Galahad at Blandings

  And it was as this disquieting thought flitted through his mind that the door of the study opened and he saw Dame Daphne coming out of it. She disappeared along the corridor and the next moment he was bustling into the study, all brotherly concern.

  ‘Ah, Galahad,’ said Lord Emsworth, glancing up from his pig book, ‘I was hoping you might look in. A most peculiar thing has happened.’

  Gally was in no mood to hear whatever it was that had struck his brother as peculiar.

  Are you crazy, Clarence?’ he said. ‘Have you forgotten what I told you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lord Emsworth, who always did. ‘What was it you told me, Galahad?’

  ‘On no account to allow yourself to be alone with the female whom, but for the luck of the Emsworths, you might have married twenty years ago. Your old girl friend Dame Daphne Winkworth. How could you be so criminally rash as to hobnob with her?’

  ‘But, my dear fellow, how could I help it? She came in. I could hardly forcibly eject her.’

  ‘What were you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, various things.’

  ‘The dear old days?’

  ‘Not to my recollection.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Lord Emsworth searched a treacherous memory. Recalling what anyone had talked about two minutes after the conclusion of the conversation was always a taxing task for him.

  ‘Was any mention made of the Indian Love Lyrics?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She was speaking, now that I remember, of someone called … now what was he called? … yes, I have it, someone called Allsop. The name was strange to me. Have you ever heard of an Allsop?’

  ‘You have a nephew of that name.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘If you don’t believe me, look in Debrett. Wilfred Allsop. What was she saying about Wilfred?’

  As far as I could make out, she is not going to employ him as a music master at her school. She did not like him getting intoxicated.’

  ‘Intoxicated?’ Gally was surprised. Even at the old Pelican it had been unusual for members to get into that condition in the middle of the afternoon. He felt that there must be more in his nephew Wilfred than he had suspected. ‘Blotto, do you mean? Pie-eyed?’

  ‘So she said. It appears that her son… I forget his name…

  ‘Huxley.’

  ‘Of course yes, Huxley. It appears that Huxley was passing along the passage leading to the Garden Suite and Wilfred Allsop was standing there singing drunken songs. And only yesterday the boy had found him drinking heavily by the pig sty. He of course told his mother, and she has cancelled Wilfred Allsop’s appointment. I am not sure that I altogether blame her. She seemed to fear that I might be offended, but I quite see her point of view. I have never been the headmistress of a girls’ school myself, but if I were, I should certainly think twice before engaging an alcoholic music master. Such a bad example for the pupils.’

  ‘And that was all? She didn’t go on to more tender and sentimental subjects?’

  ‘Not as far as I recall. We talked about pigs. She is interested in pigs. I was surprised how interested she seemed to be.’

  Gally’s monocle sprang from its place. He called loudly on the name of his Maker.

  ‘The thin end of the wedge! Clarence, you must get this woman out of the house and speedily, or you haven’t a hope of avoiding matrimony. It’s the case of Puffy Benger all over again. The same insidious tactics. With Puffy the girl started by talking to him about his approach putts — he was a keen golfer — and little by little and bit by bit she went on till she had him reading Pale Hands I Loved Beside The Shalimar to her, and that was the end. I tell you solemnly that unless you act promptly and firmly and heave this woman out on the seat of her pants while there is yet time, you’re a dead snip for the wedding stakes. She’s closing in on you, Clarence, closing in on you.’

  ‘You appal me, Galahad!’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to do. Well, there you are. You have been warned,’ said Gally, and stumped out, feeling that he had done all that man could do to save a loved brother from the fate that is worse than death.

  Closing the door, he remembered that at the start of their interview Clarence had said something that had aroused his curiosity, though at the time more urgent matters had prevented him giving his mind to it. Something about something being peculiar or something peculiar having happened or something. He opened the door and poked his head in.

  ‘What was that you said just now?’ he asked.

  ‘Eh?’ said Lord Emsworth, who appeared dazed.

  ‘The peculiar thing?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Pull yourself together, Clarence. You said a peculiar thing had happened.’

  ‘Oh, that?’ said Lord Emsworth, coming out of his trance. ‘It was nothing really, but it struck me as odd. I was looking through my desk, trying to find the annual report of the Shropshire, Herefordshire and South Wales Pig Breeders’ Association, which Miss Callender must have hidden away somewhere with her infernal tidying up, and I came on a manila envelope. I opened it, and inside it was another envelope addressed to Tipton Plimsoll. I couldn’t imagine how it had come there. So I rang for Miss Callender and asked her to take it to Tipton. I hope the delay in delivering it will not have caused him any inconvenience.’

  CHAPTER 11

  I

  Sandy, meanwhile, though she would have preferred to stay talking to Sam in the billiards room in which he had taken refuge, had gone to her office in the small room off the library to resume her work. She was a conscientious secretary and had always felt that as she was paid a salary, she should try to earn it. It was this defect in her character that so exasperated Lord Emsworth. His ideal secretary would have been one who breakfasted in bed, dozed in an armchair through the morning, played golf in the afternoon and took the rest of the day off.

  But though she had sat down at her desk full of zeal and though there was still plenty to be done in the way of cleaning the Augean stables of her employer’s correspondence, she found a strange difficulty in concentrating on the task in hand. And she had fallen into a trance as deep as any of Lord Emsworth’s, when the bursting open of the door brought her back to the present, and after blinking once or twice she was able to identify her visitor as Gally. It seemed to her that he was agitated about something, and her diagnosis was perfectly correct. It was not easy to make Gally lose his poise. Throughout his long life a great number of people ranging from schoolmasters and Oxford dons to three-card trick men on race trains had attempted the feat, but always without success. It had been left for his brother Clarence to succeed where so many had failed. He spoke without wasting time on preliminaries.

  ‘That letter? Have you got it?’

  ‘What letter? I’ve got about a hundred, and all of them ought to have been answered weeks ago.

  ‘The Tipton letter Clarence gave you.

  ‘Oh, that one? No. I haven’t got it. I gave it to Beach to give to him.’

  ‘Death, damnation and despair!’ said Gally.

  He bounded from the room as rapidly as he had bounded into it. Mystified, Sandy returned to her work and was reading a communication from Grant and Purvis of Wolverhampton, who sold garden supplies and were at a loss to understand why they had received no answer from Lord Emsworth to theirs of the eleventh ult, when he reappeared.

  ‘I thought Beach might still have it,’ he said, ‘but he hasn’t. He gave it to Tipton a quarter of an hour ago. Curses on his impetuosity. May his next bottle of port be corked.’

  No secretary, however conscientious, could have kept her mind on her work with this sort of thing going on. Sandy abandoned Grant and Purvis of Wolverhampton and their petty troubles.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Gally,’ she said, ‘what’s the matter? What’s all this about Tipton’s letter? What’s wrong with him getting his mail?’

  Gally, as a raconteur, had a tendency at times to elaborate his stories in a manner that tried the patience o
f his audience, but in his reply to her query he was admirably succinct, confining himself to the bare facts, and as these facts emerged the colour faded from Sandy’s face and she stared at him with horror in her eyes.

  ‘Oh, Gally!’ she said.

  He nodded a sombre nod.

  ‘You may well say “Oh, Gally!” I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d said “Oh, hell!” The whole infernal mess is my fault. It shows what comes of trying to be clever. I thought it was such a bright idea to slip that letter in among Clarence’s papers. The odds against him ever looking through them were at least a hundred to one, but, as so often happens, the good thing came unstuck. However, all is not yet lost.’

  Sandy stared.

  ‘How can you say that? What can you possibly do?’

  ‘I can get hold of Tipton and tell him the tale and convince him that there is nothing in that letter to cause him concern.’

  ‘If you can do that, you’re a genius.’

  ‘Well, we know that already. I’ll go and find him now.

  The proposed search, however, proved unnecessary. Scarcely had he reached the door when it flew open and the object of it appeared in person.

  ‘Ah, Tipton,’ he said. ‘Come on in. We were just talking about you.’

  Tipton’s demeanour had undergone a great change since Sandy had last seen him. Then the dullest eye would have recognised him as a young man sitting on top of the world. Now it was equally apparent that he had fallen off and come down with a bump. His brow was furrowed, his eyes dub, his mouth drooping. He was looking, in short, just as Sandy had seen him look when he had come to her for sympathy after being reduced to the status of a dear friend by Doris Jimpson, Angela Thurloe, Vanessa Wainwright, Barbara Bessemer, Clarice Burbank and Marcia Ferris.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mr Threepwood,’ he said, evincing no joy at seeing him. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’

  ‘I am,’ Gally assured him, ‘and I may tell you I know all about that letter you have in your hand. Sandy and I were discussing it before you came in.’

  ‘You were? Who told you about it?’

  ‘Oh, various people. I have my spies everywhere. May I look at it?’ said Gally, twitching it from his grasp without going through the formality of waiting for permission. He skimmed it in silence, his brows knitted, and when he came to the end gave a short, contemptuous laugh.

  As I expected,’ he said. ‘An obvious fake.’

  Tipton’s mouth, which emotion had caused to fall open like that of a mail box, opened an inch or two further. Gally’s conversation often had this effect on people.

  ‘You mean it’s a forgery?’ he asked with a sudden gleam of hope. This was something he had not thought of.

  Gally shook his head.

  ‘Not exactly that. The hand is the hand of Veronica, but the voice is the voice of her blasted mother.’

  ‘You mean she made Vee write it?’

  ‘Of course she did. It sticks out a mile. She probably stood over the poor girl with a horsewhip. Hermione dictated every word of this letter. Sift the evidence. On the second page the phrase “incompatibility of temperament” occurs. Do you suppose that that half-witted girl … pardon the word half— witted…’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ said Sandy. ‘Tipton likes her that way.

  ‘So do I. So do we all. It’s part of her charm. It’s what endears her to everyone. If a girl as beautiful as she is had any brains, the mixture would be too rich. Where was I?’

  ‘You broke off on the word “half-witted”.’

  ‘Ah yes. What I was going to say was that it is unbelievable that Veronica not only knows what incompatibility of temperament means, but is able to spell it. I yield to no one in my appreciation of her many excellent qualities, but her best friend would have to admit that she is about as dumb a brick as ever had a windswept hair-do, completely baffled by anything over two syllables. Look, too, at that “distressed” on page one. Is it conceivable that she would have put two s’s in it if she had not had a mother to guide her? And another thing. Mark how wobbly the writing is. She was finding it hard to bring herself to push the pen. See that blotch that looks as if a wet fly had walked across the paper? An obvious tear drop. She might allow herself to be coerced into taking dictation, but she was dashed if anyone was going to stop her weeping bitterly. What we have before us, in short, is a communiqué from a girl whose heart is breaking with every word she is forced to write, but one who all her life has done what Mother told her to. I have watched Veronica ripen from infancy to womanhood, and if there was a single moment during those years when Hermione allowed her to call her soul her own, it escaped my notice. Ignore this letter is my advice to you, Tipton, my boy. Wash it completely from your mind.’

  He probably had more to say, for he was a man who always had more to say, but Tipton rose to a point of order.

  ‘But it doesn’t make sense.

  ‘What doesn’t?’

  ‘Her mother twisting Vee’s arm and making her write the thing. She was tickled to death when we got engaged.’

  ‘Ah, but that was before you started going about the place telling everyone you had lost all your money. Hermione heard it from my brother Clarence, and it radically altered her views on your suitability as a son-in-law. I have no doubt that Veronica loves you for yourself alone, but Hermione doesn’t.’

  Tipton had begun to bloom like a flower beneath the rays of the sun, or perhaps it would be better to say like a string bean under those conditions.

  ‘Then you think —?‘

  ‘— That Veronica’s sentiments towards you have not changed? I’m sure of it. I am vastly mistaken if you are not still the cream in her coffee and the salt in her stew, as the song says. Five will get you ten if you care to bet against it. Go and get her on the phone now and coo to her, and see if she doesn’t coo right back at you. And when the voice offstage asks you if you want another three minutes, take them and blow the expense. There’s a telephone in the library,’ he would have added, but Tipton had already flashed from the room.

  Sandy closed the door behind him. She looked at Gally with awe.

  ‘So now I know what telling the tale means!’

  A very minor effort,’ said Gally modestly. ‘You should have caught me in my prime. One loses something of one’s magic over the years. Still I think I accomplished my objective, don’t you?’

  As far as Tippy is concerned, yes. But what happens when he gets her on the phone and she says she doesn’t love him?’

  ‘She won’t. I cannot picture any niece of mine not loving someone as rich as he is.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s only his money that’s the attraction, do you?’

  ‘Certainly not. They’re soul mates. She has about as much brain as a retarded billiards ball, and he approximately the same. It’s the ideal union and I am gratified that I have been able to do my little bit to push it along. Curious what a glow it gives one to see the young folk getting together. Which reminds me. I want to see Tipton about Wilfred Allsop.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s lost his job, and I am hoping to persuade Tipton to find him another.’

  ‘You’ll persuade him.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Not a chance of him resisting when you start to tell the tale. You ought to have been a confidence man, Gally.’

  ‘So others have told me,’ said Gally complacently. ‘I have always had that ability to touch the human heart strings. Why, in my early days, when I was at the top of my form, I have sometimes made bookies cry.’

  II

  The library was empty when he reached it, and he presumed that Tipton, having concluded a satisfactory talk with Veronica, had decided to join her in London without delay and had gone to the garage to get his car. The place to catch him would be on the drive outside the front door, and he made his way thither.

  It was now getting on for the hour of the evening cocktail and a man less dedicated than Gally to the service of his fellow
s might have given up the idea of interviewing Tipton on Wilfred Allsop’s behalf and hurried indoors. But where it was a matter of doing someone a good turn he was always willing to face privations. He hoped, however, that Tipton would not keep him lingering here too long, for already he was conscious of a dryness of the thorax which only a prompt martini could correct, and at this moment, as if having divined his thoughts by extrasensory perception, the man he wanted came bowling up in his Rolls Royce.

  A glance at him was enough to tell Gally that his recent telephone conversation with Veronica Wedge must have taken place in what reporters of conferences between foreign ministers describe as an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality, for his grin was the grin of a young man without a care in the world and he alighted from the car with a lissom leap that told its own story.

  ‘Hello, Mr Threepwood,’ he carolled. ‘I’m just off to London.’

  ‘To see the little woman?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I take it, then, that the two bob or whatever it was that you spent on that telephone call was not wasted. You found Veronica in genial mood?’

  ‘You betcher.’

  And the wedding will proceed as planned?’

  ‘Curtain goes up the day after tomorrow. Apparently you have to let these registrar birds have a day’s notice.’

  ‘That’s to give them time to get over the shock of meeting the bridegroom.’

  ‘I suppose they get all sorts?’

  ‘Yes, it must be a wearing life. How about your witness?’

  ‘That’s all laid on. I’m taking Willie Allsop with me. He’s up in his room, packing.’

  ‘Ah? Well, before he arrives I should like to talk to you about Wilfred. Are you aware that he has lost his job?’

  ‘I hadn’t a notion. You mean the Winkworth woman isn’t going to hire him as a music teacher?’

  ‘No, she has cancelled the appointment and he is at liberty. It appears that she was tipped off that he had been singing drunken songs in the corridor.’