A Fête Worse Than Death
By #HerbieHind
A Fête Worse Than Death is a tale of bunting, buttercream, and one girl'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.
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?”
“She actually made me stack a plate of scones! And wear an apron!”
Poppy bit back a smile. “Yes, that does sound like oppression.”
Clementine fumed. “She’s trying to make a point because I once asked why her iced buns looked like bunions.”
“You also said her lemon curd tasted like it had been strained 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. Judged by Bishop Fortescue himself, who had not cracked a smile since the Silver Jubilee, and that was only because he had an opportunity to enjoy berating a group of parishioners for excess jubilation.
Participation was considered a matter of village pride, and competition was fierce. The entries had been placed 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 know better than to mess with Mrs. Poppet’s baking.”
Clementine stiffened, her chin jutting out defiantly. “Wouldn’t I? 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 catalyst which precipitated what later became known as the “Red-Faced Little Dithering 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 an offended goose. Nearby, someone even 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 calm temperament and was blessed with a talent for understatement.
“Dear me,” he was heard to murmur faintly.
Moments later, Clementine found herself in disgrace behind the tea tent, facing Mrs. Agatha Poppet's particular brand of justice.
The air was thick with the 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 was not, by nature, unkind, but 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. “On the bishop.”
Clementine swallowed hard, her defiance wavering under Mrs. Poppet's stern gaze.
“I wasn't actually aiming at the Bishop,” she declared, 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, quickly enforced a cordon to discourage any unseemly curiosity. The tension was palpable.
Mrs. Poppet was a large woman and, planting one foot onto a hay bale, she graciously lifted young Clementine into a most unladylike position across her elevated and quite considerable left thigh. Clementine let out a small squeak of protest, which was promptly dismissed, and she found herself teetering in a delicate balance. It was a posture calculated to present one specific part of herself in the most precarious way possible.
A sharp, incredulous “Ouch!” escaped Clementine as the first spank landed squarely on her pert derrière. A brisk flurry of smacks followed, each punctuated by Mrs. Poppet’s stern admonishments, creating an unmistakable symphony of applied discipline in motion.
“This is for disrespecting the fête,” Mrs. Poppet said, her voice firm. “And this is for disrespecting the bishop.”
Clementine’s yelps were reaching a crescendo, but Mrs. Poppet was not quite finished.
“And most of all,” she declared, “this is for disrespecting the cakes.”
The sound of Mrs. Poppet's right palm addressing the floral patterned seat of Clementine's silk summer frock echoed 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, with Clementine’s legs kicking and her silk dress askew. The look upon Clementine's face was one of embittered regret, though perhaps 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.
The girls hid in the vicarage summer house, panting and giggling, their cheeks flushed from the speed of their escape, and perhaps from other factors too.
Clementine rubbed her behind with theatrical wincing. “I can’t believe she did that.”
Poppy burst into laughter. “Well, you did just fling a pie at a bishop! I mean, that's quite the boast!”
Clementine pulled a stray leaf from her hair and looked around. “We’re going to be banned from the fête for life.”
“We should be,” said Poppy. “But I suspect they’ll just 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 sidestep 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?”
As one who had just managed to strike a bishop with a flying pie at fifteen paces, Clementine sighed.
“Oh, trust me, Poppy — we Beaufort-Smythes never miss. I’d say this is fête-accompli.”
From the Summer Fête Chronicle Archives (WI South-West Division, -Redacted-). For instructional use only.