Galahad at Blandings (4 page)

‘Yes.’

‘What
did the poor fish do to make you mad? How do you know the girl you saw him
kissing wasn’t his aunt?’

‘I did
not see him kissing a girl.’

‘Well,
what put you off him? Did he step on your foot while dancing? Did he criticise
your hair-do? Lose your umbrella? Take you out of a business double?’

‘If you
don’t mind, Gally, I’ve a lot of work to do.’

‘What
you mean is, Don’t be such a damned old Nosey Parker. All right, if you insist.
But I’m going to find out what the trouble was. What does that S of his stand
for?’

‘Samuel.’

‘I
thought as much. It now becomes pretty certain that he’s the son of an old
friend of mine and has a claim on my interest. I shall call on him and deliver
this parcel in person. He’ll give me the facts, and the betting is that I shall
bring you two young sundered hearts together again. Sundered hearts make me
sick,’ said Gally. ‘I’ve been against them from boyhood.’

CHAPTER 3

I

Halsey Court, though
situated in Mayfair and entitled to put ‘London W.1’ after its name, is not a
fashionable locality. It is a small, dark, dingy cul-de-sac, far too full of
prowling cats, fluttering newspapers and derelict banana skins to attract the
haut
monde.
Dukes avoid it, marquises give it a wide berth, earls and viscounts
would not settle there if you paid them. It consists of some seedy offices and
a block of residential flats, Halsey Chambers, which are occupied mostly by
young men of slender means who cannot afford to pick and choose and are
thankful to have an inexpensive roof over their heads. Jeff Miller, the writer
of novels of suspense, lived there at one time; so did Jerry Shoe-smith, editor
until his services were dispensed with of the weekly paper
Society Spice;
and
now that they had married and gone elsewhere literature was represented by
Sandy Callender’s late betrothed, Samuel Galahad Bagshott.

Actually,
when he had forms to fill up and information to give to an inquisitive
bureaucracy, Sam described himself as a barrister, but it was his typewriter
that enabled him to pay the rent and enjoy three moderately square meals a day.
Like so many commencing barristers, he wrote assiduously while waiting for the
briefs to start coming in. He wrote short, bright articles on fly-fishing,
healthy living, muscle development, great lovers through the ages and the
modern girl. He wrote light verse, reviews of novels, interviews with
celebrities, chatty Guides to the Brontë country and the Land of Dickens,
stories for half-witted adults, stories for retarded boys and stories for
children with water on the brain. It was with the last-named section of his
public in mind that he was toiling on the morning when Gally had started his
drive to London. He was writing a short story about a kitten called Pinky-Poo
which he hoped, if all went well and the editor’s heart was in the right place,
to sell to the Yuletide number of
Wee Tots.

He did
not look the sort of young man from whom one would have expected stories about
kittens called Pinky-Poo or indeed about kittens whose godparents had been less
fanciful in their choice of names, for his appearance was distinctly on the
rugged side. Tough was the adjective a stylist like Gustave Flaubert would have
applied to him, though being French he would have said
dur
or
coriace.
He was large and chunky, he had been one of the Possibles in an England
international Rugby trial game, and a fondness for boxing had left his nose a
little out of the straight and one of his ears twisted. If he had been your
guide to the Brontë country or the Land of Dickens, you would probably have
felt a qualm at the thought of being alone with him on a deserted moor or down
a dark alley, but your apprehensions would have been needless, for despite his
intimidating looks he was inwardly, like Tipton Plimsoll’s Officer Garroway,
all sweetness and light. Off the football field and outside the ring anything
in the shape of mayhem would have been unthinkable to him.

He had
written the words ‘There never was a naughtier kitten than Pinky-Poo’ and was
leaning back in his chair with the feeling that he was off to a good start but
wondering what twists and turns his narrative would now take, when the doorbell
rang. Going to answer it, he found standing on the mat a small, dapper, elderly
gentleman with an eyeglass who bade him a civil good morning.

‘Good
morning,’ said Sam, not to be outdone in the courtesies. The thought occurred
to him that this might be a solicitor bringing a brief, but he did not really
hope. Solicitors, if they call on barristers, do so at their chambers in
Lincoln’s Inn or wherever it may be, and they seldom wear monocles and never
beam as this visitor was doing. Nor are they as a rule so rosy and robust.

That
was what struck Sam immediately about Galahad Threepwood, that he looked
extraordinarily fit for his years. It was the impression Gally made on everyone
who met him. After the life he had led he had no right to burst with health,
but he did. Where most of his contemporaries had long ago thrown in the towel
and retired to cure resorts to nurse their gout, he had gone blithely on, ever
rising on stepping stones of dead whiskies and sodas to higher things. He had
discovered the prime grand secret of eternal youth — to keep the decanter
circulating, to stop smoking only when snapping the lighter for his next
cigarette and never to retire to rest before three in the morning.

‘Doesn’t
he look marvellous?’ one of his nieces had once said of him. ‘It really is
extraordinary that anyone who has had as good a time as he has can be so
amazingly healthy. Everywhere you look you see men leading model lives and
pegging out in their prime, but good old Uncle Gally, who apparently never went
to bed till he was fifty, is still breezing along as perky as ever.

‘Yes?’
said Sam.

‘Mr
Bagshott?’

‘Yes.’

‘My
name is Threepwood.’

‘Oh
yes?’

‘Galahad
Threepwood.’

The
name touched a chord in Sam’s memory. It was one the late Berkeley Bagshott had
often mentioned when in reminiscent vein. The conversation of his intimates of
the old days was always inclined to turn to Gally as they probed the past.

‘Oh,
really?’ he said, beaming in his turn. ‘I’ve heard my father speak of you.’

‘So you
are
old Boko’s son? I thought so.’

‘You
were great friends, weren’t you?’

‘Bosom.’

‘That
was why he had me christened Galahad, I suppose.’

‘Yes,
it was a pretty thought. He told me he would have asked me to be your
godfather, only he didn’t feel it would be safe. Starting you off under too
much of a handicap.’

‘Well,
it’s awfully nice of you to look me up. How did you find my address?’

‘It was
given me by Sandy Callender as I was leaving Blandings Castle this morning.’

‘Oh?’
Sam gulped. ‘So you’ve met Sandy?’

‘I’ve
known her for quite a time. We first met in New York when she was working for
Chet Tipton, a pal of mine. He, poor chap, handed in his dinner pail and she
came to London, looking for a job. I ran into her just when my sister Hermione
was wanting a secretary for my brother Clarence, so I recommended her and she
was signed on. This morning, as I was leaving, she gave me this parcel to post.
I saw your name, the S.G. struck me as significant and I decided to deliver it
in person, just in case you were the fellow I thought you might be, if you see
what I mean. I don’t know what odds a bookie would have given me against your
turning out to be Boko’s son, but it seemed a fair speculative venture, and the
long shot came off.’

‘I see.
Er — how is Sandy?’

‘Physically
fizzing, spiritually not so good. She has the air of one who is brooding on
something, as it might be a broken engagement or something of that kind. Am I
right in supposing that this parcel contains your letters?’

Sam
nodded gloomily.

‘I
expect so. She told me she was going to send them back.’ There was a world of
sympathy in the eye behind Gally’s monocle. As many people did, he had taken an
instant liking to this son of one with whom he had so often heard the chimes of
midnight, and he longed to do something to lighten his gloom. Years of
membership of the old Pelican Club, where somebody was always having trouble
with duns or bookies or women, had taught him how comforting it was to tell
your sad story to a compassionate listener.

‘Would
it,’ he said, ‘be impertinent of me, always bearing in mind that your father
and I were old friends and that I may quite possibly have dandled you on my
knee as a baby, if I asked what caused the rift between you and young Sandy?’

‘Not at
all. But it’s rather a long story.’

‘I have
all the time in the world. I’ve got to meet my brother at Barribault’s Hotel,
but that’s only just round the corner and he won’t mind waiting. I’ll trickle
in, shall I?’

‘Do. How
about a drink?’

‘If you
have a spot of whisky?’

‘The
one thing I do have.’

‘Excellent.
But I’m afraid I’m interrupting your work.’

‘Oh,
that’s all right. I’m only writing a story about a kitten, and I had got stuck
when you arrived. What can I make a kitten do?’

‘Chase
its tail?’

‘But
after that? I need a strong story line and a couple of situations that’ll
knock the
Wee Tots
subscribers’ eyes out.’

‘Is it
your aim to amuse the little blisters, or do you want to scare the pants off
them?’

‘Either.
I’m not fussy.’

‘I’m
afraid I can’t help you.’

‘Then
help yourself,’ said Sam hospitably, placing bottle, glass and syphon at his
side.

II

Gally took a restorative
draught. Refreshed, he lit a cigarette.

‘Wee
Tots,’
he said meditatively. ‘I know a fellow who
once edited that powerful sheet. Monty Bodkin. Ever meet him?’

‘I’ve
seen him at the Drones.’

‘You
are a member of the Drones Club?’ Sam gave a short, bitter laugh.

‘Am I a
member of the Drones Club! Yes, Mr Threepwood—’

‘Call
me Gally.’

‘May
I?’

‘Of
course. Everybody does. You were saying —?‘

‘Yes,
Gally, I am a member of the Drones Club. If I weren’t, there wouldn’t have been
this trouble between Sandy and me.’

‘She
wanted you to resign?’

‘No, it
wasn’t that. But I’d better begin at the beginning, hadn’t I?’

‘It
sounds an excellent idea.’

Sam
mused, marshalling his thoughts. Producing another glass, he mixed himself a
whisky and soda. It stimulated him to speech.

‘Well,
the first thing that happened was that I was rather frank about her
spectacles.’

‘I
don’t follow you.’

‘I mean
that was what really started the unpleasantness. It got the conversation off on
the wrong note. Is she wearing those damned spectacles?’

‘Never
without them. A pity she’s had to take to them. They spoil her appearance.

‘That’s
what I told her. I said they made her look like a horror from outer space.

‘And
what had she to say in response?’

‘Oh,
this and that,’ said Sam. It was plain that the memory was not one on which he
cared to dwell.

Gally
pursed his lips. He was a chivalrous man. In his time he had said things
equally or even more offensive to silver ring bookmakers and their like, but
these had invariably been of the male sex. To women from youth upward he had
always prided himself on being scrupulously polite. Even on the occasion in his
early days when a ballet dancer of mixed Spanish and Italian parentage had
stabbed him in the leg with a hatpin, his manner had remained suave and his
language guarded.

‘You
ought not to have taunted her about her physical misfortunes, my boy,’ he said
disapprovingly. ‘She can’t help wearing spectacles.’

‘But
she can. That’s the whole point. Her eyesight’s perfect. The beastly things are
made of plain glass, and she only put them on to impress Lord Emsworth.’

‘Her
train of thought eludes me.’

‘She
said they made her look older.’

‘Ah
yes, I see what she meant. Chet Tipton never objected to her functioning
without the headlights, but perhaps she feels that my brother will be more
critical. And I don’t suppose my sister Hermione would approve of a secretary
who looks about eighteen.’

‘More
like seventeen.’

‘Yes,
possibly more like seventeen. It’s an odd thing, but all girls look seventeen
to me nowadays. You’ll find that yourself when you get to my age. So she took
umbrage?’