Full Moon (7 page)

Some little while later Veronica, starting the conversational ball rolling once more, said that she had been bitten on the nose that afternoon by a gnat. Tipton, shuddering at this, said that
he had never liked gnats. Veronica said that she, too, did not like gnats, but that they were better than bats. Yes, assented Tipton, oh, sure, yes, a good deal better than bats. Of cats Veronica said she was fond, and Tipton agreed that cats as a class were swell. On the subject of rats they were also at one, both holding strong views regarding their lack of charm.

The ice thus broken, the talk flowed pretty easily until Veronica said that perhaps they had better be going in now. Tipton said, 'Oh, shoot!' and Veronica said, 'I think we'd better,' and Tipton said, 'Well, okay, if we must.' His heart was racing and bounding as he accompanied her to the drawing-room. If there had ever been any doubt in his mind that this girl and he were twin souls, it no longer existed. It seemed to him absolutely amazing that two people should think so alike on everything – on gnats, bats, cats, rats, in fact absolutely everything. And, as for that episode at dinner, he was now prepared to condone that. True, she had certainly appeared to slosh Freddie roguishly on the wrist, but that could be explained away on the supposition that her hand had slipped.

His elation persisted all through the long, quiet home evening, causing him to feel right up to bedtime as he generally felt only when about half-way through the second quart. So much so, indeed, that when the ten-thirty tray of whisky and its accessories was brought in, he took his barley water without a qualm. It surprised him a little that Freddie and Colonel Wedge should feel the need of anything stronger.

At eleven o'clock Lady Hermione headed a general exodus, and at eleven-ten Tipton was in his room on the second floor, gazing out at the moonlight and still in the grip of that strange, febrile excitement which comes to young men who have recently for the first time encountered a twin soul of the opposite sex.

It seemed to him absurd to think of going to bed when he was feeling like this. He gazed out at the moonlight, and it seemed to beckon to him.

Five minutes later he was unfastening the french window of the drawing-room and stepping out on to the terrace.

As he did so, a voice said, 'Bless my soul!' and he perceived Lord Emsworth at his elbow.

In moments of emotion Lord Emsworth's pince-nez always sprang from their base, dancing sportively at the end of their string. The sight of a stealthy figure emerging from the window of the drawing-room caused them to do so now, for he took it for granted that it must be that of a burglar. Then he reflected that burglars do not come out, they go in, and it was in a calmer frame of mind that he reached for the dangling glasses, hauled in the slack, and replaced them on his nose.

He then saw that the other was no midnight marauder, but merely his guest Popkins or Perkins or Wilbraham – the exact name had escaped his memory.

'Ah, Mr Er,' he said genially.

As a rule, the seigneur of Blandings Castle was not very fond of the society of his juniors. In fact, the only time he ever moved with any real rapidity and nimbleness was when endeavouring to avoid them. But to-night he was feeling a kindly benevolence towards the whole human species.

To this Prudence's change of heart had, of course, contributed, but it was principally owing to the fact that in the course of the conversation over the port his son Frederick had mentioned that
this time he would not, as had always happened before, be sticking to Blandings Castle like a limpet on a rock, but rather using it simply as a base for operations in the neighbourhood. Shropshire and its adjoining counties are peculiarly rich in landowners with well-stocked kennels, and it was Freddie's intention to pay flying visits to these, sometimes staying the night, sometimes inflicting himself on his unfortunate prey for days at a time.

No father could help but be uplifted by such news, and Lord Emsworth's manner, as he proceeded, was very cordial and winning.

'Going out for a little walk, Mr Ah?' he said.

Tipton said that he was, adding in rather a defensive way that it was such a swell night.

'Beautiful,' agreed Lord Emsworth, and then, for he was a man who always liked to make his meaning quite clear, added, 'Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. There is a moon,' he went on, directing his young friend's attention to this added attraction with a wave of the hand.

Tipton said he had noticed the moon.

'Bright,' said Lord Emsworth.

'Very bright,' said Tipton.

'Very bright, indeed,' said Lord Emsworth. 'Oh, extremely bright. Are you,' he asked, changing the subject, 'interested in pigs, Mr Er – Ah – Umph?'

'Plimsoll,' said Tipton.

'Pigs,' said Lord Emsworth, raising his voice a little and enunciating the word more distinctly.

Plimsoll explained that what he had been intending to convey was that his name was Plimsoll.

'Oh, is it?' said Lord Emsworth, and paused awhile in thought. He had a vague recollection that someone had once
told him to do something – what, he could not at the moment recall – about someone of that name. 'Well, as I was about to say, I am just going down to the sty to listen to my pig.'

'Oh, yes?'

'Her name is Plimsoll.'

'Is that so?' said Tipton, surprised at this coincidence.

'I mean Empress of Blandings. She has won the silver medal in the Fat Pigs class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show twice—'

'Gee!'

'—in successive years.'

'Gosh!'

'A thing no pig has ever done before.'

'Well, I'll be darned.'

'Yes, it was an astounding feat. She is very fat.'

'She must be fat.'

'She is. Extraordinarily fat.'

'Yessir, I'll bet she's fat,' said Tipton, groaning in spirit. No lover, who has come out to walk in the moonlight and dream of the girl he adores, likes to find himself sidetracked on to the subject of pigs, however obese. 'Well, I mustn't keep you. You want to see your pig.'

'I thought you would,' said Lord Emsworth. 'We go down this path.'

He grasped Tipton's arm, but there was really no necessity for thus taking him into custody. Tipton had resigned himself to going quietly. He had had no experience in the difficult art of shaking off adhesive peers, and it was too late to start learning now. Merely registering a silent wish that his companion would trip over a moonbeam and break his neck, he accompanied him without resistance.

As usual at this hour, the Empress had retired for the night.
It was only possible at the moment, accordingly, for Lord Emsworth to give his guest a mere word picture of her charms. But he held out the promise of better things to come.

'I will take you to see her to-morrow morning,' he said. 'Or, rather, in the afternoon, for I shall be busy in the morning arranging matters with this artist of Galahad's. My son Freddie,' he explained, 'tells me that my brother Galahad is sending down an artist to paint the Empress's portrait. It is an idea I have long had in mind. I wrote to my sister Dora, asking her to find me an artist, but she answered very rudely, telling me not to be absurd, and my sister Hermione was also opposed to the project. They seemed to dislike the idea of a pig appearing in the family portrait gallery. That was Hermione you sat next to at dinner. The girl sitting next to Freddie was her daughter Veronica.'

For the first time Tipton began to feel that something might be saved from the wreck of his moonlight walk.

'I thought she was very charming,' he said, limbering himself up for a good long talk on his favourite topic.

'Charming?' said Lord Emsworth, surprised, 'Hermione?'

'Miss Wedge.'

'I don't think I know her,' said Lord Emsworth. 'But I was speaking of my niece Veronica. A nice girl, with many good qualities.'

'Ah!' breathed Tipton reverently.

'She has an excellent heart, and seems fond of pigs. I saw her once go out of her way to pick up and drop back into the sty a potato which the Empress had nosed beneath the bars. I was very pleased. Not every girl would have been so considerate.'

Tipton was so overcome by this evidence of the pure-white soul of the goddess he worshipped that for a moment he was incapable of speech. Then he said 'Gosh!'

'My son Freddie, I remember, who was present—'

Lord Emsworth broke off abruptly. This third mention of his younger son had had the effect of stirring his memory. Something seemed to be coming to the surface.

Ah yes. He had it now. His bedroom ... Egbert bursting in ... himself jotting down that memorandum in his pig book.

'Freddie, yes,' he went on. 'Of course, yes, Freddie. I knew there was something I wanted to tell you about him. He and Veronica were once engaged to be married.'

'What!'

'Yes. It was broken off- why, I cannot at the moment recall – possibly it was because Freddie married somebody else – but they are still devoted to each other. They always were, even as children. My wife, I recollect, used to speak of Veronica as Freddie's little sweetheart. My wife was alive at that time,' explained Lord Emsworth, careful to make it clear this was no question of a voice from the tomb.

Although any possible misunderstanding had thus been avoided, Tipton's brow remained drawn and furrowed. Spiritually, he was gasping for air. At a boisterous reunion in a speakeasy someone had once hit him on the bridge of the nose with an order of planked steak. As he had felt then, so did he feel now. The same sensation of standing insecurely in a tottering and disintegrating universe.

Many lovers in his position might have consoled themselves with the reflection that Freddie, being now a married man, was presumably out of the race for Veronica Wedge's hand and heart. But Tipton had had the wrong sort of upbringing to permit of his drawing comfort from any thought like that. The son of parents who after marrying each other had almost immediately started marrying other people with a perseverance worthy of a
better cause, his had been one of those childhoods where the faintly bewildered offspring finds himself passed from hand to hand like a medicine ball. And, grown to riper years, he had seen among his friends and acquaintances far too much of that Ex-Wife's Heart Balm Society Love Tangle stuff to be a believer in the durability of the married state.

That very Doris Jimpson, of whom he had once supposed himself enamoured, had become Doris Boole, Doris Busbridge, and Doris Applejohn in such rapid succession that the quickness of the hand almost deceived the eye.

So the fact that Veronica's little sweetheart was now a married man by no means seemed to Tipton to render him automatically a non-starter. Freddie, he assumed, having wearied of Mrs Freddie, had sent her off to Paris to secure one of the divorces which that city supplies with such a lavish hand; and now, giving himself a preliminary shake preparatory to starting all over again, he was about to make a pass at his old love. That low-voiced remark of his at dinner, which had caused the girl to slap his wrist and tell him not to be silly, had, of course, been something in the nature of a sighting shot.

That was how Tipton summed up the situation, and while the moon did not actually go out with a pop, like a stage moon when some hitch occurs in the lighting effects, it seemed to him to have done so.

'I guess I'll be turning in,' he said hollowly. 'Getting kind of late.'

As he made his way back to the drawing-room, one coherent thought held sway in his seething mind; and that was that, faces or no faces, he had got to have a bracer. He was convinced that even E. J. Murgatroyd, had the facts been placed before him, would have patted him on the shoulder and bidden him go to it.
He would never, Murgatroyd would reason, were he standing beside him now, need a drop of the right stuff more than at this shattering moment; and, after all, the clear-thinking medico would go on to point out, since two o'clock that afternoon he had been leading a quiet regular life, thus reducing risk to a minimum.

The decanter was still on the drawing-room table, fully half of its precious contents intact. To seize it and take a long, invigorating snort was with Tipton the work of an instant. Then, as a prudent man's will, his thoughts turned to the future. Owing to those insane instructions which he had given Freddie, that only non-alcoholic beverages should be served to him while at the castle, this, unless he took steps, was the last life-saver he would get till he returned to civilization. A prospect at which imagination boggled.

Swift action was required, and he acted swiftly. Hastening to his room, he found the large flask without which he never travelled, and which he had brought along this time partly from habit and partly out of sentiment. He took it down to the drawing-room and filled it. Then, feeling that he had done all that man could do to make the future safe, he returned to his bedchamber.

Probably owing to his prompt measures, the moon had now begun to shine again, and Tipton, leaning on the window sill looking down over the meadows and spinneys which it illuminated so tastefully, was sufficiently himself once more to regard its activities with approval. The fact that he was sharing the same planet with Freddie still aggrieved him, but he no longer feared the other as a rival. That gargle from the decanter had made him feel capable of cutting out a dozen Freddies, and it now occurred to him that a gargle from the flask might help the good work along still further.

He took one, accordingly, and was about to take another, when he suddenly checked the progress of hand towards his lips and leaned forward, peering. A moving something on the lawn below had caught his eye.

It seemed to be a human figure.

It was a human figure – that of Bill Lister, who had carried out his intention of walking to the castle and gazing up at Prudence's window. The fact that he had no means of knowing which of these many windows was hers in no way deterred him. He was planning to gaze up at them all and so make sure. And, as a matter of fact, he had made an extraordinarily accurate shot. Her room was next door to Tipton's, the one with the balcony.