DOWNSTAIRS AT RAMSEY'S

Brace yourself if you're morally peckish; otherwise relax and enjoy it as any number of people who read James Leigh's cheeky What Can You Do? of a couple of seasons back no doubt will. Downstairs is the bottom half of Ramsey's house--he's a retired Hollywood actor--a British butler--an ""ineffably consummate"" type who narrates these proceedings as they drift up to him through his Flo-Through ventilating system, in between pregnant pauses. And they deal with his lessees, thirty-odd Hardy Brewster (""a ghostwriter for people too lazy to use the library"") and Jim Long (he plays the horses and uses very vivid language) and one Delilah, a teenage torrid zone, formidably developed and well arranged at fourteen. Delilah, while maddening in every sense of the word, is left in their custodial care and she is also very determined to get rid of Jim, get rid of Fauna--Hardy's currently affable young woman (Hardy dislikes more permanent arrangements) and to marry Hardy. It's a supremely funny book with lots of aplomb--lots of appeal.