Algie thinks it very remiss of his wife Emma to call him a grouse tart, though he could have sworn she used the word whore. Hasn’t he spent 40 years damn well keeping a (slightly sagging) roof over all their heads, sending their ‘three peas – Poppy, Penny and Pippa – to Cheltenham Ladies and generally keeping the good ship Snodworthy-Ffiennes on an even keel?
So what if he sucked up to that dreadful oik Derek, who made a fortune from office furniture, and now owns three grouse moors? How on earth do you think you get invited to have a crack on one of the world’s greatest shoots? Yes, OK, on reflection, perhaps it was a bit craven to have a cashmere tweed gilet made up for him, complete with mink-lined collar, but it did the trick.
That day in the Lammermuirs was one for the ages, grouse going like greased lightning, coming straight at you for hours, bang, bang, bang, starbursts in driving winds that almost knocked you down, and that bird at the end of the day. A real screamer. ‘I’ll never know how I got it, it was almost in Denmark when I pulled the trigger’. He carefully re-enacts this moment of sporting immortality for his audience of one, who is not looking. ‘Did I tell you, Hugo has asked me for a day on the woodcock in Wales?’
Deep down, Emma is relieved when the shooting season arrives. It means she can escape the ocean-going tedium of Algie’s conversation for ten to fifteen days over the next few months. After a moderately successful career in the City with GoldGood Capital, he is now retired with more time on his hands.
The problem is that she has to listen, or at least give a semi-plausible impression of listening, to a shot by shot account of his day in the field once he’s home. Like most men, Algie blithely assumes that everyone shares a deep and abiding interest in Algie and what he’s been up to. So on he bores for England, ‘… and on the third drive you wouldn’t believe it darling, wonderful, high crossing birds, bang, bang, left and a right, fell out of the sky like lead weights. You would have loved it. Completely wiped Roddy’s eye.’
General Sir Roderick ‘Thumper’ Bristlethwaite KCB MC DL is an old Army friend of Algie’s. Although Algie’s wholly undistinguished military career in the 756th King’s Hussars lasted all of five minutes, he still drones on endlessly about his time in ‘the smartest regiment in the British Army’. Octogenarian Roddy is a TGE (Thoroughly Good Egg), but though a man of imperious command and unquestionable distinction, simply can’t hit a thing. Any question directed the general’s way tends to receive one of two glassy-eyed answers: ‘Vair good indeed’ or ‘Vair much so.’
From time to time, if Algie’s shooting somewhere nice, like Huffington Castle down in Devon, Emma might come along, but she’s rather wary these days. The last time she joined him, it was one of those ghastly house parties in Gloucestershire, full of nouves and Eurotrash. French, Belgians and Germans dressed head to toe in garish tweed and brand-new Barbour, Schöffel and Härkila; black Range Rovers with tinted windows and all the guns talking loudly on their phones on the pegs. Not to mention the white-gloved butlers serving champagne at elevenses, tricksy canapés in the middle of a muddy field and not a sausage roll or beaker of sloe gin in sight.
Several of the women had had lots of work – boobs, noses, lips, the full monty. Algie’s eyes were on stalks, of course. Emma winces at the memory of that cheap looking Italian woman with an absurdly low neckline who was downing Negronis. Algie thought she was ‘rather attractive. Did you see that belt she was wearing, old girl? Huge words ‘GAME BIRD’ on the buckle. Hahaha, very clever.’ Yes, Emma had seen the belt, and the woman’s midriff.
Algie would deny it, but he is completely in awe of the toffs. Show him an earl, a marquess or even a baronet and he goes a little weak at the knees. It’s all a little desperate. Any anecdote involving a member of the peerage is endlessly recirculated but Emma has heard them all before. While Algie revels in what he calls gun truck boys’ banter, his more cerebral wife finds the badinage is merely bad.
‘So there we were, darling. We’d been blazing away at the partridge all day, mostly Frenchmen, the odd English, flying like feathered bullets, probably had 150 in the bag, really top notch. Then Johnny Lancashire overheard one of the chaps asking how much he should tip the keeper. Someone said 200 quid and, quick as a flash, Johnny said, “I want to thank the man, I don’t want to fuck him… hahaha!”’
Emma gives a weak smile and says she’s going to bed. She only has three more months of this to endure.
Comments