‘In order not to be ignorant of the obsequies we are about to attend, I am in fact reading the order for the burial of the dead. And Schultz it would not hurt were you to heed psalm thirty nine.’
‘Holy christ up in the ass end of nowhere I’m also getting biblical lectures.’
‘Well Schultz you really should have stayed in London, you know, and faced your music.’
‘OK your Lordship what’s psalm thirty nine.’
‘I will take heed to my ways that I offend not in my tongue.’
‘O boy. I’ll say. Hey your Lordship seriously tell me what do you do for fucking these days. I really got to know what to do with my life which women are wrecking.’
‘I’ve told you many a time that what I do for my fucking Schultz is no concern of yours. And it really would be more appropriate if you were to realize that we are on our way to a most solemnly sad occasion, and while we are attending, it would be more suitable were you not to address me as your Lordship. I do have Christian names you know. Which include Basil, Andrew, George, Albert.’
‘OK Basil, my dear, as Binky might say. You are no longer your Lordship. Hey and let me see that book. Jeez. The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church According to the Use of the United Church of England and Ireland. And hey listen to these bullshit words. We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. Like your ancestors brought you with millions into this world. And shit who worries then about carrying anything out.’
A castellated bridge over a river in this lonely remoteness. Grey pebbles and stones in a narrow ravine rising to mossy banks. Winter-ish yellow leaves of a strange tree against the backdrop of snowy mountains. And the motor turning between massive gates and gate houses and between clumps of shiny leaved rhododendrons. A ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds, speckles of dandruff white on the ancient chauffeur’s shoulders. The motor ascending a winding narrow road up this mountain side mile after mile and emerging around an outcrop of rock. Ahead, silhouetted against a misty sky, a soaring turreted castle perched precipitously on the cliff side. And on a rising hillside meadow shaggy long haired cattle grazing.
‘Holy jeez your Lordship are we here. This place looks as if it’s out of some fairy tale.’
‘Schultz you’ll forgive me if I further suggest that you do not continue shouting holy jeez, it might be more appropriate, if, in the present circumstances you simply say it under your breath. And please, may I remind you again, I am not your Lordship. Call me old boy, old sport, or old anything.’
‘How about you old tart.’
‘Ah I see that a slight element of comedy of a very anglicized nature is making its feeble attempt to seep back into your spirit.’
On the rust coloured pebbles the black Daimler car coming to a stop between two cannons flanking the massive fortified entrance. The walls, buttresses, battlements and towers of this castle disappearing high into the cold mist. Stepping from an open oak door, two moss green liveried footmen descending the steps. And a black suited red eyed butler bowing to his Lordship.
‘We are very sad milord, to have to welcome you on such a very sad occasion.’
‘Yes Warrick. Yes.’
‘Ah and I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure before milord to meet your Mr Noble.’
‘O in fact this is a Mr Schultz, a friend of Mr Sunningdale’s.’
‘O I am sorry sir, do please forgive me. Mr Schultz.’
The little group entering the portals. The echoes of voices in the great front hall. Schultz following a footman with his baggage up four flights of stone stairs and along a vaulted corridor. Spears fanning out over the walls, suits of armour stationed on every landing. Ancestral portraits and one life sized of Binky’s mother in a black evening gown, a red rose at her bodice. Long pale yellow gloves held in her hand. Imagine anybody as beautiful as that being dead. Christ I’ve never, never felt so conspicuous in my life. Boy has this trip already started out on the wrong foot. Shit. Imagine I’m already in this suit being taken as a butler. What is it that these people and their servants have got which stops you right in your tracks, leaving you, if you’re not on your American guard, dumbfounded with inferiority. Then if ever you try getting to know them it’s like big iron gates are shut in your face that you have to talk through. Jesus I got to keep as close to his Lordship as possible and hide through all of this. Binky did at least say thanks to me for coming. But he and his Lordship never even spoke. They said not even a word to each other, not even of greeting, just a glance and the merest nod of the head. Such close friends they know what the other is thinking. And the only real close life long friend I ever had was Al. Shit I wonder what he’d say if I ever did get to his bedside and said forgive me Al for what I done to you. Jesus he might take off his oxygen mask and hit me over the fucking head. The cunt. Christ I was nearly always half glad when someone came along to take a faithful girlfriend off my hands. And Al had been fucking other guys’ girlfriends not to mention their wives, all his life. Why does he have to throw such an unreasonable fit when it’s done to him. O god I know why. There’s never never ever going to be another one of Louella.
‘If there’s anything at all sir, the buttons to press are there at the side of the chimney piece. Mourners are to assemble sir in exactly twenty minutes in the front main hall.’
‘Thanks. It’ll give me time to catch my breath up all those stairs.’
Schultz going to the narrow window. Opening it to peer hundreds of feet into the glen below. An eagle circling above a river entering the loch between the steep cliffs plunging into the valley. Schultz crossing the bedroom to look out another turret window. Down upon formal gardens, stone statues, pebble paths, clipped hedges, and lily pond. Great crags and a tiny cottage. And inside here a canopied bed. Hangings embroidered with red roses. Paintings and drawings of birds on the wall. A still life with flowers. Painted by Antonio Ponce. Could be one of Binky’s jokes. And jesus, a priceless tapestry of these butterfly wings. I’ve seen enough in half of this room already to buy and sell my poor father. Just two square inches of the ceiling of this room you could stare at for an hour wondering why, like Freddie Joy’s nose, it’s so beautiful. Here I am a kid from Woonsocket. Growing up working down a dingy basement with Saul while Binky must have been living in all this. As if I have to remind myself, it really makes sense to make money. And these people must have been stacking it up for centuries. And at least it’s providing me with a peaceful change from a night on the train. Recalling as if I needed them, past catastrophes. While the lonely lights went by like shooting stars. Even lamp standards and station clocks I counted trying to go to sleep. The click clack and the clank of the sounds of coupling trains. Figures at a road crossing, with a horse that I swear reared with a fantastic erection in a flash of moonlight. Jesus even the bathroom in here is like a private living room. Hey Rabbi Low, not that I’m exactly starving for the company but one thing is for sure, so far there isn’t another single Jew in sight up here. So be exclusive Sigmund, with you there who needs another. Touche Rabbi. I’m convinced I’m fine alone. Hey and this is a miracle of coincidence, right here in this painting on the wall, my most favourite food and taste in all the world. Fucking fraises des bois on a fucking nice blue plate next to a glass of champagne. Rabbi Low I just got an insight. All I need is a good butler, a good cook and a good secretary and I can tell every woman in the world to go fuck themselves and for a start I’m going to tell three of them in a row. Sigmund, you’re optimistic, you’re going to have to go find them first. And I have news, they’ll all be busy fucking someone else.
In the chill castle air Schultz returning down the deeply worn stone steps between the cold stone walls and pillars holding up the vaulted arches of the staircase. Stopping at a landing to open up one side of a pair of massive mahogany doors and peek in. Good fucking god. It’s a room a mile long. With a carpet that looks two miles long. All this space d
oing nothing except being here. This is another Shangri La, just like his Lordship’s castle. Where he would prostrate himself in depression inside because outside he thought his grass was the wrong colour green. I guess you got to cultivate a style of living to accommodate this kind of life. Boy and I got to revise my own style of living simply to include remaining alive.
People assembled in the vast front hall. Pink light from the blazing fire glinting from the silvery suits of armour, spears and swords. Binky black jacketed in a kilt, a silver buckle on his belt flashing as he descended the curving stone staircase. The gathering moving down a long corridor and disappearing into a doorway of the chapel filled to overflowing. Supine upon a tomb, a marble effigy of a knight in armour next to his wife, their hands joined pointing upwards in prayer, and at their feet, two smaller effigies of their children kneeling. The stained glass window over the altar, insignias and coats of arms in hues of green, blue, yellow, gold and crimson. The draped coffin centre of the chapel. Schultz and his Lordship taking their places in the polished oak pews carved with lions and stags rampant. As Schultz trips with an echoing clatter and grabs a candlestick to hold on. The lit candle breaking and with it clutched in his fist, wax dripping down on Schultz’s face as he lies supine at his Lordship’s feet.
‘Good god Schultz, any moment now we’ll be burying you next.’
The distant snow capped mountains shining bright above the shadows of their valleys. The slow hesitant beating of a distant drum. A piper in his kilt, taking his slow steps down a narrow stony path of the hillside. Lady Ottoline’s coffin atop the shoulders of estate workers. The blue black shiny waters of the loch far below. The wind blowing the pipe strains across the valley and echoing them back from the mountain cliff sides. Binky his blond curly locks blowing in the breeze, walking next to a figure in a black cape and cowl. An eagle wheeling high above in the sky.
‘Schultz can you make it.’
‘Yeah just let me hold on to your arm. Jesus I’m half a cripple looking devastated, while Binky walks like a soldier.’
‘Schultz, believe me, Binky despite his implacable military air, is utterly struck down with sorrow. She was a lady loved by at least a hundred men and was Scottish loveliness at its most supreme. So fond she was of wearing black. And did have the most beautiful exquisitely white eyeballs.’
‘Jesus now that you mention, christ yes that I remember too. Plus she had a fantastic figure for her age. And amen. I guess you say.’
The damp chill and biting bitter wind turning hands and faces blue with cold. The long winding stream of mourners, making their way through the iron gates of a small cemetery carved out of the side of the mountain. A tiny chapel built into the rock of the cliff side. Sheep, like tiny maggots on the snowless patches on the lower slopes of the distant hills. Shaggy long haired highland cattle with great curving horns grazing the pasture below the cemetery.
‘Jesus your Lordship how much longer now the fuck is this routine. I’m freezing bloody well to death.’
‘For god’s sake Schultz be quiet.’
‘Jesus you don’t need to be in this wind. I wish like you I could think beautiful well behaved thoughts instead of thinking the real thoughts I am forced to think especially that everyone’s out to get me in this life. My leg feels broke.’
‘Your neck will feel broke soon Schultz. You really are, to put it mildly, the original court jester.’
A sprig of heather dropped on the coffin as it lowers into a crypt in the floor of the chapel. A bishop from a slip of paper reading words. The steam of his breath in the cold air. The bowed heads and tearful eyes. The sound of a cough and a muffled sob. A nose being blown. The wind gusting in the chapel door. Footsteps crunch out again on the gravel forecourt. And as the dark line of figures climb back up the narrow path, a flurry of snow falls.
‘I’m choked up your Lordship. Jesus, there goes more beauty by its own hand wasted just like that. I mean how bad can life get that you just don’t want to live anymore.’
‘The imagination Schultz can quickly make life far worse than death, and she was an extremely imaginative lady.’
The funeral gathering assembled back in the castle’s vast dining room echoing loud with voices. Under its high ceiling, vaulted with ribs of stone and beams of oak, a minstrel’s gallery. Two fires blazing massive logs under white marble chimney pieces. A long table covered >with smoked salmon, ham, roast beef. Glasses and silverware glinting from the fading shaft of light coming in the tall narrow gothic windows. Servants to and fro with trays of drinks and canapes. Family portraits, tapestries and flags hung high on the walls.
‘God your Lordship, I mean Basil, I’m hungry and freezing. I got to get something down my throat. And I’ve got to give the people credit. Except for the fucker who just asked me to go get him some Angostura Bitters, they are just too polite to take any notice of me. Or maybe way the fuck up here in this isolation they don’t know they’ve got a national celebrity mingling in the midst.’
‘I don’t suppose Schultz that it has occurred to you that rather than thinking they have a national celebrity mingling in their midst they might instead think they’ve got a national embarrassment invading their privacy.’
‘Hey shit your Lordship, come on, don’t ruin, will you, the fucking momentary enchantment I’m enjoying for just two whole seconds. Hey but hold it. Holy jeez, who the fuck is that. My god. What a face, hair and figure. Holy christ that creature is a devastating apparition I’ve never seen anything like before. And she’s talking to that guy in the clerical garb with wrappings around his legs. Jesus I just got the first real glow of pleasure through my balls since they got zapped by a zipper.’
‘Ah how nice for you Schultz.’
‘Hey look at that jet black long wavy hair. Her eyes have got to absolutely be a magic green. Jesus what am I doing in my life, wasting time with old past disasters, when such opportunity springs eternal. Wasn’t she the one wearing a cape and hood over her head in the chapel.’
‘Schultz I have no intention of procuring for you but I will say, some colour has come back into your cheeks.’
‘Jesus your Lordship you bet it has. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Just look at that over there standing at the fireplace. Wow. Who, my god is she.’
‘She lives I fear some many valleys away.’
‘Jesus show me the fucking stony path over the mountains that leads there will you.’
‘No I won’t Schultz.’
‘Hey wait a second, like fuck she does live many valleys away. Look. She’s even giving the butler instructions and behaves as if she belongs here. Right in this house.’
‘Schultz you are a bit of a detective aren’t you but I do think you have enough on your plate for the moment. And I most certainly don’t think you should at this precise time start any of your lady killing antics.’
‘Well who is she.’
‘She was in fact at Oxford. Double first in Classics. And is now happily married with seven children.’
‘Now I know you’re a god damn liar. And the way you say that word Oxford. Like it was supposed to be natural and normal. You sons of bitches. It’s like a garden party your fucking lives.’
‘I’m sure Schultz you hardly mean to call this a garden party. If it is, there has rarely ever been a sadder one.’
‘Yeah holy christ you’re right I guess I’m just getting carried away by confronting all this. And to change the subject a second, what’s this.’
‘A silver cruet set.’
‘Is it solid.’
‘I should be awfully surprised if it weren’t Schultz.’
‘Shit it could weigh a ton.’
‘Well I’m certainly sure it weighs considerably as I believe I have one resembling it.’
‘Jesus, can you just imagine there on the table, five fucking thousand pure ounces of silver. Do you know silver is really selling at the moment. Jesus the value of that could be realizing interest in a bank.’
‘Or
Schultz, the considerable pleasure one gets out of its perfection.’ His Lordship wandering off. Schultz rubbing elbows amid the lofty accents and staring across the room at the apparition of beauty in black. These craggy faced people. Their superior chins raised. A lady regally seated there with a countenance of an eagle. What a collection. Because their ancestors made a profit, pleasure comes first. Principle of the upper classes which yours truly has just adopted. Until holy christ. Did you hear that. Some guy says, excuse me waiter, I wonder would you mind awfully getting me another glass of champagne. Fuck you buster.
Through the door under the minstrels’ gallery, Binky entering the room. Nodding his head. Shaking hands here and there and the pleats of his kilt swirling about his knees, making his way across the massive gold and crimson carpet towards Schultz sipping a glass of champagne.
‘How do Schultz. You’re looking awfully pretty this evening even though it’s only the afternoon. In our latitudes up here, the darkness of winter descends early as you will see out there through the window behind you. Sorry not to be able to look after you, a few private family matters to attend to. Are you enjoying yourself.’
‘Yeah, fine.’
‘Between a pause in my organ playing I did hear the noise of your not quite breaking your arse in the chapel. I do hope your balls weren’t further aggrieved thereby. And I especially do hope you’re not contemplating suing us.’
‘Holy shit Binky, no, I’m not.’
‘Ah such a relief. Of course having had a view of the video of your zipper inconvenience I believe you are going to be able to give a good account of the event. My zoom in close ups should be especially choice and I’m sure the damages awarded you from your tailors will be severe and should I think have them already quaking in their tracks and their own balls trembling in their crotches. Now must go to attend to the bishop over there, having it appears a joke with my half sister. And by the way I did enjoy reading in one of the more sensational papers this morning and in the most screaming of headlines, news of your harem in Belgravia. Ladies in purdah no less. Ah Schultz I do think we might take lessons from you in seeking the best in the otherworldly pleasures in which clearly you indulge. See you seven thirty for drinks in the armoury when we can before dinner chat a little longer. And if you’re short on togs we can I’m sure fit you up. And do let Warrick know if he can make your stay any more comfortable. And we do hope you’ll not be rushing away immediately and stay on a little. Ta ta. I must go and have a word in Lord Nectarine’s ear.’