by Simon Brett
Corky was one of those men who blossomed in wartime, and for whom peace would always come as something of a disappointment. He had excelled as a fighting machine in the ‘recent little dust-up in France’ and sincerely regretted that his homicidal tendencies were no longer allowed free rein. The war had also represented the high spot of his life in other respects. In France he had met a young Resistance fighter who had fulfilled his every expectation of what a woman might be. But the fortunes of war brought about an inevitable separation. Corky and his ideal woman lost touch and had no means of contacting each other. So, though he indulged in enjoyable skirmishes with many of the below-stairs beauties of Tawcester Towers, none of them could match the memory of his lost Yvette.
When Blotto brought the Lagonda to a perfect halt outside the main doors of The Savoy, it was left to Corky to park and check in their valises. Twinks hailed a cab and demanded that the driver take her to ‘Madame Clothilde of Mayfair’, while Blotto set off at a brisk walk in the direction of the Gren.
* * *
‘Dippy, you poor old thimble, what’s put lumps in your custard?’
Blotto’s solicitous enquiry was addressed to a young man in the club’s Marlborough Bar. The man’s face was twisted into a rictus of pain, and his glass clearly – and shamefully in such an environment – contained nothing stronger than ginger beer.
Dippy Le Froom had been a contemporary of Blotto’s at Eton. Many’s the time on the cricket pitch that they had shared unbreakable partnerships, and in their studies shared more trivial games, most of which involved hurling missiles of ink-soaked blotting paper. They were close in the way only public schoolboys can be. In other words, they insulted each other a lot, hit each other a lot, bought each other a lot of drinks, and rigidly prevented their conversation from ever straying into an area that might involve feelings.
Dippy looked up at Blotto piteously. ‘Yes, I am in a bit of a treacle tin,’ he admitted.
‘By Wilberforce, you can say that again! You look like a pig who’s lost his whistle. What’s up – been losing a bit on the old gee-gees?’
Even as he asked the question, Blotto knew the answer would be no. Dippy Le Froom was sole heir to the Earl of Minchinhampton. He lived so high on the hog that the only other pigs he saw were flying ones. Dippy had a house in Mayfair, built on the scale of a Tsar’s Winter Palace. He had hundreds of staff and, when he was at home, all his meals were prepared by Xavier, a chef whose reputation had spread to every continent.
So Dippy could have lost thousands on the old gee-gees every day, and still not make the smallest dent in the vast fortune which he would eventually inherit. Whatever his problem might be, it certainly wasn’t financial.
‘No, no,’ Dippy confirmed. ‘Fact is, Blotto me old bootscraper, I’ve done something I’m not very proud of.’
‘Have you, by Denzil?’ said Blotto cautiously. He had a nasty feeling he was about to be shoved into a gluepot of inappropriate emotions and all that rombooley.
‘I’m not sure that I should really be talking about such matters in the Gren.’
‘Oh, Dippy, come on! Uncage the ferrets!’
‘Righty-ho, Blotters. If you’re going to put the Chinese burners on me about it, I’ll tell you. The fact is . . .’ Dippy gulped.
Blotto couldn’t stand the silence going on too long. ‘It can’t be that murdy,’ he said.
‘I’ve got married.’
Oh dear. It was that murdy. With feeling, Blotto murmured, ‘Tough gorgonzola, me old pineapple.’
‘Nothing against the old bride, of course. Called Poppy. Charming gel, couldn’t be nicer. It’s just, you know . . .’ His jaw sagged like the loose elastic on a pair of rugger shorts ‘. . . marriage.’
‘What you need in this situation, you poor old thimble, is the starchiest of stiffeners.’ Blotto turned in the direction of the barman. ‘What’s it to be, Dippy – a quadruple brandy?’
‘No, no!’ His friend hastened to negate the order. ‘Can’t be done, I’m afraid, old man.’
‘Why not, for the love of strawberries?’
‘The fact is, Blotters, I can’t go home to Poppy, smelling of drink.’
‘What, does the poor little breathsapper suffer from one of those religions which doesn’t allow boddoes to do anything they might enjoy?’
‘No, it’s worse than that.’
‘I can’t imagine anything being worse than that.’
‘Poppy trusts me!’
‘Trusts you not to have too much of the old alkiboodles?’
‘Trusts me not to have any of the old alkiboodles.’
‘Toad-in-the-hole!’ Blotto let out a low, shocked whistle. ‘You really are up a gumtree without your teeth, Dippy! If it’s not religion that gives the gel such bizarre notions, then what is it? Is there a history of insanity in the family? Because there are some very brainy bonkers-doctors around these days, who might be able to—’
‘No, there’s nothing squiffy about Poppy’s sanity. She just says that our love is so pure, that it doesn’t need any artificial stimulants to preserve it.’
‘What, not even a half-bott of the club claret?’
‘Not even a small sherry at Christmas.’
Blotto was beginning to see the extent of his old muffin-toaster’s predicament. He knew that women had an irrational tendency to bring love into all of their dealings, but to use love to deny a boddo the human right of drinking . . . Well, that was way outside the rule book.
Still, he was with a chum, and he knew that the thing to do with chums was to dig them out of the mope-marshes. If he wasn’t allowed to facilitate that process with drink, then he’d do it with food. ‘Come on, Dippy!’ he said. ‘We’re going straight to the dining room, where I am going to spoffing well buy you lunch. Won’t be up to Xavier’s standards, I’m afraid, but the Gren can still do a decent—’
‘No, Blotters, it can’t be done.’
‘What on earth are you cluntering on about?’
‘Poppy doesn’t like me eating away from home.’
‘Well, I suppose I can understand, if you’ve got Xavier’s expertise to call on, then—’
‘Poppy’s sacked Xavier.’
‘What?’ It took a moment before the winded Blotto recouped enough breath to add, ‘Why?’
‘Poppy says that feeding someone is one of the greatest expressions of human love . . .’
‘Yes, I’d buy that in a bargain basement, but—’
‘. . . and she says that our love is so pure that she is going to express hers for me by seeing to it that she cooks every meal for me.’
‘Well, I’ll be snickered . . . But, Dippy, Dippy old man . . . Is Poppy as good a cook as Xavier?’
Blotto saw loyalty fight with truth in his friend’s face, and saved him the anguish of answering, by asking another question. ‘To put it at its most basic level, Dippy me old shrimping net . . . Can Poppy cook?’
Again, there was no reply, but the way Dippy Le Froom’s hand went instinctively to rub his stomach in anticipation of indigestions to come, gave a more potent answer than words could ever have done.
‘So, Dippy, not to shimmy round the shrubbery, given the gluepot you’re in: if you’re not drinking and you’re not eating, why on earth have you come here today?’
A tear glinted in his friend’s eye. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ he said.
‘Goodbye? Goodbye to the Gren?’
‘Yes, Blotters,’ came the mournful reply.
‘But why? No one ever leaves the Gren . . . unless they’re drummed out for thimble-rigging. Why on earth are you leaving, Dippy?’
‘Poppy says I no longer need to be a member of the Gren . . . not now I’ve got her.’
The Blotto who sat down at a table on his own in the Gren’s dining room was a sober one. (That is, of course, not to say that he hadn’t been sluicing his tonsils with the cream of the club’s wine list. It was his mood that was sober.)
His encounter with Dippy Le Fro
om had shifted the barometer of his moods to ‘changeable’. It had confirmed Blotto’s every prejudice against the institution of marriage. And yet that was the stable into which the Dowager Duchess was inexorably leading him. His fate would be decided by the Hunt Ball at the end of the month. And the agent who destroyed all his boyish hopes and dreams would be Araminta fffrench-Wyndeau (with two silent fs). The die was cast.
‘Blotto, you poor thimble,’ demanded a cheery voice. ‘What’s put lumps in your custard? Lunching in the Gren on your own? That’s not your usual size of pyjama.’
Blotto looked up from his thin soup to greet another of his Old Etonian muffin-toasters. In colour, Giles ‘Whiffler’ Tortington’s face bore more than a passing resemblance to a rare sirloin. And the buttons of his tweed waistcoat fought a losing battle with his increasing girth. ‘May I join you for lunch, Blotters?’
‘On one condition.’
Puzzlement spread across Whiffler’s honest features. ‘Conditions? What’s this?’
‘Promise me that you’ll be drinking.’
‘Me? Drinking?’ said Whiffler, as he speedily took his seat. ‘Is the King German?’
Blotto had had a couple of large brandy and sodas in the Marlborough Bar, and now noticed that he seemed to have got through a bottle of claret at the table. He waved to a waiter for another one.
Giles ‘Whiffler’ Tortington, obviously, like Blotto and Dippy Le Froom, had aristocratic connections. He was, in fact, son and heir to the Earl of Hartlepool. His mother, the Countess, had died many years back and, though his father was enjoying a healthy and disgraceful old age, the moment must inevitably come when his son Giles would inherit the title. Most young men would find this a delightful prospect, but not Whiffler. His ambitions, from schooldays onwards, had always been modest. All he wanted to do with his life was play cricket, drink in the Gren, and be a Stage-Door Johnny. The thought of giving up these harmless pastimes when he took on the responsibilities of Earldom was his secret sorrow, a burden he carried around with him, but of which he never spoke to his Old Etonian chums. The kinds of things one talked about with one’s muffin-toasters were facts. Feelings were way beyond the barbed wire.
The waiter brought the second bottle of the club claret, and soon both lunchers had their glasses charged.
‘So, what’s the toast, Whiffler?’
‘Health and happiness!’ came the uncontroversial response.
‘And death to marriage!’ added Blotto. They toasted each other accordingly. ‘No, we’re bong on the nose there, Whiffler. Only way a boddo can get on with his life is by keeping women out of it.’
‘I wouldn’t say that, Blotters.’
‘What?’ Blotto looked puzzled. He hadn’t anticipated argument on the subject. Ever since he’d known Whiffler, they’d agreed on everything (except for one minor difference of opinion in their early teens about how close to the batsman a silly mid-off should be placed on a cricket field). Blotto had certainly not expected any argument from his friend on the matter of the fair sex.
‘Women can be rather wonderful,’ said Whiffler, in the dazed manner of someone who’d just been hit over the head with a stone-filled sock.
‘Come on, you can’t mean that. You’re jiggling my kneecap, aren’t you?’
‘Never more serious in my life, Blotters. Of course, I’m not saying all women are wonderful. But one is.’
‘Don’t talk such toffee.’
‘I’m not talking toffee, Blotters. The truth of the matter is . . . I’m in love.’
‘Oh,’ said Blotto with the deepest sympathy, ‘I am sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. It’s the most wonderful thing to have happened to me since I scored that century in the Eton and Harrow match.’
Blotto tried to lift himself out of the low mood engendered by his encounter with Dippy Le Froom. ‘Well, it may not last,’ he reassured Whiffler.
‘Oh, but it will. Frou-Frou and I are for ever.’
‘I beg your pardon, Whiffler me old sauce boat, but did my lugs deceive me, or did you say “Frou-Frou”?’
‘Nothing wrong with your lugs, Blotters. They’re factory-fresh. I did say “Frou-Frou”. And I was referring to the most beautiful girl in the world, Frou-Frou Gavotte.’
‘Spoffing odd name. Is she foreign?’
‘No, as English as a ham sandwich with mustard. She’s an actress.’
‘Oh?’ said Blotto with huge relief. ‘That’s all right then.’ His worries about Whiffler’s future were at an end. Like bishops, over the years many Old Etonians had had a great deal of fun with actresses, but none of them would have gone as far as marrying one. Blotto raised his glass of claret in salutation. ‘Top of the foxtail to you, me old fly-button! I’ve been shinnying up the wrong drainpipe. I thought you were going to tell me you were thinking of marrying this Frou-Frou.’
‘But I am,’ Whiffler protested.
‘She’s an actress.’
‘Yes, one of the finest and most talented actresses currently to be seen on the London stage.’
‘I’m sure she’s an absolute eyewobbler too. But the fact remains that she’s an actress. I can’t see your Aged Parent welcoming one of those into the ancestral purlieus.’
‘I don’t care what the Aged P says. He can cut me off with a brass button if he wants to. Never mind the Pater: Genghis Khan and his Mongol Hordes couldn’t stop me from marrying Frou-Frou!’
Blotto considered raising the possibility that Genghis Khan and his Mongol Hordes might have other priorities, but he remained silent. Though Blotto was normally a fluent fat-chewer, Whiffler’s announcement had momentarily robbed him of the power of speech. He had actually met his friend’s Aged P, the Earl of Hartlepool. As well as a good few acres in Central London, the noble peer owned most of Shropshire and sizeable chunks of adjacent counties. His likely response to his son and heir marrying an actress could, by Blotto’s reckoning, cause an eruption comparable to that of Krakatoa. But it wasn’t the moment to point that out.
‘You must see Frou-Frou,’ urged his friend. ‘Then you’ll agree with me that she is the most beautiful woman in the world.’
Nor was it the moment for Blotto to point out that that particular berth was already occupied by his sister, so he just said, ‘I’m sure I’d be delighted to make her acquaintance at some point.’
‘What about tonight?’
‘Tonight?’
‘Come on, you’re in London. Have you got other plans for this evening?’
‘Well, I was lining up for nosebags at the Savoy with my sister Twinks.’
‘Bring her along. We can have dinner after the show.’
‘What show is this?’
‘Light and Frothy. It’s the new intimate revue at the Pocket Theatre. Frou-Frou’s the star. You’ll love it, Blotters. Go on, say you’ll come!’
‘Tickey-Tockey,’ said Blotto.
3
Light and Frothy
‘When the news looks bad
And the people sad
And the clothes on your back are mothy . . .
When your spirits droop,
There’s a fly in your soup
And a cockroach in your coffee . . .
When the future’s dark
And you’ve lost your spark
And you cannot smile for toffee . . .
Well, a wise man said:
You must clear your head
And keep it Light and Frothy.’
While the chorus of white-clad flappers oo-ooed in the background, Frou-Frou Gavotte and her male partner, the immaculately suited Jack Carmichael, broke into a burst of manic tap-dancing. It ended with them forming a mirror image, conjoined by one hand and stretching the other out as far away as they could. Then, to applause filling the Pocket Theatre, they coiled back towards each other till they were arm in arm. The showgirls behind them stilled, as the pair of them sang the final chorus:
‘Light and Frothy . . .
That’s what the wise man sai
d.
Light and Frothy . . .
Now your cares have fled.
Light and Frothy . . .
That must be your mood.
Light and Frothy . . .
That’s the attitude.
As you face each day,
Cast your cares away,
Shout “Hip-hip-hooray!”
And make sure you stay . . .
Light . . . and . . . Frothy!’
The pair held their pose to wild applause, as the curtain fell. The sound redoubled as it rose again. First the chorus girls danced forward to acknowledge their part of the ovation. Then the supporting featured players took their bows. Finally, from the wings on either side, Frou-Frou Gavotte and Jack Carmichael entered. They joined hands. A deep bow and curtsey were granted to the ecstatic audience, who rose to their feet in acclamation.
Though very few of the people in the tiny Pocket Theatre could remember all the sketches and songs they had just witnessed, all of them felt that they’d had a really good time. That was certainly true of the party in the box that Giles ‘Whiffler’ Tortington had organised. Only Twinks had been slightly disappointed by the false rhymes in some of the lyrics. So far as she was concerned, ‘coffee’ and ‘toffee’ could never rhyme with ‘frothy’. And she immediately distrusted any writer who thought he could get away with that kind of laziness. But then she always had been a stickler when it came to respect for the English language.
The writing of Light and Frothy’s sketches hadn’t impressed her much more than the lyrics. For her, the humour of the show had fallen just the wrong side of whimsical.
But she had admired the style of the costumes. It was with no surprise she read in the programme that they’d all been creations of her own favourite couturier, Madame Clothilde of Mayfair.
Reservations about the writing aside, she had enjoyed the evening. And, despite being a past mistress at the art of discouraging the attentions of men, Twinks could not help acknowledging that Jack Carmichael was exceptionally good-looking.
Whiffler, of course, had made no secret of his adoration for Frou-Frou Gavotte. Every moment she was onstage, his eyes looked as if they were about to pop out on to his shirt front.
