Galahad at Blandings (15 page)

Huxley,
like Tipton, believed in getting down to brass tacks.

He was
not the boy to beat about bushes. He said, without preamble: ‘I saw you
drinking!’

‘No,
you didn’t.’

‘Yes, I
did.’

‘No,
you didn’t.’

‘Yes, I
did. Let me smell your breath.’

‘I will
not let you smell my breath.’

‘Suspicious,’
said Huxley. ‘Highly suspicious.’

There
was a pause, occupied by Wilfred in perspiring at every pore. Huxley resumed
the conversational exchanges.

‘Do you
know what alcohol does to the common earthworm?’

‘No, I
don’t. What does it do?’

‘Plenty,’
said Huxley darkly. He was silent for a moment, seeming to be musing on the
tragic end of earth-worms he had known. ‘Mother says you’re going to teach
music at her school,’ he resumed at length. ‘Are you?’

‘I am.’

‘She
won’t like it if you spend your whole time drinking.’

‘I do
not spend my whole time drinking.’

‘The
hags aren’t allowed to drink.’

‘What
do you mean, the hags?’

‘The
teachers. I call them the hags.’

‘Try
calling them the ladies of the staff.’

‘Crumbs!’
said Huxley, apparently not thinking well of the suggestion. He laughed an
eldritch laugh. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’

‘What’s
funny?’

‘You
being a lady of the staff Will they call you Ma’am?’

Ah,
shut up.

‘Or
Miss?’

‘I’m
not keeping you, am I?’

Huxley
said no, he was at a loose end. He returned to the aspect of the matter on
which he had touched originally.

‘Mother
would sack you if she knew you were an alcoholic.’

‘I am
not an alcoholic.’

‘She
once sacked a hag for having a glass of sherry.’

‘Very
properly.’

‘I
shall have to tell her you were mopping it up.’

‘I deny
it categorically.’

‘Let me
smell your breath,’ said Huxley, coming full circle, as it were.

Wilfred
groaned in spirit. There was something about this child’s conversational
methods that gave him the illusion that he had fallen into the hands of the
police. He did not know what future Dame Daphne Winkworth was planning for her
son, but she would, he felt, be wise to have him study for the Bar. The boy
seemed to him to possess all the qualities of a keen cross-examining counsel,
the sort that traps a witness into damaging admissions and thunders an ‘I suggest—”
or a ‘Then am I to understand — ?‘ at him. And he was asking himself how long
he would be able to hold his own in this battle of wills, when a hand reached
past him and attached itself to the stripling’s left ear, drawing from him an
‘Ouch!’ of anguish.

It was
not merely the sight of Huxley in such close proximity to the Empress that had
caused Monica, returning from her ablutions at the kitchen garden pump, to come
galloping to the sty. She had also seen Wilfred Allsop, and the last thing she
desired was to have a small boy a spectator of the tender scene which she hoped
would shortly take place. If you have to have a small boy looking on when you
have a tender scene, you might just as well not have a tender scene at all.

Accordingly,
having grasped his ear and twisted it for the third time, she proceeded to lead
Huxley across the meadow. She opened the gate at the end of it and pushed him
through. Then, with a brief word to the effect that if she ever found him near
the sty again she would strangle him with her bare hands, she came back to the
man she loved.

Tumultuous
emotions were stirring in Wilfred’s bosom as he watched them go. Behind him he
could hear the golloping sound of the Empress tucking into her bran mash, and
at another and less tense moment he might have experienced some anxiety as to
what the Scotch he had added to it would do to her if it acted so disastrously
on earth-worms. But now his thoughts were not on the Empress. There is a time
for worrying about pigs and a time for not worrying about pigs.

His
morale, lowered by those long minutes of waiting and further weakened by his
chat with Huxley, had, he was glad to find, become completely restored. The few
mouthfuls he had had time to imbibe from Tipton’s flask had done their
beneficent work. Once more he was feeling strong and masterful, and when she
came back, he was ready for her. He strode up, he clasped her in his arms, he
kissed her.

‘My
woman!’ he bellowed in a tone somewhat reminiscent of a costermonger calling
attention to his brussels sprouts. Tipton had been perfectly right. It was, as
he had said, as easy as falling off a log.

II

Visitors’ Day at the
castle always found Lord Emsworth ill at ease. It gave him the same
apprehensive feeling as did the annual school treat, except that on Visitors’
Day he did not have to wear a
top hat. He was amiable and on the whole
fond of his fellow men, but he preferred them when they remained aloof It disturbed
him when they came surging into his demesne, especially when their unions had been
blessed and they brought their children with them. Children, unless closely
watched, were apt to sneak off to the Empress’s sty and do things calculated to
wound that supreme pig’s sensibilities. He would not readily forget the day
when he had found her snapping feverishly at a potato on the end of a string,
the vegetable constantly jerked from her lips by an uncouth little pip-squeak
from Wolverhampton named Basil.

It was
to prevent the repetition of any such horror that today, having seen the first
char—a-banc arrive, he had set out for the sty armed to the teeth with a stout
hunting crop, the blood of his Crusading ancestors hot within him. If Basil were
playing a return date and had not undergone a spiritual change for the better
since his last visit, he was in for an unpleasant surprise. By the time his
host had finished with him he would know that he had been in a fight.

Avoiding
the front door, for to go there would have meant passing through the hall where
the personnel of the char-a-banc were keeping in line, not smoking and not
fingering objects of art, he came out through a side entrance, and he had not
gone far when his progress was arrested by Sam, who was trying to find the
rendezvous which Gally had suggested. The three people he had so far asked to
direct him to the Empress’s sty had proved to be strangers in these parts
themselves.

Sam,
like Lord Emsworth, was not without his feeling of uneasiness on this Visitors’
Day. The thought that Constable Evans, too, might have taken it into his head
to have a look at the castle and its objects of art was not one that made for
peace of mind. He had not liked meeting that zealous officer the first time,
and something told him that it would be even more unpleasant meeting him again.
It was difficult to shake off the feeling that he might appear at any moment
round any corner, the handcuffs clinking in his pocket.

He also
found Blandings Castle and its surroundings intimidating. To adjust himself to
its impressive magnificence was not a simple task for one accustomed to the
homelier atmosphere of Halsey Chambers, Halsey Court, London W.1. Basil from
Wolverhampton had taken the place in his stride, but it overawed Sam. It made
him feel as if his hands and feet had swollen in a rather offensive manner and
that his clothes had ceased to fit him.

This
meeting with Lord Emsworth, accordingly, braced him like a tonic. His
self-confidence functioned once more. If Blandings Castle could accept this
seedy old man in his patched flannel trousers and battered fishing hat, he told
himself, it could scarcely raise its eyebrows at one who in comparison was
almost dapper.

‘Good
afternoon,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you could tell me how to get to the sty of
the pig they call Empress of Blandings?’

Lord
Emsworth’s mild eyes glowed. It had always pained him when visitors on
Visitors’ Day trooped about the castle’s interior goggling at pictures,
tapestries, amber drawing-rooms and the like and never thought of going to see
the one sight that mattered. He beamed at Sam, well pleased at having found a
kindred spirit.

‘I am
going there myself,’ he said, and his voice had a cordial ring. ‘So you are a
pig lover, too?’

Sam
considered the question. He had never given much thought to pigs and, if asked,
would probably have described himself as able to take them or leave them alone,
but his companion had used the word ‘too’, seeming to indicate that these
animals stood high in his estimation, so he felt it was only civil to reply in
the affirmative. He did so, and was rewarded with a look of approval that
convinced him that he had said the right thing.

‘We go
through the kitchen garden. It is the shortest way. Is this,’ Lord Emsworth
asked as they moved off, ‘your first visit to Blandings?’

Sam
said it was.

Are you
American?’

‘No.’

‘I thought
you possibly might be. So many people are nowadays. I have just returned from
America.’

‘Oh
yes?’

‘I went
to attend my sister’s wedding. I stayed at an hotel in New York. Are you fond
of boiled eggs?’

‘Yes, I
like boiled eggs.’

‘So do I.
But in America they serve them mashed up in a glass. It is one of the many
curious aspects of the country. I objected strongly, but it did no good. Every
time I asked for a boiled egg, up it came in a glass.’

‘I
suppose the solution would have been not to have asked for a boiled egg.’

‘Exactly
what my brother Galahad said. It would, he said, be the smart thing to do. But
that’s all very well, because suppose you want a boiled egg. It puts you in a
bit of a fix.’

Sam was
astounded. Unconsciously he had been picturing the proprietor of this
super-stately home of England as a formidable figure on the lines of the old
gentleman with the bushy eyebrows in
Little Lord Fauntleroy,
a book
which twenty years ago he had read with considerable zest. The shock of finding
that the patched and baggy object at his side owned the entire works was as
great as that experienced by Colonel Wedge on the night when he had mistaken
Lord Emsworth for the pigman’s discarded overalls. It held him speechless until
they had nearly reached the sty.

As they
approached it, Lord Emsworth uttered an exclamation.

‘Bless
my soul, there’s Wellbeloved.’

‘I beg
your pardon?’

‘My
former pigman,’ said Lord Emsworth, indicating the figure slouched over the
rail of the sty. ‘He is in retirement now. I believe some relative of his left
him a public house in Wolverhampton. He must have come in the char-a-banc from
there. Ah, Wellbeloved,’ he said. ‘Come to have a look at the Empress?’

George
Cyril Wellbeloved turned, revealing himself as a man with a squint and a broken
nose, the former bestowed on him at birth, the latter acquired in the course of
a political discussion at the Goose and Gander in Market Blandings in which he
had espoused the Communist cause.

‘Hullo,’
he said.

He
spoke curtly. Between the manner of a pigman dependent on his weekly wage and
that of the owner of a prosperous public house in Wolverhampton there is always
a subtle but well-marked difference. In George Cyril’s case it was more well—
marked than subtle, for he could not forget that twice during their mutual
association Lord Emsworth had dismissed him from his service and dismissed him
with contumely. These things rankle. To be sacked once, yes, a man expected
that, it was part of the wholesome give and take between employer and employed,
but twice was a calculated insult.

‘Fat
lot of having a look at the Empress I’ve been able to do,’ he said morosely.
‘She’s dug in in her shed and won’t come out,’ he said, and Sam saw that at one
end of the sty there was a wooden shelter, presumably where the silver medalist
retired to sleep or to meditate.

‘Strange,’
said Lord Emsworth.

‘Sinister,
if you ask me. I’d say she was sickening for something.’

‘Nonsense.
Try chirruping.’

‘I have
tried chirruping, and the more I chirrup, the less she emerges. She’s like the
deaf adder in Holy Scripture. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the deaf
adder. It comes in a bit in the Bible I used to learn at Sunday School. Like
the deaf adder, it says, what don’t pay a ruddy bit of attention to the
charmer, though he charms till his eyes bubble. Try chirruping, indeed!’ said
George Cyril disgustedly.

‘You
can’t have chirruped properly. Chirrup again.’

‘Not
me, cocky, I’ve got a sore lip. You have a go.

‘I
will.’

When it
came to communicating with pigs, Lord Emsworth had resources denied to other
men. It so happened that there had come to Blandings Castle a year or so ago a
young fellow anxious to marry one of his nieces, a young fellow who on leaving
England under something of a cloud had found employment on a farm in Nebraska.
He had forgotten his name, but he had never forgotten his teachings. In however
deep a reverie a pig might be plunged, this young fellow had said, passing on
the lore he had learned on the Nebraska farm, it could always be jerked out of
it by what he described as the Master Call, and this he had taught to Lord
Emsworth. It consisted of the word ‘Pig-hoo-ey’, the ‘Hoo’ to start in a low
minor of two quarter-notes in four—four time, building gradually from this to a
higher note until at last the voice soared in full crescendo, reaching F-sharp
on the natural scale and dwelling for two retarded half-notes, then breaking
into a shower of accidental grace-notes.