The Adventures of Philomena Bottletop

PROLOGUE

Philomena Bottletop lived with her aunt, the redoubtable Lady Agatha Pierce-Doubling at the lovely old manor Doubling House. Or 'Hice' as Lady Agatha pronounced it.

If truth were told and in these pages only the truth will suffice, there will not be even one secret kept from you the reader, I was going to write ‘dear reader’ but you may not be a dear at all you may be a serial killer, I’m not responsible for the morals of those who read these pages, but whoever you are, I promise this, I will be telling you no lies just the plain, occasionally varnished truth. But what’s a spot of varnishing between friends?

Back to the story. Lady Ag P-Doubling  was not actually her real aunt. Oh no, dear me no, not at all, for there was a real MYSTERY attached to Philomena’s parentage. You see, nine years previously on a dark and stormy night, as a tiny tot, she had been left in a wicker work cradle on the doorstep of Doubling Hice and Lady Agatha had adopted her as she had nothing better to do at that particular time in her life, having just invested three months in attempting to learn the intricacies of Bridge and discovering she was terrible at it - so on seeing the tiny mite brought in by the butler she decided there and then to dump bridge and to make bringing the baby up her new hobby.

In the swaddling clothes with which the babe was swaddled there was a note swaddled round a bottletop, presumably so the note wouldn’t fly away. The note was written in an educated handwriting by a short red-headed female with a limp and cross-eyes, an addiction to gin and an obsession with politics, or so Lady Agatha was subsequently informed by the eminent and highly useless Harley Street handwriting expert to whom she showed the note.

The note read simply: ‘Her name is Philomena. Please bring her up as a lady.’

So for obvious reasons she became Philomena Bottletop and was brought up as a member of the Pierce-Doubling family, to the secret shock of the rest of the county, who fortunately were all too terrified of Lady Pierce Doubling to say anything nasty.

But human nature being what it is, which is often inhuman, there was much gossip behind closed doors. Who could her mother have been? The betting was ten to one that she was one of them suffragettes. A shiver would run up the collective spine at the mere mention of this odious sisterhood which was threatening the very foundations of British domestic complacency and well actually slavery as well. Remember I promised to tell the truth, for that is what slavery is, for if you are not free to say your opinions in a loud voice then you are a slave.

The overbearing Lady Agatha very soon found, that,  to her astonishment, she had actually grown to love little Philomena, an emotion, which she was amazed to discover, she possessed in almost boundless measure. What she had taken up as a hobby now became the centre of her life. In fact she grew to adore the tiny thing and the more Philomena grew up and revealed her sterling qualities the more the previously adamantine Lady Agatha found that she loved her.

Lady Agatha was stunned to discover that she could feel such an inexhaustible amount of this untidy and embarrassing emotion called love, she had assumed since birth that she would be like her mother, the Lady Edwina Pierce Doubling - unfeeling, remote, distant and detached. And while we’re about it just plain nasty.

Her mother’s idea of child-rearing was to fire every nanny after one month so that none of them would be able to create a close and loving relationship with little Agatha. She felt that this cruel treatment was exactly what would make her daughter strong and durable like a fine Japanese sword whose steel has been beaten and folded over thirty thousand times until it is the hardest cutting blade in the world.

The outrageously autocratic Lady Agnes Pierce-Doubling was quite horrible. When she wasn’t being tyrannical she was being dictatorial and if by some chance she wasn’t being either of them then she was certainly asleep.

But let us open the curtains on the present moment.

CHAPTER ONE
Philomena Bottletop peered anxiously at her aunt.

“Auntie you just said the ‘F’ word” she fluted in shocked falsetto.

“Dratted child I’m well aware of it. The last time I said it was when your uncle Charles trod on a stoat in 1879. And now this.”

Philomena regarded her deranged aunt with something like affection. But what is something like affection she thought? Annection? Aggection? Allection? However Philomena was, to coin a cliché, made of sterner stuff and brought her mind back to the matter in hand.

“Yes but Auntie, Mr Nokes didn’t mean to do it.” Said Philomena brave as a salmon about to leap past a grizzly bear waiting to catch it on a rock by a rushing stream who has just come out of hibernation and could eat a large bag of cement he’s so hungry, if you see what I mean and if you do please tell me because I’ve lost the thread of all this. I just want to go home and have a cup of tea and watch ‘Flannel Foot” on the telly. But duty calls and I must continue to recount this tale of daring and intrigue in the upper classes.

Auntie Pierce-Doubling pulled herself up to her full height, with the aid of her chinning bar and a step ladder.

She was an extremely autocratic looking lady with a nose to match. Her wrists were excessively wrist-like and so was the wrist of her. She was a terrifying old bint and no mistake.

But Philomena wasn’t in the least bit impressed by her occasional piercing shrieks because she had seen her without her false teeth and could never be afraid of her again. Any time her aunt started to bully her, Philomena had only to utter the words:

“Buffle fluff puffle” which was a brilliant imitation of Auntie Pierce-Doubling talking without her dentures and the old girl would subside in a flutter of embarrassed adjectives.

“I don’t care if Mr Nokes meant to do it or did not mean to do it. The problem is that he did it. Now what are we to do?”

Philomena was at a loss how to answer her aunt. For it was true that Mr Nokes, the fattest man in the county, had just flung himself onto the couch and simultaneously alas onto Chin Chin the pekinese, thus instantly flattening him and rendering him useless as a living thing, though excellent as a deceased one.

“Now what are we to do?” Her Aunt suddenly reminded her of David Copperfield’s aunt who keeps asking her friend Mr Whatsit for advice. So Philomena gave it.

“We will have Benson the carpenter make the finest and flattest pekinese-shaped coffin from the best and rarest handpicked woods that money can buy and then we will have a funeral so fabulous that Lady Sternworthy will die of jealousy .”

Aunt Pierce-Doubling cogitated for a moment. Don’t worry I know that sounds as though she was about to explode but it actually means ‘thought it over’.

Aunt Pierce Doubling cast a beady eye in the direction of Mr Nokes whose bright crimson face gave evidence of his shame and guilt in the dog squashing department.

“I-I-I am so very …oh dear I am so very very …it’s appalling that…the poor animal. Oh dear I am so very, very…”

“Fat!” interpolated Aunt Perce Doubling in a stentorian bellow.

She went on.”Mr Nokes I would have thought that, after a lifetime of lowering your gargantuan frame onto other people’s sofas, you would by now have learnt to previously ascertain whether they contain living creatures. You must surely know by now that the rapid descent of so much tonnage in one fell swoop is not only dangerous, it is anti-social. I would call the Canine Defence League, of which I have the honour to be president, but luckily for you it has recently gone into bankruptcy owing to a plethora of Pit Bull-related incidents.”

“Lady Pierce Doubling if there’s anything I can do, of course I will be happy to pay the costs of the funeral.” His unctuous voice waffled on for a few seconds with apologies and counter apologies and re-apologies and dis-apologies until Philomena’s head was reeling.

“Philomena your head is reeling, it is most unladylike.”

“Yes Auntie” grinned Philomenma who loved the old girl even at her most forbidding.

After Mr Nokes had apologised himself blue in the face and taken his leave, Auntie Pierce Doubling rang for Godalming the Butler.

“You rang Ma’am?”

“Godalming please remove Chin Chin. Mr Nokes has squashed him irreparably.”

“Yes Ma’am, should I use a fish slice?”

“Oh for goodness sake man, I do not care with which implement you effect his removal as long as you do it with the utmost despatch.”

Godalming looked about him at a loss but Philomena caught his eye and motioned to the tongs nestling by the empty summer coal scuttle.

Godalming gave her the shadow of a wink and with the coal tongs plucked up the last remains of Chin Chin and exited the room with dignity.

“Dear gal, I must apologise profusely for using the F word. After all my lectures on ladylikeness and good manners it was an unpardonable and irreparable… oh!”

Philomena interrupted her surprised Aunt with a peck on the cheek.

“Oh Auntie I do love you. I hear that word every day, if it’s not in the stables, it’s in the kitchen. I was just a bit surprised that you knew it. But come on admit it you feel a bit better for having said it.”

Her Aunt turned her forbidding and patrician profile in the air and said haughtily:

“My dear young lady I certainly do not feel better. Really.”

“Miffle waffle croffle!” Said Philomena with a twinkle and the frightening woman had the grace to grin sheepishly.

“Oh alright just a bit.”