Chapter Twenty-Nine

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The Miraculous Happenings of The Memorial Goat’s Cheese

The insolent and more than a little disobedient Dogpiddle did not feel the least bit like playing the Welch Cob for Miss Havering Ma’am. Furthermore (as far as he was concerned) the tiny phaeton to which his mistress had eluded was well and truly ready for the knacker’s, having broken both a wheel and its shafts in a fit of pique during an argument with Le Visage d’Orifice (better known as ‘Tony’), the ancient, crittety and cranky pony. In the aftermath, Tony had fled into the laundry, where he wreaked havoc with the household linen and whence he resolutely refused to emerge. “I,” he proclaimed, “have retired. I am but a little thing and Herself has grown quite fulsome. Henceforth I shall be fed grated carrots and turnips in molasses, washed down by porter and sewed prunes in vast amounts. Dogpiddle, who has whipped me for no reason in the past, shall from this point forward don my harness and pull our Her Noble Vastness on her excursions and wretched visitations to far-flung estates.” And since there are few who would argue with a pony and survive, that (as they say) was that. Dogpiddle lost the argument. He would be the pony, like it or not. And after minor though suitable alterations had been made to his person, rendering him a more reliable and obedient performer according to his Mistress’ bidding, he was undeniably a most elegant, if slightly puny, Welch Cob (even though he was Irish).

It took some time before the stalwart Dogpiddle had repaired the Phaeton and fastened himself into the harness, but when, at last, he pulled up to the Rhododendron as instructed, he looked very sharp indeed. “How thrilling you look, Mr. Dogpiddle,” hallooed the Gracious Lady, as though he were her favoured coachman and four at hand combined. “Neigh-h-h-h-h-h,” he nickered in response, fully mindful of his place (and of the polished carriage whip in her right hand).

While Mortimer and T’reasa stowed the hamper under the seat (along with The Great Lady’s favourite brace of Setters) and prepared the rugs to cover her mighty pins, Miss Havering Ma’am waddled her bulk over to Dogpiddle (who happened to be snorting and pawing the earth in the manner of the most splendid of steeds) and stroked his forelock. “What a magnificent beast you are,” she said. “Were that one was a young gel, firm of thigh and joyous of bosom! We have not had your like at The Hall since The General’s mighty stallion, the great and immortal Cézar de Marais Haveringoise (so very appropriate it was to proclaim him emperor over our precious domain). What one would not give to mount you in the manner you deserve, just as one did your namesake. Yes, namesake! For that, my lowly, lugubrious Dogpiddle, is what you shall be. From this moment on you shall no longer be the lowly, spat upon Dogpiddle, but Cézar de Marais Haveringoise le Deuxième Classe, or (for simplicity’s sake, Number Two).”

What was left unspoken (especially by Dogpiddle, or Number Two as he was now called, who blanched and felt a certain dreaded trickle between his hind legs) was that the glorious and splendid Cézar de Marais Haveringoise (première classe) had been stuffed and mounted rampant upon a golden plinth on the grand staircase, where his formidable credentials never failed to inspire a gasp of awe from visiting dignitaries.

At long last the Phaeton was packed with all the essentials for a day’s outing, and Mortimer, T’reasa, Ebbers – as well as Dogpiddle, who had unharnessed himself for the occasion – winched the mighty Miss Havering Ma’am (by means of a system of pulleys devised for the raising of blocks of marble onto the fourth floor balustrade) into her appointed place, carefully draping her pins with fur rugs ripped untimely from the carcasses of beasts wild and tame who had had the misfortune of getting in the way of The General’s crossbow. About her shoulders Mortimer placed the requisite number of shawls, each fastened with its own diamond broach of heroic proportions. The horn was sounded, and The Proud and Frisky Number Two trotted off at a brisk though not necessarily aristocratic pace.

Throughout the aforementioned preparations, wellingffomething-ffomething sisters, who had been coddling Their Mistress’s Mighty Feet with their customary insouciance, were completely ignored, almost as if they were not there at all. No words of appreciation had been expressed, no words of rebuke had been showered upon them. And when they had dared to comment on this insult, The Newly Elevated Number Two had seen fit to chide, “You are nothing but rubber boots, you great yammering cowsheds. Were you thinking that you should be carrying your mistress’ sandwiches?” And Edders, who was forever spoiling for a fight, added, “and if you don’t mind your manners, when we get home I shall kick you to the other side of kingdom come,” after which he gloated, “just as I did that whiny, smelling bedroom slipper!” Wambledy-Jane was at that moment heard to let out a gasp and a squawky squeak, whereupon Miss Havering Ma’am stamped her feet a dozen times to show her displeasure with the behaviour of her right boot.

In answer to their mistress’ pummelling, the sisters merely held their tongues and wept silently, and the youngest, the cause of all the most recent fuss, thought about her long-lost daughter and her cruel fate (which in all probability had been worse than death). “Oh woe, woe, woe,” she cried to herself, “my dearest darling Delphiniumtidum Bedroomslipper, how I long to hold you in my arms and nurse you…” And then she slipped into a tender lament, which ran something like this:

Lament for A Lost Daughter

Oh, my daughter, daughter dear, oh, sweetest of my sproglets,
Where is you teeny tiny one, asleep down with the froglets?
You’z took from me asudden, abruptly and untimely
T’was in the spring, before the thaw
And paths and lanes was grimely.
You had the colic so you did
And coughed and burped and spluttered,
And thems what thinks they’ve got the right
To eat their toast twice buttered
Took umbrage at your wheezy sneeze
And sent you out at night.
They locked the door upon your face
And blew out all the torches
And when you tried to climb back in,
They threw you from the porches.
A mighty wind it rose that night
And took you for its own
And now I’ll never see your cheesy grin nor hear your bilious groan.
Oh, daughter, daughter, daughter dear,
Oh, where is you my darling?
In the bog under a log or in a pig’s digestion?
Please call to me my little one, please never have no fears
It’s been so long, so very long since I have boxed your ears…

It was at this point that Miss Havering Ma’am, exceedingly annoyed by the persistent vibrations and discordant vocals from her right gum boot, stamped her feet and shouted, “Enough, we command, or we shall summon The General.” And since everyone knew how much he disliked having his deathful sleep interrupted for such a trivial matter, both evil sisters ceased their moaning and set about whistling and pretended they were in a distant elsewhere.

It was neither more nor less than fourteen seconds later (i.e., twelve seconds before the phaeton and its contents were scheduled to emerge from the Imperial State Rhododendron and enter the Path of Seclusion and Succulented Pines, a romantic lane leading to the stable yard and coach house) that the cosmos was shattered by a mighty whine. The world froze, and ere it recovered sufficiently for the assembled throng to emit a gasp, a streak of fire descended from the heavens and struck Miss Havering Ma’am upon the bonnet. “How dare you!” she thundered, and then again, “How dare you!” she roared.

The cosmos held its collective breath, and even the great lady fell silent, no doubt enraptured by the miracle from on high. But then the smoke and flames and dramatic pauses were wafted away by the afternoon breeze, and all were left with gaping mouths and googly eyes, amazed at the sight before them. Surmounted above the spot where Miss Havering Ma’am’s elaborate purple silk and feather bonnet perched upon her pointed brow, was a gigantic frothy egg-shaped meringue. “Wot’s that, nan?” squawked the village idiot’s twelfth born to his grandmother, the creamery drudge. “Mark my words,” she replied, quite forgetting herself, “it’s returbooshun. Him wot’s down below has come to take ‘ersowff home wiv ‘im for cleaving to the travelling window cleaner, Master Dogpiddle’s older brovver Donkeywanger.”

“No it ain’t,” laughed a second little boy (somewhat smarter than the first) who happened to be in the neighbourhood throwing rocks at baby bunnies, “it be a marshy-mallow!”

Miss Havering Ma’am freed herself from her rugs, hurling them to the floor, and drawing herself together like the fearsome despot she was, she slowly stood up. The crowd (with the possible exception of Number Two, who was attached to the phaeton, and Mortimer, who still possessed strong feelings where her mistress was concerned) inhaled as one man, fell silent and disappeared into the hedgerows.

The Mighty Miss Havering Ma’am gazed at her demesne, then - examining her gloves with a critical air - blew on her silver whistle and bellowed, “Mortimer, come here! Immediately!”

The maid, her heart fluttering wildly and rejoicing in the suspicion that she might be even more pitiful and incompetent than was humanly possible, approached her mistress with head bowed and a hopeful light in her rheumy eyes. “Yes, Ma’am,” she said while curtsying in the French manner.

Miss Havering Ma’am extended her gloved hands and waggled her fingers. “And what, pray tell, are these?”

“Thems be your hands, Ma’am,” the ancient factotum replied, then, suspecting she might have somehow dressed her mistress in the wrong pair of hands, added, “and right heligent they are, too, Ma’am.”

“How dare you comment on our person!” Miss Havering roared, causing the bushes to quake, “These tentacles are all wrong! Remove them at once and bring me the right pair!”

“Your tentacles, Ma’am?” replied Mortimer, not entirely sure what was expected of her. “Was you talking about your hands?”

“How dare you even suggest such a thing!” The Great Lady huffed. “These very hands, the hands you see before your ill-gotten eyes, were once admired by the first cousin to the second lady-in-waiting to (she lowered her voice and spoke in reverence) Her Imperial Majesty Herself.” Mist glinted in Miss Havering’s eyes and her mind wandered back to the days of her debut, and she burbled, “Oh, my dear Lord Cholmondsey, one very much fears that one’s dance card is full…” Her voice sank deeper still into a wishful and girlish whisper, and a single tear appeared in her left eye. Mortimer, standing beside the phaeton, waited a suitable length of time for her mistress to recover, and then cleared her throat in an obsequious manner.

“Yes, Mortimer,” barked Miss Havering, “What is it this time?”

“Excuse me, Ma’am, but you was asking me to remove your…”

“And about time, too,” interrupted Her Mistress, regaining her composure and contorting her face into its correct position. When the servant hovered uncertainly, Miss Havering Ma’am grew most impatient and barked at her, as was customary on such occasions. “The right pair, you oaf, the right pair.”

“B… b… but Miss Havering M’m, I was sure you said the purple ones this morning,” quavered Mortimer.

“But not these purple ones, you fool. The right ones.”

Mortimer fell silent for a moment, trying to locate the placement of her brain. But as Her Mistress said nothing and only persisted in glowering at her, she finally ventured to speak before she was spoken to.

“Miss Havering M’m, if it pleases you, ma’am” she said.

“ye-e-e-e-e-s,” replied her mistress, ‘may we be of assistance?”

“Well, ma’am, I was just wondering, ma’am?”

“Yes, Mortimer, how may we assist you?” asked Miss Havering Ma’am in her best spinster librarian voice (such as Mrs. DaFarge had been known to employ when faced with one of her more common cardholders).

“Well, it’s like this, ma’am,” answered Mortimer, perhaps encouraged by her mistress’ apparently helpful attitude. “If it pleases you, Miss Havering M’m, you did request your purple gloves and them’s wot I brung.” She then quickly added, as if to reassure herself that the world was still right way round, “innit?”

“One is with you thus far,” purred Miss Havering evenly.

“I putted one on your left hand and one on your right hand, at least I think that’s wot I dun.”

“Is there a particular reason why you are speaking in such an irritatingly quaint manner, Mortimer?” queried Her Mistress, suddenly overcome with dizziness.

But Mortimer had fainted dead away and lay on the ground in a heap.

“Oh for goodness sake,” trumpeted Miss Havering, “bring the smelling salts,” and then remembering that the only servant who knew where the salts were kept was Mortimer, she barked a fresh command. “Number Two! Come here instantly and forthwith! Position her nose under your left arm. If we cannot have smelling salts then we shall have to make do with what is available.”

Dogpiddle sat cross-legged beside Mortimer and stuffed her face into his armpit as directed. She immediately coughed violently, spluttered and fought herself free, and when she looked up her face was red and shiny and she looked new and reborn.

“Am I in Heaven,” she asked, “and are all of you Hangels?”

“Certainly not!” barked Miss Havering, “and get up at once!”

Mortimer, looking more radiant by the second, immediately scrambled to her knees, bowed low to her mistress and genuflected more times than had been seen in a very long time, “If not han hangel, then yew are my wonderful God! At last I have met you. I have come home! Sweet Lord…”

“Don’t be silly,” sighed Miss Havering, “You cannot have come home yet because we haven’t left. Now would you please stop scrambling about in the mud and fetch the correct pair of gloves from my dressing table.”

“Oh, Your Worshipful God Madam,” Mortimer grovelled, touching a tuft of grass with her forelock, “I shall run like the wind to do Thy Bidding.”

“Be off then,” barked Miss Havering, pretending not to listen.

“Only, please, Your Worshipful Holiness, God Madam, please remind me…”

“Idiot!” roared Miss Havering in her most omnipotent voice, “Fetch us the one true pair of purple gloves in the right glove drawer. The one true pair shall be embroidered with the letter ‘R’, signifying that they are the right pair. What you brought us earlier was the left pair, which is the incorrect pair and cannot be worn on alternate Tuesdays. This,” she said in tone of one both holy and wholly wise, “is an alternate Tuesday.”

It took a good many minutes for the problem to be resolved, and for Miss Havering (under her new guise as God) to be resplendent in her royal purple right gloves and once again seated in the ancestral phaeton, suitably bedecked with robes and with Number Two in his most beautiful harness, prancing in a manner that would have gladdened the long dead heart of Cézar de Marais Haveringoise (première classe).

In all the excitement and adjustments to protocol (as befitting the treatment of a Sacerdotal Deity), nearly everyone had quite forgotten the great, white, lozenge-shaped object (once flying, now resting atop Miss Havering’s head) whose appearance had played such a major part in the difficulties. The only two individuals who had not forgotten were those trapped inside this most luminous object. Of these two, one was serene and calm, perfectly surrendered to an unknown and possibly unpleasant fate. His companion, on the other hand, was snorting like a bull and primed to shred the nose of the next idiot to knock on the lozenge’s surface and ask a stupid question. “I have had it, Owld Misther Bucket,” huffed Olivia Spider, “and I simple will not take any more!”

Owld Misther Bucket heaved a great sigh and said he concurred. “However,” he added, “I don’t know what we can do. We seem to have fallen from a very great height, and are presently perched upon something which wobbles about a great deal.”

“Whatever it is, it barks in a very loud voice and has a great opinion of itself,” replied Olivia Spider sarcastically.

Whereupon Miss Havering Ma’am smacked her new white bonnet with her whip. “Do hold your tongue, hat,” she roared, “and do not speak until you are bidden!”

“Never mind, my dear,” said Owld Misther Bucket to his little friend in a very low voice, “something will come up. It always does. And in the meantime we can always sing to each other. Perhaps the wobbly thing on which we sit will be greatly pleased at our small amusement and will spare our lives.”

“I know,” said Olivia Spider, “I shall dedicate a ballad to my tiny, lost Libbedy. Would that suffice?”

“That would be utterly delightful,” said Ould Misther Bucket, “and if I may, I shall whistle a melodic accompaniment.”

Ode to Precious Libbedy

My darling precious Libbedy
The sweetest apple crumble
You’re made of jam and honey combs
And all things bright and bumble.

I do think you might comb your hair
And come to play parchesi
And stick less garlic in your nose
To make your breath more pleasy.

Come home to me my little one
But only if you wash more
I do not think your taste in spats
Will make my joyful heart roar.

Yum – yum – yum
(at which point Owld Misther Bucket repeated the final verse no less than twelve times, finally ending with a flourish and a solemn ”Aaaaamen”).

As it so happened, the instant Olivia Spider opened her mouth to sing, the phaeton caught its right front wheel in a small, protruding root, ejecting Miss Havering into a nearby chestnut tree and sending her new, fuzzy white lozengy bonnet into the sky for a good three miles or more. Its journey being considerable, the article in question was not seen again for several hours, and when it was, it surprised no one in particular that it came to rest on the Sacred Receptacle of The General’s Memorial Pinnacle, on the exact same spot whence it had been ejected before falling on to Miss Havering’s magnificent purple bonnet.

By coincidence, or perhaps not, Mrs. DaFarge, nearing the end of her quest for The Memorial Goat’s Cheese and desiring more than ever to exorcise the spirit of Mrs. Begonia Throttle from her liver, where it was causing havoc, had just a moment or two previously climbed to the central roof of The Big House. Out of breath and very much out of sorts, she reinforced her gumption with two drams of fifty-year-old Auld Ram’s Fundament (of which several dozen barrels were stacked near the tomb in readiness for the anticipated return from the dead of The General). “That is better,” she proclaimed to herself, after which she felt more inclined than ever to achieve her personal grail. “Ah,” she said, looking up to the top of the spire at the same instant The Lozenge descended from Heaven, “this might be easier than I had anticipated. That large white thing must be The Memorial Goat’s Cheese!”

Whereupon, she hoiked up her skirts and climbed up the narrow iron staircase that spiralled round and round the obelisk. “You!” she called, and then again, “Halloa! Have I the honour of addressing The Memorial Goat’s Cheese?”

Unbeknownst to her (and hardly worth either noticing or bothering about), a very small individual, identical in every respect to Mrs. DaFarge (only with a poorer taste in outer garments), happened to be clinging to the lozenge with all her might. She, too, was out of sorts (not to say extremely disagreeable), having mistaken the object for a bus, with the result that the occupants (obviously lower class and not at all well-spoken) had addressed her in the familiar and in a rude tone of voice. Not only that, but they had quite obviously mistaken her for her sister Eulilie, who was (as far as she was concerned) a most odious person living or dead.

Mrs. DaFarge greeted the object of her quest once again, “Oh Great Memorial Goat’s Cheese, it is I, Mrs. DaFarge, the Head Librarian, Deputy Mayoress of Life and Lady of Social Standing, who is seeking an audience with Your Eminence!”

Whereupon her sister, whose name was Phosphorescence Fish-Baight (being married, as she was, to the recently deposed president of The Miss Havering’s Bog Hunting and Fishing Club, Felonimous Arbuthnotical Fish-Baight), saw her opportunity to humiliate her elder and socially more cumbersome sister, said in a very spiritually evolved voice, “You have come not a moment too soon, my daughter Eulilie! Bow down and lay your left ear upon my foot.”

Mrs. DaFarge, fairly desperate to rid herself of the shade of Mrs. Begonia Throttle and to be divorced from her most recent husband (the odious Ms. Bedelia Zonker in her guise as the mysterious and exotic beggar), and suspecting no treachery from the likes of The Memorial Goat’s Cheese, did as she was commanded. “Your Masterful and Wondrous Eminence, Your Wish is my command.”

“What is it you desire of me and my glorious powers?” roared the awkwardly middle age Phosphorescence, quite enjoying a new found freedom now that she was a despotic goat’s cheese.

“Your Perfection, if I may be permitted, I shall tell you of my desperate plight,” began Mrs. DaFarge.

“Be quick about it,” interrupted The Faux Goat’s Cheese, “but do not take your ear from the ground. And should you by accident catch sight of my Glorious Being, I fear I shall stamp upon your nose.”

“Oh, My Great and Indulgent One,” wept Mrs. DaFarge, “I, who am the lowest of the low and the most unworthy of all your petitioners, readily concur.”

“Then begin,” pronounced The Cheese, adding, “You have exactly two minutes and twelve seconds.”

“If it pleases Your Cheeseship, in a detestable fit of pique I consumed the grotesquely greedy tycoon Mrs. Begonia Throttle, owner of Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s Tea Cosy and a dozen other businesses in Miss Havering’s Splendid Bog. She had deceitfully enjoined me in wedlock to an evil, devious but most handsome eastern gentleman…”

“Hmmm,” interjected The Cheese, thoughtfully, “that seems to have been a most reasonable course of action on her part.”

“But, Your Reverend and Omnipotent Cheesehood,” wailed Mrs. DaFarge, “it was not a gentleman at all, it was the pathetic Ms. Bedilia Zonker, my tiresome Lithuanian assistant at The Lending Library.”

“Eulilie DaFarge,” boomed The Cheese in ominous undertones, “is not this selfsame Ms. Bedelia Zonker your lawfully wedded spouse?”

“Well…” ventured Mrs. DaFarge, “I suppose so…”

“And is she not your Lord and Master?”

“If you put it like that,” said Mrs. DaFarge, losing all hope.

“Then you must obey her in all things,” opined The Cheese, adding, “there is nothing to be done. Go forth and worship…”

“B…b…but,” stuttered Mrs. DaFarge.

“B…b…but me no buts,” screamed The Cheese.

“P…p…please do not leave me bereft of hope,” cried Mrs. DaFarge. “What must I do?”

But there was no reply, for at that very moment The Real Cheesied Pimple and Mousse, living in the tower directly underneath the lozenge and becoming exceedingly annoyed at the unpleasant Phosphorescence Fish-Baight and her treatment of the unhappy Mrs. DaFarge, sent a dozen of its minions to the roof to capture the odious creature and bring her down into the dungeon to be tortured. A further minion, Mr. Cyril Himsbothom, was dispatched to Mrs. DaFarge.

“Are you Mrs. DaFarge?” he intoned. “Mrs. Eulilie DaFarge?”

“Yes, it is I, the miserable Eulilie DaFarge,” she moaned, not daring to left her head from the slates.

“I do not quite know how to put this,” said Mr. Himsbothom, “but you are free to go.”

“B…b…but I don’t understand,” stammered Mrs. DaFarge.

“The cruellest trick in the world has been played upon you,” he said in the most sympathetic voice he could muster (which was considerable, having been trained as a massage therapist). “I fear you have been deceived. There is no possession and there was no wedding. It was all a hoax devised by Ms. Bedelia Zonker (who has been banished to an odious place for a very long time) and your sister Phosphorescence, who – as you know – was jealous of your beauty and magnitude.”

“But,” ventured Mrs. DaFarge, suddenly suspicious and wishing to be cautious, “what about Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s business enterprises? To whom do they belong?”

“To you, of course,” laughed Mr. Cyril Himsbotham quite happily. “She has found true happiness in her new circumstance and is glad to be ride of the burdensome responsibility.”

“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. DaFarge. “So, I see.”

Copyright 2007 JA Weeks