Uncle Dynamite (19 page)

The
theory which Lord Ickenham had advanced in extenuation of Pongo’s recent
kissing of this girl whose nose he was now so nearly touching with his own had
not satisfied Bill Oakshott. It might have been as the kindly peer had said, a
mere mannerism, but Bill thought not. The impression he had received on the
previous afternoon had been of a licentious clubman operating on all twelve
cylinders, and that was the impression he received now. And at the thought
that it was in the hands of an all-in Lothario like this that Hermione Bostock
had placed her life’s happiness his sensitive soul quivered like a jelly. The
outlook, to Bill’s mind, was bad.

Pongo
was the first to break an awkward silence.

‘Oh,
hullo,’ he said.

‘Oh,
hullo, sir,’ said Elsie Bean.

‘Oh,
hullo,’ said Bill.

His
manner, as he spoke, was distrait. He was trying to decide whether the fact of
Pongo not being, as he had at one time supposed, off his onion improved the
general aspect of affairs or merely rendered it darker and sadder. It was plain
now that Elsie Bean had been mistaken on the previous day when she had asserted
that the other had said ‘Coo! I think I’ll go to
London
,’ and had driven thither. He had merely, it appeared, taken a short
spin somewhere in his Buffy-Porson, which was quite a reasonable thing to do on
a fine afternoon. But was this good or bad? Bill had said in his haste that
loony libertines are worse than sane ones, but now he was not so sure. It might
be a close thing, but were you not entitled to shudder even more strongly at a
libertine who was responsible for his actions than at one who was not?

On one
point, however, his mind was clear. It was his intention, as soon as they were
alone together, to buttonhole this squire of dames and talk to him like an
elder brother — as, for instance, one could imagine Brabazon-Plank
major
talking
to Brabazon-Plank
minor.

The
opportunity of doing this came earlier than those familiar with Elsie Bean and
her regrettable tendency to be a mixer would have anticipated. It is true that
all her instincts urged the gregarious little soul to stick around and get the
conversation going, but though sometimes failing to see eye to eye with Emily
Post she was not without a certain rudimentary regard for the proprieties, and
her social sense told her that this would not be the done thing. When a
housemaid in curling pins and a kimono finds herself in a drawing-room at one
in the morning with her employer and a male guest, she should as soon as
possible make a decorous exit. This is in Chapter One of all the etiquette
books.

So with
a courteous ‘Well, good night, all,’ she now withdrew. And it was not very long
after the door had closed that Pongo, who had become conscious of a feeling of
uneasiness, as if he were sitting in a draught, was able to perceive what it
was that was causing this. He was being looked at askance.

The
rather delicate enterprise of looking askance at an old boyhood friend is one
that different men embark on in different ways. Bill’s method — for while he
was solid on the point that it was about time that a fearless critic came along
and pointed out to Pongo some of the aspects in which his behaviour deviated
from the ideal, he found it difficult to overcome his natural shyness — was to
turn bright vermilion and allow his eyes to protrude like a snail’s. He also
cleared his throat three times.

Finally
he spoke. ‘Pongo.’

‘Hullo?’

Bill
cleared his throat again.

‘Pongo.’

‘On the
spot.’

Bill
took a turn up and down the room. It was not easy to think of a good opening
sentence, and when you are talking like an elder brother to libertines the
opening sentence is extremely important, if not vital. He cleared his throat
once more.

‘Pongo.’

‘Still
here, old man.’

Bill
cleared his throat for the fifth time, and having replied rather testily in the
negative to Pongo’s query as to whether he had swallowed a gnat or something,
resumed his pacing. This brought his shin into collision with a small chair
which was lurking in the shadows, and the sharp agony enabled him to overcome
his diffidence.

‘Pongo,’
he said, and his voice was crisp and firm, ‘I haven’t mentioned it before,
because the subject didn’t seem to come up somehow, but when I returned from
Brazil the day before yesterday, I was told that you were engaged to my cousin
Hermione.’

‘That’s
right.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I hope
you will be very happy.’

‘You
betcher.’

‘And I
hope — here’s the nub — that you will make
her
happy.’

‘Oh,
rather.’

‘Well,
will you? You say you will, but I’m dashed if I see how it’s going to be done,
if you spend your whole time hobnobbing with housemaids.’

‘Eh?’

‘You
heard.’

‘Hobnobbing
with housemaids?’

‘Hobnobbing
with housemaids.’

The
charge was one which few men would have been able to hear unmoved. Its effect
on Pongo was to make him mix himself another whisky and soda. Grasping this,
like King Arthur brandishing his sword Excalibur, he confronted his accuser
intrepidly and began a spirited speech for the defence.

It was
inaccurate, he pointed out, to say that he spent his whole time hobnobbing with
housemaids. Indeed, he doubted if he could justly be said to hobnob with them
at all. It all depended on what you meant by the expression. To offer a
housemaid a cigarette is not hobbing. Nor, when you light it for her, does that
constitute nobbing. If you happen — by the merest chance — to be in a
drawing-room at one in the morning with a housemaid, you naturally do the civil
thing, behaving like a well-bred English gentleman and putting her at her ease.

You
chat. You pass the time of day. You offer her a gasper. And when she has got
her hooks on it, you light it for her. That, at least, was Pongo’s creed, and
he believed it would have been the creed of Sir Galahad and the Chevalier
Bayard, if he had got the name correctly, neither of whom had to the best of his
knowledge ever been called hobnobbers. He concluded by saying that it was a
pity that some people, whose identity he did not specify, had minds like sinks
and, by the most fortunate of chances remembering a good one at just the right
moment, added that to the pure all things were pure.

It was
a powerful harangue, and it is not surprising that for an instant Bill Oakshott
seemed to falter before it, like some sturdy oak swayed by the storm. But by
dint of thinking of the righteousness of his cause and clearing his throat
again, he recovered the quiet strength which had marked his manner at the
outset.

‘All
that,’ he said coldly, ‘would go a lot stronger with me, if I hadn’t seen you
kissing Elsie Bean yesterday.’

Pongo
stared.

‘Kissing
Elsie Bean?’

‘Kissing
Elsie Bean.’

‘I
never kissed Elsie Bean.’

‘Yes,
you did kiss Elsie Bean. On the front steps.’

Pongo
clapped a hand to his forehead.

‘Good
Lord, yes, so I did. Yes, you’re perfectly right. I did, didn’t I? It all comes
back to me. But only like a brother.’

‘Like a
brother, my foot.’

‘Like a
brother,’ insisted Pongo, as if he had spent his whole life watching brothers
kiss housemaids. ‘And if you knew the circumstances —‘

Bill
raised a hand. He was in no mood to listen, to any tale of diseased motives. He
drew a step nearer and stared bleakly at Pongo, as if the latter had been an
alligator of the Brazilian swamps whom he was endeavouring to quell with the
power of the human eye.

‘Twistleton!’

‘I wish
you wouldn’t call me Twistleton.’

‘I will
call you Twistleton, blast you. And this is what I want to say to you, Twistleton,
by way of a friendly warning which you will do well to bear in mind, if you
don’t want your head pulled off at the roots and your insides ripped from your
body —‘

‘My
dear chap!’

‘— With
my naked hands. Cut it out.’

‘Cut
what out?’

‘You
know what. This Don Juan stuff. This butterfly stuff. This way you’ve got of
flitting from flower to flower and sipping. Lay off it, Twistleton. Give it a
miss. Curb that impulse. Kiss fewer housemaids. Try to remember that you are
engaged to be married to a sweet girl who loves and trusts you.’

‘But —’

Pongo,
about to speak, paused. Bill had raised his hand again.

The
gesture of raising the hand is one which is generally more effective in costume
dramas, where it always suffices to quell the fiercest crowd, than in real
life: and what made it so potent now was probably the size of the hand. To
Pongo’s excited imagination it seemed as large as a ham, and he could not
overlook the fact that it was in perfect proportion with the rest of his
companion’s huge body; a body which even the most casual eye would have
recognized as being composed mostly of rippling muscle. Taking all this into
consideration, he decided to remain silent, and Bill proceeded.

‘I
suppose you’re wondering what business it is of mine?’

‘No,
no. Any time you’re passing —‘

‘Well,
I’ll tell you,’ said Bill, departing from a lifetime’s habit of reticence.
‘I’ve loved Hermione myself for years and years.’

‘No,
really?’

‘Yes.
Years and years and years. I’ve never mentioned it to her.’

‘No?’

‘No. So
she knows nothing about it.’

‘Quite.
She wouldn’t, would she?’

‘And
loving her like this I feel that it is my job to watch over her like a —‘

‘Governess?’

‘Not
governess. Elder brother. To watch over her like an elder brother and protect
her and see that no smooth bird comes along and treats her as the plaything of
an idle hour.’

This
surprised Pongo. The idea of anyone treating Hermione Bostock as the plaything
of an idle hour was new to him.

‘But —‘
he began again, and once more Bill raised his hand, bigger and better than
ever. In a dreamlike way, Pongo found himself wondering what size he took in
gloves.

‘As the
plaything of an idle hour,’ repeated Bill. ‘I don’t object to her marrying
another man —‘

‘Broad-minded.’

‘At
least, I do — it’s agony — but what I mean is, it’s up to her, and if she feels
like marrying another man, right ho! So long as it makes her happy. All I want
is her happiness.’

‘Very
creditable.’

‘But
get this, Twistleton,’ continued Bill, and Pongo, meeting his eye, was reminded
of that of the headmaster of his private school, with whom some fifteen years
previously he had had a painful interview arising from his practice of bringing
white mice into the classroom. ‘This is what I want to drive into your nut. If
I found that that other man was playing fast and loose with her, two-timing
her, Twistleton, breaking her gentle heart by going and whooping it up round
the corner, I would strangle him like a —’

He
paused, snapping his fingers.

‘Dog?’
said Pongo, to help him out.

‘No,
not dog, you silly ass. Who the dickens strangles dogs? Like a foul snake.’

Pongo
might have argued, had he felt like going into the thing, that the number of
people who strangle foul snakes must be very limited, but he did not feel like
going into the thing. In a sort of coma he watched his companion look askance
at him again, stride to the table, mix himself a medium-strong whisky and soda,
drain it and stride to the door. It closed, and he was alone.

And he
was just beginning to lose that stunned sensation of having been beaten over
the head with something hard and solid which must have come to the policeman
whom Elsie Bean’s brother Bert had sloshed on the napper with a blunt
instrument, when from across the hall, from the direction of the room where Sir
Aylmer Bostock kept his collection of African curios, there proceeded an
agonized cry, followed by the sound of voices.

Pongo,
crouched in his armchair like a hare in its form, his eyes revolving and his
heart going into a sort of adagio dance, was unable to catch what these voices
were saying, but he recognized them as those of Sir Aylmer and Lord Ickenham.
The former appeared to be speaking heatedly, while the intonation of the latter
was that of a man endeavouring to pour oil on troubled waters.

Presently
the door of the collection room slammed, and a few moments later that of the
drawing-room opened, and Lord Ickenham walked in.

Whatever the nature of the
exchanges in which he had been taking part, they had done nothing to impair
Lord Ickenham’s calm. His demeanour, as he entered, was the easy, unembarrassed
demeanour of an English peer who has just remembered that there is a decanter
of whisky in a drawing-room. As always at moments when lesser men would have been
plucking at their ties and shaking in every limb, this excellent old man
preserved the suave imperturbability of a fish on a cake of ice. It seemed to
Pongo, though it was difficult for him to hear distinctly, for his heart, in
addition to giving its impersonation of Nijinsky, was now making a noise like a
motor-cycle, that the head of the family was humming light-heartedly.