by Simon Brett
4
A Ticklish Problem with a Guest List
‘There is a person on the telephone, Your Grace,’ announced Grimshaw, the Tawcester Towers butler, ‘who wishes you to come and speak to him.’
‘To come and speak to him?’ echoed the Dowager Duchess, doing a very passable impression of the Wrath of God.
There was only one telephone in Tawcester Towers. It was placed on a table in the high draughty hallway. The Dowager Duchess never answered it or was summoned to it. If one of her social equals rang for her, the message would be passed on and she would return the call to belittle the friend at a time of her choosing. If she initiated a call, that would also be when she wanted to do it. She would lift the receiver and bellow into it, terrifying the poor girl on the local exchange. (Her voice was of the kind that sounded as though it could talk to friends in the Colonies without the intervention of a telephone.)
But no one had ever before had the temerity to summon the Dowager Duchess out to take a call in the hall.
She turned on her butler a look that could set a tiger’s teeth chattering at fifty paces. ‘Have you taken in nothing, Grimshaw, in all the years you have been serving here at Tawcester Towers?’
‘I can assure you, Your Grace, I have taken in a great deal.’
The look she now turned on him would not just have chattered the tiger’s teeth, it would have killed the creature stone dead. ‘Then why,’ she bellowed, ‘haven’t you taken in the fact that I never go out into the hall to answer the telephone?’
‘The gentleman at the other end of the line was very insistent, Your Grace.’
‘No one is insistent to the Dowager Duchess of Tawcester!’
Her treatment of the butler had much in common with sandblasting, but Grimshaw stood up to the assault with remarkable courage (born of long practice). ‘Well, I regret to inform you that this gentleman is, Your Grace.’
‘And what is the name of this extraordinarily insolent gentleman?’
‘Luther P. Chapstick III, Your Grace.’
‘I’ll come through to the hall straight away.’
‘Duchess – hi!’ The Dowager Duchess was too shocked by this greeting to say anything, so the meat-packing magnate continued from the other end of the line, ‘Just to say that little Mary-Bobs and me are really looking forward to our weekend at Tawcester Towers.’
By now the Dowager Duchess was capable of a civil reply. ‘I can assure you the family is looking forward to it just as much as you are, Mr Chapstick.’
‘Hey, where’s all this formality come from? Call me Luther.’
Though anxious to please, the Dowager Duchess was not that anxious to please. ‘I am not in the habit, Mr Chapstick, of using a first-name form of address to people I have not met.’
‘We’re meeting now, Duchess. On the old blower. So let’s relax. You call me “Luther” and . . . what should I call you?’
‘“Your Grace” is normally regarded as adequate to the situation.’
‘OK, have it your way, Duchess. Now, this weekend . . . I wanted to check out the arrangements.’
‘I can assure you, Mr Chapstick, that the arrangements will be entirely appropriate to the occasion. Some rooms in the house will be closed due to recent flood damage, but otherwise the customary high standards of Tawcester Towers hospitality will of course be maintained.’
‘Yeah, but what’s bugging me is . . . who the other guests’re going to be?’
‘There will not be any other guests, Mr Chapstick. I thought . . . given our hopes for a closer bond in the future . . .’ it was agony for her to utter such words ‘. . . this weekend should be a splendid opportunity for our two families to meet in an atmosphere of informal intimacy.’ She said this, though never in her life had she aspired to either informality or intimacy.
‘Hey, that’s not the deal I’m after, Duchess,’ said Luther P. Chapstick III.
‘I beg your pardon?’ The Dowager Duchess was affronted. People of her class did not make ‘deals’.
‘Listen, it’s cards on the table time here. I know the reason why you want to marry your goofball of a son to my daughter . . .’
The Dowager Duchess had never heard the expression before, but its meaning was self-evident. And she couldn’t help feeling that, when it came to her younger son, ‘goofball’ was probably an apposite description.
‘You’re after my money, and that’s fair enough, because I got squillions of the old greenbacks. We’re not kids, Duchess. We’re in a process of negotiation here. Now I do a hell of a lotta negotiation in my business and I never like being bilked on a deal. You’re selling me a steer or a heifer I want to know I’m getting my money’s worth.’
‘Mr Chapstick, my son Devereux is neither a steer nor a heifer.’
‘I was just using that as an example, Duchess. Let’s face the facts. The deal is: we get this marriage off the ground, you get money to maintain Tawcester Towers, Mary and I get a way into the British aristocracy.’
‘Well, your daughter would certainly get a title, but there’d be nothing of that kind for you, Mr Chapstick.’
‘You say that, you don’t know it. Listen, Duchess, I’m divorced. I offloaded Mary’s momma way back. She was becoming a bit of a liability. So I’m a free agent. I’m back in the meat market. And who’s to say I shouldn’t follow in my little Mary-Bobs’ footsteps and marry a British aristocrat too?’
The Dowager Duchess could think of a lot of people who could say he shouldn’t. Everyone in civilized society.
‘So I want to make connections, Duchess. I want to meet other aristocrats this weekend. So fix it – right?’
‘Mr Chapstick, are you telling me whom I should invite for the weekend?’ asked a flabbergasted Dowager Duchess. ‘Are you dictating my own guest list to me?’
‘Sure am. Come off it, you lot in the British aristocracy all know each other – most of you are related to each other. Pick up the blower, issue a few invites.’
‘I am afraid, Mr Chapstick, it will not be possible for me to—’
‘Make the calls, Duchess.’ His voice took on the steely quality that was essential for anyone wishing to make it big in the Chicago meat-packing industry. ‘You don’t provide me with a nice house party of aristocrats this weekend, my Mary-Bobs goes off and marries someone else . . . taking all my mazuma with her. Gottit?’
‘I’ve got it, Mr Chapstick,’ said the Dowager Duchess.
* * *
‘Well, Twinks?’ she demanded.
The summons to attend the Dowager Duchess in the Blue Morning Room had been addressed to her daughter alone. Twinks immediately understood what that meant. This was not to be a dressing-down, not another occasion for her mother to express disappointment. This time there was a problem to be faced which required intellect. Which is why there had been no summons for Blotto, in whose devastatingly handsome cranium the traditional percentages of brain and bone had been reversed.
‘I agree we have a problemette,’ said Twinks. ‘But surely there are some minor aristocracy that you could invite? Poor relations, we’ve always got plenty of those.’
‘The trouble with poor relations,’ said the Dowager Duchess, ‘is that they’re constantly in touch with rich relations.’
‘Yes, but only to ask them for money.’
‘Not only that, Twinks. They ask for money, yes, but they also pass on gossip. If we invite any genuine aristocrats, the news that we’ve had the Chapsticks to stay at Tawcester Towers will be round everyone who matters within hours. We might as well publish the details in the Court Circular.’
‘But the fact that Blotto’s being lined up to twiddle the reef-knot with Mary Chapstick is going to come out some time. When the wedding invitations are issued, if not before . . .’ Twinks looked sharply at her mother as a rather ghastly thought came into her mind. ‘That is, unless you were hoping to get him married off in America with nobody this side of the Atlantic knowing a blind bezonger about it . . . ?’
‘That had been my intention, yes,’ admitted the Dowager Duchess.
‘But somebody’s going to do up the buttons after the wedding. When Blotto comes back here to Tawcester Towers with his new bride.’
‘Only if he does come back here to Tawcester Towers with his new bride.’
Twinks turned another sharp look on her mother, unwilling to believe the full enormity of what had just been said. She hadn’t expected sentimentality, but banishing Blotto from his beloved home for ever . . . well, that was a whole new level of stenchdom . . . and not the kind of hand one expected to be dealt by an Aged P.
Still, this wasn’t the moment to argue with the Dowager Duchess about that. Twinks would apply her considerable brainpower to the problemette later. First priority was the weekend’s guest list.
‘I think I may see a solutionette, Mater,’ she said.
The Dowager Duchess sat back in her Chippendale throne, marginally relaxed. She knew that her brilliant daughter could see a way round most things.
‘Your dilemma is,’ Twinks continued slowly, ‘that you are honour bound this weekend to provide Luther P. Chapstick III with a house party of the right sort of people . . . but you don’t want the fact that you are even entertaining him here at Tawcester Towers ever to be found out by the right sort of people.’
‘That’s what I just told you, Twinks,’ said the Dowager Duchess testily.
‘I’m sorry, Mater, I was piecing the situation together.’
‘Well, could you piece it together a bit quicker?’
‘Tickey-tockey.’ There was a moment’s silence, then a slow smile brought even more radiance to Twinks’s perfect face as she announced, ‘So what you need, Mater, is some of the wrong sort of people to impersonate the right sort of people.’
‘To pretend to be members of the aristocracy?’
‘Bong on the nose, Mater.’
‘But no one would ever get away with it,’ objected the Dowager Duchess. ‘If there’s one thing our sort of people are good at it’s spotting the rotten fish in the barrel. Over the years lots of petty, jumped-up parvenus have tried to pass themselves off as the genuine article, but people of our sort always know when the Stilton’s iffy.’
‘I agree, Mater. People of our sort do. But the whole point is that we’re not dealing with people of our sort.’
‘Sorry? Not on the same page.’ Sometimes Twinks’s mother could be almost as slow of perception as her younger son.
‘Luther P. Chapstick III,’ she explained patiently, ‘comes from the United States of America, a landmass which prides itself on having no aristocracy. I doubt if he could spot the kitten in a basket of puppies, let alone a genuine aristocrat from a leadpenny one.’
A sliver of sunshine crept across the Dowager Duchess’s craggy features as she caught on to her daughter’s drift. But it was quickly extinguished as she saw a new obstacle rearing its head. ‘But where in the world are we going to find leadpenny aristocrats? I know Harrods claims to have “everything, for everyone, everywhere”, but I don’t believe even they stock ’em.’
‘We don’t have to look as far as Harrods, Mater. We have what we’re looking for right here in Tawcester Towers.’
‘Do we? Who? How?’ The Dowager Duchess’s words rang out like gunshots.
‘You know Harvey?’
‘Harvey the housemaid?’
‘Yes, Mater. The one who has an “arrangement” with Grimshaw.’
‘I have no idea to what you are referring,’ the Dowager Duchess lied. Everyone at Tawcester Towers knew that the butler and housemaid shared an ‘arrangement’ of an intimate nature not formalized by a sacrament of the church, but nobody above stairs would have lacked so much breeding as to mention it. Below stairs the ‘arrangement’ was referred to frequently, and in considerably more robust, not to say vulgar, terms.
‘Well, I happen to know,’ said Twinks, ‘that before Harvey started skivvying here, she went by another name.’
‘Really?’
‘She was called “Rosie Caramella” . . .’
‘Good heavens.’
‘“The Cheeky Chanteuse”. Harvey, Mater, used to be an actress.’
‘An actress!!!’ the Dowager Duchess echoed in appalled tones. She was about to ask why she had never been informed before of this appalling news, to expatiate on the awfulness of someone of such low moral standing sullying the corridors of Tawcester Towers, and to call Grimshaw to arrange for Harvey’s immediate dismissal, when she suddenly realized the import of her daughter’s words.
In a voice that was gently intrigued, she repeated, ‘An actress, did you say, Twinks?’
5
Amateur Dramatics
‘Oh, blimey, Your Grace, yes. I’ve played lots of toffs.’
Harvey’s voice was as Cockney as a plate of jellied eels with pearl buttons. Though she stood respectfully enough in front of her employer in the Blue Morning Room, she was far from daunted by the Dowager Duchess. There was something challenging in the way she jutted her hip. And while the typical housemaid was often not much more than a girl, Harvey was considerably older. (Her staying in that junior role in the Tawcester Towers below stairs hierarchy was something engineered by Grimshaw.) Her uniform too, though in the traditional black relieved by the white of her cap and apron, looked different. The skirt was very much shorter than those worn by the other housemaids and it revealed a considerable expanse of tight black stocking (something else engineered by Grimshaw).
About Harvey there hung an indefinable, almost subversive quality. The Dowager Duchess could not have recognized that quality – let alone put a name to it – if it had leapt up and bitten her on the knee. Twinks, a modern girl not afraid to call a spade a garden implement, would have been equally unafraid to call the quality by its proper name: ‘IT’. Or, even more daringly . . . sex appeal.
Though the ancient aristocrat did not possess a lorgnette, when the Dowager Duchess peered at people it was as if through one. And it was that lorgnettish peer which she now focused on the over-ripe housemaid. ‘Forgive my mentioning it, Harvey, but people of my breeding tend to speak in a rather different manner than that which you employ.’
‘Oh yeah, but that’s where the acting comes in, innit, Your Grace? Before I went on the halls, I done lots of theatre. And a good few of the plays I was in was about toffs . . . lords, ladies, you know. Public couldn’t get enough of them.’
‘I wonder why that is, Harvey.’
‘Well, I think for one thing, Your Grace, everyone has always been fascinated by the doings of their betters . . .’
‘I suppose that is reasonable, yes,’ the Dowager Duchess conceded.
‘. . . and then again, everyone likes a good laugh, don’t they?’
The Dowager Duchess bridled. ‘Are you suggesting that members of the theatre-going public find the activities of people of my breeding amusing?’
Harvey was about to give a reply in the affirmative, but catching a firm headshake from Twinks, transmuted it into a negative. ‘Oh no, Your Grace. I’m sure they all know their place.’
‘Good,’ rumbled the Dowager Duchess. ‘Maybe, Harvey, given that you say you have spent much of your time impersonating your betters, you could vouchsafe me a sample of what you imagine to be the speech of the upper classes.’
‘Of course, Your Grace,’ said the housemaid in her customary Cockney, which vanished as she continued, ‘I think it’s absolutely shocking the kind of jumped-up lowlife to whom this government is peddling peerages these days.’
Twinks could not believe her ears. The voice that Harvey had produced was not just similar to that of the Dowager Duchess; it was an exact copy. And, what’s more, the sentiments expressed were ones which she had heard verbatim from her mother’s mouth on more than one occasion. Twinks reckoned that Harvey’s impersonation of her employer must be a very popular variety turn below stairs.
But any resemblance was lost on the Dowager Duchess. ‘Hmm . . . I don’t believe I’ve ever he
ard anyone of my breeding speak like that.’
‘Hmm . . . I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone of my breeding speak like that,’ echoed Harvey perfectly, but rather cheekily to Twinks’s mind.
‘No, no, completely wrong,’ said the Dowager Duchess. ‘Nobody talks like that. Anyway, Harvey, what you were using there is an old person’s voice. Could you attempt the upper-class locution of someone nearer your own age?’
‘I most certainly could.’
Twinks was again shocked, but this time by the cut-glass perfection of the housemaid’s vowels. The shock redoubled when she realized that the new voice sounded exactly like her own. Maybe the Dowager Duchess wasn’t the only character featuring in Harvey’s below stairs music hall routine.
There was a long silence while the old woman cogitated, then she pronounced, ‘Excellent. That voice would certainly pass in the best of circles. You may regard yourself employed, Harvey.’
‘That’s all very well, but what’s the money, Your Grace?’ For such practical matters the housemaid had dropped back into her customary Cockney.
‘Money?’ echoed the appalled Dowager Duchess. ‘But you are already in receipt of your wages, Harvey.’
‘That’s as may be, Your Grace, but I gets my wages for being a housemaid, not being a theatrical. Being a theatrical’s over and above, and if I’m doing over and above I want to get paid for it. That’s what I always tells Grimshaw when he wants over and above.’
Whether this last sentence referred to Harvey’s duties as a housemaid or something else was not a question the Dowager Duchess would ever have thought to ask. Instead, she went on, ‘Anyway, I am not prepared to discuss remuneration until you can guarantee me more than just your own services.’
‘How d’you mean, Your Grace?’
‘I mean, I do not need just one impersonator of the aristocracy. I require six. Do you have amongst your acquaintance other people of equivalent skills to your own?’