Tuesday, August 12, 2025

copper's cruise 11 cliffie bonus

 

Chapter 11 six foot by three in Carthage part 2

 

“Ah, I love to meet ze good friends of Mr. Tony Mainwaring,” said Madam Zeleika in an accent which Alexander believed owed more to heavy theatre than any geographical origin, though the r’s trilled naturally enough. She trailed the other partygoers with her like her veils. “You would like your palm red, beautiful English woman?” she asked Ida.

Ida, used to wordplay first from Basil, and then from Alexander, was struck by an absurdity and found she could not resist.

“Thanks, but I prefer my palms the usual pink shade,” she said.

This threw Madame Zeleika completely.

“Blyat! Ya nyeh panamayuu!” she said. “I… I do not understand.”

“You asked if I wanted my palm red; I don’t want them changed colour to red,” said Ida, ingenuously.

“Oh, you make fun of me! To read the palm is what I do. I can tell you your future, and if you will be happy,” said Madame Zeleika.

“Tony, do you recommend this?” asked Ida, winsomely, batting her eyelashes at Tony.

“Oh, rather,” said Tony.

Ida held out her hand.

“Ah, ah, I see a young girl very much in love. And she has won herself the love of a handsome and wealthy young man, a sportsman and a scholar, and I see they will live happily ever after,” said Zeleika. “A long and fruitful marriage.”

“So, I won’t have an early death from my heart condition?” said Ida.

Madame Zeleika’s shoulders stiffened in slight panic.

“Love conquers all,” she declared, sententiously. “Go now, to your lover, and I will read the English gentleman who plays piano.”

Ida squeezed herself onto the piano stool and leaned on Alexander.

Madam Zeleika was nonplussed once again.

“I don’t think she meant me,” said Alexander. “Very well, madam, my hand.”

Madam Zeleika took his hand.

“Oh, a military gentleman, and you have suffered,” she said. “Perhaps in charge of some things which need more brains than brawn, after being invalided out of active service. But not wholly inactive; perhaps you try to strengthen yourself by a little sword-play… I see you striving to be good enough for the lovely heiress, but jealous of the friends she makes. You woo her with music as you cannot dance. You fear she will see you as old before your time from your sufferings at the front; the match was made, perhaps, by the parents of both of you, her old family to ally with the newly risen officer; but you love her to distraction and fear to lose her. Perhaps you are thinking of mustering out of the army to devote more time to her, and hope this cruise will rekindle something between you.”

“I told you she was a charlatan, Tony,” said Alexander. “Very good acting, madam. Well out in your guesses, but nicely played.”

She scowled.

“The palm does not lie,” she said.

“Then it must get lost in the translation,” said Alexander. “I am not sure my mother manages to get quite so far off track when she plays Gypsy Rose for the village fete, but then, as lady of the manor knows everyone in the village, and the histories of all their families. But it is amusing seeing how far from the truth you can get. ‘Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis, purpurea late qui splendest, unus et alter, adsuitor pannus.’”

“Horace,” said Tony. “‘Often on a work of serious purpose and high promises is tacked a purple patch or two to give an effect of colour.’ And to think I thought you were devoid of culture, old man!”

“I prefer satires to commentaries. In the same way that I prefer Gilbert and Sullivan to grand opera.”

“Now, you have to admit that Madam Zeleika knew you were military once!” said Tony.

“Of course she did; I’m English and some years over twenty, which is to say, I must have served at some point. It’s a fair bet that I have seen horrors. Anyone who served has suffered in a way you younger types can never – thank God! Understand.  She reads the callouses on my hands as sword-play; I can handle a cavalry sabre, but most of them are from gardening. And the odd exhumation of bodies in the course of my work,” he added. “She has no inkling what is between Ida and me, and she was assuming that Ida’s ring came from you. But a Russian exile must make her way in the world, and she does it very well,” he added.

“Who says I am Russian?” demanded Madame Zeleika.

“Well, you did, when Ida surprised you into swearing, and saying that you did not understand,” said Alexander.

“Russian!” said Tony.  He looked intently at Madam Zeleika. “I say!  How much have we spoken and rather too freely when letting you read palms?”

“I did wonder,” said Alexander.

“I think you had better leave, Madam Zeleika,” said Tony, visibly upset. “I don’t think the pater would be happy to have you here.”

Suka! Da, I will leave, and place a gypsy curse upon you all,” said Zeleika.

“It doesn’t work when you aren’t a gypsy,” said Alexander.

Zeleika left in a ruffle of veils, to the cries of disappointment of the other young people.

“But why, Tony?” whined one Alexander thought was named Vilma.

“Miss, is your father attached to the embassy?” he asked.

“Of course! Do you think we’d be in a hole like this if he didn’t have to be?” said Vilma.

“Well, have you gossiped with Zeleika about what he does?” asked Alexander.

“Of course not!” said Vilma.

“What, have you never said that he will be away talking to somebody about something when discussing when you can go to parties without him stopping you?”

Vilma’s mouth fell foolishly open.

“Well, yes, but she already knew,” she said.

“You mean, she said something like, ‘Ah, I see your father will be away from home, shortly,’ and you said ‘Oh yes, he has a meeting with X somewhere, on such and such date,’ and maybe you said ‘discussing some silly treaty,’ as well.”

“Oh, Major Armitage, can you read palms and minds too?” asked Vilma.

“No, I just know how the trick is done,” said Alexander. “You’re a bunch of little idiots, and I dread to think how much has gone out artlessly to the Bolsheviks because none of you have any discretion.”

“I say!” said Tony.

“Well, the horse has bolted, but if you shut the stable door now, before you lose any more,” said Alexander, “Perhaps there will be no more damage.”

“We don’t have horses here,” said Vilma, puzzled. “And what has that to do with Russian spies?”

“I meant, you have already been indiscreet, it is as well to avoid saying any more about anything to do with your daddies and their work, which goes back to the Bolshevists,” said Alexander, sharply.

“Oh! Could that be why my father’s car went off the road on the way to the German embassy? I had been talking to Madam Zeleika about my chances with a fraulein I had met, the war being over now,” said the boy called Edgar.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” said Alexander.

The party rather broke up after that. Alexander took a few more little sandwiches into a corner to keep himself company until a proper meal, if there was to be one.

 

oOoOo

 

There was another proper meal, which had been intended to include the local bright young things, had not everyone but the most insensitive left to tell their parents about the perfidies of Madame Zeleika. 

“Only Vilma, Stanley, and Betty left,” said Ida. “Betty is sweet on Tony, and glad to see me publicly claim you, not him; Stanley is her brother, and Vilma is protected from embarrassment by a skin of impervious stupidity.”

“Well, I can’t say I am displeased,” said Alexander. “I’m used to dining with our fellow guests, but having to be polite to all the Edgars, Ednas, and Etceteras I do not want.”

“You are a grouchy bear,” said Ida. “But I know what you mean. Enforced gaiety is not much fun.”

Major-General Mainwaring leaped in immediately with a question when they had changed to dine.

“What’s all this about that damned Zeleika woman being a spy?”

“Archibald! Language!” said his wife, a diminutive and ethereal creature, whose daughters took after her in looking as if a strong wind would blow them over. At around ten and twelve, they were overawed by all the company.

“Sorry, m’dear,” said Mainwaring. “Tony said you uncovered her being a Bolshie, Armitage.”

“I uncovered her being a Russian,” said Alexander. “Now, she might be a tsarist exile, but somehow, I doubt it.  She seems to have wheedled quite a lot out of the somewhat vacuous minds of the young people she has been entertaining and pumping in the same breath. But the credit goes to Ida, who decided to interrupt her script in a way which threw her off course, and she reverted to her native tongue.”

“Script?” asked Mrs. Mainwaring. “I don’t understand; I did not think she was presenting a play?”

“It’s what we call it in the trade, ma’am,” said Alexander. “I gather that the more ghoulish of the kind proliferated during the war, bringing spirit messages from missing or dead loved ones at the Front.”

“Oh! I had that tried on me,” said Mrs. Mainwaring. “I called for my dresser, who’s a strapping girl, and she threw the wretch in the midden.”

“Good for you, ma’am,” said Alexander. “But you will recognise the patter – ‘surely the gracious lady will like her fortune told, and messages brought from Beyond the Veil,’ and such guff.”

“Oh, yes, I recognise that,” said Mrs. Mainwaring, grimly. “And I said, ‘no thank you, not today,’ as one does with importunate itinerant tradespeople, but she would not go, and said, ‘I have a most important message from someone whose name begins with A,’ which gave me a nasty feeling, but then I reasoned, if she had seen letters to Major-General A. Mainwaring, she could get his initial from that, and not know if he was Archie, Andrew or… or Attaturk.”

“Even so,” said Alexander.  “Either the gracious acceptance, or the refusal, which is then countered by more patter. But Ida, asked if she would like her palm read, pretended to hear ‘red’ as the colour, not the past tense of read, and said she liked it pink.  It was masterly.”

“Ho ho, that’s brilliant,” laughed Mainwaring.

“And then Ida made a show of asking me if she should,” said Tony, “And Zeleika assumed her ring was from me.”

“She’s a fool, then,” said Mainwaring. “You couldn’t afford a Cartier original like that.”

“Er, right,” said Tony. “I didn’t realise it was.”

“The Armitages are worth a bob or two, as well as being descended from a royal duke,” said Mainwaring. “What, you don’t think he has to live on the salary of a policeman, do you?”

“Er…,” said Tony.

“Well, he doesn’t,” said Mainwaring. “So, you followed up on her slip?” he asked Alexander.

“I let her pitch her guesses at me,” said Alexander. “And in someways, good guesses, not knowing that my wound is from a recent police case, and that I am recovering and expect to be as right as a trivet before long. But still, far enough off to be able to rattle her further.”

“And we had been going to have her lead a séance after dinner, too,” said Tony. “Turning the tables to see what came up. And yes, pater, I know it’s all nonsense, but it’s a laugh.”

“Not if she’s busy dropping in vague comments about a message from J, and you ask if that’s your brother John on a secret mission to determine what ships the Bolshevists have,” said Alexander.

“Oh, you are silly, Mr. Armitage,” said Vilma. “Tony doesn’t have a brother called John, his brother is Henry, and he’s in the navy, patrolling in the Black Sea. Why is it called the Black Sea? Is it all horrible and tarry?”

“And that piece of information should not be spoken about!” barked Alexander. “Any Bolshevik would rub his hands in glee to know about a British fleet in the Black Sea.”

“Oh! But I want to know why it is called the Black Sea,” said Vilma.

“Because of the enormous black pearls there which are farmed by the mermaids to grow in giant clams off the Crimea,” said Alexander.

“Oooh, how lovely!” breathed Vilma. “Are there really mermaids?”

“As many as there are honest mediums, palmists, and card-readers,” said Alexander, knowing that it might be unkind to confuse the afflicted, but at least if she babbled about mermaids and black pearls at the same time as babbling about Henry Mainwaring’s peregrinations, she might be written off as unreliable.

They ate a delicious meal which was plainly an English woman’s imposition of English prejudices on local cuisine, beginning with fried fish, and with side salads of grilled vegetables with cous cous, and followed by spiced lamb stew.  Alexander and Ida were quite happy to sample, though Lady Burleigh and Vera were inclined to pick at their meal. Cobham and his nephew dug in, being used to whatever fare they might get, and David and Paula plainly saw it as exciting.

“We don’t have any damned French kickshaws at our table,” said Mainwaring. “Nothing but good home cooking.”

Nobody laughed.

“Well, we shall drive out to the dig, tomorrow,” said Tony. “All in the truck, I’m afraid; the car won’t like the track we go on.”

“Then I’ll take a pillow to sit on,” said Ida.

“Jolly good idea, wot!” said Tony.

 

 

2 comments:

  1. That was fun, thank you. I’ll always think of mermaids and black pearls now, whenever the Black Sea is mentioned.

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    1. hahah, I am glad my efforts amuse. I doubt there are any there now, Jurij Bohun in one incarnation or another has probably looted them.

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