Teacups & Tentacles | ONC 2022

16. We Were Right

"Boniface Clapstock," said Alistair, buttering a slice of toast.

It was a little before nine. Morning sunbeams fell through the stained glass pane of the kitchen window, casting a pretty blue square over the glasses of jam and milk jug on the breakfast table.

"What about him?" said Godwin more to his own chest than to his boyfriend. He was tying a butterfly cravat around the upturned collar of his shirt. And failing colossally.

"He's seeing a chap called Jonathan Butterhopper, or at least he was last time I looked," Alistair said.

"Good for him. How the hell does anyone manage to get these things tied on properly?" Godwin ripped the long strip of red silk from his neck, flattened it over his knee, then whipped it around his collar and started again.

Alistair placidly ate his toast, sipped his tea and watched Godwin struggle. He was going about it all wrong – one had to start from over, not under -- but Alistair knew his boyfriend wouldn't appreciate pointers until he was well and truly hissing with frustration. Then he would be able to gently pull the silk from his hands and do it for him.

Which he judged would be in about four, perhaps five, more attempts.

Alistair buttered a second piece of toast.

For some reason, Godwin had got the itch to go back to the Zoo disguised as a newspaper reporter to gather stray bits of information about how the giant octopus rampaging across London had escaped. The red cravat, one of the articles of clothing no real journalist was without, was part of the costume he had thrown together the night before from both their wardrobes in order to look the part.

But even with cravat, fingerless gloves and a top hat with a press card stuck under the goggles band, Alistair sincerely doubted the zoo keepers, or anyone from management with eyes in their heads, would believe he was who he said he was.

Godwin was simply too everything.

Too smooth, too poised, too well-spoken and, this he could say without bias, too handsome to be a scruffy newshound. One would think he was a slick-tongued insurance investigator come round to ferret out mistakes in conduct so the company could refuse pay for the loss of the exhibit and the subsequent damages. They would escort him straight to the edge of the crocodile pit and wait for him to not-so-accidentally trip.

This doomed subterfuge had something to do with Amelia Tooting-Spur. She had a plan for locating the escaped octopus, possibly for financial gain and Mastermind glory, but Godwin had been vague on that point.

What he had been unmistakably clear on was that he was merely assisting Amelia. The poor dear couldn't possibly do all of the investigating on her own and he, being the gentleman he was, had volunteered to help.

Because she needed it. Really she did.

Tosh, thought Alistair. He'd met Amelia Tooting-Spur. And while he judged her fashion sense to be only nominally better than that of a badger, he had thought her perfectly capable of singlehandedly taking down an entire contingent of Coldstream Guards and nicking their bearskins, if she had a mind to.

Luckily, she didn't. She put her considerable talent into flying blue-blooded underpants from flagpoles, and now into hunting down absconding sea life, it would seem.

Which meant Godwin was, no doubt, a willing participant, having thought up this journalist acting rouse under his own steam. The entire notion simply reeked of The Amazing Godwin and his penchant for harmless, costumed deceptions.

"Jonathan Butterhopper works at the Zoo, darling," Alistair said gently as he spread a thin layer of jam on his toast. "Why don't you chat with him over a nice pint instead of going to all the trouble of dressing up and milking information out of people who have lions to feed and manure to shovel? As amusing as that could turn out to be. I can go over to Boniface's right now and arrange it."