A Fête Worse Than Death
A Fête Worse Than Death is a tale of bunting, buttercream, and one young lady's spectacular miscalculation at the Little Dithering summer fête. When debutante Clementine Beaufort-Smythe crosses paths with the formidable Mrs. Poppet (and her prize-winning sponge), tradition and impropriety collide behind the WI tent, with results neither the bishop nor the cake stand will soon forget.
A Fête Worse Than Death
It was the sort of summer afternoon on which nothing dreadful was ever supposed to happen. Sunlight danced on bunting, bees hovered near sponge cakes and, in the parish of Little Dithering, the annual fête was in full swing.
Elderly gentlemen, with silver hair and weathered faces, wore panama hats with the sort of conviction that could only come from a lifetime of public school tradition. Ladies in floral summer frocks carried parasols like they were royal sceptres, ready to fend off both sun and scandal. The air was filled with the hum of cheerful chatter and the thock of coconuts tumbling in the shy.
“This,” Clementine Beaufort-Smythe declared, “is so boring.”
“It’s a charity fête, darling,” replied Poppy Harcourt, examining a jar of pickled quail eggs with polite disgust. “I'm sure it's not that bad.”
Clementine ignored her. She was nineteen, headstrong, and the daughter of the Duchess of Larkswood — a determined lady who had once struck the High Striker at the county fair with such force that the bell flew off and landed in the vicar’s punch bowl. Clementine had inherited her mother’s sense of occasion, but not her sense of propriety.
Clementine stood with arms folded and a very real sense of injustice building. Somewhere between the second bunting pole and the jam stall, she’d realised that her mother's insistence that she, just show her face, at the village fête had somehow become, do make yourself useful and lend a hand dear.
“And helping out at the bakery contest is the worst place to be,” she muttered. “That cake woman has it in for me.”
“Oh, you mean Mrs. Poppet? Of the treacle tart dynasty?” Poppy asked.
“She actually made me stack a plate of scones! And, she made me wear an apron!”
“Yes,” Poppy agreed, biting back a smile, “I suppose that does qualify as oppression.”
Clementine fumed. “She’s trying to make a point because I once asked why her iced buns looked like bunions.”
“If I remember correctly,” Poppy reminded her, “you also said her lemon curd tasted as though she had strained it through a vicar’s sock.”
Which, in fairness to Clementine, is exactly how it did taste.
The cake competition was the high point of the day. This year's contest was to be judged by Bishop Fortescue himself. He had not cracked a smile since the Silver Jubilee, and that was only because the opportunity arose to berate a group of parishioners — for excess jubilation.
Participation was a matter of village pride, and competition was always fierce. The entries were arranged beneath a decorated marquee, which now stood like a sugary shrine to all things British and buttercream.
Poppy and Clementine loitered nearby with expressions that suggested they had more interesting places to be — which they did, but their driver wasn’t due back until four.
“And you just know she’s going to win again,” Clementine grumbled, nodding at Mrs. Poppet’s triple-tier sponge with real whipped cream and a touch of gold leaf.
“Of course she will,” said Poppy.
“I’m telling you,” Clementine whispered. “Someone ought to sabotage it.”
Poppy was shocked. She was a top accomplice but, even to her, this seemed to be taking things too far.
“Oh, you wouldn’t dare. You should know better than to mess with Mrs. Poppet’s baking.”
Clementine stiffened, her chin jutting out defiantly. “You think I’m afraid of a little bakery-related sabotage?”
Poppy chuckled, her eyes twinkling with amusement.
“Nope. But trust me, you’d rather not find out what happens if you mess with her baking. Last year someone tried to sneak a peek at her recipe. They ended up with a scolding that could be heard all the way across the village. Can you imagine what she’d do if someone actually tried to sabotage her cake?”
Years later, village folklore was to record this precise moment as the prime catalyst of the events which were due to unfold. It later became known as the “Red-Faced, Red-Bottomed, Summer Fête Incident”.
With a reckless flourish, Clementine swiped a lemon custard tart from the refreshments table, not realising it was a contest entry, and lobbed it in Poppy’s direction. As the capricious whims of Lady Luck would have it, this particular pie happened to be Ms Edna Honey's entry into the “Sloppiest Creamiest Tart” category.
Sensing the incoming peril, Poppy ducked behind a tea trolley, causing the aforementioned custard-cream tart to arc gracefully towards the marquee entrance.
It might have continued to arc gracefully for some distance further, had it not been for the untimely entrance of Bishop Fortescue, accompanied by the Duchess of Larkswood.
It struck his immaculate clerical chest with a splat, causing him to make a noise like a startled goose. Nearby, someone dropped a tray of cucumber sandwiches.
The bishop blinked down at the splotch of lemon oozing down his buttons. Fortunately he was a man possessed of a sedate temperament and was blessed with a talent for understatement.
“Dear me,” he was heard to murmur faintly.
Moments later, Clementine found herself in disgrace, facing Mrs. Agatha Poppet's particular brand of justice.
The air was thick with the lingering sweet aroma of lemon custard. The usual cheerful chatter of the fête had been replaced by a hushed murmur, as if the very atmosphere held its breath in anticipation.
Mrs. Poppet stood before Clementine, her eyes mourning the loss of a perfectly serviceable lemon tart. She was a woman of unimpeachable moral fibre, with hips like a battleship.
For twenty-three years she had overseen the fête's cake competition, and had once even ejected a Lord Mayor for attempting to jump the cream scone queue. She had little sense of humour where baking was concerned, and she was in no mood to see her cake placed anywhere near harm's way.
“Lemon custard,” she said, her voice low and steady, her cheeks pink with fury. “All over the bishop.”
Clementine swallowed hard, her defiance wavering under Mrs. Poppet's stern gaze.
“I wasn't actually aiming at the Bishop,” she insisted, as if that explained everything.
“Well, it was an accurate strike for someone who wasn't aiming,” Mrs. Poppet replied, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
Ignoring Clementine's indignant protests, Mrs. Poppet led her with stalwart determination behind the tea tent. The WI ladies, sensing the gravity of the situation, enforced a cordon to discourage any unseemly curiosity. The tension was palpable.
Mrs. Poppet was a large woman and, in a bold move, planted one foot onto a nearby hay bale. With firm, insistent hands, she lifted Clementine into a most unladylike position across her elevated and quite considerable left thigh.
“Wait— just hang on a moment—!” Clementine squealed, but she was already airborne.
With all protest summarily dismissed, Clementine found herself teetering like a see-saw, her legs flailing. The dress's silken fabric clung to the curves of her bottom, drawn taut over the precise spot now presented to Mrs. Poppet's determined right palm.
A sharp, incredulous “Ouch!” escaped Clementine as the first spank landed with considerable force upon her pert derrière. A brisk flurry of smacks followed, punctuated by Mrs. Poppet’s stern admonishments, creating an unmistakable symphony of applied discipline in motion.
“This,” announced Mrs. Poppet, “is for disrespecting the fête.”
Another smack! even louder this time.
“And this...” crack! “...is for disrespecting the bishop.”
“Ooh! That wasn’t even on purpose!”
Clementine’s yelps were reaching a crescendo, but Mrs. Poppet was far from finished.
“And most of all,” she declared, “this is for disrespecting the cakes.”
The sound of Mrs. Poppet's firm hand addressing the askew seat of Clementine's silk summer frock echoed back and forth around the fête. The vicar's distinctly audible “Good heavens!” was heard above the background of scandalised whispering.
Poppy, meanwhile, was beginning to feel somewhat guilty for the part she had played in precipitating the unseemly commotion behind the tent.
She crept around the side, eyeing the structure like a junior saboteur. After a brief recce, her course of action was clear. She loosened the main guy rope with the skill of a Girl Guide who had earned her knot badges for all the wrong reasons.
From the back of the tent, Clementine’s protests seemed to have finally reached the level of a habitual cake saboteur who just might be on the verge of reform.
Then, with a ripple and crackle of canvas, the tent leaned, wobbled, and collapsed. The collective gasp from the onlookers was almost deafening.
Mrs. Poppet was revealed, spectacularly mid-spank, her arm poised aloft. Clementine lay prone, legs kicking, draped across the accommodating thigh. Her dress had ridden high, offering the assembled crowd a most unladylike glimpse of a ruffled silk garter — and from Poppy's rear vantage point, something far more existential.
The look upon Clementine's face was one of embittered regret, though not yet one of actual atonement. There followed an awkward silence, terminated by Poppy's cry of, “Run for it Clementine!”
Amidst the chaos, the two girls vanished into a hedgerow like débutantes fleeing a scandal they themselves had created at a ball. In their wake they left behind one astonished audience, one collapsed tea tent, and the lingering echo of an unforgettable spanking.
The girls concealed themselves in the vicarage summer house, tumbling in amidst breathless giggles and tangled limbs, their cheeks flushed from more than just the chase. Poppy landed half atop Clementine, one leg scandalously draped, their skirts a riot of silk and grass stains.
Clementine winced as she fervently rubbed her behind. “I can’t believe she did that.”
Poppy burst into laughter. “Well, you did fling a pie at a bishop! I mean, that's quite the boast!”
As Poppy reached out to dust some stray leaves from the back of Clementine’s skirt, her fingers brushed the curve of her friend's behind.
“Careful!” Clementine gasped. “I’m still a little tender around there you know. And I hope you realise, we’re going to be banned from the fête for life.”
“We should be,” said Poppy. “But I suspect they’ll put it down to youthful high spirits, and possibly brandy in the elderflower cordial.”
There was a pause, while they contemplated if the justification of youthful high spirits would be sufficient to spare them the usual consequences.
Then Clementine said, “She was only cross about the cake, you know. I don’t think she gave a fig about the bishop.”
“No,” said Poppy. “I don’t think she did either.”
“Perhaps Mrs. Poppet doesn't care about the bishop,” came a stern and unexpected voice from the doorway, “but I can assure you that I do.”
The girls sprang bolt upright, ready to flee once more, but the source of the voice was blocking the only exit.
“Duchess!” Poppy exclaimed.
“Mother!” Clementine groaned.
The Duchess of Larkswood bore exactly the look you would expect to see when minor aristocracy have experienced a near miss with an especially messy lemon custard pie. She still bore splashes of evidence around the front of her dress.
Noticing the item the Dutchess gripped in her right hand, Poppy leaned towards her friend and whispered: “Where do you suppose she got that wooden spoon from? And, how is her aim these days?”
Speaking as one who had just managed to strike a bishop with a custard pie at fifteen paces, Clementine sighed. “Oh, trust me Poppy, we Beaufort-Smythes never miss.”
“Clementine Beaufort-Smythe,” the Duchess declared, “come here — this instant.”
Clementine sighed, accepting her fate with all the tragic dignity of a heroine in a penny dreadful. She bent, hands to knees, braced for the warmth of her looming destiny.
The scorching impacts of the heavy wooden spoon upon her still-tender bottom reverberated through the summer house. The accompanying yelps and squeals of protest caused Poppy to wince, knowing that her own painful reckoning could only be a few moments away.
Outside, Bishop Fortescue listened to the uninhibited proceedings with interest, and the faintest hint of a very rare chuckle.
“Well— I'd say that is, indeed, fête-accompli.”