by Tom Sharpe
“What a dreadful pity,” said Clarissa ambiguously. “Anyway I haven’t come here to discuss the world’s misfortunes. I want to discuss the menus.”
“Men yous? I don’t know about men yous. Not here, that is, though I know Mr Gadsley fancies a bit of crackling at night, if you take my meaning?”
Lady Clarissa shuddered.
“Are you talking about pigs cooked or pigs uncooked?”
But the implication behind this question escaped the cook.
“Oh, never mind,” said Clarissa as Philly struggled to answer or at any rate appeared to. “I just want to make it absolutely clear that I do not share my husband’s taste for snails, hedgehogs, blood pudding and foie gras stuffing, to say nothing of all the lower forms of wildlife you seem to serve up. From what Sir George has said, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you were offering up fricassees of slugs and the like. It’s simply absurd.”
“Oh, no, mum. I never heard of anyone wanting slugs for breakfast. Or dinner either, come to that.”
“Well, that’s a mercy,” said Clarissa. “So what are you preparing for dinner tonight?”
“I thought, ‘cos Mr Gadsley keeps asking for a savoury, that for starters we’d have toadstools…”
“Toadstools?” squawked Lady Clarissa. “Don’t you mean, mushrooms? Toadstools are frequently poisonous.”
“Perhaps some are. Depends what you pick,” said Philomena. “My old man says the ones what are white on top and sort of white underneath, too, are all right. The red ones on their hats aren’t.”
“You can take all of them off the menu for a start! I’m not having my husband killed off just yet. And for the main dish?”
“Suckling pig roasted to a crisp. Like I said, he does enjoy his bit of crackling.”
“No, absolutely not. We’ll have a light supper tonight. Some tinned asparagus, followed by sardines with a lettuce salad and some tinned beans. And afterwards plain Cheddar cheese,” Clarissa ordered, then stormed out of the kitchen again in search of Sir George.
“You may wish to die a premature death from food poisoning but I most certainly do not,” she snapped at him. “And that ghastly creature in the kitchen knows as much about healthy cooking as I do about the structure of the atom. I’ve just ordered her to serve a salad for supper tonight.”
“Oh, God, no. Just when I was looking forward to some delicious hors d’oeuvre followed by suckling pig.”
“I doubt you’d still have been around for the suckling pig. She was going to give you toadstools for starters. Yes, toadstools, dear. Assorted toadstools. You know, the ones that are white underneath…like death-caps. Yes, I thought that would make you sit up and take notice.”
“I’m not sitting down or up, as a matter of fact,” said Sir George. “And I’m quite sure Philly knows what she’s doing. After all, she’s a child of Nature. Been living off the land since she was born.”
“Suckled by Nature, too, I suppose.”
“You know what I mean. Gypsies have a gift for survival. That is, if she is a real gypsy.”
“Whatever the creature is, you’d better get it into your head that I mean to see we survive her lethal cooking. I’m not having you dying in agony or, even worse, being paralysed by a cerebral haemorrhage. In other words, a stroke.”
“I am fully aware what a cerebral haemorrhage is, thank you very much.”
Lady Clarissa took perverse comfort from the anger in his tone and decided to press home her point. “I had an old friend once who had a stroke and turned into a human cabbage overnight. I remember the occasion well. He insisted that all this fuss, as he put it, about fat clogging the arteries was a lot of nonsense. He was smoking a cigar at the time, as I recall, and had just eaten two extra helpings of crackling at dinner. He was standing in front of the fireplace holding forth when he suddenly keeled over and never spoke again. Or even moved his hands. He made pitiful noises, which his wife tried and failed to interpret. She sat by his bed for three years although the stroke specialist she called in did tell her he would never recover his speech or ability to move. But she hung on out of devotion. It was only when she met a top man in the Foreign Office and fell in love with him that she finally agreed her husband could be taken into a nursing home. I can give you his name too. It was…”
“I don’t want to know!” shouted Sir George.
“All right, I won’t tell you then. Anyway he lingered on like a living corpse for another seven years before he popped his clogs. I went to his cremation, too, and I do remember hoping he was really dead when the coffin began to slide through the curtain towards the furnace. I mean, he might not have been. Oh, and another thing…”
But Sir George had heard quite enough.
“For God’s sake, shut up, will you?” he screamed, and hurled his Montecristo N°2 cigar into the empty fireplace.
But Lady Clarissa had yet to deliver the coup de grace.
“His name was Henry Hogg, which seemed appropriate considering how much he loved roast pork. A fitting end, I suppose some people would call it.”
“I don’t believe it. You made the whole disgusting story up,” her husband said in a whimper.
“You don’t have to. You can look up his name in Who’s Who: he died in 1986. Actually, come to think of it, you’ll need to look in Who Was Who.”
Sir George almost smiled.
“There’s no such bloody thing, you stupid woman.”
“All right, try the latest Who’s Who and see who Leonard Nocking married. I can tell you now to save you the trouble. It was the widow of Henry Hogg, the year after his decease. Nocking was knighted shortly afterwards for services to medicine. He was a great man, and for all I know still is.”
Later that evening, after a light supper of asparagus and sardine salad, Sir George sneaked off to his study and took down Who’s Who. He found the entry for Nocking. The bitch had been telling the truth after all.
In the kitchen Philomena was tenderly stroking the uncooked piglet. If it had been alive she might well have offered it a nipple. She felt sorry for it, enduring rejection even after death.
11
Had Ms Young’s car had any feelings, it would have felt the same way. The quads’ efforts to make the trip to Inverness a difficult one had succeeded. The pound and a half of sugar dissolved in hot water and added to the petrol tank had been augmented by a potato shoved up the exhaust pipe with the help of a broom handle.
That the potato had first been coated with super-glue made it impossible to remove without dismantling the exhaust. And, in fact, it was the potato which caused the first problem. The car, a brand new Honda of which she was particularly proud, had had to be taken down to the local garage to be repaired. Ms Young, who had been given permission to leave school six days before the end of term so as to attend her cousin’s wedding, was to put it mildly not amused and nursed her suspicions about just who had delayed the start of her journey. After two days the car had been returned with a new exhaust and she had set off again – but then the sugar water had kicked in.
She had just reached the Dartford Tunnel when the car ground to a halt. Unfortunately it was rush hour and the traffic was in its usual appalling state, so a broken-down car in the tunnel was the last straw for other drivers whose vehicles stacked up for miles behind hers.
Horns were blown, drivers cursed – those closest to her in crude language she had never heard before and most certainly didn’t wish to hear again – and it was over an hour before a recovery vehicle managed to reach her. And even then the process was made even more difficult because the Honda had stopped so close to the lorry in front of it the number plate was caught on its bumper, and the car behind couldn’t be moved at all easily. The driver of the car behind Ms Young tried to cross into the second lane in his desperation to escape, only to be hit and badly damaged by an enormous French lorry which shouldn’t have been in that lane in the first place. Altogether it took two hours to disentangle the Honda and get it out of the tunnel
, by which time Ms Young was not the sane person who had left St Barnaby’s School so many hours before. In fact, she could best have been described as demented and, while the car was towed away, was herself taken in hysterics to the nearest hospital where she was heavily sedated.
“I’ll kill the little shits!” she screamed when she’d just been informed that it would take at least a week to get the Honda back on the road again and before the massive dose of tranquillisers took effect. “I’m supposed to be attending my cousin Sarah’s wedding in three days’ time.”
The paramedics doubted that. So did the Ghanaian doctor who had been called in to deal with such a difficult case. But by then Ms Young had fallen asleep.
When she woke late the following afternoon she immediately insisted on leaving the hospital.
“I’ll catch a train,” she screamed, struggling out of bed, and, when an attempt was made to stop her, went on to use the most foul language which she’d never used before but had picked up from the drivers trapped in the tunnel.
“But you’re still in shock, dear,” the Sister told her. “You’re not fit to go anywhere. You need to rest.”
“And you need to be bloody well fired,” Ms Young yelled as she staggered to the door. The Sister sighed. If the stupid bitch insisted on leaving there was nothing she was prepared to do to stand in her way. Life was difficult enough without hysterical and evidently well-educated young-ish women telling her she ought to be fired.
“She insulted me in the foulest language,” she later explained to the Ghanaian doctor who wholly sympathised. He was used to being insulted by racially prejudiced patients.
“Well, it will serve her right if she goes to the wrong station,” the Sister said with satisfaction. “In her condition I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she does.”
Ms Young did. Two hours later she was on her way to Cardiff and, still suffering the after-effects of the sedative, asleep again. The Ward Sister had been right. She had chosen the wrong station and completely ignored the insistent denials of the ticket-seller that he had any tickets for Inverness.
“Well, give me one that will let me get there by taxi then.”
“Listen, madam, this is a railway station not a taxi office.”
“Of course it is. I know that. Just give me a ticket, you oaf! I’m in a hurry,” she snarled at him.
Convinced he was dealing with a lunatic – and a rude one at that – the railway clerk eventually sold her a ticket to a small Welsh town whose name was unpronounceable, in the hope that it had a good mental hospital or at least a rehab unit, and where the Welsh would know better than to speak to a deranged Englishwoman.
Having slept nearly all the way, Ms Young awoke with a start when the train stopped at Cardiff. By now she was sufficiently de-tranquillised to understand the ticket-seller’s reluctance to provide her with a ticket to Inverness, and the peculiar expression on his face when she’d said she’d catch a taxi there.
Still determined to attend the wedding, she tried to hire a car only to find that somewhere along the way since she’d left the damned school she’d lost her driving licence. Ranting at the unfortunate Avis man who refused to accommodate her without it was satisfying but to little avail. In fact, it was only when he threatened to call the police that she gave up and walked into the centre of town. Fortunately for her, she still had her credit card and could book into a hotel. She was feeling desperately hungry as well as murderous towards those infernal Wilt girls, absolutely certain they had been responsible for her awful experiences of the last two days.
Finally accepting defeat, Ms Young sent an urgent message to her cousin explaining that she was sorry to miss the wedding but her car had broken down and she was stuck in Cardiff, thanks to the idiocy of a taxi driver. Then she went to her room and ordered sandwiches from Room Service. She was asleep again when they arrived.
12
At St Barnaby’s School the quads were planning a final act of revenge on Mrs Collinson, the Headmistress, who had ordered them to stay away from the other girls until they left for the summer holidays.
“The silly old bag!” said Penelope. “Anyone would think we had some infectious illness. I vote we put something horrid in her study when she’s not there.”
“Like what?” asked Samantha.
“What about a snake? If we got hold of a grass snake and painted it black, the old bitch would have a fit.”
“And where are we going to get a grass snake? Anyway all snakes give me the horrors,” said Josephine.
“All right, snakes are out. Surely we can think of something she’ll hate and won’t be able to pin on us.”
“What about breaking into her office and getting lots of porn from the internet on to her computer and then reporting her to the police?”
“And how are we going to find out her password, stupid? It was only because you guessed that Mum’s password was Disappointed that we managed to do it last time. And anyway she caught us before we even had the chance to show Dad, let alone ring 999.”
“Well, what if we did the sugar in the petrol tank again?”
“Boring. And besides we may get caught,” Penelope said. “That might have worked with Ms Young but you don’t do the same thing twice if you want to get away with it. It’s got to be different and subtle, like…”
“Well, go on. Like what?”
“I can’t think. We’ve got to come up with something before the end of term, though, if we really do want to get rid of her.”
They sat behind the hockey pavilion and applied their diabolical minds to the problem but none of the ideas they discussed seemed adequate. They were all agreed that it had to be something so horrible and nasty, something so absolutely unthinkable but also very public, that the Headmistress’s position would become untenable. She’d be leaving then instead of the quads.
Emmeline still favoured ruining Mrs Collinson’s reputation by implying she suffered from some sexual perversion. “I was reading about a man called Driberg the other day. He liked tramps’ socks – and really dirty ones. They turned him on. I think he sucked them.”
“Oh, do shut up,” Penelope told her. “You make me sick.”
“You’re just too innocent to be true. I bet you have really filthy fantasies.”
“If anyone’s a pervert, you are, you weirdo!”
“Tart!”
“Cow!”
“Bitch!”
After swapping insults in language which grew fouler by the moment, and could even have taught the drivers in the Dartford Tunnel a word or two, all four of them ended up on the ground, fighting and pulling one another’s hair.
Much to their chagrin, the school groundkeeper reported them to a prefect who had them confined to their dormitory for the rest of the week.
∗
At Sandystones Hall Sir George was feeling less cheerful too. Lady Clarissa had imposed a frightful series of healthy meals on him and had been so rude to Philomena Jones that the new cook had refused to stay.
“I don’t care if you send me to prison,” she’d announced one evening as he munched his way through a salad of cos lettuce, lentils and raw carrots, all of which he detested. “You get treated better by warders than you do by her.” And Philly had marched out of the dining room before Clarissa could even say, “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”
Sir George stared at his wife venomously and was about to point out that he owned the Hall and had every right to employ whomever he liked when Clarissa announced that she was becoming increasingly worried about her uncle and would be driving down to Ipford the following day, to find out how he was getting on. She added that she would also take it upon herself to see if she could engage a proper cook there, to replace that awful creature who would undoubtedly have poisoned them if she’d stayed.
At this Sir George finally exercised his right as master of Sandystones Hall and exploded.
“To hell with your bloody uncle!” he shouted, so loudly that Philly was bound to hear him
in the kitchen. “You’ve just seen off the most interesting cook I’ve ever had, and you think you can just march away to fawn on your relatives and leave me to starve? You can go to hell. Philomena’s staying, come hell or high water. Get that into your fornicating skull but fast! It’s either that or I’ll have Philly hurl you out on your ear. She’s twice the woman you are.”
For a few seconds Lady Clarissa stayed silent. Then she spat back, “She may be sizewise, but if you let that gypsy slut loose on me, I’ll tell everyone your sexual fantasies about fat women and have you known all over the world as the Butterball lover! I can’t imagine your living that down. I’ll see to it personally that every newspaper in the country sends reporters to besiege this house and publicise your disgusting peccadillos. I can just see the headlines in the News of the World and the Sun. ‘Knight of the Girth’ or ‘Gorging George’s Orgy’ something like that. And you can be sure I’ll get our excellent previous cook to give evidence that you harassed and then sacked her because she wasn’t fat enough for your filthy tastes. That’ll really make the divorce court sit up and take notice. Oh, yes, I’ll file for divorce too. I’ve every reason to and will, you’d better believe me, if you carry on in this revolting fashion.”
Faced with this counter-threat, Sir George could only wish he was living in a previous age when women knew their place and, if they answered back too often, were strapped to a ducking stool and given a taste of pondwater. He’d happily have had Clarissa held underwater in the moat at that moment. Better still would have been a metal scold’s bridle, which would have prevented her from talking at all. After one final murderous look at her, he took himself off to his study with a bottle of brandy for consolation. The only way out he could think of was that he’d find Philly a cottage somewhere on the estate and have a proper dinner down there every night, instead of munching his way through some awful mixture of raw vegetables with his wife. He could always say he’d been down to the golf club for a drink.
13