Chapter Thirty

Directory of Humor Blogs

The Edible Possibles of Mrs. DaFarge and The Apparent Artlessness of Delphinium Bedroom-Slipper


Peveral Murkin and Ermentrude Pinkley and daff Maud Bunkum, much out of breath and glad to be recovered from the day’s unfortunate distractions, were sitting ‘round the large centre table in the refurbished, renamed and vastly improved Mrs. Eulilie DaFarge’s Tea Cosy & Espresso Bar (under new management, Mrs. DaFarge, proprietress, no cappuccini served after 10.30am). In front of them was an impressively gaudy pink Belique teapot in the shape of a seashell, and at each of the perfectly arranged place settings were matching plates and cups and saucers. “So much more inviting, don’t you think,” remarked Peveral Murkin, “than the chipped, cracked and mismatched Royal Doulton Mrs. Begonia Throttle was forever rescuing from charity shops.” “One doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead,” responded Ermentrude Pinkley, nodding her head, “but her thriftiness was extremely unattractive. One only has to sample one of Mrs. DaFarge’s scones to be struck by their quality.” “Yes,” added Daff Maud Bunkum, for good measure. “Cheapness made Begonia’s face shrivel up like a prune. Besides, when one ate her food, one never knew quite what it was one was eating.”

“Perfectly true,” remarked a fourth personality at the table (seated directly opposite Peveral Murkin). “When she cleared the tables, she used to take all the uneaten bits and pieces back to the kitchen. Flossie Dirigible, who was stepping out with Lairy Bogbug at the time, used to say Mrs. Throttle would cut away all the nibbled bits, glue the scones and cakes back together with flour and water paste and pink icing and serve them up the following day.”

“So they say, so they say,” countered Peveral Murkin sagely, “although to be fair to Mrs. Begonia Throttle (of Blessed Memory) one must take care to separate rumour from fact.”

“I suppose you’re right,” mused the occupant of the fourth chair, who looked very much like The Mud Monster, “but as Mrs. Throttle herself liked to say, ‘nobody believes the truth anyway, so why bother, and besides, rumour is much more fun’”

“If it hadn’t been for her scurrilous rags,” interjected the occupant of the fifth chair, referring to Mrs. Throttle’s stable of tabloids, “Oinka The Pig would still be selling faggots and mash from her stall in the flea market and be none the worse for wear.”

There was a startled silence, after which The Mud Monster looked directly at the fifth chair (whose occupant was so very small as to be practically invisible) and glowered. “I don’t know what you mean, I’m sure.”

Teeny tiny Libbedy Spider, who was that very small individual, blushed crimson and spluttered, “I didn’t mean to offend, honest I didn’t.”

“Then why did you say it?” scolded The Mud Monster.

“What I meant (only I couldn’t get the words out right) was that the publicity from Mrs. Throttle’s tabloids helped to increase Oinka’s fame. It made her a celebrity, only Begonia didn’t know when to stop, which is why Oinka eventually had a nervous breakdown and went into hiding.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” huffed The Mud Monster. “In any case, it’s none of your business.”

“That’s the whole point,” replied Libbedy. “What the tabloids were writing was none of anybody’s business, even if some of it was true.”

“None of it was true,” sighed The Mud Monster, “not even the items Oinka sold to Mrs. Throttle to support her family.”

“Ohhh?” said the other occupants of the table in unison, before falling silent and staring into space with embarrassed expressions.

Peveral Murkin picked up the teapot and refilled the cups, after which he took a fresh teacake and passed the plate to the right (after first offering a cake to Ermentrude Pinkley, who was seat on his left).

“I do miss her,” signed the fifth member of the party, “I really do. Mrs. Throttle, I mean. We all knew she could serve the same items over and over again for a month before giving up on them, but, you know, there was something special about her.”

“There most certainly was,” snapped Mrs. DaFarge, who happened to be passing the table on her way to the office. “It was called greed!” And with that, the new owner, carrying a large stack of ledgers, disappeared into the small office at the back.

“Mrs. Throttle kept her all her accounts in her head, she did,” sighed daff Maud, “she must have been impossibly intelligent.”

“Impossibly crooked, more like it,” interjected Ermentrude Pinkley. “From what I hear, she was bleeding the county dry.”

The five at the table sighed in unison and fell silent for a couple of minutes, after which they refilled their cups once again from Mrs. DaFarge’s gaudily delicate pink teapot, so reminiscent of the seaside, and ordered an exceptionally large plate of Battenburg cake.

***
Some distance away and dangling just below the topmost branch of a very, very tall and large tree, the evil twin wellingffomething-ffomething sisters, Muffin and Wambledy-Jane, were swinging in the afternoon breeze. Both had their eyes tightly closed against the possibility of seeing something unfulfilling, and both were screaming. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” they screamed, and then again, “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” Their plight was helped not at all by various factors which seemed, for whatever reason, to have ganged up against them.

The first of these were the two rapacious great orangy, hairy creatures (Miss Havering’s favourite Setters, named Bountiful and Brutus-Louise, respectively) who swung beneath them at the end long, leather leads which were attached (fortunately for them) to their harnesses and not their collars. These two creatures were even more fearful of great heights than the sisters, and although they did their best to howl in horror, the very horror of their circumstance had sealed their lower gums to their uppers, and the best they could do was emit a somewhat pathetic (although suitably well-intended) whine, something like “Whine whine whiiiiiiiiiiii.e.”

The other ends of their leads here clasped in the hands of what could be called an even more important (perhaps even the most important, though not necessarily) factor. Miss Havering. Miss Havering neither screamed nor whined, not even a little bit. Miss Havering, more than ever aware of her position as granddaughter of The General, was considering her options. Although it was not the first time she had sat on the topmost branch of a very, very tall and large tree, it was the first time she had been catapulted into that position by an errant phaeton. “All things considered,” she told herself somewhat severely, “it is far wiser to climb, and if we should ever return to this position in the future, we shall keep that in mind.”

Whilst she was considering possible courses of action, Miss Havering looked down to get her bearings. It was a very, very long way, and it seemed to her that the entire household was clustered around the tree, looking up and gesticulating wilding and speaking in unsuitably loud voices. “How very small and inconsequential they are,” she said to herself, “and how badly it reflects on us.” She took a small piece of barley sugar from one of her many pockets and popped it into her mouth, counting, as she did so, the small line-up of servants. “When The General was alive, there were so many more of them.”

Miss Havering looked down over her left shoulder and considered the state of The Big House. “Those chimneys want doing. And what is that monstrous white fuzzy thing on Grandpapa’s memorial spire? And why is everything such a dreadful ruin?”

She sighed heavily and sucked on the sweet. Looking down again, she noticed that several of the servants (which ones she could not say what with them being so very far away) were propping what appeared to be a very short ladder against the tree.

“What do they hope to gain by that?” she said, before extracting a silver flask of Auld Ram’s Fundament from another pocket and taking a swig. “If they have the time to play silly buggers with a ladder, then they have too much time on their hands.” And with that, she unhooked a tiny mother-of-pearl inlaid, silver bound ivory notepad and a silver pencil from her chatelaine. “One shall make a note of this for future reference: ‘servants bored; too much time on their hands; house is falling down; summon Sturdge’.”

Miss Havering replaced the pencil and notepad on their hooks and went into a reverie. Sturdge! Horrible, ugly, cruel, brutal Sturdge! The General’s batman and later his overseer. What a terrible, terrible man he was, and how wonderfully he ran the estate and farms. Like clockwork. Never any decay or waste while he was in charge. She sighed deeply and absentmindedly swung her legs back and forth. Back and forth, back and forth, a little girl on a swing, being pushed back and forth back and forth by the monstrous Sturdge (albeit a very tender, considerate monstrous Sturdge when it came to serving little girls). Miss Havering sighed once again and then a third time. Sturdge had never died, he was far too strong and terrible for that. Even when he had become embarrassing and horribly insane and The General had been forced to blow him up with black powder and beat his head in with an anvil, he had not succumbed. How tiresome it had been, sealing him up in a lead-lined slate and concrete sarcophagus, only to discover some ten years later he was stronger than ever (and even more horribly insane). The General revived him, of course, with a glass of his fourth-best brandy (not even proper Cognac or Armagnac, but a concoction distilled for the curing of temperance among the lesser clergy), whereupon Sturdge immediately beat fourteen undergardeners for partaking of dinner on the Sabbath, re-mortared twenty miles of wall, slaughtered twelve fat boars, butchered them, brined their heads for fromage de tête and cured three hundred pounds of bacon. He was preparing to train an army of three hundred farmers’ lads to protect the estate from possible invasion by the Moghul hoards when The General personally rendered him unconscious with a nude statue of Heracles and put him back into his sarcophagus.

“Our darling granddaughter,” General Lord Havering had said afterwards over the port and walnuts, “after we are gone, Sturdge will be thy vassal, at thy side at all times, prepared to do thy bidding at a moment’s notice. We have placed the key to his prison on thy chatelaine. Use him wisely.”

Many decades had come and gone since that fateful night, the night of The General’s own demise, and never once had Miss Havering availed herself of the batman’s services. “We have grown so frightfully ancient,” she said to herself, “but looking down from this vantage point, it is clear to us that our beloved house might not outlive us. We shall not allow it to crumble around us. It is time for Sturdge to put things right.” She swallowed the remains of her sweet and bellowed down at her servants. “You!” she roared, glaring down at her servants (the ones not yet yielding to the temptation of tea and one of Mrs. Beasley’s marmalade and bull’s pancreas tarts), “Stop dithering with that ladder. Tell Edders to strap himself into our climbing chair and to bring with him two of our stoutest and longest ropes!” Whereupon Mortimer and T’reasa, the only two remaining at the base of the tree, curtsied in the French manner and scuttled into the house. “Will you look at them!” sighed Miss Havering. “Not a single brain cell between them.” quickly adding, “At least they do not breed.”

While she waited for the servants to re-emerge from the house with her climbing chair and the required lengths of rope, Miss Havering cast her mind back to the several occasions on which she had scaled (in commemoration of the various jubilee years) The Matterhorn, Mount Everest, The Andes and Los Torres del Paine (the latter ascent made on her twenty-first birthday explorations of El Seno de Ultima Esperanza). Naturally on these endeavours the chair had been worn by the massively strong and dependable Sturdge, but with him being locked away in his sarcophagus and with the only key being safely secreted on her person, Edders would have to make do, and Miss Havering reminded herself that on this occasion she was only up a tree and not a cliff.

“Unless one is rendered a corpse by Edders (should he drop us fatally to the ground, he shall be dismissed without a reference) one shall celebrate our forthcoming anniversary in The Himalayas. Sturdge shall, of course, accompany us, and together (with our person strapped to his mighty back) we shall be the first lady of breeding to conquer twelve shimmering spires of an afternoon.”

While she was reliving past mountaineering triumphs and dreaming of those to come, Miss Havering’s legs started swinging back and forth again, back and forth, back and forth, even more vigorously, as though in gleeful anticipation of glories to come. So vigorous and reckless were her movements that, before she knew it, her two gumboots were cast off into the wind and sailed westward over the bog. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” screamed the startled and frightened Sisters Wellingffomething-ffomething, (who were, for the first time in years not necessarily evil and could, therefore, be spoken about in normal-seized print). “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee”, shrieked Muffin, while at the same time remembering to hold her skirts closed to avoid a scandal. “Wheeeeeeee!” echoed an elated (and possibly ecstatic) Wambledy-Jane, who not only was not modestly clasping her skirts to her person but was sailing with her arms outstretched and her face into the wind.

“What on earth are you doing?” shouted Muffin.

“Oh, Muffy,” replied her sister, “we are free!”

“On the contrary,” shouted Muffin, more than a little aggrieved at being called ‘Muffy’, “we are about to meet our maker!”

“How wonderful,” screeched Wambledy-Jane, elated.

Muffin looked at her sister sternly for a second, before being distracted by two rust-coloured leggy and furry objects sailing along beneath them. “Oh my,” she muttered to herself. “How very inconvenient!”

“Did you say something, Muffin?” yelled her sister, still oblivious to any impending doom.

“I said we are not alone,” replied her sister in an exasperated tone of voice.

“Of course we are not alone,” laughed Wambledy-Jane. “Old Mister Snort is nigh!”

Two seconds of complete and stunned silence followed, during which a flock of small birds, cross at finding two rather large and tattered rubber boots soaring along in their midst, glared at them severely and made uncalled for remarks.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeee!” shrieked Muffin, noticing that the ground was fast approaching, “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

“Ooooooooooof,” said Wambledy-Jane, as she tumbled head over heals and came to rest in a soft mound of earth.

“Oooooooooof,” echoed her sister, and then, “Owwwwwww!” as she landed bottom first in a bramble.

“Yelp! Yelp! Yelp!” screamed the two large, orangey, rapacious creatures, Miss Havering’s favourite setters, as they fell into a nearby bog pond with a splash and a thud.

The four of them cautiously examined their bruises while they caught their breaths and looked around, after which Muffin glowered at the two enormous and inconveniently muddy dogs. “Come, Bountiful! Come Brutus-Louise!” she barked, “Come here!”

The two dogs struggled out of the pond, shook themselves free of goo and trotted eagerly toward the spot where the boots had landed.

“Sit!” commanded Muffin, quickly adding, stay!”

***
The occupants of the large round centre table in Mrs. Eulilie DaFarge’s Tea Cosy & Espresso Bar (under new management, Mrs. DaFarge, proprietress, no cappuccini served after 10.30am and scones baked to order) had finished eating the last of the Battenburg.

Mrs. DaFarge happened to be surveying the proceedings from the door of her small office and recalled an earlier conversation with one of her nearest and dearest friends.

“Battenburg?” her friend had gasped in horror. “You serve Battenburg?”

“I know, I know! It’s dreadfully common but so are most of my customers,” a sighing Mrs. DaFarge had retorted to Missus Ridglet-Grassworm over dry sherry and tiny sandwiches at The Women’s Institute ‘Accommodating The Working Classes’ Committee Strategy Session earlier that day. “One simply is obliged to compromise, isn’t one?”

“But Eulilie, dear,” continued Missus Ridglet-Grassworm sadly before devouring another cress and pâte de cuisses de grenouille soldier, “you must remember your position! Fine Darjeeling from those dreadful shell cups? It is simply too much!”

“You must try to be more magnanimous, my dear Euphemia,” replied Mrs. DaFarge, “and take comfort in the fact I have not as yet hung the seventy-three Beswick ducks on the walls.”

“Oh, Eulilie,” sobbed Missus Ridglet-Grassworm. “What is the world coming to?”

“Baked beans on toast and mash, I expect,” said Mrs. DaFarge, sadly, “or immense plates of sausages and chips and tomato sauce,” adding bleakly, “or Kabobs at three in the morning and binge drinking.”

“Too, too horrible!” swooned Missus Ridglet-Grassworm, gulping down the last of the cucumber and dill on Melba toast squares.

“Never you mind, Euphemia,” chortled Mrs. DaFarge heartily, “and rest assured those dreadful cups will never darken the tannin of my best Darjeeling!”

“How very wonderful you are, Eulilie,” responded Missus Ridglet-Grassworm with a sigh. “I do not see how you manage it all, and at your age!”

***
Within twenty or so minutes, Muffin and Wambledy-Jane had extracted themselves from their muddy splodges and clambered aboard the setters, Muffin on the sleek Bountiful and the plumper Wambledy-Jane on the ancient, fat and doddering Brutus-Louise.

“This is better,” sighed Muffin, squoodging herself about and settling nicely in the middle of Bountiful’s strong, slender back.

“If mummy could only see us now,” beamed Wambledy-Jane. “She hadn’t stopped turning in her grave ever since that day Herself first used us so very poorly.

“Hmph!” replied her sister stoutly, “Mummy this! Mummy that! Please get it into your head that it was Mummy who was responsible for our plight!”

“How can you say that,” cried Wambledy-Jane, “It was Old Mister Snort who sold us into slavery. I shall never forget the sticker on our box until the day I die! ‘Used Ladies’ Gumboots, One Owner, £ -/ 2/6, slightly soiled’. Even thinking about it makes me go all strange.”

“You forgot the three farthings,” commented Muffin dryly.

“How could you?” wept Wambledy-Jane bitterly. “How could you even bear to remember… to remind… oh, oh, oh…” At which point the elderly plumpish and slightly scarred Wellington boot broke down in a flood of tears.

“There, there,” cooed her sister, thumping her on the back with her riding crop. “That is all in the past, my dear. We cannot go back, not any more.”

“You’re right,” snuffled Wambledy-Jane, “and I’m sorry for breaking down like that! It’s just that it was all so very cruel and unnecessary.”

“The past is a dark and murky realm, my dear sister,” said Muffin in a wise tone of voice. “It does not take kindly to visits from old acquaintances. Best to go forward, Wambledy-Jane, onward and upward.”

“But I can’t help thinking of her from time to time,” sighed Wambledy-Jane, “she was my daughter and had such a pretty smile and such beautiful hair.”

“Delphinium Bedroom-Slipper had very little smile to speak of, and even less hair,” said Muffin Wellingffomething-ffomething to herself. “She was a nasty, ungrateful little girl and deserved everything she got.”

“Did you say something, Muffin?” asked Wambledy-Jane, coming out of her reverie.

“Just clearing my throat, my dear sister, just clearing my throat,” replied Muffin wearily, adding in a commanding voice, “Walk on, dog, walk on!”

Copyright 2007 JA Weeks

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Directory of Humor Blogs

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

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Directory of Humor Blogs

The Quest for The Memorial Goat’s Cheese or The Confusion of Mrs. DaFarge


Mrs. DaFarge was annoyed. It was, as to be expected, a recurring theme in her life to dwell in a moderate state of respectable dudgeon. After all, she occupied a certain stratum, much loftier than the realm in which other, less elevated organisms went about their ordinary, fairly useless, humdrum lives, and in the battle to maintain the highest of standards she felt the onerous weight of the world upon her shoulders. “If I am not willing to fly the flag of social perfection, then I have let the side down,” she would say, and for much of her long life she had but rarely stumbled.

It was not uncommon for Mrs. DaFarge to articulate extreme chagrin and exasperation, but only when addressing her reflection in her dressing room mirror (a mannerism picked up and used to a less gentile effect by her underling, the spiteful Ms. Delilah Zonker). To erupt in unmannerly and vulgar harangues in front of mere mortals was unthinkable; her reflection was as well bred as she and, therefore, impervious to insults. Besides, it rarely if ever gossiped.

But in spite of the trials and tribulation she was forced on a daily and hourly basis to endure, Mrs. DaFarge was hardly if ever annoyed. “To spend one minute in a state of annoyance when one is gifted with a life such as mine, is to slap the face of God!”

Be that as it may, on this particular afternoon, Mrs. DaFarge was annoyed.

Her 11.20 appointment with The Marriage Bureau for Respectable Gentlefolk’s managing director, Mrs. Begonia Throttle, had not gone as planned. “What is this?” she’d trumpeted when Mrs. Throttle’s personal assistant of the day, Miss Mimsy Flotsum, produced a leading candidate in the marriage stakes. “Why, it is nothing but a stinkbug!”

“But,” responded Mrs. Throttle, with the utmost respect, “he is the most immaculate and refined gentleman we have on our books. Not only is he a professional of independent means, but I am told he sings tenor in the village choir.”

“I,” roared Mrs. DaFarge, “sing lead alto, and I assure you we has never once darkened the stairs of Reverend Spinckter’s choir loft!”

“I am told on good authority he is very retiring,” replied Mrs. Throttle, trying to retain her composure.

“Well,” said the noble lady, after a moment’s reflection, “bring him out again (and be quick about it, I haven’t got all day) and parade him ‘round the room, first one way, then the t’other. If he equips himself satisfactory and has about him no odour of the nineteenth arrondissement (as she referred to the most lurid of the south bog neighbourhoods), I shall require him to speak. Perhaps he might compose a sonnet or two to my grandeur, perhaps not. In any event, he must be acquainted with the spoken word, as nurtured by The Bard and dear Mr. Wordsworth. I will consider (but only just) a certain, barbaric regionalism to his tonality, but be warned, Mrs. Throttle, I shall withdraw my patronage of this establishment should he be endowed with the three word vocabulary as enjoyed by the current batch of children’s television presenters!”

Mrs. Begonia Throttle blushed deepest crimson and removed her spectacles, wiping them with a corner of her faux-damask tablecloth and humming a few bars of her beloved Schoenberg, before glancing sweetly at her most important client.

“Might I suggest a discreet corner table for two at darling Chef Blatard de Flumpe’s Café aux Quinze Oublis. His terrarium de amour in the maze is divinely exquisite this time of the year and he is, as you know, discretion itself.”

In spite of herself, Mrs. DaFarge shuddered outwardly. “And to think I was once susceptible to the hypnotic charms of his mousse au chocolat avec sauce haut-le-cœur supreme,” she said. “It was my undoing, but, of course, you recall the unfortunate ‘affaire delicate’ involving Dr. Polymorphibubble Stickleback (possibly Prof. Doktor Polymporphius Stickleback, perhaps not)) and his boat…” she filled the rancid air of Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s tiny office with her silence, and Mrs. Throttle, to her credit, had the good grace to blush once again and lower her eyes.

“That was indeed unfortunate,” she said.

“Indeed it was!” replied Mrs. DaFarge. “And I have not forgotten he came, shall we say, highly recommended. Now what was it you said? Oh yes, ‘My dear Mrs. DaFarge,’ you said, ‘I am told on the highest authority that Professor Doctor Stickleback is a most distinguished professional of independent means and sings counter tenor in the village choir.”

“Alas, I fear you have remembered correctly,” lamented Mrs. Begonia Throttle, “if only I hadn’t been swept away by the sweet music of the castrati! In my childhood, during the long summer evenings in Naples, the piazzas and loggias would melt with their song! Honestly, Mrs. DaFarge, it wasn’t my fault! It was my childhood and my mother’s incessant beatings and the gelati di marsala…I was in a trance.”

“Harrumph!” commented Mrs. DaFarge, and once again, “Harrumph!”

And so it was that, exactly forty-three minutes later, Mrs. DaFarge emerged from The Marriage Bureau for Respectable Gentlefolk (Mrs. Begonia Throttle, proprietoress) with reservations for two at Chef Blatard de Flumpe’s Café aux Quinze Oublis and a certificate of marriage signed by Miss Mimsy Flotsum (who, in addition to being Mrs. Throttle’s Personal Assistant was also a fully ordained Minister of the Church of The Seven Hidden Penchants [of Las Vegas, Nevada], as well as a Justice of the Peace). Precisely ten seconds before The Great Librarian’s exit from Mrs. Throttle’s office, sanity had returned to her, full force, courtesy of an incident involving her new groom’s burkha. Immediately upon Miss Flotsum proclaiming “I pronounce you man and wife that’ll be thirty shillings,” the mysterious and exotic foreign beggar and distinguished professional (and new husband) leaned over to kiss his blushing bride, accidentally tripping over his garment, and revealing himself to be none other than the hideous Ms. Delilah Zonker, arch-nemesis as well as Assistant Librarian and recently engaged Second Assistant Librarian. It was then that Mrs. DaFarge’s head cleared and annoyance set it. “I am extremely annoyed, Mrs. Begonia Throttle! You have betrayed me once again!” Thereupon she ate the bemused café owner and leading entrepreneur and squashed the stinkbug like, well, a bug. “You are fired, Ms. Delilah Zonker and whatever your other name is! And don’t bother coming in to pick up your cards. I shall throw them into the gutter. You may find them there, amongst the pig leavings.”

Once outside, she took a deep breath and examined both the very large and ostentatious fake diamond ring on her finger and the marriage certificate. The former was, quite naturally, vulgar to the extreme and so she felt no compunction in hurling it into the nearest pigsty (where it was eaten immediately by one of the [late] Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s prize boars). The certificate of marriage she folded carefully and inserted into the safe located in the bottom of her Louis Vuitton handbag (a present from her beloved, departed Clarence). “The first thing I shall do,” she trumpeted to herself (to ensure she was listening properly) “is have this beastly marriage annulled! The second thing is to proceed without delay to Chef Blatard de Flumpe’s Café aux Quinze Oublis and avail myself of a double portion of mousse au chocolat avec sauce haut-le-cœur supreme. My mouth is salty from eating that common Throttle woman, and I require great beauty of palate… of…”

“I KNOW,” she boomed. “I shall submit myself to three hours or so of Rafael la Louche’s pummelling ministrations at Day Spa Delicioso. I demand to be a new woman immediately! J’arrive Rafael! J’arrive.”

***

Forty-seven minutes later, following her three hours of aggressive and therapeutic ministrations by the sinewy, Italianesque Rafael (perfect in every way except he was ginger), Mrs. DaFarge was settled comfortably on the black leather Chesterfield in the chambers of Chief Justice Sir Humbart Pincer-Pettigrew (father-in-law of Dorothina Flumpe, the erstwhile wife of Chef Blatard) and becoming reacquainted with his finest single malt. “A gift from the General, may he rest in peace, his most exquisitely perfect distillation of Auld Ram’s Fundament. The cask was exactly one hundred years old even then, and that was over ninety years ago,” said His Lordship, to which Mrs. DaFarge replied, somewhat uncertainly, “and how very delightful it is, Your Lordship,” to which he cleared his throat and shouted, “Here, Here!” and bade his clerk recharge their glasses.

The reason for Mrs. DaFarge’s delay in arriving at His Lordship’s chambers, quite aside from her session with the succulent and muscular Rafael, was directly related to the unfortunate events in The Marriage Bureau. “I have come, my dear cousin Humbart, for your advice. My life, for whatever reason, it unravelling in a most unsettling and common fashion, and I wish it to be rectified before the afternoon is out. I must chair a meeting of the Women’s Institute’s Select Committee on the Abolition of Unfortunate Childhoods at half past two and I cannot be seen to be less than bountiful,” whereupon he replied, “I quite understand, my dear, and I shall give you all the assistance I can. Pray, continue.”

Thus encouraged, Mrs. DaFarge launched into a precise though (for her) somewhat incoherent account of the events of the day, culminating in her unaccountable behaviour following the splendid Rafael’s therapeutic manipulations (of which the judge requested a written account). “For the life of me, I cannot understand why I am suddenly given to ungovernably ‘tradesmanlike’ impulses,” she said, lowering her voice at the mere mention of her plight and throwing up her hands (and in so doing, spilling the dregs of the precious Fundament on to her left brogue). “I do apologise,” she cried absentmindedly, before plunging on.

The tale she related was fulsome and piteous, and one which left the Lord Chief Justice quaking in his silks. It left not one detail of that morning’s horrors to the imagination, and included such background information as she could remember, as well as much that she could not (omitting only certain details relating to the ravishing Rafael’s impeccable technique). After nearly six and three-quarter hours, during which the judge’s clerk served them (first) a traditionally unsatisfactory dinner of Brown Windsor Soup, Fried Scampi and Baked Beans, Steak and Kidney Pudding, Plum Duff and Stilton, and (to follow) an intellectually stimulating supper of cuisses de grenouille meunière, perdrix aux truffes and les fraises de bois à la crème, Mrs. DaFarge, at long last, achieved the climax suprème of her story.

“It was, my dear cousin Humbart, upon departing partially invigorated from the physiotherapist’s surgery that a strange and urgent compunction came over me. I was, you see, compelled to convey myself forthwith to The Tea Cosy, that abysmal establishment so favoured by the lower orders and up until a few short hours ago owned by the loathsome Mrs. Begonia Throttle, fortuitously défunte. Once there I proceeded to bake a large variety of exquisite patisseries and upbraid the meagre staff (as you are no doubt aware, they include Miss Frou Frou de Potsy, the manageress, Dorcas O’Leary, the subterranean waitress, Borgo Hankshaft, the baker, about whom the less is said the better, Bert Tiffle, the cook, and [when he puts in an appearance] Lairy Billy Bogbug, the plonge) for their accursed slovenliness. All of this was done without either my consent or knowing. I was is a state of trance, my dear Humbart, performing tasks essential to the furtherance of an establishment that heretofore I have neither entered nor considered anything but onerous. It was as though I felt a sudden and urgent responsibility towards the vile place. I swear, my stately cousin, I had suddenly become HER (that despicable THING, Mrs. Begonia Throttle) in body and mind. I am possessed! And that, my dear cousin, is why I have come to you. I throw myself at your mercy, Your Lordship, you are the only one I trust to rid me of this meddlesome priest.”

“Priest, you say?” muttered the ancient judge into his glass. “How extraordinary!”

“Precisely,” trumpeted Mrs. DaFarge.

“Hmmm,” hummed The Lord Chief Justice, and then again, “Hmmm…”

Mrs. DaFarge perked up, suddenly hopeful. “Yes, my dear Humbart?”

“It is, my dear cousin Eulilie-Elizabeth-Mary-Victoria, a simple case of possession by the consumed. Am I right in supposing that you ate the vile creature in one gulp, without, as they say, masticating unnecessarily?”

“Why yes,” responded Mrs. DaFarge enthusiastically.

“Then, my dear, you are very fortunately indeed,” said the judge in a grave manner, as if about to pronounce sentence. “If you had masticated unnecessarily and unduly, and, by so doing, had shredded her into unrecognisable pulpy fragments, doom would have been upon you for all time and even more. As it is, however, all is not lost,” he added quickly before she could interrupt or sob on his shoulder, “and if you are willing to undertake a pilgrimage to The Shrine of The Memorial Goat’s Cheese on the Tower of the Dead Termagant and offer three black pearls to the sacred eternal vessel, the consumed woman… what was her name?… Mrs. Prattle…”

“Mrs. Throttle,” said Mrs. DaFarge, interrupting him. “Mrs. Begonia Throttle. She is (or was) the proprietress of The Tea Cosy and most of the…”

“Yes,” said The Lord Chief Justice, cutting her off as quickly as possible, “quite so… As I was saying, upon offering the three black pearls to the sacred vessel (which you shall find quite easily, there being adequate signage) the vulgar person shall be obliged to move out of your mind and body (into which it had so precipitously entered, it being a presumptuous and foul social climber and from a bad family). Mrs. Frattle…”

“Throttle,” interjected Mrs. DaFarge as quickly as possibly.

“Exactly,” continued The Lord Chief Justice testily. “As I was saying, this Mrs. Spittle will then be in your power forever, at your beckoned call at all times and in your debt until the end of time.”

“Couldn’t we simply send her to one of those places dead creatures go and forget about her?” inquired Mrs. DaFarge, quickly adding, “after a suitable memorial service, of course. I understand the vicar offers a most pleasing and discreet service. His charges for an internment are quite reasonable, or so I am led to believe, providing one requires only the minimum.”

“You forget, my dear cousin Eulilie-Elizabeth-Mary-Victoria,” chimed in The Judge, “there is no corpus delecti. Without one of those there may well be an enquiry. Such things are, as you may or may not be aware, extremely awkward, and as you are her heir under the law of sole eater, you might well find yourself in for a rough ride.”

“But, my dear cousin Humbart, the income from her various enterprises would be so terribly pleasing to me. I was hoping to landscape the gardens, you see, and the orangery wants replanting…”

“Orangery, my dear Mrs. DaFarge?” he enquired with raised eyebrows, “I was not aware you were in possession of such an asset.”

“Precisely, my dear Lord Chief Justice,” she replied. “Impeccable social standards do not an orangery provide. For that one requires money and a great deal of it. I am a Head Librarian, as well as President of the Women’s Institute and Chairwoman of the Council. The latter two positions pay not at all and the former provides me with a pittance. Why, only last week, the bank (Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s Throttle Bank, if you please) informed me that they were disinclined to honour my overdraft. After all these years, a pillar of the community, and I am destitute!”

“My dear, dear cousin Mrs. DaFarge,” murmured The Aged Judge, patting her reassuringly on the left hand, “I simply had no idea.”

“Precisely,” she said, “no one had.”

“This changes everything,” whispered The Lord Chief Justice, nodding his head sagely. He fell silent for a moment, distracted by a very small caterpillar crawling up his leg. He stabbed it with his right forefinger and popped it absentmindedly into is mouth.

“There is, of course,” he said to Mrs. DaFarge between chews, “the question of your husband, the exotic beggar.”

“Are you referring to Mr. Hui Ya Fing?”

“The very same,” replied Chief Justice Sir Humbart Pincer-Pettigrew (father-in-law of Dorothina Flumpe [erstwhile wife of Chef Blatard]), trimming his pre-prandial cigar with a pair of silver garden secateurs.

“B…b… but,” she studdered, “I smashed him into bits. He is dead, my dear Humbart.”

“Not nearly so dead as you might wish,” The Judge replied, “I am informed Mr. Hui Ya Fing has, this very afternoon while we were partaking of the Golden Amontillado, moved his possessions (twenty boxes in all) into your best bedroom.”

Mrs. DaFarge coughed, disgorging a small trickle of Crème de Menthe, which fell in droplets down her décolletage. “Oh,” she sobbed, “What am I to do?”

“My dear cousin Eulilie-Elizabeth-Mary-Victoria,” replied The Judge in his most eloquent tone of voice, “I fear that unless you are prepared to act as I advised, you will have no choice but to face a life of ruin, as well as a doubtful husband who is also (or so I am advised) your bitterest enemy.”

“What on earth are you talking about,” she demanded.

“Has your short-term memory deserted you completely, Mrs. DaFarge? You yourself admitted that Mr. Hui Ya Fing is none other that the vile Lithuanian Assistant Librarian, Mrs. Delilah Zonker,” adding for effect, “and whichever way you put it, they are both your lawfully wedded spouse, as well as your lord and master.”

Whereupon Mrs. DaFarge fainted dead away.

***

Twenty minutes later, following a therapeutic session in The Judge’s hot tub and several experiments with his beloved essential oils, Mrs. DaFarge emerge from her cousin Humbart’s chambers with a map, a set of instructions and a look of determination on her face. Given her own druthers she might have preferred not to display her intentions so openly, but The Lord Chief Justice had passed sentence. “You may, of course, my dear cousin Eulilie-Elizabeth-Mary-Victoria, carry duplicate instructions in your handbag, but written as they are upon your physiognomy, all may see and admire examples of my calligraphy (for which a full price list – including invitations, decrees, visiting cards and diplomas – have been annotated on your bald spot).” Under any other circumstances, Mrs. DaFarge would have objected most strenuously to being used in such a commercial manner, but if it meant ridding herself of an unwanted husband and a dangerous incubus (or was it succubus) at the same time, then humiliation was a small price to pay.

The Judge had stressed the importance of immediate action. Under no circumstances was she to go through the village (“you would be sorely tempted,” His Lordship had warned, “to follow the possessor’s urgings and visit The Tea Cosy or one of her other business ventures. Once inside, there is no telling what the consumed might get up to, although I am certain it would involve death, at least as far as you are concerned”). Mrs. DaFarge was to follow the instructions (and map) to the letter, walking as briskly as her brogues would allow through the remote eastern marshes to the Stile of The Lost, an archaic pyramid of stone and brick predating the invention of mankind. After she had clambered over to the other side, she should walk four hundred twenty seven substantial paces due east to a primordial oak (‘you can’t miss it,” The Judge had said, “in stands in the centre of the northern parkland and is surrounded only by a sea of grass. You will also be able to identify it by its location half way between The Big House and The Ornamental Inner Gate, and also by the bronze plaque affixed to its mighty trunk”).

“Oh, Humbart, that is so very far away, and I have my committee meetings,” whispered Mrs. DaFarge, desperately.

“My dear Mrs. DaFarge, you will never chair another committee as long as Mrs. Begonia Throttle resides within your stomach.”

“I know, I know,” she groaned. “Well, goodbye, my dearest Lord Chief Justice. Bid me fond farewell. I shall return home immediately and pack for the journey.”

“Au contraire,” interjected The Judge, “There is no time for packing. The three black pearls must be placed within the sacred eternal vessel at exactly sixteen and a half seconds before teatime. One second later and Mrs. Begonia Throttle and her strange characteristics shall become a permanent part of your physiognomy.”

Mrs. DaFarge looked at him petulantly. “I find it irritating that you should even think of me sacrificing pearls of great price, especially the black ones. Black pearls carry with them the memory of dear Prince Albert’s funeral. My great great grandmamma attended (you no doubt recall) in her capacity as close friend of the bereaved. If I am required to cast pearls unto the swine, may I not I substitute a tawdry string of dark greys? They do nothing whatsoever for a lady’s complexion, and besides they look extremely irksome in the light of day? And while I am on the subject, what if I should choose to place my offering in (what was it?) the Sacred Eternal Vessel one second early or one second late?”

“You haven’t been paying attention, have you? One second early or one second late, my dear cousin Eulilie-Elizabeth-Mary-Victoria, and Mrs. Begonia Throttle will sing in your bowels forever!”

With that, Mrs. DaFarge arose from her chair, gathered up her handbag and left The Judge’s chambers. She strode down the ancient street like a three-masted schooner in full sail, oblivious to the medieval aspects of the buildings (of which she had always been so devoted), slowing down only when she reached the iron gates to her garden. “How different life was,” she lamented, “before darling mummy died (she had been devoured by a cat – either Marquis or Maribel-Bean, she never knew which, during a midsummer picnic along the lovely eastern bog stream, in 1947). “Without her to keep him on an even keel, poor daddy simply went into a decline. He had lost the manse to Geraldo Throttle in a game of cards before the week was out… oh daddy daddy daddy, I never could forgive you after we moved into the bungalow. I screamed at you, ‘what would mummy have thought, us having to move from a house with a name into a bungalow with a street number’? I forgive you now, for I have allowed myself to become possessed by Geraldo’s daughter, and I must sacrifice The Three Black Pearls to regain my soul…” whereupon she broke down in bitter sobs and was forced to grab hold of the gatepost for support.

A few minutes later, after some heavy breathing and scolding herself for the show of weakness, Mrs. DaFarge emerged from her little bungalow with a silver-mounted black leather overnight case (thereby partially disobeying The Lord Chief Justice’s instructions). She turned left at the gate and proceeded to the common land at the end of the avenue. Two carefully tended paths intersected the green. She chose the more narrow of the two and followed it round the crystalline waters of the eastern bog pool, passing en route the rowing club and equestrian centre, and not pausing until she had reached the noble (though now sadly neglected) stairs referred to as The Stile of the Lost. In a nonce she was on the other side of the monumental wall, and within another she was standing under the primordial oak. “Was that really four hundred, twenty-seven paces?” she asked herself. “I hardly noticed.” Nor did she care. She had no more and no less than fifteen minutes and forty-seven seconds to reach the Shrine of The Memorial Goat’s Cheese on the Tower of the Dead Termagant and exactly one second more to offer three black pearls to the sacred eternal vessel. “I dare not fail,” she said. “I shall not even consider it!”

And with that, she turned to face the formidable pile of bricks and slate known as Havering Hall. Looming over the great hall of the centre wing was the hideous carbuncle, The Tower of The Dead Termagant, home to the Tomb of The General (and of greater concern to Mrs. DaFarge, the Eternal Sacred Vessel of The Memorial Goat’s Cheese. “You shall not defeat me, Mrs. Begonia Throttle. I am a DaFarge. You are (shudder) trade and will rue the day you dared to stand in the way of my mouth!”

Copyright 2007 JA Weeks

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Directory of Humor Blogs

The Big Three

Libbedy Spider awoke with a start to find a great round muddy face examining her ever so closely, but before she could question it about its purpose in life, it narrowed it’s eyes (which were a speckled yellowish blue) and spoke.

“And who har yoo,” it asked in a reasonably pleasant voice (given the circumstances), “and whwat har yoo made of, and” it added severely, “whwy did you come there?”

Libbedy Spider would have liked very much to sit up and address The Mudmonster politely, but since it was leaning over her and hovered only a few inches from her face it was hardly practicable. “My name is Libbedy Spider,” she replied from her prone position, “and this is the lovely new home I have built for my mother and sisters and brothers.”

“Yoo hev not answurd me,” he scolded in retort, a tear glowing in his left eye. “I asked who yoo were, not whwat yoo wur callt.”

“You asked many other things as well,” she responded. “In fact, if I am correct, you asked far to many questions for anyone to possibly remember on a Tuesday.”

“Is this a TOOSDAY?” asked The Mud Monster, surprised, suddenly dropping his accent. “I must have forgotten to set my watch. What day is it?”

Libbedy thought for a moment and then brightened. “I know! It’s Wednesday. I remember because the sun came up from the south! He always visits his old mother Tuesday nights for tea and stays the night singing the old songs and dancing pointless folk dances. She lives in the south, you see…”

The Mud Monster looked at her carefully and examined her hair, which she’d dyed bright purple and red for the occasion. “Why,” he asked, “is you hair such a strange colour? Have you been ill?”

“No, silly billy, it’s because I’m intent on becoming a rock star!”

“Just like Oinka The Pig?” he asked, but then quickly remembered what he was about and changed the subject. “Will you please be so good as to remind me of Wednesday’s questions? I prepared so very hard for Tuesday that my head is quite full.”

“I know what you mean,” giggled Libbedy (though very sympathetically). “I once revised for twelve exams in a single week and I didn’t have any more room in my brain for a month of Sundays!”

“Ah,” he sighed, “Life can be so terribly vexing! However, you still haven’t answered my question.”

“Which one?”

“Why, more of them than meets the eye,” replied The Mud Monster. “All of Tuesday’s (for I cannot progress to Wednesday until Tuesday’s curiosity has been satisfied) and anything else you can think of.”

“Erm…” muttered the little spiderling, “Erm hmmm…”

“Please,” interjected The Mud Monster, “do not pester me about specific questions and do not ‘erm’ me to death. The mud has slipped into my ears and quite unnerved my follicles.”

“I meant to ask about that,” said Tiny Libbedy, “only I didn’t want to appear rude.”

“Oh, that’s quite all right,” said The Mud Monster, fanning himself frantically with a huge amber and gold feather boa and breathing heavily. “One never cares one way or t’other, not if one craves personal happiness. In any event, one really can’t ‘appear’ rude, can one”?

“At least one shouldn’t, not unless one wants to be sent to bed without raspberry jelly.”

But The Mud Monster seemed not to notice Tiny Libbedy’s interjection and continued with his thought. “It is, of course, possible to appear neat and tidy or covered in treacle, and I’ve known some (which I won’t name but the worst offender is daff Maud Bunkum) to appear with their clothes inside out, whereas Mrs. Ridglet-Grassworm usually appears in Sea Green Tweed twin sets. Baroness Winitraudl Dragon-ffleugan is said to appear dithery, but that is incorrect. She may actually BE afflicted with a dithersome temperment, but since she is invisible, she cannot be said to appear at all. And along the same lines, Mrs. Dafarge cannot appear to be a tiresome bore. She IS a tiresome bore, but when one sees her on the street (which, by the way, is not a good idea, because if she sees you back she is liable to approach you) she appears to be an elegantly clad preying mantis with a fine set of legs and five strands of pearls. So, to cut a long story short, you can either BE rude or NOT be rude, or even (if you are clever enough) both at the same time, but you cannot appear to be rude.”

“Is there a reason for all this?” asked rumpus Libbedy in a sensible, ‘I shall one day be a schoolmarm’ voice. “Why on earth did you wander into my lovely new home, wake me from the best nap I’ve had in ages, and start asking ridiculous questions?”

“Oh dear,” responded The Mud Monster, “I was hoping you would tell me.”

At that moment, a great crashing and banging was heard from the lane. The two of them quite forgot about their own quandary and rushed to the window.

“Oh dear,” they gasped in unison. “It’s Peveral Murkin and he’s tumbled over his feet and into a bin bag. What on earth is he up to?”

And sure enough, just below the pink and gold bedroom window and in the middle of the pretty bohereen, was Peveral Murkin, all knotted into a bundle of feet and legs and arms and stuffed into a black bin bag all tied up with string.

“HHELLPPP!” he cried, and then again, “HHELLPP!”

“What izz thet?” asked the Mud Monster, looking out of the window and reverting to his beloved foreign origins. “Iz is efter eetinggus?”

“Don’t be silly,” laughed Rumpus Libbedy. “I already told you who and what it is! His name is Peveral Murkin and he’s got himself trapped in a very large black bin bag.” Whereupon she threw open the window even further and leaned out as far as she could. “YOO HOO,” she called, “A very good morning to you, Mr. Peveral Murkin”

Peveral Murkin immediately stopped struggling and sniffed, obviously very relieved (if not a little suspicious. One just wasn’t rescued at a drop of a hat without regretting it later). “Libbedy Spider? Is that you?”

“Only if it is you, Mr. Peveral Murkin,” she said matter of factly. “As you must know, I was brought up never to converse with strangers.”

“Oh, what a delightful day this is,” sang Mr. Peveral Murkin, “which just goes to show how very mistaken I was!”

“In what way, Mr. Peveral Murkin?” inquired Tiny Libbedy.

“Why, in thinking this was the worst of all possible days,” he replied in a hopeful tone.

“How’s thet?” interjected The Mud Monster, forgetting he had not been properly introduced.

“Well,” continued Peveral Murkin, apparently not noticing, “it’s like this. Only this morning I went, together with my good friends Ermentrude Pinkley and Daff Maud Bunkum, to the lending library, and after finding very little in the way of useful information we adjourned to Miss Begonia Throttle’s Tea Cosy for a fulsome repast. I regret to say I drank rather too much tea, which led to my excusing myself.”

“Whwot,” interrupted The Mud Monster, “Yew got ha smell bledder?”

“NO,” retorted Peveral Murkin, “I have no such thing, and kindly refrain from interrupting. I did not mention it before, but we have not been introduced.

“AARRGGHH!” screamed Rumpus Libbedy. “Stop it, stop it, stop it this very instant! This strange person is my new friend and I will not have someone in a bin bag speaking to him in a rude fashion!”

“Well, I never!” responded Peveral Murkin, slightly affronted. “You know very well, young lady, it is quite impossible to speak with anyone with whom you have not been properly introduced. It simply will not do! And,” he added with a sniff, “you must learn to mind your manners! Whatever will your sweet, angelic mother think?”

The three fell into an awkward silence, broken only by The Mud Monster cracking open an enormous Brazil nut and munching on its shell.

Libbedy Spider looked this way and that and at her new shoes (which happened to be bright red and shinier than a bucket of shiny things) and came to a decision. “I shall arrange for him to call on you in the morning and leave a visiting card in your hall.”

There was another silence (this one neither heavy nor filled with ominous undertones), followed by a rustling and scuffling within the bag.

“If he promises to do that first thing tomorrow,” offered Peveral Murkin, “say between half past nine and ten o’clock, I shall be amenable. To that end, I have already re-set my watch accordingly and scribbled a memorandum to myself in my diary. Officially, this person to whom I have not yet been introduced, is no longer standing in a window peering down at me. He is, instead, sitting in a comfortable chair at what SEEMS to be the same window, but which in fact won’t exist until TOMORROW. Am I making sense?”

Libbedy Spiderling was by now extremely confused and on the verge of an impatient outburst somewhere along the lines of “you are a sanctimonious old poop.” It was the sort of thing she most certainly would have done before the dreadful occurrence of Owld Misther Bucket’s bottom leak, but maturity (and with it, a certain sensibility) had come upon her in the interim, and so she took the more diplomatic route. In other words, she quickly changed the subject.

“Pray tell, Mr. Peveral Murkin, was your visit to the lending library on urgent business?” she asked.

“Oh yes, Miss Libbedy,” he answered, suddenly quite excited. “and this is the most amazing coincidence. It was about you, my dear. You see, you were swept away in a torrent, and I, along with my good friends Ermentrude Pinkly and daff Maud Bunkum, went to that noble edifice in search of information regarding past floods and the destinations to which their passengers were bound. We were in the middle of browsing holiday brochures when acute hunger attacked us, and you know the rest.”

There was the sound of succulent chewing and slurping from within the bin bag, after which he sighed heavily and continued. “So you see,” he added miserably, “we never did find anything useful. And now I am trapped in this bin bag with only one chocolate bar and I’ve misplaced my friends, as well.”

“Perhaps,” sang The Mud Monster, brightening considerably, “if I may be so bold…”

“Which you may, seeing as how we shall be formally introduced tomorrow morning,” interjected Peveral Murkin.

“May I suggest we three join forces?” sang The Mud Monster. “You are in search of your friends, Miss Libbedy Spider is longing to bring her lovely mother and brothers and sisters to the new home she built, and I, who was also cruelly separated from my darling mommy when I was but a mewling infant, yearn to be reunited with her. She must now be so ancient, I fear… I fear…” Where upon The Mud Monster broke down and sobbed very loudly.

“Oh, you poor poor thing,” said Libbedy Spider and Peveral Murkin at one and the same time. “How tragic life is!”

And so it was, after further discussion, that Tiny Rumpus Libbedy Spider and Mr. Peveral Murkin and The Mud Monster (who still had not really been properly introduced, at least not so you’d notice) joined forces and set out to right the world’s wrongs and find their loved ones.

“Now that we have joined forces,” ventured The Mud Monster before they adjourned for tea at Begonia Throttle’s Tea Cosy, “sha’n’t we call ourselves something heroic?”

“Absolutely,” trumpeted the other two. “We shall call ourselves The Big Three!”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Directory of Humor Blogs

Miss Havering Prepares For Her Walk

In Miss Havering Ma’am’s considered opinion, there was nothing so delightful as a lovely walk in the ‘country’ (her appellation for the copious and feral gardens surrounding The Big House). And so it was that, every afternoon, rain or shine, sleet or snow, she would summon Mortimer (by means of her horrid and infamous silver claxon) from the depths of the maid’s dormitory (which was, in fact, located in the uppermost attic facing the stable yard and carriage house; having never attempted the journey to ‘those regions’ herself, however, it served Miss Havering Ma’am’s purpose to image they were located in the dungeon). Upon The Ancient, Scrawny and Wittery Factotum’s eventual arrival (all-aflutter), she would enrobe her mistress in the appropriate quantity of woollen shawls (ten on the hottest summer days, one in the dead of winter), after which The Great Lady’s vast bulk would be heaved through the dining room window and into the treasured mudroom. At that point, Mortimer customarily assumed the position of a supplicant misericordia, against which Miss Havering Ma’am would lean in preparation for the ordeal of “those damned gumboots” (as she was so fond of saying).

With the passing years, Miss Havering had grown a mighty girth, topped by a formidable shelf of bosom specifically designed to support her books when she read after dinner (as well as to accommodate the plentiful medals she, as a general’s granddaughter, considered her birthright). With the bulk - (which was quite ably contained by a large quantity of stays, none of which had been removed since the day Mortimer’s muscles showed signs of becoming enfeebled) - came a great deal of weight. “One is not the gel one once was,” Miss Havering loved saying. “Gads, one could accommodate seven or twelve of one’s former self!”

Once Mortimer was firmly braced against the wall and Miss Havering Ma’am had assumed a comfortable and securely supine position with the entirety of her great weight leaning into her skinny back, the operation of “those damned gumboots” would commence.

The boots had, of course, been lined up in perfect symmetry in readiness for the assault (a task the Wellingtons took on themselves, knowing that to do otherwise would result in grievous punishment from Miss Havering Ma’am, who was nothing if not a firm believer in the subjugation of the lower orders). After kicking them about a bit to wake them up, Herself Ma’am would make sure their bearing was suitably military and regimental, and facing the door according to prescribed protocol. And above all, that they were positioned directly in front of the hapless Mortimer’s misericordia. It was a timeless a routine, one played out daily and which had its roots in those halcyon years when both mistress and servant had been supple and ripe. The routine never varied, nor did its aftermath. For upon the required position having been assumed, and the signal for readiness having been given (the signal being the appropriately subservient ‘ooof’ from The Maid), Miss Havering Ma’am would clear her throat in a superior and important fashion, implying that was quite unwilling to lift her legs without assistance. The throat clearing was followed by an abrupt clanging of the large silver bell hanging from a conveniently placed cord, whereupon, from environs unknown, Ebbers, the sad and no longer handsome or lairy gardener’s boy, would appear as if by magic. And having materialised, he would take a heavy, beleaguered breath, and one at a time, heave his mistress’ Mighty and Jellisome Jambes into her gumboots. It was a task both gruesome and awful, and to accomplish it and yet remain alive, Edders stoppered his ears, for as he once said to his doxy, Elderberry Magee, “Them wot hears the horribo squelchies and groanies that comes from them rancidy boots’ll die as sure as a dog under a cow.”

Once the mighty and jellisome Jambes were encased within the ‘rancidy boots’ (a terrible fate for any boot, let along one of evil will), T’reasa (blinder than on the previous day and still unaware of having sat upon her spectacles, even though the articles in question remained stuck in an unfortunate predicament, making it most uncomfortable to sit down), would, on cue, enter through the lower window. Curtsying jerkily and deeply (and not occasionally losing her balance altogether), T’reasa would then present to Her Mistress a paper parcel tied up with string. For reasons better left unsaid, though having to do with The Skivvy’s habit of dropping the tea tray on the kitchen stairs, causing it to roll back down again and into an unknown chasm in the lower passage, the parcel always dangled from her quavering forefinger, bringing a terrible rebuke from Miss Havering Ma’am.

The parcel, whether dangling from a maid’s scraggy finger or balanced upon a tray, customarily contained the picnic lunch which Mrs. Beasley had deigned to prepare for ‘Herself Ma’am’. Characteristically, it was comprised of rissoles made from the leavings of the previous night’s dinner and supper (themselves invariably leftovers from lunch), into which was mixed that morning’s breakfast leavings together with a portion of mash destined for the prized hogs. Understandably, The Venerable Cook lived in a state of constant high dudgeon and greatly resented having to prepare what she referred to as “the hamper”. She did, however, find enormous satisfaction in the beauty of her brown paper parcels and in the quality and quantity of her knots, knowing full well how well nigh impossible it would be to untie them (she did so enjoy listening to ‘Herself Ma’am’ bellow and curse in the attempt). It marked the high point of her day, and she would later share the words and insults coined by Her Mistress over cups of strong, sweet tea (the leaves having been ‘borrowed’ without permission from ‘Herself Ma’am’s Cupboard’) and plates of marzipan bunnies and roly poly pudding with Dogpuddle (the disused Butler/Chauffeur), Ebbers and T’reasa – but not with Mortimer, who still retained a certain loyalty to The Great Lady.

There was always one final ritual before ‘one’s delightful walk in the country’ and that was the ‘conveying of the Fundament’. As soon as she was settled into her boots, Miss Havering Ma’am would rummage in the folds of her mighty décolletage and retrieve the gold mounted ivory klaxon which was at all times kept in readiness for particularly important summonses. Three imperious blasts would be given, and upon these three imperious blasts having been heard, Mortimer would curtsy (according to the mood of her knees) and immediately produce (from somewhere or other, no one knew) a large silver flask. “Your afternoon Fundament, M’m”. M’m would duly suspend the sacred vessel from a hook on her chatelaine (never once removed since its liberation from the mouldering corpse of her mother several decades previously). Thus armed for the rigours of the forthcoming expedition, the door would swing open as if by magic and she would exit the house. “One shall return in time for tea,” Miss Havering Ma’am would trumpet. “Tell Beasley One should prefer anchovies and cress and please do not remove the crusts from the sandwiches. They not only restore the humours but are good exercise for the teeth. Strawberries if they are ripe, otherwise a poached apple. Drumloch and water biscuits. No oatcakes if you please. They annoy One, which one knows pleases Cook greatly. One shall be returning punctually at three quarters past three in the après midi.”

***
On this particular day, the ‘day in question’, in which the evil and downtrodden gumboots, the sisters Wellingffomething-ffomething, would at long last taste a pyrrhic victory, Miss Havering Ma’am chose to turn left at the kitchen garden. She crossed the ancient, crumbling stable yard, from which she proceeded to the medieval wall separating the demesne from the western-most bog, known by all the denizens, large and small, as ‘Miss Havering’s’. The Great Lady had earlier that very morning contemplated a gentle ramble through the eastern meadows and into the plantations of oak and beech and ash and elm, a much-favoured constitutional. Unfortunately, when she awoke with a swollen knee and “a certain sensitivity” (most definitely accompanied by a certain black and blue-toned bruising, although the extent of the injuries would go unexamined due to her scruples concerning the abominations of the unadorned flesh), Miss Havering Ma’am decided to change course. “The unfortunate injuries brought on by the rigours of yesterday’s vicissitudes,” brought to mind the tumble she had taken when shortness of sight and inattention to her surroundings had prompted her misjudge the location of the haha. “I was so looking forward to the skirmish,” she sighed, thinking of the many vulgar Stinkhorns (genus Fungus Phalloides) to be found and exterminated within the plantations, “and had my most glorious spear primed for a famous victory.” However, such exertions now being deemed unwise and impractical, Miss Havering Ma’am sighed and chortled to the aubusson antimacassar, “Such is life, but one fears one sha’n’t feel oneself again until one has whipped a servant or two. MORTIMER,” she’d bellowed, “summon Dogpuddle and Whatisname immediately! And bring the cat!”

***
As was her custom, following a breakfast of Mrs. Beasley’s famous twice-baked eggs (placed in the oven the night before and left to “improve”), suspiciously thick slices of toast, boiled kidneys and a single tomato (never eaten, always the same, when is a kidney not a kidney? When it is painted red.), and feeling refreshed from her morning “ablutions”, The Great Lady adjourned to her little desk (the one facing out the window towards her grandfather’s memorial fountain) to plan her day.

“Who,” ‘Herself Ma‘am would ask herself, “is the foe and what is to be one’s battle plan?” A large Baccarat beaker of Auld Fundament found its way to her blotting paper, courtesy Mortimer’s trembling fingers (and for once the gods were smiling, for half a dram or so of the fragrant, honeyed amber liquid remained in the glass for the drinking).

A tiny sip (“Ah, what bliss it is to sip this golden nectar”), after which the nib was dipped into the ‘freshly ground’ India ink (from a large bottle purchased in The Army and Navy and kept in the wine cellar, where is was regularly mixed with maderized wine and passed off as Porto Fino), and her pen would literally fly across the foxéd vellum.

One this particular day, the day in question, Miss Havering Ma’am had reminded herself to be in the worst of all possible moods. She ached from head to toe, Beasley’s breakfast was even more abominable than usual, Mortimer showed signs of increased enfeeblement, having absentmindedly set down the morning tray on the wrong side of the bed – then suddenly thinking the bed was hers and climbing in after the tray. Furthermore, no visiting cards had been left in the silver tray in the hall, and it was a sunny day. “Nothing for it,” she growled, “but to invade the bog and destroy as many plants as possible!” And while she was about it, she might look for the bedroom slipper she had hurled into the dankest bog pond in a fit of pique. “It sang at us,” Miss Havering recalled, “and pinched our bunion.” Nonetheless, she had no other pair and missed it dreadfully. “We must one be the only maiden under The Heavens deprived of a full pair of bedroom slippers?” she whined. “Half a pair is so very inconvenient. Number one, it pines all the time and calls for its mate (which is so unnerving when it will insist upon doing so in the middle of the night); number two, it fights with the yellow woollen sock one is forced to wear on the other foot (calling it presumptuous and no better than it ought to be); and number three, one suspects the servants of harbouring complete pairs of their own and flaunting them in public at local fetes when one is judging the herbaceous borders.”

And so it was that she determined to turn left, not right, at the kitchen garden. Dogpuddle!” she boomed, “You shall accompany us as far as the stile and assist our person to the other side. And while we are about it, carry the hamper. It is far too redolent of Mrs. Beasley’s cardigan and our health today is delicate.” Miss Havering Ma’am fell silent for a moment and considered various options. “Better yet, attach yourself to Grandmama’s tiny phaeton. We shall wait for you,” she commanded, pointing in various directions, by the rhododendron.”