‘Don’t be such a party-pooper, Hugo. It gave Daddy just the opportunity he needed to get that old roof sorted out, and all at the expense of the insurance company. Anyway, he never told you, but he just souped-up a few of those fireworks, so that he would get the desired result.’
Hugo’s mouth went slack. ‘You mean he used me as a pawn in a game of “fleece the insurance company”?’
‘Of course he did. He thought you knew.’
‘I had no idea. I’ve carried the guilt of the damage I thought I’d caused ever since.’
‘Silly, silly Hugo. I thought you knew Daddy better than that. Anyway, perk yourself up. We may not have seen these people for a long time, but we used to have some damned fine times with them, and I hope that today will just be the first in another round of fun for all of us.’
‘May I see the guest list, please, Lady Amanda?’ asked Enid, who always like to know people’s names, so that she didn’t have to go through the embarrassing procedure of having to ask who they were.
‘In my desk, Enid. Top drawer, under my diary. Help yourself. Hang around as I admit them, if you like, and that’ll help you when it comes to remembering who’s who. There’re not coming until two o’clock, so you’ve got plenty of time to commit their names to memory.
The morning, not unsurprisingly, was spent rehearsing the tour part of the afternoon’s proceedings, and the doors of all the rooms that they were unwilling to have other folk poke around in, were securely locked against any unwelcome invaders.
The plan was to give everyone a drink to welcome them to the establishment, then take them on what Lady Amanda considered to be the ‘below stairs’ tour, to include the kitchens, scullery, buttery, brewery and wash room, downstairs, then to ascend to the second floor where the servants had their sleeping quarters. Beauchamp, being more familiar with the domestic running of the house during his employment, had volunteered to conduct the tour, pointing out items of interest on the way, and telling stories from the old days which had been passed down to him by long-gone members of staff.
He would leave tea laid out in the library, with the exception of the delicacies which had to be freshly produced, Lady Amanda would accompany him to add her two-penn’orth of interesting figures and facts, and Enid and Hugo would make the tea at a given signal (one bong on the gong on the half-landing to the first floor) to commence this task.
Beauchamp forbade anyone to enter the kitchen during the morning, and flew about its confines like a blue-arsed fly, getting the tasty morsels prepared. Lady Amanda consulted a notebook in which she had noted the ‘off-the-cuff’ stories with which she would flesh-out the bones of Beauchamp’s prose, and with this, she prowled her kingdom (or queendom, which may be more apt, but isn’t actually a real word), mouthing the tales she would tell, with appropriate facial expressions and arm and body movements, even going so far as to feign laughter in complete silence, at a joke she would make at a certain point in the proceedings..
Enid armed herself with a long-handled feather duster and a polishing cloth, and prowled every available room with this weapon, fighting a last-minute war with dust and the like, so that no one should get the impression that the household was slovenly in its care of the house. She was deadly with a duster, and nothing escaped her eagle eye, so long had she been eradicating this particular arch-enemy.
While this hive of activity swarmed around him, Hugo took himself off to the library, selected a book from the more modern shelves of the room’s contents, and settled down, contentedly, to read. His excuse was that his knee was giving him particular trouble, and as he did not have an appointment to see the orthopaedic consultant until after the New Year, nobody could question the veracity of his tale.
At seven minutes to two, all three of them stood in the entrance hall, like sprinters at the start of the race of their lives. The whole house stood in silence, holding its breath for the moment where it would be put to the test.
At the sound of a car backfiring a good quarter of a mile away on the main road, they all visibly started, Enid going so far as to issue a squeak of surprise. ‘Calm, troops,’ ordered Lady Amanda, who was steeling herself to be nice to people. ‘Best smiles to the fore, small-talk loaded and ready to fire.’
The sound of the bell ringing, at two minutes to the hour, almost caused the timid Enid to faint clean away, but Lady Amanda trod on her foot (accidentally on purpose) in her anxiety to be the first to greet her guests, and that brought her back to a state of being fully alert and ready for anything, including taking particular care where she put her feet. Lady Amanda was no slip of a girl, and she didn’t want to spend the rest of the busy afternoon with a broken toe or two.
Lt Col. Aloysius Featherstonehaugh-Armitage and his wife Angelica were the first to arrive and Lady Amanda, in her excitement at the commencement of her battle plan, forgot to address them formally for Enid’s benefit, and merely bade them welcome with the words, ‘How lovely to see you again after such a long time, Stinky. How’s the family, Donkey? All prospering, I trust?’
As they crossed the threshold, Beauchamp stepped forward to take their coats, hats, and gloves, and the residents of Belchester Towers had their first opportunity to take a look at what had happened to the grounds since they had last been outside. Lady Amanda opened the large doors wide and surveyed the iced lawns and bedecked shrubs and trees, as her guests stamped their feet on the (fortunately large) doormat to rid themselves of the encrustations of snow they had gathered on their walk from their car.
‘Can’t remember when we last had a white Christmas,’ exclaimed Lady Amanda, clapping her hands together with glee. ‘Perhaps we could all have a snowball fight on the lawn after tea.’
Totally ignoring the scandalised expressions on her first two guests’ faces, she turned to them with a winning smile and urged Beauchamp to accompany them to the drawing room where a large fire burned, so that they could defrost before they had a little drink. She had obviously made up for her gaffe about snowballs by this remark, and Stinky and Donkey smiled in approval at the idea of a winter warmer at such an early hour. It was, after all, a bank holiday, and the sun and the yard-arm would have nothing to do with protocol today.
As all the clocks in the house chimed the hour, there was another smart knock on the door, which opened this time to admit Sir Jolyon and Lady Felicity ffolliat DeWinter. Sir Jolyon was red of face, even from the short walk he had taken from the car to the front door, and his complexion wasn’t aided by the air temperature. Although the sun was shining, it was bitterly cold, with a slow lazy north wind that sliced at one like knives.
Lady Felicity merely looked like a child wearing an older person’s skin, and skipped into the house babbling happily about how delighted they had been to receive Lady Amanda’s invitation, and how much they had been looking forward to such an unusual experience. Beauchamp relieved her of her mink coat, hat, and fur-trimmed gloves, scandalised to hear Sir Jolyon call after him, ‘You make sure you take care of that coat. It’s not ranch mink, my man; it’s the real wild article. Just make sure it doesn’t bite you!’ The manservant bore them away, with a scowl of fury at being so addressed, to some below-stairs region where such things resided while guests were in occupation. “My man”! Whatever next? ‘Oi, buddy’, perhaps?
Search as she might, over the years, Lady Amanda had never been able to solve the mystery of what Beauchamp did with all the coats, and had finally given up the impossible task of discovering his hiding place. Maybe the man had access to another dimension, where all menservants hid such bulky items during family entertainments. She just hoped he didn’t decide to stay there, today, after such a blow to his dignity and elevated position.
Blimp escorted himself to the drawing room, anxious as he was to warm his backside at the fire, and when Beauchamp returned to accompany Fifi, she was still prattling away happily to herself about how lovely everything was, and how much she was looking forward to seeing the others invited for the occasion, hoping
that she would already know some of them. The manservant at her side nodded his head in attentive agreement with much that she said, without even being aware that he was doing it. Such a habit had it become, that his mind was in the kitchen, running over all the preparations, to check that nothing had been neglected.
‘Henry! Hilda! What a pleasure to see you again!’ trilled Lady Amanda as a third couple arrived on the doorstep. She had picked up her game, and was using their real names now, so that Enid could chalk-up a house-point by addressing them as such, without having to be introduced. Although she wasn’t using their full names, she was at least giving Enid sufficient evidence to work out who was who, and had only blundered over the first arrivals.
Cutie and Daisy were next, and each received a warm handshake and a kiss on the cheek, as Lady Amanda chortled, ‘Sir Montacute! Lady Margaret! How delightful that you could attend our little entertainment this afternoon.’
The penultimate couple to enter Belchester Towers that afternoon was the Mapperley-Mintos, who actually commented on Lady Amanda using their given names. ‘Given up on Monty and Maddie then, have you, Manda? Too grown-up for all that stuff, now, eh?’
‘Not at all,’ gushed Lady Amanda. ‘I just thought that you might think it childish of me to use the diminutives of so long ago.’
‘Not at all,’ growled Monty. ‘Still use them ourselves, as a matter of fact. Go back to that now, shall we?’
‘With pleasure, Monty,’ replied their hostess, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Enid had placed herself just out of the arriving guests’ sightline, and was making copious notes on her list of those invited for the occasion. She’d get it right. She’d cudgel them into her memory, until she couldn’t get it wrong if she tried. Very tenacious, was Enid.
Last to arrive by a good five minutes, and causing some little consternation in the troops that manned the line by the front door, were Capt Leslie and Mrs Lesley Barrington-Blyss, the former looking a tad out of sorts, the latter, with a worried smile on her face. Porky, as Mrs B-B was known, made profuse apologies for their tardy arrival, citing a domestic staff crisis just before they had left. While she did this, she kept one hand behind her back, her stout fingers crossed to negate the lie.
Beauchamp took their outer clothes, while Porky clung possessively to a large tapestry handbag. ‘Why on earth have you brought that monstrosity with you? Surely you haven’t brought your knitting?’ her husband asked, glaring at the bag with disgust, as she opened it to insert her gloves for safe-keeping. ‘Why don’t you go the whole hog, Porky, and wear a damned rucksack, but I can assure you’ll be walking alone, for I won’t be seen with you’ he concluded, in withering tones,’ then added, ‘Whole hog – Porky! I say, that was rather a good one, wasn’t it? Haha! Hahahahaha!’
Neither Beauchamp nor Lady A, though, seemed amused by this comment, made in extremely dubious taste, but, instead of an angry retort from Porky, a small smile of triumph appeared on her face. Why, though, she should be so pleased that she had annoyed him in front of others, was inexplicable. Maybe it was the sour look that she, Amanda, had bestowed upon him that had pleased Porky, thought Lady A. Popeye wasn’t the most popular man in the county, nor ever would be, but he’d better tread carefully – Porky was his only ally at the moment, God bless her, and she’d stuck with him through thick and thin, even with this awful book business. She really was a good and loyal soul.
What she didn’t know, however, was that Porky and Popeye had, in fact, had a rather heated discussion – row – about whether to attend at all. Popeye had stated categorically that he wanted to stay in his study and work on his book, which was nearly ready for publication. His publisher had sent him a series of instructions for where he wanted changes made, and small rewrites, and he wanted to get it finished as soon as possible, to get the book hurried on to the bookshelves. Never mind how much embarrassment and trouble he caused for others; he just wanted the notoriety.
The money would be damned useful too, for he was sick of penny-pinching in these hard times, even though he’d had to pursue a less than traditional route to get his work before the public gaze, and he just hoped that the risk would pay off. He’d warned her that, should it not sell extremely well, they might have to consider moving to a smaller property and dispensing with what little domestic help they currently enjoyed, and this had left Porky in a cleft stick.
She had finally justified putting her rather pudgy foot down over the matter by telling him that he might make some very useful contacts from the afternoon, as they had no idea who else had been invited, and that, furthermore, if he didn’t comply, he’d become known as an untrustworthy, ill-mannered cur, throughout the County set. She’d make sure of that!
All her guinea pigs safely gathered in, Lady Amanda escorted the late-comers into the drawing room where she was pleased to find that Beauchamp had already taken orders for drinks and was, at this very moment, handing them round to those who had arrived more promptly. The man was a veritable gem.
‘… hook from which the meat hung, behind this sheet of semi-circular metal … a device for cutting the Seville oranges for marmalade-making … a wash-dolly with which the laundry maid would agitate the clothes … copper moulds for all sorts of puddings, both shapes, custards and ices … the hard wooden beds on which the servants slept … the wooden staircase which the female staff ascended to their rooms … the marble wash-stands where they had to wash in cold water every morning …’
Beauchamp led the party into the library at the end of the tour, looking as fresh as the proverbial daisy. Lady Amanda brought up the rear, looking as if she had been into battle, but quickly pushed her hair back into place, fixed a big social smile on her face, and entered the room which was now scented with some of the delights of which they were about to partake.
Not even a torturer from the Inquisition could make her confess how exhausted she felt, traipsing round the unfamiliar quarters that had been occupied, in her childhood and for many years before, by the staff, nor the horror she had felt when she had taken a good, hard look at how they had lived. Cleaning the quarters up had not done this for her, but today had, and she thanked her lucky stars that she had been born into the layer of society that she had.
Beauchamp had disappeared as soon as he had reached the library, now at work in the kitchen, no doubt on the things that had to be served either fresh, or warm, and her guests were gathered round the big library table helping themselves to delicate morsels of food. Enid and Hugo had done their job as promised, and two large silver teapots, one each of Indian and China, stood on mats on the table, to assuage their guests’ thirst after their portion of enforced education for the day.
Lady Amanda sank into the confines of a porter’s chair, and hid herself for a moment, to give herself a few seconds to summon up fresh energy and enthusiasm. That they enjoyed their afternoon tea was tantamount to the success of her venture, but that they felt relaxed enough to stay on for cocktails and give her some decent feedback was just as vital, and she must remain the perfect hostess, throughout the experience.
Finally rising from her hideaway, she poured a cup of the restoring Indian infusion for herself, put some choice morsels on her plate and began to circulate amongst her guests. No one seemed at all put out by anything, and they looked as if they were having a jolly time of snooping round a neighbour’s home. Well, she had an extra card up her sleeve that would make their day.
‘Excuse me, everyone,’ she announced after about twenty minutes. ‘Today my home is at your service. Should any of you wish to explore its other rooms, those that constitute, I suppose, upstairs, please feel free to do so over the next hour or so. Beauchamp will be your guide, should you require him. At that point, I should be grateful for any comment on what I propose to do, and you will all be very welcome to stay on for cocktails.’
Hugo, suddenly coming to life, called out, ‘Why don’t we get Beauchamp to light a yule log in the great hall and turn this occasion into an o
ut-and-out party, everyone? He’s a domestic marvel, and I’m sure he could rustle up enough grub for us all. A bowl of punch and a bit of music would liven us all up a bit, and we could make this a red-letter day. After all, we haven’t seen each other in an absolute age, have we?’
Enthusiastic mutterings greeted this suggestion, and as the guests made themselves ready to vacate the library, discarding cups and saucers, and plates empty of everything except a few crumbs, in preparation for having a good old nose around Belchester Towers, Hugo was unaware of Lady Amanda’s approach until she suddenly landed next to him on the sofa, making him squeal in pain as the jolt shuddered through the joints he was still waiting to have replaced.
‘I say, old thing, that was a bit rough, wasn’t it?’ he asked, trying to draw himself away from her encroaching bulk, as all the bits of her settled into place with a little help from gravity.
‘And throwing my home open to this bunch of social vultures for a full-blown party isn’t? Really, Hugo, I don’t know how you have the bare-faced cheek to do something like that, when I’ve been running around like a headless chicken all day, and all you’ve done is sit around on your bum and rest your poor old joints. Making extra work for other people on a day like today is just beyond the pale, and you know it.’
Hugo had the grace to look shame-faced, but defended himself by saying, ‘I thought everyone was having such a jolly good time that it would be just like the old days, with some of the old crowd here to recreate the atmosphere.’
‘Do you actually remember “carriages at three”? It was deadly! One hardly ever saw daylight, and entered a twilight existence that was just one round of parties. A single one of those would be the death of me now. I just hope that a good snoop round, followed by a few drinks and a good old bitch about our set-up here will be enough for all of them. I forbid you to tell Beauchamp to light a yule log in the great hall, or forage around for enough food for well over a dozen people.’
Belchester Box Set Page 25
