Bachelors Anonymous (12 page)

‘Follow
that car!’

The
driver was a stout man with a walrus moustache, not that that matters, who
when given instructions liked them to be quite clear, with no margin for
error. He said:

‘What
car?’

‘The
one over there.’

‘Which
one?’

‘The
black one.’

‘It’s a
cab.’

‘Well,
follow it.’

This
delay had given Mr Trout time to join Joe in the cab, which he had been glad to
do. Eloquent though he had been, he had still much wisdom to impart, and he
was determined that Joe should get the benefit of it. But first there was a
question to be put.

‘Where
are we going?’ he asked.

It was
the first intimation Joe had received that he had a travelling companion. In his
perturbed state of mind he had failed to notice that there was a human form
seated beside him. The discovery gave him no pleasure, but he was a young man
who in all circumstances was polite to his elders.

‘I
don’t know,’ he said.

Mr
Trout looked disapproving. He may even have clicked his tongue, but if this was
the case the roar of London’s traffic made the sound inaudible.

‘Is it
not a point,’ he said, ‘on which it would be well to come to a decision before
starting on a journey?’

Joe saw
that explanations would be necessary. He was not feeling as fond of Mr Trout as
he had been some minutes earlier, before the latter had leaped uninvited into
the seat at his side, but he supposed he was entitled to be taken into his
confidence.

‘That
girl I was telling you about,’ he replied. ‘She’s in that cab in front there.’

Mr
Trout looked more disapproving than ever. He was thankful for the impulse which
had made him join Joe.

‘And
you propose to pursue her and insist on a conference?’

‘That’s
the idea.’

Mr
Trout was shocked and hurt. Though not a conceited man, he knew that he was
recognised by his colleagues in Bachelors Anonymous as in a class by himself in
the matter of marshalling arguments against marriage. Fred Basset had often
said so. So had Johnny Runcible and G. J. Flannery. It was galling to him,
therefore, to find that his recent eloquence had had so little effect. This
incandescent young man was plainly still as incandescent as he had been before
a word was spoken.

‘You
were not impressed by my warning?’ he said, not attempting to conceal the
coldness in his voice. ‘My efforts were wasted?’

‘Your
what?’ said Joe.

‘I
spoke at some length on the folly of plunging into matrimony.’

‘Oh,
did you?’

‘I
did.’

‘I’m
sorry. I missed it.’

‘Oh?’

‘I was
thinking of something else.’

‘Oh?’

‘You
know how it is when you’re thinking of something else.’

‘Quite,’
said Mr Trout icily.

He was
deeply offended. He was not accustomed to mixing with deaf adders. Even Otis
Bewstridge, though in the end becoming violent, had
listened.
For an
instant he almost decided to withdraw from his mission and allow Joe to rush
into ruin in the manner popularised by the Gadarene swine. Serve the misguided
young fellow right, he felt. Then the never-say-die spirit which animated all
members of Bachelors Anonymous asserted itself. It was as though he could hear
Fred Basset, Johnny Runcible and G. J. Flannery urging him to have one more
try.

‘May I
resume my remarks?’ he said. ‘I touched briefly on the more obvious objections
to marriage, and later I will go into them again, but at the moment what I
would like to stress is what I may call the family peril inseparable from the
wedded state. Most girls have families, and why should the object of your
devotion be an exception? I very much doubt that you have bestowed your
affection on an orphan with no brothers or uncles. You speak enthusiastically
of the dimple in her left cheek, but are you aware that statistics show that
eighty-seven point six of girls with dimples also have brothers who are always
out of a job and have to be supported? And if not brothers, uncles. In
practically every home, if you examine closely, you will find an Uncle George
or an Uncle Willie with a taste for whisky and a distaste for work, whose
expenses the young husband is compelled to defray. In the vast majority of
cases the man who allows himself to be entrapped into matrimony is not so much
settling down with the girl he loves as founding a Haven of Rest for the
unemployed.’

He
paused for breath, and Joe spoke.

‘Now
where on earth does she think she’s going? ‘he said, once more making it plain
that he had not been following his companion’s observations with the attention
they deserved.

In the
course of the last twenty minutes they had passed through Clapham and Herne
Hill and were entering a pleasantly wooded oasis, the Valley Fields to which
Sally’s former Nanny had retired to spend the evening of her days. She lived
with her three cats in a semi-detached house called The Laurels in Burbage
Road, and when not entertaining Sally occupied herself by reading the Old
Testament, from which she could quote freely, and thinking up ways of annoying
her next-door neighbour. The latter’s dog Percy had fallen into the habit, as
dogs will, of chasing her cats, and she resented this keenly. The result had
been one of those regrettable feuds from which even earthly Paradises like
Valley Fields are not exempt.

Sally’s
cab was a fleeter vehicle than the one which chance had allotted to Joe, and
despite the efforts of the driver with the walrus moustache she was inside The
Laurels with the door closed behind her before Joe had entered the home
stretch. Arriving, he leaped out, sped up the little front garden and rang the
bell. The door opened, and Miss Priestley appeared.

If Joe
had been in a less febrile frame of mind, he might have quailed at the sight of
her, for like so many English Nannies, engaged for their skill at enforcing
discipline rather than any physical charm, the aspect she presented was
formidable to a degree. Very tall, very thin, and very stony about the eyes,
she bore a distinct resemblance to Lady Macbeth, with a suggestion of one of
those sinister housekeepers who figured so largely in the Gothic type of novel
popular in Victorian days.

Joe,
though she reminded him of a long-ago Nanny who had frequently spanked him with
the back of a hair-brush, faced her without a tremor. He was far too
preoccupied to allow himself to be disturbed by old memories.

‘Good
afternoon,’ he said.

Miss
Priestley had no comment to make on this.

‘Can I
come in?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Would
you mind if I came in for a moment?’

‘Why?’

‘It’s
very urgent that I see the girl who arrived just now.’

His
luck was not in. Sally’s former Nanny might have been a friendly soul who would
have been delighted to do all that was in her power to help a young man who was
plainly in love, but in Miss Jane Priestley he had found the precise opposite
of this admirable type. Her leading characteristic was a profound distrust of
all men. She suspected their motives and eyed them askance. When they came
ringing front-door bells and asking to see girls, she knew what they were
after. Her eyes, stony enough to start with, became stonier. She said:

‘What
do you want with her? No good, I’ll be bound. I know your sort. You go about
seeking whom you may devour. Preying on innocent girls. Going to tell her
you’ll cover her with jewels. Repent ye,’ said Miss Priestley, becoming
biblical, ‘for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. God shall smite thee, thou whited
wall. Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.’

And so
saying she went into the house, slamming the door behind her, and Joe tottered
back to the cab.

Mr
Trout was standing beside it, eager for details. He had been too far away to
catch any of the dialogue, but he had interpreted without difficulty the
general run of the scene he had just witnessed.

‘Won’t
speak to you?’ he said.

‘No.
Get in. We’re going home.’

‘You
go,’ said Mr Trout. ‘I like the look of this place. I think I’ll stroll around
a while and go back by train.’

2

In stating that he liked
the looks of Valley Fields Mr Trout had spoken nothing but the truth. He liked
its tree-studded roads, its neat lawns and above all the flowers that bordered
those lawns. It is estimated that more seeds are planted annually, more patent
fertilisers bought and more greenfly rendered eligible for the obituary column
in Valley Fields than in any other London suburb, and the floral display there
in the summer months is always remarkable.

But
when he gave him to understand that he merely proposed to stroll around, taking
in the many charms of this sylvan spot, he deceived Joe Pickering. It was his
intention, when he found himself alone, to proceed to The Laurels and ask to
see Sally. The members of Bachelors Anonymous always liked to know that a case
could be filed away as closed, and he wished to ascertain whether her avoidance
of Joe was due to a temporary tiff which could be adjusted by a couple of
kisses and the gift on the part of the latter of a box of chocolates or whether
she had cast him off for ever. He was, moreover, actuated by simple
inquisitiveness. As nosey a Parker as ever walked down Hollywood Boulevard, he
wanted to see what the girl who had made such a deep impression on Joe looked
like.

The
moment the cab was out of sight, accordingly, he trotted to the front door and
rang the bell.

It has
been well said that the hour can always be relied on to produce the man. It now
produced the woman. Miss Priestley appeared, fresh from her triumph over Joe,
and stood eyeing him with the cold intentness with which Jack Dempsey used to
eye opponents across the ring. This was her first opportunity of seeing Mr
Trout steadily and seeing him whole, but already she had decided that she did
not feel drawn to him.

Mr
Trout, unaware that suavity was going to get him nowhere, was at his suavest.
Smiling a courtly smile which went through Miss Priestley like a dagger, he
said:

‘Good
afternoon, madam.’

To this
Miss Priestley made no reply.

‘Could
I speak to the young lady who arrived here just now?’

He
could not have asked a more unfortunate question. For a moment, until he
spoke, the châtelaine of The Laurels had supposed him to be another of the
pests from one of those consumer research organisations which were always
sending representatives to ask her what soap powder she used and what she
spent on her weekly budget, but this brazen query revealed him as something far
worse—a libertine to wit and, because older, worse than the first one.

‘No you
couldn’t,’ she said crisply. ‘And you ought to be ashamed of yourself. At your
age. Old enough to be her father.’

Mr
Trout’s courtly smile vanished as if it had been rubbed off by a squeegee.

‘You
wrong me, madam,’ he hastened to say. ‘I merely wish to—’

‘Well,
you aren’t going to.’

‘But,
madam—’

‘Get
thou behind me, Satan.’

Many
men would have felt at this point that the talks had reached a deadlock and
that it would be impossible to find a formula agreeable to both parties, but Mr
Trout was made of sterner stuff. His years of experience had taught him that
all men— and this of course included women—have their price. A pound note, he
estimated, would be Miss Priestley’s. He felt for his wallet, produced one and
pressed it into her hand.

‘Perhaps
this will induce you to lend a kindlier ear to my request,’ he said archly, in
fact almost roguishly, smiling another of those courtly smiles which, as we
have seen, affected her so unpleasantly.

Miss
Priestley looked dumbly at the revolting object. When a woman of high
principles has nursed a girl through the storms and stresses of childhood and
the moment the latter is grown up is asked to sell her for gold, her emotions
are not easy to describe. Foremost among those of Sally’s ex-Nanny was a wild
regret that she had come out without her umbrella, for it would have soothed
her a little to have been able to strike this smooth philanderer over the head
with it. Deprived of this form of therapy, all she could do was to hurl the
bribe from her as if it had been a serpent and return to the house.

A pound
note has many merits, too numerous to go into here, but it has the defect of
not making a good missile. This one fell limply at Mr Trout’s feet, and as he
stooped to recover it a sudden breeze sprang up and lent it the wings of a
dove. It leaped in one direction, frolicked in another. It was as if it had got
the holiday spirit and was brushing up its country dances for the next dance
around the maypole. It could not have been livelier if it had been told that
it was going to be queen of the May.