This is in Short Stories already.
But it is all true.

True story this. There’s this family friend – let’s call him Bob – who’s a butler. Yep, that’s right, a genuine, wait-on-another-person, be-looked-down-upon butler. I bet you don’t know one. He’s certainly the only one I know. Anyway, he’s a friend of the family because eons ago his father proposed to my late Grandmother. She turned him down, but they stayed friends and when both met other people, got married and had kids, Grandma became Godmother to his son, and the son became the aforementioned butler.

So, how did he become a butler you ask? Well, like the people he served, Bob was born into it. Y’see, his father was a butler, had been all his life, and when he passed away, Bob, then aged 14, took his place. He was never given a choice, but never thought of doing anything else. It was simply what was going to happen. Like being an heir to something, although not something wonderful.

Oh, the life that Bob leads. Sometimes he’s at the stately home in the country, but mostly he’s at the 5 storey town house in Mayfair. Sounds grand, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not, let me tell you.

Bob lets his guard down when he’s had a few whiskeys, and divulges little stories of the privileged and the great that his sober self never would. I visited him one night in Mayfair and persuaded him to crack open a bottle of the bosses best single malt. (I knew he wouldn’t get into trouble for this. He’s in charge of the household budget and does all the shopping, so a bottle of whiskey is nothing. Hell, you should see me wolf down his bosses smoked salmon, caviar and fine wines when offered.). My favourite story, and I’ve heard it countless times now, is the foam story. Bob swears it’s true. I believe him, for he’s not one to lie, and nothing about the people above him would surprise me anyway. They literally are above him by the way, and not just in their own hierarchical class system. Bob lives in the basement at the Mayfair place in a humble little flat.

So, the story goes like this. There’s a big shooting weekend at some toff’s large country pile. About fifty of this country’s landed gentry have converged on the estate, including Bob’s boss and thus Bob himself as well. Built 200 years before on the backs and toil of the local populace, the place was amazing, the grounds run into hundreds of acres and the shooting was, apparently, “spectacular”.

Let me translate for you here. Spectacular means that hundreds of pheasant and grouse have been bred especially to be shot out of the air. Spectacular means that hundreds are indeed shot. Spectacular means that a few are eaten and a few hung for later consumption. But spectacular also means that most are simply buried in the ground, in the grounds. Spectacular simply means lots and lots and lots of dead little birds, whose life existed solely for the purpose of being blasted out of the air by a braying man smothered in tweed and Barbour called Tristan, or Sebastian, or, I kid you not, Peregrine, which is the equivalent, I think, of me being called Magpie or Chaffinch.

Anyway, amongst these gathered toffs, snobs and work-shy inheritors was a Lord, who we’ll call Charles. Lord Charles was twenty seven at the time, an Oxbridge and Army reject (too lazy for study and too ‘much of a girl’ for the army, to quote his Major) who ‘worked’ for Daddy on Daddy’s estate, but actually did bugger all, truth be told, and was merely biding his time before Daddy died and he could inherit everything, including the title of Duke and the respect he believed would follow it. Well, Lord Charles was in a bit of a sulk at the end of the shooting. He’d shot only one thing (on account of him being quite scared of guns and unable to shoot without closing his eyes). Or, to be more precise, he’d shot nothing with wings and only one thing without – his valet. You heard me. He’d shot the man who’d looked after him since he was five, his ever-suffering valet, called Peter (although since the age twelve he’d pompously referred to Peter as his “Bagman” after hearing that’s what the President of the United States called his valet). Don’t start getting all worried. Peter the valet was fine and just needed the pellets removed from his backside and an overnight stay at the local hospital. And Peter never complained. Not once. A good valet shouldn’t, of course. Not like the beater the year before, who Lord Charles had also accidentally shot, this time in the arm, and who would never beat again, if you follow me. He’d yelled and cussed and had the temerity to insult the Lord, specifically questioning his eyesight. He was, of course, roundly removed from the shoot, the grounds, his cottage on the estate, and thus his life.

Anyway, following dinner, and in the middle of port and cigars with the other men, Lord Charles had feigned tiredness and gone to bed. Of course, all the Peregrines knew that he was acting like a petulant child, but no-one said anything because he was, after all, going to be Duke one day soon and a Duke is top of the toffs and commands respect, as Charles well knew. So, Lord Charles had been gone upstairs for just five minutes when he starts yelling and screaming and, I promise you, actually stamping his feet. The Peregrines put down their port and cigars, their Fenellas and Fionas and Beatrices looked up from their sherry and then in burst Charles, resplendent in blue and white striped pyjamas, holding his toothbrush and looking very distressed.

“It’s not foaming! It’s not foaming!”, he was yelling, “It’s not bloody foaming!!!”

“Calm down now Charles, what’s the problem?” asked a Peregrine.

“It’s not foaming!!” He’s quite distressed by this stage. It’s a high point of the story in my view. “There’s no foam!!!”. The poor man is almost at the point of tears.

“Your toothbrush?”, inquired a Beatrice.

“Yes, Yes", replies Charles quite rudely, "there’s no foam!!!”.

The Perigrines and Beatrices subtly exchanged looks that the unsubtle would not catch. They are quite amused, but cannot let it be seen. Lord Charles sees nothing.

“Charles, come with me and we’ll fix this, ok?”. A Peregrine took him gently by the arm and lead him back upstairs.

“It’s always foamed. It’s always foamed!” Lord Charles wailed as he climbed the steps.

The peregrine returned downstairs some minutes later and informed the group that he had, indeed, got Lord Charles’ toothbrush foaming very nicely, much to their amusement.

“I can’t believe the Duke makes his staff follow the old ways quite so rigorously”, states a fellow guest, another Lord who had bagged thirty pheasant and one fox that day. “I mean, the valet still putting toothpaste on his brush? You don’t suppose he still wipes his ar…”

“Really!”, squeals his Beatrice, acting disgusted at the thought but actually finding the whole thing very amusing.

Gravely, the Peregrine who had taken Lord Charles upstairs intoned, “Actually, I know for a fact he does. I know that valets are born to serve us, but one can’t help but feel sorry for that poor Peter”.

And that’s the story. Now, I know what you’re thinking. That can’t be true, can it? A grown man who has had toothpaste squeezed for him his whole life and doesn’t know how to do it for himself? Surely not? And having a man wipe his own bottom? No! It can’t be true. Can it?

Well, I’m sorry to say, but yes, it is. It’s all true. Bob doesn’t lie. Especially when he’s full of single malt.

Think about that next time you pick up your toothbrush.