by Ruth Edwards
‘And you’ve come here today to ask me to help you save the Amazonian rain forests.’ Amiss sounded a little sleepy.
‘I haven’t,’ said Pooley. ‘And I wouldn’t worry about old Watson down there. He’s about ninety-three and has been sleeping away the afternoons in that corner for, I believe, the last twenty years. I can’t think he’s doing it just on the off-chance that one day he’ll pick up something useful to the enemy. Now come on, concentrate.’
‘Oh, all right. What do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to become a waiter.’
‘Silver service, I hope,’ said Amiss, with a hint of hauteur. ‘My mother would be most upset if I sank any lower than that.’
‘Certainly silver service—club waiters always are.’
‘You want me to become a club waiter?’
‘Yes.’
‘This club.’
‘No. Fanshaw’s.’
‘Fanshaw’s. Where’s that?’
‘Just off St James’s Street. Very close to the centre of clubland there.’
‘I can’t remember ever reading anything about Fanshaw’s.’
‘No. But that’s probably because it isn’t spelt Fanshaw’s. That’s how it’s pronounced. It’s actually spelt Featherstonehaugh’s. You understand that, don’t you? It’s the same as Cholmondley being pronounced Chumley and Marjoribanks Marchbanks. Oh, yes. And it begins with two small “ff”s.’
‘Nothing begins with small “ff”s outside fiction.’
‘Oh, yes they do. Just hang on a minute.’ Pooley jumped up, walked over to a free-standing bookcase and returned within moments flourishing a large volume. ‘Can’t find Who’s Who. One of the old buffers out there probably has it: some of them like reading their own entries over and over again. We’ll have to make do with Debrett’s Distinguished People of Today. They won’t have so many aristocrats, unfortunately. Some tomfool notion of merit applies. Let’s see…Ah, yes. Here we are, the double “ff”s. Ffolkes, Ffooks, Fforde and Ffolkes don’t use a double small “f”, I grant you. But let’s look at the ffrenches.’ He frowned. ‘Good Lord!’
‘You look shocked.’
‘I am shocked. The country’s going to the dogs. What would my father say? The ffrenches have ratted. Look.’ He thrust the book at Amiss and pointed.
Amiss perused the offending entries. ‘Dear, dear. Not only are a clutch of ffrench-born now styling themselves Ffrench, but even ffytche has turned Ffytche.’
‘Still, at least they’re keeping on the two “ff”s.’ Pooley removed Debrett and went off to put it back. When he returned, Amiss’s eyes had closed. ‘Wake up, Robert.’
‘Sometimes I don’t believe England,’ said Amiss dreamily. ‘I think the whole country has been invented by a deranged Hollywood impresario with intellectual pretensions and we’re all living in a theme park.’
‘Well, he certainly deserves full marks for inventing ffeatherstonehaugh’s. D’you know anything about the history of clubs?’
‘Oh, just the usual stuff.’ Amiss sat upright, stretched, and picked up his glass. ‘Some of them were gaming-houses, weren’t they, and some of them are descendants of coffee-houses? Yes? Others, like this one, were founded quite late on to bring like-minded people together. Roughly it?’
‘Yes, that’s roughly it.’
‘Well, I hope that ffeatherstonehaugh’s is going to be one of the more interesting ones. If you’ve got to tell me a story, let it be a story about a club which descended from mad Regency bucks—a place that embodies the spirit of the chap I remember reading about who threw a waiter out of the window and told the club steward to put him on his bill.’
‘Ffeatherstonehaugh’s is much closer to that beau ideal than here, I can promise you. Unusually enough, it was founded largely on the proceeds of a legacy from Lord ffeatherstonehaugh, who even by the standards of his time was pretty louche. He fell out with the proprietors of the clubs he belonged to because of what he regarded as their unreasonable restrictions on the importation of wenches, their timidness about the anti-duelling laws, their killjoy objections to three-day parties and so on and so on. Fearless ffeatherstonehaugh, he was called about town.’
‘Fearless with two small “ff”s, no doubt. Jesus, the aristocratic sense of humour is almost enough to make one send for the tumbrils.’
‘Anyway, after a particularly ferocious row, he swore that he would have a club set up in his honour to perpetuate the principles of a full-blooded aristocrat. And sure enough, much to the rage of his family, the unentailed part of his very considerable estate was found to have been left for the foundation of a club.’
‘Well, if it was set up in the spirit in which he apparently wanted it set up, I’m surprised it’s still in existence.’
‘Ah, yes. But those to whom he had left this delicate task were slightly less reckless than he had been. Indeed a couple of them seem, from all one hears about ffeatherstonehaugh’s, to have been uncommonly keen on rules and regulations, even by the standards of gentlemen’s clubs, all of which, you probably know, are absolutely hide-bound by daft conventions, rules and nomenclatures. You know the sort of thing: it’s true of most of them. The dining-room is called the Coffee Room, but it’s the place where you can’t have coffee. The place you sit in after lunch is likely to be called the Morning Room. The cold food restaurant is called the Strangers’ Room because a hundred years ago you couldn’t take strangers into the Coffee Room. The room with all the books in it isn’t called the library, it’s called the Smoking Room. And so on and so on.’
‘Yes, what’s the point of all that? Hangover from boarding-school, presumably.’
‘Quite a lot of it is. I mean, it’s not just that it’s a matter of keeping up traditions. This is a way of confusing the new boys as well as the outsiders and making members feel superior and part of a private conspiracy. Anyway, ffeatherstonehaugh’s has more than its share of that sort of carry-on. Whatever ffeatherstonehaugh’s decided to do they did with more enthusiasm than any of the other clubs.’
‘How long am I going to have to wait to find out why you’re telling me all about this place?’ asked Amiss.
‘There’s been what I think is murder, but it can’t be proved. Shall I go on?’
‘Situation normal. Go on.’
***
‘So of course I said yes,’ reported Amiss to Rachel on the telephone that night.
‘What do you mean, “of course”?’
‘Because the place is preposterous and what he wants me to do is equally preposterous. I need stimulation. I’m bored, I’m fed up and you’re going to India tomorrow.’
‘So it’s my fault that you’re going into a haunt of thieves and vagabonds?’
‘Of course it isn’t, you silly bitch,’ said Amiss affectionately. ‘I’m not placing on your shoulders or even on those of Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the responsibility for my electing to become, or rather, to try to become, a snooping waiter in a lunatic asylum. However, you have made it possible for me to do this and I can’t resist it. Don’t be cross.’
‘I won’t be cross. What’s the point? Clearly there’s some old Boy’s Own adventure urge rampant in you at the moment. I suppose you might as well get rid of this inclination while you’re an unemployed bachelor rather than finding yourself in ten years’ time—a senior civil servant or a captain of industry—stripping off to your red underpants in telephone kiosks.’
‘More likely to be a down-and-out than a captain of anything, the way things are going,’ said Amiss gloomily.
‘Well, maybe you won’t get the job and you’ll have to apply for something sensible.’
‘I’m afraid there isn’t much chance of my not getting the job. I understand from Ellis that the turnover in staff in ffeatherstonehaugh’s is spectacularly high even by club standards. They treat them badly and the inmates are madder than the norm, I gather. So at the moment they are short of about five underlings. It would be very strange
indeed if they were to reject a WASP like me.’
‘I don’t know what to wish you on this one, other than a short and safe tour of duty.’
‘Look on the bright side. I’ll be gaining some useful experience for being an embassy husband. I’ll know from which side to present the canapés.’
Chapter Three
At 9 a.m. Amiss began ringing employment agencies specialising in the catering trade. By ten o’clock he was standing in a short queue on the premises of the one that had sounded most hopeful. To his delight no one seemed to want to fraternise, so he was able to read his Independent. From the snippets he picked up from overhearing interviews, there appeared to be few fluent speakers of English among the job hunters.
The surroundings were plain; the interviewers crisp. By ten twenty-five he was sitting in front of a large woman wearing an enormous grey Aran cardigan that bore all the unhappy signs of having been knitted by an over-ambitious amateur.
‘Experience?’ she demanded.
‘Not as a waiter,’ said Amiss hesitantly. ‘But I have been a barman.’
‘Hum,’ she said. ‘Testimonials?’
He passed over rather sheepishly the five-line encomium from his landlord friend, awash with lavish praise of his probity, uprightness, sobriety and general reliability.
‘So why don’t you stick with bartending? Why d’you want to be a waiter?’
‘I need a live-in job and I heard there were more as a waiter. And anyway, I want to increase my experience.’
She glowered at him through her heavy spectacles and tapped impatiently on the desk with her pen. ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to,’ she informed him crossly, ‘when a young fellow like you is wasting himself on this kind of job. Why aren’t you a schoolteacher or something? You’re obviously educated.’
Amiss gazed at her defiantly. ‘Because I’m a poet,’ he said firmly, ‘so I can’t afford to expend any of my creativity in my work.’
‘I suppose I should be grateful you’re not doing it on my taxes. Now why did you say you wanted clubs and not hotels? You can live in either of them.’
‘I prefer the kind of person you get in clubs.’
She looked unimpressed. ‘They’re more cultured,’ he offered, rather desperately. ‘You can get to know them.’
She eyed him dubiously. ‘Well, it’s your funeral. All right. Here are details of the jobs available at the moment.’
Amiss leafed through the cards, which listed vacancies in half a dozen or so clubs.
‘Hurry up. Choose two.’
He took out the cards for the Repeal and ffeatherstonehaugh’s.
‘Don’t take ffeatherstonehaugh’s,’ she said. ‘You won’t like it. The staff get rotten food and rotten conditions and everyone there is mad. It’s got the highest turnover of any of our clients. Being English, you’d easily get into one of the others.’
Amiss was touched by her concern and impressed by her brutal honesty. ‘Nevertheless, I like the sound of it. It has a romantic aura.’
‘Romantic aura my granny. But maybe you’re daft enough for it,’ she declared sourly. ‘Don’t complain to me when you walk out in a week’s time.’ Scribbling his name on a couple of introductory cards, she handed them over, nodded curtly and called for the next applicant.
***
He was outside ffeatherstonehaugh’s by eleven o’clock. It had proved particularly difficult to find, being in a kind of mews off an alley off a side-street. However, there was nothing discreet about the building: it was a brash, daring and vulgar parody of the Athenaeum. Where the Athenaeum entrance was dominated by a huge figure of Minerva, ffeatherstonehaugh’s had Venus. In place of the Athenaeum’s faithful reproduction of the Parthenon frieze, featuring the pride of Athenian youth on beautifully sculpted horses, ffeatherstonehaugh’s had reproductions of erotic Hindu sculptures. On either side of the five steps leading into the building there loafed a marble Grecian youth, unclad, and well-endowed, wearing a provocative leer.
Amiss found it impossible not to enjoy the joke: call it art and you can get away with anything, even if you are Victorian. Still smiling, he went up the stairs into the rather dark and grimy lobby, where he was stopped by a stooped and gnarled ancient in a dingy frock coat.
‘How can I help you, sir?’
‘I should like to see the club steward, please.’
The ancient, who was wearing what was presumably his normal expression of obsequiousness, altered it instantly to one denoting shock and contempt. ‘And what might your business be?’ he enquired, the unsaid ‘sir’ hanging between them.
‘I’ve come about a job.’ From the glare cast at him, it was clear that he would have to work hard to be forgiven for allowing himself to be mistaken, even momentarily, for a gentleman.
‘Well, you can’t see him,’ announced the porter with satisfaction. ‘’E’s gorn.’
Amiss noted that the posh accent had disappeared along with the courtesy. ‘When you say gone…?’
‘I mean gorn…fired.’ The old blighter looked pleased.
‘Well then, may I see the secretary?’ asked Amiss, aware that this was an even more futile request, since it was the secretary’s demise he was hoping to investigate.
‘’E’s dead,’ said the porter with even more pleasure.
‘Dead? Was it sudden?’
‘As sudden as it can be. One minute he’s upstairs having a drink and a chat with some of the members. Next minute he’s jumped off the gallery and splat, he’s all over the floor of the Saloon.’
Amiss affected shock. ‘How horrible. Killed instantly, was he?’
‘Well, what d’you expect to happen when you jump sixty feet on to a tiled floor?’ asked the sage.
‘Splat,’ said Amiss.
‘Splat’s right. And you should of seen the skidmarks. ’E travelled a fair bit, I can tell you. It was a real mess.’ By now the porter was clearly softening towards his appreciative audience.
‘I suppose you’d better see Commander Blenkinsop. He’s doing the secretary’s job till we find a new one. He used to be secretary until the new git took over.’
‘You didn’t like him?’
‘Interfering bollocks.’ The porter was throwing all dignity and discretion to the wind. ‘Trying to go changing things. I don’t see the point. Now the Commander, he understands what the club is about. He’s one of the old school.’ And with an approving nod at his own sagacity, he beckoned to Amiss and led him into the interior of the building.
Amiss was pleased that Pooley had been able the previous day to take him into the body of the Reform Club to prepare him for the lampoon of that noble interior perpetrated by ffeatherstonehaugh’s. Without a reasonable knowledge of the original, the subtlety of the caricature would have been lost on him. As it was, he recognised immediately that the great square central hall with colonnades, a fine staircase and an upper gallery closely resembled the original. It was in the incidental adornments that the differences were strikingly obvious. Where the Reform’s mosaic floor featured a geometrical design, ffeatherstonehaugh’s favoured frolicking nymphs and shepherds draped lightly, or in some cases, not at all.
‘He fell on to this?’ Amiss asked.
‘He sure did.’ The porter grinned evilly, revealing several gaps among his greeny-grey front teeth. ‘Made a right mess of that crowd over there, I can tell you.’ He directed Amiss’s attention to what appeared to represent a bacchanalian orgy. ‘Put a bit of a stop to their gallop, if you ask me,’ he said with a malevolent chuckle.
Amiss was fascinated by this display of prurient fancy. Its creator gestured at him to wait and disappeared through a door in the corner of the hall. Amiss gazed around looking for evidence of fresh travesties. Like the Reform, ffeatherstonehaugh’s had enormous portraits inset into the walls. Amiss speculated wildly as to who would feature in place of the Reform’s great liberal statesmen. Satyrs? Strippers? From where he stood the outlook seemed disappointing. Although he could see one
woman, she was fully clothed, and the chaps looked like most chaps in varying kinds of historical kit. Unable to contain his curiosity he dashed over to the portrait that dominated the hall, the one that a cunning arrangement of huge mirrors ensured could be seen from every angle. The picture was enormous, probably one and a half times life size, and it featured a chap with voluptuous lips whom Amiss didn’t recognise. He read the plaque underneath: ‘John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 1647–1680.’
Good God! thought Amiss. Ellis didn’t tell me this. Rochester, the great dirty poet. What an extraordinary un-English patron saint for a club. He felt a sudden rush of certainty that he was going to enjoy his time at ffeatherstonehaugh’s—whatever horrors it might bring.
‘Young fellow, come here,’ thundered a voice behind him. ‘Come on, come on, come on. Don’t keep me waiting. That’s the trouble with you young fellows these days. No respect. No get-up-and-go. No idea of right and wrong. Deafened by pop music. Heads crammed full of ideas above their station. Now stop gaping, gaping, as I said. Stop gaping and come over here double-quick and tell me what you’re good for.’
Christ, thought Amiss. Another parody. And with as much speed as dignity would permit he walked over to the Commander.
Chapter Four
The Commander had the florid complexion one expected of an old sailor, though Amiss guessed it more likely to be attributable to an excess of alcohol rather than sun, wind and sea. His extreme portliness tended to confirm the diagnosis, though he had the height to carry it well. He wore a blazer of some antiquity and his loud pink-and-black-striped tie sported several stains.
It was not an exacting interview. As the Commander explained from the start, it was a nice change to have somebody white and English-speaking looking for a job.
‘That’s one good thing about all this unemployment,’ he remarked cheerily. ‘Every cloud has a silver lining, what?’
Being unable to think of a response which would please his conscience and the Commander, Amiss resorted to a weak smile.
‘Mind you,’ said the Commander, proving himself to be a more even-handed man than Amiss had expected, ‘at least some of these blacks have some get-up-and-go. Whereas a fellow like you looking for a dead-end job like this must be a bloody layabout.’