Galahad at Blandings (6 page)

‘Oh, I
see. How do I find it?’

Anyone
will tell you where it is. It’s one of the Blandings’ landmarks. So I may
expect you shortly?’

‘I’ll
take a train to Market Blandings this afternoon.

‘That’s
the way I like to hear you talk. Give me a ring on the telephone when you
arrive. And now,’ said Gally, ‘I must be getting along to Barribault’s and
picking up Clarence.

IV

Having been carefully
informed by Sandy Callender on the telephone the previous evening that he would
be calling for him shortly before one and it now being twelve fifty-four Lord
Emsworth was naturally astounded to see Gally. He was sitting in the lounge
when Gally reached Barribault’s Hotel, his long lean body draped like a wet
sock on a chair, and he appeared to be thinking of absolutely nothing. His mild
face wore the dazed look it always wore when he was in London, a city that
disturbed and bewildered him. Unlike his younger brother to whom it had always
been an earthly Paradise, he was allergic to England’s metropolis and counted
each minute lost that he was obliged to spend there. He rose like a snake
hurriedly uncoiling itself and his pince-nez flew from his nose and danced at
the end of their string, their invariable habit when he was startled.

‘God
bless my soul! Galahad!’

‘In
person. Weren’t you expecting me?’

‘Eh? Oh
yes, of course, yes. You’re looking very well, Galahad.’

‘You,
too, Clarence. Your travels have given you a sparkle.’

‘Have
you lunched?’

‘What,
at my own expense with you all eagerness to fill me to the brim at yours? Not
likely,’ said Gally. ‘Let’s go in, shall we, and as we fortify ourselves for
the drive home you can tell me about your American adventures — what shows you
saw, what bars you were thrown out of and so on, and I’ll give you the latest
news from Blandings.’

Quite a
number of his acquaintances, most of them looking like men whom the police were
anxious to interview because they had reason to believe that they might be able
to assist them in their enquiries, accosted Gally as he went through the
grill-room, and he had a good deal of stopping and passing the time of the day
to do. It was consequently not for some little while that he and Lord Emsworth
were at their table, dealing with their orders of sole mornay and able to take
up the thread of their conversation again.

Gally
was the first to speak.

‘Well,
Clarence, what did you think of America?’

‘Extraordinary
country. You know it well, don’t you?’

‘Oh
yes, I was always popping in and out of it in the old days. You found it
extraordinary, you say?’

‘Very. Those
tea bags.’

‘I beg
your pardon?’

‘They
serve your tea in little bags.’

‘So
they do. I remember.’

‘And
when you ask for a boiled egg, they bring it to you mashed up in a glass.’

‘You
don’t like it that way?’

‘No, I
don’t.’

‘Then
the smart thing to do is not to ask for a boiled egg.’

‘True,’
said Lord Emsworth, who had not thought of that.

‘Though
the way things are going now over there, you’re lucky if you’re able to afford
boiled eggs.’

‘Eh?’

‘Didn’t
you read in the papers about the crash on the American Stock Exchange?’

‘I did
not see any papers while I was in New York. They left one outside my door every
morning, but I never read it. Has there been a crash on the Stock Exchange?’

And
how! Fellows jumping out of windows in droves.’

‘That’s
America for you. One day you’re a millionaire, the next you’re selling apples.’

‘Selling
apples?’

‘That’s
right.’

‘Why
apples?’

‘Why
not apples?’

‘True.
Do you think Constance’s husband — I forget his name — is selling apples?’

‘I
don’t imagine so. I remember him telling me his money was mostly in Government
bonds. How was the wedding, by the way? Did you get Connie off all right?’

‘Yes.
Oh yes. They are spending the honeymoon at a town called Cape Cod.’

‘I know
it well. Cape Cod, the Forbidden City. But something in your eye tells me you
don’t want to talk about Connie and her nuptials, you want to be brought up to
date on the latest happenings at Blandings. Let me think. Well, I suppose the
first thing you’ll want to hear is how the Empress has been getting on in your
absence. You will be relieved to learn that she’s as robust as ever, her health
all that her friends and well-wishers could desire. Rosy cheeks and sparking
eyes. Under the ministrations of Monica Simmons she has flourished like a
green bay tree. You’ll be glad to see her again.

‘Yes,
yes, oh yes indeed. And it is wonderful to think that Constance will not be
there to look disapproving and make clicking noises with her tongue when I go
off to the sty. You’ve no idea how I am looking forward to settling down at
Blandings without.., well, of course nobody could be fonder of Constance than I
am, but…’

‘I get
your meaning, Clarence. No need to be apologetic about it. You know and I know
that Connie was a Grade A pest.’

‘I
wouldn’t say that.’

‘I
would.’

‘But
she was very autocratic.’

‘Very.
Bossy is perhaps the word.’

‘Odd
how all our sisters are like that.’

‘I’ve
always said it was a mistake to have sisters. We should have set our faces
against it from the outset.’

‘Constance
… Dora … Julia … Hermione … How they oppressed me! None of them would
ever leave me alone. They were always wanting me to
do
things, always
saying I must keep up my position.’

‘That’s
what you get for being the head of the family. We younger sons escape all that
sort of thing.’

‘Hermione,
of course, was the worst of them, but fortunately she was not very often at
Blandings, while Constance was there all the time. You never attended the
annual school treat, did you, Galahad?’

‘Too
much sense.’

‘Constance
always made me wear a top hat for it.’

‘I’ll
bet you were a sensation.’

‘And a
stiff collar. Yes, I must confess that, devoted as I am to Constance, it will
be a wonderful relief to be free from feminine society. The peace of it! By the
way, who was that who spoke to me on the telephone yesterday? A strange female
voice.’

‘You
can hardly expect me to keep tab on all the strange female voices that ring you
up on the telephone. You know what a dog you are with the other sex.

Lord
Emsworth allowed this innuendo to pass, probably feeling that his reputation
needed no defending. Since the death of his wife twenty-five years ago he had
made something of a life work of avoiding women. In sharp contradistinction to
Gally, who liked nothing better than their society and in his younger days had
always been happiest when knee deep in ballet girls and barmaids, he had taken
considerable pains to keep them at a distance. He could not hope, of course, to
evade them altogether for women have a nasty way of popping up at unexpected
moments, but he was quick on his feet and his policy of suddenly disappearing
like a diving duck had had excellent results. It was now pretty generally
accepted in his little circle that he was not a ladies’ man and that any woman
who tried to get a civil word out of him did so at her own risk.

‘She
was speaking from Blandings. She said you would be coming here today to pick me
up. She told me her name … now what did she say her name was?’

‘Callender.
Sandy Callender. She’s your secretary.’

‘But I
have no secretary.’

‘Yes,
you have.’

‘I’m
sure you’re mistaken, Galahad.’

‘No,
I’m not. She’s your secretary all right. Hermione engaged her.’

Lord
Emsworth was a mild man, but he could be roused to wrath.

‘Meddlesome
and officious!’ he cried, his eyes gleaming militantly behind their pince-nez.
‘High-handed impertinence! What business has Hermione to engage secretaries for
me? When did she do this?’

‘Shortly
after her arrival at Blandings.’

The
sole lay untasted on Lord Emsworth’s plate, the hock unsipped in his wine
glass. His pince-nez had gone adrift again and his nude eyes glazed at Gally
with a horror that touched the latter’s heart.

‘Hermione’s
not at Blandings?’ he quavered.

Gally
patted his hand sympathetically. He knew how he felt. ‘I’ve been wondering all
this time how to break it to you, Clarence. I was planning to do it gently, but
perhaps the surgeon’s knife is best. Yes, Hermione has moved in and is firmly
wedged into the woodwork. Egbert’s there, too, of course. And Wilfred Allsop.’

‘And
that tall half-witted girl of theirs?’

‘If you
are alluding to your niece Veronica, no. She’s in London. I brought her with me
this morning and left her at Dora’s. I gather she’s stocking up with clothes
against the day when young Plimsoll returns from America and makes her his
bride. I’m afraid this has been something of a blow to you, Clarence.’

Lord
Emsworth nodded dismally, limp among the ruins of his golden dreams. The
prospect of having his sister Hermione substituted for his sister Constance had
affected him rather as the announcement that for the future they might expect
to be chastised with scorpions instead of, as under the previous administration,
with whips must have affected the Children of Israel.

Nobody
who knew her would have denied that Constance was an able disciplinarian, but
they would have been obliged to concede that she could not be considered in
Hermione’s class. Hermione began where she left off.

‘Oh
dear, oh dear!’ he whispered with bowed head, seeming to be addressing what
remained of his sole mornay.

For
perhaps a fleeting second Gally hesitated before speaking. It pained his kindly
heart to witness his brother’s distress, but having adopted the policy of the
surgeon’s knife he felt that the worst must be told even if it led to the
stricken man having what in the land from which he had just returned is known
as a conniption fit.

‘I
wonder Clarence,’ he said, ‘if you remember a girl called Daphne Littlewood?
And don’t think I’m changing the subject, because she is definitely germane to
the issue.’

There
were very few things that Lord Emsworth ever remembered. This was not one of
them.

‘Daphne
Littlewood? No, I do not.’

‘Tall,
dark, handsome girl with a formidable personality, not unlike Connie in
appearance. In fact, except that she has different coloured eyes and hair she
could go on and play Connie without make-up. She married a rather celebrated
historian named Winkworth. She’s a widow now with a small and repulsive son and
runs a fashionable girls’ school. They think a lot of her in educational
circles, so much so that she was made a Dame in the last Birthday Honours, a
thing that’s never likely to happen to you or me. I often wonder who had the
idea of calling these women Dames. Probably an American. There’s nothing like a
dame, he told them, and they agreed with him, and so the order came into being.
But I’m wandering from my subject. You’ve really forgotten Daphne?’

‘Completely.’

‘Strange.
Twenty years ago the bookies were taking bets that you’d get engaged to her.’

‘Impossible!’

‘That’s
how the story goes.

‘It is
inconceivable that I should have contemplated such a thing.’

‘You
say that now, but you know what your memory is like. For all you know, you may
have wooed her ardently — sent her flowers, written in her confession book,
pressed her hand in a conservatory during a dance … No,’ said Gally on
reflection, ‘I doubt if even in your prime you would have been as licentious as
that. Well, anyway, that’s who Daphne Winkworth is, and you’ll find her at
Blandings when we get there.’

‘What!’

‘With
her son Huxley. Hermione invited them.’

‘Good
God!’

‘I was
afraid it would upset you, and I’m sorry to say that that’s not all. The worst
is yet to come.

Gally
paused. He was very fond of Lord Emsworth and hated to upset him, and he knew
that what he was about to say would make his eyes, like stars, start from their
spheres and also cause his knotted and combined locks, if you could call them
that, to part and each particular hair — there were about twenty of them — to
stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine. He shrank from saying it,
but it had to be said. Impossible to allow the poor dear old chap to arrive at
Blandings unwarned.

‘Hold
on to your chair Clarence, for you’re going to get a nasty shock. Has Hermione
brought Dame Daphne Winkworth to Blandings because they’re old friends? No. Because
she enjoys the society of little Huxley Winkworth? No. Then why, you ask.