Noblesse Oblige
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: One strong one only.
Description: A timely reminder of our debt to the aristocracy.
Swearwords: One strong one only.
Description: A timely reminder of our debt to the aristocracy.
Something had wakened me but it wasn’t until it happened again that I recognised the noise the little silver thing that stops the water running out, makes when it hits the side of the bath. What the Hell is Pierre playing at?
I didn’t get to bed until after three so it took me a few moments to remember it’s Saturday, Pierre’s day off. It will be that stupid footman, the latest George, drawing my bath. Filling a bath is hardly rocket science: I’ll bet I could do it myself if someone showed me once or twice.
Mama sneers at me because of my servants.
“You don’t employ them, Henry, they employ you.”
She always brings girls from one of these countries that keep changing their names. You know the ones that get you a low score on Pointless. When that Richard chappie talks about a ’sovereign state’, I always think that Mama probably gets change from a sovereign when she buys a new lot of maids. That absolute bounder Boris arranges it so she can import a plane load whenever she wants.
She’s right about my servants, of course. They all belong to a Trade Union and have better lawyers than me. I used to be with Becket, Hyde and Becket but they dropped me when I decided that I wasn’t going to employ females. The family has been with them since before Agincourt and they used to send over the senior partner to smooth over any little contretemps I had. I mean it’s almost a family tradition to run your hand up under the dress of the maid when she’s holding the soup tureen and giving her buttocks a little squeeze. Great Uncle Harry used to moan that they had spoiled the game in the thirties by wearing knickers.
The girl who complained had some nerve really. She was plain with fat legs and I was positively doing her a favour by giving her bum a pinch. It certainly wouldn’t have gone beyond that if she hadn’t spoiled my aim by squirming. She spilled half the soup when she banged the tureen down on the table before she slammed out the front door. I phoned Becket, Hyde and Becket when the two policewomen came to the door asking for a statement. I was prepared to let bygones be bygones over the ruined tablecloth but the Robertas didn’t see the funny side.
I was ordered to the nick for an interview under caution which wouldn’t have been a problem if they hadn’t insisted that I be there at the time Angela had given me for meeting her in Burlington Arcade to fit her engagement ring. Country Life were to be there to take a snap although Angela is really better suited to Horse and Hounds.
I was shown to an interview room which was not, in my opinion, fit for a dog, not even a homeless mongrel. Across the scuffed table sat a woman constable and a woman detective. That was bad enough but things got worse when a young woman in a severe business suit eased into the chair beside me. According to her, she’s the rising star in the Becket, Hyde and Becket firmament and I was jolly lucky that she could spare the time to represent me. I need hardly tell you that my case didn’t get out of the starting stalls. When I objected, Becket and all the others threw me out.
I’m on the sex offenders register which is like being warned off Newmarket Heath and I was fined a small fortune because I went straight back to the house and sacked the cook (female) and all the maids – wrongful dismissal with no just cause, was the verdict. Now I’ve an all-male establishment and my friends find excuses not to dine at my table since the new cook (male) is awful.
As if things couldn’t get worse, Angela decided to stand by me.
“Whatever you’re going through, my darling,” she whinnied, “I’ll be at your side.”
That’s why I’m up at the crack of ten o’clock on a Saturday, actually. I’ve to present myself at St George’s, Hanover Square, at two to be joined in holy matrimony by the Archbishop himself. At least all I have to do is turn up. Angela and her mother have organised everything including the small copper coins I have to fling out of the limousine at passing urchins as I depart for the church. We don’t get all that many urchins in Russell Square but Angela will probably bus some in from Stepney for the occasion.
She even supplied the morning suit I will be wearing. It is lurking in my dressing room now inside a plastic bag.
I waited so long that I’d rather eat breakfast before my bath but George will probably have a temperament if I do. He will want to sit on the bath stool and talk while I apply the old loofa. Last week was his first Saturday on duty and he insisted on stripping out of his trousers to show me the precise location of the muscle in his thigh which ruptured, terminating his promising career in the Royal Ballet. I had no idea that there were so many muscles in that region nor that they came so perilously close to what he referred to as his ‘junk’.
Today he was too preoccupied with what he mistakenly dubbed ’the happy event’ to continue my anatomy lesson. I’m pretty sure Pierre had threatened him with violence if my suit wasn’t passed A1 at Lloyds. I would have enjoyed a long soak but the water temperature was so low that pack ice was forming along the sides of the bath. I yelled to him to come and turn on the hot tap but he pretended not to hear me. Then I scooted out and dried myself when I remembered my embarrassment last week when he assisted me. The stewards would have suspended him for gross abuse of a towel if they’d got wind of it.
I was sufficiently miffed to deviate to the dressing room to utter a mild reproach. He was standing there absolutely enthralled looking at the item I was required to don for my imminent, and very public, nuptials. The material was silk, shiny silk and the colour was white, a glaring white except for large black buttons and an even larger, even blacker rose.
We landed with the Conqueror – the second boat to touch the beach in Hastings after Duke William himself. You can actually see the jolly old progenitor behind the King’s shoulder in the Bayeux Tapestry. I suppose we’ve survived so long because we know how to handle an emergency. All I want is for people to leave me alone but there is a limit to my patience and the suit was well beyond that bourn from which no traveller returns.
I telephoned William.
I have three brothers – the others are Alfred and Edward (Mamma has a thing about kings). William is my twin, born a mere twenty minutes after me but excluded by that narrow margin from the glory of the title. I offered to give it to him when the old man died but he told me to keep it. To tell the truth, he’d be much better at being a duke than I am but he simply wouldn’t hear of me giving it up. At the time, I thought he was making a noble sacrifice but recent events are beginning to make me wonder if he hasn’t got the better deal.
William and I used to be great pals but Mama and Angela don’t approve of him so I’ve had to cut him out of my circle recently. I wanted him to be my best man but I was told off for my folly in the sternest terms. He was always the one to solve the problems when we were boys but I don’t think even he can do much about Angela and the shiny white suit.
I explained everything and he was absolutely wonderful, listening carefully and asking all sorts of questions, some of which I understood. It calmed me just to talk to him, to tell the truth, and I was confident that I could follow his advice.
“Put on the suit, go to the church and leave everything else to me.”
It wasn’t quite as hard as I feared. Angela had insisted that we rehearse practically everything together so I engaged auto pilot and went with the flow. Angela is a worrier and she wanted to check that everything was going to go smoothly. She even practiced bedroom frolics but not with me because, as she explained when I found her naked in bed with her second cousin Nigel, she didn’t want to spoil the surprise for me on our honeymoon. I said that I’d be happy to pretend surprise if she rehearsed with me but she told me not to be frivolous.
So, I got into the suit and went out to the limousine. There were no urchins that I could see but a bunch of drunken Australians, attracted by the suit, came across and collected most of the copper coins I threw at them, taking care that as many as possible landed in the road. There’s never a policeman when you need one but in this instance there were two and they stopped the traffic so the Australians escaped serious injury.
The church was full when I got there and I heard a few gasps as I walked down the aisle to take my position at the altar steps. Nigel, Angela’s choice of best man, was already there but when he opened his mouth to deliver one of his witticisms I threatened to head butt him if he said so much as ‘good afternoon’. My bride was only ten minutes late and I’m sure the audience felt I was unreasonable to look so often towards the door. The fact is I was waiting for William to come to the rescue.
It was the swelling music that alerted me to the arrival of my bride. I turned and watched her glide down the aisle on her father’s arm but she didn’t trip or faint and arrived by my side composed and in command of the situation. The archbishop stood in front of us clearly primed and ready to commit me. I’d given up hope and I was hardly listening to him droning on when William’s voice rang out behind me.
“I do!” he said, loudly and clearly.
I was confused because I thought that was my line but then I realised that he was responding to the request to show why Angela and I should not be wed. The archbishop looked startled but he recognised my twin brother so I suppose he felt that he had to give him a hearing.
“Do I understand that you object to this wedding, my lord?”
“Yes, my lord. The fact is that the bride’s been sleeping with the best man.”
William is only a baron and he’s outranked by the archbishop, a lord of the church, but I don’t suppose it will come down to that, not yet at least.
“This is the twenty-first century and a little dalliance can generally be overlooked, particularly before the nuptials. Perhaps we should adjourn to the vestry to discuss this amongst the interested parties”, the archbishop proposed. He was a business man before he got the God urge so he knows how to handle negotiations.
“That’s all very well, my lord, but I don’t think the vestry’s big enough for all the interested parties. The truth is that the bride has fucked half the men in the church – groom’s side as well as her own. You yourself had her that weekend in Perthshire when you sprained your ankle.”
The archbishop, looking as sick as a parrot, muttered something about an act of Christian charity by the dear girl but I don’t think anyone else heard him.
Proceedings had been pretty orderly to start with but now there was uproar. Angela’s father got up from his front pew and yelled for silence. He didn’t get it but we were able to hear his defence of his baby girl. It was actually quite moving and I could sense that the mood of the crowd was turning against my twin. William was, however, ready with a crushing counter-blow.
“You forgot to mention the old family tradition of you and Angela sharing a bed – a narrow bed - at the Monaco Grand Prix.”
Angela fainted and her father staggered back to his seat as white as chalk. We were all looking at William who winked at me and took a step to the side revealing Mavis standing behind him. She was in her uniform with her hair messed and her hat askew but she gave me a shy smile and a little wave. I grinned and waved back; I wanted to go to her but it would have meant stepping over Angela who was lying with her head in Nigel’s lap cooing at him.
It took a few minutes to get her back on her feet and moved to the vestry with her entourage leaving the archbishop and me alone at the altar steps.
“I suppose that means the wedding is off,” he said, making no effort to keep his voice down.
“We can still have a wedding,” William replied, “if my big brother wants one. I have a special licence that permits him to marry Mavis Patricia Green, spinster.”
About the only advantage in being a duke is that you can get things like special licences on a Saturday morning.
I thought I would be safer married and I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to marry more than Mavis. After the ceremony, we skipped the wedding breakfast at the Ritz and went to the McDonalds where Mavis works and had Big Macs with her pals. After I dismissed my cook (female) I started going to McDonalds where Mavis made me feel welcome and important in a way that hasn’t often happened in my life.
It was the best decision I ever made and we’re doing quite a lot of living happily ever after. We let the house in Russell Square to an Arab Sheik and moved into a nice semi close to her Mum and Dad in Penge. We’re house-hunting again since Mavis told me she’s expecting our third. William has a job in the neighbourhood and he can often arrange that we’re his last pizza delivery of the evening so he can stay and eat with us.
I didn’t get to bed until after three so it took me a few moments to remember it’s Saturday, Pierre’s day off. It will be that stupid footman, the latest George, drawing my bath. Filling a bath is hardly rocket science: I’ll bet I could do it myself if someone showed me once or twice.
Mama sneers at me because of my servants.
“You don’t employ them, Henry, they employ you.”
She always brings girls from one of these countries that keep changing their names. You know the ones that get you a low score on Pointless. When that Richard chappie talks about a ’sovereign state’, I always think that Mama probably gets change from a sovereign when she buys a new lot of maids. That absolute bounder Boris arranges it so she can import a plane load whenever she wants.
She’s right about my servants, of course. They all belong to a Trade Union and have better lawyers than me. I used to be with Becket, Hyde and Becket but they dropped me when I decided that I wasn’t going to employ females. The family has been with them since before Agincourt and they used to send over the senior partner to smooth over any little contretemps I had. I mean it’s almost a family tradition to run your hand up under the dress of the maid when she’s holding the soup tureen and giving her buttocks a little squeeze. Great Uncle Harry used to moan that they had spoiled the game in the thirties by wearing knickers.
The girl who complained had some nerve really. She was plain with fat legs and I was positively doing her a favour by giving her bum a pinch. It certainly wouldn’t have gone beyond that if she hadn’t spoiled my aim by squirming. She spilled half the soup when she banged the tureen down on the table before she slammed out the front door. I phoned Becket, Hyde and Becket when the two policewomen came to the door asking for a statement. I was prepared to let bygones be bygones over the ruined tablecloth but the Robertas didn’t see the funny side.
I was ordered to the nick for an interview under caution which wouldn’t have been a problem if they hadn’t insisted that I be there at the time Angela had given me for meeting her in Burlington Arcade to fit her engagement ring. Country Life were to be there to take a snap although Angela is really better suited to Horse and Hounds.
I was shown to an interview room which was not, in my opinion, fit for a dog, not even a homeless mongrel. Across the scuffed table sat a woman constable and a woman detective. That was bad enough but things got worse when a young woman in a severe business suit eased into the chair beside me. According to her, she’s the rising star in the Becket, Hyde and Becket firmament and I was jolly lucky that she could spare the time to represent me. I need hardly tell you that my case didn’t get out of the starting stalls. When I objected, Becket and all the others threw me out.
I’m on the sex offenders register which is like being warned off Newmarket Heath and I was fined a small fortune because I went straight back to the house and sacked the cook (female) and all the maids – wrongful dismissal with no just cause, was the verdict. Now I’ve an all-male establishment and my friends find excuses not to dine at my table since the new cook (male) is awful.
As if things couldn’t get worse, Angela decided to stand by me.
“Whatever you’re going through, my darling,” she whinnied, “I’ll be at your side.”
That’s why I’m up at the crack of ten o’clock on a Saturday, actually. I’ve to present myself at St George’s, Hanover Square, at two to be joined in holy matrimony by the Archbishop himself. At least all I have to do is turn up. Angela and her mother have organised everything including the small copper coins I have to fling out of the limousine at passing urchins as I depart for the church. We don’t get all that many urchins in Russell Square but Angela will probably bus some in from Stepney for the occasion.
She even supplied the morning suit I will be wearing. It is lurking in my dressing room now inside a plastic bag.
I waited so long that I’d rather eat breakfast before my bath but George will probably have a temperament if I do. He will want to sit on the bath stool and talk while I apply the old loofa. Last week was his first Saturday on duty and he insisted on stripping out of his trousers to show me the precise location of the muscle in his thigh which ruptured, terminating his promising career in the Royal Ballet. I had no idea that there were so many muscles in that region nor that they came so perilously close to what he referred to as his ‘junk’.
Today he was too preoccupied with what he mistakenly dubbed ’the happy event’ to continue my anatomy lesson. I’m pretty sure Pierre had threatened him with violence if my suit wasn’t passed A1 at Lloyds. I would have enjoyed a long soak but the water temperature was so low that pack ice was forming along the sides of the bath. I yelled to him to come and turn on the hot tap but he pretended not to hear me. Then I scooted out and dried myself when I remembered my embarrassment last week when he assisted me. The stewards would have suspended him for gross abuse of a towel if they’d got wind of it.
I was sufficiently miffed to deviate to the dressing room to utter a mild reproach. He was standing there absolutely enthralled looking at the item I was required to don for my imminent, and very public, nuptials. The material was silk, shiny silk and the colour was white, a glaring white except for large black buttons and an even larger, even blacker rose.
We landed with the Conqueror – the second boat to touch the beach in Hastings after Duke William himself. You can actually see the jolly old progenitor behind the King’s shoulder in the Bayeux Tapestry. I suppose we’ve survived so long because we know how to handle an emergency. All I want is for people to leave me alone but there is a limit to my patience and the suit was well beyond that bourn from which no traveller returns.
I telephoned William.
I have three brothers – the others are Alfred and Edward (Mamma has a thing about kings). William is my twin, born a mere twenty minutes after me but excluded by that narrow margin from the glory of the title. I offered to give it to him when the old man died but he told me to keep it. To tell the truth, he’d be much better at being a duke than I am but he simply wouldn’t hear of me giving it up. At the time, I thought he was making a noble sacrifice but recent events are beginning to make me wonder if he hasn’t got the better deal.
William and I used to be great pals but Mama and Angela don’t approve of him so I’ve had to cut him out of my circle recently. I wanted him to be my best man but I was told off for my folly in the sternest terms. He was always the one to solve the problems when we were boys but I don’t think even he can do much about Angela and the shiny white suit.
I explained everything and he was absolutely wonderful, listening carefully and asking all sorts of questions, some of which I understood. It calmed me just to talk to him, to tell the truth, and I was confident that I could follow his advice.
“Put on the suit, go to the church and leave everything else to me.”
It wasn’t quite as hard as I feared. Angela had insisted that we rehearse practically everything together so I engaged auto pilot and went with the flow. Angela is a worrier and she wanted to check that everything was going to go smoothly. She even practiced bedroom frolics but not with me because, as she explained when I found her naked in bed with her second cousin Nigel, she didn’t want to spoil the surprise for me on our honeymoon. I said that I’d be happy to pretend surprise if she rehearsed with me but she told me not to be frivolous.
So, I got into the suit and went out to the limousine. There were no urchins that I could see but a bunch of drunken Australians, attracted by the suit, came across and collected most of the copper coins I threw at them, taking care that as many as possible landed in the road. There’s never a policeman when you need one but in this instance there were two and they stopped the traffic so the Australians escaped serious injury.
The church was full when I got there and I heard a few gasps as I walked down the aisle to take my position at the altar steps. Nigel, Angela’s choice of best man, was already there but when he opened his mouth to deliver one of his witticisms I threatened to head butt him if he said so much as ‘good afternoon’. My bride was only ten minutes late and I’m sure the audience felt I was unreasonable to look so often towards the door. The fact is I was waiting for William to come to the rescue.
It was the swelling music that alerted me to the arrival of my bride. I turned and watched her glide down the aisle on her father’s arm but she didn’t trip or faint and arrived by my side composed and in command of the situation. The archbishop stood in front of us clearly primed and ready to commit me. I’d given up hope and I was hardly listening to him droning on when William’s voice rang out behind me.
“I do!” he said, loudly and clearly.
I was confused because I thought that was my line but then I realised that he was responding to the request to show why Angela and I should not be wed. The archbishop looked startled but he recognised my twin brother so I suppose he felt that he had to give him a hearing.
“Do I understand that you object to this wedding, my lord?”
“Yes, my lord. The fact is that the bride’s been sleeping with the best man.”
William is only a baron and he’s outranked by the archbishop, a lord of the church, but I don’t suppose it will come down to that, not yet at least.
“This is the twenty-first century and a little dalliance can generally be overlooked, particularly before the nuptials. Perhaps we should adjourn to the vestry to discuss this amongst the interested parties”, the archbishop proposed. He was a business man before he got the God urge so he knows how to handle negotiations.
“That’s all very well, my lord, but I don’t think the vestry’s big enough for all the interested parties. The truth is that the bride has fucked half the men in the church – groom’s side as well as her own. You yourself had her that weekend in Perthshire when you sprained your ankle.”
The archbishop, looking as sick as a parrot, muttered something about an act of Christian charity by the dear girl but I don’t think anyone else heard him.
Proceedings had been pretty orderly to start with but now there was uproar. Angela’s father got up from his front pew and yelled for silence. He didn’t get it but we were able to hear his defence of his baby girl. It was actually quite moving and I could sense that the mood of the crowd was turning against my twin. William was, however, ready with a crushing counter-blow.
“You forgot to mention the old family tradition of you and Angela sharing a bed – a narrow bed - at the Monaco Grand Prix.”
Angela fainted and her father staggered back to his seat as white as chalk. We were all looking at William who winked at me and took a step to the side revealing Mavis standing behind him. She was in her uniform with her hair messed and her hat askew but she gave me a shy smile and a little wave. I grinned and waved back; I wanted to go to her but it would have meant stepping over Angela who was lying with her head in Nigel’s lap cooing at him.
It took a few minutes to get her back on her feet and moved to the vestry with her entourage leaving the archbishop and me alone at the altar steps.
“I suppose that means the wedding is off,” he said, making no effort to keep his voice down.
“We can still have a wedding,” William replied, “if my big brother wants one. I have a special licence that permits him to marry Mavis Patricia Green, spinster.”
About the only advantage in being a duke is that you can get things like special licences on a Saturday morning.
I thought I would be safer married and I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to marry more than Mavis. After the ceremony, we skipped the wedding breakfast at the Ritz and went to the McDonalds where Mavis works and had Big Macs with her pals. After I dismissed my cook (female) I started going to McDonalds where Mavis made me feel welcome and important in a way that hasn’t often happened in my life.
It was the best decision I ever made and we’re doing quite a lot of living happily ever after. We let the house in Russell Square to an Arab Sheik and moved into a nice semi close to her Mum and Dad in Penge. We’re house-hunting again since Mavis told me she’s expecting our third. William has a job in the neighbourhood and he can often arrange that we’re his last pizza delivery of the evening so he can stay and eat with us.
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned thirteen novels and many short stories. His ten latest novels – The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths, Loyalty, Killing Cousins, Damaged Lives, Patriotism, The Hobos' Union and Getting GOVAN out of the GIRLS – are all McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned thirteen novels and many short stories. His ten latest novels – The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths, Loyalty, Killing Cousins, Damaged Lives, Patriotism, The Hobos' Union and Getting GOVAN out of the GIRLS – are all McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.