Pigs Have Wings (10 page)

Striking words, but well justified. Instead of the blot on a proud family which his sister Constance, his sister Julia, his sister Dora and all his other sisters considered him, he might have been a youngish teetotaller who had subsisted from boyhood on yoghurt, yeast, wheat germ and blackstrap molasses. He himself attributed his health to steady smoking, plenty of alcohol and his life-long belief that it was bad form to go to bed before three in the morning.

‘I keep pretty well,’ he agreed complacently. ‘Life in the country suits me.’

‘I should have thought you’d have been bored stiff.’

‘No, I like it. It’s all a matter of taste. Poor old Fruity Biffen, now, he couldn’t cope with the local conditions at all. You remember Fruity Biffen? He was down here till a few days ago, but he couldn’t take it, and left. A great loss. He would have been of invaluable assistance to us in this task of ours of foiling Parsloe. Your Uncle Sebastian, though a good chap, lacks a certain something. Not the sort of fellow to put in the forefront of the battle. What one wants in a crisis like that through which we are now passing is one of those young, tough, butlers, spitting out of the side of the mouth and ready for anything.’

‘How is Uncle Sebastian?’

‘Very well, considering everything. Worried, naturally. The dark circles which you will notice under his eyes are due to anxiety regarding the Empress’s future. The Agricultural Show is approaching, and he has invested far more on her than he cares to lose. Me too. I also am heavily involved. So we are relying on you, Maudie, to do your bit. Watch the girl Simmons unblinkingly, for it is from that quarter that peril looms. Did your Uncle Sebastian explain the situation fully?’

‘Not what you would call fully. But I understand most of it.’

‘The pig contest? The danger that threatens? The need for constant vigilance?’

‘Yes, all that. But who is this Mrs Bunbury I’m supposed to be?’

‘The lifelong friend of a Mr Donaldson, father of a Miss Penelope Donaldson who is a guest at the castle, a merchant prince who provides the American dog with its daily biscuit. So when Connie starts talking about him, don’t be like Clarence and say “Who is Mr Donaldson?” Clarence is my brother, Lord Emsworth, and Connie is my sister, Lady Constance Keeble. She is the menace in the treatment.’

‘I thought this Sir Gregory Parsloe was the menace.’

‘Aided and abetted by Connie. Not that a twister like Tubby Parsloe needs any aiding and abetting.’

Maudie sat up with a jerk.

‘Tubby?’

‘That’s odd,’ said Gally. ‘I don’t suppose I’ve called him that for thirty years. Meeting you again like this seems to have put the clock back. Tubby was his nickname in the old days, due to his obscene obesity. Did you ever run across him when you were at the Criterion?’

Maudie was breathing emotionally. A strange light had come into her blue eyes.

‘Did I ever run across him! Why, I was going to marry him.’

‘What!’

‘Only he never turned up.’

‘Never turned up?’

‘Never turned up. I waited an hour and a quarter at the church with my bunch of lilies of the valley in my hand, and then I came away.’

Gally was not one of those monocled men who are always taking their monocle out of their eye and polishing it. He reserved this gesture for occasions when he was much moved. This was one of them. For perhaps half a minute he sat in silence, thoughtfully passing his handkerchief over the crystal, while his guest, her mind back in the past, heaved gently, from time to time drinking beer in a manner that betrayed the overwrought soul.

‘Too bad,’ he said at length.

‘Yes, it annoyed me a good deal, I must say.’

‘I’m not surprised. Enough to upset anyone. A rather similar thing happened to Mariana of the Moated Grange, and she was as sick as mud. You really mean he never showed up?’

‘Not a sign of him. It’s my belief he blew the honeymoon money in at the races and hadn’t the nerve to tell me. Because it was all settled. He was living down at Shepperton-on-Thames at that time, and I’d had a letter from him making all the arrangements. I can remember every word of it as if it was yesterday. Be at St Saviour’s, Pimlico, two o’clock sharp June the seventh, he said. Nothing could be plainer than that, could it? And then all the stuff about going to Paris for the honeymoon. Well, I don’t know how you feel about it, but I think there’s something not quite nice in telling a girl to meet you at the church and you’ll get married and then not showing up,’ said Maudie with a touch of austerity. ‘That sort of thing sounded funny, I admit, when you heard Vesta Victoria singing about it … Remember?’

Gally nodded.

‘I remember. “There was I, waiting at the church … ”’

‘“Waiting at the church … ”’

‘“Waiting at the church … ”’

‘“For he’d gone and left me in the lurch. Lord how it did upset me … ”’

‘“– set me.”’

‘Yes,’ said Maudie, suspending the community singing, ‘that sort of thing’s funny enough in a music-hall song, but it’s no joke when it happens to you, you can take it from me. Makes a girl feel silly. So he’s Sir Gregory Parsloe now?’

‘Sir Gregory Parsloe, Bart. A cousin of his died, and he came into the title. Did you ever see him again?’

‘No.’

‘Did he write?’

‘Not a word.’

‘Just faded away like a dream at daybreak? Well, that’s Parsloe,’ said Gally philosophically. ‘What else could you expect of a man capable of loading my dog Towser up with steak and onions on the night of the rat contest? But I can readily understand that it must have been an unpleasant experience for you, old girl. Must have given you a jaundiced idea of the male sex. Still, you got over it.’

‘Oh, I got over it.’

‘You were well out of it, if you ask me. Were you happy with the late Stubbs?’

‘Yes, Cedric and I were very happy.’

‘There you are, then,’ said Gally buoyantly. ‘All’s well that ends well. No good brooding over what might have been. Let the dead past bury its dead, and all that sort of thing. Well, I’m glad you told me this, Maudie, because it stimulates and encourages me. If young Parsloe did you down in that scurvy fashion, you will be up and doing with a heart for any fate, unremitting in your efforts to get a bit of your own back on the son of a bachelor, straining every nerve to foil his evil schemes. Which is precisely the spirit we want to see in you at this juncture. More beer?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Then we might be strolling along and picking up the station taxi, Jno Robinson proprietor. I suppose it’s about time I sprang you on the old folks. Keep calm when you meet Connie. And when you see Beach, for goodness sake don’t go losing your head and flinging yourself into his arms with a “Hey, hey, Uncle Sebastian!”’ said Gally. ‘Treat him with distant hauteur, and if you can manage an occasional “Ah, my good man” or “Ha, Beach, my honest fellow,” it will help the general composition greatly.’

In all properly regulated country houses the hours between tea and dinner are set aside for letter writing. The strength of the company retire to their rooms, heavy with muffins, and settle down to a leisurely disposal of their correspondence. Those who fall asleep try again next day.

Lady Constance Keeble, having a boudoir of her own as well as a bedroom, had gone there as soon as tea on the terrace was over, to relay the latest from Blandings Castle to Mr Donaldson of Long Island City. She had just finished, and was relaxing over a cigarette, when the door opened and her brother Galahad came in.

‘Yes?’ she said, in a voice in which sisters like her do say ‘Yes?’ to brothers like Gally. She also raised her eyebrows.

Her intrepid visitor was not the man to be quelled by this sort of thing.

‘Step out of the frame, Mona Lisa,’ he said briskly. ‘I came to hear what you think of this Mrs Bunbury.’

It was a point on which he was most anxious to obtain firsthand information. On presenting Maudie to Lady Constance at the tea table, he had observed the chatelaine of Blandings Castle blink twice, rapidly, rather in the manner of a woman who has been slapped between the eyes with a wet fish, and the spectacle had momentarily disconcerted him. He had not needed Beach to tell him that his sister’s standards in the matter of guests were exacting, and there was unquestionably quite a good deal of that passed-for-adults-only stuff about Maudie. He had been forced to ask himself if she had made the grade.

But after that first electric moment it seemed to him that everything had gone with a swing, nor in arriving at this conclusion had he erred. Confronted with Maudie, Lady Constance had certainly blinked, but almost immediately had reminded herself that this guest of hers was American. One always, she knew, has to budget for a touch of the spectacular in the outer crust of the American Society woman. This concession made, she had speedily been won over by the polished elegance of Maudie’s deportment, which, as always, was considerable, with the result that the letter to Mr Donaldson now lying on her desk was a definitely enthusiastic one. In her view of the presiding genius of Digby’s Day and Night Detectives she was seeing eye to eye with the Shropshire lads, the landlord of the Emsworth Arms and the latter’s growing son Percy.

‘Nice woman, I thought.’

‘Very. I have just been writing to Mr Donaldson to tell him how much I like her.’

‘That’s fine. That’s splendid. That’s the way to talk.’

‘I don’t see why you are so interested.’

Gally gave her a rebuking look.

‘My dear Connie,’ he said, ‘I am interested, as you put it, because I am extremely fond of Penny Donaldson and would not have liked her to be upset. This Mrs Bunbury is a close friend of her father, and she is naturally anxious for her to get the green light. Picture the poor child’s feelings if you had drawn yourself up in that sniffy way of yours and come the
grande dame
over Ma Bunbury. And it might easily have happened. If I’ve caught you being the haughty English aristocrat once, I’ve caught you a hundred times. It gets you greatly disliked on all sides.’

‘Let me relieve your mind. Mrs Bunbury is a little odd-looking, but I think she is quite attractive.’

‘So do I.’

‘Not that that matters. Well, good-bye, Galahad.’

‘And so does Clarence, by Jove. I’ve never seen him take to a member of the opposite sex so wholeheartedly. Usually, if you try to make Clarence say What ho to a female of the species, he’s off over the horizon like a jack rabbit. But you would not be putting it too strongly if you said that he took this Mrs Bunbury to his bosom. He was all over her. Watching them go off together to see the Empress, I was reminded of a couple of sailors on shore leave at Marseilles. Astounding!’

‘I am rather busy, Galahad.’

‘Eh?’

‘I say I am rather busy.’

‘You’re not in the least busy. When I came in, you were smoking a gasper with your feet on the mantelpiece.’

‘My feet were not on the mantelpiece.’

‘And in another minute you’d have been asleep, snoring your head off.’

‘How dare you say I snore? I never snore.’

‘That is not the point at issue,’ said Gally. ‘The point at issue is the way you have been behaving since I blew in. Your manner has been most peculiar. It has wounded me a good deal. If your own brother can’t come and pay you a friendly visit without having you blinding and stiffing at him like a bargee, things have reached a pretty pass in English family life.’

The conversation was approaching a stage where it might easily have developed into one of those distressing brother-and-sister brawls, for both participants were of high spirit, but at this moment Lord Emsworth appeared, giving tongue immediately in the high, plaintive tenor which he used when he felt ill-treated.

‘Stamps!’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘I am writing a letter and I have no stamps. Have you been taking my stamps, Constance?’

‘I have not been taking your stamps,’ said Lady Constance wearily. ‘You keep letting your box get empty and forgetting to tell Beach to have it filled. You can have one of mine, if you like.’

‘Thank you,’ said Lord Emsworth, pacified. ‘That will be capital, capital. I am writing to the Shropshire, Herefordshire and South Wales Pig Breeders’ Association.’

‘Is it their birthday?’ asked Gally, interested.

‘Eh? No, not that I know of. But I had a letter from them yesterday, asking me to deliver an address on certain aspects of the Empress. Very flattering, I thought it. I am looking forward to … My God!’ said Lord Emsworth in sudden alarm. ‘Shall I have to wear a top hat?’

‘Of course you will.’

‘And a stiff collar?’

‘Well, really, Clarence, do you expect to address these people in pyjamas?’

Lord Emsworth considered this.

‘No. No, I see what you mean. No, possibly not pyjamas. But a stiff collar in weather like this!’

‘
Noblesse oblige
,’ said Gally.

‘Eh?’

‘I presume what Galahad means is that you have a certain position to keep up.’

‘Exactly,’ said Gally. ‘You’ve got to impress these pig-breeding blighters. Give ’em the morning coat, the sponge-bag trousers, the stiff collar and the old top hat, and you have them saying to themselves “Golly, these Earls are hot stuff!”. Whereas, seeing you dressed as you are now, they would give you the bird and probably start a revolution. You must cow them, Clarence, overawe them, make them say “The half was not told me,” like the Queen of Sheba when she met King Solomon. This cannot be done in a ten-year-old shooting coat with holes in the elbows.’

‘And flannel trousers that have not been pressed for weeks,’ added Lady Constance. ‘You look like a tramp. I cannot imagine what Mrs Bunbury thought of you.’

Lord Emsworth started. A quick look of concern came into his face.

‘Do you think Mrs Bunbury thought I looked like a tramp?’

‘Everything turns,’ said Gally, ‘on whether she thrust a penny into your hand and told you not to spend it on drink. Did she?’

‘No. No, I don’t remember her doing that.’

‘Then all may be well. Nice woman, that, Clarence.’

‘Delightful.’

‘You seemed to be getting along with her all right.’