Pigeons fluttering in a clear blue sky. Fresh big white clouds floating westerly over London. With new bruises but bones unbroken, Schultz in Arabesque Street carefully alighted from the pearl grey limousine. The door of number four opening once more on its hinges. To reveal an already amazing transformation. The scene designers on Sperm Productions’ scaffolding working on the library ceiling. Smiling down at Schultz smiling up.
“Hey Jesus fellas you’re doing a real great fucking job, no kidding.”
Schultz in his bedroom throwing clothes into the pigskin Gladstone bag. Purchased out of his first management money from his first big London flop. And looking in the mirror. One’s scars miraculously healing. Black eyes fading. I might even look human once more. With my career at last taking off in the direction of my golden dreams. That bitch and her clap finally out of my life. A pity her luscious gorgeous white body had to go with her.
Outside Sperm Productions his Lordship’s limousine packed purring and ready for the road. Binky’s pearl grey motor now taking up the rear with his shotgun cases, fishing rods, riding gear and luggage.
“Ah Schultz après vous. His Royal Grace any moment shall be flying out to be with us. Seat yourself. I trust you found Gayboy up one of his assistants prodding away as is his wont.”
“Jesus Binky he actually was. He agreed the deal right in the middle of it. Soon as I offered him the rent.”
“Ah I see. Amazing isn’t it Schultz, how people’s interest in money is so easily aroused when they ought to be otherwise engrossed.”
His Lordship one side, Binky the other and Schultz luxuriating in the flashing beams of sunshine. Down Sloane Street and humming along the King’s Road. So named for a monarch who once made his way to the edge of Fulham to mount a lady friend. Before there were these drab house and shop fronts. A pottery, cemetery and church. And over the Thames at Putney Bridge. Its mud flats along the river black and shiny at low tide. Playing fields and the greenery of Barnes Common. And the larger more affluent suburban houses. Mortlake and Sheen. And beyond at a mile a minute through Sunningdale. Until at four o’clock they agreeably took tea in a cozy oak tea room of a village. Schultz leaning way back in his chair as he slowly pushed a cream bun into his pleased expression and regarded the tweedy rose growing ladies.
“Jesus, England. Look at this quaint fucking place. Like a magazine advertisement for the good life. Well bred people just hanging around in here eating this Devon clotted cream, hot scones and clover honey and drinking tea in the middle of this secluded picturesque countryside without a single fucking worry in the world.”
“Ah Schultz his Royal Grace and I did so think you might like it all.”
“Like it, I’m fucking well utterly enchanted. But with this kind of bliss no wonder the country is ruined.”
Schultz constantly jerking around in his seat enquiring about nearly every item in the passing landscape. Hubert directed to make a little detour to a tiny village where, nervously hopping out, his Lordship bought cheese and tongue.
“Now Schultz try a bit of cheese wrapped up in this calves’ tongue.”
“Hey this is really delicious. Jesus to think I was screwing around years in the fucking States missing all this. When are we reaching your cottage your Lordship. We’ve been heading down this winding narrow road over these hills and through these valleys for half an hour.”
“Not long Schultz. In fact just over this bridge and up through the village.”
“Hey this is really beautiful. And christ. Did you see her. That girl. Did you see her. She turned around looking at us. Gorgeous. Shit. Everyone is turning around and looking at us.”
“Schultz I must warn you. You are not to spread your clap around this place, where I unfortunately happen to be known.”
“Hey you have to remind me of that just when I’m enjoying myself. All I’m doing is remarking on the incredible beauty. But don’t worry about a thing your Lordship, my prick is temporarily safely bandaged up inside my zipped up fly. Till I start using it on this fantastic girl I met today in the lobby of Gayboy’s building.”
Up through the high street. A bakery, a grocery, a pub and neat grey stone houses. A saddlers. Seed and grain merchant. A book shop. Tall elms surrounding a triangular green. A hotel The Lord Nectarine. Past some ancient stone cottages. And at the outskirts of this ancient village a high wall on either side of the road. Beyond which beeches towered and the deep green leaves of rhododendrons shined in the sun. The two motor cars turning left into an entrance.
“Hey where are we going.”
“We’re here Schultz.”
“Hey that’s what I thought, back there I noticed a hotel, The Lord Nectarine, is that you.”
“Schultz you do have sharp eyes don’t you.”
“You bet I do. Those were some kind of gate lodges we passed there.”
“They were Schultz.”
“Jesus they’re big enough to live in. Hey Jesus look at that. Cattle. Cows. Sheep. Horses. Hey this is beautiful. Christ a river. What are those your Lordship. Those big hill tops of trees.”
“Ah Schultz your curiosity is insatiable. Binky do tell Schultz, you know so much more about these things than I.”
“Those my dear insatiable Schultz are the park arrangements. Set out in such fashion by a chap Capability Brown who had rather a flair for that sort of thing. Placing trees, hills and various vistas so that they would be agreeable to the eye and bewitching by moonlight to the ladies.”
“Jesus you guys. As if you didn’t have enough bewitchingly agreeable already, now you got to have a guy shifting the whole landscape and countryside around so you get your rocks off if you even look sideways. Hey where’s this cottage. We’ve gone a couple of miles. There’s a church. And a cemetery. Don’t tell me you have your own church and cemetery too.”
“I’m just counting these cows Schultz. Binky I’m sure will explain.”
“Ah Schultz unlike you brash rushing Americans we Brits do like to equip ourselves for life. One must upon occasion be seen to pray you know. And even, in due course get buried. One does however attempt to delay that event by pursuing one’s comfortable habits as long as possible.”
“What’s that Binky. Up on top of that hill.”
“The ruin of the old cottage Schultz.”
“Cottage. That’s an old castle.”
“Now Schultz if you wait but a moment, you will see just as we cross this little bridge and rise up this hill, the new cottage. Ah. There.”
“Jesus christ almighty, your Lordship, that’s not where you fucking well live is it.”
“Survive is a better word Schultz.”
“But it’s fucking massive. What has it got a thousand rooms or something. Jesus look at the turrets and towers. And all them windows. Hey wait, it’s gone out of sight now.”
“Be back in view in just a minute Schultz.”
“Jesus I hope so, I want to see that again.”
“Just as we get up this little hill now. And just around by this clump of trees.”
“Wow. Look at that. It’s like out of a fairy tale or something. What the hell do you do in there all by yourself for fucks sake.”
“Ah Schultz you have asked a most marvellously pertinent question. Which of course I think I can answer. In one word. Cower.”
“Jesus cower. I wouldn’t cower. I’d go fill the place up with pieces of fucking ass and screw my brains out.”
“Of course Schultz being already familiar with your personal habits, we both fervently believe you.”
“Hey some guy’s running up a flag on that turret. This place is fucking incredible. What a film set. I mean Jesus, for porno films, your Lordship. You’d make a million.”
“Ah Schultz I knew the time would finally come when you would provide me with a solution to my life.”
Crossing a moat, the motor’s wheels rumbling over a drawbridge. The cars swinging around on pebble stones to draw to a halt in front of a great oaken door. The castle’s
long shadows spread out beyond its dikes across sweeping lawns and pasture and reaching up to a forest edge of trees. Where two great birds, their vast black shiny wings flapping gave deep cries as they flew swooping out over the parkland.
“Christ your Lordship you got a team of fucking retinue waiting.”
A tall austere butler his grey hair parted in the middle and combed flat back on his head stood flanked by two footmen in livery. The shortest of whom stepped forward, opened the car door and bowed to his Lordship alighting. The butler’s chin rising as he tweezed a fingertip of one hand with the fingertips of his other, intoning into the moist soft late afternoon air.
“Welcome home my Lord, I trust your journey was pleasant.”
“Yes thank you Batters. Schultz this is Batters. Mr. Schultz. And of course Batters you know Mr. Sunning dale.”
“Mr. Schultz, sir. And Mr. Sunningdale, so good to have you back with us again.”
Schultz led to his room by a young footman in dark green livery. Toting Schultz’s bag between two brass cannons and across the stone paved floor of the enormous pillared hall. Up the Jacobean staircase. A mullioned window looking down on the moat and out over more parkland. Massive gilt framed portraits. Some folk in their ermine and scarlet robes staring dolefully down. Along an arched corridor to a doorway entrance which went through six feet of masonry from the hall. Inside the outside door an inner door covered in a soft green damask silk opening on this pine scented perfumed high ceilinged room.
“Thank you, here’s a half a crown buy yourself a drink.”
“I’m sorry sir but his Lordship does not permit the acceptance of gratuities.”
“Holy shit, kid, you should go on strike, that’s unjust. Don’t let his Lordship push you around.”
“Yes sir, thank you sir.”
Schultz standing at the tall window. Turning a handle and pushing it open. Staring out across the twilight parkland. Vast haunted lonely landscape shut away from the whole world. Towering oaks, elms and pines. His Lordship’s church steeple in the distance. Evening birds chirping and singing. A bat crisscrossing the air. A beast mooing. Fresh moist cool breeze blowing in the open window. The great grey granite still cold to the touch.
“Jesus christ, his Lordship while he goes around London with holes in his socks, has a whole fucking personal kingdom here.”
Schultz washing his face in the big bathroom. Full of scented soaps and glass trays of bath salts. Towels stacked warmly over a large chromium heating rail. Aiming his piss down on the flowers decorating the toilet bowl. Changing his corduroy suit to ivy league grey flannel trousers and popping on a yellow silk shirt, brown knit tie and a fawn tweed jacket to descend the wide carpeted oak stairs. Feet pounding below as his out of breath shirt sleeved Royal Grace raced upwards.
“Hey what’s the hurry your Lordship.”
“Schultz there is always a hurry concerning a dangerous disaster of some kind in this place. The chimney sweep is stuck up the chimney of the music room with his feet kicking down bucketfuls of soot. And I may have left my bath running.”
“So what’s so dangerous about that.”
“Well for a start some silly young fellow from the kitchens lit the fire under the sweep and then pulled off the dust sheets from the furniture in such a manner as to succeed in breaking considerable crockery.”
“Jesus your Lordship take it easy for Christ’s sake. Your jugular vein is standing right out from your throat. What’s a few dishes. Or a bit of overflowing water. You’re going to bust a blood vessel. This is a swell fucking place. Relax, enjoy it.”
“Ah Schultz you are inspiring. But I’d rather a few dishes did not happen to be irreplaceable Meissen. And that the chimney sweep’s socks weren’t scorched off him up the music room smoke hole. The staff in this place do compete in their efforts to make life easy for me but they only succeed in fucking up everything in sight.”
“Hey with all servants around you want to watch your language your Lordship. Where do I go, I’ll turn off your bath.”
“O god Schultz. I’d be grateful if you would. Just up to your left then left then right and it’s the last door on your right. And let me advise you, never take up residence in a large house.”
His Lordship jumping back down the stairs. Schultz not quite following directions, promptly geting lost plus hysterical as he opened doors, pounded on locked ones and ran back and forth in hallways and finally shouting blue murder. Until meeting two footmen with blackened faces who led him rushing to one last door. All three in feverish haste through the book lined study, bedroom and dressing room and bath. To happily confront a chambermaid, the same rosy cheeked buxom stunningly beautiful young girl Schultz had caught sight of in the local village.
“Thanks guys, I think I can handle this little problem for his Lordship now.”
“Very good sir.”
The footmen withdrawing. The chambermaid putting her finishing polishing touches on glass shelves and stacking towels. As Schultz nosed around his Lordship’s private apartments. Silk dressing gowns. Eight pairs of slippers. One gold embroidered with crossed shotguns. Dinner clothes neatly laid out in his dressing room. Piles of architect’s drawings on the massive desk in the study and a strange convoluted contraption that appeared to be a telephone. Paintings and statuary in the bedroom hall. A gilt coronet above the canopy of his Lordship’s bed. And awfully good looking well dressed people in silver framed photographs on a high dresser in his bedroom.
“These are nice little rooms his Lordship’s got.”
“Yes sir.”
“Is this your station.”
“Excuse me sir but I do not know what you mean sir.”
“I mean do you work here in his Lordship’s room.”
“Well it’s me who tidies out and does his Lordship’s bathroom sir.”
“What’s your name honey.”
“Roxana sir.”
“Are you satisfied with this kind of life here. A good looking girl like you.”
“I am sir.”
“Girl with your looks, you could be up in London.”
“Oooo I wouldn’t want to be living in an awful big city sir. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
“No problem. None. And tell you what honey, just in case you are ever up in town, here’s my phone number, you just give me a little tinkle. How about that.”
“Well sir that’s extremely kind of you but I don’t have cause to go up to London.”
“Give it time, honey. Just give it time. Domestic slavery is going out of fashion. And you just give me a tinkle. Be seeing you around.”
“Yes sir.”
Schultz went out in the evening light strolling around the cobbled courtyards and reconnoitering beyond the moat in the castle gardens. And even to the staff’s astonishment nosing about the basements. Later bathing and changing his once rather ripped tuxedo now miraculously repaired and freshly pressed and laid out on his bed.
“Shit. The god damn rich sure do get the pleasure. And Jesus the poor sure do get the pain.”
Schultz, following a session walking about admiring his erection in his various bedroom mirrors, presented himself at eight for sherry in the library. His Lordship in the large panelled room playing a madrigal on his gramophone as they sipped their fortified wine. Until Batters announced to these three gentlemen.
“My Lord, dinner is served.”
Schultz on his Lordship’s right sitting back expansively in the candlelight of the pillared dining room. Digesting his dinner of freshly caught salmon with Riesling and followed by slabs of tender rare roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, broccoli and fat dark burgundy ferried in by Batters and two footmen.
“Holy shit, your Lordship, what the fuck are you doing spending your time in London. This is paradise. The furnishing fabrics alone, they’re gorgeous and priceless. The gardens out there, the birds, the flowers. Flocks of deer grazing down the hillside. Being here like this makes me feel like two and a half million bucks.”
Over port and cigars, Schultz sucking back deeply both smoke and liquid. His silk cuffed wrist extended on the mahogany and his fingers twirling the deep purple glass of wine. Binky pushing a gold toothpick between lower teeth and blowing his smoke out over the decanter.
“Ah don’t you think Schultz is, your Royal Grace, the stuff of which country gentlemen are made. Indeed the expression, like a duck to water, is, I think appropriate.”
“Of course that’s true Binky, but while Schultz is advising me to abandon London he is at the same time advising certain members of my household to go there and to strike for higher wages here.”
“Holy shit your Lordship I never said anything of the fucking kind. Who told you that. All I was saying was the middle ages are over. I mean christ, do you know what’s going on down there underneath us up here, a whole fucking mob of people working in cellars. It looked to me like they needed fresh air.”
“Ah Schultz you do, don’t you, take the fucking cake sometimes. I don’t suppose it has crossed your mind that all of them are being paid, housed, fed and are without chains. And indeed I should be all but too delighted were they to disappear entirely out of my life.”
On the billiard room walls, portraits of fierce looking gentlemen in military uniform. Schultz with dinner jacket off and chalking his cue tip like a master, proceeded to devastate and awe Binky and his Lordship with a magnificent display of bank, carom and full massé shots.
“By god Schultz wherever did you learn to be so marvellous at billiards.”
“In my local neighborhood pool hall. And outside of show business it’s the first fucking thing I’m able to teach you guys a lesson in.”
“Binky and I are suitably impressed. And now Schultz if you’ll just press the button behind your elbow, perhaps you might like a palate cleansing champagne.”
“Yeah sure, why not. This life with you two eccentric guys is beginning to really suit me.”
They repaired to the music room. A long shadowy ornate gallery with white gold embellished organ pipes at one end and a black gleaming concert grand piano and two ancient harps at the other. A wood fire now blazing and crackling where the chimney sweep had his socks scorched. Tall windows looking down from battlements over the moonlit deer park. Batters entering with an ice bucket of champagne. Followed by the young footman whose hand trembled as he proffered his tray to Schultz.