Directory of Humor Blogs
Mrs. DaFarge, The Marriage Bureau and The Great Draught and Famine of 1947
The box hedge within her garden had matured, aged, withered and died in the interim since Mrs. DaFarge had dispatched her most recent spouse to the great beyond, and she was feeling rather disappointed with herself. “Clarence (as he was called) was SUCH a satisfactory husband, by far the most congenial. How tiresome it is to be a preying mantis when one is so completely devoted to the sanctity of marriage!” She then heaved a hideous sigh and entered into one of those penetrating self-examinations of which she was so passionately fond. “Poor dear Clarence. Is it not frightful that I cannot even recall his surname? Elm-something, I’m pretty sure. Elmhurst? Elmbotham? Oh, never mind, it does not really matter… Still, we did have such FUN together, sitting in the library of an evening and reading poetry to each other. Silly romantic fuzzy Clarry Barry, he was drawn to Shelley and Browning, whereas I have always found Wordsworth and the Bloomsburys and the Neo-Pagans, especially dear, beautiful Rupert Brooke, to be particularly thrilling… Elmleaf? Elmdisease? Slippery-Elme? Oh, well… never mind.”
Mrs. DaFarge had an intensely dislike of sentimentality. One did tolerate it, of course, when others lapsed into The Pit of Treacle (after all, that was to be expected where the common hoi polloi were concerned; one had to be mindful of their origins). However, it was her rigidly held belief that she, as a member of both the local and county councils and the arbiter of manners among the socially élite, had a responsibility to maintain irreproachably exalted standards. If, therefore, she suspected that she might be wallowing in depths plumbed theretofore only by certain Germanic Composers of overripe and overblown grand opera, daytime television (which was banned in her household) and (God Forbid) The Pseudo Pre-Raphaelites, she condemned herself for letting the side down. “I have never shed a tear, neither for my loved ones in extremis nor for myself, and I refuse to be swayed by romantic twaddle,” was how she prefaced conversations to strangers, in the event they jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Mrs. DaFarge had intentionally forgotten how many husbands had exchanged with her the marriage vows. “The majority were ruinous mistakes!” she liked to confide to her confessor. “In spite of myself I have always been attracted to the wrong sort, to the reckless and handsome bounders. Officers of a certain rank and eldest sons though they were, they were also cads who, had I been another woman, would have left me broken hearted and bereft.” She would then pause for a studied moment, turn inwards, and with a secret smile, punctuate the sentiment with a joyful flourish. “Of course, darling, I ate them.”
Very recently, Mrs. DaFarge had begun to suspect it might be time so seek out another spouse. “Not for myself, you understand, but for appearances.” Unfortunately, because of her age (which was considerable) and rigorous demands, there were not many options available to her in Miss Havering’s Bog. She had, after all, exhausted the entire population of suitable gentlemen, leaving The Bog very much in a state of social imbalance, and those who had resisted her charms theretofore tended to flee at the very sight of her magnificence. It was out of the question to insert a line or two in the want ads of The Times of The Bog (the other publications were excluded from consideration insofar as she refused to admit to their existence). Coy and subtle advertisements rarely fooled anyone, not in this day and age. Not only would the wrong sort single them out for ridicule, but all the gossips and busybodies would immediately know it was she who had placed them. Meeting gentlemen over a rubber of bridge in The Club was also out of the question, for she was well-acquainted with all the other players and found none of them up to scratch. They either played their cards rather badly, or snuffled, or drank excessively (or displayed distressing tendencies), or were already enjoined in wedlock with one of her social equals. And as Mrs. DaFarge held the opinion that The Community Centre was a charity to which one donated money for the good of The Lower Elements, it would not have occurred to her that she might avail herself its Single’s Club.
This, unfortunately, left only The Marriage Bureau for Respectable Gentlefolk, a self-proclaimed ‘charmingly discreet’ listing (much like an upper class escort agency, only with respectable cobwebs) founded many years previously by Mrs. Begonia Throttle and her brother, Isidor Throttle-Zonker, the aggrieved husband of the hideous Lithuanian Assistant Librarian, Ms. Delilah Zonker. Mrs. Begonia Throttle, ever the astute businesswoman with an eye for the main chance (she also owned an immodest chain of betting shops, formerly Throttle & Co., Turf Accountants, recently rebranded www.betbegonia.bog), was, for the right price and under her own terms, discretion itself. Given that her clientele was, in the main, comprised of hideously respectable matrons such as Mrs. DaFarge, Mrs. Ridglet-Grassworm (recently widowed for the twelfth time) and Baroness Winitraudl von Dragon-ffleugen (“I must be dazzled constantly. A perfect husband is like a soufflé, exquisite and so imminently deflatable”), not so much as a whiff of scandal could attach itself to her bureau. She never took notes (“for every note written down there is a secretary who will make copies”), committing every detail to memory and often eating witnesses (usually personal assistants, of which she had rather a lot; because of this she had eventually founded an employment agency, Begonia’s Fulfilling Positions, Ltd., which was by its second week, the most profitable of its kind in the bog, if not the county). No stone was left unturned to ensure that confidential information gleaned (often under torture, but that is another story) would find its way only into the right ears (long a bog obsession). The end result of such vigilant security measures on the part of this quaint, respectable and slightly mouldering marriage bureau was that the agency leaked like a sieve during a rainstorm, a result not altogether lamented by Begonia Throttle, who (as has been previously stated) owned the majority shareholding in Slash & Burn Publications, Ltd., publishers of the more odious (and, hence, most lucrative) tabloids in the bog. Among the cognoscenti, The Marriage Bureau for Respectable Gentlefolk and Un Secret de Polishinelle were synonymous. However, this was still preferable to The Singles’ Club or the other alternative, which was to post a shy notelet in the telephone kiosk behind the underwear factory.
Mrs. DaFarge was, quite naturally, aware of Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s shortcomings. “I am fortunately very thick skinned, and although I find Mrs. Throttle and her enterprises repugnant, odious and vulgar in the extreme, both she and they are, to put it succinctly, more than a little convenient when it comes to filling my copious needs. She is, of course, trade, and therefore completely untrustworthy. I find a good flogging before our consultations helps my cause considerably.” What Mrs. DaFarge did not admit, even to her pillow, was that she herself possessed certain ‘information’ concerning Mrs. Throttle and had made it perfectly clear to the matchmaker that she would not hesitate to use it. “Be Warned, Throttle,” she would thunder, adding sweetly, “I do believe we have an understanding.”
There was one fly in the ointment, and a very large, juicy one it was. Ms. Delilah Zonker. Several years previously, in a moment of exquisite weakness, Mrs. DaFarge had allowed herself to be transported to the outer limits of ecstasy whilst in a punt with a certain well-known lothario named Prof. Dr. Polymorphius Stickleback. It was in the first week of June, when spring was at its sweetest and the bog, pungent with fecundity, was fairly bursting at the seams with érotisme (in all its splendidly raw and rampant hues, flavours and variations). Professor Doctor Stickleback (whose mother may or may not have been French from either Île de Re or the chorus of the Moulin Rouge) lured the redoubtable matron to the furthest, dankest and most claustrophobic regions of the southern swamp with promises of never ending adoration and the secret recipe for mousse au chocolat avec sauce haut-le-cœur supreme, the famously addictive dessert sans pareil of Chef Blatard de Flumpe’s Café aux Quinze Oublis (about which we have not heard the last).
Appearances are deceiving at the best of times, but in Miss Havering’s Bog there exists a saying, “those who believe their own eyes are doomed to weep.” Nothing was ever as it seemed and nothing was the slightest bit straightforward. This noted lothario who had wooed and won Mrs. DaFarge (in a moment of supreme weakness) was in actual fact the despicable cad, “Badger” ffermin-ffrench of Epping-on-the-Sea, a detestable blackmailer and white slaver who had, several years previously, fathered and then groomed the Lithuanian gorgon, Ms. Delilah Zonker, to be not only his protégé but his eventual successor. But all this was so very long ago, and had quite escaped the normally deadly antenna of the well-informed Mrs. DaFarge, but even had this not been the case, the moment the dashing “Professor Doctor Stickleback” whispered words of magic in her shovel-like ear, her cottage cheese-like thighs turned to jelly. Ignoring her head and throwing caution to the wind, the romantically inflamed matron, doyenne of polite society and discretion personified, was once again a schoolgirl. As she lowered her vast bulk into “Prof. Dr. Stickleback’s” ‘Vessel of Love’ (the aged punt for which he had traded a cracked cranberry glass vase, two ham sandwiches and a pencil), her heart fluttering as though in the breast of a young maiden, her mind (usually so worldly and astute) adrift in the seas of romance, her eyes failing to notice a subtle movement in the tall reeds bordering the foetid swamp. It was, of course, the diligent Lithuanian spigot, Ms. Delilah Zonker, camera and sound crew at the ready, recording every swoon, blush and grown, and thinking of her future prospects (and smiling very broadly indeed). The world was hers! The haughty Mrs. DaFarge, the most evil woman in the world, the beast who had consigned her to cleaning the Incontinent Ladies’ Reading Room in The Lending Library and who had revoked her front entrance privileges. Vengeance would be hers!
And so it was, though not as effectively as she hoped. Mrs. DaFarge refused to be blackmailed and reported the lowly Lithuanian to the Vice Squad, which in turn arrested her (following a lengthy investigation during which some fourteen hundred fifty-seven suspects and seven hundred twenty-two witnesses were interviewed). Legal loopholes prevented her from being brought to trial, however, but nonetheless, Chief Justice Sir Humbart Pincer-Pettigrew (father-in-law of Dorothina Flumpe (erstwhile wife of Chef Blatard, who, herself, proved to be a most valuable asset to the Prosecution’s case) used The Accused in various ways, all under the guidelines of the The Official Immoral Purposes Act (of 1907) and afterwards condemned her to spend the rest of her life dying of an unspecified number of ailments and occurrences. It was, all in all, an unfortunate and scandalous affair, and one that occupied the denizens’ complete attention for nearly three weeks (a period coinciding with the great draught and famine of 1947, when there was very little else going on).
Awful Lithuanian Peasant Ms. Delilah Zonker, convicted criminal though she now may have been, was not to be defeated. She had hidden on her person (in a little suede bag with purple drawstrings) an unplayed card: a photograph of Mrs. DaFarge with a small rabbit, taken behind the carriage house on a fine summer’s day. This time, however, the Lithuanian hoodlum did not make the mistake of approaching the society matron directly. Instead, she visited her own sister-in-law, Mrs. Begonia Throttle, in the dead of night disguised as a beggar and weeping copious amounts of artificial tears. Claiming to be a wise woman and gentleman of mysterious Eastern extraction, she/he sang of the many fortunes that were destined to fall into the lap of Throttle Enterprises, Ltd. Flourishing the picture, now reproduced in faded and scratchy sepia in a barely discernable faux-medieval frame, she/he wove her magic spell.
Da vurlt gows wumpity wump wump wumpity
Ant yer life it gows vump vump vumity.
All yoo gotz ta doooo isss pump pump pumpity
Unt cross myee hents mit silver.
Yoy Yoy Yoy.
Yur vurlt it isss un oyster
You isss zo vury blessszt.
Mine troadt izt full of goiters
Mine pents dey isss ha messs.
Pleeeze du halp me ladeee
Aiull lub yoo till hai die
Hai vanst to kizzzt unt skveees yooo
Unt baik yoo inna pie.
Ai chavva liddel fotow
Id isss zo vury neis
Unt ven yoo lookit ovow
Aiyul gif yoo mai adwize.
By this time Mrs. Begonia Throttle was beginning to feel distinctly queasy. Stars floated in front of her eyes and she was sure that vapours were no more than a second or two away.
“Please,” she cried, “I shall do anything you want, only please stop singing.”
But the exotic foreigner of mystical extraction, appearing not to hear her (which since she was in a trance-like state at the time may or may not have been true) continued her strange lament:
Ai needza lodda munnee
Id isss zo vury nais
Ai vunna buy zym toolibz
Und puddum inna vais.
“If I find you some employment, will you go away and leave me alone?” interjected Begonia Throttle, reasonably voiced yet with a trembling subtext.
The interestingly clad beggar fell silent for a minute to consider the proposition. She then straightened her jingly veil (which had become distinctly unhinged during her dance) and looked the other woman in the eye.
“It will have to be in a professional capacity, and I warn you in advance that I shall have nothing to do with either farm implements or dust cloths,” she said, suddenly sounding as if she were recently down from Oxford.
“Absolutely no farm implements or dust cloths”, replied Begonia Throttle, distinctly relieved, and making a note of it on her little computer thingy. “Would you be interested in working with animals?”
The beggar (who Mrs. Begonia Throttle had not failed to notice had a suspiciously large mouth, somewhat reminiscent of a pigmy hippopotamus’s) immediately picked up her lament from where she had left off (only this time a great deal louder)
“I vasss ha liddel parsnip
Zittun inna feeelt
Und vennn hai feildt mine noseslip…”
Mrs. Begonia Throttle immediately clapped all four of her hands over her ears and fairly screamed at the interloper. “All right,” she cried. “You have made your point!” She thought for a moment, then suddenly her face cleared and she turned to the exotic mendicant. “Do you like books?” she asked.
“It all depends upon the paper,” replied the beggar in her best Cheltenham Ladies’ College accent. “I find first editions quite tasty, especially the bindings and spines.”
“What are your feelings as regards paperbacks?” asked Begonia Throttle, hoping the question would not provoke another bout of singing.
“I am sure I do not know what you are talking about,” replied the interestingly dressed woman, “mummy said she sampled a volume sans binding (if that is what you mean) once by mistake and found it indigestible. She henceforth banned all such items from the house, and I have as yet to lay my hands on one of their breed. Tell me, do these ‘paperback’ to which you refer taste good with brown sauce?”
“Banned them from the house? Do they taste good with brown sauce?” muttered Mrs. Throttle to herself, careful not to offend the perfumed stranger by speaking out loud. “I know where you grew up, my dear, and you were lucky to have a court summons, much less a book.”
“Are you feeling poorly?” asked the stranger, suddenly looking concerned. “Have you lost your voice? You appear to be talking to me, but nothing is coming out.”
But Mrs. Begonia Throttle was by now completely lost in her own world and wanted to finish her thoughts. Lest the awful beggar might be tempted to take up her song where she had left off, however, she smiled wearily at her and apologised for her behaviour. “Please bear with me, my dear, I am quite overcome and sedentary. Would you be so kind as to sit over there,” she added, pointed to a low stool, “and I shall be with you in a minute.”
“Would it be helpful if I sang to you. It wouldn’t have to be the same song. I know ever so many”
“No thank you dear, I shall be fully recovered before you can swallow your toes.” The motley coloured beggar sat where she was told and immediately took an old currant bun from her pocket and nibbled at the edges.
Mrs. Begonia Throttle frowned and murmured to herself via her left ear flap. “I wonder where she bought that dreadful currant bun? It most certainly is not one of mine. And how rude of her to bring her own food into my delightful tea shoppe.” She peered over her spectacles at the lowly creature and then continued the appraisal she had begun earlier, being more careful than ever to speak utterly sotto voce and inarticulately. “I don’t know whom she thinks she’s fooling. I know exactly who she is, and one thing she did not have is a ‘mummy’. For that matter, she wouldn’t know a book from a mealy bug. The poor deprived creature probably can’t even read…”
Having got her own feelings straightened out, Mrs. Throttle arranged her mouth into her prettiest, most alluring smile (the one she reserved for only her favourite customers) and turned to the wayward foreign stray. “As I was about to say, if you are interested in respectable employment, I may be able to obtain a suitable position for you,” she purred, adding quickly, “professionally speaking.”
“No animals or small children,” harrumphed the beggar, idly brushing crumbs off her sleeve, “and no aardvarks.”
“Oh, nothing like that, I assure you,” chirped Begonia Throttle in her best butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth tone. “It is in the Lending Library, as (she added quickly before the beggar could imagine the worst) The Official Second Assistant Librarian. Absolutely respectable and above board, you understand, and best of all you wouldn’t have to do anything,” she said before whispering silently to herself “except for a few light callisthenics every other Wednesday.”
Mrs. Throttle, warming to her subject, continued. “The Official Head Librarian insists on conducting all the official Library duties herself. She even makes her own tea. Of course, if you are not interested…” she let the sentence dangle mysteriously.
“Oh yes, it sounds delightful,” the beggar chortled, quickly adding, “but I have a condition. Should The Head Librarian abandon her post, I should want to slip into her shoes at a moment’s notice.”
“That is, I believe,” answered Begonia Throttle, “the usual practice.”
“Then I shall accept! It sounds ideal,” sang the awful stranger. “How much will I be paid? When can I start? Would it be convenient for me to take time off for my monthly holiday now?”
“Well,” Begonia cautioned, “I shall have to ask Mrs. DaFarge, but…”
“MRS. DAFARGE?” screamed the exotic eastern-looking woman. “Did you just say Mrs. DaFarge? How very exciting!”
The slimy little beggar turned her head around in a complete circle, as if in furtive contemplation, then relaxed, smiled and beamish smile (one which unfortunately showed her teeth) and shook Mrs. Throttle’s hand all too vigorously.
“Please consider the position taken. I could not be more thrilled if I had kippers for a nose!” And indeed nothing could have been more to the beggar’s liking. Just think! Twice the power over Mrs. Dafarge! Twice! He/she would be both the rude Librarian’s Assistants at the same time. Perhaps, with any luck, the Third Assistant Librarian (the lacklustre and ineffable Mr. Cyril Bump) would meet with an untimely end, in which case he/she could acquired his position as well!
“I do hev von furder contizhun,” he/she said cautiously. “Hiy hem in neet uvva vife.”
“A vife?” interjected Begonia Throttle, suddenly interested and confused at the same time.
“Hay continzhun uf mine imploeemind iz yoo fint mee he vife.” The beggar paused and smiled a secret smile. “Hay beeooodifol brayink mentisss. Doo yoo tink….?
“AH!” whooped Begonia Throttle, assuming her best marriage broker voice. “A wife! How thrilling! And a praying mantis you said! I have just the thing! A beautiful (mature) mantis of means, as well as great respectability and elegance. In fact, I do believe you know her, or if you don’t you will shortly, for she is none other than your future employer at the Lending Library!”
“Do yoo meeen Missiz Dafarge?” the beggar asked, speculatively, his/her upper lip moist with anticipation and his/her lower one trembling.
“Yes,” replied Begonia Throttle, trembling slightly. “Is there a problem with that?”
“No,” replied the exotic foreigner, “not at all. In fact, it is compleedlee vonterfill!”
With that, the beggar ran from the café as fast as he/she could (disappearing in a cloud of dust). “I must see my dearest husband Isidor immediately, and also my darling Polymorphius! We have triumphed! Victory is ours! Soon I shall take my revenge on my nemesis Mrs. DaFarge. She will be ruined! I shall eat her beloved, so-superior co-conspirators for breakfast. Chief Justice Sir Humbart Pincer-Pettigrew and dainty Dorothina Flumpe will be mine. ALL MINE!… I,” she added ripping off her beggar disguise and flinging it into the gutter, “will rule the bog! Fire up the barbeque, Chief Justice Sir Hoity-toity and your flimsy Dorothina, you will be mine for breakfast!”
And then Ms. Delilah Zonker giggled hysterically and gleefully. “On toast with a fried tomato and beans.”
The box hedge within her garden had matured, aged, withered and died in the interim since Mrs. DaFarge had dispatched her most recent spouse to the great beyond, and she was feeling rather disappointed with herself. “Clarence (as he was called) was SUCH a satisfactory husband, by far the most congenial. How tiresome it is to be a preying mantis when one is so completely devoted to the sanctity of marriage!” She then heaved a hideous sigh and entered into one of those penetrating self-examinations of which she was so passionately fond. “Poor dear Clarence. Is it not frightful that I cannot even recall his surname? Elm-something, I’m pretty sure. Elmhurst? Elmbotham? Oh, never mind, it does not really matter… Still, we did have such FUN together, sitting in the library of an evening and reading poetry to each other. Silly romantic fuzzy Clarry Barry, he was drawn to Shelley and Browning, whereas I have always found Wordsworth and the Bloomsburys and the Neo-Pagans, especially dear, beautiful Rupert Brooke, to be particularly thrilling… Elmleaf? Elmdisease? Slippery-Elme? Oh, well… never mind.”
Mrs. DaFarge had an intensely dislike of sentimentality. One did tolerate it, of course, when others lapsed into The Pit of Treacle (after all, that was to be expected where the common hoi polloi were concerned; one had to be mindful of their origins). However, it was her rigidly held belief that she, as a member of both the local and county councils and the arbiter of manners among the socially élite, had a responsibility to maintain irreproachably exalted standards. If, therefore, she suspected that she might be wallowing in depths plumbed theretofore only by certain Germanic Composers of overripe and overblown grand opera, daytime television (which was banned in her household) and (God Forbid) The Pseudo Pre-Raphaelites, she condemned herself for letting the side down. “I have never shed a tear, neither for my loved ones in extremis nor for myself, and I refuse to be swayed by romantic twaddle,” was how she prefaced conversations to strangers, in the event they jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Mrs. DaFarge had intentionally forgotten how many husbands had exchanged with her the marriage vows. “The majority were ruinous mistakes!” she liked to confide to her confessor. “In spite of myself I have always been attracted to the wrong sort, to the reckless and handsome bounders. Officers of a certain rank and eldest sons though they were, they were also cads who, had I been another woman, would have left me broken hearted and bereft.” She would then pause for a studied moment, turn inwards, and with a secret smile, punctuate the sentiment with a joyful flourish. “Of course, darling, I ate them.”
Very recently, Mrs. DaFarge had begun to suspect it might be time so seek out another spouse. “Not for myself, you understand, but for appearances.” Unfortunately, because of her age (which was considerable) and rigorous demands, there were not many options available to her in Miss Havering’s Bog. She had, after all, exhausted the entire population of suitable gentlemen, leaving The Bog very much in a state of social imbalance, and those who had resisted her charms theretofore tended to flee at the very sight of her magnificence. It was out of the question to insert a line or two in the want ads of The Times of The Bog (the other publications were excluded from consideration insofar as she refused to admit to their existence). Coy and subtle advertisements rarely fooled anyone, not in this day and age. Not only would the wrong sort single them out for ridicule, but all the gossips and busybodies would immediately know it was she who had placed them. Meeting gentlemen over a rubber of bridge in The Club was also out of the question, for she was well-acquainted with all the other players and found none of them up to scratch. They either played their cards rather badly, or snuffled, or drank excessively (or displayed distressing tendencies), or were already enjoined in wedlock with one of her social equals. And as Mrs. DaFarge held the opinion that The Community Centre was a charity to which one donated money for the good of The Lower Elements, it would not have occurred to her that she might avail herself its Single’s Club.
This, unfortunately, left only The Marriage Bureau for Respectable Gentlefolk, a self-proclaimed ‘charmingly discreet’ listing (much like an upper class escort agency, only with respectable cobwebs) founded many years previously by Mrs. Begonia Throttle and her brother, Isidor Throttle-Zonker, the aggrieved husband of the hideous Lithuanian Assistant Librarian, Ms. Delilah Zonker. Mrs. Begonia Throttle, ever the astute businesswoman with an eye for the main chance (she also owned an immodest chain of betting shops, formerly Throttle & Co., Turf Accountants, recently rebranded www.betbegonia.bog), was, for the right price and under her own terms, discretion itself. Given that her clientele was, in the main, comprised of hideously respectable matrons such as Mrs. DaFarge, Mrs. Ridglet-Grassworm (recently widowed for the twelfth time) and Baroness Winitraudl von Dragon-ffleugen (“I must be dazzled constantly. A perfect husband is like a soufflé, exquisite and so imminently deflatable”), not so much as a whiff of scandal could attach itself to her bureau. She never took notes (“for every note written down there is a secretary who will make copies”), committing every detail to memory and often eating witnesses (usually personal assistants, of which she had rather a lot; because of this she had eventually founded an employment agency, Begonia’s Fulfilling Positions, Ltd., which was by its second week, the most profitable of its kind in the bog, if not the county). No stone was left unturned to ensure that confidential information gleaned (often under torture, but that is another story) would find its way only into the right ears (long a bog obsession). The end result of such vigilant security measures on the part of this quaint, respectable and slightly mouldering marriage bureau was that the agency leaked like a sieve during a rainstorm, a result not altogether lamented by Begonia Throttle, who (as has been previously stated) owned the majority shareholding in Slash & Burn Publications, Ltd., publishers of the more odious (and, hence, most lucrative) tabloids in the bog. Among the cognoscenti, The Marriage Bureau for Respectable Gentlefolk and Un Secret de Polishinelle were synonymous. However, this was still preferable to The Singles’ Club or the other alternative, which was to post a shy notelet in the telephone kiosk behind the underwear factory.
Mrs. DaFarge was, quite naturally, aware of Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s shortcomings. “I am fortunately very thick skinned, and although I find Mrs. Throttle and her enterprises repugnant, odious and vulgar in the extreme, both she and they are, to put it succinctly, more than a little convenient when it comes to filling my copious needs. She is, of course, trade, and therefore completely untrustworthy. I find a good flogging before our consultations helps my cause considerably.” What Mrs. DaFarge did not admit, even to her pillow, was that she herself possessed certain ‘information’ concerning Mrs. Throttle and had made it perfectly clear to the matchmaker that she would not hesitate to use it. “Be Warned, Throttle,” she would thunder, adding sweetly, “I do believe we have an understanding.”
There was one fly in the ointment, and a very large, juicy one it was. Ms. Delilah Zonker. Several years previously, in a moment of exquisite weakness, Mrs. DaFarge had allowed herself to be transported to the outer limits of ecstasy whilst in a punt with a certain well-known lothario named Prof. Dr. Polymorphius Stickleback. It was in the first week of June, when spring was at its sweetest and the bog, pungent with fecundity, was fairly bursting at the seams with érotisme (in all its splendidly raw and rampant hues, flavours and variations). Professor Doctor Stickleback (whose mother may or may not have been French from either Île de Re or the chorus of the Moulin Rouge) lured the redoubtable matron to the furthest, dankest and most claustrophobic regions of the southern swamp with promises of never ending adoration and the secret recipe for mousse au chocolat avec sauce haut-le-cœur supreme, the famously addictive dessert sans pareil of Chef Blatard de Flumpe’s Café aux Quinze Oublis (about which we have not heard the last).
Appearances are deceiving at the best of times, but in Miss Havering’s Bog there exists a saying, “those who believe their own eyes are doomed to weep.” Nothing was ever as it seemed and nothing was the slightest bit straightforward. This noted lothario who had wooed and won Mrs. DaFarge (in a moment of supreme weakness) was in actual fact the despicable cad, “Badger” ffermin-ffrench of Epping-on-the-Sea, a detestable blackmailer and white slaver who had, several years previously, fathered and then groomed the Lithuanian gorgon, Ms. Delilah Zonker, to be not only his protégé but his eventual successor. But all this was so very long ago, and had quite escaped the normally deadly antenna of the well-informed Mrs. DaFarge, but even had this not been the case, the moment the dashing “Professor Doctor Stickleback” whispered words of magic in her shovel-like ear, her cottage cheese-like thighs turned to jelly. Ignoring her head and throwing caution to the wind, the romantically inflamed matron, doyenne of polite society and discretion personified, was once again a schoolgirl. As she lowered her vast bulk into “Prof. Dr. Stickleback’s” ‘Vessel of Love’ (the aged punt for which he had traded a cracked cranberry glass vase, two ham sandwiches and a pencil), her heart fluttering as though in the breast of a young maiden, her mind (usually so worldly and astute) adrift in the seas of romance, her eyes failing to notice a subtle movement in the tall reeds bordering the foetid swamp. It was, of course, the diligent Lithuanian spigot, Ms. Delilah Zonker, camera and sound crew at the ready, recording every swoon, blush and grown, and thinking of her future prospects (and smiling very broadly indeed). The world was hers! The haughty Mrs. DaFarge, the most evil woman in the world, the beast who had consigned her to cleaning the Incontinent Ladies’ Reading Room in The Lending Library and who had revoked her front entrance privileges. Vengeance would be hers!
And so it was, though not as effectively as she hoped. Mrs. DaFarge refused to be blackmailed and reported the lowly Lithuanian to the Vice Squad, which in turn arrested her (following a lengthy investigation during which some fourteen hundred fifty-seven suspects and seven hundred twenty-two witnesses were interviewed). Legal loopholes prevented her from being brought to trial, however, but nonetheless, Chief Justice Sir Humbart Pincer-Pettigrew (father-in-law of Dorothina Flumpe (erstwhile wife of Chef Blatard, who, herself, proved to be a most valuable asset to the Prosecution’s case) used The Accused in various ways, all under the guidelines of the The Official Immoral Purposes Act (of 1907) and afterwards condemned her to spend the rest of her life dying of an unspecified number of ailments and occurrences. It was, all in all, an unfortunate and scandalous affair, and one that occupied the denizens’ complete attention for nearly three weeks (a period coinciding with the great draught and famine of 1947, when there was very little else going on).
Awful Lithuanian Peasant Ms. Delilah Zonker, convicted criminal though she now may have been, was not to be defeated. She had hidden on her person (in a little suede bag with purple drawstrings) an unplayed card: a photograph of Mrs. DaFarge with a small rabbit, taken behind the carriage house on a fine summer’s day. This time, however, the Lithuanian hoodlum did not make the mistake of approaching the society matron directly. Instead, she visited her own sister-in-law, Mrs. Begonia Throttle, in the dead of night disguised as a beggar and weeping copious amounts of artificial tears. Claiming to be a wise woman and gentleman of mysterious Eastern extraction, she/he sang of the many fortunes that were destined to fall into the lap of Throttle Enterprises, Ltd. Flourishing the picture, now reproduced in faded and scratchy sepia in a barely discernable faux-medieval frame, she/he wove her magic spell.
Da vurlt gows wumpity wump wump wumpity
Ant yer life it gows vump vump vumity.
All yoo gotz ta doooo isss pump pump pumpity
Unt cross myee hents mit silver.
Yoy Yoy Yoy.
Yur vurlt it isss un oyster
You isss zo vury blessszt.
Mine troadt izt full of goiters
Mine pents dey isss ha messs.
Pleeeze du halp me ladeee
Aiull lub yoo till hai die
Hai vanst to kizzzt unt skveees yooo
Unt baik yoo inna pie.
Ai chavva liddel fotow
Id isss zo vury neis
Unt ven yoo lookit ovow
Aiyul gif yoo mai adwize.
By this time Mrs. Begonia Throttle was beginning to feel distinctly queasy. Stars floated in front of her eyes and she was sure that vapours were no more than a second or two away.
“Please,” she cried, “I shall do anything you want, only please stop singing.”
But the exotic foreigner of mystical extraction, appearing not to hear her (which since she was in a trance-like state at the time may or may not have been true) continued her strange lament:
Ai needza lodda munnee
Id isss zo vury nais
Ai vunna buy zym toolibz
Und puddum inna vais.
“If I find you some employment, will you go away and leave me alone?” interjected Begonia Throttle, reasonably voiced yet with a trembling subtext.
The interestingly clad beggar fell silent for a minute to consider the proposition. She then straightened her jingly veil (which had become distinctly unhinged during her dance) and looked the other woman in the eye.
“It will have to be in a professional capacity, and I warn you in advance that I shall have nothing to do with either farm implements or dust cloths,” she said, suddenly sounding as if she were recently down from Oxford.
“Absolutely no farm implements or dust cloths”, replied Begonia Throttle, distinctly relieved, and making a note of it on her little computer thingy. “Would you be interested in working with animals?”
The beggar (who Mrs. Begonia Throttle had not failed to notice had a suspiciously large mouth, somewhat reminiscent of a pigmy hippopotamus’s) immediately picked up her lament from where she had left off (only this time a great deal louder)
“I vasss ha liddel parsnip
Zittun inna feeelt
Und vennn hai feildt mine noseslip…”
Mrs. Begonia Throttle immediately clapped all four of her hands over her ears and fairly screamed at the interloper. “All right,” she cried. “You have made your point!” She thought for a moment, then suddenly her face cleared and she turned to the exotic mendicant. “Do you like books?” she asked.
“It all depends upon the paper,” replied the beggar in her best Cheltenham Ladies’ College accent. “I find first editions quite tasty, especially the bindings and spines.”
“What are your feelings as regards paperbacks?” asked Begonia Throttle, hoping the question would not provoke another bout of singing.
“I am sure I do not know what you are talking about,” replied the interestingly dressed woman, “mummy said she sampled a volume sans binding (if that is what you mean) once by mistake and found it indigestible. She henceforth banned all such items from the house, and I have as yet to lay my hands on one of their breed. Tell me, do these ‘paperback’ to which you refer taste good with brown sauce?”
“Banned them from the house? Do they taste good with brown sauce?” muttered Mrs. Throttle to herself, careful not to offend the perfumed stranger by speaking out loud. “I know where you grew up, my dear, and you were lucky to have a court summons, much less a book.”
“Are you feeling poorly?” asked the stranger, suddenly looking concerned. “Have you lost your voice? You appear to be talking to me, but nothing is coming out.”
But Mrs. Begonia Throttle was by now completely lost in her own world and wanted to finish her thoughts. Lest the awful beggar might be tempted to take up her song where she had left off, however, she smiled wearily at her and apologised for her behaviour. “Please bear with me, my dear, I am quite overcome and sedentary. Would you be so kind as to sit over there,” she added, pointed to a low stool, “and I shall be with you in a minute.”
“Would it be helpful if I sang to you. It wouldn’t have to be the same song. I know ever so many”
“No thank you dear, I shall be fully recovered before you can swallow your toes.” The motley coloured beggar sat where she was told and immediately took an old currant bun from her pocket and nibbled at the edges.
Mrs. Begonia Throttle frowned and murmured to herself via her left ear flap. “I wonder where she bought that dreadful currant bun? It most certainly is not one of mine. And how rude of her to bring her own food into my delightful tea shoppe.” She peered over her spectacles at the lowly creature and then continued the appraisal she had begun earlier, being more careful than ever to speak utterly sotto voce and inarticulately. “I don’t know whom she thinks she’s fooling. I know exactly who she is, and one thing she did not have is a ‘mummy’. For that matter, she wouldn’t know a book from a mealy bug. The poor deprived creature probably can’t even read…”
Having got her own feelings straightened out, Mrs. Throttle arranged her mouth into her prettiest, most alluring smile (the one she reserved for only her favourite customers) and turned to the wayward foreign stray. “As I was about to say, if you are interested in respectable employment, I may be able to obtain a suitable position for you,” she purred, adding quickly, “professionally speaking.”
“No animals or small children,” harrumphed the beggar, idly brushing crumbs off her sleeve, “and no aardvarks.”
“Oh, nothing like that, I assure you,” chirped Begonia Throttle in her best butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth tone. “It is in the Lending Library, as (she added quickly before the beggar could imagine the worst) The Official Second Assistant Librarian. Absolutely respectable and above board, you understand, and best of all you wouldn’t have to do anything,” she said before whispering silently to herself “except for a few light callisthenics every other Wednesday.”
Mrs. Throttle, warming to her subject, continued. “The Official Head Librarian insists on conducting all the official Library duties herself. She even makes her own tea. Of course, if you are not interested…” she let the sentence dangle mysteriously.
“Oh yes, it sounds delightful,” the beggar chortled, quickly adding, “but I have a condition. Should The Head Librarian abandon her post, I should want to slip into her shoes at a moment’s notice.”
“That is, I believe,” answered Begonia Throttle, “the usual practice.”
“Then I shall accept! It sounds ideal,” sang the awful stranger. “How much will I be paid? When can I start? Would it be convenient for me to take time off for my monthly holiday now?”
“Well,” Begonia cautioned, “I shall have to ask Mrs. DaFarge, but…”
“MRS. DAFARGE?” screamed the exotic eastern-looking woman. “Did you just say Mrs. DaFarge? How very exciting!”
The slimy little beggar turned her head around in a complete circle, as if in furtive contemplation, then relaxed, smiled and beamish smile (one which unfortunately showed her teeth) and shook Mrs. Throttle’s hand all too vigorously.
“Please consider the position taken. I could not be more thrilled if I had kippers for a nose!” And indeed nothing could have been more to the beggar’s liking. Just think! Twice the power over Mrs. Dafarge! Twice! He/she would be both the rude Librarian’s Assistants at the same time. Perhaps, with any luck, the Third Assistant Librarian (the lacklustre and ineffable Mr. Cyril Bump) would meet with an untimely end, in which case he/she could acquired his position as well!
“I do hev von furder contizhun,” he/she said cautiously. “Hiy hem in neet uvva vife.”
“A vife?” interjected Begonia Throttle, suddenly interested and confused at the same time.
“Hay continzhun uf mine imploeemind iz yoo fint mee he vife.” The beggar paused and smiled a secret smile. “Hay beeooodifol brayink mentisss. Doo yoo tink….?
“AH!” whooped Begonia Throttle, assuming her best marriage broker voice. “A wife! How thrilling! And a praying mantis you said! I have just the thing! A beautiful (mature) mantis of means, as well as great respectability and elegance. In fact, I do believe you know her, or if you don’t you will shortly, for she is none other than your future employer at the Lending Library!”
“Do yoo meeen Missiz Dafarge?” the beggar asked, speculatively, his/her upper lip moist with anticipation and his/her lower one trembling.
“Yes,” replied Begonia Throttle, trembling slightly. “Is there a problem with that?”
“No,” replied the exotic foreigner, “not at all. In fact, it is compleedlee vonterfill!”
With that, the beggar ran from the café as fast as he/she could (disappearing in a cloud of dust). “I must see my dearest husband Isidor immediately, and also my darling Polymorphius! We have triumphed! Victory is ours! Soon I shall take my revenge on my nemesis Mrs. DaFarge. She will be ruined! I shall eat her beloved, so-superior co-conspirators for breakfast. Chief Justice Sir Humbart Pincer-Pettigrew and dainty Dorothina Flumpe will be mine. ALL MINE!… I,” she added ripping off her beggar disguise and flinging it into the gutter, “will rule the bog! Fire up the barbeque, Chief Justice Sir Hoity-toity and your flimsy Dorothina, you will be mine for breakfast!”
And then Ms. Delilah Zonker giggled hysterically and gleefully. “On toast with a fried tomato and beans.”
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