Heavy Weather (15 page)

'I didn't come to the front. I went straight round to the stables. Dropped mother at the Vicarage.' 'Yes?'

'She wanted to have a talk with the vicar.' *I see.'

'You've not met the vicar, have you?' 'Not yet.'

'His name's Fosberry.' 'Oh?'

Silence fell again. Ronnie's eyes were roaming about the roof. He took a step forward, stooped, and picked up something. It was a slouch hat.

He hummed a little under his breath.

'Monty been up here with you?'

'Yes.'

Ronnie hummed another bar or two.

'Nice chap,' he said. 'Let's go down, shall we?'

Chapter Eight

If you turn to the right on leaving the main gates of Blandings Castle and follow the road for a matter of two miles, you will find yourself approaching the little town of Market Blandings. There it stands dreaming the centuries away, a jewel in a green heart of Shropshire. In all England there is no sweeter spot. Artists who come to paint its old grey houses and fishermen who angle for bream in its lazy river are united on this point. The idea that the place could possibly be rendered more pleasing to the eye is one at which they would scoff - and have scoffed many a night over the pipes and tankards at the Emsworth Arms.

And yet, on the afternoon following the events just recorded, this miracle occurred. The quiet charm of this ancient High Street was suddenly intensified by the appearance of a godlike man in a bowler hat, who came out of an old-world tobacco shop. It was Beach, the butler. With the object of disciplining his ample figure, he had walked down from the Castle to buy cigarettes. He now stood on the pavement, bracing himself to the task of walking back.

This athletic feat was not looking quite so good to him as it had done three-quarters of an hour ago in his pantry. That long two-mile hike had taxed his powers of endurance. Moreover, this was no weather for Marathons. If yesterday had been oppressive, today was a scorcher. Angry clouds were banking themselves in a copper-coloured sky. No breath of air stirred the trees. The pavement gave out almost visible waves of heat, and over everything there seemed to brood a sort of sulphurous gloom. If they were not in for a thunderstorm, and a snorter of a thunderstorm, before nightfall, Beach was very much mistaken. He removed his hat, produced a handkerchief, mopped his brow, replaced the hat, replaced the handkerchief, and said 'Woof!' Disciplining the figure is all very well, but there are limits. An urgent desire for beer swept over Beach.

He could scarcely have been more fortunately situated for the purpose of gratifying this wish. The ideal towards which the City Fathers of all English county towns strive is to provide a public-house for each individual inhabitant; and those of Market Blandings had not been supine in this matter. From where Beach stood, he could see no fewer than six such establishments. The fact that he chose the Emsworth Arms must not be taken to indicate that he had anything against the Wheatsheaf, the Waggoner's Rest, the Beetle and Wedge, the Stitch in Time, and the Jolly Cricketers. It was simply that it happened to be closest.

Nevertheless, it was a sound choice. The advice one would give to every young man starting life is, on arriving in Market Blandings on a warm afternoon, to go to the Emsworth Arms. Good stuff may be bought there, and of all the admirable hostelrics in the town it possesses the largest and shadiest garden. Green and inviting, dotted about with rustic tables and snug summerhouses, it stretches all the way down to the banks of the river; so that the happy drinker, already pleasantly in need of beer, may acquire a new and deeper thirst from watching family parties toil past in row-boats. On a really sultry day a single father, labouring at the oars of a craft loaded down below the Plimsoll mark by a wife, a wife's sister, a cousin by marriage, four children, a dog, and a picnic basket, has sometimes led to such a rush of business at the Emsworth Arms that seasoned barmaids have staggered beneath the strain.

It was to one of these summerhouses that Beach now took his tankard. He generally went there when circumstances caused him to visit the Emsworth Arms, for as a man with a certain position to keep up he preferred privacy when refreshing himself. It was not as if he had been some irresponsible young second footman who could just go and squash in with the boys in the back room. This particular summerhouse was at the far end of the garden, hidden from the eye of the profane by a belt of bushes.

Thither, accordingly, Beach made his wa
y. There was nobody in the summe
rhouse, but he did not enter it, having a horror of earwigs and suspecting their presence in the thatch of the roof. Instead, he dragged a wicker chair to the table which stood at the back of it, and, sinking into this, puffed and
sipped and thought. And the more he thought, the less did he
like what he thought about.

As a rule, when members of the Family showed their confidence in him by canvassing his assistance in any little matter, Beach was both proud and pleased. His motto was 'Service'. But he could not conceal it from himself that the Family had a tendency at times to go a little too far.

The historic case of this, of course, had been when Mr Ronald, having stolen the Empress and hidden her in a disused keeper's cottage in the west wood, had prevailed upon him to assist in feeding her. His present commission was not as fearsome an ordeal as that, but nevertheless he could not but feel that the Hon. Galahad, in appointing him the custodian of so vitally important an object as the manuscript of his book of Reminiscences, had exceeded the limits of what a man should ask a butler to do. The responsibility, he considered, was one which no butler, however desirous of giving satisfaction, should have been called upon to undertake.

The thought of all that hung upon his vigilance unnerved him. And he had been brooding on it with growing uneasiness for perhaps five minutes, when the sound of feet shuffling on wood told him that he had no longer got his favourite oasis to himself. An individual or individuals had come into the summerhouse.

'We can talk here,' said a voice, and a seat creaked as if a heavy body had lowered itself upon it.

And such was, indeed, the case. It was Lord Tilbury who had just sat down, and his was one of the heaviest bodies in Fleet Street.

When, a few minutes before, meditating in the lounge of the Emsworth Arms, he had beheld Monty Bodkin enter through the front door, Lord Tilbury's first thought had been for some quiet retreat where they could confer in solitude. He could see that the young man had much to say, and he had no desire to have him say it with half a dozen inquisitive Shropshire lads within easy earshot.

Great minds think alike. Beach, intent on an unobtrusive glass of beer, and Lord Tilbury, loath to have intimate private matters discussed in an hotel lounge, had both come to the conclusion that true solitude was best to be obtained at the bottom of the garden. Silencing his young friend, accordingly, with an imperious gesture his lordship had led the way to this remote summerhouse.

'Well,' he said, having seated himself. 'What is it?' It seemed to Beach, who had settled himself c
omfortably in his chair and was
preparing to listen to the conversation with something of the air of a nonchalant dramatic critic watching the curtain go up, that that voice was vaguely familiar. He had a feeling that he had heard it before, but could not remember where or when. He had no difficulty, however, in recognizing the one which now spoke in answer. Monty Bodkin's vocal delivery, when his soul was at all deeply disturbed, was individual and peculiar, containing something of the tonal quality of a bleating sheep combined with a suggestion of a barking prairie wolf. 'What is it? I like that!'

Monty's soul at this moment was very deeply disturbed. Since breakfast-time that morning, this young man, like Sir Gregory Parsloe, had run what is known as the gamut of the emotions. A pictorial record of his hopes and despairs would have looked like a fever chart.

He had begun, over the coffee and kippers, by feeling gay and buoyant. It seemed to him that Fortune - good old Fortune - had amazingly decently put him on to a red-hot thing. All he had to do, in order to ensure the year's employment which would enable him to win Gertrude Butterwick, was to nip into the small library and lift the manuscript out of the desk in which, Lord Tilbury had assured him, it reposed.

Feeling absolutely in the pink, accordingly, and nipping as planned, he had fallen, like Lucifer, from heaven to hell. The bally thing was not there. Fortune, in a word, had been pulling his leg.

And here was this old ass before him saying' What is it ?'

'Yes, I like that!' he repeated. 'That's rich! Oh, very fruity, indeed.'

Lord Tilbury, as we have said, had never been very fond of Monty. In his present peculiar mood he found himself liking him less than ever.

'What is it you wish to see me about?' he asked, with testy curtness.

'What do you think I want to see you about?' replied Monty shrilly. 'About that dashed manuscript of Gally's that you told me to pinch, of course,' he said with a bitter laugh, and Beach, having given a single shuddering start like a harpooned whale, sat rigid in his chair; his gooseberry eyes bulging; the beer frozen, as one might say, on his lips.

Nor was Lord Tilbury unmoved. No plotter likes to have his accomplices bellowing important secrets as if they were calling coals.

'Sh!’

' Oh, nobody can hear us.'

'Nevertheless, kindly do not shout. Where is the manuscript? Have you got it?' 'Of course I've not got it.'

Lord Tilbury was feeling dismally that he might have expected this. He saw now how foolish he had been to place so delicate a commission in the hands of a popinjay. Of all classes of the community, popinjays, when it comes to carrying out delicate commissions, are the most inept. Search History's pages from end to end, reflected Lord Tilbury, and you will not find one instance of a popinjay doing anything successfully except eat, sleep, and master the new dance steps.

'It's a bit thick ...' bellowed Monty.

'Sh!'

'It's a bit thick,' repeated Monty, sinking his voice to a conspiratorial growl. 'Raising hopes only to cast them to the ground is the way I look at it. What did you want to get me all worked up for by telling me the thing was in that desk?'

'It is not?' said Lord Tilbury, staggered.

'Not a trace of it.'

'You cannot have looked properly.'

'Looked properly!'

'Sh!'

'Of course I looked properly. I left no stone unturned. I explored every avenue.' 'But I saw Threepwood put it there.' 'Says you.'

'Don't say "says you". I tell you I saw him with my own eyes place the manuscript in the top right-hand drawer of the desk.' 'Well, he must have moved it. It's not there now.' 'Then it is somewhere else.' 'I shouldn't wonder. But where?' 'You could easily have found out.' 'Oh, yeah?'

'Don't say "Oh, yeah".'

'Well, what
can
I say, dash it? First you keep yowling "Shush" every time I open my mouth. Then you tell me not to say, "Says you". And now you beef at my remarking "Oh, yeah". I suppose what you'd really like,' said Monty, and it was plain to the listening ear that he was deeply moved, 'would be for me to buy a flannel dressing-gown and a spade and become a ruddy Trappist monk.'

This spirited outburst led to a certain amount of rather confused debate. Lord Tilbury said that he did not propose to have young popinjays taking that tone with him; while Monty, on his side, wished to be informed who Lord Tilbury was calling a popinjay. Lord Tilbury then said that Monty was a bungler, and Monty said, Well, dash it, Lord Tilbury had told him to be a burglar, and Lord Tilbury said he had not said 'burglar', he had said 'bungler', and Monty said, What did he mean, bungler, and Lord Tilbury explained that by the expression' bungler', he had intended to signify a wretched, feckless, blundering, incompetent, imbecile. He added that an infant of six could have found the manuscript, and Monty, in a striking passage, was making a firm offer to give any bloodhound in England a shilling if it could do better than he had done, when the argument stopped as abruptly as it had started. Childish voices had begun to prattle close at hand and it was evident that one of those picnic parties from the river was approaching.

'Cor!' said Lord Tilbury, rather in the manner of the moping owl in Gray's 'Elegy' under similar provocation.

One of the childish voices spoke.

'Pa, there's someone here.'

Another followed.

' Ma, there's someone here.'

The deeper note of a male adult made itself heard.

' Emily, there's someone here.'

And then the voice of a female adult.

'Oh dear. What a shame! There's someone here.'

The conspirators appeared to be men who could take a tactful hint when they heard one. There came to Beach's ears the sound of moving bodies. And presently, from the fact that the summer-house seemed to have become occupied by a troupe of performing elephants, he gathered that the occupation had been carried through according to plan.

He sat on for some minutes; then, hurrying to the inn, asked leave of the landlord to use his telephone in order to summon Robinson and his station taxi. His mind was made up. He would not know an easy moment until he was back in his pantry, on guard. The station taxi would run into money, for Robinson, like all monopolists, drove a hard bargain; but if it would get him to the Castle before Monty it would be half a crown well spent.

'Robinson's taxi's outside now, Mr Beach,' said the landlord, tickled by the coincidence. 'A gentleman phoned for it only two minutes ago. Going up to the Castle himself he is. Maybe he'd give you a lift. You can catch him if you run.'

Beach did not run. Even if his figure had permitted such a feat, his sense of his position would have forbidden it. But he walked quite rapidly, and was enabled to leave the front door just as Monty was bidding farewell to a short, stout man in whom he recognized the Lord Tilbury who had called at the Castle on the previous day to sec Mr Galahad. So it was he who had been egging young Mr Bodkin on to bungle!

For an instant, this discovery shocked the butler so much that he could hardly speak. That Baronets like Sir Gregory Parsloe should be employing minions to steal important papers had been a severe enough blow. That Peers should stoop to the same low conduct made the foundations of his world rock. Then came a restorative thought. This Lord Tilbury, he reminded himself, was no doubt a recent creation. One cannot expect too high a standard of ethics from the uncouth
(hoi polloi)
who crash into Birthday Honours lists.

He found speech.

'Oh, Mr Bodkin. Pardon me, sir.'

Monty turned.

'Why, hullo, Beach.'

'Would it be a liberty, sir, if I were to request permission to share this vehicle with you?'

'Rather not. Lots of room for all. What are you doing in these parts, Beach? Slaking the old thirst, eh? Drinking-bouts in the tap-room, yes?'

'I walked down from the Castle to purchase cigarettes at the tobacconist's, sir,' replied Beach with dignity. 'And as the afternoon heat proved somewhat trying
..
.'

'I know, I know,' said Monty sympathetically. 'Well, leap in, my dear old stag at eve.'