by Tom Sharpe
‘Do come in,’ said the Kommandant, demonstrating once again that lack of refinement Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon found so attractive. She entered and looked dubiously around.
‘Don’t let me interrupt you,’ she said glancing significantly at the taps and tubes.
‘No, not at all. I was just about …’
‘Quite,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon hurriedly. ‘There’s no need to go into the details. We all have our little ailments I daresay.’
‘Ailments?’ said the Kommandant.
Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon wrinkled her nose and opened the door.
‘Though to judge from the smell in here, yours are rather more serious than most.’ She stepped into the corridor and the Kommandant followed her.
‘It’s the sulphur,’ he hastened to explain.
‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, ‘it’s lack of exercise. Well, we’ll soon put that right. What you need is a good gallop before breakfast. What’s your seat like?’
Kommandant van Heerden rather huffily said that as far as he knew there was nothing wrong with it.
‘Well, that’s something,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon.
They went out through the revolving doors and stood on the terrace where the air was fresher. Something of the acerbity went out of Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon’s manner.
‘I’m so sorry you’ve been stranded here like this,’ she said. ‘It’s all our fault. We looked for you at the hotel in town but I had no idea that this place existed.’
She leaned voguishly against the balustrade and contemplated the building with its stippled portico and faded legend. The Kommandant explained that he had tried to phone but that he couldn’t find the number.
‘Of course you couldn’t, my dear,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon taking his arm and leading him down into the garden. ‘We don’t have one. Henry’s so secretive, you know. He plays the stock market and he can’t bear the thought of anyone listening in and making a killing in kaffirs because he’s heard Henry telling his broker to buy Free State Gedulds.’
‘That’s understandable,’ said the Kommandant, completely at sea.
They wandered down the path to the river and Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon chattered away about life in Kenya and how she missed the gay times of Thomson’s Falls.
‘We had such a lovely place, Littlewoods Lodge, it was called after … well never mind. Let’s just say it was named after Henry’s first big coup and of course there were acres and acres of azaleas. I think that’s why Henry chose Kenya in the first place. He’s absolutely mad about flowers, you know and azaleas don’t do awfully well in South London.’
The Kommandant said the Colonel must have been keen on flowers to come all the way to Africa just to grow them.
‘And besides there was the question of taxes,’ Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon continued, ‘I mean once Henry had won the pools … I mean when Henry came into money, it simply wasn’t possible for him to live in England with that dreadful Labour government taking every penny in taxes.’
Presently, when they had walked beside the river, Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon said she must be getting back.
‘Now don’t forget tonight,’ she said as the Kommandant helped her into the Rolls, ‘dinner’s at eight. Cocktails at seven. I’ll look forward to seeing you. Au ’voir,’ and with a wave of her mauve glove she was gone.
*
‘You’ve done what?’ Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon spluttered when his wife returned to say that the Kommandant was coming to dinner. ‘Don’t you realize it’s Berry Night? We can’t have some damned stranger sitting in on the Club dinner.’
‘I’ve invited him and he’s coming,’ insisted Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon. ‘He’s been sitting in that ghastly spa for the past week giving himself enemas out of sheer boredom simply because Boy’s such an idiot he had to go and drink in the wrong bar.’
‘Oh, I say,’ expostulated Major Bloxham, ‘that’s hardly fair.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, ‘it isn’t fair. So he’s coming to dinner tonight, Club or no Club, and I expect you both to behave yourselves.’
She went up to her room and spent the afternoon dreaming of strong silent men and the musky smell of the Kommandant. Outside in the garden she could hear the click of the Colonel’s secateurs as he worked off his irritation on the ornamental shrubbery. By the time Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon came down for tea the bush that had formerly resembled a chicken had assumed the new proportions of a parrot. So, it seemed, had the Colonel.
‘Yes, my dear,’ ‘No, my dear,’ the Colonel interjected as Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon explained that the Kommandant would fit in perfectly well with the other members of the Club.
‘After all, it’s not as though he’s illiterate,’ she said. ‘He’s read the Berry books and he told me himself he was a fan of the Master.’
She left the two men and went to the kitchen to supervise the Zulu cook who among other things was desperately trying to figure out how to cook Filet de boeuf en chemise strasbourgeoise.
Left to themselves the two men smiled knowingly.
‘Nothing like having a buffoon at a dinner,’ said the Colonel. ‘Should be quite fun.’
‘The court jester,’ said the Major. ‘Get him pissed and have a lark. Might even debag the bugger.’
‘That’s an idea,’ said the Colonel. ‘Teach the swine some manners, eh?’
*
In his room at the Spa Kommandant van Heerden studied his book Etiquette for Every Man and tried to remember which fork to use for fish. At six he had another makeshift bath and sprayed himself all over with deodorant to neutralize the smell of sulphur. Then he put on the Harris Tweed suit he had had made for him at Scurfield and Todd, the English tailors in Piemburg, and which the coloured maid had pressed meticulously for him, and at seven drove up to White Ladies. The gravel forecourt was crowded with cars. The Kommandant parked and went up the steps to the front door, which was opened by the Zulu butler. Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon came down the hall to receive him.
‘Oh, my God,’ she said by way of welcome, appalled at the Kommandant’s suit – everyone else was wearing dinner jackets – and then with a greater show of savoir-faire, ‘Well never mind. It can’t be helped,’ ushered the Kommandant into a room filled with smoke and talk and people.
‘I can’t see Henry just at the moment,’ she said judiciously, steering the Kommandant to a table where Major Bloxham was dispensing drinks. ‘But Boy’ll make you a cocktail.’
‘What’s your poison, old man,’ Major Bloxham asked.
The Kommandant said he’d appreciate a beer.
The Major looked askance. ‘Can’t have that, my dear fellow,’ he said. ‘Cocktails you know. The good old Twenties and all that. Have an Oom Paul Special,’ and before the Kommandant could ask what an Oom Paul Special was, the Major was busy with a shaker.
‘Very tasty,’ said the Kommandant sipping the drink which consisted of apple brandy, Dubonnet and, to make it Special, had an extra slug of vodka.
‘Glad you like it,’ said the Major. ‘Knock it back and you can have a Sledge Hammer,’ but before the Kommandant could experience the effects of a mixture of brandy, rum, and apple brandy on top of the Oom Paul Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon whisked him as discreetly as the crowd would allow away to meet Henry. The Colonel regarded Kommandant van Heerden’s suit with interest.
‘Glad you could make it, Kommandant,’ he said with an affability his wife found disturbing. ‘Tell me, do Boers always wear Harris Tweed to dinner parties?’
‘Now, Henry,’ Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon interjected before the Kommandant could reply, ‘The Kommandant was hardly prepared for formality in the country. My husband,’ she continued to the Kommandant, ‘is such a stickler for …’ The rest of the sentence was drowned by the boom of an enormous gong and as the reverberations died away the Zulu butler announced that dinner was served. It was half past seven. Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon hurled herself across the room and after a brief and bitter exchange of views in which she called the butler a b
lack oaf twice, the hostess turned with a ceramic smile to the gathering. ‘Just a misunderstanding about times,’ she said, and with some further remark about the difficulty of getting decent servants mingled serenely with the crowd. The Kommandant, finding himself deserted, finished his Oom Paul and went over to the bar and asked for a Sledge Hammer. Then he found himself a quiet corner beside a goldfish which matched his suit and surveyed the other guests. Apart from the Colonel, whose bilious eye marked him out as a man of distinction, the other men were hardly what the Kommandant had expected. They seemed to exude an air of confident uncertainty and their conversation lacked that urbane banter he had found in the pages of Berry & Co. In a little group near him a small fat man was explaining how he could get a fifty per cent discount off on fridges while someone else was arguing that the only way to buy meat was wholesale. The Kommandant moved slowly round the room catching a sentence here and there about roses and the July Handicap and somebody’s divorce. At the makeshift bar, Major Bloxham gave him a Third Degree.
‘Appropriate, old boy, what?’ he said, but before the Kommandant could drink it, the gong had reverberated again and not wishing to waste the cocktail the Kommandant poured it into the goldfish bowl before going in to dinner.
‘You’re to sit between La Marquise and me,’ Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon said as they stood awkwardly around the long table in the dining room. ‘That way you’ll be safe,’ and the Kommandant presently found himself next to what he took to be a distinctly queer man in a dinner jacket who kept calling everyone darling. He shifted his chair a little closer to Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, uncomfortably aware that the man was eyeing him speculatively. The Kommandant fiddled with the silver and wondered why he found the Colonel’s eye on him. In a moment of silence the man on his right asked him what he did.
‘Do?’ said the Kommandant suspiciously. The word had too many meanings for an easy answer.
La Marquise discerned his embarrassment. ‘For a living, darling, do for a living. Not me for God’s sake. That I do assure you.’ Round the table everyone laughed and the Kommandant added to it by saying that he was a policeman. He was about to say that he’d seen some fucking poofters in his time but … when Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon whispered, ‘She’s a woman,’ in his ear. The Kommandant went from pink to pale at the thought of the gaffe he had been about to commit and took a gulp of the Australian Burgundy which it appeared the Colonel thought was almost the equal of a Chambertin ’59.
By the time the coffee had been served and the port was circulating the Kommandant had quite recovered his self-confidence. He had scored twice, quite accidentally, off La Marquise, once by asking her if her husband was present, and the second time by leaning across her to reach for the salt, and jostling what there was of her well disguised bosom. On his left, flushed with wine and the Kommandant’s pervasive manliness, Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon pressed her leg discreetly against his, smiling brightly and fingering her pearls. When the Colonel rose to propose the toast to the Master, Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon nudged him and indicated a photograph over the mantelpiece. ‘That’s Major Mercer,’ she whispered, ‘Dornford Yates.’ The Kommandant nodded and studied the face that peered back disgustedly from the picture. Two fierce eyes, one slightly larger than the other; and a bristly moustache; the romantic author looked like a disgruntled sergeant major. ‘I suppose that’s where the word authority comes from, author,’ thought the Kommandant, passing the port the wrong way. In deference to La Marquise the ladies had not withdrawn and presently the Zulu waiter brought round cigars.
‘Not your Henry Clays, just Rhodesian Macanudos,’ said the Colonel modestly. The Kommandant took one and lit it.
‘Ever tried rolling your own?’ he asked the Colonel and was surprised at the suffused look on his face.
‘Certainly not,’ said Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon, already irritated by the erratic course of the port. ‘Whoever heard of anyone rolling his own cigars?’
‘I have,’ replied the Kommandant blandly. ‘My ouma had a farm in the Magaliesburg and she grew tobacco. You have to roll it on the inside of your thigh.’
‘How frightfully oumanistic,’ La Marquise said shrilly. When the laughter died down, the Kommandant went on.
‘My ouma took snuff. We used to grind that down for her.’
The circle of flushed faces examined the man in the Harris Tweed suit whose grandmother took snuff.
‘What a colourful family you have,’ said the fat man who knew how to get discounts on fridges and was startled to find the Kommandant leaning across the table towards him with a look of unmistakable fury.
‘If I weren’t in someone else’s house,’ snarled the Kommandant, ‘you would regret that remark.’ The fat man turned pale and Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon placed her hand restrainingly on the Kommandant’s arm.
‘Have I said something wrong?’ the fat man asked.
‘I think Mr Evans meant that your family is very interesting,’ Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon explained in a whisper to the Kommandant.
‘It didn’t sound like that to me,’ said the Kommandant. At the end of the table Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon, who felt that he needed to assert his authority somewhere, ordered the waiter to bring liqueurs. It was not a wise move. Major Bloxham, evidently still piqued by the failure of his Oom Paul Special and Sledge Hammer to render the Kommandant suitable for debagging, offered him some Chartreuse. As his port glass filled with the stuff, the Kommandant looked at it interestedly.
‘I’ve never seen a green wine before,’ he said finally.
‘Made from green grapes, old boy,’ said the Major and was delighted at the laugh he got. ‘Got to drink it all in one go.’ Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon was not amused.
‘How low can you get, Boy?’ she asked unpleasantly as the Kommandant swallowed the glassful.
‘How high can you get?’ said the Major jocularly.
La Marquise added her comment. ‘High? My dears,’ she shrieked, ‘you should sit here to find out. Absolute Gorgonzola I do assure you,’ a remark which led to a misunderstanding with the waiter who brought her the cheese board. Through it all Kommandant van Heerden sat smiling happily at the warmth spreading through him. He decided to apologize to the fat man and was about to when the Major offered him another glass of Chartreuse. The Kommandant accepted graciously in spite of a sharp kick from Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon.
‘I think we should all join the Kommandant,’ she said suddenly, ‘we can’t let him drink by himself. Boy, fill all the port glasses.’
The Major looked at her questioningly. ‘All?’ he asked.
‘You heard me,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, looking vindictively from the Major to her husband. ‘All. I think we should all drink a toast to the South African Police in honour of our guest.’
‘I’m damned if I’m going to drink a whole port glass of Chartreuse for anyone,’ said the Colonel.
‘Have I ever told you how Henry spent the war?’ Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon asked the table at large. Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon turned pale and raised his glass.
‘To the South African Police,’ he said hurriedly.
‘To the South African Police,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon with more enthusiasm, and watched carefully while the Colonel and Major Bloxham drank their glasses dry.
Happily unaware of the tension around him, the Kommandant sat and smiled. So this was how the English spent their evenings, he thought, and felt thoroughly at home.
In the silence that followed the toast and the realization of what a large glass of Chartreuse could do to the liver, Kommandant van Heerden rose to his feet.
‘I should like to say how honoured I feel to be here tonight in this distinguished gathering,’ he said, pausing and looking at the faces that gazed glaucously back at him. ‘What I am going to say may come as something of a surprise to you.’ At the end of the table Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon shut his eyes and shuddered. If the Kommandant’s speech was going to be anything like his taste in clothes and wines, he couldn’t imagine what to expect. In the ev
ent he was pleasantly surprised.
‘I am, as you know, an Afrikaner,’ continued the Kommandant. ‘Or as you British say a Boer, but I want you to know that I admire you British very much and I would like to propose a toast to the British Empire.’
It took some time for the Colonel to realize what the Kommandant had just said. He opened his eyes in amazement and was appalled to see that the Kommandant had taken a bottle of Benedictine and was filling everyone’s glass.
‘Now, Henry,’ Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon said when the Colonel looked imploringly at her, ‘for the honour of the British Empire.’
‘Dear God,’ said the Colonel.
The Kommandant finished replenishing the port glasses and raised his own.
‘To the British Empire,’ he said and drank it down, before staring with sudden belligerence at the Colonel who had taken a sip and was wondering what to do with the rest.
‘Now, Henry,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon. The Colonel finished his glass and slumped miserably in his chair.
The Kommandant sat down happily. The sense of disappointment that had so marred the early part of the evening had quite disappeared. So had La Marquise. With a brave attempt at one last ‘darling’ she slid, elegant to the last, beneath the table. As the full effects of Kommandant van Heerden’s devotion to the British Empire began to make themselves felt, the Zulu waiter, evidently anxious to get to bed, hastened the process by producing both the cheese board and the cigars.
Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon tried to correct him.
‘Shtilton and chigars don’t go toge …’ he said before stumbling from the room. Behind him the party broke up. The fat man feel asleep. Major Bloxham was ill. And Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon pressed a great deal more than her leg against the Kommandant. ‘Take me …’ she said before collapsing across his lap. The Kommandant looked fondly down at her blue rinsed curls and with unusual gallantry eased her head off his flies and stood up.
‘Time for bed,’ he said and lifting Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon gently from her seat carried her to her room closely followed by the Zulu butler who suspected his motives.