‘Master Reginald, begging your permission sir, I needed help you know, what with me knees and the lad here now, I can train him up. Sure half his life spent in the kitchen anyway and we’d make some use of him. And I’d like to be rid of that other one, our Dawn Beauty. Up there, won’t answer to her door.’
His Lordship swallowing down more than a dram or two or three. Emptying the bottle specially got up from the cellar for the ladies. Necessitating Crooks sending Foxy’s brother to unearthing yet another bottle. And clearly the little bloody bugger ‘was bug eyed and swaying as he came back later to the door to receive Crooks’ whispered growls of chastisement for his long delay. Which one was bloody sure meant having to check the cellar book and record the newly missing bottles, already nearing the very last of the precious few splendid ones remaining. The parsimony lurking in one’s soul. As if I were English. But the fateful moment is coming. When Crooks will say, I am sorry sir, but there is no more Madeira, there is no more bloody nothing. And one did, knowing it was going fast, switch from sherry. Crooks murmuring to me as he filled the glass.
‘Master Reginald this evening brings back memories of your mother my dear Antoinette Delia Darcy Darcy Thormond. She would herself have taken pleasure at the company.’
Rashers animatedly engaging Miss von B in conversation. Has her laughing. Still feel her lips between my legs still glowing. So comforting to have her here. Mine again. Maybe she wouldn’t mind in the morning smartening things up. Go round as she used to with her keys and white gloves. Of course one is daydreaming. Put a log on the fire. In these flames. See Rashers walking barefoot to the pawn. His Lordship pushing a pram down the street with a toilet bowl in it wearing a bonnet and bow of pink ribbon. And ah Crooks at the door. Waiting for a lull in the conversation, clearing his throat, bowing. Pursing his lips. And as if from a pulpit announcing.
‘Master Reginald, ready whenever you are sir.’
Crooks with a couple of extra candelabra had the hallway blazing. Showing perhaps just rather too much of the dilapidation for real delusions of grandeur but I must say in our little procession out the library door and up and around into the dining room, one did feel that nonetheless, the green faded brocaded wall fabric did lend itself well to the moment. With a distinct quickening of the pulse as the ladies’ scents softened the sharpness of the hall’s cold air. And making our way with perhaps just imagining for a moment, the ladies with tiaras. It all did look rather perfect. Andromeda Park suddenly the grandest of grand places. In the very height of fashion. Until of course, I chanced to see Rashers, who had departed to the toilet and thinking the rest of the guests had already turned the corner, was busy fingering a plate, upturning it to the candle to examine its underside. And even daring to handle a figurine off its plinth. O dear reminded again. That one is instead in the boggiest of the most bereft backwater. I mean damn it, he could ask one were it Meissen or not. Of course that piece is not. But back in the library I did think it strange, how his finger casually tipped up the flap of the silver topped water jug and suspended it as if to test the weight of the metal. I suppose poor chap his life is presently devoid of beautiful things and he wants to keep his finger in. No matter. He does at least help the evening along making it three ladies and three gentlemen. And he could not, no matter how bad he is, be all that bad. Having a friend and loving as he did. O god that name Clarissa. Comes back with tears into one’s world. Dropping from its every syllable. To make one shudder. For her beautiful silken pale white skin. Her gay flowing flood of laughter. Suddenly spilling out of her lips. Golden erupting glory. How could her body be pierced. How could she be impaled. Found by a milkman in the morning. On the coldest iron railings. On Stephen’s Green. And forever now just a memory in Mr Arland’s heart. And perhaps that is why. Rashers. When he did shed tears. For all their inappropriateness. May have shed them for Clarissa. For he too adored her. And yet how could she die. So alive in the minds of those who still live. And I must. Must go on the train. Find Mr Arland. Find him.
There is simply no denying Miss von B’s aristocracy. The fluent way she included Rashers and Lavinia in conversation. While Christabel was busy trying to captivate his Lordship into making her as soon as possible a Marchioness. And before vacating the library, his Lordship was giving Rashers the odd glance over Lavinia’s shoulder, his alarm lessened considerably. And Rashers keeping very much to the sideline of his own conversation and instantly turning his attention to the forefront of his Lordship’s louder and most unfunny jokes.
‘Ha, ha, ha, couldn’t help hearing that in the corner of my ear. Damn funny.’
During service of the soup one was all the time wondering where Leila was. As was his Lordship, looking up into the face of Norah, Kitty and Dingbats and hoping the next would be hers. And I was wondering whether she had broken the glass vase deliberately. Just to have reason to lock herself up in her room. With the Marquis’s letter. A thought instantly discontinued, as Crooks was serving the wine, by a loud voice erupting in the pantry.
‘Put that back away and take your hands this minute off me or I’ll give you the hot gravy on top of it. You dirty little rooster.’
A few minutes later Norah all red cheeked coming out with the carved slabs of lamb. And followed by equally red cheeked Kitty and Dingbats with bowls of sprouts. And the sound of Foxy’s brother giggling in the pantry.
Dear me. All the fun is out there beyond the swing door. Miss von B listening politely to Lavinia get her day’s outing off her chest. And talking about chests. In the furnishing sense. One noticed gone from my mother’s dressing room, her toilet service. Not that it matters it was Louis the Sixteenth or that it was made in Paris by Boullier, or that I enjoyed to peruse my eyebrows occasionally in the mirror and see if my teeth were still growing straight. But what matters is their continued bloody nerve to remove without my leave twenty pieces of silverware plus a pair of Louis Fifteenth silver gilt rocaille quatrefoil dishes by Jean Marie Jan de Villecler, from under my nose. With the both of them now spoutingly full of their own brands of very English foxhunting references.
‘The scent was very sketchy today, wasn’t it.’
And Christabel throwing her tresses over her shoulder and affectedly sniffing at the air, as she tipped salt off the end of her knife, announcing her signal event.
‘One does like to travel up front. And I would have but for coming off at that first double bank. Of course it was entirely my own fault.’
Not that one is any kind of down to earth purist about foxhunting but I do confess that this latter comment of my sister’s does make me utterly impatient. Being that one feels it a detestably phony attempt to avoid saying. My effing stupid horse didn’t watch where he was effing going and didn’t know what he was effing doing and threw me off on my effing head. But of course one is lulled into a pleasant reverie listening to the same old hackneyed words.
‘Vixen showed her mask twice.’
‘Yes they spoke to her line for nearly a mile.’
‘And my dear, did you see that green faced lady, whose horse rolled on her.’
‘Served her right for not baling out.’
This last remark emitted by his Lordship. Now swirling the claret around in his glass before putting it under his nose and tipping it backwards gurgling down his throat. By the door slams Crooks must have seen to Foxy’s brother in the pantry. As the food now appeared without the ladies bringing it being so red cheeked. Flushed all over the face like that did make the girls more attractive. And Dingbats was contusing her big tits ever so slightly against my shoulder. And smelling somewhat fusty, but not completely unpleasantly. One should make a household rule of at least one bath per fortnight per person. Or at least monthly. I’m sure they would figure some way to avoid such cleanliness. But Dingbats’ reastiness did have a fumy musky quality which I was absolutely astonished provoked the most rigid erection under the table. Making me hesitate to rise to help Crooks prise open the cigar humidor. But one had to leap to action as the poor bugger was going to send the fucking thing skidding to kingdom come across the sideboard any second and knock over the decanters of port. And while I took hold of the snap ring on the humidor to gently prise it up, Crooks whispered to me in what I thought was a conspiratorially approving manner concerning the pantry altercation of Foxy’s brother.