Chapter 6 Judgement Day #3
Denholm clapped his hands and said, “Stop, stop! You’re such a bunch of gloomy Cassandras.
” He tightened his cravat in an attempt to assert authority.
“Come on, now, gentlemen—and ladies—lady—let’s have solutions instead of problems. The request has come down from on high and we are mere servants to the cause.
Apparently, what Mitzi wants Mitzi gets.
Well, anyway, Mr. Flynn, time for you to meet her. ”
“Meet her?”
“Yes, you’re to be her…” Denholm stared at the ceiling, searching for the right word. “Chaperone,” he concluded.
“Chaperone? Does she need one?”
“Yes. Most definitely. You can introduce yourself at the Parkinson Stoves showroom this afternoon. You’d better get going if you don’t want to miss it. And you can put her on expenses.”
“I have expenses?”
“You do now. Miss Ogilvie will oversee them.”
Maud gave a little nod to confirm this fact.
“Are you coming with me, Miss Ogilvie? Aren’t you curious to meet Denholm’s ‘awful woman’?”
“I am afraid I am otherwise engaged, Mr. Flynn. I have been called Upstairs to help with an audit.” A task that sounded too tedious for anyone to bother questioning. She handed him his hat. “Bon courage, as the French say, Mr. Flynn.”
“Probably when they were in a tumbril on their way to the guillotine.”
Despite the evidence of the cake and the awfulness of her reputation, Flynn had been expecting Mitzi Blinkhorn to be the kind of woman who taught cookery in a girls’ school, not that he knew anything about cookery teachers or indeed girls’ schools.
And a cookery teacher might have been more likely to be a Thelma or an Eileen, rather than a Mitzi.
(Was that her real name? Surely not.) Nonetheless, he had imagined someone rather plain, wrapped in a floury white apron, her clean, scrubbed hands diligently rolling pastry and kneading dough.
Mitzi’s large, rather masculine hands did not appear particularly scrubbed.
Her long nails were varnished, some of the varnish chipped, and she sported several rings that looked as if they might easily slip off her fingers and embed themselves in pastry or dough.
Nor was she wrapped in the spotless floury apron of his imagination, but instead wore a frilly little pinafore over a green satin evening gown and was adorned with an abundance of costume jewellery.
Her hair was gingery and bouffant (possibly a wig), and perched on top of this dubious confection was a ribbon tied in a girlish bow that made Flynn think of a poodle. On the whole, though, she resembled nothing so much as her own godawful Festival Cake.
“And today, my darlings,” she said to the rather excitable audience of women in the showroom, “we are going to make what the French call éclairs au chocolat and which you, of course, know as ‘chocolate eclairs.’ ”
She had a deep voice, hoarse and rather manly.
A voice that had been worked on over the years by nicotine.
It was possible that it was intended to be seductive.
She had extraordinary eyebrows, highly arched like circumflexes and composed entirely of pencil.
Along with her enormous false eyelashes and her slapdash red lipstick, they helped to give her a clownish look.
There were female impersonators in Soho cabarets who looked more feminine than Mitzi.
A surly-looking girl, built like a wrestler, appeared and resentfully fulfilled a series of orders barked at her by Mitzi. (“Pass me a saucepan, Cynthia. No, not that one.”)
“Now, a great deal of fuss is made about choux pastry, my darlings, but I am going to show you how it is in fact terrifically simple to make. At the next dinner party that you host, your guests will be full of praise for your skill and only you and I will know how easy it was to produce a delicious French dessert.” She pronounced it in the French manner, baffling many.
Nonetheless, a murmur of appreciation went round the audience, all women and mostly still dressed in postwar drab.
None of them looked as though they were in the habit of hosting dinner parties, but the idea that they might do so was clearly thrilling.
“And you know,” Mitzi said (“Spoon, Cynthia!”) as she began to beat something furiously in a saucepan, “a housewife’s importance has more far-reaching effects than she sometimes realizes.
On her wise choice and careful preparation of foods depend the health, strength and vitality of her family, and ultimately the nation.
” It sounded like a patriotic call to stay in the kitchen.
Perhaps Dangerfield had written this speech for her.
“And let’s not forget,” Mitzi said, suddenly recollecting what she was there to promote, “this is all so easy with the Parkinson Renown Gas Cooker Mark 4 with Ajusto control dial.”
She piped the eclair mixture on a tray (“force into fingers” was the mysterious instruction) and invited the audience to come closer.
The women gathered in an eager ruck while Flynn lurked at the back.
He could see only one other man present.
Balding and bow-tied, he stood off to one side of the room nodding benignly at everything Mitzi said, even though he didn’t seem to be listening to a word.
Flynn was surprised to realize that it was the man who had been sitting opposite him at the Telekinema mannequin parade.
The Major. Flynn went over to him and said, “Are you with Miss Blinkhorn?”
“You could say that.” He stuck out a hand. “Archie. Major Archie Blinkhorn, late of the Guards, at your service, sir.” He saluted and laughed.
“Mitzi’s husband?”
“Got it in one.”
“Harry Flynn. From the Festival Office.”
“Ah, Harry Flynn. We’ve been eager to meet you. Heard all about you, old chap.”
“Have you?” What had he heard?
“Wonderful news about the cake. I always knew Mitzi would triumph, of course.”
Archie Blinkhorn still had the ramrod posture of a military man, but he was a bantam cock—the puffed-out chest, the skinny legs, all indicated someone who had gone rapidly to seed since his Army days.
He was wearing a camel-hair coat that managed somehow to indicate a sleaziness of character.
It was a short, boxy garment. “Ah, see you’re admiring my coat,” he said.
(Flynn wasn’t.) “Nice bit of schmutter, eh? It’s called a car coat. ”