In which Arthur Rhoose avoids a fuss

 There are many things I can not be doing with.  I example for you the sort of cove who appears on the wireless to instruct you on gardening and implies you are lacking in morale fibre if you don’t spend all the daylight hours out amongst your begonias.  Another thing I can’t be doing with is the chap who is sure that everyone agrees with his singular prejudice against whatever it is and does not notice the well honed silence his remarks are being met with. But above them all, is that kind of manager who believes all his minions must be exact copies of him in mean and method – saving they be not so good as this kind of bounder hates the thought that others could be more skilled.  I, on the other hand, appreciate the skills in others I do not possess.

Take Arthur Rhoose, one of those fellows in the Foreign Office who are essential for the smooth running of any embassy as they can remember what we actually promised to do under the Treaty of Windsor and what we gave to the Grand Duke of Luxembourg last Christmas, thus avoiding the embarrassment of sending ‘His & Her’ egg cups two years running. 

 

Arthur Rhoose is the most serious minded of young men and as such splendid and well fitted man to be our treasurer.  While I hope I add a certain expansive pomp to the running of the club, Rhoose knows, to the last farthing, where the money has gone.  I like to see him as a Clement Atlee to my Churchill, unlikely allies against a greater foe.  Admittedly I haven’t raised the Summer Dinning Room into an Expeditionary Force to teach those bounders at a certain neighbouring club the value of decent manners and polite conversation and he, to my knowledge, has not brought the boiler room into communal ownership or implemented a scheme of free health care at the point of use for all those in the kitchens, but still, I stand by the remark.

 

Now Arthur has a gel in his life and if ever there were two such peas in a pod it is Arthur Rhoose and Miss Rachel Bottesford.  If she owned a skirt made of a substance other than tweed I swear I never saw it.  Her hair was under stricter control than any quailing first form faced by a vengeful Latin mistress and I believe with greater faith than any member of an obscure sect has in their creed, she has never her utter a frivolous word in her life.  Together they would go on improving walking holidays, identifying the decade in which a particular style of Ministry of Works sign was placed on a crumbling pile of rubble which, against all expectations, was a castle and waxing lyrical about how a mound of undistinguished earth was surprising proof of the thriving nature of Beaker Culture in the Bronze Age.   I used to look in on them with a paternal eye when Miss Bottesford would visit on the permitted Ladies High Tea Tuesdays, both of them peering through horn-rimmed specs at some worthy tome, a modest scone to the side and cooling cuppa to the fore.  I remember one day Rhoose was struggling with Dame Veronica Wedgewood’s ‘The Thirty Years’ War’ and Rachel was furiously scribbling notes on something from The Left Book Club.  ‘Soviet Democracy’ I tried, looking over her shoulder.  ‘Are they thinking of trying it soon?’ I ventured, hoping to lighten the mood.  It didn’t.  I was put in my place with a look that somehow expressed a very deep disappointment and an endless sorrow for the fallen condition of mankind.  None the less.  I wouldn’t have them any other way.

 

It was with all that in mind that, to my surprise, I came across them in a nearby tea room, countenances more woeful than the selectors after yet another plan for the Golden Age of Cricket turns out to have been made of inferior tin.  They were never loquacious at the best but lord it was difficult to coach a half sentence out of them.  Eventually Arthur choked out a single word, ‘marriage.’

 

Now, I can understand why Arthur would look glum, when Mrs The Hon Sec announced ‘You’re do’ I felt much the same but Miss Bottesford looked the same.  ‘It’s alright’ I said, hoping to lift them.  ‘I managed to get a posting to a small garrison town in the Midlands when we were hitched.  We spent the first two years of wedlock separated by a hundred miles. You should try it, gives you a chance to get used to the idea.’  The silence that followed suggested that this, it appears, would not help.

 

At times like this deception is not felony.  I sent for more tea, added much sugar as a distraction and slipped in something medicinal.  Soon tongues were loosened and consciences unburdened.  Marriage, itself, was not the problem, in fact they had devised several pie charts to demonstrate the financial prudence of such a decision.  No, it was not the vows but all the rigmarole connected with them that filled them with dread.

 

Rhoose started first.  He had been assured that there would be a ‘stag’ event.  He had readied himself and put 10 shillings aside for a few pints of Brown Ale at the ‘Trumpeter on Horseback.’  Then his chums broke it to him.  He would be expected to spend a weekend in Barcelona.  Arthur rallied at this point because he had always wanted to see the collection of walking canes at the Museu Frederic Marès.  It was quiet forcibly explained that he would not have time  time to see the reconstructions of Catalan Romanesque churches or walk the planks of galley such as the great Cervantes had at Lepanto as he was to be subjected to wines, bright lights and a general excess of every kind.

 

It was at this point Miss Bottesford interjected. It had been suggested she have a ‘pamper day’, which seemed to involve revealing to her friends more flesh than even her husband would be allowed to see under several layers of defendable flannelette and being turned into some kind of painted maypole.  As for the Hen Party, all she could say was it was ‘silly’ - a simple word which from her decided lips carried more commendation that any five thesis Martin Luther could care to name.

 

You had to pity them, so lost in a blue stocking fug.  Was it possible to skip the preface and go straight on to the main body of the marriage?  No.  Here too were fripperies which were beyond the pale.  Serviceable wool was not allowed in a wedding dress and when someone suggested bridesmaids in blushing peach I am sure I heard a whimper.  Having been taken to a wedding once Arthur shuddered at the noise made by the musicians and apart from being forced to dance, he would not be able to hear anyone having an interesting conversation.  Drink stronger than their favoured beef tea would be expected. Then there were all the extras, apparently now you have to leave out bags of gobstoppers around for quests,  presumably because the Wedding Breakfast is meant to give you more of a sense of minimalist artistry rather than milk puddings that stick the ribs together today.  No, no, it was all to much.

 

I did think of suggesting they ‘live in sin’ - a popular choice I’m told among father's of the bride when presented with the bill, but Arthur was one of those subdivisions of the greater Wesleyan community that wasn’t on speaking terms with the people in the next pew and, if stranded on a desert island would build two chapels, just so they would have one they didn’t go to.  A man of his strict principles would not allow himself to fall into error.

 

The young do take things so blessedly seriously and, while their ways are not mine, I just could let them be bullied into something they so opposed to their very marrows.  I begged their pardons, I departed.  I returned after a quick call to a cove I knew.  I sent the padre off to Lambeth to make some arrangements.  It was done.

 

The appointment of  Arthur Rhoose to Governor General of the Farne Islands with immediate affect came as surprise to all but a select few.  Of course he would need a wife to welcome all the important visitors and open things that needed opening so by special license they married in our own chapel of ease and departed north that day.  It will be a lost to the club but will have weathered worse and when he returns, in a couple of years, the lack of nonsense involving humorous balloons will all have blown over.