Around the World With Auntie Mame

by Dennis, Patrick

  “He’s probably some little nobody from some Colonial regiment,” Hermione stormed.

  “No, he’s with the Coldstream Guards,” Auntie Mame said dreamily. “But he’s been released or set free or on a sabbatical or whatever they call it. And marvelous shoulders.”

  That stopped Hermione for a moment, but she took a deep breath and started in again. “Well, do get rid of him before any of my people come to dinner. In Court circles it does not pay to . . .”

  “Oh, Hermie, I’m so sorry. But I’ve called off the dinner party, owing to the bad weather. In fact, Captain Fitz-Hugh has asked me to dine with him—just the two of us.”

  “Mame! Do you mean to say that you’re leaving us for some nobody who . . .”

  Hermione’s speech was cut short by the reappearance of Captain Fitz-Hugh, looking very much like Somebody. And she was further put to flight when Vera came in with yet another duke, who fell upon Captain Fitz-Hugh as though they were long-lost brothers. It was simply not Lady Gravell-Pitt’s day.

  Auntie Mame was out awfully late with Captain Fitz-Hugh. I know, because I heard a terrible crash out in the street at half past three that morning and looked out to see that Ito had run into the captain’s water-logged sports car as he brought Auntie Mame home. But I heard her say, “That’s all right, Ito,” and watched her bidding a long farewell to the captain.

  The next morning there was almost a scene in the big marble rotunda. It was about eleven o’clock and I was up in my room sending post cards of the Houses of Parliament and the Changing of the Guard back to America when I heard the doorbell ring. Looking down from my window I saw Captain Fitz-Hugh, done up to the nines in his Guards uniform and carrying what must have been twelve dozen white roses. Since Auntie Mame was still asleep, naturally, I started down the stairs to make the captain feel at home, if such a thing were possible in that tomb of a house. But Lady Gravell-Pitt got there first.

  I hadn’t even rounded the bend in the stairway when I heard her nastiest tone of voice echoing in the rotunda. “Gud mawning, Leff-tenant,” she said horridly. “I’m so soddy to say that Mrs. Burnside is not at home.”

  “Oh?” Captain Fitz-Hugh said dismally. “She said that I might call . . .”

  “Of cawss,” Lady Gravell-Pitt said. I peered down the stair well and saw her standing there, flanked with footmen so that she looked like the Notre Dame backfield. “Mrs. Burnside was called away, to Colchester in fact. And I’m teddibly afraid that she won’t be back until late this . . .”

  I knew that Auntie Mame saw something very special in the captain and I was just about to go down and say that Lady Gravell-Pitt was lying in her teeth. Happily, Ito did it for me.

  “Oh, no, major,” Ito said, “you come in. You sit. Missy Burnside back already. I drive velly fast.”

  “Capital!” the captain said.

  I didn’t hang around to see or hear any more of Hermione. Instead, I raced into Auntie Mame’s room and snatched the sleep mask from her eyes.

  “Wake up, Auntie Mame,” I said. “Wake up. He’s here.”

  “Wh-who’s here?” she said, blinking owlishly in the morning sunlight.”

  “He,” I said. “Hhhhhhhim!”

  “You make it sound like the second coming,” she snapped. “And what’s more, I don’t care if it is. How dare you come pounding into my room in the middle of the night, waking me out of a sound . . .”

  “But it’s Captain Fitz-Hugh!”

  “For God’s sake, why didn’t you tell me, child?” she said, bounding out of bed. “Now go down and keep him company while I get dressed.”

  Sitting in the gloomiest of the Chippendale rooms under the beady eye of Lady Gravell-Pitt, the captain seemed almost overjoyed to see me.

  “Mrs. Burnside will be right down,” I said in my best manner. “Cigarette, sir?” I added, showing him how worldly I was.

  Captain Fitz-Hugh and I then had a conversation suitable to a growing boy. We discussed boarding schools (he had gone to Eton) and colleges (Oxford). Hermione didn’t seem very pleased to hear any of this. Then Auntie Mame, who could change her clothes faster than a fireman when pressed for time, swept into the room in a cumulus cloud of chiffon. “Basil, my dear,” she said, “how good of you to come for elevenses. Patrick, be a love and ring for Ito.”

  “I do hope you’ll be able to have lunch with me,” the captain said.

  “Oh, but I’d adore . . .”

  “What a pity, Mame dear,” Hermione said, “but of cawss you’re having luncheon here today for . . .”

  “Oh, no,” Ito said, appearing in the doorway. “I telephone everybody and say no lunch party today. Missy Burnside have to go to Colchester. Also no tea party, no cocktail party, no dinner party. Velly far, Colchester.”

  Hermione said something that sounded like “Awk!” and marched out of the room. Soon afterward, Auntie Mame did another quick change and went off to lunch, and later in the day still another change before the captain showed up in spectacular evening attire to take her out for a night on the town. And as Auntie Mame flew down the stairway, dazzling in diamonds, I knew that she had that Old Feeling again.

  I was dressing for dinner, as was the custom of the house, when Vera burst into my room.

  “Why, Patrick, what pretty legs,” she said, handing me a glass of brandy.

  “Is it your habit to burst into men’s rooms?” I asked, stepping into my trousers.

  “Frankly, yes,” Vera said. “And besides, this is about the only place in the house where we can talk without old horse face snooping around. Here’s how.”

  “Cheers,” I said.

  “Well, isn’t it divine?”

  “Isn’t what divine, Vera?”

  “It, stupid. Mame and Basil. I tell you, Patrick, I’ve done twenty-four hours’ intensive research on him and the news couldn’t be better. Rich as the Bank of England—richer, really. Forty-one. Single. Not queer. Knows everyone. Related to half of Debrett. And he’s an Hon., hon!”

  “He’s a what?”

  “He’s an Honourable, honey. His family have been the earls of Upshot ever since Ethelred or somebody like that. And Basil’s the only son. That means he’ll have the title when his father cools—and there won’t be too long to wait since the old fool’s nearly ninety and can’t live forever—so that Mame will be a lady! Our Mame and a belted earl!”

  “Not so fast, Vera,” I said. “He hasn’t asked her yet.”

  “Oh, but he will. They’re already making book on it at his club. And as for Mame, I haven’t seen her this way since poor Beauregard was alive.”

  RATHER THAN SIT AROUND AND TALK TO LADY Gravell-Pitt, I turned in early that night with a copy of Gone With the Wind and I got so fascinated with it that Atlanta was being burned to the ground before I realized that it was almost four o’clock. I turned off the lights and was raising the window when I saw a car coming up the wrong side of South Audley Street and I knew it could only be Ito. Sure enough. The car stopped at our door and Auntie Mame and Captain Fitz-Hugh stepped out. They were both laughing and then he kissed her for a long, long time before she ran gaily into the house.

  It seemed to me that as long as I was awake anyhow, we might have one of our Little Morning Chats and I could tell Auntie Mame all the interesting things Vera had found out about the captain. I opened my door just in time to hear Hermione’s voice vaulting up the rotunda. “I want a word with you,” she said.

  “Oh, Hermione, it’s so late,” Auntie Mame sang. “Won’t it keep?”

  “No, it won’t,” Lady Gravell-Pitt said peevishly. “Come into the library where we won’t be disturbed.”

  “At this hour, who’d want to disturb . . .” But the door shut on what Auntie Mame was saying.

  I put on my robe and waited. Then I got tired of just waiting and picked up Gone With the Wind again. Hermione must have had quite a lot of words for Auntie Mame because Scar-lett was saying she’d never be hungry again when I heard Auntie Mame finally coming up
the stairs.

  I opened my door and stepped out into the corridor. Auntie Mame was coming up the stairs all right, but it wasn’t the same woman who had flitted down them earlier that evening. Auntie Mame looked tired and haggard and old and I felt that she was fighting back the tears.

  “Auntie Mame . . .” I began.

  “What are you doing up at this hour?” she snapped. “I won’t have you prowling around all night, do you hear? Now go to bed this instant!” Her bedroom door slammed behind her.

  THE NEXT DAY HERMIONE GRAVELL-PITT WAS BACK in the saddle. People—Hermione’s people—were expected for luncheon and tea and dinner, and Hermione twittered grimly about the house all morning bullying the servants over all the arrangements.

  Auntie Mame didn’t come down until it was almost time for luncheon. She looked pale and sad and as though she’d slept very little. Almost as if it had been prearranged, Hermione summoned all the servants and lined them up in the rotunda. And then Auntie Mame addressed them. “This is to tell you,” she said, “that if a Captain Basil Fitz-Hugh calls, either in person or on the telephone, and asks to speak to me, he is to be told that I am out.”

  “And . . .” Hermione prompted.

  “And,” Auntie Mame said miserably, “any of you who gives him any information will—will be dismissed forthwith.”

  Just then the doorbell rang and Auntie Mame’s hand flew to her heart. Three footmen started for the door, but the butler did it. “Mrs. Burnside is out,” I heard him say and the door closed with an imposing thump. Auntie Mame started for the window, but Lady Gravell-Pitt said imperiously, “That is all. You may go.” And then she said, “Come, Mame. We’ll wait for our guests in the Adam room.”

  All that day and the next and the next Auntie Mame moved like an automaton among the same old deadbeats Hermione kept inviting in. She seemed neither to see nor hear them, which was, in a way, to be envied.

  Poor Captain Fitz-Hugh never gave up coming around to the house and he telephoned nine or ten times a day. Knowing that Auntie Mame couldn’t very well fire me, I always tried to get to the door or to one of the extension telephones and was always beaten to it by one of the servants. So Auntie Mame moped. Vera moped. I moped. Ito moped. Only Lady Gravell-Pitt seemed to be enjoying herself.

  On the fourth day I discovered Auntie Mame alone in the garden and so I tackled her. “Auntie Mame,” I said, “why can’t Captain Fitz-Hugh come here any more?”

  “Ah, my little love,” she sighed, “that’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got lots of time.”

  “Ah, but you wouldn’t understand.”

  “I might. At least I could try.”

  “Very well. It’s simply this. It seems that I’ve picked a bounder—an utter rotter. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “But, Auntie Mame,” I said, “some of your best friends have been bounders—utter rotters. Besides, I don’t believe it for a minute. Who told you this, anyhow?”

  “H-Hermione. She—she said that if people in Court circles ever found out that I was—was going about with him, then I’d—I’d never be presented. She said I’d have to choose between my—my presentation and B-Basil.”

  “But, Auntie Mame,” I said, “what do you care about the silly old presentation? Besides, it seems to me that the captain is a lot more aristocratic than old Lady Gr . . .”

  “You wretched little ingrate,” Auntie Mame said, her eyes blazing behind the brimming tears. “Here I’m sacrificing everything for you and that’s the way you talk. Don’t ever speak to me again!” With that she flounced off into the house.

  I was so stunned by Auntie Mame’s performance that I thought I’d better get out of that madhouse. I took off through the mews out in back of the house. When I reached the street, the first person I saw was Captain the Honourable Basil Fitz-Hugh, armed with white roses and looking as though he were about to shoot himself. It was an embarrassing social encounter.

  “G-good morning, Captain Fitz-Hugh,” I said.

  He dropped the roses and grabbed both my arms as though he were drowning. “Patrick,” he said brokenly, “I’ve got to know. Why? Why won’t your aunt see me? What have I done? I haven’t been able to eat, to sleep.”

  A minute later he had propelled me into a taxicab and we were on our way to his club for a man-to-man luncheon. It was a very elegant club, but kind of a lousy meal.

  Lulled, however, by a great deal of gin and lime, and feeling very sorry for the captain as he sobbed into his whisky, I became less and less evasive in my answers to his questions and finally broke down and told him all.

  “She does like you, Captain Fitz-Hugh,” I said. “She likes you a lot. But you see, Auntie Mame wants very much to come out.”

  “To come out?” he said.

  “Well not exactly come out. She did that way back in . . . well, several years ago. But she’s really doing it for me. She thinks I should see London society at play.”

  “What a ghastly sight,” the captain said.

  “It certainly is,” I agreed. “But Lady Gravell-Pitt says . . .”

  “Who is this old dragon, Lady Gravell-Pitt?”

  “Well, nobody seems to know. It’s just that Auntie Mame wants to be presented at the Court of St. James’s and . . .”

  “But, my dear boy,” the captain said, “nothing could be simpler. My old aunt could do it. Or my sister. Or the American ambassador’s wife. Or any of a dozen . . .”

  “Yes, I know,” I said. And for once I actually felt embarrassed for Auntie Mame. “But it seems that Lady Gravell-Pitt has been, um, engaged to present Auntie Mame at the next . . .”

  “But that’s impossible!”

  “Wh-why?” I said. “Auntie Mame’s very well bred, most of the time, and she’s never been divorced and not in very many scandals. Actually, she’s considered rather social back home.”

  “But I mean she’s not even on the list.”

  “The list?”

  “Well, you see,” Captain Fitz-Hugh said, “I happen to be one of the King’s equerries—albeit junior . . .”

  “Equerry?” I said. “Junior?”

  “Quite,” he said. “It’s rather a foolish post, but we do know everything that’s going on at the Palace. In fact, I’m rather helping to run off the next herd of old cows—if you’ll forgive me—right after we get the debs presented. The list is all drawn up.” He reached into his breast pocket and hauled out an alphabetical list of names, all very official looking.

  I scanned the list quickly. It read something like “Aponyi, Countess Lászlo; Argenta, Señora Juan Carlos María-Jesus; Atterbury, Mrs. Edward; Bechstein, Mrs. Julio; Bliss, Mrs. Erskine; Capehart, Mrs. Farnsworth . . .” There was no mention of Mrs. Burnside, nor, in the list of ladies who were serving as sponsors, of Lady Gravell-Pitt.

  “Gee,” I said, “Auntie Mame will be brokenhearted. Once she starts something she . . .” Then a brilliant idea struck me. “I’ll bet you could arrange it, couldn’t you?” I said.

  “It would be most highly irregular,” the captain said primly.

  “But I’ll bet you could, couldn’t you? Especially if you wanted to see Auntie Mame again?”

  “Well, I hardly . . .”

  “And there’s that aunt you were talking about—or your sister . . .”

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER WE WERE SITTING IN THE drawing room of a mammoth house in Belgrave Square and the Hon. Basil’s aunt, Griselda, Lady Spavin, was saying “Gravell-Pitt, Gravell-Pitt? I do seem to remember some most unwholesome tale about her but . . .”

  “My aunt has a fantastic memory for these things,” the captain said to me.

  “Well, I shan’t have, Basil, if you don’t stop interrupting my stream of thought,” Lady Spavin said. She’d already gone through Burke’s without finding the name. Not that it really mattered, for the captain was obviously the apple of her eye and she’d agreed to take Auntie Mame under her wing sight unseen. It was just that she was so old I was afraid she wouldn’t last
long enough to get Auntie Mame through her curtsy, and Court was in session, so to speak, that night.

  Griselda, Lady Spavin, had kicked up quite a fuss telling the captain how irregular it was to slip in an extra name on the list, but while she was fussing and fuming and saying that this never would have been countenanced in dear Queen Victoria’s reign, Captain Fitz-Hugh had already telephoned the Palace to announce that a ghastly error had been made in overlooking a Burnside, Mrs. Beauregard Jackson Pickett, of New York City and her sponsor The Lady Griselda Spavin. Since his aunt seemed to cut quite a lot of ice in posh circles the list had been amended without a murmur.

  “Gravell-Pitt,” Lady Spavin said, jabbing a needle into her embroidery rack. “It seems to me that some sort of sordid case came up in Jubilee Year. . . . No, not Jubilee Year, for that was the year poor Spavin took sick and died at Heaves.”

  “Her husband, my Uncle Alister,” the captain said to me in a whispered aside. “Very draughty, Heaves.”

  “Or was it the year when the Queen—by that I mean Queen Mary—began her gros-point carpet? Ah, yes, it all comes back to me now. I’d come into town from Heaves to match some wool, for I was just finishing the needlework seats for the chairs in the dining room at Heaves. Basil, do take this young man down to the dining room and show him the chair seats. It’s so damp in the house at Heaves that I’ve had them moved in.”

  “Please, Aunt Griselda,” the captain said, “do try to remember.”

  “But, of course, I remember perfectly, Basil. Don’t be such a goose. There were thirty-six William and Mary chairs and I’d got to the last seat cover—birds of paradise on an off-white ground—when to my vast annoyance I found that I hadn’t got any more blue left. Nor could I find the correct shade at the little draper’s in Heaves Priory. A sweet shop. Pure Cotswold but woefully understocked. So, since I found that I’d got to come into London, I’d decided to take the nine o’clock train from Heaves Priory, which gets into Charing Cross Road at . . .”

  “Aunt Griselda, please. Lady Gravell-Pitt. Hermione Gravell-Pitt!”