I couldn’t understand just what Auntie Mame ever saw in Hermione, but on the other hand I was never too surprised by any of the fads or people my aunt picked up. Auntie Mame— who could be astonishingly astute about some people and equally gullible about others—almost reached the breaking point during Ascot Week when she learned that she hadn’t been invited—nor apparently had Hermione—into the Royal Enclosure. Nor was Auntie Mame any too pleased when Vera, wearing more fox furs than the Queen herself, went sashaying off to Ascot on the arm of a naughty old duke.
“Of cawss, Mame, nobody nice goes to Ascot,” Hermione tried to explain weakly.
“Oh, of course not!” Auntie Mame growled. “Just the King and the Queen and Queen Mary and the Duke and Duchess of Kent—trash like that!”
“And besides, Mame,” Hermione said cloyingly, “you’re entertaining the cream of Court circles at luncheon today.”
“If they’re in Court circles,” Auntie Mame said, “why aren’t they out at the Royal Enclosure with the Court? Why aren’t Patrick and I? And, for that matter, why aren’t you?” Auntie Mame said, and stamped off to her room.
After that I heard Lady Gravell-Pitt making several surreptitious and desperate-sounding telephone calls. In fact, all through the day, while Auntie Mame spread charm and caviar among the same old free loaders, Hermione was constantly excusing herself to make yet another urgent call.
Nor were the household tensions eased when Vera came back that evening with her duke, her winnings, and her impressive roster of great names with whom she had lunched alfresco or had tea or just gossiped. Vera was laying it on thick and said “Of cawss, I’m only an actress” three or four times. And when Hermione came into the room, after what must have been her hundredth urgent trip to the telephone, Vera pushed her duke forward and said, “But certainly you two must be aold, aold friends, so there’s no need to introduce you.”
The duke looked absolutely blank and Hermione looked as though she could have crawled under the rug.
The duke said, “Er, I—I don’t believe . . .”
Hermione said, “Of cawss,” with a dismal clack of her upper plate and excused herself once more in favor of the telephone.
The duke’s title was very recent, Hermione explained later. He was no one, really.
But that night Lady Gravell-Pitt somehow managed to wangle invitations for Auntie Mame and me to the next Garden Party. She crowed with relief and pride as she raced in, flapping the envelopes aloft. Auntie Mame was delighted to think that at last she was getting somewhere in Court circles.
“There are only three, of cawss,” Hermione said horridly. “I was so soddy not to have got one for Miss Charles.”
“Thet’s quate all raight,” Vera said in her stage accent, “I’ve had mine for days.”
THE DAY OF THE ROYAL GARDEN PARTY DAWNED unusually hot and humid. The household was in a furor. Maids scuttled up and down the corridors trailing freshly pressed dresses in their wake. Out in front, Ito polished first his buttons and then the Rolls, then the buttons again and once more the Rolls. There was even a little excitement in it for me with the arrival of my slightly used ducal clothes.
It was only when I tried to put the outfit on that I began to entertain serious doubts as to this particular tailor’s superiority over Rogers Peet. The trousers were much too large and much too short. Held up with braces, as they had to be, they cleared my ankles by a good inch. If I let them down to reach the tops of my shoes, then a dazzling array of shirt front appeared between the trousers and my gray waistcoat, which happened to be so tight that all the buttons strained every time I breathed. The coat was short in the sleeves and narrow through the shoulders, but so large across the stomach that I was almost able to get it around me twice. The tie, however, was perfectly fine. I was still trying to discover a way to stand so that my new finery wouldn’t look quite so grotesque when Auntie Mame called up to me from the garden.
“Patrick, my little love, do come down. We’re just having a snack here before we go. It wouldn’t do to be late.”
“I—I’ll be down soon, Auntie Mame,” I said. “I just can’t seem to get this suit right.”
“Never mind, darling,” she called, “come down and Vera and I will help you.”
Auntie Mame and Vera and Lady Gravel-Pitt were preening themselves in the hot sunlight. Auntie Mame looked very Gainsborough in her pearls, a sweeping gown of ivory with parasol to match, and on her head a platter of nodding plumes in all the colors of sweetpea. Vera, too, looked dazzling, in a stagey sort of way, in mauve lace and, to be as one again with the Queen of England, several dozen fox pelts dripping from various parts of her. Lady Gravell-Pitt’s costume had quite a lot of wrinkles and some indelible spots insufficiently covered with cameos.
“Well,” I said, stepping out bravely, “you’re certainly all looking . . .” I couldn’t go on. I stood there frozen beneath the awe-stricken stares of Auntie Mame and Vera.
Vera was the first to speak. “Jesus,” she said, simply and succinctly.
“Patrick,” Auntie Mame gasped, “what are you got up as? If you think this is a joke, you’re . . .”
“It’s my new suit,” I said. “For the Garden Party. It just arrived.”
“New?” Vera said. “I should live so long. Why, it’s positively green with . . .”
“Really, Hermione,” Auntie Mame said, “I do happen to know something about clothes, and this ridiculous getup is simply . . .”
“It’s what all the best-dressed men in London are wearing,” Hermione began, but even she wasn’t able to bluff it through. One look from Auntie Mame and Hermione’s statement trailed off and stopped with a dismal little click of her teeth.
“It’s surely just some sort of mistake,” Auntie Mame said. “Undoubtedly there’s been some mix-up and Patrick has received the wrong package. This bedraggled old rag is certainly not the sort of thing that anyone would pay a hundred guineas for.”
“A hundred guineas!” Vera said and whistled.
Lady Gravell-Pitt looked so crestfallen at being caught out in her shabby trick that I almost felt sorry for her. But she rallied and said, “Of cawss. It can all be straightened out tomorrow. But now we’d best be off. It wouldn’t do to keep Bertie and Bessie waiting.”
“Very well,” Auntie Mame said. “Patrick, my little love, you’ll just have to make do, somehow. Perhaps no one will notice.”
“Maybe,” I said dubiously. I put on my gray topper. It sank down to the bridge of my nose.
The traffic in London has always been bad, but on that particular Garden Party day it was so heavy that it took the better part of an hour to travel the last two blocks to the gates of Buckingham Palace. Nor were matters improved when Ito nicked a very old Daimler limousine and crumpled the fender of the Peruvian Ambassador’s Packard. By the time we got there the temperature in the car was about ninety and the humidity was unbearable.
Never having been to a Royal Garden Party before or since, I have no similar function with which to compare this. But the only difference I could see between the Royal Garden Party and a giant rally at Yankee Stadium is that Yankee Stadium has rest rooms and it’s easier to get refreshments. We got into the receiving line behind several hundred thousand overdressed people and began inching forward in a long serpentine queue toward the marquee where the Royal family received. An hour went by and we were still standing. Vera was the first to crack. “To hell with it,” she said, and went off to join some people she knew. In fact, it seemed to me that Vera knew a lot more people in Court circles than Lady Gravell-Pitt did. Every two or three minutes someone with a most impressive title would spot Vera standing on line and barge up to greet her, whereupon Vera would introduce us all around.
Lady Gravell-Pitt, on the other hand, would just caw, “Oh, there’s the Marquess of Something or the Duchess of Somethingelse,” and wave frenetically, only to receive the blankest of stares. But Auntie Mame was too pleased to be there, and too happy chatting with Ve
ra’s gay friends to notice.
Another hour went by and we were not much closer to our goal. However, the sun had disappeared behind a cloud and there was quite a breeze. “Thank God for a little relief from this heat,” Auntie Mame said. I agreed with her wholeheartedly, but I noticed that quite a few people began casting nervous glances toward the heavens.
Still the line moved on. But now the breeze became a wind. The long filmy skirts of the women’s dresses fluttered nervously, and more than one picture hat was sent skimming across the lawn.
“Oh, dear,” Lady Gravell-Pitt began, “I do hope that it’s not going to . . .” Her words were drowned out by a terrible clap of thunder. The wind mounted to gale velocity and I could feel the tails of my coat flapping out behind me. Lady Gravell-Pitt’s dowdy flowered georgette skirts were caught in a gust that sent them flying up to her waist, thus affording all of smart London a grisly view of the largest feet and the thinnest shanks in the whole British Empire.
Then the rains came. Gently at first, in big, splattering drops, and then more wildly, whipped into a foam by the wind. Several men who had had the foresight to bring umbrellas chivalrously put them up to protect their ladies, but those that didn’t turn inside out instantly were wrenched free of their owners’ hands to go bouncing and bumping across the grass. The marquee above their Britannic Majesties flapped wildly and there was a definite feeling of exodus among the guests.
A procession of shrill debutantes ran shrieking past us, hair plastered to their skulls, their white lawn dresses clinging to them like winding sheets. The lawn was now a morass of hats and umbrellas with people dashing every which way, stumbling, slipping, falling, and bumping into one another. I let go of my own hat just long enough to have a minor monsoon sweep it into the air. It landed just under the foot of a bishop who was hell-bent on getting to shelter.
Then it happened. There was a long, low rumble, a flash, a crash, and a blinding something that hit the earth nearby with the force of a blockbuster. I heard somebody shout, “Oh, my God, it got Sir Hubert!” And then the crowd dispersed in real earnest. No British reserve about it. It was every man for himself and devil take the hindmost.
Hermione bolted like a steer. I called out, “Auntie Mame!” and reached forward to take her arm, but I was knocked flat by the Dowager Marchioness Somebody. I was joined on the ground by a woman in blue who assured me that this sort of thing never happened in Capetown. We wallowed helplessly in the muddy grass for a moment, and by the time we were back on our feet there was no sign of Auntie Mame. It was raining so hard that it was almost impossible to see anybody.
Auntie Mame’s rakish Rolls-Royce town car usually stood out in any crowd, with its sleek black paint job, its polished rivets and silver wire wheels, the jaunty angles of its squared-away corners. But at a Royal Garden Party it was just one among hundreds of big black cars. The chauffeurs weren’t having any too easy a time of it, either. Engines, thoroughly inundated from the cloudburst, refused to start; sodden grandes dames in soggy finery screamed like fishwives for their cars, but to little avail. The few cars that were operating sloshed and skidded on the pavement, sending up huge sprays of water. The collapse of the Axis was only narrowly averted when the German embassy’s big Mercedes-Benz locked bumpers with the Italian embassy’s Isotta-Frascini.
It simply was not Ito’s element. In fact, Ito was nowhere to be seen. Lightning struck again, somewhere on the Palace grounds, and the panic reached a fever pitch. At that point I decided to trust to luck and public transportation. I raced out into the road and jumped onto the first bus that came along. It had gone several miles before I realized that it was headed straight for Putney.
SOME TWO HOUR SLATER I ARRIVED AT AUNTIE Mame’s house via bus, tube, and taxicab. Although the rain had finally stopped, Grosvenor Square was under a foot of water. A sporty open car was parked in front of Auntie Mame’s door.
I let myself into the house and slogged across the porphyry floor, my shoes squishing with every step. The vast marble rotunda was dark and empty, with none of Auntie Mame’s rented footmen doing their usual sentry duty. Feeling that I was the only one who hadn’t gone down with the Royal family, I called out, “Anybody home?” but without much hope.
Then I heard Auntie Mame, sounding unusually chipper. “Is that you, my little love? I’m in the garden room.”
I sloshed back to the garden room and, through the gloom, made out Auntie Mame’s silhouette. She was curled up on the floor in front of the fireplace with a drink in her hand.
“Some picnic,” I said.
“Wasn’t it just, darling?” she said. “I can’t remember when I’ve had more fun.”
“Fun?” I said.
“Oh, and darling, I’d like you to meet Captain Fitz-Hugh. Basil, this is Patrick Dennis, my nephew, my ward, my life. Patrick, this is Captain Fitz-Hugh.”
“Is there somebody else in here?” I asked. “The place is as black as . . .”
“Oh, of course, my little love. I hadn’t even noticed. Do turn on a light.”
I switched on a lamp and there, looming above me, was about seven feet of Coldstream Guardsman. “Hahjudu?” he said, grasping my hand firmly.
As I said, Captain Fitz-Hugh was very tall. He had red-brown skin, red-brown hair, red-brown eyes, and a red-brown mustache. That he was extremely well built was abundantly evident, for he was wearing only my old blue dressing gown, with “St. Boniface Academy, Apathy, Mass.” embroidered over the heart. The robe was too small even for me, and from it several yards of Captain Fitz-Hugh’s well-turned legs, splendid forearms, and muscular chest were shown off to almost too much advantage. Except for his English accent and the mustache, Captain Fitz-Hugh reminded me of Auntie Mame’s late husband, Beauregard Burnside, and in a rare flash of intuition, I sensed Something was Afoot.
“Captain Fitz-Hugh valiantly rescued me from the Garden Party this afternoon. I couldn’t find you or Vera or Hermione or Ito or the car. Indeed,” she said, with a silvery little laugh, “if it hadn’t been for the captain and his adorable little car, I should probably still be treading water at Buckingham Palace.” She gathered her skirts demurely around her and for the first time I noticed that she was wearing a very special velvet negligee Molyneux had designed for her. Auntie Mame had always said that it had more pizazz than anything she owned.
Auntie Mame got to her feet and executed a little whirl to show off even better her trim ankles and the glory of Captain Molyneux. Captain Fitz-Hugh was most appreciative. “Now, my little love, you must run upstairs and get into some dry things. You’ll find Captain Fitz-Hugh’s clothes drying in front of the fire in your bedroom. I knew you wouldn’t mind. Oh, and would you just stick your head in the kitchen and ask for some more boiling water. Captain Fitz-Hugh and I are warding off pneumonia with hot toddies and I suggest you do the same. Don’t be long, dear.” As I made for the service hall, I could hear Auntie Mame’s tinkling laugh and Captain Fitz-Hugh’s genial chuckle and I received the distinct impression that Auntie Mame’s Season was beginning to look a lot brighter.
WHEN I WENT BACK DOWN TO THE GARDEN ROOM I found Auntie Mame curled up on the sofa, a full glass in her hand, regaling the captain with carefully chosen anecdotes from her colorful past, while the captain chuckled intimately from close, but discreet, range. Captain Fitz-Hugh had been to America, which he described as “ripping,” knew some of the people Auntie Mame knew, whom he called “smashing,” and admired her negligee by labeling it a “bit of all right.” It looked like one of those situations where three can be a crowd and I was about to tiptoe out when the crowd was increased by the entrance of Lady Gravell-Pitt.
If Hermione had looked awful before the Garden Party, she was beyond adjectives now. Her dress was soaked, the colors running hideously into one another. It was also torn and splattered with mud and had shrunk so that the hem line barely covered her bony knees. Her fusty ostrich boa hung like wet seaweed. Her hat was missing entirely and the tarnished gold of her dyed hai
r dangled in long, soggy ropes to her shoulders.
“Well!” Hermione roared, charging in, her teeth in a chatter. “I see that you managed to get home safe and . . .”
“Hermie!” Auntie Mame said genially. “I do hope that you were able to find Ito and the car. Lady Gravell-Pitt, Captain Fitz-Hugh.”
The captain bowed to Hermione although she barely nodded in his direction. Then, looking down at his bare legs, he said he’d chance getting back into his clothes if I’d show him the way to my room.
When I returned, Lady Gravell-Pitt was haranguing Auntie Mame for all she was worth.
“. . . bad enough,” Hermione was shouting, “to desert me at an important Royal function. But to come back with a totally strange man . . .”
“Isn’t he divine looking, Hermione?” Auntie Mame said. “And that heavenly voice.”
Around the World With Auntie Mame Page 6