Galahad at Blandings (12 page)

‘You
mean my cousin Prue?’

‘Is she
your cousin? Everybody seems to be your cousin.

‘She’s
my Aunt Dora’s daughter. She’s married to a man named Lister. Bill Lister. They
run a sort of roadhouse place near Oxford.’

‘Yes, I
remember they wanted me to put money into it, but I was light on my feet and
kept away. Well, she was staying here when I first met Vee, and one day she
drew me aside and said “You’re in love with Vee, aren’t you, Mr Plimsoll?”‘

‘To
which you replied?’

‘I
didn’t reply, because I was busy falling off a wall at the time. We were
sitting on the wall of the terrace, and her words gave me such a start that I
overbalanced. Returning to my seat, I said I was, and she said Well, why don’t
you ask her to marry you, and just like you I said it couldn’t be done, because
I hadn’t the nerve. And do you know what she suggested?’

‘What?’

‘She
said that that could be readily adjusted if I had a good quick snort by way of
a send—off’

And you
did?’

‘I did,
and it altered the whole set—up. It made a new man of me and I approached the
matter in hand in an entirely different spirit.’

‘You
became the dominant male?’

‘With
bells on.’

And
asked Vee to marry you?’

‘Ordered
would be a better word. I just gave her her instructions.’

‘What
did you actually say?’

‘By way
of leading into the thing? “My woman!”, if I remember rightly. Yes, that was
it. “My woman!” I thought for a moment of saying “My mate!”, but decided
against it because it seemed to me to have too nautical a ring. But you don’t
need to worry about the dialogue. That’s a side issue. It’s the clasping in
arms and kissing that puts the act across. And I’ll tell you what I’ll do for
you, Willie. In the glove compartment of my car there is a well-filled flask.
It’s yours. Slip it in your pocket and about five minutes before the kick-off
drain its contents. You’ll be surprised.’

For an
instant Wilfred Allsop’s face lit up, as that of the poet Shelley whom he so
closely resembled must have done when he suddenly realised that ‘blithe spirit’
rhymes with ‘near it’, not that it does, and another ode was as good as off the
assembly line. Then it fell. He fingered his chin dubiously.

‘Can I
risk it?’

‘No
risk involved. It’s good Scotch.’

‘I was
thinking of Dame Daphne Winkworth.’

‘Who’s
she?’

‘She
runs the school where I’m going to teach music.’

‘Of
course, yes. You mentioned her that night in New York. But how does she come
into it?’

‘She’s
staying here. She would fire me like a shot if she caught me drinking. And
while drumming the elements of music into the heads of a bunch of goggle—eyed
schoolgirls isn’t what I’d call an ideal form of employment, it’s a job and
carries a salary with it. Do you think I ought to take a chance?’

‘You’ll
never get to first base if you don’t. When were you planning to contact Miss
Simmons?’

‘Tomorrow
morning, I thought.’

‘I’ll
tell her to expect you then.’

‘Though
I’m still nervous about Ma Winkworth.’

‘Relax.
I’ll see that she isn’t around. I’ll get hold of her and keep her talking.’

‘You’re
a true friend, Tippy.’

‘I like
to do my bit. That’s settled, then. Shall we just run through the scenario to
make sure you’ve got it straight?’

‘It
might be as well.’ ‘Walk up.’ ‘Walk up.’ ‘Clasp in arms. ‘Clasp in arms.
‘Kiss.’

‘Kiss.’

‘And
say “My woman!” It’s as easy as falling off a log. You can’t miss.’

CHAPTER 7

I

It is never pleasant for a
girl to find that she is being followed, and if she has to be followed she
would always prefer it not to be by a man who has recently called her a
ginger-haired little fathead. Sandy, as she passed through the front door of
the castle on her return from Market Blandings, was seething with indignation,
resentment and a number of other disagreeable emotions. She was also conscious
of a choking sensation. The sight of a Sam Bagshott where no Sam Bagshott
should have been had taken her breath away and she was still in the process of
recovering it.

The
front door opened on a spacious hall, and as she entered it a footman appeared
at the other end. He was carrying a coiled-up red rope, and this he hooked to a
ring in the wall. He then carried it to the opposite wall and hooked it there.
After which, he hung up in prominent positions two printed notices, both on the
brusque side. One said:

KINDLY
KEEP IN LINE

the other:

NO
SMOKING

He then
dusted his hands and stepped back with the air of a man who has done a good
day’s work.

Surprise
at these peculiar goings-on made Sandy momentarily forget Sam and his adhesiveness.
She would come back to him later, but in the meantime she wanted to know what
all this was about. The footman, when she put this question to him, smiled the
indulgent smile of the expert illuminating a novice.

‘Visitors’
Day, miss.’

‘Today?’

‘No,
miss, tomorrow. Premises thrown open to the public every Thursday. Mr Beach
shows them round.’

‘Do a
lot of them come?’

‘This
hot weather seems to bring them out like flies. Three charabangs and a girls’
school last week.’

‘I
didn’t get here till the Friday, so I missed them.’

‘You
were lucky,’ said the footman, his eyes bleak. He seemed to be brooding on past
horrors. ‘Draw that rope tight, Thomas, ‘he added as another footman entered
bearing a sign that read:

KINDLY
DO NOT FINGER OBJECTS OF ART

‘Last Thursday a couple of
hussies climbed over it and sat on that fender as bold as brass.’

A
sudden disquieting thought struck Sandy like a blow. Only now did that phrase
‘Premises thrown open to the public’ come home to her.

‘Can
anyone
come on Visitors’ Day?’

Anyone
that’s got half-a-crown, miss,’ said the footman, giving the rope another pull.

There
was a thoughtful look on Sandy’s face as she made her way to the library, to
which she planned to give a thorough straightening and tidying. And indeed she
had been provided with food for thought. No doubt Gally would have told Sam
about Visitors’ Day, and if she knew her Gally would have pointed out to him
how admirable an opportunity it provided for invading the castle. And once Sam
was in the castle a meeting between them, he being the thrustful young man he
was, would be inevitable. He might refrain from smoking, and he might not
finger objects of art, but the one thing of which she was certain was that he
would not kindly keep in line. It would take more than a mere butler and two
footmen to restrain him from roaming at large about the place until he found
her.

And she
recoiled from the thought of being found by him. She did not want to see him
even in the distance. All she asked of him was to stay out of her life. She did
not conceal from herself that his absence from it had left a gap in her heart
like the excavation for the foundation of a skyscraper, but that could not be
helped. Time would presumably fill it up again, and even if that did not happen
a man who had called her the things he had called her at their last meeting was
obviously a man she was better without.

Reaching
the library, she went about her work, but she did it absently. She dusted
books, she tidied papers, but her thoughts were not with them. Her mind was
concentrated on the problem of how this distasteful encounter could be avoided.
It was as she removed from the coal scuttle a letter addressed to her employer
which had somehow managed to find that unusual resting place that the solution
came to her, and she hurried to Lord Emsworth’s study.

Her
arrival there startled Lord Emsworth. He peered at her in quick alarm. She
looked to him like a girl who had come to bring him some more letters demanding
his instant attention. Unless his eyes deceived him, it was a letter she was
holding in her hand. He feared the worst, and her words, when she spoke, were
music to his ears.

‘I
wonder if you could possibly spare me for a day or two, Lord Emsworth,’ she
said. ‘My father is very ill.’

This
would have struck old friends like Gally and Tipton Plimsoll as peculiar,
knowing as they did that the late Ernest Callender had passed away shortly
before her eighth birthday, but Lord Emsworth, lacking this knowledge,
tut-tutted courteously.

‘I am
sorry,’ he said. ‘Too bad. Quite.’

‘Will
it be all right if I go away for a few days?’

‘Certainly,
certainly, certainly, certainly,’ said Lord Emsworth with perhaps a greater
enthusiasm than was tactful. ‘Stay away as long as you like. My brother-in—law
Colonel Wedge is catching some sort of a train this afternoon, got to go to
Sussex or somewhere. You could drive into Market Blandings in the car. An
excellent idea. Yes, quite.’

‘Thank
you very much.’

‘Not at
all, not at all.’

‘I’ll
go and pack my things. Oh, by the way, I found this letter in the coal scuttle
in the library. I think you should answer it at once.

Lord
Emsworth took the letter gloomily. He was saying to himself that he had thought
as much. If Sandy Callender’s come, he would have said if he had been more
poetic than he was, can letters to be answered at once be far behind?

II

Gally on returning to the
house had wandered off to the smoking-room and begun to glance through the
illustrated weekly papers. But their pages, filled mostly with photographs of Society
brides who looked like gangsters’ molls and the usual gargoyles who attend Hunt
Balls, failed to grip him, and the thought having occurred to him that another
chat with one whose conversation he always enjoyed might offer greater entertainment,
he made his way to Lord Emsworth’s study. And he had just reached the door when
Lord Emsworth came popping out like a cuckoo from a cuckoo clock.

‘Oh,
Galahad,’ he said. ‘The very man I was looking for.’

To
Gally’s surprise he seemed, despite the fact that Blandings Castle had been
filling up so much of late, in excellent spirits. On their way to the sty he
had been moody and peevish and, when speaking of his current secretary,
inclined to wallow in self-pity, but now he was not merely cheerful but
exuberantly cheerful.

‘Galahad,’
he cried, as sunnily as if there had been no Lady Hermione, no Colonel Wedge,
no Dame Daphne Winkworth, no little Huxley Winkworth and no Sandy Callender in
the house, ‘the most wonderful thing has happened. I have never been so pleased
in my life.’

‘Don’t
tell me they’ve made you a Dame?’

‘Eh?
No, not so far as I know. You told me yourself that such a thing was most
unlikely. But you have heard me speak of Augustus Whipple?’

‘The
chap who wrote that book you’re always reading?
Put Me Among The Pigs,
isn’t
it called?’

‘On
The Care Of The Pig.’

‘That’s
right. Banned in Boston, I believe.’

‘Eh?’

‘Let it
go. What about Augustus Whipple?’

‘Miss
Callender has just found a letter from him.’

‘In the
wastepaper basket?’

‘No,
actually in the library coal scuffle, oddly enough. I cannot imagine how it got
there.’

‘Sherlock
Holmes used to keep his tobacco in the toe of a Persian slipper.’

‘I
don’t think I have ever seen a Persian slipper.’

‘Nor
have I. It is my secret sorrow. Tell me about this letter from old Pop Whipple.
Does he want an exclusive interview with the Empress?’

‘He
wants to come here and see her. He had heard so much about her, he says, and
would like to take some photographs. He writes from the Athenaeum Club.’

‘That
morgue?’ said Gally, who did not think highly of the Athenaeum. There was not a
bishop or a Cabinet Minister there whom he would have taken to the old Pelican
and introduced to Plug Basham and Buffy Struggles. He might be wronging the
institution, but he doubted if it contained on its membership list a single
sportsman capable of throwing soft-boiled eggs at an electric fan or smashing
the piano on a Saturday night. ‘I lunched with him there once.’

Lord
Emsworth gasped, astounded.

‘You
mean you
know
Augustus Whipple?’