“Bertie, have I got a surprise for you,” Phil called.
The countess motioned for the earl to lower his head to hers so that she could whisper in his ear.
“Bertie, darling,” she whispered, “somehow I don’t think ol’ Phil is going to surprise us with the six Dames of Runnymede and their husbands, which group of Americans is dumb enough to pay £1,102.00 sterling, plus tax, per day, per person, or a daily total of £13,224.00 sterling, plus tax, for the privilege of sleeping under our somewhat leaky roof.”
“Now that you mention it, that would be a bit odd, wouldn’t it, my love?”
“What I suspect is that his surprise for you is going to be that bloody Austrian ballet dancer he married when he was, I deeply suspect, deeply in his cups.”
“That does seem to be a more likely possibility, doesn’t it?”
“If that is the case, you’ll be sleeping with that bloody regimental goat, and not your countess, until death do us part.”
“I take your point, my love,” the earl said, and straightened up.
“Phil, old chap, could you give me a wee hint about the surprise you have for me?”
“Montague Obango,” Phil replied. “How’s Montague Obango for a surprise?”
“I thought her name was Brunhilde,” the countess said.
“Montague Obango? Surely you jest, old chap!”
“I EXPLETIVE DELETED!! you not, Bertie. Generalissimo and President for Life Sir Montague Obango in the EXPLETIVE DELETED!! flesh, of which there is quite a bit, as you know.”
The generalissimo then deigned to stand at the doorway. He stomped his feet, which caused the plane to teeter dangerously, and saluted in the British manner, and barked, “Sergeant Major Montague Obango reporting once again to Sub Lieutenant Charles William George Michael Bertram, sir!”
The earl crisply returned the salute, and with his voice breaking with emotion, called out an order: “Bandmaster! Sound the ‘Regimental March’!”
The band had played it often, so they knew it by heart, so they could and did immediately break into the regimental march of Her Majesty’s Own Scottish Light Lancers, which is the old Scottish tune “When Scottish Eyes Are Smiling” arranged for eight bagpipes, two tubas, two bass drums, the jawbone of an ass, and a flute.
The generalissimo came down the door stairs, followed by Field Marshal Percy Dingo, and General of the Army Ethelbert Jones, and of course Lieutenant Colonel Sir Brathwaite T. Smythe. They took up positions and raised their hands in salute as the band played and the earl marched across the field to join them.
The countess, who did not like being left to stand alone, half trotted across the field to the airplane, arriving there just as Ginger, who did not like being left to sit alone in her private plane, came down the stair door.
The countess recognized Lieutenant Colonel Sir Brathwaite T. Smythe.
“Smitty,” she inquired, “what in the bloody hell is going on here?”
“Not now, Maggie. Except that the fate of the British Commonwealth of Nations is at peril if things go wrong.”
“But I want—”
“Honey, you heard what Smitty said,” Ginger said. “Why don’t you cool it?”
“How dare you call me Honey!” the countess said.
“Okay,” Ginger said agreeably. “Maggie, why don’t you cool it?”
“How dare you call me Maggie!”
“Why not? Smitty just did.”
“Smitty is Lieutenant Colonel Sir Brathwaite T. Smythe, a fellow aristocrat, and you’re . . . I don’t know who you are. Who are you?”
“I have recently become the love of Phil’s life.”
“Isn’t that a little awkward, inasmuch as Phil is already married to a bloody awful Viennese hoofer, with whom, I just recalled, he has a daughter about your age?”
“Phil is worth a little awkwardness.”
“Actually, Phil’s a pretty good chap. I like him so much that he can call me Maggie instead of Your Ladyship. Which gives me the moral right to ask this, or more accurately, to deliver this warning: If you’re after Phil’s money, I won’t let you get away with it.”
“That’s my private plane,” Ginger replied. “But I am touched by your concern for my Phil, so perhaps you’re not quite the unmitigated EXPLETIVE DELETED!! that you at first appeared to me to be.”
“And I am touched by your saying you are attracted to Phil for who he is, warts and all, than for his money, so perhaps you’re not quite the expensive hooker I thought you must be when I noticed when you were getting off the airplane that you are not wearing a brassiere.”
“Thank you,” Ginger said. “Nothing personal, of course, Your Ladyship, but I don’t need support for my boobs.”
The countess started to reply, but then changed her mind and instead said, “I have an idea.”
“Glad to be of help,” Ginger said graciously. “If you’ve got them, flaunt them, I always say.”
“What I meant to say,” the countess said, just a bit coldly, “is that what we were doing out here was waiting for a dozen of your co-countrymen, who are willing to pay through their bloody noses . . .”
“The Dames of Runnymede?”
“You know about them?”
“I know if they get their hands on my Phil, they are going to kill him.”
“Over my dead body, they will!” the countess said. “What did Phil do to annoy them?”
“If you could dig up a taste of Famous Pheasant for me, I’ll tell you all about it.”
“I’ll tell you all about Famous Pheasant,” the countess said. “It’s distilled right here on the lands of Castle Abercrombie. Most of what we distill here we sell around the world as Famous Pheasant. The really good stuff, the forty-eight-year-old Old Pheasant, we of course keep for ourselves. What do you say, Ginger, let’s go in the house and have a sip, and then discuss how we can keep Phil out of the hands of the Dames of Runnymede?”
“I’m starting to like you,” Ginger said, “so much that that I’m willing to go along with your ‘Your Ladyship’ EXPLETIVE DELETED!!”
“You can call me Maggie, Ginger. Any true friend of Phil’s is a friend of mine.”
[ THREE ]
Over the next hour and a half, in the game room of Castle Abercrombie, so called because it housed the stuffed hunting trophies—an elephant, a rhinoceros, two lions, a giraffe, and an assortment of smaller fauna—the present earl had brought home from his service in the former British Crown Colony, now the People’s Democratic Republic of Chongo—Ginger and Maggie got to be great friends.
Three-quarters of a bottle of forty-eight-year-old Old Pheasant helped, of course, but so did the sense of freedom the countess now felt after she had adopted Ginger’s If you’ve got them, flaunt them philosophy and hung her upper torso intimate undergarment on the left tusk of the stuffed Loxodonta africana, or African bush elephant, which stood to the left side of the fireplace across from the stuffed Diceros bicornis, or hook-lipped rhinoceros, on the right.
The girls also solved between them the problem of how to handle the Dames of Runnymede, and The Tuesday Luncheon Club Ladies, and at the same time satisfy Phil’s desire for revenge on Mr. Randolph C. Bruce.
When the earl and the generalissimo and the field marshal and the general of the army and Smitty finally staggered into the small reception room, weary and thirsty from their having marched back and forth for an hour and a half, reliving the happy military days of their youth, Ginger and Maggie said they wanted to outline for them what they had come up with.
“But before we get into that, where’s my Phil?” Ginger asked.
“I saw him come into the house,” Smitty said. “He said the marching and saluting he’d done as a youth in his own military service was enough for a lifetime, and he had no desire to march down military memory lane with us.”
&nb
sp; “But where is he?” Ginger persisted. “Can we can send someone to look for him?”
“God only knows in which of the three hundred eleven rooms of our little home he’s in,” Maggie said. “When Phil wants to be found, he’ll come out, but not before. That bloody ballet dancer we were talking about before once hunted for him for five days without success.”
“Okay, Maggie, if you say so.”
When they had finished explaining the plans, Generalissimo Sir Montague Obango asked if he might dare to offer a suggestion that would solve all of the problems quickly and efficiently and once and for all time.
“What I propose is that Field Marshal Percy Dingo meet the plane carrying the Dames of Runnymede here and shoot them all as they debark. He will then see that all the bodies are buried on the moor. Then, when the other ladies, the Lunch Ladies, arrive at the Dungaress Royal Hotel in Dungaress, with their husbands, General of the Army Ethelbert Jones will shoot all of them and consign their remains to the moor. And as a personal favor to my new friend Mr. Phil Williams, I will personally cut the heart out of Mr. Bruce before we bury him out in the moor.”
It was hard to dissuade Sir Montague from his plan. He was after all generalissimo and president for life, and back home people who dared disagree with, or even question, any suggestions he might make rarely lived more than an hour or two.
By the time they had dissuaded him, it was time for Phase One of the Plan to be executed. This was to house the Dames of Runnymede in rooms along one corridor in an upstairs wing and then to station Field Marshall Percy Dingo at the foot of the stairway leading to that wing. That would be enough, Maggie reasoned, to keep them in their rooms and from killing Phil until the banquet.
Phase One went off without a hitch, although there was a moment when one of the ladies—no names here—didn’t seem nearly so terrified to see the field marshal as the others and could even have been smiling shyly at him.
Phase Two was to have the invitations to the Ducal Banquet printed and distributed to both the Dames and the Lunch Ladies when they arrived late that night at the Dungaress Royal Hotel. The invitation stated that Mr. Randolph C. Bruce requested the honor of their presence the next night at a formal Ducal Banquet under the patronage of the Earl and Countess of Abercrombie at Castle Abercrombie.
It did not mention the menu would be haggis. If anything would redirect the ire of the Ladies and the Dames away from Phil and toward Randy, haggis would do it.
“Frankly,” Maggie said, “I think what Ginger and I came up with is pure genius. I’m only sorry Phil can’t hear of it.”
“Phil has heard of it,” Phil said, and came out from behind the stuffed rhinoceros where he had been hiding. “But I have been thinking.”
“Thinking of what, Precious?” Ginger inquired.
“Thinking that if that duplicitous EXPLETIVE DELETED!! Randy had not asked me to go shooting pheasants in Scotland while he was randying about with Carol-Anne Crandall, I would never have met you, my love.”
“That’s true, my precious.”
“I’m not finished,” Phil said. “So, because the duplicitous EXPLETIVE DELETED!! did invite me and I did meet you, is it fair of me to do to the duplicitous EXPLETIVE DELETED!! what he so richly deserves to have done to him? And that doesn’t even get into the subject of my wife and children, including the one who is nearly as old as the love of my life and which, frankly, I don’t have a EXPLETIVE DELETED!! clue how to deal with.”
“One problem at a time, my precious,” Ginger said. “Try this vis-à-vis your feelings of guilt toward Randy. He didn’t know we would meet, or what would happen if we did, as indeed it did. So you owe him nothing in that regard and can sock it to the EXPLETIVE DELETED!! as hard as you want with a clear conscience.”
“That makes sense,” Phil agreed.
“And so far as your wife is concerned,” Generalissimo and President for Life Sir Montague Obango said, “no problem at all, Friend Phil. Give me your address and the field marshal will see that she is dealt with as we deal with difficult wives at home.”
“But, Sir Montague, buddy, she’s the mother of my children.”
“So what? What’s that got to do with anything?”
Thirty minutes later, Phil was still trying to convince the generalissimo why he didn’t think his tribe’s traditional barbaric rituals would work on the Angry Austrian—she was indeed a formidable one—when there came the sound of a jet aircraft flying low overhead.
“I wonder who that is apparently about to land?” someone asked.
“Send someone to find out, Bertie,” the countess ordered. “If it’s the Lunch Ladies, tell them to take a hike into the village.”
It wasn’t the Luncheon Ladies.
It was Moses Lipshutz, L.L.D., Mrs. Rachel Lipshutz, and with them was Dr. Waldo Pfefferkopf.
“Et tu, Moses?” Phil said. “Et tu, Rachel? I thought you were my friends and here you are with this Austrian gentleman who wants to talk to me about my wife, which is the last EXPLETIVE DELETED!! thing I want to do right now. How could you do this to me?”
“Call it tough love, Phil,” Rachel said. “Listen to what Dr. Pfefferkopf has to say.”
“Moses?” Phil asked.
“Listen to Rachel, Phil. Listen to what Dr. Pfefferkopf has to say. I considered it so important that I chartered a jet to bring him here. If this turns out the way I think it will, you’ll get a bill. Now talk to him!”
“Not in front of all these people, certainly!”
Three minutes later Phil was alone with Dr. Pfefferkopf, everybody else having left them alone in the game room.
“All right, let’s have it, Pfefferkopf,” Phil said, biting the bullet.
“May I speak frankly?”
“Why not?”
“The time has come for you to end the suffering your Brunhilde has been suffering all these years since she let her lust run away with her in Paris.”
“How would I do that?”
“Sign these papers.”
“What are these papers?”
“They state that you are willing to allow Brunhilde to divorce you and also to take with her to Vienna your minor child, Franz Josef, which she can’t do without your permission. Once I get the signed papers to Vienna, I am assured by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who has always deeply regretted marrying you in the first place, that the divorce will be practically instantaneous.”
“What’s Franz Josef going to do in Vienna?”
“He wants to become a ballet dancer.”
“Dr. Pfefferkopf, what makes you think Franz Josef wants to go to Vienna to become a ballet dancer?”
“May I speak frankly, man-to-man?”
“Why not?”
“I managed to have a chat with Franz Josef.”
“Did you indeed?”
“Yes, I did. And after getting his word that he wouldn’t quote me, I admitted that the rumors that most of the male dancers in the Corps de Ballet are poofters are sadly all too true.”
“You have the EXPLETIVE DELETED!! effrontery to tell me that my son wants to become a EXPLETIVE DELETED ballet dancer in the Corps de Ballet because all the other guys are poofters?”
“That is exactly what I’m telling you.”
“Think it through, Precious,” Ginger said, coming out from under the stuffed elephant where she had been hiding.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” Phil protested.
“If we are going to skip down life’s path together, Precious, you better learn not to tell me what I’m not supposed to do.”
“Fräulein, having heard you call Herr Williams ‘Precious,’ may I assume that you’re more than casual acquaintances?” Dr. Pfefferkopf asked.
“You can bet your Austrian EXPLETIVE DELETED!! we are. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“In that circumstance I will confide in you that since we were six years old, I have been in love with Brunhilde, and I have never stopped loving her even after she lost control of her lust and had to marry Herr Williams.”
“That’s very interesting, but what I want to talk about right now is my Franz Josef and the poofters,” Phil said. “He’s never shown any signs of that sort of thing that I have noticed.”
“I told you before, Precious, to think it through.”
“I’m having great trouble doing that.”
“Try this,” Ginger said. “There are six ballet dancers, three male, two of whom are really light on their feet, and one who is heavy. The other three dancers are females, all of whose hearts beat a little faster when they look at a handsome young man wearing tights who they know to be heavy on his feet. Am I getting through to you now, Precious?”
“I get the picture,” Phil said. “Doctor, do you have plans for Brunhilde should I sign the documents you have laid before me?”
“I intend to marry her, of course. And she will become vice director of the Corps de Ballet.”
“And how much did you say this was going to cost me?”
“Good question,” Ginger said.
“Brunhilde wants nothing but her freedom,” Dr. Pfefferkopf said. “But I think it would be a nice gesture on your part to contribute to the support of Franz Josef—”
“So long,” Ginger interrupted, “as he doesn’t get too carried away with the dancers, the female dancers, my fiancé will assume full responsibility for all of his son’s expenses.”
Dr. Pfefferkopf nodded. “And as we know that Brunhilde has expensive tastes, I thought perhaps a small settlement would be appropriate.”
“How small?” Ginger asked.
“How does a million dollars sound?”
“Done,” Ginger said. “Sign where the nice man shows you, Precious, while I go find my checkbook.”
EPILOGUE
Frau Brunhilde Wienerwald Pfefferkopf is now vice director of the Corps de Ballet of the Vienna State Opera.
Randolph C. Bruce, after losing several lawsuits against him for alienation of affections, breach of promise, and income tax evasion, was reported to be in discussions with the Reverend Paul Twinings, S.J., D.D., Ph.D., concerning his becoming a member of the Roman Catholic Church and ultimately joining the Trappist Monastery at Gethsemane, Kentucky.
The Hunting Trip Page 37