by Simon Brett
He had responded with an enthusiastic ‘Tickey-tockey!’ Of course, he reminded himself, Zelda was English. That explained everything. Only an Englishwoman would have thought to bring an indoor cricket set on to a transatlantic liner. Great Wilberforce, he thought, not for the first time, it’s really sad how much foreign people miss just by being foreign.
He reached into his other trouser pocket and felt the reassuring outline of his clockwork jumping frog. When Zelda wanted a break from cricket, he could show her some of its tricks.
Blotto checked his new-fangled wristwatch. It was time. Half an hour had elapsed since that last guest had left the dining room. He made his way towards state room number two.
Another visitor in the same circumstances might have moved surreptitiously, might have checked to see if there was anyone around, might have waited until the coast was clear before letting himself into the state room. No such thought occurred to Blotto. This was partly due to the fact that very few thoughts ever occurred to him, but also because his mind was devoid of any trace of guilt about what he was doing.
So he failed to notice that his use of the key to enter state room number two was observed by the two heavy-set Mediterraneans who had watched his sister so closely at dinner and who were now standing guard outside number one. Nor did Blotto notice the grim looks of complicity that Lenny ‘The Skull’ Orvieto’s men exchanged after he disappeared into Zelda Finch’s room.
She had changed out of her scarlet dress into a silken negligée. Though it was full length, the material was so diaphanous that her every contour was visible. And, it has to be said, excellent contours she had, all of which were displayed to advantage as she lolled lasciviously on a chaise longue.
‘Blotto,’ she trilled, ‘welcome to my world.’
‘Good ticket,’ he murmured, not quite sure what response was appropriate.
‘Blotto,’ she continued, ‘from the moment I first saw you this evening I was aware of an animal magnetism between us. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Not really,’ he admitted, honest as ever. ‘I mean, from what I remember the beaks at Eton teaching me and my fellow muffin-eaters was that magnetism worked for metals. You know, put a chunk of metal near a magnet and they spring together like a pair of newlyweds. I hadn’t got a mouse-squeak of an idea that it could work with human beings, though.’
‘Never mind.’ During dinner Zelda Finch had got the impression that Blotto was perhaps not the brightest twig on the family tree, but that didn’t represent a problem. It wasn’t his brains that interested her. Past experience had taught her that in such situations an excess of brains in a man was often an inconvenience. Once they started thinking about things, the outcome was generally disappointing.
‘Blotto,’ she continued, even sultrier, ‘together, you and I could make sweet music.’
‘Ah. Sorry to put a bit of crud in that particular crumpet, but I’m afraid when it comes to music I’m an empty revolver. No control over the noises that come out of the old tooth-trap. When I join in hymns in the Tawcester Towers chapel, the village boddoes all reach for their earplugs.’
‘I wasn’t talking literally,’ said Zelda.
‘Good ticket,’ said Blotto, remembering his cricket-pitch conversation with Ponky Larreighffriebollaux. ‘You were using one of those metronome things, were you?’
Zelda Finch didn’t know he meant ‘metaphor’, but passed no comment. She simply stretched out one of her long, elegant hands towards him and said, ‘Touch me.’
Blotto shrugged. He wasn’t quite sure what game she was playing, but he reached his hand out, tapped hers and immediately withdrew it.
She let out a throaty giggle. ‘I meant really touch me.’ He was once again puzzled. ‘I did really touch you.’
‘Blotto, I meant for you to touch me as only a man can touch a woman.’
‘Hoopee-doopee!’ he murmured.
‘You are all man . . .’
He concurred. ‘I was when I last looked.’
‘. . . and I am all woman.’
‘I wouldn’t argue with a lady about something like that.’ He still wasn’t quite sure where the conversation was leading.
‘And, Blotto,’ she panted, again reaching out towards him. ‘I want you to take me in your arms and lift me up to the highest point that humankind can reach.’
‘Beezer,’ said Blotto. ‘If that’s what you want . . .’
Shortly afterwards he left the state room in a glow of satisfaction. He had done what Zelda Finch had asked him to. It had maybe been an unusual request, but he was far too much of an English gentleman to question the desires of a lady.
And it didn’t occur to him to wonder how she was going to get down from the top of the wardrobe.
6
From Sea to Shining Sea
The S.S. Regal docked at New York in the early evening. Although porters removed the passengers’ trunks, the larger items in the hold would not be disembarked until the following day. These, of course, included the Lagonda. So while Blotto and Twinks stayed in suites at the Plaza, Corky Froggett spent the night in the car. He didn’t sleep. He had heard that New York was a lawless place so he stayed awake, protecting the beloved vehicle from the attentions of the city’s many hoodlums, who he expected to invade the liner’s hold at any moment.
His First Class dining room waitress tried to entice him away from the car for some farewell celebrations in her cabin, but he resolutely resisted such blandishments. And when she suggested some action inside the Lagonda he was positively shocked. The thought that those sacred leather seats should be sullied by anything so vulgar was anathema to him. So the chauffeur restricted their farewells to a brief handshake and spent the night awake in the driver’s seat, guarding the young master’s pride and joy. That kind of loyalty to the Lyminster family was entirely characteristic of Corky Froggett.
The following morning the Lagonda was duly craned out of the hold and Corky drove it sedately to the Plaza. Though America prided itself on being the home of the automobile, the sleek lines of Blotto’s car drew many admiring looks from passing New Yorkers.
Once the hotel porters had loaded the siblings’ trunks and been lavishly tipped, Blotto took over the wheel and set off to drive across the United States to Hollywood. It was a long, dusty journey. However assiduously Corky Froggett cleaned and polished the Lagonda every morning, within fifteen minutes it was once again covered with dust.
Nor was the accommodation where Blotto and Twinks spent their nights up to the lavish standards of New York’s Plaza. One-horse towns – and they went through a good few of them – tended to have one-horse hotels. Some were little more than grubby, dusty bedrooms on the floors above rowdy, dusty saloons. Corky Froggett, whose suspicions of the Americans did not decrease as they travelled West, spent every night on guard. He’d seen enough cowboy movies to anticipate posses of outlawed bank robbers lassoing the Lagonda, or chieftains with feathered headdresses galloping around it with blood-chilling warcries and fusillades of burning arrows. Because he got no sleep by night, he occasionally let his guard slip sufficiently to doze during the day in the back of the Lagonda, while Blotto drove gleefully with the top down and Twinks kept commenting that everything was ‘Splendissimo!’
Their adventures on the journey – the dangerous shootouts from which Blotto rescued them, the dastardly would-be robbers fought off by Corky Froggett, the many amorous swains who fell for Twinks like giraffes on an ice rink – would provide enough material for a book. But another book, not this one you are currently reading. So, in the jargon of the movies, we will ‘cut to the chase’ and rediscover our hero and heroine safely installed in two suites of the Hollywood Hotel on the north side of Hollywood Boulevard.
As soon as they had freshened up in their lavish bathtubs and dressed in clean clothes from their trunks (into which no speck of dust had been allowed to penetrate), Blotto and Twinks met up in one of the hotel’s many bars for a leisurely drink. Though Prohibition wa
s supposed to rule, appropriate payments to the LAPD had ensured that it was not enforced in the Hollywood Hotel. So alcohol was served without demur. Twinks ordered champagne, and Blotto was delighted to find that the barman had the skills to make his favourite cocktail, a St Louis Steamhammer.
Once the top of his cranium had settled back down after the first sip of this combustible concoction, he asked the barman to bring him a telephone. For a moment he contemplated calling Mimsy La Pim. Except, of course, he had no phone number or other contact for her.
And anyway, there were some things more important than women. He announced that he was going to call Ponky Larreighffriebollaux. ‘Don’t want to get caught the wrong side of the calendar, Twinks me old gutbucket,’ he explained. ‘Might be a spoffing cricket match on tomorrow and it would be a shame to miss the down train. Could do with a game after all that desert-dongling.’
He was quickly connected to Ponky at his hotel. ‘Ratteley-Baa-Baa!’ said Blotto.
‘Ritteley-Boo-Boo!’ his friend responded. It was the form of greeting the pair always used, something that went back to their early days at Eton.
‘How’re you pongling, me old fruitbat?’ asked Blotto.
‘Knobby as a chest of drawers. And are your suspenders tight, Blotters me old shrimping net?’
‘Tight as a hippo’s hawser, Ponky me old boot blackener.’
‘Ra-ra!’ said Ponky.
‘Ra-ra-ra!’ said Blotto.
Twinks showed no surprise at these pleasantries. She had heard them many times before, not only when her brother was speaking to Ponky Larreighffriebollaux but also to any of his other Old Etonian muffin-toasters.
‘Anyway, Ponky, uncage the ferrets. Tell me the cricket forecast. Any chance of a game in the foreseeable?’
‘A very good chance, Blotto. The White Knights are playing tomorrow.’
‘White Knights?’
‘Name of the outfit I mentioned back at Tawcester Towers. Run by this actor boddo J. Winthrop Stukes. Heard of him?’
‘No.’
‘Well, he’s quite a big noise around Hollywood. An Englishman of the old school.’
‘Eton?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Tickey-Tockey.’ Whenever Blotto and his associates mentioned ‘the old school’, they always meant Eton. ‘So, it’s White Knights v. Peripherals?’
‘No, we’ve got our first fixture next week. Not sure who the White Knights are up against tomorrow. Bound to be some shower from the movie business.’
‘Good ticket. And are you padding up for the White Knights?’
‘Got it in one, Blotters. Anyway, I’ve mentioned you to J. Winthrop, and said what a whale you are with bat and ball, and he has got a Blotto-sized hole in his team, but he won’t commit himself to tattooing your name down until he’s met you.’
‘Oh?’ Blotto was slightly taken aback. ‘Does he know that I’m the brother of the Duke of Tawcester?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And that I went to Eton?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And he still wants to meet me to check out my credentials?’
‘’Fraid he does, yes.’
‘Did he say why?’
‘J. Winthrop Stukes says in his experience more bounders come from the aristocracy and Eton than from any other background.’
Blotto nodded. ‘Oh well, he’s got a point there, of course, yes.’
J. Winthrop Stukes’ mansion was in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, not far from Griffith Park. It was called Britannia and built in Tudor style – or at least an expensive American architect’s idea of what Tudor style should be. Indeed, had Elizabeth I wanted a half-timbered residence only slightly smaller than Buckingham Palace with a private cinema, two swimming pools and garaging for a dozen cars, Britannia was pretty much what she would have come up with.
And in case any visitor hadn’t yet got the message that the place was owned by an Englishman, a large union jack floated from a tall flagpole in front of the house.
Corky Froggett drove the Lagonda from the Hollywood Hotel to Britannia, diverting to pick up Ponky Larreigh-ffriebollaux on the way. Needless to say, in the bright Californian sunshine, the car’s roof was down. Ponky sat in the back with Twinks. He had first met her when she came to watch her brother excel in an Eton and Harrow match at Lord’s. Predictably enough, Ponky had fallen for her like the blade of a guillotine, and his adoration had had the effect of cutting off his powers of speech. Even now, after many years of meeting her at cricket matches and other functions, he found it difficult to come up with much more than a strangled ‘Tiddle my pom!’ by way of conversation.
So it proved that evening, while they sat side by side in the back of the Lagonda. Twinks, apparently unaware of her companion’s silence, prattled on about the beauties of the Californian sunset. And Ponky Larreighffriebollaux, whose dearest dream of being so close to his idol had been realised, could only capitalise on the situation with the occasional ‘Tiddle my pom!’
In the trip across America Corky Froggett had become used to the perverse business of driving on the wrong side of the road, but he still didn’t like it. ‘Surely, milord,’ he said as they waited outside Ponky’s hotel, ‘we could just try driving on the left for a little while? I’m sure the Americans will soon realise it makes sense and come round to our way of thinking.’
But he was due for a disappointment. The young master forbade him from making the experiment.
As the blue Lagonda crunched over the gravel towards Britannia, the vast metal-studded Tudor doors of the mansion opened and through them issued its owner.
J. Winthrop Stukes was a tall patrician figure whose eyebrows were a very good visual aid for people who might need an explanation of the expression ‘beetle-browed’ (though there were no beetles harmed during the manufacture of his face). In spite of the Californian heat, he was dressed in a three-piece tweed suit with plus fours and thick woollen stockings. But he was far too much of a gentleman to sweat.
‘Welcome to Britannia!’ he boomed. He was an actor of the old school, trained by years of repertory theatre to project his voice to fill auditoria of any size. His voice was loud enough to speak to people within a 200-yard radius without the intervention of a telephone.
Of course, this major asset – his voice – was not capitalised on when he first moved to Hollywood, because all the movies in which he appeared were silent. But now that ‘talkies’ were beginning to be discussed, J. Winthrop Stukes anticipated a new golden age for his career. So many of the stars of silent films – like Toni Frangipani – were vocally unqualified for the rigours of talking. Foreign accents and squeaky voices didn’t matter in the silent era, but the talkies would expose a whole raft of vocal inadequates. J. Winthrop Stukes gleefully relished the prospect of infinite opportunities opening up for actors with his experience.
As if rehearsing for such an eventuality, the booming tones with which he greeted Blotto, Twinks and Ponky could have been heard the other side of the Hollywood Hills.
‘Excellent to see you all!’ he bellowed. ‘A bit late for tea, but I’m sure you could manage some scones and cucumber sandwiches.’
Corky Froggett was instructed to drive the Lagonda to a garage at the back of the house and go to the kitchen door, where he would be given a drink appropriate to his social status. Then Stukes led his guests through a vast hallway into an even vaster reception room, whose décor brought to mind an English gentleman’s club. Shelves of leather-bound books covered the walls. Any spaces between them were filled with the mounted heads of antlered stags whose breeds were unknown in the States. There were starbursts of medieval weapons on the walls, and two suits of armour standing guard beside the main door.
Through the leaded panes of windows at the back of the house could be seen a vast expanse of flat green grass.
J. Winthrop Stukes snapped his fingers and white-jacketed servants of oriental extraction brought in tiered cake-stands loaded with sandwiches an
d sweet pastries. ‘I never think it’s too late for afternoon tea,’ their host roared. ‘Though of course if you’d rather have something stronger to drink, I have a considerable supply of single malt whiskies, together with an array of gins. And, because you can’t get a glass of the stuff out here that doesn’t freeze your tongue off, I can offer you some specially warmed beer.’
The idea was very attractive, but before giving his order, there was a point Blotto wanted to clarify. ‘This business of the old alkiboodles . . .’ he began.
‘Yes?’ said Stukes. ‘What about it?’
‘I’d heard there’s some rombooley out here about booze being beyond the barbed wire. Don’t you have this thing called “Prostitution”?’
‘“Prohibition”,’ said Twinks, helpful as ever.
‘Oh yes,’ J. Winthrop Stukes agreed. ‘But we don’t bother about any of that in Hollywood. We drink when we want to.’
‘But isn’t that against the spoffing law?’
‘I believe it is.’
‘So what do you do?’ asked a very confused Blotto. ‘Bribe the police?’
‘Yes,’ said Stukes blandly. ‘Now what would you like to drink?’
And that was the last Blotto and Twinks heard about Prohibition during their sojourn in Hollywood.
Both the male visitors, delighted to hear that such a delicacy was on offer in a backward country like America, opted for pints of warm beer. It was just like being at home. Twinks asked for a gin and orange juice.
J. Winthrop Stukes was of the opinion that everything in life should – like a game of cricket – stop for tea. In his big voice he exchanged small talk with his guests, but his small talk was inevitably about cricket, and mostly about the shortcomings of the current English national side. He proved to be very well informed on the scores of recent matches; clearly he had a very efficient communications system with the land of his birth.