Read Online Clubbed to Death by Ruth Dudley Edwards - Free Book Online

weekends, when only the long-term residents get fed. I’ve graduated to serving at lunch-time also: some even newer employee has been put in charge of the bar. In the afternoon I attend to the needs of the inhabitants of the Smoking Room and the gallery. Three or four nights a week I also wait at dinner. I’m known to be keen to earn extra money on overtime, so I volunteer for everything and I get most of it because – wait for it – I am prized! I am good-humoured, adaptable and I can understand instructions. I am therefore bliss for poor old Gooseneck, who this week has already suffered five losses. Elsa departed because she couldn’t take Fagg’s oft-repeated loud muttering of “Swiss maybe, but Swiss-Kraut certainly”; two male Chinese took umbrage when he denounced them as Nips; an observing Hindu became revolted when Mauleverer, an occasional resident, subjected him to intense cross-questioning about whether the liver was from a Dutch calf and was being served sufficiently rare; and a delicious-looking Filipino, who strayed too close to Fishbane at breakfast, received a pinch which made her hysterical. Never a dull moment in this establishment. Despite my many and varied duties I have quite a lot of free time and this is where the ritual sets in. Nine-thirty to ten-thirty, stroll in St James’s Park, having, I hasten to say, changed out of my uniform. I may not suffer much from amour propre , but I’m fucked if I’m prepared to run the risk of running into people from my past life while clad as a bellhop. Return and change into uniform. Ten-thirty to eleven-thirty, read in the Card Room, and then off to staff lunch and work.
    ‘Afternoon duty is quite pleasant: I can usually get quite a lot of reading done in the library because there’s little activity on the gallery after three o’clock. Glastonbury is usually asleep – in fact, apart from mealtimes, he seems to be rarely awake. Fagg and Blenkinsop gossip and doze, sometimes joined by Fishbane, and the occasional non-resident looks in for afternoon tea. I’m off duty at five and staff supper is at seven.
    ‘On the nights I’m on duty 1 work from seven-thirty to nine-thirty. I turn up for staff meals but I don’t really eat at them because young Pooley is so guilty about what he’s condemned me to that he keeps on having parcels of goodies delivered. I share the spoils with Sunil, to whom I’ve spoken vaguely about an eccentric rich friend.
    We are waxing fat on a diet of Fortnum & Mason’s cold meats, game pies, smoked fish and cheese. It’s amazing the difference it makes. He even puts in the occasional bottle of claret. I have absolutely no conscience about taking this stuff from Ellis, who incidentally has shunted Plutarch off to a luxurious cattery and is still wrestling at getting the hairs out of the carpets. We’re meeting tomorrow. I’ve got a lot to tell him and Jim and by then they should have seen our chairman.
    ‘When I have evenings off, I tend to stay in the club lurking in the shadows reading: I am disinclined to meet friends. It’s too difficult to explain what I’m doing and I can’t face lying. Nor do I really want to go home. I only get depressed when I’m there, thinking that you should be there too. “Self-pity”, I hear you cry, all the way from New Delhi, so I won’t indulge in that any more. Oh yes. Speaking of not indulging, you’ll be pleased to hear that this place is conducive to staying off the ciggies. Lots of the old boys smoke and nobody objects, so I don’t get into my anti-anti-smoking mood.
    ‘There is another unexpected bonus with this job. I had decided when in Rome to do as the Romans or in this case, more appropriately, when in Babylon do as the Babylonians – no, I don’t mean I’m having orgies in the servants’ quarters, or letting Gooseneck have his way with me. What I’m doing is getting stuck into erotic literature and pornography: the club has a fascinating, not to say incredible,