by Simon Brett
‘No, Blotters. Better than that. Again, she suspected something else was making me unhappy, realised – like the little darling she is – what it was putting lumps in my custard. And she asked our chef Xavier to come back!’
Blotto smiled benevolently. There was a God.
Then he remembered that he was shortly going to have to marry Araminta fffrench-Wyndeau and decided that perhaps there wasn’t.
The Dowager Duchess did not like going to London, but she suffered from incurable nosiness and, when the Countess of Lytham St Annes invited her to a return luncheon at the Savoy, could not resist agreeing.
Catching sight of her as she processed through the American Bar, Everard Stoop left his cackling acolytes and stepped forward to her. ‘Your Grace,’ he said, with an inclination of the head, ‘a friend in need is a friend whenever you want one.’
‘Oh, stuff a pillow in it, you stupid little man!’ said the Dowager Duchess, not breaking stride on the way to her table.
There was a look in the eye of the Countess of Lytham St Annes that she didn’t like. A look of triumph, as though the Countess had some advantage over her luncheon guest.
‘Well, Agatha,’ said the Dowager Duchess, ‘I trust your little shrimp of a daughter is prepared for her wedding.’
‘I can assure you, Evadne, she is fully prepared. And very much looking forward to it.’
‘Yes, I did have a thought about her wedding dress.’
‘Oh. I would have thought that was a matter in which only my thoughts were of importance.’
‘Normally, yes, Agatha. But when we’re dealing with a child of such an anaemic complexion as your daughter, I think it is only charitable for me to offer you advice.’
‘You always think of others, Evadne,’ said the Countess through clenched teeth. ‘So what advice is it that you have for me?’
‘There is a couturier in Mayfair whom my daughter patronises. Her name is Madame Clothilde, and she is a great expert with colour. I think she might have some suggestions to save your daughter on her wedding day from looking like a white sheet of paper wrapped in another white sheet of paper.’
The Dowager Duchess smiled magnanimously as she concluded this advice, but she was slightly disappointed in the Countess’s reaction. She had been hoping for blind fury but was rewarded only with slight annoyance. It suggested to the Dowager Duchess the unappealing possibility that her opponent had something up her sleeve.
‘Did you . . .’ the Countess asked ingenuously, ‘like the way the wedding announcement appeared in The Times?’
‘I did not read it,’ came the magisterial response. ‘To search for one’s own name in the newspapers is a sign of middle-class mediocrity.’
‘Yes, I thought you probably hadn’t seen it.’
‘Oh?’
‘In fact, I would have been surprised if you had seen it.’
‘What are you talking about? Stop shuffling round the shrubbery, Agatha.’
The Countess spoke with agonising slowness. ‘I am not surprised that you didn’t see the announcement of Araminta and Devereux’s engagement in The Times . . . because there was no such announcement.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve had a better arfer.’
‘I think the word you are looking for is “offer”.’ She let the idea sink in. ‘A better offer?’ The Dowager Duchess bubbled like an overheated coffee percolator. ‘What do you mean – a better offer?’
‘I was always slightly worried about the prospect of Araminta marrying beneath herself.’
‘Beneath herself! She would be joining the Lyminster family!’
‘Yes, but Devereux is only a younger son. And a younger son of a Dook—’
‘The word, Agatha, is “Duke”!’
The Countess carried serenely on, ‘The younger son of a Dook doesn’t cut much mustard these days . . . not for a girl like Araminta. It certainly doesn’t compare with her becoming a Countess in her own right.’
‘Huh! Your daughter “a Countess in her own right”? And where are you going to find some accommodating Earl ready to take on the anaemic little chit?’
‘Oh, don’t worry, Evadne. I’ve found him.’
‘What!’ The volume of this response attracted looks from all around the Grill Room.
‘We sorted out the details,’ the Countess of Lytham St Annes went on, ‘over lunch at Rules. My daughter Araminta is going to marry the Earl of Hartlepool!’
In her salon in Mayfair, Madame Clothilde opened the envelope the postman had just delivered. She had not recognised the handwriting. Corky Froggett did not write many letters.
‘Dear Yvet,’ she read, ‘I am sory I did not say goodby when I left the other day, but this leter will have to do instedd. With you I have shaired the best moaments of my life, but I canot let anything stand in the way of my loyelty to my imployers. I felled very bad when I reelised I had not been on hand when my young marster needed me. We will not meat agane. Tahnk you for evverything. Corky.’
A tear threatened the hundred-per-cent perfection of Clothilde’s maquillage.
The Earl of Hartlepool agreed to come down to London for his wedding. Though the Countess of Lytham St Annes assured Araminta that this was a demonstration of his love for her, the real reason he’d been persuaded to leave Little Tickling was that he was running out of matchsticks and had found a new supplier in Mayfair.
* * *
The Hunt Ball at Tawcester Towers passed off without incident. Blotto and Twinks were in sparkling form, their feelings being mainly ones of relief. The Countess of Lytham St Annes’ machinations at Rules restaurant had let them both off the hook. Not only had the Earl of Hartlepool’s marriage stopped Twinks from being lumbered with him, it had also mopped up Araminta as a potential fiancée for Blotto. Never had two jilted people been so happy.
They were equally happy some months later when it was announced, to general surprise, that Araminta, Countess of Hartlepool, was expecting a baby.
And when a boy arrived (as transparently pale as his mother), the happiness spread to Whiffler Tortington. As well as having married the woman he loved, he now achieved his only remaining ambition. He renounced his claim on the Hartlepool title, and happily endorsed his new half-brother as heir to Little Tickling and everything else.
His life was also enhanced by a generous allowance from the father who couldn’t remember what he looked like. Frou-Frou kept lots of friends from her theatrical days and, the nights when Whiffler wasn’t with his muffin-toasters at the Gren, there was nothing the couple liked better than going into the West End. To see the newest, hottest revue.
And in time, too, they became parents.
Barmy Evans and his men in black all received substantial prison sentences, which would prevent them from being a threat to the public for a long time to come. And Barmy’s dangerous socialist plans were put in abeyance (for the time being).
Pierre Labouze and Everard Stoop, who had not in fact done anything criminal, continued to make a little money on the side from matching up superannuated showgirls with vacuous aristocrats. Dolly Diller, realising that she wasn’t going to be spending much more time with Barmy Evans, was happily married off to an Anglo-Irish Earl, who owned most of County Offaly.
When Everard Stoop, in the American Bar of the Savoy, announced that the union was ‘an Offaly good thing’, how his acolytes roared.
And, of course, Labouze and Stoop continued to produce intimate revues. In fact, on the night the heir to Little Tickling was born, they opened a new one, called Light Up With Laughter, whose opening number ran,
‘When you’re feeling low
And you’ve had your go
And there’s nothing coming after . . .
When your face is long,
And you need a song
That will echo to the rafter . . .
When you feel like doom
And you’re sunk in gloom,
You’re in need of something dafter . . .
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br /> So, come on, unwind –
Yes, switch off your mind . . .
And just Light Up With Laughter.’