Emma on the twins' amusing themselves in a puritan Shadow

"Oh Clovis is excellent company," Emma said loyally. "Even if his pet Shadow and mine are slightly different. We go to those when we can ... but Farve has been utterly wonderfully in suggesting amusing places we might like to visit. He sent us off to be worshipped as gods at one point - he wanted to see if it appealed. And I must say, it rather did. But one could grow bored with being capricious and wilful, I should think. Although it might take eons."

She bit thoughtfully into the lemon curd. "There are usually parties though. Farve once sent us to a hideously puritanical Shadow where everyone wore deepest black and the longest possible faces imaginable just to see what we'd do.

"We introduced an intoxicant into the religious ritual," she explains. "A powerful euphoric. Just as a variant at first, you know - a new sacred mystery. A cult grew up - and, of course, spread like wildfire - because it was such =fun=. Soon it was a much, much better place - and we were being asked to parties allll the time."

She frowned. "Then Clovis made the mistake of lacing the euphoric with an aphrodisiac. It did seem an awfully good idea at the time.

"I believe the religious wars continue to this day. I say, this lemon curd is utterly delicious."

 

Emma on the unsuspected bargains one might find when shopping

"Oh, absolutely!" agreed Emma. "I remember one occasion in Kensington when we emptied half the lingerie section just so we could fill sufficient boxes as to necessitate the page boy carrying the boxes home for us.

"He was so very pretty," she added airily, by way of explanation. "I think we ended up employing him as a boot boy in the end. Or was he the one that Clovis lost in a game of cards to that funny little man with a ruby the size of a pigeon's egg. Or was it a pigeon's egg the size of a ruby? Whichever way round is the most valuable. Clovis =so= wanted to win it for my birthday. But he lost - and lost our boot boy with it.

"Still, I do remember the page boy as being one of our all-time bargains," she said, smiling at the memory. "Such a shine he could get on my riding boots!"

 

Emma on tea parties

"How lovely," said Emma. "And are you cousins? We're meeting such a lot! It's rather like that tea party Great Aunt Inegrunde gave back in Blythe. My mother's family, you know. Clovis and I had to promise to be on our very, very best behaviour before we we allowed to pass the cakes and ale. Well, not really cakes and ale. It was tea to drink. Although there were cakes - rather fine ones, as I recall. And Clovis and I begged to be allowed to help make them.

Her eyes softened as she recalled it. "It was the ones with the blue icing that were the best. Great Aunt Inegrunde was spinning round the room like a top, and sour-faced Cousin Cora woke up the next morning in bed with one of the stable boys."

She frowned slightly. "But we were utterly angelic at the party itself, so I really do think it was bad of Mama to punish us for the cakes. After all, no-one had told us we weren't to lace the cakes with a euphoric.

She sighed. "They did afterwards though. We were warned before every single party of what we were not to do. When it got to more than a hundred items, Mama took to pinning it on the back of our bedroom door and making us learn it by heart. I can still remember it vividly. Drugging the cakes was I Shall Not number 25. And number 28 was I Shall Not attempt to drown Cousin Osbert in the sceptic tank."

Her eyes flashed.

"As though we would have done that a second time!"

 

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To see information about Clovis, click here.
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