A Decent Chap

Futmerry Hall, October 1918

“Bloody machine gun. Took ‘em off clean as a whistle. Didn’t feel a damn’ thing until afterwards.”

Lady Amelia Warrender, Duchess of Swineshire, was examining her husband’s war wounds. She could see that the Fourteenth Duke's penis was intact but the remnants of his scrotum was an empty bag, crudely stitched up by a field surgeon.

They do a better job on the horses, Amelia thought.

The wounds on Henry’s upper, inner thighs, from passing bullets were now healing fast. Henry would soon be walking normally. The Duchess would be so pleased when that happened. The bandy legged gait that the wounds forced on him made it look as if the Duke had just shat himself.

“Will you have to go back to the front?”

“Shouldn’t think so. There’s only a few months left. The German army is still strong but their people are starving. They won’t be able to keep up their war effort for much longer. And with tanks and the Americans now in the war it’s over for ‘em. They're talking about an armistice.”

“So many men have died. There isn’t a family in the country that hasn’t lost someone.” A tear ran down Lady Amelia’s cheeks.

“I know. But it’s not just England, Darling. The whole of Europe is buggered. Most of the Empire too. It’s a big problem. And this blasted ‘flu epidemic doesn’t help either.” The Duke put a comforting arm around his wife. She in turn gave his limp little pecker a reassuring squeeze.

“Things will never be the same, will they Henry?”

“Afraid not, old girl. But we shall all have to do our bit. Need to get the old country back on its feet. It might not be pleasant for you but needs must.”

“For me?” Lady Amelia was puzzled. What did Henry expect from her?

“Sorry darling. But it goes with the title.”

“Henry what are you talking about?”

“All this, Futmerry Hall, the estates.”

“What about it?”

“Needs an heir darling.”

“Oh! Yes. I see.”

Lady Amelia thought for a moment. “But if you’re a gelding you won’t er … be able to sire.”

“No. I’m afraid you’re on you own with this, old thing.”

“You sure Henry?”

“You wouldn’t want it to go to Algernon, would you?”

Lady Amelia knew that Henry’s younger brother had spent the war in an asylum, frequently in a straight jacket.

The thought crossed her mind that the Warrender bloodline was not prime breeding material. Perhaps the discreet introduction of new blood wouldn’t be too bad a thing. Not that there’d been anything at all wrong with Henry, up until he’d had his balls shot off.

“I doubt if Algy could run the estate,” Amelia said. “Did you have anyone in mind?”

“God no! Discretion is everything. Algy’s mad but he’s not stupid. Wouldn’t do to have him contest a will.”

The Duke paused for a moment. "Perhaps we could take a tour when the shooting stops. I'd like to see Europe again, without all the ordnance flying around.

The armistice came into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month that year. The German army wasn't beaten, the nations of Europe had simply fought themselves to a standstill. Church bells rang across the land but Christmas 1918 was a time for weeping. How could families celebrate when there were empty places at the table?

In the late spring of 1919 Henry and Amelia Warrender went to see the battlefields: the Somme, Ypres, Passchendale. At his own part of what had been the front a daffodil was growing through the rusting barbed wire. Henry was unable to contain his tears. "What utter bloody madness," he murmured.

Amelia could easily see what it must have been like for those who'd been there. She knew that no man would come through that unaffected. "Darling, this is too depressing. Can't we go and see those jolly fat men in lederhosen playing in an oompah band. I used to enjoy that before … before all this."

Amelia had German relatives. Like Queen Victoria, she was a relative although a distant one of Kaiser Wilhelm II himself. Her childhood had been partly spent in Germany and she spoke the language fluently. She had happy memories from those days.

The situation in Germany appalled her almost as much as the battlefields. Gaunt grim faces of bereaved and starving women haunted her. What men she saw were mostly injured. There were very few able bodied young men to be seen.

Walking around Munich they heard an oompah band in a Hofbrau house so they went in. The bandsmen were wearing lederhosen but they weren't at all fat. The music at least was jolly but there was none of that happy relaxed spirit that Amelia remembered in these places. People were arguing and talking rather than singing.

After a while the band gave up as a lost cause and left the small stage. The compere made an introduction, a man walked on to a round of applause and began to make a ranting speech.

"Who is this fellow? Is he a comedian or something?" Henry asked his wife.

"Not intentionally. He's a politician. He says the German army was betrayed by the communists."

"Oh. Let's go."

The place was crowded and they were more or less trapped in their bench seats at the wooden tables. Amelia sensed that the crowd would resent anyone walking out. "Stay put darling and drink your beer. It would be undiplomatic to leave now."

Henry understood and at least the beer was good. After a while the speaker handed the platform over to another man and the crowd thinned. This one was much younger and he wasn't injured, well apart from a slight limp.

Amelia was about to suggest they leave but the man's words caught her interest. She stayed to listen. Henry was just enjoying the beer.

Although the man was no gentleman and never would be there was something about him that appealed to Amelia. More importantly, he was of Henry's build and colouring.

She leant over to Henry. "Darling, you remember telling me that we needed an heir?"

"Hmm what? Oh yes."

"Wouldn't you like to go back to the hotel? I'll be along later."

No one took any notice of the inebriated man who left the hall in an unsteady way.

Amelia meanwhile planned her campaign.

Henry was sound asleep when Amelia entered their hotel room. It was next morning over breakfast when she wanted to tell him what had happened. Henry wasn't much interested. "Is he a decent chap, would you say?"

"I think so, darling. He has an Iron Cross, you know, first class."

"Hmm. Can't be too bad then. So now we have to wait and see, I suppose."

The seed from the man who had the same build and colouring as the Duke of Swineshire took root and grew. A male heir to the Dukedom was born in February 1920. He was a fine healthy baby and he was christened Arthur Henry William after his ancestors. Arthur grew up to be a splendid young man. Well, Amelia thought so. Henry was as pleased with his heir as if he'd sired the boy himself. In fact he chose to forget that he hadn't. In his own mind he thought that Amelia had done a damned fine job with that boy. From time to time he even remembered to tell her that.

The boy did well at school, having a natural bent towards the arts. He captained the first XV, was a house prefect and generally considered a decent chap and all round good egg. He completed his first year at Oxford and then interrupted his studies for a spell in the Royal Air Force. He was kept quite busy during the summer of 1940.

If Arthur's duties caused his father any concerns the Duke didn't voice them. It was tacitly understood that one did one's duty to the best of one's ability and that's all there was to it.

When the fourteenth Duke eventually joined his old comrades in the sky in 1953 he died content that his stewardship of the estate had been successful and he was leaving it in good hands. Meanwhile Arthur had married and his wife Jennifer was happily into the business of producing heirs and spares.

The fifteenth Duke of Swineshire settled into being an English country gentleman of the old school. He seldom left his estate, although it was generally agreed that he made an uncommon good speech on those rare occasions when he stood up in the House of Lords.

Something odd happened in the 60s. A constitutional reform made it possible for hereditary peers to renounce the peerage for their own lifetime and, if elected, were permitted to take a seat in the House of Commons. Lords Stansgate (Labour) and Hailsham (Conservative) were two who seized the chance to do so.

When Amelia heard that the local Conservatives had approached Arthur to see if he would stand for Parliament the family were astonished at the violence of her antipathy to the idea. It was quite out of character for the old girl to throw such a scene. "Arthur must not go into politics," she yelled in near panic. "It would be disastrous."

Because Arthur didn't want to go into politics, he was content being the Duke of Swineshire, nobody in the family could see what the fuss was about and Amelia would never explain herself. In the end they put it down to the eccentricity of an elderly female and left it at that.

Perhaps it was the excitement of that incident that contributed to her demise soon after. And perhaps Amelia did have a good reason for her behaviour. That young man she'd seduced at the beerhall in Munich had had a lot more about him than even Amelia realised at the time. It would never do for the world to know that the biological father of the fifteenth duke was Adolf Hitler. That would be too dreadful. The secret died with her.

And there was another secret that she took to the grave. Did Hitler really have only one ball or was that just Allied propaganda? Amelia would have known but she never told.

End