Galahad at Blandings (10 page)

‘Ho!’

The
monosyllable intensified the dislike which Sam had been feeling from the first
for this intrusive bluebottle.

‘Can’t
you say anything except Ho?’ he snapped.

‘Yus,’
said Constable Evans. He was not as a rule a quick man with a repartee, but it
was not often that he was given an opening like this. With the insufferably
complacent air of a comedian who has been fed the line by his straight man he
proceeded. ‘Yus, I
can
say something except Ho. I can say “You’re
pinched”,’ he said, and laid a heavy hand on Sam’s shoulder.

It was
not the moment to lay hands on Sam’s shoulder. He had been finding it difficult
enough to endure the conversation of one who seemed to him to combine in his
single person all the least attractive qualities of a race — the human — which
he particularly disliked, and to have his collarbone massaged by him was, if
one may coin a phrase, the last straw. With a reflex action which would have
interested Doctor Pavlov his fist shot out and there was a chunky sound as it
impinged on the constable’s eye with all the weight of his muscular body behind
it. It sent him staggering back, his foot tripped over a loose stone and he
fell with a crash loud enough for two constables. And Sam, leaping at the
bicycle, flung himself on it and rode off at a speed which Beach in his hot
youth might have equalled but could not have surpassed. Had he been alive forty
years before and a member of the choir attended by Beach, and had his voice by
some lucky chance not broken before the first Sunday in Epiphany, thus enabling
him to enter for the contest in which the butler had won his spectacular
triumph, the race in all probability would have ended in a dead heat.

III

If you start two hundred
yards or so from Market Blandings on a bicycle you have stolen from one of the
local police force and continue to pedal along the high road, you come before
long to the little hamlet of Blandings Parva, which lies at the gates of
Blandings Castle. It consists of a few cottages, a church, a vicar— age, a
general store, a pond with ducks on it, a filling station (its only concession
to modernity) and the Blue Boar Inn. The last named was where Sam’s trip came
to an end.

It was
on foot that he completed its final stages, for some time before he reached
Blandings Parva the thought had crossed his mind that the sooner he got rid of
his Arab steed the better. It is never wise to remain for long in possession of
a hot bicycle, particularly one formerly the property of a member of the constabulary.
Some quarter of a mile before journey’s end, accordingly, he propped the
machine against a stile at the side of the road and was able to enter the
premises of the Blue Boar in the guise of a blameless hiker. He took a seat in
the cool, dim taproom and started to review the situation in which he found
himself.

It fell,
he immediately perceived, into the category of situations which may be
described as not so good. Try to gloss over the facts though he might, he could
not reach any conclusion other than that he was a fugitive from justice and one
jump, if that, ahead of the police. Totting up the various crimes he had
committed — watch stealing, bicycle stealing, resisting an officer in the
execution of his duty and causing him bodily injury — he had the feeling that
if he got off with a life sentence, he would be lucky.

The
problem of what to do next was one beyond his power of solution. It called for
a wiser head than his, and most fortunately there was just such a head within
easy reach.

‘I
wonder if you could let me have a piece of paper and an envelope,’ he said to
the landlord. And is there someone who could take a note for me to Mr Galahad
Threepwood at the castle?’

The
landlord said his son Gary would be happy to, if sixpence changed hands.

‘I’ll
give him a shilling,’ said Sam.

He was
not a rich man and a shilling was a shilling to him, but if a shilling would
provide for him a conference with one for whose ingenuity and resource he had
come to feel a profound respect, it would in his opinion be a shilling well
spent.

CHAPTER 6

I

A night’s rest and a strengthening
cocktail before lunch had quite dispelled any fatigue Gally might have been
feeling as the result of his yesterday’s motoring. His superb health, fostered
by tobacco, late hours and alcohol, always enabled him to recuperate quickly,
and he could be alert and bubbling with energy after activities which would
have sent most teetotallers tottering off to their armchairs, to lie limply in
them with their feet up.

Sam’s
telephone call just before lunch, announcing his arrival at the Emsworth Arms,
had completed his sense of well being, and he was about to seek Sandy out and
tell her of the treat in store for her when as he passed the door of Lord
Emsworth’s study it flew open and its occupant came out, his face contorted,
his pince-nez flying in the breeze, his whole demeanour that of a man who has
been pushed too far.

‘Galahad,’
he cried passionately, ‘I won’t stand it. I shall assert myself. I shall take a
firm line.’

‘Take
two if you wish, my dear fellow,’ said Gally equably. ‘This is Liberty Hall. What
are you planning to take firm lines about?’

‘This
Callender girl. She’s driving me mad. She’s an insufferable pest. She’s worse
than Baxter.’

These
were strong words. It had always been Lord Emsworth’s opinion that the
Efficient Baxter, now happily in the employment of an American millionaire and
three thousand miles away in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had, when it came to
irritating, harrying and generally oppressing him, set a mark at which all
other secretaries would shoot in vain.

‘She’s
worse than that Briggs woman.

Here,
too, was an impressive statement. Lavender Briggs, who had resigned her
portfolio and gone to London to conduct a typewriting agency, may not have been
as intolerable as Rupert Baxter, but she had come very close to achieving that difficult
feat.

‘She
covers my desk with letters which she says I must answer immediately. She keeps
producing them like a dashed dog bringing his dashed bones into the
dining-room. Where she digs them out from I can’t imagine. Piles and piles of
them.’

‘Fan
mail, do you think?’

‘And
what she has done to my study! It stinks of disinfectant and I can’t find a
thing.’

‘Yes, I
saw her tidying it up.’

‘Messing
it up, you mean. It’s hard,’ said Lord Emsworth, quivering with self—pity. ‘I
go to America to attend a sister’s wedding, and when I come back expecting to
have a little peace at last, what do I find? I find not only that another
sister has come to stay but that she has introduced into my home a spectacled
girl with red hair whose object seems to be to give me a nervous breakdown.’

Gally
nodded sympathetically. There was nothing he could do to soothe, but he put in
a mild word on Sandy’s behalf.

‘It’s
just zeal, Clarence. You get it in the young. She’s a trier.’

‘I find
her trying,’ Lord Emsworth retorted, one of the most brilliant things he had
ever said. It was so good that he repeated it, and Gally gave another
sympathetic nod.

‘I can
understand that her ministrations must be hard to bear,’ he said, ‘but put
yourself in her place. She’s a young girl eager to make good. She’s told by her
agency or whatever they call those concerns that they’ve found a job for her at
Blandings Castle, and her eyes widen. “Isn’t that where the great Lord Emsworth
hangs out?” she says. “Quite correct,” they say. She quivers from head to foot
and a startled cry escapes her. “Hell’s bells!” she says. “Then I’ll have to
spit on my hands and pull up my socks and leave no stone unturned or my name
will be mud. That boy will expect good service.” What you’ve got to realise,
Clarence, is that you’re a godlike figure to young Sandy. She has heard about
you in legend and song. You awe her. She looks on you as a cross between a
Sultan of the old school and a grandfather.’

‘Grandfather?’
said Lord Emsworth, stung.

‘Great-grandfather,’
said Gally, correcting himself. ‘Well, if she has given you all that homework
to do, you’d better buckle down to it.’

‘I’m
going to see my pig.’

‘I’ll
come with you. I often say there is nothing so bracing as a good after—luncheon
look at the Empress. Well known Harley Street physicians recommend it. But
you’ll catch it from her if she finds you’ve been playing hooky.’

‘I do
not allow myself to be dictated to by my secretary,’ said Lord Emsworth
haughtily.

As they
made their way to the buttercup—dabbled meadow in a corner of which the
Empress’s self-contained flat was situated, Gally enlivened their progress with
the story of the girl who said to her betrothed, ‘I will not be dictated to!’
and then went and got a job as a stenographer while Lord Emsworth, who never listened
to stories and very seldom to anything else, continued to explain why he found
Sandy Callender such a thorn in the flesh. They had reached their destination
and were gazing with suitable reverence on the silver medalist’s superb
contours, when a voice hailed them and, turning, they perceived a long, thin
young man approaching. To Lord Emsworth, though they had frequently met, he
appeared a total stranger and he merely blinked enquiringly, but Gally, having
a better memory for faces, recognised him as Tipton Plimsoll and gave him a
cheery greeting. He had always been fond of Tipton, sometimes going so far as
to feel that, if that famous club had still existed, he would have been
perfectly willing to put him up for membership at the old Pelican.

‘Well,
when did you get here, Tipton?’ he said.

‘Hello,
Mr Threepwood. I’ve just arrived. Hello, Lord Emsworth. They told me in the
house they thought you might be out here. You don’t happen to know if Vee’s around?’

The
name conveyed nothing to Lord Emsworth.

‘Vee? Vee?’

‘She’s
in London,’ said Gally.

‘Oh,
shoot. When do you expect her back?’

‘I
really couldn’t say. I understand she’s buying clothes, so I doubt if you can
hope to see her for some little time. Still, you’ve always got me. Did you have
a good trip?’

‘Swell,
thanks.’

‘You’re
looking very bobbish.’

‘I’m
fine, thanks.’

It
seemed to Lord Emsworth that for a man who had so recently been reduced to beggary
by losses on the Stock Exchange this Tipton, whom with a powerful effort of the
memory he had now recognised, was extraordinarily buoyant, and he honoured him
for his courage and resilience. He was reminded of a Kipling poem the curate
had recited at a village entertainment his sister Constance had once made him
attend — something about if you can something something and never something
something, you’ll be a man, my son, or words to that effect.

‘How
was the coffee, Tipton?’ he said.

‘Pull
yourself together, Clarence,’ said Gally. ‘You’re dithering.’

‘I am
doing nothing of the sort,’ said Lord Emsworth warmly. ‘We had a most
interesting conversation on the telephone one night in New York, and he told me
that he was going to have a cup of coffee and a piece of pie.’

‘Oh,
sure, yes, I remember,’ said Tipton. ‘And talking of that, I owe you twenty dollars.’

‘My
dear fellow!’

‘I’ll
give you a cheque when I get back to the house.’

Lord
Emsworth was horrified.

‘No,
really, you must not dream of it. I am amply provided with funds and you cannot
possibly afford it. Let us forget the whole thing. Tipton,’ he explained to
Gally, ‘has lost all his money on the Stock Exchange.’

Gally
looked grave. As has been said, he liked Tipton and wished him well, and being
familiar with his sister Hermione’s prejudice against penniless aspirants for
her daughter’s hand he feared that this was going to affect his matrimonial
plans to no little extent. Like so many mothers, Lady Hermione expected a
son-in-law to ante up and contribute largely to the kitty.

‘Is
this true?’ he asked, concerned.

Tipton
laughed amusedly.

‘No, of
course it isn’t. I’m afraid I misled Lord Emsworth that night in New York. I’ve
never lost a nickel in the market. All I wanted was twenty bucks to get self
and friend out of the pokey.

Somebody
had got away with my roll, leaving me without a cent, and a cop told me bail
could be arranged if somebody would loan me the needful. So I thought of Lord
Emsworth.’

Illumination
came to Gally, and with it a renewed feeling that this young man would have
been just the sort of new blood the Pelican would have welcomed.

‘Oh,
you had been pinched?’

‘That’s
right.’

‘Drunk
and disorderly?’