‘Damned pleased to hear it! What’s the old wind-bag up to now, then?’
‘She’s planning to do guided tours of The Towers, and she wants us to be guinea pigs.’
‘Oh, God! I hope that doesn’t mean being dragged from room to room while some wrinkly old worthy spouts on about their boring family history.’
‘Nothing of the sort, my sweet. We’re to have access to bits of her residence that we’ve never seen before, and then be provided with afternoon tea – a no doubt splendid affair, given that she only acts mean, and is actually rolling in it.’
‘Glad to hear someone is.’
‘Do be quiet, Cutie, and let me finish,’ she chided him, automatically. ‘If we’re willing to stay on and give her our opinions, we’ll be included in cocktails. She wants this thing up and running by spring, and to have exactly the right sort of clients booking the tours: personal recommendation only, for the first month or so.’
‘Well, cocktails sound super. Keeping the old cupboard stocked with the hundreds of bottles that seem to be required to have even a modest cocktail party these days is simply beyond my means. And if it means that I can recommend this tour to all those acquaintances that I thoroughly dislike, that will be the icing on the cake. When’s this shindig scheduled to happen?’
‘Boxing Day,’ replied his wife, pleased with the reaction she had received to the invitation.
‘Hallelujah! There is a God after all! I can now cancel my snivelling cousins who always take the trouble to have a good old suck at my wallet on the twenty-sixth. They can go hang, for we have a prior engagement, and cannot be here to receive them this year. I feel so happy about telling them, that I could kiss Lady Amanda’s hand. I just hope she doesn’t change her mind and cancel at the last minute. The County grapevine is every bit as efficient as the community variety.’
‘Well, that’s that settled, then. I shall write to accept, straight away.’ Skipping like the child she had once been, Lady Margaret returned down the landing to her boudoir, where she sat at a tiny Davenport, extracted her pen and a sheet of paper embossed with her name and address, and began to write, in a beautifully flowing hand.
At the breakfast table in The Old Convent, Lieutenant Colonel Aloysius Featherstonehaugh-Armitage – aka Stinky – puffed on his after breakfast cigar, perusing the oblong of fine quality card that he held out in front of him, with interest.
‘Golly, Stinky, no wonder that’s what they called you when you were old enough to smoke those vile things. I do so wish you wouldn’t smoke one at the breakfast table, though. Thoroughly bad form, if you ask me,’ commented his wife, Angelica, affectionately known by her friends and family as ‘Donkey’, because she could be a bit slow at times, and as stubborn as her nickname-sake.
‘Sorry old girl, but a man’s got to be able to do what he wants in his own home, as there’s nowhere else he can do it. Why don’t you take breakfast in bed? That should solve everything. I could have my morning cigar, and you could have your breakfast in the unpolluted air of the bedroom. What do you say, old thing?’
‘The air in there isn’t exactly pure when you’ve spent the night in there.’ (Amongst their friends and acquaintances, they were about the only two who still shared a bedroom.) ‘I presume they didn’t give you your nickname just because you took up smoking those dreadful things. You must have had it from a very early age. I wonder if it’s time we had separate rooms, my little snuggle bunny. I know how my tossing and turning, and my snoring disturb you. Maybe you’d like to consider that over your breakfast cigar?’
‘Sorry,’ apologised Stinky. ‘Went off into a brown study there. Didn’t take in a thing you said.’
‘Never mind. I’m sure I shall raise the subject again in the near future, maybe as a New Year’s resolution.’
‘Jolly good show, Donkey, old girl. Talk to me about it another time, what?’
‘Of course, my dear. That invitation’s given me an idea, though. Why can’t we do the same thing here?’
‘What same thing?’ Lt Col. Featherstonehaugh-Armitage was still not paying his wife any attention. ‘What invitation?’
‘Oh, I do wish you’d listen sometimes. We’ve been invited to Belchester Towers on Boxing Day to do a trial run on a guided tour. We’ll get a slap-up afternoon tea afterwards, and if we can be bothered to stay on and tell Lady Amanda what we think of her tour, we’ll get cocktails as well,’ she explained, speaking in a rush, because she was so fed up with repeating herself. She sometimes wondered whether her husband needed a hearing-aid or a resounding slap.
‘Having people round for cocktails, you mean?’ Stinky was still rather in the dark.
‘No! Oh, I do wish you’d pay attention. Opening up part of this place to the public. Restore some of the nuns’ cells, maybe do up the chapel a bit, and offer cream teas – at an extra cost, of course.’
‘Ah, got you, Donkey. Go on a reconnaissance mission. Clever old thing. Not like you at all to have a brainwave. Are you feeling quite the ticket today?’
‘Don’t be so cutting, my dear. I’m not the utter ass you’ve always assumed I am. I just save my good ideas for really important things, and don’t squander them on trivialities.’
‘Good girl, good girl!’ soothed Stinky, completely immersed in his newspaper. ‘I say! Old Binky’s getting a new ball-and-chain. Says so right here, in the forthcoming marriages section. At least no one could be more of an old misery-guts than the last one. Always moaning about being ill with something or other.’
‘She did die, dear, so she must have been right. Don’t be so hard on her memory.’
‘You’re right. Dear old Donkey! Always trying to bring out the best in people. Still, I suppose you’ve got your work cut out with me. I say, haven’t you, old girl? Got your work cut out with me?’
‘If you weren’t such a fine-looking specimen, I should have poisoned you years ago and gone in search of pastures new,’ replied Daisy but, Stinky was oblivious to his wife’s words, reading the obituary of an old army comrade-in-arms.
Chapter Eight
Menus and Stockings and Lashings of Good Cheer
While the various invitations were being received and considered, Lady Amanda had encountered Hugo in rather finer fettle than he had been before his first ever encounter with one of Beauchamp’s prairie oysters, and had cornered him so that she could bully him into joining her at a little menu planning for Boxing Day.
‘Come on Hugo! You know you want to really! You’ve always loved a party, and you could pack away canapés faster than anyone I knew. I’m sure your educated stomach – and palate, of course – could come up with some wonderful ideas for our little tea party.
‘It’s got to be special, to get them to tuck in and prolong their stay: then we have to keep them hooked into the occasion long enough for cocktails to be served. That’ll get ’em going. Relax them with a shot or two of alcohol, and the truth about what they really think of our enterprise, and this establishment, will come pouring out, and all without any guile whatsoever.’
‘Then you don’t consider that coercing them to stay for cocktails to loosen their tongues is in any way a use of guile?’ asked Hugo, astonished at her attitude.
‘Of course not. It’s normal social practice, as far as I’m concerned, and the whole bang-shoot of them would agree with me, were they in a similar position. Come along, Hugo! Get your thinking cap on. Let’s go and sit in the drawing room and see what we can come up with.’
A few minutes later, Lady A sat with a pad on her lap, a pen in her right hand, waiting for Hugo’s first suggestion. ‘Come along, old thing. I can’t wait for ever.’
‘You go first,’ grumbled Hugo. ‘My mind is a complete blank. You’ll have to crank it over like we all used to with the old cars.’
‘I think you need new batteries, if the truth be told, Chummy. Right, here goes: those lovely little squares of rusked bread with cream cheese and smoked salmon, with a little dollop of caviar on the top.’<
br />
‘That’s pushing the boat out a bit, isn’t it?’ asked Hugo, surprised at the extravagance of her first suggestion.
‘We want to get them relaxed and content, don’t we?’ she parried.
‘S’pose so! What about doing something similar with smoked venison and haggis, with a tiny drop of Cumberland sauce on top, finished off with just the merest hint of Scottish gravy?’ Hugo said, a greedy look entering his eyes. This was one of his favourite nibbles.
‘I’m sure the whisky supply will stand up to that. Now, what do you think of anchovy toast?’
‘Absolutely topping, Amanda, old bean. Love the stuff. Can we use toasting forks and make our own toast at the fire, so that’s it’s hot and crispy, and not cold and limp, as it always is when made in the kitchen, then transferred to the table?’
‘Superb idea! That will tie in with the tour of the domestic quarters, and let them remember how it had always limped to the table in a parlous state when made in advance.’
Lady Amanda had hardly had time to write down this idea before Hugo had another brilliant idea. ‘And we could have some of those prune things wrapped in bacon. The chaps always gobble those down.’
‘Better remember to get Beauchamp to de-stone the prunes, then,’ remarked Lady A rather sharply, ‘or there’ll be cracked dentures all over the floor,’ then added, ‘We could do with some of those little puff pastry case things – damn! I can’t remember what they’re called, but you can put a variety of fillings in them. Vol-au-vents o – that’s the little beggars.
‘They’re a bit ‘Tupperware party’-ish, aren’t they?’ asked the Educated Stomach.
‘Have you ever actually been to a Tupperware party, Hugo?’ asked Lady Amanda, skewering him with her eye.
‘Well, no …’
‘Then don’t talk about things about which you know nothing.’
‘I suppose you have been to one, then. Just your sort of thing, I suppose: pieces of plastic for a kitchen you never enter.’ Hugo was now feeling quite waspish.
‘I have actually,’ replied his hostess, with a smile of triumph on her face. ‘It was about twenty years ago, at Enid’s house, when times were hard and she was trying to make a little extra money.’
‘Bet you didn’t buy anything.’
‘Well, there, you’re wrong. I did.’ Lady A definitely had the winning hand in this game.
‘What?’ asked Hugo, mesmerised by the idea of Lady Amanda in Enid’s tiny little house in Plague Alley, at something as mundane and common as a Tupperware party.
‘Well, the demonstrator, as I think she was called, called it a Yorkshire pudding batter maker, but I think she must not have been trained very well. To my eye, it was a plastic cocktail shaker, for use in dire emergencies, and I immediately entered one on my order form. If one forgets the real thing on picnics, it could be a life-saver, when one is in the middle of the countryside, without a civilised dwelling in sight, and nothing in which to mix the cocktails.’
‘By George! I didn’t think they sold anything useful,’ exclaimed Hugo, and gave her leave to add vol-au-vents to the menu, provided she could come up with some appropriate fillings.
After a few moments of silence in which she contemplated this challenge, she smiled, looked Hugo straight in the eye and said, ‘What about a little melted Camembert, topped with a sharp fruit jus? Or chopped game, set in a port aspic, with a crunchy little morsel of green on the top?’
‘Manda, I think you just made the vol-au-vent fit for civilised company. Of course, we haven’t even started to discuss sandwiches or cakes yet, which are the main components of a good afternoon tea. No plates of bread and butter for us, on such an important occasion, I assume.’
‘Absolutely not. I suggest rare beef with horseradish,’ replied the hostess, licking her lips in anticipation.
‘Thinly sliced pork with an apple and cinnamon sauce,’ interjected Hugo, raising his voice just a tad against a tremendous rumble from his stomach. ‘Golly, this is making me hungry, Manda. What time is Beauchamp bringing through afternoon tea?’
‘Not long! Now think! It’s better to think of food when you’re hungry, because you have more enthusiasm for it. Smoked salmon and watercress. If there are any vegetarians, and I haven’t seen any of these folk for some time, they’ll just have to peel away the bread and eat that. Now for cakes. Over to you, Hugo.’
‘Walnut and coffee, with a coffee butter cream filling and outside coating. Golly, I feel positively faint with hunger.’
‘Double chocolate cake with a fresh whipped cream filling,’ continued his partner, ‘and I think a good old-fashioned seedcake for those who like a little punishment with their luxuries.’
The door opened soundlessly, and Beauchamp entered the room and slid across the floor as silently as a snake, a large laden tray in his hands. Hugo actually clapped his hands in glee. ‘Oh, thank God you’re here, Beauchamp. Here we’ve been discussing the afternoon tea for the twenty-sixth for I don’t know how long, and I’m dying of starvation just thinking about all that food.’
As Beauchamp set down the tray, Lady Amanda tore a page out of her notebook and handed it to him. ‘Cast your eye over that, will you, and let me know if there are any problems, or if there is anything you would like to add to the list. We must do our guests proud on this occasion, because so much depends on it.’
Beauchamp took a cursory glance at the list and, just before he took his leave of them, murmured, ‘Bite-sized lemon meringue pies. Individual treacle tarts with a creme patissiere topping …’
‘Just add them to the list, my good man. I’m sure anything you come up with will be gastronomically excellent.’
The fact that the afternoon tea that had been set before them wasn’t of the gourmet quality they had been discussing, made no difference whatsoever, so hungry had their menu-planning session made them, and they fell on the food with gusto, and slightly less good manners than usual.
The next few days saw the arrival of six envelopes, all containing acceptances to Lady Amanda’s invitation, and by Christmas Eve, she was literally rubbing her hands together in glee at the thought of her forthcoming advertising campaign, cunningly disguised as a plea to her friends’ good taste, and for their generosity in spreading the word of the future opening of the official tours.
‘I don’t understand why you’re so excited at this commercial enterprise, Manda,’ stated Hugo during the afternoon. ‘I mean, it’s not as if you need the money, is it?’
‘Of course not! Don’t be so coarse! I like people, and I haven’t seen enough of them in recent years. Running into you has brought that home to me. Not only have I gladly accepted you into my house and enjoyed your company, but I have also craved more. I thoroughly enjoyed our little adventure earlier in the year, and as something like that isn’t likely to land in our laps again, I’m making the effort to be more sociable.
‘I’m basically a very nosy person, and have found myself in a position to have no one to be nosy about. If I can get nothing out of this enterprise except the renewing of old friendships, it will be enough. If it actually works, I shall be meeting different people every week, and life will be more fun. Though I did like being a detective! Still, I suppose I shouldn’t wish someone dead, just because I want to play at being ‘Shirley’ Holmes again.’
‘Does that mean you don’t really want me here?’ asked Hugo, not quite understanding what she was trying to tell him, with all this talk of meeting different people every week to make life fun again.
‘Exactly the opposite. After a few initial hiccoughs, I think we’ve settled down admirably together. And renewing our friendship has made me hungry for other contact. You’ve breathed new life into me, Hugo, old boy, and I shall be eternally grateful for that. Now, don’t forget to hang up your stocking on the fireplace tonight, will you?’
‘Whatever for?’ Hugo sounded scornful. ‘We’re hardly children any more.’
‘Let me tell you a little story, Hugo, old be
an. When I first got my state pension, I put the money towards financing the best cocktail cabinet in the county. When I’d done that, I had the money paid into a special account, to which only Beauchamp has access – I trust him implicitly with my funds.
‘From this, every Christmas, he buys himself anything he wants, as a gift from me. The remaining funds are to buy me presents. He is my own personal Father Christmas, and it’s much more exciting than when I was a child, because he always knows exactly what I want, even if I haven’t realised it yet. This year, you’re on his present list, too, and as you’ve been a good boy all year, to my knowledge, you’d better be prepared to hang up that old stocking, and get what’s coming to you, in the morning.’
‘Why don’t you just donate it to charity?’ asked Hugo, somewhat ungratefully, she thought.
‘Because I already make generous donations to charities throughout the year, and this is my one annual indulgence, to which I feel I’m entitled.’
Hugo sat for a moment, lost in thought, while he digested what she had just told him, then sat bolt upright and looked straight at her. ‘You’re absolutely right, my dear, as always. And may one ask if there is any limit to the size of the stocking I’m allowed to leave out?’
‘A yacht is completely out of the question, but I leave the size to your own discretion. Anything that won’t fit will be left by the fireplace, with your name on it.’
‘I think I’m going to enjoy this Christmas. You’re going to make it just as sparkling and magical as it used to be in the old days, before I got old and crippled and stopped going out. It’s not a time of year to be on one’s own, and I don’t have children to visit or to invite me round. I thank God every time I remember old Reggie, that you were on a mission to cheer up his day, and arrived in that ghastly nursing home while I was in residence.’
Belchester Box Set Page 23
