by Simon Brett
‘But ’ow could someone like you, a piece of vermin brought up in the gutter, ’ow ever could you ’ave ’ad the opportunity to learn to read music?’ (It was noticeable that, in this dialogue between French and Cockney, initial aitches had been completely eliminated.)
Twinks realised she had put herself in danger of blowing her cover, so she thought quickly before responding, ‘Self-taught, old cock, that’s me. ’Ad to make the time to learn the dots. Got up at four-firty every mornin’, to get me seven little bruvvers aht a bed, cos there’s just me to look after ’em, since the cholera took away our muvver and our Dad fell in the Thames. So, every morning I have to see me little bruvvers is dressed and fed wiv bread an drippin’ – includin’ little Tim wiv the gammy leg and the crutches.’
She feared she was straying rather into Dickens territory and did a bit of self-correction. ‘Then, when Ah’ve got them to the Board School, ah go dahn Covent Garden to pick up any loose flahs what got dropped by the uvver sellers, and I get togevver a few bunches wot I can sell on the street ahtside St Pau’s Church there.’
Getting dangerously close to George Bernard Shaw now, she realised, and steered off in another direction. ‘And when I sold me flahs, and maybe got a few farvings in me basket for me singin’ and dancin’, like, then I nip in the church and read the ’im books in there. And I see the straight lines of the music wiv all the dots goin’ up and dahn, and cos I know the tunes of all the ’imms wot I learned wiv the Sally Army, I can understand them dots.’ She looked at Pierre Labouze with a winning smile. ‘And at’s ’ow I learnt to read music.’
The impresario was silent for a moment. Twinks worried that she might have slightly overegged the pudding. But then he threw his arms around her and, sobbing, announced, ‘But that is so triste. It is a wonderful story! It is a story the newspapers will love when you become a great star!’
‘Oh, I just tell the trufe, mister,’ said Florrie Coster modestly. ‘That’s just ’ow life is when you’ve been dragged up in the gutter.’
‘C’est magnifique! Such odds you ’ave overcome. And such natural talent!’ He released her from his embrace and looked cannily into her eyes. ‘All right, I believe ’ow you learned to read music, but the chanson, the song you sang outside the Pocket Theatre last night, the “Kensington Cavalcade”, I cannot believe that you wrote that. Tell me the truth – where did you get the song from?’
‘Like Ah said, Ah writ it.’
‘Vraiment?’
‘Absolutely bloody vraiment, wotever that means!’
He clearly didn’t believe her. Not that that mattered too much. ‘Eh bien, let us now find out the extent of your dancing skills. Émile, play the mazurka!’
And so began a morning of frenetic singing and dancing at a level that Twinks had not before experienced. Pierre Labouze was a fiercely hard taskmaster. He had very high standards for his artistes, and he took great pleasure in berating them when those standards were not met. But he had a hard time with Twinks. Whatever song he demanded she sight-read, she sang perfectly. Whatever dance step he wished her to demonstrate, she executed in a manner which would have satisfied Diaghilev. By the end of the morning, Labouze was the one who was looking exhausted, and it was he who called for a break.
Twinks was far too well bred to sweat, but her exertions had left her in need of a little restorative nose-powdering. That aquiline feature duly powdered, it was on her return to the hall that she heard the voice of Pierre Labouze emanating from behind a half-closed door. It was evident that he was speaking on the telephone. Reminding herself that the whole purpose of her subterfuges had been to get close to the impresario and find out his connection with Whiffler Tortington, Twinks listened intently.
The first part of the overheard speech concerned her exceptional skills as a singer and dancer. The kind of girl whose head was easily turned might have listened to this eulogy with rapture, but for Twinks, who had grown up from the nursery knowing she was brilliant at everything, his praise was of no interest.
It was the direction in which the conversation moved on that riveted her attention.
‘So,’ Labouze was saying, ‘she is merveilleuse! She will be a sensation in my next revue. Already I am planning a sequel to Light and Frothy, which will be called Light As a Feather. In that show I will launch Florrie Coster as the new Pierre Labouze discovery.
‘But . . .’ His voice took on a lower and more conspiratorial tone ‘. . . she will also be perfect for our . . . other purposes. We can make a lot of money from her. The right kind of buyer will pay way over the odds for someone of her talent and beauty.’
Twinks’s exquisite brow wrinkled. Was the idea to sell her into white slavery? If so, they would soon find out the kind of Britannia’s daughter they were up against.
More importantly, who was at the other end of the telephone line? Who was Labouze’s co-conspirator?
That question was quickly answered. ‘And I am sure, with your contacts, the right husband for her can be quickly found. Wouldn’t you agree . . . Everard?’
11
She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed
‘To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune,’ said Everard Stoop. ‘To lose both would leave you an orphan.’
He was at his customary post at the Savoy American Bar, surrounded by his customary coterie, who let out their customary appreciative laughter at his latest witticism.
‘Being a parent,’ the celebrated wit continued, ‘is giving hostages to Fortune. And who knows what ransom Fortune will ask for your children’s return?’
This again was, to the coterie, Everard Stoop’s funniest remark since his previous one.
‘In loco parentis,’ he went on, feeling he had not exhausted the subject, ‘means “travelling by train with one’s parents”.’ More sycophantic laughter. ‘To be a parent is to give up—’
Everard Stoop rarely stopped in mid-aphorism. Certainly, none of his coterie would have dared to interrupt him, so, as on this occasion, he interrupted himself.
The reason for his depriving his audience of another leaden witticism was the arrival, supported by a stick on one side and the arm of her son Devereux Lyminster on the other, of the Dowager Duchess of Tawcester. They were passing through the American Bar on their way to the Grill Room. Leaving his tall stool, long tortoiseshell cigarette holder and Martini, Everard Stoop stepped towards them.
‘Your Grace,’ he said to the Dowager Duchess, ‘how enchanting it is to see you again.’
She turned on the writer the look she reserved for Labrador puppies who had misbehaved on the carpet of the Blue Morning Room. ‘And who are you?’ she asked, with a froideur which immediately halved the ambient temperature of the American Bar.
‘I am Everard Stoop, Your Grace.’ He waited for a response of recognition. Receiving none, he went on, ‘Composer. Pianist. Lyricist. Sketch writer. My show, Light and Frothy, is currently running – to reactions of audience ecstasy – at the Pocket Theatre.’ Still getting nothing back from the North Face of the Dowager Duchess, he elaborated, ‘You and I were introduced at a weekend party at the Marquess and Marchioness of Tolworth’s country house, Brinkmans, where I had the honour of providing after-dinner entertainment at the piano.’
She looked him up and down, as if examining wallpaper discoloured by yet another failure of the Tawcester Towers plumbing. Then, with the crushing force of a sheet metal roller, the Dowager Duchess announced, ‘I cannot be expected to recognise servants.’
With that, she and her son processed through to the Grill Room.
Araminta fffrench-Wyndeau was, in Blotto’s view, as pretty as a picture. A very pale picture, it has to be said. Pale skin, pale eyes; a boddo could almost see through her, like a shrimp in a rock pool.
Not only as pretty, he soon discovered, but about as articulate as a picture too. No doubt she had at some point undergone the same kind of training regime in ladylike accomplishments as his sister. He felt sure Araminta could sew, tinkle away on the pian
o and point a toe in the ballroom with the best of them. But she seemed somehow to have missed out on the conversation classes.
Not that Blotto minded. He had little to say himself at that lunch in the Savoy, as a miasma of misery settled around his patrician head. He thought mournfully of Dippy Le Froom’s fate. Marriage had curtailed his freedom as effectively as a life sentence in Dartmoor. Blotto’s old muffin-toaster had been forbidden to frequent the Gren. He had been denied the consolation of Xavier’s cooking, and condemned to a schedule of eating home-cooked meals at home. He had been forcibly separated from all that might be enjoyable, rather in the way that, as the school chaplain had explained to him, Adam and Eve had been cast out of Ealing.
Dippy’s wife Poppy had brought about this ghastly reversal of fortunes for him. And the simpering breath-sapper, now sitting opposite at the Savoy, was preparing the same fate for Blotto. No wonder he had nothing to say.
Anyway, the silence of the younger generation couldn’t have mattered less. Their seniors did not leave a single edgeways-sized gap for a word to be slipped into.
Next to hunting, kicking Labradors, and shouting at the Tawcester Towers domestics, the Dowager Duchess’s favourite pastime was patronising her contemporaries. And that lunch at the Savoy with the Countess of Lytham St Annes gave her the perfect opportunity to flex her belittling muscles. It would have been easy for her, anyway, but, given the fact that the person in the opposite corner was an American . . . well, it made shooting fish in a barrel look tricky.
‘The wedding itself will presumably take place at Spatchcocks,’ the Dowager Duchess boomed, not being of the constituency who believed one should talk quietly in restaurants, ‘despite the house being of such vulgar modern construction?’
The Countess of Lytham St Annes bristled to the ends of her considerable moustache. Decades of mixing with the right sort of people had done nothing to dilute her American accent. ‘I don’t know how you can call it “modern”, Evadne,’ she riposted. ‘Spatchcocks was built on land granted to the first Earl of Lytham St Annes by Henry VIII.’
‘Oh yes, I remember, Agatha. Henry VIII did ennoble all kinds of riffraff, didn’t he?’
‘I can assure you that—’
‘While, of course, Tawcester Towers was built on land granted by William the Conqueror.’
‘Oh?’ said the Countess, in a voice larded with sarcasm. ‘And no doubt the Dukedom was bestowed on your family by Jesus Christ?’
‘That is a rumour,’ replied the Dowager Duchess evenly, ‘that has never been disproved. And I would point out that the proper pronunciation is “Dukedom”, not “Dookdom”. Now, as to the date for the ceremony . . .’
‘September, isn’t it, Mater?’ said Blotto miserably. ‘Before the hunting season begins. You said the two of you had discussed it.’
The Countess of Lytham St Annes bridled. ‘I can assure you no such discussion has taken place.’
‘Don’t be tiresome, Agatha,’ said the Dowager Duchess. ‘I have made the decision. I’m not having the Tawcester Towers hunting programme upset by something as trivial as a wedding. The ceremony will, in fact, take place on September the fourteenth.’
The Countess, now very much on her high horse, bridled again. ‘Might it not be more appropriate, Evadne, for you to ask me, as the owner of Spatchcocks and the mother of the bride, what I would consider a suitable date?’
‘No,’ replied the Dowager Duchess. ‘You know full well that, in the English aristocracy, a Duchess outranks a Countess. And, in any circumstances on God’s earth, someone who has had the inestimable good fortune to be born British outranks an American. So, in this matter – or indeed any other – I make the decisions. And I have decided that the wedding between my son and your daughter will take place on September the fourteenth. Now, let’s talk about the other personnel who will be involved. Blotto will need a best man. That will be his elder brother, the Duke.’
‘Oh,’ said her son, not a little dismayed. He had rarely exchanged more than a couple of civil words with his elder sibling. ‘I’d rather have one of my old muffin-toasters from Eton. Whiffler Tortington would fit the pigeonhole – that’s if we’ve found the poor old boddo by then. Or Dippy Le Froom . . . if his wife lets him out for the day, that is. Or—’
‘Your best man,’ said the Dowager Duchess, in the voice that had shaped the British Empire, ‘will be your brother, the Duke.’
‘Tickey-Tockey, Mater,’ a subdued Blotto agreed.
‘And as for the bridesmaids . . .’
‘Ah, yes, I’ve had some thoughts on that, Evadne. Araminta has hordes of young cousins, lots of them living in the States who—’
‘I must stop you there, Agatha. Although, as the mother of the bride, you cannot be excluded from the ceremony, I do not wish to have the occasion downgraded by the presence of other Americans.’
Anger made the Countess forget her current aristocratic status. She went straight back to her Texan roots, as she protested, ‘Holy cow, Evadne, you can’t—’
But she was silenced, as the Dowager Duchess juggernauted on. ‘The bridesmaids will be the daughters of my son, the Duke.’
‘What, all of them?’ Blotto couldn’t help asking. His brother Loofah’s fame, in upper-class circles, rested chiefly on his inability to produce a male heir to take on the mantle of his Dukedom. Well aware of the duties that came with his position, the Duke continued regularly to impregnate his wife Sloggo. And she continued to produce daughters. Blotto had by now lost count of how many nieces he had.
‘All of them,’ the Dowager Duchess confirmed magisterially.
The Countess was almost lost for words. The only one she could come up with was ‘But—’
‘Duchess outranks Countess,’ she was reminded by her superior. ‘So, you will see to it, Agatha, that an announcement of the engagement – and the wedding date of September the fourteenth – will appear in the Court Circular of The Times next Monday.’
‘Why should it not appear earlier, Evadne?’
‘Because the right sort of people will be involved in house parties in the country on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And nobody gives their full attention to a newspaper at a house party. They focus better on Mondays.’
‘And what?’ asked the Countess. ‘Shall I put the same announcement in the Daily Telegraph next Monday as well?’
‘No announcement will appear in the Daily Telegraph,’ boomed the Dowager Duchess. ‘We don’t want servants reading about our affairs.’
The Countess of Lytham St Annes managed to get out another ‘But—’, before the Dowager Duchess went on, ‘Needless to say, there will be financial details to be sorted out before the union takes place. I will brief my man of business, and rely on you to do the same, Agatha.’
‘Of course, Evadne,’ agreed the Countess, now completely vanquished.
‘So, all that remains, to conclude the practical side of this very convivial luncheon . . .’ (The Dowager Duchess, Blotto reckoned, had a different definition of the word ‘convivial’ from that in common currency.) ‘. . . is for us to drink a toast, in the Savoy’s best champagne, to the happy couple!’
As the two old dinosaurs of the peerage raised their glasses, Blotto found himself also questioning the definition of the word ‘happy’. Looking covertly across at the life sentence sitting opposite, he didn’t think Araminta fffrench-Wyndeau looked very happy either. She was still as silent as the second and third fs in her surname.
* * *
It was as they were walking through the Savoy foyer after lunch that they were greeted by someone Blotto recognised. The tweed suit hanging loosely on the thin frame, the tufts of hair flying in all directions, even the hands still discoloured with dust and glue, left him in no doubt that the Earl of Hartlepool had arrived.
‘Hello. Any news of Whiffler?’ asked Blotto.
‘Whiffler?’
‘Your son. Giles.’
‘Why should there be any news of him?’
‘We
ll, he has been abducted, hasn’t he?’
Finally, the Earl of Hartlepool’s memory re-engaged. ‘Oh yes, so he has. Do you know, I’d forgotten all about that?’ Whatever his faults, oversentimentality about his only child could not be counted amongst them. He turned to the Dowager Duchess. ‘Good afternoon, Evadne.’
‘Cyril, how good to see you.’ She had instantly forgotten the mother and daughter with whom she had just had lunch, making no attempt to effect introductions, and indeed, completely cutting them out of the conversation. Again, it was a matter of status. Though Araminta’s mother was a Countess, and therefore of comparable rank, the Earl of Hartlepool was a man, and took precedence. Also, on the Dowager Duchess’s scale of values, he did not suffer the appalling disqualification of being American.
What was also in his favour was the fact that she knew him to be extraordinarily rich. Which may have had a big part in prompting the reaction it did, when the Earl announced, ‘I want to marry your daughter, Honoria.’
‘Really, Cyril?’ said the Dowager Duchess. ‘What an excellent idea!’
She had been offered a once-and-for-all solution to the problem of the Tawcester Towers plumbing.
That evening it was again cocoa that they had sent up to Twinks’s suite. Comfort was what they needed, but even the comfort of cocoa was inadequate in their current circumstances.
‘Have we ever been in such a treacle tin?’ asked Blotto mournfully. ‘Both of us lined up to twiddle the old reef-knot at the same time. Come on, Twinks me old combine harvester, you’re a whale on wriggling out of tight spots. Surely you can thread your way through this particular needle.’
‘You’re bong on the nose, Blotters. Usually I can bat back anything the stenchers of this life pelt me with. But, in this case . . .’ Her voice descended to the same level of despondency as his. ‘I’m up against the Mater.’
‘Tough Gorgonzola,’ said Blotto, and he meant it.
‘And if the Mater’s got her mind set on the idea of me becoming the Countess of Hartlepool, a stampeding herd of buffalo wouldn’t make her change it.’
