A Pelican at Blandings (11 page)

Lady Constance's animosity had waned considerably as this
explanation proceeded. She still felt that she should have been
consulted before additions were made to the castle's guest list,
but on the whole she approved of what had been done. The
incidents of that disturbed night had shaken her. She had
never been under the illusion that Clarence's was a keen mind,
but not till then had he given so substantial a cause for anxiety
to his nearest and dearest. Psychiatric treatment was
unquestionably called for. Whatever it might do to him, it
could scarcely fail to be an improvement. The only doubt that
lingered with her was whether this Mr. Halliday was
sufficiently mature to undertake the task of penetrating to his
subconscious and bringing to the surface the contents of its
hidden depths.

'He's very young,' she said dubiously.

The Duke's attention was engaged once more with the
photograph of Lady Constance's husband.

'Funny-shaped head Schoonmaker's got. Like a Spanish
onion.'

It was a statement which at any other time Lady Constance
would have contested hotly, but her mind was on Sir Roderick
Glossop's junior partner.

'He's very young,' she repeated.

'I wouldn't call Schoonmaker young. Depends of course
what you mean by young.'

'I was speaking of this Mr. Halliday. I was saying he was
very young.'

'Of course he's young. Why wouldn't he be? If a man's a
junior partner, how can he help being junior?' said the Duke,
taking, as so few women were able to, the reasonable view.

Extraordinary, he was thinking, how mingling with those
Yanks had sapped Connie's intellect. She didn't seem able
nowadays to understand the simplest thing.

For perhaps two or possibly three minutes after they had left
Lady Constance's boudoir Gally and John preserved an
unbroken silence. Gally was plunged again in thoughts of how
cleverly he had grappled with the various problems which had
confronted him, a feat possible only to one trained in the hard
school of the Pelican Club, while John was in the grip of the
peculiar numbed sensation, so like that caused by repeated
blows on the head from a blunt instrument, which came to all
but the strongest who met Lady Constance for the first time
when she was feeling frosty. It was as though he had been for
an extended period shut up in a frigidaire with the first Queen
Elizabeth.

'I think you came through that well, Johnny,' said Gally at
length. 'Just the right blend of amiability and reserve. It is not
every man who can come through the ordeal of being
introduced to Connie with such elan and aplomb. It leads me
to hope that when you come up against La Gilpin, she will be
less than the dust beneath your chariot wheels. Too bad she's
away, but she ought to be with us in an hour or so.'

'By which time I may have started to recover.'

'Yes, I could see that, however little you showed it, you found
Connie overpowering. Long association has made me immune,
but she does take the stuffing out of most people. Somebody
wrote a story years ago entitled The Bird With The Difficult
Eye, and I have always thought the author must have had
Connie in mind. She takes after my late father, a man who could
open an oyster at sixty paces with a single glance. But you
mustn't let her sap your nerve, for you'll need all you have for the
coming get-together with that popsy of yours.'

'I wish you wouldn't—'

'I am a plain man. I call a popsy a popsy. How were you
thinking of playing the scene of reunion, by the way, always
taking into consideration the fact that she, too, will have a
difficult eye? Her mood when we were discussing you the
other day was not sunny. You will need to pick your words
carefully. I would advise the tender reminiscent note, what you
might call the Auld Lang Syne touch. Remind her of those
long sunlit afternoons when you floated down the river in your
punt or canoe, just she and you, the world far away, no sound
breaking the summer stillness except the little ripples whispering
like fairy bugles among the rushes.'

'We didn't float.'

'Didn't you ever go on the river?'

'No.'

Gally was surprised. He said that in his day you always took
a spin with the popsy in a punt or canoe, with a bite to eat
afterwards at Skindles. It was the first step towards a fusion of
souls.

'Then where did you plan your future?'

'We didn't plan it anywhere. I asked her to marry me and
she said she would, and that was that. We hadn't any time to
plan futures. It all happened quite suddenly in a taxi.'

'But you must have seen something of her before then?'

'At parties and so on.'

'But not in canoes on long sunlit afternoons?'

'No.'

'Disappointing. When was your first meeting?'

'One morning in her shop.'

'She runs a shop?'

'She used to. It didn't pay.'

'What sort of shop?'

'Flower.'

'And you went in to buy long-stemmed roses?'

'No, I went in because I had seen her through the window.'

'Love at first sight?'

'It was at my end.'

'What happened then?'

'We got talking. It turned out that I had been at Oxford
with her brother.'

'And then?'

'We met again somewhere.'

'And went on talking about her brother?'

'Among other things.'

'And after that?'

'Some lunches.'

'Many?'

'No. She always seemed to be booked up. She was very
popular. Whenever I met her, there was always a gang of
Freddies, Algies and Claudes from the Brigade of Guards
frisking round her. That's why asking her to marry me
seemed such a long shot. I didn't think I had a hope. After
all, who am I?'

'You are my godson,' said Gally with dignity, 'and furthermore
you have a golf handicap of six. Dash it all, Johnny,
Linda Gilpin isn't the Queen of Sheba.'

'Yes, she is.'

'Or Helen of Troy.'

'Yes, she is, and also Cleopatra. You ought to know. You've
met her.'

A sidelong glance at his godson told Gally that these words
had not been lightly spoken. There was a soul's-awakening
look on John's face that emphasized their sincerity. It left no
doubt that Linda Gilpin was the girl he wanted and that he
was prepared to accept no just-as-good substitute, and it was
an attitude Gally understood. He had felt the same himself
about Dolly Henderson. Nevertheless, he considered it his
duty as a godfather to assume, if only halfheartedly, the role of
devil's advocate. He had taken an immediate liking to Linda,
but he was not blind to the fact that in making her his wedded
wife Johnny would be running up against something hot. She
was no Ben Bolt's Alice, who would weep with delight when
he gave her a smile and tremble with fear at his frown. She was
a girl of spirit, and any husband rash enough to frown at her
would very shortly know that he had been in a fight.

This he proceeded to point out to John in well-chosen
words.

'I agree,' he said, 'that she is a personable wench and has
what it takes, but looks aren't everything. The conversation I
had with her when we were going to see the yew alley left me
with the conviction that she was anything but meek and
insipid. Admittedly the proceedings in the case of Clutterbuck
versus Frisby had stirred her up very considerably, but she
reminded me of a girl I knew in the old days who once wound
up an argument we were having by spiking me in the leg with
a hat pin. She recalled to my memory a poem I read in my
youth, the protagonist of which was a young costermonger
who took his donah to Hampstead Heath on Bank Holiday.
The expedition started out well, but when it came on to rain
and the ham sandwiches got wet, the gentler side of her nature
went into abeyance, and this is how he expresses himself.
"There is some girls wot cry, says I, while some don't shed a
tear, but just has tempers and when they has 'em, reaches a
point in their sawcassum wot only a dorg could bear to hear.
Thus unto Nancy by and by, says I". Linda Gilpin seemed to
me very much the Nancy type. Are you prepared to face a
married life into which tempers and sawcassum are bound to
enter?'

'Yes.'

'You don't feel like calling the whole thing off?'

'No.'

'Taking to the hills while escape is still possible?'

'No.'

'Then,' said Gally, gladly abandoning the functions of
devil's advocate, 'we know how we stand, and I may say that
I agree with you wholeheartedly. My acquaintance with
Linda Gilpin has not been a long one, but I have seen enough
of her to know that she is what the doctor ordered. Good
Lord, what does an occasional bit of sawcassum matter? It
prevents married life from becoming stodgy. What we must
do now is think of a good approach for you to make. The
approach is everything. There are dozens to choose from.
There was a chap at the Pelican who pretended to commit
suicide when the girl turned him down. He swallowed an
aspirin tablet and fell back with a choking cry. The trouble
was that after they had worked on him with the stomach
pump and he went back to the girl, she simply refused him
again, and all that weary work wasted. Still, it was an idea.
Something on those lines might be worth trying. It strikes
you favourably?'

'No.'

'Then how about having an accident? If she sees you lying
on the floor, spouting blood all over the carpet, there'll soon be
an end to her sales resistance. I knew a man who won his bride
by getting hit over the head with a stone tobacco jar, the sort
with the college arms on them which you buy when you're a
freshman at the University. Clarence has a stone tobacco jar,
and Beach would bean you with it if you slipped him a couple
of quid. Indeed, if you played your cards right, he would
probably do it for nothing. How about it? No? You're a hard
man to help, Johnny. Finnicky is the word that springs to the
lips. There seems no way of pleasing you.'

They walked on in silence, John's a thoughtful, Gally's a
wounded silence. But it was never the latter's habit to leave a
story unfinished.

'There was rather an odd conclusion to that romance I was
speaking of,' he said as they came in view of the lake. 'I should
have mentioned that the suicide chap's girl was the hat check
girl at Oddenino's, and he had left his hat with her before
putting on his act. You know how at many restaurants the
O.C. in charge of hats sticks a slip of paper with a description
of the customer in each lid to assist identification, the idea
being that they'll feel complimented at being remembered,
which they wouldn't be if they just got a ticket. Mine, for
instance, would probably have been something like "Slim,
distinguished, wearing eyeglass". Well, as I say, this fellow had
handed over the headgear, and when they had finished
working on him with the stomach pump and he went back to
the girl and proposed again and she refused him once more, he
thought he might at least save something from the wreck by
getting his hat, so he asked for it in a heartbroken sort of way
and she gave it to him and he tottered off still heartbroken. His
distress was not longlived. He found the girl had forgotten to
take out the slip, and it read "Face that would stop a clock". He
was so indignant that his love died instantaneously and he
lived happily ever after.'

John had not given this human drama the attention it
deserved. He was staring at the lake with the intensity of
Tennyson's bold Sir Bedivere, suddenly conscious of how
warm and sticky the sultry summer afternoon had rendered
him. He pointed emotionally.

'Could I have a swim before dinner?' he asked, and Gally
said he could if he did not take too long over it.

'You'll find trunks, towels and what not in the bath house.
My brother Clarence takes a dip every morning, but whether
from motives of health or in order to dilute the scent of the pig
sty is not known. I shall be in the hammock on the front lawn
when you want me.'

He strolled off—slim, distinguished, wearing eyeglass, as
the hat check girl at Oddenino's would have said, and a few
minutes later John was in the water, revelling in its
thereapeutic properties with a gusto which Lord Emsworth
could not have surpassed when taking his morning dip, and
Linda Gilpin, returning from her visit to the old school and
hurrying to the lake for a quick bathe before dressing for
dinner, saw him, stood transfixed, and blinked several times as
if to assure herself that she had really seen what she thought
she had seen. Then, coming to life, she shot off in the direction
of the house. It was her intention to find Gally and take up
with him the matter of John's arrival, for her woman's
intuition told her that if barristers she particularly disliked
wormed their way into Blandings Castle, it must be he who
had engineered the outrage.

She boiled with justifiable fury, but she was resolved, when
she saw Gally, to be very calm and cool and dignified, making
it clear to him that though she had been surprised to see John
Halliday, his presence at the castle was a thing of supreme
indifference to her. To suppose that it mattered to her one way
or another was absurd.

Such were her meditations. They were suddenly interrupted.
Over lawn and pasture there came stealing a metallic
but musical sound, soft in its early stages, then soaring to a
majestic crescendo.

Beach was beating the dressing-for-dinner gong.

Beach replaced the gong stick with the quiet glow of satisfaction
which this part of his duties always gave him. He loved
to hear the music swell to the sound of a great Amen and die
away in a pianissimo like the last distant murmur of a passing
thunderstorm. It had taken him some years to bring his art to
its present state of perfection. At the outset of his career he had
been a mere crude banger, but today he was prepared to match
his virtuosity against any butler in England. Gally, complimenting
him once on a masterly performance, had ventured the
opinion that it was the large dorsal muscles that did it. Beach
himself attributed his success to wrist work and the follow
through.