Full Moon (10 page)

'She liked it?' cried Tipton eagerly.

'The way she spoke of it, I think it absolutely bowled her over. Vee's the sort of girl who admires men who do things.'

'This opens up a new line of thought,' said Tipton, and was silent for a space, adjusting himself to it.

'If I were you, I'd ask her to marry me right away.'

'Would you?' said Tipton. His eyes rested on Prudence and in them now there was nothing but affection, gratitude, and esteem. It amazed him that he could ever have placed her among the squirts. An extraordinarily bad bit of casting. What had caused him to do so, of course, had been her lack of inches, and he realized now that in docketing the other sex what you had to go by was not size, but soul. A girl physically in the peanut division steps automatically out of her class if she has the opalescent soul of a ministering angel.

'Gosh!' he said. 'Would you?'

'I wouldn't waste another minute. Let me go and tell her that you want to see her, as you have something most important to say to her. Then you can put the thing through before lunch. Here is the set-up as I see it. I don't want to influence you if you have other ideas, but my suggestion would be that you ask her to come and confer with you behind the rhododendrons, and then, when she shows up, you reach out and grab her and kiss her a good deal and say: "My woman!" So much better, I mean, than messing about with a lot of talk. You get the whole thing straight that way, right from the start.'

The motion picture she conjured up made a profound appeal to Tipton Plimsoll, and for some moments he sat running it off in his mind's eye. Then he shook his head.

'It couldn't be done.'

'Why not?'

'I shouldn't have the nerve. I'd have to have a drink first.'

'Well, have a drink. That's just the point I was going to touch on. I've been watching you pretty closely, and you haven't drunk anything since you got here but barley water. That's what's been holding you back. Have a good, stiff noggin.'

'Ah, but if I do, what happens? Up bobs that blasted face.'

'Face? How do you mean?'

Tipton saw that it would be necessary to explain the peculiar situation in which he had been placed, and he proceeded to do so. Looking on this girl, as he now did, as a sort of loved sister and knowing that he could count on her sympathy, he experienced no difficulty in making his confession. With admirable clearness he took her through the entire continuity – the acquisition of his money, the urge to celebrate, the two months' revelry, the spots, the visit to E. Jimpson Murgatroyd's consulting room, E. Jimpson's words of doom, the first appearance of the face, the second appearance of the face, the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth appearances of the face. He told his story well, and a far less intelligent listener than Prudence would have had no difficulty in following the run of the plot. When he had finished, she sat in thoughtful silence, staring at the cow.

'I see what you mean,' she said. 'It can't be at all pleasant for you.'

'It isn't,' Tipton assured her. 'I don't like it.'

'Nobody would.'

'It would be quite different if it were a little man with a black beard. This face is something frightful.'

'But you haven't seen it since the first night you were here?'

'No.'

'Well, then.'

Tipton asked what she meant by the expression 'Well, then,'
and Prudence said that she had intended to advance the theory that the thing had probably packed up and gone out of business. To this Tipton demurred. Was it not more probable, he reasoned, that it was just lurking – simply biding its time as it were? No, said Prudence, her view was that, discouraged by Tipton's incessant barley water, it had definitely turned in its union card and that Tipton would be running virtually no risk in priming himself- within moderation, of course – for the declaration of his love.

She spoke with so much authority, so like somebody who knew all about phantom faces and had studied their psychology, that Tipton drew strength from her words. There was a firm, determined set to his lips as he rose.

'Okay,' he said. 'Then I'll have a quick snootful.'

He did not mention it, but what had helped to crystallize his resolution was the thought that in this matter of getting Veronica Wedge signed up, speed was of the essence. He had Prudence's assurance that the girl was still reeling under the effects of that balancing trick with the fork and the wineglass, but he was a clear-thinking man and knew that the glamour of balancing tricks does not last for ever. Furthermore, there was the menace of Freddie to be taken into account. His little friend had scouted the idea that there was any phonus-bolonus afoot between Veronica Wedge and this prominent Anglo-American snake, but though she had been convincing at the moment, doubts had once more begun to vex him, and he was now very strongly of the opinion that the contract must be sewed up before his former friend could return and resume his sinister wooing.

'If you'll excuse me,' he said, 'I'll pop up to my room. I've got a ... No, by golly, I haven't.'

'What were you going to say?'

'I'd started to say I'd got a flask there. But I remember now I gave it to Lord Emsworth. You see, that time I saw this old face out of the window I kind of thought it would be better if somebody took charge of that flask for me, and I met His Nibs going to his room and gave it to him.'

'It's in Uncle Clarence's bedroom?'

'I guess so.'

'I'll go and get it for you.'

'Giving you a lot of trouble.'

'Not a bit. I was just going to tidy Uncle Clarence's bedroom. I've done his study. I'll bring it to your room.'

'It's darned good of you.'

'No, no.'

'Darned good,' insisted Tipton. 'White, I call it.'

'But I think one ought to help people, don't you?' said Prudence, with a faint, gentle smile like that of Florence Nightingale bending over a sick-bed. 'I think that's the only thing in life, trying to do good to others.'

'I wish there was something I could do for you.'

'You can give me something for the vicar's jumble sale.'

'Count on me for a princely donation,' said Tipton. 'And now I'll be getting up to my room. If you wouldn't mind contacting Miss Wedge and telling her to be behind the rhododendrons in about twenty minutes and bringing me the good old flask, you can leave the rest of the preliminaries to me.'

In the bearing of Tipton Plimsoll, as some quarter of an hour later he took up station at the tryst, there was no trace of the old
diffidence and lack of spirit. He was jaunty and confident. The elixir, coursing through his veins, had given his system just that fillip which a lover's system needs when he is planning to seize girls in his arms and say, 'My woman!' to them. You could have described Tipton at this moment as the dominant male with the comfortable certainty of having found the
mot juste.
He exuded the will to win.

He looked at the sky sternly, as if daring it to start something. In the quick glance which he gave at the rhododendrons there was the implication that they knew what they might expect if they tried any funny business. He straightened his tie. He flicked a speck of dust off his coat sleeve. He toyed with the idea of substituting 'My mate!' for 'My woman!' but discarded it as having too nautical a ring.

A caveman, testing the heft of his club before revealing his love to the girl of his choice, would have shaken hands with Tipton in his present mood and recognized him as a member of the lodge.

Nevertheless, it would be falsifying the facts to say that beneath his intrepid exterior there did not lurk an uneasiness. Though feeling more like some great overwhelming force of nature than a mere man in horn-rimmed spectacles, he could not but remember that he had rather thrown down the challenge to that face. Far less provocation than he had just been giving it had in the past brought it out with a whoop and a holler, and Prudence's encouraging words had not wholly removed the apprehension lest it might report for duty now. And if it did, of course, phut went all his carefully reasoned plans. A man cannot put through a delicate operation like a proposal of marriage with non-existent faces floating at his elbow. Then, if ever, it is essential that he be alone with the adored object.

But as the minutes passed and nothing happened hope began to burgeon. His experience of this face had taught him that the one thing it prided itself on was giving quick service. That time in his bedroom, for instance, he had scarcely swallowed the stuff before it was up and doing. Nor had it been noticeably slower off the mark on other occasions. He could not but feel that this dilatoriness on its part now was promising.

He had just decided that he would give it a couple more minutes before finally embracing Prudence's theory that it had gone on the pension list, when a sharp whistle in his rear caused him to look around, and one glance put an end to his hopes.

On the other side of the drive, screening the lawn, was a mass of tangled bushes. And there it was, leering out from them. It was wearing a sort of Assyrian beard this time, as if it had just come from a fancy-dress ball, but he had no difficulty in recognizing it, and a dull despair seemed to crush him like a physical burden. Useless now to think of awaiting Veronica's arrival and going into the routine which Prudence had sketched out. He knew his limitations. With spectral faces watching him and probably giving him the horse's laugh to boot, he was utterly incapable of reaching out and grabbing the girl he loved. He turned on his heel and strode off down the drive. The whistling continued, and he rather thought he caught the word 'Hi!' but he did not look back. He could not, it appeared, avoid seeing this face, but it was some slight consolation to feel that he could cut it.

He was scarcely out of sight when Veronica Wedge came tripping joyously from the direction of the house.

Veronica, like Tipton five minutes earlier, was in excellent fettle. For the past few days she had been perplexed and saddened, as her father and mother had been, by the spectacle of
an obviously enamoured suitor slowing down after a promising start. That moonlight walk on the terrace had left her with the impression that she had found her mate and that striking developments might be expected as early as the next day. But the next day had come and gone, and the days after that, and Tipton had continued to preserve his strange aloofness. And Melancholy was marking her for its own when along came Prudence with her sensational story of his wish to meet her behind the rhododendrons.

Veronica Wedge was, as has been indicated, not a very intelligent girl, but she was capable, if you gave her time and did not bustle her, of a rudimentary process of ratiocination. This, she told herself, could mean but one thing. Men do not lightly and carelessly meet girls behind rhododendrons. The man who asks a girl to meet him behind rhododendrons is a man who intends to get down to it and talk turkey. Or so reasoned Veronica Wedge. And now, as she hastened to the tryst, she was in buoyant mood. Her cheeks glowed, her eyes sparkled. A photographer, seeing her, would have uttered a cry of rapture.

A few moments later her animation had waned a little. Arriving at the rhododendrons and discovering that she was alone, she experienced a feeling of flatness and disappointment. She halted, looking this way and that. She saw plenty of rhododendrons but no Plimsoll, and she found this shortage perplexing.

However, she was not accorded leisure to brood on it, for at this point it was borne in upon her that she was not alone, after all. There came to her ears the sound of a low whistle, and a voice said 'Hi!' Assuming that this was her missing Romeo and wondering a little why he should have chosen to open an emotional scene in this rather prosaic manner, she spun around. And having done so she stood staring, aghast.

From out of the bushes on the other side of the drive a bearded face was protruding, its eyes glaring into hers.

'Eeek!' she cried, recoiling.

It would have pained Bill Lister, the kindliest and most chivalrous of men, could he have read the
News of the World
headlines which were racing through her mind – FIEND DISMEMBERS BEAUTIFUL GIRL the mildest of them. Preoccupied with the thought of the note which he wished conveyed to his loved one, he had forgotten what a hideous menace the beard lent to his honest features. Even when clean-shaved, he was, as has been shown, not everybody's money. Peering out from behind Fruity Biffen's beard, he presented an appearance that might have caused even Joan of Arc a momentary qualm. But he had overlooked this. All he was thinking was that here at last was somebody who could oblige him by acting as a messenger.

His original intention had been to entrust the note to the tall, horn-rimmed spectacled chap who had been here a moment ago. He had seen him coming down the drive and, feeling that he looked a good sort who would be charmed to do a man a kindness, he had hurried across the lawn and intercepted him. And the fellow had merely given him a cold stare and proceeded on his way. Veronica's sudden appearance a few moments later had seemed to him sent from heaven. Girls, he reasoned, have softer hearts than men in horn-rimmed spectacles.

For a meeting with Prudence herself Bill had ceased to hope. If she sauntered about the grounds of Blandings Castle, it was not in the part of them in which he had established himself. And, in any case, the note put what he wanted to say to her so much more clearly and fluently than tongue could be trusted to do. He knew himself to be an unready speaker.

He wished he had some means of ascertaining this girl's name, for there was something a little abrupt in just saying 'Hi!' But there seemed no other way of embarking on the conversation, so he said it again, this time emerging from the bushes and advancing towards her.

It was most unfortunate that in doing so he should have caught his foot in an unseen root, for this caused him to come out at a staggering run, clutching the air with waving hands, the last thing calculated to restore Veronica's already shaken morale. If he had practised for weeks, he could not have given a more realistic and convincing impersonation of a Fiend starting out to dismember a beautiful girl.