The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix Page 14
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The parsnips.’
‘What about the parsnips?’
‘Don’t play the ignorant with me! You know precisely what about the parsnips. They were shrivelled and sour!’
‘Oh.’
‘Rationing or no rationing, parsnips should be firm and sweet, and if you can’t provide them like that we’ll take our custom elsewhere. What do you have to say to that, eh?’
‘Very little, I’m afraid, except that I’m the new butler.’ I extended a hand.
‘New butler?’ she inquired suspiciously, ignoring my hand and staring me up and down.
‘That’s right. Raphael Phoenix. Lord Slaggsby sent me a telegram.’
She made no reply but continued to peer at me, her already narrow eyes getting even narrower so that in the shadows of the doorway she looked faintly oriental.
‘You were expected yesterday,’ she said eventually.
I apologized, and explained that I had had rather a difficult journey.
‘We’ve won the war,’ I joked, ‘but still can’t get the damned trains to run on time.’
She gave me a look of utmost distaste – the hairline scar on her upper lip appearing to throb somewhat, like a tiny luminous threadworm – and then stood back and ushered me inside.
‘And wipe your shoes,’ she barked.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Kindly keep your “ma’am”s to yourself!’
‘I’m sorry. Might I inquire your name?’
‘No you might not. If His Lordship wishes to tell you, that’s up to him. For myself, I have no wish to discuss the subject with strangers. He’s in his study. Follow me.’
She led me across a wide, lofty hallway and down a narrow corridor, at the far end of which stood a large suit of armour. There were closed doors to left and right, and pictures on the walls, although in the thick gloom I was unable to make out what they were of. One looked like a fox hunt, and another appeared to depict a woman having her head cut off.
‘What a fascinating house!’ I declared.
‘Two hundred and fifty years old,’ snapped my guide. ‘Two hundred and fifty, and not a speck of dust in it. His Lordship insists on standards!’ She placed heavy emphasis upon this last word, as though it denoted a concept of which I might well be unaware.
‘So I can—’
‘We keep ourselves to ourselves here at Tripally,’ she went on, cutting me off mid-sentence. ‘We don’t like outsiders. They bring . . . ideas.’
And with that she bustled onwards towards the suit of armour with me trailing in her wake. We turned right, and then left, and then right again, went up some stairs, round a corner, down some more stairs, along a corridor, and then more rights and lefts, more stairs and corners and corridors until, eventually, after we had walked for what seemed like hours but was probably only a matter of minutes, we turned into a short, brightly lit corridor with windows down one side and a large oak door at the far end. I could hear music, loud music, coming from the room beyond, and noticed, by the view, that we were now at the back end of the left-hand wing of the house.
‘Wait there!’ ordered my hare-lipped guide, leaving me standing with my bag whilst she went forward and rapped forcefully on the oak doorway. There was a muffled cry of ‘Come!’ from within, followed by a blast of operatic wailing as she opened the door and stepped into the room.
‘He’s here!’ announced the hare-lipped one.
‘Who?’ came a curt voice.
‘Him,’ she announced. ‘Phoenix.’
‘Phoenix? Phoenix? What are you talking about, woman?’
‘Phoenix, Your Lordship. The new butler.’
‘Butler? I thought I told him to be here yesterday.’
‘So you did. Definitely yesterday.’
‘So what’s he doing here today?’
‘He can answer that better than me, I’m sure. He’s quite a talker.’
‘Talker, eh! Well, let’s hope he says the right thing, or we’ll be sacking him before we even employ him. Chop, chop, get him in. Come on, come on! Where is he!’
The woman beckoned me into the room, and then, shooting me a look of murderous distaste, exited and closed the door behind her. The music – Wagner, I later discovered, although I didn’t know it at the time – really was extremely loud. I began to wonder if I should have brought ear plugs.
Lord Rufus St John Arnold James Neville Maldon Slaggsby, 23rd Baron of Tripally – for he it was whose voice I had heard from the corridor – bore as close a resemblance to Adolf Hitler as it was possible to bear without actually being Adolf Hitler. Ensconced behind a large desk, upon which were arranged, with dazzling symmetrical neatness, various books, papers, items of stationery and, in one corner, an enormous gramophone with a crank handle and a speaker like a giant conch shell, he was, I guessed, in his late fifties, of small to medium height, with a curtain of dark hair sweeping down across the left side of his forehead. He had puffy bags beneath his eyes, a Teutonic pout to his chest and, atop his upper lip, a neatly clipped moustache. So striking was the similarity between him and the late Führer, indeed, so dazzling the likeness, that for a moment I genuinely wondered if the latter had somehow escaped from his Berlin bunker and sloped off to start a new life in the north of England. It was, frankly, as much as I could do not to click my heels together and give him a full-blown Nazi salute. From what I later came to know of him, he wouldn’t have been altogether displeased with the gesture.
‘You’re late!’ he snapped, peering at me across the top of his desk. ‘Late!’
‘I’m very sorry, sir—’
‘Not “sir”! Your Lordship! We’re not in America now, you know!’
For a moment I was unsure of his meaning until I recalled that, amongst my forged references had been one from multi-millionaire American industrialist Ulysses J. Bumbleberg.
‘Dreadful people, Americans,’ he went on, furrowing his brow and grimacing, as though he had eaten something distasteful. ‘The sooner the war’s over and they get back to their own country the better.’
‘Yes, Your Lordship,’ I mumbled.
‘You met Crone?’
‘Crone?’
‘Crone, you fool! The housekeeper.’
‘Ah yes, sir . . . Your Lordship. Mrs Crone. Charming lady.’
‘Not Mrs Crone. Crone. Been with us thirty years now. She knows the form.’
I concurred that, from what I had seen of her, she certainly appeared to know her way about.
‘Now what’s all this lateness?’ His Lordship continued, thrusting out his lower jaw. ‘I wanted you yesterday. I won’t stand for lateness. It’s slack! Slack!’
‘I can only apologize. It was the trains, you see. They kept getting cancelled.’
‘Cancelled! Cancelled, you say. What’s happening to this country? It’s collapsing, that’s what’s happening to it. Mussolini. That’s who we need in charge. No cancelled trains under Mussolini. And who do we get? Bloody Clement Attlee and the bleeding-hearts namby-pamby brigade. God have mercy on our souls!’
He slammed his fist down on the desk, sending a tremor through the room and causing the needle of the gramophone to jump, before launching into an extended tirade on the iniquities of the current government, his fulminations interspersed with a good deal more table thumping and a good many more ‘God have mercy on our souls!’ Eventually, however, he calmed down enough to turn his attention to a small pile of papers to his left. These, I noticed, were the false references I had sent him from Dover.
‘Now,’ he grumped, ‘I am not at all impressed with these references. A recommendation from a foreigner is no recommendation at all. Indeed, when that foreigner happens to be [and here he crumpled up my carefully crafted forgeries and dropped them one by one into the wastepaper basket] an Itie, a Frog and a Yankee, then the recommendation becomes quite the opposite. It becomes a warning. These people have no standards. No standards, d’you hear! If staff weren’t so hard to co
me by at present, I wouldn’t have you within a hundred miles of Tripally. Not a hundred miles! Whoring yourself on foreign soil!’
I couldn’t very well tell him that I had, in fact, been doing no such thing, and that the papers he had just scrunched up and binned were in fact forgeries. I therefore contented myself with a mumbled apology for past mistakes, and otherwise kept quiet.
‘Yes, well,’ he muttered, ‘apologies are all very well, but you’re at Tripally now, and at Tripally we expect standards. Do you know how old this house is?’
‘Two hundred and fifty years, Your Lordship.’
‘Two hundred and fifty years! And do you how long the Slaggsbys have been in England? Over two thousand years. I’m writing a monograph about it. Slaggsby: A Very English Heritage. Two thousand years, d’you hear! And that makes for high standards.’
‘Standards I will do my utmost to maintain, Your Lordship.’
‘Well,’ he growled, ‘let’s hope your very utmost is enough! Now let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. We run a tight ship here at Tripally. Crone does the cooking and the cleaning and the washing and the ordering of provisions. Those are her tasks and are not to be interfered with, do you understand?’
‘Yes, Your Lordship.’
‘The gardens, likewise, are the strict domain of Old Lummy. You will not touch anything in the grounds without his prior permission, particularly the lily pads. Lummy’s very protective of his lily pads.’
‘Yes, Your Lordship.’
‘You will act as my valet and manservant, with all the duties concomitant thereto. In addition, you will attend me here in the study from nine to twelve of a morning and two to six of an afternoon to assist in the compiling of my monograph.’
‘Yes, Your Lordship.’
‘I expect absolute rectitude, probity and punctuality at all times. Anything less and you will be dismissed instantly, as you will be if caught consuming either cigarettes or alcohol anywhere within a ten-mile radius of the hall. Two thousand years of history makes for high standards, and I expect them to be kept.’
I nodded gravely.
‘You will be paid twenty shillings a week, an excessive sum in my opinion, but then what can you expect with the bloody mollycoddling Bolsheviks in power, on top of which you are provided with board and lodging. You will have the last Sunday of each month as a free day, although I should point out that no Tripally manservant has ever yet seen fit to avail himself of the aforementioned privilege.’
‘A tradition I shall doubtless continue, Your Lordship.’
‘Very good. Very good. Possibly you won’t be so bad after all. We’ll have to see. Smotters was with the family for sixty-three years and gave absolute satisfaction throughout, even after they’d amputated his leg. You have a lot to live up to, Phoenix.’
‘I shan’t disappoint, Your Lordship.’
‘I hope not. And for Christ’s sake shave of that verminous moustache. You look like a damned Yankee dandy. Crone will show you to your room and provide you with suitable attire.’
Whereupon he reached beneath his desk and withdrew a large rubbery tube, to the end of which was attached a short brass funnel. It resembled those tubes down which the captains of transatlantic steamers were wont to shout orders to their engine rooms, and appeared to serve a similar purpose here, for, having blown vigorously into the funnel, and apparently attracted his housekeeper’s attention thereby, Lord Slaggsby proceeded to issue a series of instructions concerning my room and clothing.
‘And when you’ve done all that, come and fetch him and show him what’s what. He’ll be in the corridor.’
A distant, subterranean murmur of ascent wafted up the tube.
‘Good type, Crone,’ said Lord Slaggsby, shovelling his pipe back beneath the desk. ‘Damn good egg. Knows the form. Now, give me a hand round to the gramophone so I can change the record. A bit of Götterdämmerung, I think. Bloody marvellous fellow, Wagner. Only good thing ever to have come out of Germany. Sometimes wonder if he was German at all. Far too much fibre for a damn Hun, if you ask me!’
He pushed himself backwards away from the desk and stared at me expectantly. Only then did I notice he was sitting in a wheelchair.
With the exception of each second Friday – of which more later – every day at Tripally Hall was exactly the same as every other day. Today was a precise replica of yesterday, and tomorrow a verbatim rerun of today. Nothing new ever happened; nothing unexpected ever occurred; the routine never varied. A single sequence of events was simply repeated over and over again throughout the 24 years I was there. Background details changed, of course – today might be rainy whereas yesterday was dry; tomorrow there might be roast lamb for dinner whereas today it was roast partridge – but the essence of the place remained immutable. Had probably remained immutable, indeed, for as long as the Slaggsbys had occupied their Hall, and most likely some considerable time before. At Tripally time went round in a loop, starting off from one point and returning to precisely the same point 24 hours later.
Each and every morning I would wake at 5.15 a.m. in my room in the eastern wing of the castle. It was a dingy room, devoid of all but the most essential furnishings, and, aside from a rubber communication tube that emerged like a large maggot from the wall at the head of my bed, quite without adornment.
Once awake I would lie for a few minutes gazing up at the ceiling before rising, washing and donning my uniform, an excruciatingly ill-fitting black satin affair with curlicues of faded gold braid down the front. Into the back pocket of this I would slip The Photo and into the front one The Pill, the latter wrapped in a small silk handkerchief. I would then brush my hair, turn down my bed and, at 6 a.m., make my way down to the kitchen, where Crone would be bustling about preparing the day’s victuals.
‘Morning, Crone,’ I would say affably. ‘Slept well, I hope?’
‘How I sleep is none of your business,’ she’d snap, her hare-lip throbbing angrily. ‘Sit down and eat your breakfast.’
Whereupon she would slap a plate of greasy bacon and fried bread in front of me and get on with whatever it was she was doing at the time. I would eat my food in silence, peering out of the window at the bent figure of Old Lummy, who would, at that hour, be weeding in the herb garden, before at 6.30 a.m. retiring to the fireside to polish Lord Slaggsby’s shoes for the day. This would occupy me until 6.50 a.m. when, with his footwear under one arm, his paper (The Times) under another, and a large breakfast tray in both hands, I would set off to His Lordship’s apartments in the west wing of the house, arriving thereat on the dot of 7 a.m.
‘Good morning, Your Lordship,’ I would say, knocking and opening the door. ‘I trust you had a good night.’
‘No, Phoenix,’ he would reply every morning, ‘bloody tempestuous. Frightful attack of wind! Three rashers of bacon, I hope!’
I would help him up in bed, plump his pillows and put his tray on his lap, leaving him to eat his bacon and peruse his paper – ‘Bloody upstart pickaninnies causing trouble on the subcontinent again!’ – whilst I busied myself running his bath. This done, I would then stand mutely in a corner until 7.45 a.m., when I would lay aside his completed breakfast things, to be removed later by Crone, and carry him bodily into the bathroom for his morning ablutions.
‘Ye gods, Phoenix, I’ve got the squitters again!’
‘I’m very sorry to hear it, Your Lordship. A little milk of magnesia, perhaps?’
‘Rubbish. Fresh air’s what I need. Get those windows open.’
‘It’s raining, Your Lordship.’
‘For God’s sake, man, we’re not in bloody pansy school now. Little bit of rain never did anyone any harm. Get ’em open! Get ’em open!’
From the bathroom, it was into the dressing room, where I would clothe, shave and brush my employer before lifting him into his wheelchair and setting off, at precisely 8.15 a.m., for his study (except for every second Friday, when, as I believe I have already mentioned, something quite different would happen).
‘Napoleonic,’ explained my employer. ‘Modelled the whole thing on his battlefield dispatch system. Might have been a Frog but by God he knew how to organize things. Not like Attlee. The man’s a walking disaster area.’
It took us 15 minutes and three wheelchairs to cover the distance between His Lordship’s bedroom and his study, where we would arrive at 8.30 a.m. (it took two wheelchairs to get from his study to the library; two from the library to the dining room; four from the dining room to the bedroom; and five from his bedroom to the front door). Having arrived, I would install him behind his desk, wind up the gramophone – ‘Damn it, Phoenix, let’s have “The Ride of the Valkyries”! Set the day off with a bang, eh!’ – and then return to the kitchen to fetch him a cup of tea and his mail, which he would, respectively, slurp and open until 9 a.m. when, on the dot, he would begin work on his monograph: Slaggsby: A Very English Heritage.
If Lord Slaggsby was to be believed, which I’m not entirely sure he was, his family had been involved in just about every event of any significance to have occurred in Britain since the last Ice Age.
‘We’re not just English,’ he would inform me, ‘we’re the English. Do you see what I’m getting at, Phoenix? We’re as much a part of the landscape as the River Thames. Our blood is pure. No Froggie or Kraut in us, by God. We’re untainted. Even the royals can’t say that much!’