Ten Lords A-Leaping (3 page)

Piecing it together with a little help from Bertie, the excellent Duke of Stormerod, I learned that they’re the inner circle or hard core dedicated to defending hunting – particularly of foxes – against the House of Commons, the animal activists and all comers. And needless to say, Jack has thrown herself enthusiastically into the cause for, as you might guess, the Troutbecks have ever been tremendous enthusiasts and participants in this noble sport. And because it was necessary to get cracking with the conspiracy, her celebratory dinner was limited to this group, for, as you will remember, when Jack throws herself into something she doesn’t hang about.

Well, I don’t know how productive animal activists’ planning meetings are, but I can’t say I was overimpressed with this one; I think in her exuberance Jack overdid the hospitality. Before we got through even the first two courses – quails’ eggs, wild salmon and plenty of champagne and Chablis – and were proceeding to get stuck into our noble roast, several of the gathering seemed decidedly squiffy. And although Jack has a head like a rock, she had had enough herself to be treating the evening as a rave-up rather than a sort-out.

By now I was already even more ambivalent than I had started out. For while Bertie, on my left, was so charming and so very persuasive on the subject of the traditions of our way of life that need to be preserved in the interests of society, m’Lord Poulteney, on my right, had turned out to be a nightmare.

I am, as you know, a connoisseur of bores and until last night I thought no experience could be worse than that man who trapped me on the plane the last time I went to Delhi and turned out to be a kind of talking motorway atlas, but Poulteney is a talking hunting diary. You know the sort of thing the Victorians wrote up: ‘Good start, early scent, ran him into small cover. Lamed gee and had to call a halt.’ Riveting.

As insensitive as he is thick, old Poulteney required of me little more than attention and although he suffered a slight shock when he learned that I kept neither hounds nor horses, it never even crossed his mind that I didn’t hunt. So he bored on with his interminable and incomprehensible reminiscences of ‘View Halloa and into Braggs Wood’. Fortunately Bertie – one of those aristocrats who justifies the hereditary principle – recognized that I had fallen into a catatonic state and rescued me. It turned out that one of his ancestors had been a Viceroy of India and he loves it well and we had a very jolly chat about all of that with lots of chummy anecdotes along the way. He was also full of amusing sidelights on the Lords, on the dotty customs of which he expounds affectionately and very amusingly. The reason he had not been one of Jack’s sponsors, it turned out, was that he outranked her. ‘Oh, no,’ he explained gravely. ‘You see I’m a hell of a feller, with four miniver bars to her two and a gold coronet with strawberry leaves for best, while Jack – poor old thing – ’ll have to settle for something plebeian in silver gilt with a few silver balls. And rules say you can only be sponsored by two from your own grade. Pity. I’d have been proud.’

Jack, meanwhile, was the life and soul of her side of the table, smacking her lips over the food, demanding that the glasses to the left of her and right of her and indeed in front of her be refilled, and generally celebrating her elevation like a good ’un. ‘I like being a baroness,’ I heard her announce when someone asked her how she was feeling.

At about 9.30 or so, when we hit the port, a feeling of camaraderie was universal. Jack leapt to her feet with such energy she knocked over her chair as she called us all to order. ‘Friends!’ she shouted. ‘Before we get down to the serious business of the evening, I want you to drink a toast.’ Everyone staggered to his feet. ‘Her Majesty the Queen!’ she cried, somewhat conventionally, and then as an afterthought, ‘and confound her enemies… and ours.’

As she sat down, Bertie got up and made a speech about our noble hostess. He reminisced fondly about their days together in the department, where apparently she endeared herself to him on the very first day they met by denouncing a colleague for talking a lot of bollocks.

‘Jack,’ he explained towards the end, ‘though perhaps short on diplomatic skills’ – (she looked surprised at this; it’s impossible to get it through to her that she is anything other than suave) – ‘is a trooper. Some amongst us have never quite adjusted to the arrival in this House of peeresses. First they feared women were not intellectually up to the position. And though this view has altered, there are now those who feel our lady members are worryingly puritanical.

‘I am pleased that is a criticism no one has ever made of our noble friend, Baroness Troutbeck, who thinks Roundheads exist to be target practice for Cavaliers. We now have an important challenge facing us as the forces of puritanism attempt to encircle us. We have lost the first hunting battle: it behoves us to ensure we don’t lose the second.

‘I am delighted to welcome, as part of our counterattack, such a doughty companion in arms. We require much of her. Sid’s beloved Surtees declared that among the qualities possessed by the ideal Master of Foxhounds should be’ – he peered at his card – “the boldness of a lion, the cunning of a fox, the shrewdness of an exciseman, the calculation of a general, the decision of a judge and the liberality of a sailor”. My dear old friend Jack has all these and more qualities in abundance. She is a great addition to our struggle and we can rely on her.

‘My friends, let us drink a toast.’ There was another scraping of chairs. ‘To Baroness Troutbeck.’

‘Baroness Troutbeck!’ shouted us all. ‘Hoicktogether!’ shouted Poulteney, ‘Huickholler!’ or something similar shouted someone else, and a cheerful-looking cove beside Jack launched into ‘For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow’, thus inspiring the more jovial elements of the gathering to embark on a sing-song in which, for most purposes, I was unable to participate, owing to being a bit short of experience on the hunting-song front. I could make a shot at:

D’you ken John Peel, with his coat so grey

D’you ken John Peel at the break of day

but that was about it. Still, as the port went down, I quite enjoyed listening to ever louder and jollier verses like

Hark forward, my boys, tally-ho is the cry,

Tantara! Tantara! resounds the blithe horn

I was vividly reminded of Wodehouse’s
The Mating Seasons
. Do you remember when Bertie Wooster got sloshed with Esmond Haddock and they ended up singing Bertie’s version of Esmond’s aunt’s hunting song:

Halloa, halloa, halloa, halloa!

A hunting we will go, my lads,

A hunting we will go.

Pull up our socks and chase the fox

And lay the blighter low

while Bertie stood on his chair waving the decanter like a baton and Esmond on the table using a banana as a hunting crop. We didn’t quite get to that pitch of excitement, probably because some rather serious-looking waiters shimmered in from time to time, but we came close. We roistered away, Jack to the fore, until midnight, when we were persuaded to leave. When we stood outside waiting for a taxi, I expected to be the last to be allowed to get one, being both the most junior and the only commoner, but to my surprise, Jack had one of those flashes of consideration that saves one from throttling her and shooed me into the first taxi ahead of all my elders, somewhat spoiling the effect by saying, ‘Breakfast, Park Lane Hotel, seven-thirty, and be on time.’ Before I could deliver a protest she had slammed the passenger door and was waving me off.

Not wishing to get involved in an altercation in front of a group of her fans, and not knowing where she was staying, I had little choice but to obey orders. And yes, I know you are thinking, ‘How can you let this old bag push you around like this?’ The answer is, of course, that I am congenitally inclined to take the line of least resistance, except when I take a stand on principle. And do bear in mind that it was principle that got me where I am now, i.e., out of work…

Chapter 4

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‘Mmmmmmm. I was afraid they wouldn’t have any.’ The baroness heaped on to her already well-filled plate a pile of black pudding and looked at Amiss solicitously, spoon poised.

He shuddered. ‘No thanks.’

‘Why not? What’s wrong with you? You need building up.’

‘Sorry, Jack, but at this time in the morning, wimp that I am, I can’t face eating dried blood.’

The baroness rolled her eyes heavenwards and shook her head incredulously. ‘I like black pudding.’

‘Good, good. I’m happy for you.’

Together they carried their trays to the booth where they had left their coats and settled in, Amiss to breakfast modestly on bacon, egg and Cumberland sausage, the baroness to weigh into kidneys, bacon, tomato, mushroom and black and white puddings, while punctuating her eating with grunts of satisfaction.

‘Enjoying it?’ she enquired anxiously.

‘Very nice, thank you. And you?’

‘Kidneys a bit of a disappointment. I like them bloody.’

‘You would,’ said Amiss grumpily. ‘Now, why am I here?’

‘Plan of campaign, obviously. We didn’t get very far last night. I don’t know what you were thinking of.’

‘Me?’

‘Well, you’re supposed to be coordinating all this.’ She took a mighty swig of coffee and chomped happily on some crispy bacon. ‘That’s what I’ve hired you for.’

‘First, you haven’t hired me and second, you omitted to tell me what I was supposed to be doing.’

‘Well, I’ve sort of hired you. I’ll foot any bills you incur and give you a couple of hundred quid a week. After all, I make a bit on expenses.’

‘Even with the price of London hotels?’

‘I don’t stay in hotels.’ She grinned happily. ‘Myles is based in London, I should remind you.’

‘So you’re still two-timing Mary Lou with him?’

‘Or vice versa.’ She laughed. ‘Not that two-timing is an appropriate accusation. We’re not all such prigs as you. Neither Myles nor Mary Lou is exactly sitting wistfully by the fireside waiting on my return. Anyway, stop being so nosey. What you’re supposed to be finding out about is how to sort out the killjoys.’

‘Dammit…’ Amiss put his cup down with such force that it slopped coffee into his saucer and on to the tablecloth. He swore and mopped it up.

‘Tsk, tsk. Can’t think what’s got into you. You’re becoming awfully ratty.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d regard jet-lag, lack of sleep and a hangover as mitigating circumstances? Not to speak of having to get up at six-thirty in order to come in to watch you scoffing a fat breakfast.’

She wasn’t listening. ‘Right, now for your instructions. What with having to fly up and down to Cambridge to do my mistressly duties, I can’t run things at the Lords. You’re going to have to help this crowd function. Marshal the arguments, the facts, and help them with the speeches. For although right is on our side, I have to say we’ve got some pretty weak vessels to make its case.’

‘Jack, I don’t even know whether I’m for or against foxhunting. That is’ – he raised his voice as she opened her mouth – ’I don’t like it and I don’t want to do it so I can hardly be said to be for it, but I’m not clear if I’m against it. Instinctively I hate an activity that involves chasing a small animal over hill and dale. Yet I do dimly grasp the arguments about tradition, esprit de corps and all the rest of it.’

She shook her head so vigorously that several hairpins were dislodged from her bun. ‘You disappoint me. I can see that I’m going to have to spell everything out. Right. Let’s start with cruelty.’

‘Yes, I know. Foxes are vermin that have to be kept down and gassing, trapping and even shooting are far more cruel than hunting.’

‘Right. Now conservation.’

‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that hunts are interested in preserving the traditional countryside.’

‘Yep, including planting woods to make coverts for foxes and keeping a varied landscape to increase the enjoyment of the huntsmen. You don’t get farmers who hunt clearing hedgerows and turning their farms into prairies. With me so far?’

‘More or less. Pass the coffee.’

‘Now, economics. What with hunt-staff and farriers, feed merchants and vets, saddlers and bootmakers and all the rest of them, you’re talking of more than thirty thousand jobs. Then there are the horses and hounds. I can tell you there would be a pretty sharp drop in the horse population if you abolished hunting, and most of them would be slaughtered to be fed to dogs. Although there would be a lot fewer dogs since the hounds would have to be put down too, so they’d have to flog the horse carcasses to the Frogs.’

‘Oh, I suppose it’s aesthetics.’ Amiss felt driven into a corner. ‘It seems faintly distasteful to have all this going on for the benefit of a few thousand nobs and City types prancing around in scarlet coats.’

‘Where’d you get that figure? What with those who follow by car and on foot, it’s closer to a quarter of a million, few of them nobs and the majority of them women. Mind you’ – she paused to pull her pipe out of her pocket and ram into it a vast quantity of tobacco – ‘you can see what we’re up against if, even you, the confidante of a baroness, are demonstrating class prejudice.’

‘I wouldn’t call it that.’

‘Well, I would. You know bloody well that that is one of the two motivating forces for the anti-hunt lobby. Why do you think the Great British Public regularly declares itself in favour of abolishing hunting while being perfectly happy with fishing? I’ll tell you why. It’s because there are four million anglers in this country, and most of them are plebs.’

‘You’re not saying that the huge majority against hunting consists of people actively participating in the class war?’

‘Not necessarily. But I am saying that they don’t know what they’re talking about. If you know sod-all about an issue like this, it’s very easy to get all sentimental about a fox. It’s good old sloppy thinking. That’s what happened over deer-hunting. The populace had a vision of brutal toffs pursuing Bambi and his mother over hill and dale with bloodcurdling whoops. And bingo, in the blink of an eye and without giving the matter any serious thought, a collection of ignorant parliamentarians – opposed only by some ineffectual wimps – put an end to the Exmoor and all the other historic hunts of the West Country. That mustn’t happen this time.’ She took a mighty pull and enveloped the table in smoke, which she sniffed appreciatively. ‘Now, let’s turn from the ignorant to the nutters.’