Rosy Is My Relative (8 page)

“You know, my boy,” he said at last, “there’s something wrong. I look a little bit pale for a maharaja, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps,” said Adrian.

“I have it,” said his lordship with a flash of inspiration. “Burnt cork!”

Before Adrian could protest the butler had been dispatched to the wine cellar from whence he soon reappeared carrying a variety of corks. With the aid of two footmen and a candelabra a sufficient quantity of burnt cork was manufactured, and his lordship proceeded to make himself up with great gusto.

“There!” he said at last, turning round in triumph from the mirror. “How does that look?”

Adrian stared at him. Lord Fenneltree’s face was now a rich coal-black, against which his enormous violet eyes and auburn side-whiskers looked, to say the least, arresting.

“Magnificent,” said Adrian doubtfully.

“It’s just the final touch that makes all the difference,” said his lordship. “Now let me do you.”

He had just done half of Adrian’s face when the butler reappeared in the room.

“Excuse me, my lord,” he said.

“What is it, Raymond, what is it?” asked his lordship testily, pausing in his work.

“I thought you ought to know, my lord, that her ladyship has just arrived.”

Lord Fenneltree started violently and dropped the burnt cork.

“Great heavens!” he ejaculated in horror. “She mustn’t find us like this. quick, quick, Raymond, go and tell her we’re just having baths or something. Don’t let her come up here . . . and above all, don’t mention that elephant.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Raymond, and left the room.

“I can’t think why she’s come back,” said his lordship, unwinding his turban frantically. “They shouldn’t be back till the day after to-morrow. Look here, Rookwhistle, she must not under any circumstances find out what we’re planning. She has very little sense of fun, my wife, and she’d probably put a stop to the whole thing. So, dear boy, silent as the grave, oh? Quiet as a tombstone, what?”

It was on meeting Lady Fenneltree and her daughter Jonquil that Adrian, for the first time, began to have serious qualms about introducing Rosy into the party.

Lady Fenneltree was a tall, majestic woman with quantities of still-golden hair, an exquisite profile, and eyes like those of a particularly maladjusted python. When she spoke she articulated dearly, so that her wishes should not be in doubt, in the sort of voice you would use for addressing several hundred guardsmen. She used a pair of large and beautifully fashioned lorguettes to magnify the malignancy of her eyes when expressing her wishes, and her stare was such that it completely paralysed Adrian’s vocal chords. Jonquil, on the other hand, had taken after her father. She had his slender physique, to which she had added one or two curves of her own, enormous violet eyes and long auburn hair. Her beauty was so delicate and ethereal that it had much the same effect on Adrian’s vocal chords as Lady Fenneltree’s enquiring stare.

When they had entered the withdrawing-room, slightly dishevelled and with traces of burnt cork still on their faces, her ladyship had raised her lorgnettes and fixed them with a glare of such ferocity that Adrian blanched.

“My very own dear, how nice to have you back,” said Lord Fenneltree faintly.

“One wouldn’t have thought so, from the fact that you were not down here to receive us,” said Lady Fenneltree coldly. “Who is this?”

“Ah Yes!" said his lordship. “Let me introduce you, my love. This is Adrian Rookwhistle, the son of a dear old college friend of mine. He . . . er . . . just happened to be passing by and so I asked him to stay for the party. Adrian, this is my wife and Jonquil, my daughter.”

“How do you do?” enquired her ladyship, in a tone of voice that implied that news of his imminent demise would leave her unmoved.

“Well,” said his lordship, rubbing his hands, “did you have a good time in the city, eh? Buy lots of pretty pretty things, eh?”

“Rupert,” said her ladyship, “you will kindly stop addressing us as though we were a pair of backward children. We had, in fact, a very fatiguing time in the city. What is more to the point, how have
you
been getting on with preparations for the party?”

His lordship started and gulped. Adrian’s heart sank After even this brief exchange with Lady Fenneltree he was convinced that she was the last woman on earth to take kindly to having an elephant, however beautifully apparelled, inserted into her party. Still, things had gone too far now, and all he could do was to sit there and leave the explanations to Lord Fenneltree.

“Preparations!” said Lord Fenneltree, clasping the lapels of his coat and endeavouring to look cunning. “Preparations . . . well, now, it wouldn’t do to tell you everything, my love. Let’s just say that the preparations are well in hand,
very
well in hand. It’s going to be a surprise, my love. But my lips are sealed. Wild horses wouldn’t drag a word from me.”

In the circumstances, Adrian reflected, this was probably just as well.

“H’m!" said Lady Fenneltree, compressing into that one exclamation more suspicion and foreboding than a hanging judge. “Well, if you must be childish. It’s nice to know that you have not been entirely inactive during our absence.”

“No, no!” protested his lordship earnestly. “’Pon my soul, my love, we’ve been working like beavers, veritable beavers. The success of the party is assured, I give you my word.”

The next two days Adrian spent in an agony of apprehension. His effort to get his lordship to tell Lady Fenneltree were unavailing. Having come up with an original idea for the first time in his life, Lord Fenneltree was not going to relinquish it, and he knew that her ladyship would certainly put a stop to the whole thing if she got wind of it. But once it had been a triumphant success even Lady Fenneltree could not complain.

The difficulties of concealing the presence of an elephant in the stables from one as omniscient as Lady Fenneltree were enormous. The first thing she discovered was a complete dearth of fruit on the dining-table, and this was explained by Lord Fenneltree (in a wild flash of inspiration) as due to a new and virulent form of beetle, an explanation which–since Lady Fenneltree was no naturalist–satisfied her. She merely sacked the head gardener. Then she discovered that half the peacocks in the park were wandering around forlornly without tails. Lord Fenneltree’s explanation that they were moulting was treated with scorn, for even Lady Fenneltree knew when peacocks moulted. The gamekeepers were gathered together and given a Boadicea-like harangue by her ladyship, and set to prowl the perimeter of the park in search of peacock tail poachers, with orders to shoot on sight.

During this time Adrian’s overwrought nerves were not helped by the fact that he had to get up at midnight in order to exercise Rosy up and down the drive, an occupation made hazardous by the number of armed gamekeepers about. Rosy herself did not help matters. Thoroughly spoilt on her rich diet, she had taken to trumpeting loudly and shrilly if her supply of peaches ran out. Both Lord Fenneltree and Adrian were in a constant state of panic in case Lady Fenneltree heard the noise and decided to investigate. On the afternoon before the party they did, in fact, come within an ace of discovery. They were all playing a gentle game of croquet on the smooth green lawn at the back of the house when suddenly the sound of shrill and indignant trumpetings was wafted to them from the direction of the stables. Her ladyship, just about to play a shot, stiffened and stared at Lord Fenneltree who, in a desperate endeavour to drown Rosy, had burst into loud and tuneless song.

“What is that noise?” enquired her ladyship ominously.

“Noise?” said his lordship, hitting a croquet ball with unnecessary violence. “Noise? D’you mean my singing, my Love?”

“I do not,” said her ladyship grimly.

“I heard nothing,” said his lordship, “did you, Adrian?”

“No,” said Adrian, wishing he were somewhere else. “Not a thing.”

“It sounded,” said her ladyship, “not unlike a trumpet or a cornet or one of those vulgar instruments they play in bands.”

Again the shrill sound of Rosy’s displeasure floated to them on the breeze.

“There!” said her ladyship. “
That’s the noise.
”

“Ah! That,” said Adrian desperately. “I think that’s the local hunt.”

Lady Fenneltree was not convinced. She stood listening with her head on one side, while Adrian and Lord Fenneltree held their breath. But there was blessed silence. Presumably the supply-train of peaches had arrived.

“Talking of the local hunt,” said her ladyship suddenly, “did you hear, Rupert, about that disgraceful occurrence? Some man, who could only have been deranged, attacked the hunt viciously with a large and uncontrollable elephant.”

Adrian dropped his croquet mallet heavily on his foot.

“Yes,” said Lord Fenneltree, trying to look severe. “Disgraceful!”

“The
worst
part of it was,” hissed her ladyship, hitting her croquet ball with such vigour that it shot effortlessly through three hoops, “that the man was stark naked!”

“Really?” said Lord Fenneltree, his attention caught. He glanced at Adrian, who had kept this part of the story from him.

“Positively disgusting,” said her ladyship.

“Stark naked, eh?” repeated Lord Fenneltree, obviously fascinated. “But why would he be stark naked with an elephant?”

“The lower classes,” said Lady Fenneltree, “sometimes do the most peculiar things, particularly when they are under the influence of alcohol.”

Throughout this conversation Jonquil bad been standing staring into space. Now she fixed Adrian with a melting stare.

“I have never seen a naked man,” she said.

“Jonquil!” said Lord Fenneltree, greatly shocked. “I should hope you have not. There will be plenty of time for that.”

The Conversation succesfully diverted Lady Fenneltree’s attention from Rosy’s trumpeting, but it left Adrian feeling acutely embarrassed.

He was now convinced that Lord Fenneltree’s idea was doomed to failure. Apart from anything else Lady Fenneltree was clearly not the sort of woman to greet with enthusiasm the revelation that for the last few days she had been entertaining in her midst the young man who, stark naked, had attacked the local hunt. He endeavoured once again to put his point of view to Lord Fenneltree, but his lordship was adamant.

“Just let me go quietly away with Rosy,” Adrian pleaded. “I assure you that when your wife finds out she’s going to go off like a volcano.”

“Nonsense!” said his lordship airily. “Why, when she sees our splendid entrance into the ballroom she’ll be so captivated she’ll be speechless.”

Adrian could not conceive of any set of circumstances that would render Lady Fenneltree speechless.

“But when she finds out who I am,” he protested, “and when she finds out about Rosy . . . and . . . and . . . when she finds out about the fruit and the peacocks’ tails . . .” His voice trailed away. He was overcome by the mental image of Lady Fenneltree finding out all these things simultaneously.

“Dear boy,” said his lordship, “don’t worry. You are a natural worrier. I’ve noticed it before. It’s terribly fatiguing for the nerves. Why, when that elephant enters the ballroom my wife–who is, as you will have noticed, perceptive to a degree–will realise instantly that no other ball in the district has ever had an elephant I tell you, dear boy, it will make her evening.”

It did make Lady Fenneltree’s evening, but not quite in the way that he had intended.

So the great day dawned and the whole house hummed with activity. The ballroom into which Rosy was to make her entrance was a hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet wide. At one end were two massive carved oak doors that led out on to the stone flagged terrace. It was through these that Rosy was to appear. Above the doors, like a swallow’s nest on the wall, was the gallery in which the musicians were to foregather. The whole setting was lit by twenty-four gigantic chandeliers that hung in two rows down the length of the ballroom, shimmering and glittering like upside-down Christmas trees. The floor of the ballroom had been polished and waxed so that it gleamed like a brown lake, and at the end of the room, opposite the great doors, there were long trestle tables covered with snow-white cloths. On them were great silver bowls of fruit; haunches of cold venison; lobster tails in aspic, gleaming like gigantic red flies in amber; enormous cold pies with autumn coloured crusts, stuffed with grouse, pheasant and quail; smoked eels crouching on beds of parsley and watercress; gigantic smoked salmon, each wearing a carefully embossed coat of mayonnaise studded with black pearls of caviar; and in the centre, the
pièce de résistance
, a whole roast pig, beautifully decorated, with a rosy apple in its mouth. Surrounding these snacks were great glass bowls of punch, silver buckets full of champagne, stately rows of claret and port to keep the gentlemen happy, and fresh orange juice, lemon juice, peach juice and pink and white ice-creams with which to revive the ladies after the rigours of the waltz or the valeta. As the day wore on the activity grew more and more feverish, and Adrian spent his time either in the stables, lecturing Rosy on the part the was to play, or wandering into the ballroom and gazing at the vast expanse of shining parquet with a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach.

Presently, up the moonlit drive, clopped and tinkled the first of the carriages, carrying bevies of handsome, be-whiskered men and great colourful scented clouds of women. The band had taken up its position in the minstrels’ gallery and was playing soft, soothing arrival music. Adrian, morosely drinking punch, was mentally cursing his uncle, Lord Fenneltree and Rosy for having inveigled him into this situation. But his second glass had a warming effect, and so he had a third. He had just made up his mind to go and ask Jonquil to dance when a large, be-whiskered individual came striding up, calling loudly for a drink. For a moment Adrian did not recognise him in his finery and then, suddenly, went cold all over. The man standing next to him was the Master of the Monkspepper Hunt–fortunately too preoccupied in swilling down punch to take much notice of his surroundings. Adrian, with a handkerchief held over his face, crept out of the ballroom undetected and started to search frantically for Lord Fenneltree. Eventually he managed to find him and, with some difficulty, prise him away from his guests.