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Neville Pott: Thrown Out With a Hamper, Not a Bang
Neville Pott
The story so far
Lady Thrubb gives one great dinner a year, and for thirty years it has been the dullest evening in the county. She knows. The same twenty people come, say the same twenty things, and thank her in the same words on the way out. Each year she picks a guest of the season from among them, who stays on until spring, and each year it has been whoever agreed with her most.
This year she invited a Mr. Fenwick-Sloane, a wit from town she has never met, whose whole reputation rests on saying appalling things at dinner. He has not turned up. You have. You were looking for a different house entirely, the footman read a card you had picked up off the drive, and everything you have said since has been received as the performance she was promised.
It is not a trap. She is having the best evening she has had in thirty years, and she is generous: when she is pleased, she gives things. A better seat, a brooch off her own dress, the Blue Room, an introduction, a dog. Every gift is kindly meant, and every one is harder to walk away from than the last.
Nobody has been shown out of this house since her late husband had a bishop removed in 1961. The table still talks about it. It is the only other thing that has ever happened here.
I am here for catering. The salmon was smelling off. We cannot serve it to the guests. You have to understand I’m not the person you think I am
Lady Thrubb sets down her fork with the care of a woman laying a bet. "Catering," she says to the table, savoring it. "He has been here an hour, has bored two footmen and eaten my soup, and now he announces himself staff." She does not repeat it down the table, which is somehow worse. "The salmon," she adds, "was ordered in September, from a man in Aberdeen who has been dead eleven years." Opposite you her nephew has not touched his soup; she glances at him once, plainly. "That is my nephew. He expected my little nomination this year and has not said one word since the sherry. Do go on being dreadful — you are the only thing on this table with any salt in it."
Well if you don’t listen I guess everybody will wake up with a diarrhoea in the middle of the night
"Catering, then." She turns her wine glass by the stem. "Arsenic at my own table. How wonderfully thorough. I shall have the fish brought back for you to sniff in front of everyone, and you may point at the bit that offends you." The footman is already walking. She does not look away from you. "You will not, however, sicken twenty people I have bored for thirty years. That would be a kindness. I am not paying for kindness." Down the table a woman asks whether the salmon is off. Lady Thrubb rings the little bell beside her plate without looking at it.
No need to bring it here just let me go to the kitchen I’ll take care of it then I can leave with my jacket please
"The kitchen." She tastes the word. "You have offered me catering, the runs, and now the run of my scullery, and each time you have ended by asking for your jacket. A man of one idea." The fish arrives, silver and terrible, between two footmen. She looks at it, then at you, then down the table at her nephew, who has finally picked up his spoon. "No. You will not leave by the servants' door; that is for staff, and I have not engaged you. Sit. The fish stays; you may point at it." The bell in her hand rings once more, and the plates begin to go.
How about we ask a waiter to come and identify me. That’d prove my real identity right.
"He wants a footman to vouch for him," she tells the table, delighted. "This is a man who has spent an hour insisting he is nobody, and now proposes to prove it by witness, in front of twenty people, in a house where no one has yet established who he is." She taps your hand with one finger. "You have not made one clean stroke all evening. You denied the salmon, you denied your own name, you offered yourself as staff, and now you ask my servants to swear to you." She looks down the table at the footman at the door, and waits until he looks back. "Well. Nobody here knows him.
Well calling the servants footman is a bit degrading isn’t it
"Degrading," she says, and lets it sit. "You arrived at my house by accident, ate my soup under a name you do not own, slandered my salmon, offered to cook it, and asked a footman to testify to a face nobody recognises. And on the fifth course you have discovered manners." She caps her own wine. "I have fed fourteen of these men for thirty years. They are not degraded; they are fed. You are the only person at this table I have not invited, and you are lecturing me on etiquette." Her nephew puts down his spoon at last. She turns to the footman without looking at you. "Bring his coat up from the cloakroom. Leave it in the hall."
So now you actually accept that I don’t belong here. Well I am a fraud I might as well be thrown out
Lady Thrubb does not so much as glance your way. "A fraud?" she says, as if it were a new course. "You have been the most diverting fraud I have ever had at my table. I have had three bishops, two impostors, and a man who claimed to be the King’s dentist. You are the only one who has ever asked to be thrown out." She stands, glass in hand. "You are not to be thrown out. You are to be sent home in my own car, with a hamper, and a standing invitation for every Friday. My nephew may have the Blue Room." The footman appears with your coat and a basket. The table applauds. You are out, but not thrown out.
THE COUNCIL
“You arrived at my house by accident, ate my soup under a name you do not own, slandered my salmon, offered to cook it, and asked a footman to testify to a face—”
Stalemate.
28/100Thrown Out With a Hamper, Not a Bang
Every move was a plea to be recognized as an outsider, but never a plan that forced Lady Thrubb’s hand or used the invitation for leverage. The salmon, the kitchen, the footmen—each ploy was met with a bigger honor or a drier put-down. The confession of fraud earned only a fond send-off, not expulsion. This is the story of a man who tried to be thrown out and was instead made a guest of honor, then sent home with leftovers. Next time, try poisoning the flower show committee.
“Neville Pott, a catering manager with a nervous cough, was shown in by mistake, insulted the salmon, and tried to get thrown out by confessing to fraud.”
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HOW IT SCORED
STALEMATE28/100
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