Downtrodden Abbey: The Interminable Saga of an Insufferable Family (12 page)

Anyway—enough small talk. I have a bit of news that may get your knickers in a twist. (By the way, do they allow you to wear knickers there? Just curious.)

Turns out I fancy Dick quite a bit. I’m not sure if I can live without Dick. I’ve got a real thing for Dick. Not Spotted Dick—the British food that makes every tourist laugh when they hear of it—but Dick Calamine. You know. That older, manipulative, divisive plutocrat and social climber? Well, if you’ve got daddy issues like I do, a man like Calamine is irresistible.

I sincerely hope I haven’t ruined your day.

Warmly,

Marry

Word spreads around Downtrodden that Mr. Brace now spends his days in a local pub, a writing tablet on his laptop, hard at work on a novel. Feeling badly about the manner in which Brace was dismissed, Roderick ventures into town to visit his hobbled friend.

“I can’t talk about it—if I talk about it, I won’t write it,” Brace says, over a pint with Lord Crawfish.

“Oh, I understand. I’m not here to talk about your novel, though. It’s … Atchew.”

“Gesundheit.”

“No, Brace. Atchew—Marry’s intended. He was to return from war, and no one’s heard from him. Everything’s all out of kilter. There’s constant gossip and backstabbing, and every conversation is overheard and repeated to some inappropriate party.”

“Sounds quite a bit like business as usual, Milord.”

Roderick’s eyes well with tears. “Would you consider returning to Downtrodden?” he asks. “It’s only a quarter of a kilometer away. If you start now, you’ll be there by Christmas.”

Brace recaps his activities over the past few weeks, as he worked to find a valid reason to leave his marriage to Viral. He felt he needed a more substantial argument in court than hers (that Brace refused to clean the garage).

He first suspected wrongdoing when he saw a razor and shaving soap. Then, several pairs of men’s trousers, suspenders, and neckties in the closet. “These were all hints that something was awry,” Brace told Lord Crawfish.

“I should say so.”

“Initially, it seemed obvious—she was dressing in men’s clothing and shaving her face! Then I discovered a stack of love letters—not written by me—on perfumed stationary, in the drawer of Viral’s nightstand.

“So it’s a full-on split personality, I thought. In the guise of this male character, Viral is writing poetry to herself. But that’s hardly grounds for divorce.”

Lord Crawfish does his best not to offend his dear colleague.

“Brace, you jackass! Men’s clothing? Foreign shaving equipment? Love letters? Use your bean, old man. She’s cuckolding you. Catting around. Cheating.”

Brace is gobsmacked. He cannot imagine why his wife would want to play around on a war-ravaged cripple who is in love with a sleep-deprived maid.

“I think it is time for me to take you up on your offer to return to Downtrodden Abbey, Lord Crawfish,” he says. “It is simply the right atmosphere for someone as emotionally fragile and sensitive as I am.

“But first, I’m going to put a cap in that bitch.”

*   *   *

The war rages on, as Atchew and Fodder toil for the Fourth Army. Following the discovery of a typographical error, the Offensive Hundred Days is changed to the far more threatening-sounding Hundred Days Offensive. As the Allied Forces advance, though, Fodder notices Atchew choking on a piece of food.

Fodder has heard talk that the Germans have been developing a secret method of forcing lodged particles from one another’s throats, but that is hardly helpful now.

Fortunately, he has been carrying a cannonball, a lucky charm from his great-grandfather. This confused Fodder at the time of the gift and has greatly compromised his mobility, but he is grateful to have the cannonball at this moment. With a running start, he thrusts the cannonball into the suffering Atchew’s stomach. From Atchew’s mouth a bullet shoots out, with such force that it severely disfigures Fodder.

Atchew is transported back to Downtrodden Abbey with Fodder, who is now unrecognizable and initially sent away, as he is thought to be an anonymous solicitor selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. As Atchew is still stricken with laryngitis from the bullet in his throat (which he later claims he mistook for a ration of chewing gum), he cannot remedy the situation.

Oddly enough, it is the intolerant and thick-headed Vile who convinces the others that the unwanted stranger is Fodder, and that he should convalesce within the hallowed walls of Downtrodden Abbey. With some trepidation, she pitches the notion to Isabich.

“I refuse to compromise my ideals for some frivolous, impulsive fantasy,” Isabich tells the dowager countess.

“Seriously? You don’t think the recuperation of a badly injured soldier is more important than the cosmetic needs of a bunch of pansies?”

“I will thank you not to insult my clients,” Isabich counters. “Here’s a compromise. We’ll do an initial consultation with Fodder and try to fit him in. Paolo is completely booked, but Franco might be able to see him if it’s just a cut, and he’s not too concerned about the color.”

Meanwhile, Marry is reunited with Atchew, who slowly begins to recover his voice, but after several meetings in close quarters must admit to a chronic case of irritable bowel syndrome.

“It’s said that war does funny things to men,” he chokes out. “But what they do to the food is anything but amusing. You should have seen this stuff they foist on officers, Marry. Bruised produce. Lumpy porridge. Wine of unacceptable vintages. I dropped a biscuit on my foot and fractured three toes.”

“Good God,” gasps Lady Marry. “No wonder you were chomping on bullets. Not that I would turn to artillery as a source of nutrition or flavour but—as they say—different strokes.”

“No one seems to understand that the bullet episode was unintentional. What is it with you people? One would think
you
were the ones who had suffered brain trauma.”

When Slovenia Swine arrives at Downtrodden Abbey, she and Atchew take a long walk around the grounds. But even amongst the roses, she cannot help but notice a certain unpleasant aroma trailing her intended.

“You look good, Atchew,” she says. “I wish I could say the same about the way you smell.”

Atchew knows that he cannot ignore the elephant odor in the room.

“Slovenia,” he says, taking her hand, “What would you say if I told you that I might never be able to … make a normal movement again?”

“Your movements look fine,” she says reassuringly. “I mean, I’ve heard reports of soldiers returning with spinal injuries, needing wheelchairs, and—”

“—I’m talking about
bowel
movements, my dear. Chronic flatulence. Diarrhoea. Loose stool. Darling, you can do much better than me. You owe it to yourself, for a better life—a life in which you don’t have to leave a room every time your husband enters it. A life in which my special dietary needs do not take precedent over those of our own children.

“Pull your finger? For heaven’s sake, why?”

“Rather than continuing to think that you
smell
something that is dead, I urge you to consider
me
dead.”

*   *   *

Brace puts his novel writing on hold to return to Downtrodden Abbey, but his reappearance is hardly heralded, particularly by Tomaine—who is gunning for the position as Lord Crawfish’s personal valet—and O’Grotten, who feels obliged to write an encoded letter to Viral:

Dear Mrs. Brace,

You do not know me, but I have information about a certain hobbled party to your marriage who is not you. I would rather not name names. The gentleman in question has defied your wishes and returned to a certain vast manor in the countryside, where he may or may not have been employed by a certain lord, possibly as his valet.

Sincerely,

An Anonymous Homely, Chain-smoking Yenta and

Occasional Housekeeper

O’Grotten feels confident that Viral Brace will be able to read between the lines. Her husband, meanwhile, literally falls back into Nana’s emaciated arms, but is ecstatic that he has elected to carry out his plan: to give every one of his last remaining pennies to his wife in order that she will divorce him.

“Just think,” he tells Nana. “Now, not only will you be with a guy that people will mistake for your grandfather, but you’ll be broke, and have to take yourself out of the workforce in order to care for me in my dotage.”

Brace’s image of their future together sounds absolutely nauseating to Nana, but she keeps this opinion to herself as he returns to his duties at the Abbey. Brace notices her hangdog countenance. When he asks if she would like to hear about his aborted novel, Nana demurs, telling him that she finds it even more excruciating than listening to people recount their dreams.

Viral Brace arrives at the Abbey and calls for a private meeting with Roderick and Flora Crawfish.

“I understand that an Arab wet your daughter’s bed,” she says.

“What concern is that of yours?” the earl asks.

“It’s simple. I’ve devised a plan that will have serious consequences. I will go to Dick Calamine, who will insure that this humiliating incident is printed on every roll of toilet paper in England. If Calamine buys the story from me and doesn’t run it on the papers, he can use it as a way to blackmail Marry. But if that happens, then I’ll need a back-up plan, which may involve hiring a team of private investigators to follow Brace and catch him with this young maid he’s purportedly seeing. And don’t think it’s easy to get these detectives to focus, what with the Christmas holidays coming. Plus, they charge a bloody fortune.”

“Why, that doesn’t sound simple at all,” Lord Crawfish says.

“What can I say?” Viral shrugs. “It’s a work in progress.”

Knowing that Marry has been having second thoughts about marrying him, Calamine elects to pretend that they are already married, hoping that she will fall into step. Calamine begins arguing with Marry incessantly, sleeping on the sofa in the drawing room, and complaining about her weight gain to his male friends.

The unsightly Fodder is installed in the salon, where—unfortunately—a good hairstyle will hardly erase the horror Laizy feels when she looks at him.

“Marry me,” Fodder pleads, when they have a moment alone. “Just think about it, at least. You’ll have a king’s ransom—my military pension—if I die, which could be any minute now…”

“There’s a better chance that I’ll be the one who dies—of humiliation,” Laizy moans. “Honestly, Fodder. I can’t tell your face from your rear end. What kind of a life could we possibly have together?”

“Look me in the eye and say that,” Fodder challenges.

“I’d have better luck milking a rooster. Who even knows where your eye is?” asks Laizy. “But I’ll consider your offer. I mean, not that scrubbing pots and dishes and mopping the floors all day and night isn’t a good life. I would like a formal, printed statement with the exact amount that I would inherit, however.”

“Honestly, Laizy, you must be the most romantic gal I have ever known.”

“That’s great, Fodder,” Laizy says, as she adjusts his bedclothes and tiptoes out of his bedroom. “You just make sure to stay on your medication, okay?”

Handsom starts to read more and more about the work of Georgi Plekhanov, who believed that Russia—less developed in industry than Western Europe, would need to replace tsarism with a socialist, and eventually a communist, society.

“You seem so serious lately,” Lady Supple tells Handsom during a walk through the woods.

“Listen. Karl Marx thought that Russia might avoid a period of bourgeoisie capitalism. Something must be done. A revolution might be a harbinger—the beginning of workers’ revolutions all over the Western world.”

“I’m concerned that you may be verging on political zealotry,” says Supple. “I mean, we used to discuss what kind of dog we wanted, and where to get the finest scones and tea. Now you’re obsessed with the murder of the tsar, and social change. To be perfectly honest it’s, like, kind of a bring-down.”

“What if we were to sneak behind those bushes and I took you in much the manner that Stalin plans to someday overthrow the efforts of the Trotskyites to remove him from power?” Handsom proposes.

“Now you’re talking, big fella.”

Atchew’s recovery is slow, so he is cared for by Lady Marry—who fails to fall for Calamine’s ruse, much to the bathroom tissue magnate’s chagrin. Atchew can barely be heard as his damaged larynx continues to slowly heal, but he does pantomime to Marry that she should be careful not to destroy her life by marrying him. Between his war injury and his continuing confusion over cutlery, Atchew believes that Marry’s domestic future lies with someone else.

Calamine still believes he is the man for Marry to marry, and in that spirit he considers making an impulsive purchase—a grand estate located a mere stone’s throw from Downtrodden Abbey. He responds to the following advert in the local newspaper:

HOARE HOUSE

Forty-one bedroom, thirty-six bath manor. Architect Nathan Trevathon’s masterpiece. Hardwood floors. Sixty-seven acres. Private lake. Golf course. Kitchen recently redone. Great location. Stunning views. Garage fits two carriages or three motorcars. Rustic barn perfect for rental or romantic trysts. Finished deck. French doors. Comfortable parlour. Study ideal for studying. Wine cellar. Media room equipped with fully functional telegraph. Owner is former king, highly motivated to sell. Offered at £100,000,000. Serious inquiries only. Perfect for businessman trying to finagle his way into family entail. No barons, please.