideal opportunity, won’t it? And, as you mentioned him, what about old Stinky and Donkey?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Hilarious couple! Had a grand time when I last went to theirs, although, as I said, it was a long time ago.’

  ‘They haven’t changed, Hugo: only got a bit older, like we all have,’ Lady Amanda assured him, turning once more to her list and noting d
own: Lt Col. Aloysius and Mrs Angelica Featherstonehaugh-Armitage. ‘Now, one last couple, and I think a dozen’s enough, don’t you?’

  ‘Ra-ther!’ agreed Hugo.

  Both of them had been lapsing into a state of deep thought between suggestions, but finally, that splendid chap, Mr Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump, opened his eyes wide, as if he had had what one used to think of as ‘a light-bulb turning on’ moment but, now, could no longer be pertinent to describe such an occurrence, what with the time it took to get any light brighter than a glow-worm’s, for what seemed like ages, out of one those new-fangled energy-efficient jobbies.

  ‘There’s always Cutie and Daisy,’ he piped up, remembering this august personage and his rather child-like and over-feminine wife, of whom he had always been rather in awe.

  ‘Bingo!’ she shouted in triumph, adding the final names to her pad: Sir Montacute and Lady Margaret Fotherington-Flint. ‘We’ve done it, and in record time. I thought it would take hours to sort out a dozen people, and here we are, done in not much longer than twenty minutes. Right, I’ll just leave this list, with the draft invitation I’ve already prepared – it’s in my desk – and put it on the salver in the hall.

  ‘Phew! What a list! I hope the printer’s got some really wide invitation cards. I’m just glad I don’t have to send you one, Hugo, especially if I’d have to include all your other middle names. Anyway, Beauchamp will know what it’s all about, and take it to the printer’s. If I put a separate note about Christmas cards, he’ll get them to print the same as usual.’

  ‘You get your Christmas cards printed?’ asked Hugo, aghast.

  ‘You funny old thing! Doesn’t everybody? Saves so much time having to write them by hand, and the local printer’s even got a facsimile of my signature, so that all I have to do is put them in the envelopes. He even prints the sticky labels for the envelopes. Costs a bit more than buying them in Smith’s or somewhere like that, but it’s worth the money to avoid the annual grind.’