Plum Pie (15 page)

It was not, of course, an entirely novel experience for him. In his bachelor days he had generally found himself in custody on Boat Race night. But he was now a respectable married man and had said goodbye to all that, and it is not too much to say that he burned with shame and remorse. He was also extremely apprehensive. He knew the drill on these occasions. If you wished to escape seven days in the jug, you had to pay a fine of five pounds, and he doubted very much if the M.C. next morning would be satisfied with four shillings and threepence down and an I.O.U. for the remainder. And what Mrs. Bingo would have to say when informed on her return that he was in stir, he did not care to contemplate. She would unquestionably explode with as loud a report as the bomb which he had been engaged in banning.

It was consequently with a surge of relief that nearly caused him to swoon that on facing the magistrate at Bosher Street Police Court he found him to be one of those likeable magistrates who know how to temper justice with mercy. Possibly because it was his birthday but more probably because he was influenced by Miss Murgatroyd's radiant beauty, he contented himself with a mere reprimand, and the erring couple were allowed to depart without undergoing the extreme penalty of the law.

Joy, in short, had come in the morning, precisely as the psalmist said it always did, and it surprised Bingo that his fellow-lag seemed not to be elated. Her lovely face was pensive, as if there was something on her mind. In answer to his query as to why she was not skipping like the high hills she explained that she was thinking of her white-haired old father, George Francis Augustus Delamere, fifth Earl of Ippleton, whose existence at the time when she was making her Trafalgar Square protest had temporarily slipped her mind.

"When he learns of this, he'll be fit to be tied," she said. "But why should he learn of it?"

"He learns of everything. It's a sort of sixth sense. Have you any loved ones who will have criticisms to make?"

"Only my wife, and she's away."

"You're in luck," said Mabel Murgatroyd.

Bingo could not have agreed with her more wholeheartedly. He and Mrs. Bingo had always conducted their domestic life on strictly turtle dove lines, but he was a shrewd enough student of the sex to know that you can push a turtle dove just so far. Rosie was the sweetest girl in a world where sweet girls are rather rare, but experience had taught him that, given the right conditions, she was capable of making her presence felt as perceptibly as one of those hurricanes which become so emotional on reaching Cape Hatteras. It was agreeable to think that there was no chance of her discovering that in her absence he had been hobnobbing in the dock at Bosher Street Police Court with red-haired girls of singular beauty.

It was, accordingly, with the feeling that if this was not the best of all possible worlds, it would do till another came along that he made his way to the office of
Wee Tots
and lowered his trouser-seat into the editorial chair. He had slept only fitfully on the plank bed with which the authorities had provided him and he had had practically no breakfast, but he felt that the vicissitudes through which he had passed had made him a deeper, graver man, which is always a good thing. With a light heart he addressed himself to the morning's correspondence, collecting material for the Uncle Joe To His Chickabiddies page which was such a popular feature of the paper, and he was reading a communication from Tommy Bootle (aged twelve) about his angora rabbit Kenneth, when the telephone rang and Mrs. Bingo's voice floated over the wire.

"Bingo?"

"Oh, hullo, light of my life. When did you get back?"

"Just now."

"How did everything go?"

"Quite satisfactorily."

"Did Ma Purkiss make a speech?"

"Yes, Mrs. Purkiss spoke."

"Lots of the old college chums there, I suppose?"

"Quite a number."

"Must have been nice for you meeting them. No doubt you got together and swopped reminiscences of midnight feeds in the dormitory and what the Games Mistress said when she found Maud and Angela smoking cigars behind the gymnasium."

"Quite. Bingo, have you seen the
Mirror
this morning?"

"I have it on my desk, but I haven't looked at it yet."

"Turn to Page Eight," said Mrs. Bingo, and there was a click as she rang off.

Bingo did as directed, somewhat puzzled by her anxiety to have him catch up with his reading and also by a certain oddness he had seemed to detect in her voice. Usually it was soft and melodious, easily mistaken for silver bells ringing across a sunlit meadow in Springtime, but in the recent exchanges he thought he had sensed in it a metallic note, and it perplexed him.

But not for long. Scarcely had his eyes rested on the page she had indicated when all was made clear to him and the offices of
Wee Tots
did one of those
entrechats
which Nijinsky used to do in the Russian ballet. It was as if the bomb Miss Murgatroyd disliked so much had been touched off beneath his swivel chair.

Page Eight was mostly pictures. There was one of the Prime Minister opening a bazaar, another of a resident of Chipping Norton who had just celebrated his hundredth birthday, a third of students rioting in Pernambuco or Mozambique or somewhere. But the one that interested him was the one at the foot of the page. It depicted a large policeman with a girl of singular beauty in one hand and in the other a young man whose features, though somewhat distorted, he was immediately able to recognize. Newspaper photographs tend occasionally to be blurred, but this one was a credit to the artist behind the camera.

It was captioned

THE HON. MABEL MURGATROYD AND FRIENDS

and he sat gazing at it with his eyes protruding in the manner popularised by snails, looking like something stuffed by a taxidermist who had learned his job from a correspondence course and had only got as far as Lesson Three. He had had nasty jars before in his time, for he was one of those unfortunate young men whom Fate seems to enjoy kicking in the seat of the pants, but never one so devastating as this.

Eventually life returned to the rigid limbs, and there swept over him an intense desire for a couple of quick ones. He had got, he realized, to do some very quick thinking and he had long ago learned the lesson that nothing so stimulates the thought processes as a drop of the right stuff. To grab his. hat and hasten to the Drones Club was with him the work of an instant. It was not that the stuff was any righter at the Drones than at a dozen other resorts that sprang to the mind, but at these ready money had to pass from hand to hand before the pouring started and at the Drones there were no such tedious formalities. You just signed your name.

It occurred to him, moreover, that at the Drones he might find someone who would have something to suggest. And as luck would have it the first person he ran into in the bar was Freddie Widgeon, not only one of the finest minds in the club but a man who all his adult life had been thinking up ingenious ways of getting himself out of trouble with the other sex.

He related his story, and Freddie, listening sympathetically, said he had frequently been in the same sort of jam himself. There was, he said, only one thing to do, and Bingo said that one would be ample.

"I am assuming," said Freddie, "that you haven't the nerve to come the heavy he-man over the little woman?"

"The what?"

"You know. Looking her in the eye and making her wilt. Shoving your chin out and saying 'Oh, yeah?' and 'So what?'."

Bingo assured him that he was not in error. The suggested procedure was not within the range of practical politics.

"I thought not," said Freddie. "I have seldom been able to function along those lines myself. It's never easy for the man of sensibility and refinement. Then what you must do is have an accident."

Bingo said he did not grasp the gist, and Freddie explained.

"You know the old gag about women being tough babies in the ordinary run of things but becoming ministering angels when pain and anguish wring the brow. There's a lot in it. Arrange a meeting with Mrs. Bingo in your normal robust state with not even a cold in the head to help you out, and she will unquestionably reduce you to a spot of grease. But go to her all bunged up with splints and bandages, and her heart will melt. All will be forgiven and forgotten. She will cry 'Oh, Bingo darling!' and weep buckets."

Bingo passed a thoughtful finger over his chin.

"Splints?"

"That's right."

"Bandages?"

"Bandages is correct. If possible, bloodstained. The best thing to do would be to go and get knocked over by a taxi cab."

"What's the next best thing?"

"I have sometimes obtained excellent results by falling down a coal hole and spraining an ankle, but it's not easy to find a good coal hole these days, so I think you should settle for the taxi."

"I'm not sure I like the idea of being knocked over by a taxi."

"You would prefer a lorry?"

"A lorry would be worse."

"Then I'll tell you what. Go back to the office and drop a typewriter on your foot."

"But I should break a toe."

"Exactly. You couldn't do better. Break two or even three. No sense in spoiling the ship for a ha'porth of tar."

A shudder passed through Bingo.

"I couldn't do it, Freddie old man," he said, and Freddie clicked his tongue censoriously.

"You're a difficult fellow to help. Then the only thing I can suggest is that you have a double."

"I've already had one."

"I don't mean that sort of double. Tell Mrs. Bingo that there must be someone going about the place so like you that the keenest eye is deceived."

Bingo blossomed like a flower in June. Almost anything that did not involve getting mixed up with taxi cabs and typewriters would have seemed good to him, and this seemed particularly good.

"This business of doubles," Freddie continued, "is happening every day. You read books about it. I remember one by Phillips Oppenheim where there was an English bloke who looked just like a German bloke, and the English bloke posed as the German bloke or vice versa, I've forgotten which."

"And got away with it?"

"With his hair in a braid."

"Freddie," said Bingo, "I believe you've hit it. Gosh, it was a stroke of luck for me running into you.

But, back at the office, he found his enthusiasm waning. Doubts began to creep in, and what he had supposed to be the scheme of a lifetime lost some of its pristine attractiveness. Mrs. Bingo wrote stories about girls who wanted to be loved for themselves alone and strong silent men who went out into the sunset with stiff upper lips, but she was not without a certain rude intelligence and it was more than possible, he felt, that she might fail to swallow an explanation which he could now see was difficult of ingestion. In its broad general principles

"Not while I have my health and strength they won't," said Lord Ippleton.

Bingo saw that nothing was to be gained by pursuing this line of thought. Mabel Murgatroyd's parent was plainly in no mood for abstract discussion of the modern girl. Even at this distance he could hear him gnashing his teeth. Unless it was an electric drill working in the street. He changed the subject.

"I wonder if I could speak to Miss Murgatroyd?"

"Stop wondering."

"I can't."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I've shipped her off to her aunt in Edinburgh with strict instructions to stay there till she's got some sense into her fat little head."

"Oh, gosh!"

"Oh what?"

"Gosh."

"Why do you say 'Gosh'?"

"I couldn't help it."

"Don't be an ass. Anybody can help saying 'Gosh'. It only requires will-power. What are you, a reporter?"

"No, just a friend."

Bingo had never heard the howl of a timber wolf which had stubbed its toe on a rock while hurrying through a Canadian forest, but he thought it must closely resemble the sound that nearly cracked his ear drum.

"A friend, eh? You are, are you? No doubt one of the friends who have led the ivory-skulled little moron astray and started her off on all this escutcheon-blotting. I'd like to skin the lot of you with a blunt knife and dance on your remains. Bounders with beards! You have a beard, of course?"

"No, no beard."

"Don't try to fool me. All you ghastly outsiders are festooned with the fungus. You flaunt it. Why the devil don't you shave?"

"I shave every day."

"Is that so? Did you shave today?"

"As a matter of fact, no. I hadn't time. I had rather a busy morning."

"Then will you do me a personal favour?"

"Certainly, certainly."

"Go back to whatever germ-ridden den you inhabit and do it now. And don't use a safety razor, use one of the old fashioned kind, because then there's a sporting chance that you may sever your carotid artery, which would be what some writer fellow whose name I can't recall described as a consummation devoutly to be wished. Goodbye."

It was in thoughtful mood that Bingo replaced the receiver. He fancied that he had noticed an animosity in Lord Ippleton's manner—guarded, perhaps, but nevertheless unmistakeably animosity—and he was conscious of that feeling of frustration which comes to those who have failed to make friends and influence people. But this was not the main cause of his despondency. What really made the iron enter into his soul was the realization that with Mabel Murgatroyd in Edinburgh, not to return till the distant date when she had got some sense into her fat little head, he had lost his only chance of putting across that double thing and making it stick. It was, he now saw more clearly than ever, not at all the sort of story a young husband could hope to make convincing without the co-operation of a strong supporting cast. Phillips Oppenheim might have got away with it, but that sort of luck does not happen twice.

It really began to seem as if Freddie Widgeon's typewriter-on-toe sequence was his only resource, and he stood for some time eyeing the substantial machine on which he was wont to turn out wholesome reading matter for the chicks. He even lifted it and held it for a moment poised. But he could not bring himself to let it fall. He hesitated and delayed. If Shakespeare had happened to come by with Ben Jonson, he would have nudged the latter in the ribs and whispered "See that fellow, rare Ben? He illustrates exactly what I was driving at when I wrote that stuff about letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would' like the poor cat in the adage."