by Simon Brett
She was there with him, presenting Blotto with the ongoing challenge of obeying his sister’s instructions to make Dimpsy believe he held a candle for her, while his every instinct told him that the only thing he wanted to do was to blow that candle out.
Then there was another stye in the eye in the form of the Marquis of Bluntleigh. Deprived of the presence of Twinks – and indeed having had his declaration of love ignored by her – Buzzer was in low spirits. He spoke distractedly of ‘doing something stupid’… even of trying to win his beloved’s heart by writing her a poem in French.
And to compound Blotto’s irritation, the waiter – like all waiters in Les Deux Mangetouts – insisted on delivering a lecture on philosophy rather than taking his order. It was as bad as rain stopping play when only two runs were needed for the victory.
‘But then of course when Nietzsche developed Schopen-hauer’s Wille zum Leben into his own Wille zur Macht, we find ourselves challenged by the syllogistic proposition that—’
‘Look, would you please just get us three coffees!’ bellowed Blotto (people of his class had never had any inhibitions about talking loudly in cafés – or anywhere else, come to that).
The waiter did not appear to be put down by being shouted at. He took it philosophically (as indeed he took everything else), and went off to get their order.
There was a silence. Blotto did not let his eye linger long on the Marquis – that hangdog expression was far too dispiriting. Dimpsy Wickett-Coote was a far more attractive sight. Quite a breathsapper, in fact. He could imagine lots of boddos falling for her like gallowsmen on a trapdoor. He’d have been tempted himself, but for the complications that always come with women. The danger of somehow finding you’ve ended up getting married to one … and then having your hunting rights curtailed.
But he had promised Twinks … And it was in the cause of their investigation. His sister had specifically asked him to make doe eyes at Dimpsy. He had to think of something. A compliment. Yes, that’d be beezer. He’d heard from many sources that women really liked compliments.
Blotto brought his brain to bear on the subject for a long moment. Then, directing the full beam of his bonhomie on Dimpsy Wickett-Coote, he said, ‘You’re as beautiful a sight to a man’s eyes as a fox being torn apart by hounds.’
The expression which greeted this remark suggested that the image didn’t rank as high in Dimpsy’s pantheon of perfection as it did in his. ‘Stuff a pillow in it, Blotto,’ she said.
Clearly he wasn’t living up to Twinks’s hopes for him. He cleared his throat and tried again.
‘What I mean to say, Dimpsy, is that you’re as beautiful as a well-linseed-oiled cricket bat.’
This second attempt also got a look that would have iced over the contents of an erupting volcano. What on earth did the woman want, for the love of strawberries? He had another pop at the partridge.
‘What I’m really trying to say, Dimpsy, is that you’re as beautiful as …’
While Blotto fumbled through his meagre stock of similes, he was surprised to hear his sentence completed by another voice. ‘… as a dragonfly alighting on a lily leaf in Monet’s garden.’
The accent was American and it belonged to a burly man with black hair and moustache who was approaching their table. He wore a shapeless three-piece tweed suit over a khaki shirt and dark green tie. In his wake came a slighter figure, a clean-shaven man whose dark hair was parted in the centre.
Clearly the newcomers were known to Dimpsy Wickett-Coote. Leaping to her feet, she threw her long arms around both of them. ‘Chuck! Scott! How shrimpalicious to see you!’ Her voice was nearly as high-pitched as when she had greeted Twinks the night before. She turned to make the introductions. ‘Blotto, Buzzer, these two reprobates are terrific chums of mine – Chuck Waggen and Scott Frea!’
Forgoing the courtesy of handshakes, the two Americans brought chairs up to the table and quickly summoned the waiter. After a brief discussion of the influence of Platonic Dialogue on Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic, they ordered a bottle of whisky, asked the waiter to bring the soda syphon, and began to drink with single-minded dedication.
‘Blotto? What kind of a name’s that?’ demanded the larger man, the one called Chuck Waggen.
‘It’s a nickname.’
‘Holy cats, I never figured you were christened with it. And what do you do, Blotto?’
‘Do?’ It was an unexpected and difficult question. ‘Well, I, er … um …’ Then he had the brilliant idea of turning the tables on the American by asking, ‘Why, what do you do?’
‘I write. So does Scott.’
‘Ah.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes, I can write,’ asserted Blotto.
‘What do you write on?’
‘Um … chequebooks … tailors’ bills … that kind of thing.’ Seeing the puzzlement in the thickset man’s eyes, Blotto thought he’d try another reversal. ‘Why, what do you write on?’
‘Life. Death. Death in the morning. And at other times of day. Drink. Boxing. Bulls. Stuff.’
‘Hoopee-doopee,’ said Blotto.
‘So what do you do?’ Chuck Waggen asked again.
The question couldn’t be ducked a second time, so Blotto replied airily, ‘Oh, this and that.’ Cannily he realized this was not the moment to mention criminal investigation. ‘Play a bit of cricket …’ he went on. ‘Hunting …’
The muscular man’s eyes lit up. ‘I like hunting. Hunting is good. Not so good perhaps as being with a dame. But it’s good. What kind of gun do you use, Blotto?’
‘Ah. I don’t use a gun.’
‘What, you wrestle the beasts down with your bare hands? Like with the bulls in Pamplona?’
‘No, I hunt … we hunt … I mean one hunts in England with hounds.’
‘Ah. Yes. I heard of that some place. Kinda takes away the fun, doesn’t it?’
‘Well, no, it—’ But before he could articulate his impassioned defence of the hunting he knew and loved, Blotto was interrupted by the other American, Scott Frea.
‘Are you not a drinking man?’ he asked Blotto.
‘Oh, yes, I drink. And eat too,’ he added helpfully.
‘No, I mean proper drinking. Is that coffee in your cup?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why don’t you drink a man’s drink?’
‘You mean alcohol? Well, it’s a bit early in the day for me to—’
‘Tommyrot! There’s no time of the day too early for alcohol. Isn’t that right, Chuck?’
‘Sure. First thing I do in the morning is have a drink. That is, after I’ve had an hour’s swim in the Seine, boxed ten rounds and written two thousand words. Then I have a drink. Can you hold liquor, Blotto?’
‘Well, I can if it’s in a glass. Not in my bare hands, though. And, Scott, do you do the same as Chuck? Get some writing done before you start drinking?’
‘No, I get some drinking done before I start writing.’
‘And then you often don’t get round to doing the writing,’ said Chuck Waggen on a bellow of laughter. He turned his dark eyes on Blotto. ‘I could drink you under the table. Because I’m a man. Are you a man, Blotto?’
‘Oh yes.’ The questions were getting easier.
Chuck Waggen turned a contemptuous look on his friend. ‘And what about you, Scott? Are you a man?’
‘Sure.’
This was rewarded by another bellow of laughter. ‘You’ll never be half the man that I am.’
‘You’re right, Chuck,’ Scott Frea conceded.
‘Nobody will ever be half the man that I am.’
Blotto was a little disturbed by this kind of talk. Being brought up properly – in other words, as an English gentleman – he knew that one of the worst social solecisms that could be committed was ‘showing off’. This had been dinned into him from his earliest youth by the Dowager Duchess, by an ever-more-despotic sequence of nannies and by his education at Eton. Whatever manly feats one had achieved, i
t was really bad form to crow about them. And the correct way to respond to a compliment was with an embarrassed shake of the head and the sheepish words, ‘Don’t talk such spoffing guff.’
Certainly the last thing one should do was to talk in the way Chuck Waggen was talking. But then he was American, Blotto concluded generously, so he probably didn’t know any better.
While he was thinking this, the catalogue of Waggen’s self-defined superiority continued. Not only could he out-drink anyone, he could also outwrite anyone, outhunt anyone, outfish anyone, outfight anyone. And when it came to the ladies …
Blotto’s upbringing had also taught him that it was unbelievably bad form for a man to talk about his amorous conquests. It was something he would never do – even though, in his case, his amorous conquests were always accidental. Blotto’s allergic reaction to the idea of matrimony meant that he would never make a first move on a girl. But in spite of that, women did have a habit of falling for him like giraffes on an ice rink.
It was a phenomenon he could never really understand. Not only had his upbringing taught him to play down his achievements, it had also given him a suitably low estimate of his worth. That was the aim of a British upper-class education, after all – to produce young men who could organize foreign people in the Empire, but who never succumbed to introspection or personal vanity.
To Blotto the idea that an impossibly handsome and honourable second son of a duke might be an attractive target for a young woman to get in her sights had never occurred.
Continuing his theme of amorous conquests, Chuck Waggen now turned the full beam of his personality on to Dimpsy Wickett-Coote. After the glow he had given her with his dragonfly compliment, she had become rather bored with the subsequent direction of the conversation. She felt excluded, sitting in silence beside the lugubrious Marquis of Bluntleigh. Dimpsy needed masculine attention and adoration the same way that a sunflower needs the sun.
She certainly blossomed when Chuck Waggen told her, ‘You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.’
Part of Blotto felt jealous that he hadn’t come up with such a simple compliment, rather than pongling around with comparisons to dismembered foxes and cricket bats. But another part felt hugely relieved. If Chuck Waggen was going to make up to Dimpsy Wickett-Coote, then that rather let him off the hook. Twinks had wanted her friend to have an amorous swain and had nominated her brother for the role. But surely this muscle-bound American writer would do the business just as well?
And if Chuck was pressing his suit with Dimpsy and the Marquis of Bluntleigh was still wallowing in his own gloom, Blotto had the perfect opportunity to continue his investigation into the disappearing Ruperts. Twinks had often told him that clues could come from the most unlikely sources, and that a good way of eliciting information was to get people drunk.
Well, Scott Frea was an extremely unlikely source, and he was managing to get himself drunk quite satisfactorily. So Blotto turned to him and asked, ‘I say, Scott me old pineapple, do you know anything about Art Theft?’
‘Art Theft? Hell, I don’t know. There are just so many jazz musicians around in Paris these days.’
‘No, not Art Theft the person … if indeed there is a boddo of that name. I’m talking about the theft of art. I just wondered if—’
But Blotto had chosen the wrong moment to pursue his investigation. Scott Frea’s ongoing rivalry with his compatriot meant that he couldn’t allow Chuck Waggen free rein in pressing his suit with Dimpsy. Scott had also to enter the lists. He didn’t go for the fancy stuff, either. He just said, ‘Dimpsy, you really are the most beautiful woman in the world.’
His words certainly had the right effect on her. Having both Americans praising her beauty made Dimpsy Wickett-Coote swell up like one of those Japanese paper flowers that Blotto remembered from his nursery. A beam of contentment settled on her features as the two rivals vied to outcompliment each other. The beam of contentment on Blotto’s face, prompted by the fact that there were now two other men paying court to Dimpsy, was almost as wide.
‘I want to take you on my next big-game hunting trip to Africa,’ offered Chuck Waggen to his latest object of adoration.
‘I want to take you to dance with me in the hottest jazz club in Paris,’ counterbid Scott Frea.
‘I will immortalize you in a book as a woman. One who suffers the privations of war. And still remains sexy.’
‘I will immortalize you in a book in which you are beautiful, enigmatic and slightly unhinged.’
‘You will find in me. A lover. With the strength of a bull.’
‘You will find in me a lover who is very sensitive and irresistibly neurotic.’
‘I will fight any man who so much as looks at you.’
‘I will not fight, but I have my own ways of—’
Whether the situation would have developed into open fisticuffs and – given the disparity in physique between the two Americans – the inevitable flooring of Scott Frea was a question destined never to be answered. Because at that moment the interior of Les Deux Mangetouts was irradiated by the entrance of Twinks. A silence descended on the café. Even the waiter stopped in the middle of his explanation of Spinoza’s early espousal of Descartian Dualism to a man who only wanted to order a quick brandy.
The two writers, in the grip of a power stronger than themselves, turned instantly towards the new arrival. As they did so, the glow on the face of Dimpsy Wickett-Coote vanished as quickly as a manifesto promise after an election.
‘Holy smoke!’ said Chuck Waggen. ‘I’ve just seen the most beautiful woman in the world.’
‘I’ve just seen the most beautiful woman in the world,’ said Scott Frea. ‘And what’s more, Chuck, I saw her first!’
The two writers squared up to each other, ready to do battle for the love of Twinks.
It would be hard to say whether Dimpsy Wickett-Coote’s or the Marquis of Bluntleigh’s face looked as if it had swallowed the larger lemon.
But when Dimpsy refocused her doe eyes on him, Blotto looked as if he’d swallowed the largest lemon in the known universe.
9
Art for Heaven’s Sake!
Blotto felt as though he was reliving one of the most boring times of his life. He’d found giving the Marquis of Bluntleigh the tour of the Tawcester Towers art collection bad enough, but at least there had been a finite number of Ruperts to be pointed out (and, as it turned out, two fewer than there should have been). But the Louvre … The Louvre went on for ever. It seemed to have no beginning and no end … just room after room after room … And all of them full of spoffing paintings!
Now Blotto knew he had limitations when it came to the knowledge of art – he had limitations when it came to the knowledge of anything – but there were paintings he liked. A hunting scene, a picture of a ship or a horse, even a naval battle … he could respond to those. They made him think of things he enjoyed. But there were distressingly few hunting scenes, pictures of ships, horses or naval battles in the Louvre. Just, so far as he could see, endless scenes from the Bible. And although Blotto had nothing against the Bible, he knew very little about it (he was Church of England, after all). And the few bits he did know (vestigial memories from scripture lessons at Eton) didn’t interest him at all.
It wasn’t just what hung on the walls that depressed him about the Louvre, it was also what was standing on the floors. Now Blotto was not a snob; he just had an attitude to the oikish classes that had been handed down through generations of the Lyminster family. But, unlike many people of his breeding, he recognized that the feudal system had come to an end. He had no argument with the idea that estate workers at Tawcester Towers should be paid (though not very much). And he had a common touch. He thought nothing of spending hours round the garages with Corky Froggett, discussing the latest in automobiles. And at Christmas he was happy to entertain the servants to magnanimous pats on the back and half-glasses of sherry. No, he thought the oikish classes were all very fine in their pl
ace.
So long as they kept in that place. So long as they didn’t start lording it round ancestral buildings like the Louvre, acting as if their presence in such environments was a right rather than a privilege.
Blotto couldn’t help but find their behaviour irksome. There were too many of them, for a start. And then, to compound his discomfort, most of them were speaking foreign languages. So far as Blotto was concerned, that rather put the lid on the jam jar. For the love of strawberries, a public building like the Louvre ought to maintain the most basic of admission strictures, and only allow in people who spoke English!
Not only was Blotto cast down by the unknown throng that surrounded him, he was further vinegared off by his closer companions. Being upstaged by Twinks in the affections of Chuck Waggen and Scott Frea had not improved the mood of Dimpsy Wickett-Coote. She wore the pout of a star player who’d been left out of the school lacrosse team. Nor did the Marquis of Bluntleigh look any more chipper. He wasn’t responding well to being totally ignored by the object of his adoration and bundled off on a tour of the Louvre with her utterly uninformed brother.
‘How can I persuade Twinks I’m the right boddo for her?’ he kept asking mournfully. ‘Come on, Dimpsy, you’re a woman. What would be the way into your heart?’
‘Well, telling me I am the most beautiful woman in the world used to be a good ticket,’ she replied, not without bitterness, ‘but then hearing the same person say the same thing to someone else minutes later tends to take the icing off that particular Swiss bun.’
‘Ah,’ sighed the Marquis of Bluntleigh glumly. ‘I’ve tried that approach with Twinks, but she doesn’t seem to notice me. What about art? Do women respond to art – you know, to being someone’s muse?’
Blotto remembered what Twinks had told him and so didn’t go wading in with talk of stable blocks. He just waited for Dimpsy’s response.