Bachelors Anonymous (13 page)

Nor was
Mr Trout any less agile. He was not one of those men who part lightly with
anything in the shape of currency. He had once spent half an hour on his hands
and knees trying with the aid of a walking-stick to retrieve a dollar bill
which had gone to earth under a chest of drawers. The present crisis brought
out all the huntsman in him. He wanted that pound note and was determined to
get it. Wherever it went, he went, and when eventually it sailed over the fence
into the next-door garden it seemed only natural to him to follow it. He would,
he knew, be offending against the laws of trespass, but his blood was up and he
didn’t care.

The
breeze had dropped and his quarry was lying inert on the little patch of grass
outside the front door, an easy prey. Somewhat out of breath but thrilled by
the prospect of the happy ending, he advanced on it with gleaming eyes and
outstretched hands, and as he did so an odd sound as of someone gargling
mouthwash in his rear made him turn. With a sinking heart he saw that he had
been joined by a dog.

He
stiffened, growing colder and colder from the feet upwards. He had never been
at his ease with dogs, and this was a particularly formidable specimen of the
species—the sort of dog that hangs about on street corners and barks out of the
side of its mouth; a dog, more than probably, known to the police. He viewed it
with concern, and the dog viewed him with open suspicion.

Percy
was the dog’s name, and mention was made earlier of his habit of chasing Miss
Priestley’s cats. But he was not a specialist who confined himself to this
branch of industry. Postmen paled beneath their tan when they saw him, and
representatives of consumer research firms were equally affected. His guiding
rule in life was ‘If it moves, bite it’, and it was unfortunate, therefore, that
at this moment Mr Trout should have moved. Abandoning the more prudent policy
of standing rigid and hoping that he would be mistaken for a flowering shrub of
some kind, he thrust forward a trembling hand, an action against which his best
friends would have warned him, and said:

‘Good
dog. Good boy. Good old fellow.’

Percy’s
liveliest suspicions were confirmed. He had supposed himself to be up against a
unit of organised crime, and how right, he felt, he had been. Panic had robbed
Mr Trout’s voice of its usual suavity. His ‘Good dog’ had sounded like a threat
to take immediate aggressive steps, as had his ‘Good boy’, and his ‘Good old
fellow’, and Percy had been left in no doubt that he was in the presence of a
far more sinister character than any postman or consumer research man. He
ranked Mr Trout even higher as a menace to the public weal than Miss
Priestley’s three cats, dangerous devils though they were.

He
acted promptly, for he shared with Napoleon the belief that attack is the best
form of defence. Without waiting for Mr Trout to start throwing the bombs of
which his pockets were no doubt full he bit the outstretched hand with all the
emphasis at his disposal, and Mr Trout uttered a howl which might well have
been that of a dozen cats stepped on simultaneously by a dozen men in hobnailed
boots. It had the effect of so startling Percy that he took to his heels and
disappeared at some fifty m.p.h., while at the same time a woman came out of
the house, plainly eager for explanations.

This
was Mrs Amelia Bingham, the widow who owned the other half of the semi-detached
house inhabited by Miss Priestley and her cats. Mr Trout, seeing her only dimly
through the mist of unshed tears caused by Percy’s prompt action, would not
have been able to describe her, but she was what is generally termed a
comfortable woman. A tendency to plumpness made it unlikely that she would ever
become Miss Great Britain, or Miss London and Adjoining Suburbs, or even Miss
Valley Fields, but she was beyond a question comfortable. She radiated an
atmosphere of cosiness. Mr Trout had once got lost on a walking tour on a cold
and rainy night and after hours of wandering had come upon an inn, its lights
shining through the mists with their promise of warmth and comfort. His first
sight of Amelia Bingham filled him with the same feelings he had had then.

Under
normal conditions she smiled easily, but she was not smiling now. Knowing that
Percy was at large, and hearing that awful cry, she feared the worst.

‘Oh
dear. Are you hurt?’ she wailed, and ran to where Mr Trout was pirouetting like
an Ouled Nail dancer with his hand to his mouth.

‘Madam,’
said Mr Trout, removing the hand for a moment, ‘I am.’

‘Did
Percy bite you?’

‘If
Percy is the name of that homicidal hound, he did.’

‘He
probably thought you were the postman.’

‘If he
cannot tell the difference between me and a letter-carrier,’ said Mr Trout, who
could be terribly bitter when moved, ‘he ought to consult a good oculist.’

It was
at this point that Amelia Bingham suggested that he should come into the house
and have his wounds dressed, and he followed her there. He was still in the
grip of the righteous wrath which animates men who have been bitten by dogs to
whom they have not done a thing except address them as good boys and good old
fellows, but gradually resentment gave way to kindlier feelings. It was
impossible not to be soothed by contact with this woman. Very soon conversation
was proceeding in the most amicable manner. Amelia Bingham said that Percy was
a naughty dog, and Mr Trout said he had already formed that opinion.

‘You’re
American, aren’t you?’ said Amelia Bingham. ‘I thought so. It was your saying
“letter-carrier” instead of postman. Tell me if this hurts,’ she said,
referring to the iodine which she was applying to his hand.

Mr
Trout, his good humour completely restored, assured her that it did not. He
also complimented her on the skill with which she was applying the bandage, and
she said she had had a lot of practice.

‘Bandaging
letter-carriers?’

‘Not
very often, because Percy usually goes for their trousers. I meant at the
hospital. I’m a hospital nurse.’

‘Ah,
that would account for it.’

‘This
is my day off. We get one a week at St Swithin’s. Whereabouts in America do you
come from?’

‘California,’
said Mr Trout with the reverence that always came into his voice when he spoke
that name. ‘My home is in Hollywood.’

‘Oh,
are you in the movies?’

‘No, I
am a lawyer.’

Amelia
Bingham uttered a pleased cry.

‘Then
you can tell me if the woman next door has any right to throw her snails into
my garden.’

‘None
whatever. Legally, snails are wild animals.’

‘What
ought I to do?’

‘Throw
them back.’

Amelia
Bingham said he had taken a great weight off her mind, and Mr Trout said he was
happy to have been able to be of service to her. Their relations were becoming
more cordial every moment.

‘Is it
nice there?’ Amelia Bingham asked.

‘Where?’

‘In
California.’

‘Very
nice. California is generally described as the jewel state of the Union. Bathed
in eternal sunshine, cooled by gentle breezes, it affords the ideal dwelling
place for the stalwart men and fair women who inhabit it. Its noble movie
houses, its spreading orange groves—’

‘How
about the earthquakes?’

Mr
Trout, who had been waving his hands emotionally, stopped with them in mid-air
as abruptly as if he had heard a director say ‘Cut’. He stared like one who is
having a difficulty in believing his ears.

‘I beg
your pardon?’

‘Didn’t
you have a bad one some time ago?’

‘You
are thinking of the San Francisco fire of 1906.’

‘Oh, it
was a fire, was it?’

‘A
fire,’ said Mr Trout firmly. ‘Earthquakes are absolutely unknown in
California.’

‘One
always gets these things wrong. There,’ said Amelia Bingham. ‘That ought to
hold if you don’t wave it too much. And now you must let me give you a cup of
tea. You would like a cup of tea, wouldn’t you?’

‘It
would be extremely refreshing,’ said Mr Trout. It was over the meal that he
first realised that strange things were happening to him this afternoon,
strange emotions stirring within him. His whole outlook seemed to have
changed. As he watched his hostess sip her tea and tucked into the superlative
scones which, he learned, were of her own baking, he became more and more
convinced that for the last twenty years he had been proceeding on entirely
wrong lines. In supposing that the bachelor’s was the ideal life he had been
guilty of a gross error. More and more clearly as the scones disappeared into
his interior he saw that what the sensible man wanted was a wife and a home
with scones like these always at his disposal. He had, in a word, like Romeo,
Joe Pickering and other notabilities, fallen in love at first sight, and if any
thought of Fred Basset, Johnny Runcible and G. J. Flannery came into his mind,
he dismissed it without a qualm.

It
seems to be a law of Nature that when a confirmed bachelor falls in love, he
does it with a wholeheartedness beyond the scope of the ordinary man who has
been scattering his affections hither and thither since he was so high. As a
child of eight Mr Trout had once kissed a girl of six under the mistletoe at a
Christmas party, but there his sex life had come to an abrupt halt, with the
result that for forty years passion had been banking up inside him like water
in a dam. Sooner or later the dam was bound to burst, and his meeting with
Amelia Bingham had brought this about. Quite suddenly he found himself
abandoning all the principles of a lifetime. No longer the silver-tongued
denouncer of love at whom the personnel of Bachelors Anonymous pointed with
pride, he yearned for Amelia Bingham as harts are said to yearn for
waterbrooks. If somebody had happened to come along at this moment bearing a
sprig of mistletoe, he would have kissed her under it without hesitation.

‘Delicious,’
he said, swallowing the last scone. ‘You really baked these yourself?’

‘And
made the strawberry jam.’

‘Amazing.
You must allow me to make some return for your hospitality. Could I persuade
you to dine with me tonight?’

‘I
should love it.’

‘I am
staying at the Dorchester. Shall we dine there? At about seven-thirty?’

‘Splendid.’

‘Don’t
bring Percy with you,’ said Mr Trout. ‘Ha, ha,’ he added, to show that this was
whimsical humour.

‘Ha,
ha,’ said Amelia Bingham.

‘Ho,
ho,’ said Mr Trout.

He made
a mental note to get his hair trimmed and to have a manicure and a shampoo.

Chapter Ten

The late afternoon of the
day on which love had come to Mr Trout found Ivor Llewellyn in the best of
spirits. His intention of putting a stick of dynamite beneath the pants of his
London employees had been amply fulfilled; the cook he had engaged was proving
excellent; a transatlantic telephone call to the studio had assured him that
all was going well there in his absence; and he had not heard a word from Vera
Dalrymple. Providence, he felt, was going out of its way to make things
pleasant for a good man.

It was
the last item on this list that set the seal on his wellbeing. As the days went
by, he had become more and more alive to the perils inseparable from
association with Miss Dalrymple. Twice since their first meeting he had come
within a hair’s breadth of proposing marriage to her, and only the merest
chance had averted disaster. Once a table-hopping friend of hers had
interrupted him as the fatal words were trembling on his lips; on the other
occasion he had been saved by a sudden attack of hiccups, giving him time to
reflect while the waiter was patting him on the back.

But he
knew that luck like this could not last if he continued to see her, and the
fact that there had been no communication on her part put new heart into him.
At their last dinner together he had been appalled to notice her close
resemblance to the more recent of his wives, and the thought that she had
ceased to be a menace was very comforting.

He had
been musing thus for some little time, when the sound of the front-door bell
broke in on his reverie. He rose and went to answer it. Doing so, he
recognised, involved a risk, but it had to be taken, for it might be his friend
Trout who had rung. He was particularly anxious to see Trout. Trout would
support his view that in his dealings with Vera Dalrymple he was proceeding on
the right lines; and however confident he may be that he has out-generalled a
woman, a man likes to have reassurance on the point from a knowledgeable third
party.

It was
his friend Trout, but a very different Trout from the Trout of the previous
night; a Trout glowing from head to foot and quite capable of doing
buck-and-wing dances on the door mat. Even in repose he seemed on the verge of
one of those soft-shoe Shuffle-off-to-Buffalo forms of self-expression which
used to be so popular in American vaudeville. He twitched, and his feet pawed
the carpet like those of some mettlesome steed.