Blott on the Landscape

  Certainly Hoskins sounded peculiar when Sir Giles finally got through to him. ‘Deputy Field—’ he began, but Sir Giles interrupted.

  ‘Don’t give me that crap, Hoskins!’ he shouted. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at? Some sort of war game?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hoskins looking nervously out of the window. There was a deafening roar as a charge of dynamite went off.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ yelled Sir Giles.

  ‘Just a near miss,’ said Hoskins as small fragments of rock rattled on the roof of the caravan.

  ‘You can cut the wisecracks,’ said Sir Giles, ‘I didn’t call you to talk nonsense. There’s been a change of plan. The motorway has got to be stopped. I’ve decided …’

  ‘Stopped?’ Hoskins interrupted him. ‘You haven’t a celluloid rat’s hope in hell of stopping this little lot now. We’re advancing into the Gorge at the rate of a hundred yards a day.’

  ‘Into the Gorge?’

  ‘You heard me,’ said Hoskins.

  ‘Good God,’ said Sir Giles. ‘What the hell’s been going on? Has Dundridge gone off his head or something?’

  ‘You could put it like that,’ said Hoskins hesitantly. The Controller Motorways Midlands had just come into the caravan covered in dust and was taking off his helmet.

  ‘Well, stop him!’ shouted Sir Giles.

  ‘I’m afraid that is impossible, sir,’ said Hoskins modulating his tone to indicate that he was no longer alone. ‘I will make a note of your complaint, and forward it to the appropriate authorities.’

  ‘You’ll do more than that,’ bawled Sir Giles, ‘you’ll use those photographs. You will—’

  ‘I understand the police deal with these matters, sir,’ said Hoskins. ‘As far as we are concerned I can only suggest that you use an incinerator.’

  ‘An incinerator? What the hell do I want with an incinerator?’

  ‘I have found that the best method is to burn that sort of rubbish. The answer is in the negative.’

  ‘In the negative?’

  ‘Quite, sir,’ said Hoskins. ‘I have found that it avoids the health risk to incinerate inflammable material. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have someone with me.’ Hoskins rang off and Sir Giles sat back and deciphered his message.

  ‘Incinerators. Police. Negative. Health risks.’ These were the words Hoskins had emphasized and it dawned on Sir Giles that all hope of influencing Dundridge had gone up in flames. He was particularly alarmed by the mention of the police. ‘Good God, that little bastard Dundridge has been to the cops,’ he muttered, and suddenly recalled that his safe at Handyman Hall contained evidence that hadn’t been incinerated. Maud was sitting on a safe containing photographs that could send him to prison. ‘Inflammable material. That bitch can get me five years,’ he thought. ‘I’d like to incinerate her.’ Incinerate her? Sir Giles stared into space. He had suddenly seen a way out of all his problems.

  He picked up a pencil and detailed the advantages. Number One, he would destroy the evidence of his attempt to blackmail Dundridge. Number Two, he would get rid of those photographs Blott had taken of him in Mrs Forthby’s flat. Number Three, by acting before Maud could divorce him he would still be the owner of the ashes of Handyman Hall and liable for the insurance money and possibly the compensation from the motorway. Number Four, if Maud were to die … Number Four was a particularly attractive prospect and just the sort of accident he had been hoping for.

  He picked up the sheet of paper and carried it across to the fireplace and lit a match. As the paper flared up Sir Giles watched it with immense satisfaction. There was nothing like a good fire for cleansing the past. All he needed now was a perfect alibi.

  At Handyman Hall Lady Maud surveyed her handiwork with equal satisfaction. The fence had been finished in ten days, the lions, giraffes, and the rhinoceros had been installed and the ostriches were accommodated in the old tennis court. It was really very pleasant to wander round the house and watch the lions padding across the park or lying under the trees.

  ‘It gives one a certain sense of security,’ she told Blott, whose movements had been restricted to the kitchen garden and who complained that the rhinoceros was mucking up the lawn.

  ‘It may give you a sense of security,’ said Blott, ‘but the postman has other ideas. He won’t come further than the Lodge and the milkman won’t either.’

  ‘What nonsense,’ said Lady Maud. ‘The way to deal with lions is to put a bold front on and look them squarely in the eyes.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ said Blott, ‘but that rhino needs spectacles.’

  ‘The thing with rhinos,’ said Lady Maud, ‘is to move at right angles to their line of approach.’

  ‘That didn’t work with the butcher’s van. You’ve no idea what it did to his back mudguard.’

  ‘I have a very precise idea. Sixty pounds’ worth of damage but it didn’t charge the van.’

  ‘No,’ said Blott, ‘it just leant up against it and scratched its backside.’

  ‘Well at least the giraffes are behaving themselves,’ said Lady Maud.

  ‘What’s left of them,’ said Blott.

  ‘What do you mean, “What’s left of them”?’

  ‘Well, there’s only two left.’

  ‘Two? But there were four. Where have the other two got to?’

  ‘You had better ask the lions about that,’ Blott told her. ‘I have an idea they rather like giraffes for dinner.’

  ‘In that case we had better order another hundred-weight of meat from the butcher’s. We can’t have them eating one another.’

  She strode off across the lawn imperiously, stopping to prod the rhinoceros with her shooting stick. ‘I won’t have you in the rockery,’ she told it. Outside the kitchen door a lion was snoozing in the sun. ‘Be off with you, you lazy beast.’ The lion got up and slunk away.

  Blott watched with admiration and then shut the door of the kitchen garden. ‘What a woman,’ he murmured and went back to the tomatoes. He was interrupted five minutes later by a dull thump from the Gorge. Blott looked up. They were getting nearer. It was about time he did something about that business. So far his efforts had been confined to moving Dundridge’s mobile headquarters about the countryside at night and altering the position of the pegs that marked the route so that had the motorway proceeded as the contractors desired it would have been several degrees off course. Unfortunately Dundridge’s insistence on random construction had defeated Blott’s efforts. His only success had been the felling of all the trees in Colonel Chapman’s orchard which was a quarter of a mile away from the supposed route of the motorway. Blott was rather proud of that. The Colonel had raised Cain with the authorities and had been promised additional compensation. A few more miscalculations like that and there would be a public outcry. Blott applied his mind to the problem.

  That night Blott visited the Royal George at Guildstead Carbonell for the first time in several weeks.

  Mrs Wynn greeted him enthusiastically. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said, ‘I thought you’d given me up for good.’

  Blott said he had been busy. ‘Busy?’ said Mrs Wynn. ‘You’re one to talk. I’ve been rushed off my feet with all the men from the motorway. They come in here at lunch and they’re back at night. I tell you, I can’t remember anything like it.’

  Blott looked round the bar and could see what she meant. The pub was filled with construction workers. He helped himself to a pint of Handyman Brown and went to a table in the corner. An hour later he was deep in conversation with the driver of a bulldozer.

  ‘Must be interesting work knocking things down,’ said Blott.

  ‘The pay’s good,’ said the driver.

  ‘I imagine you’ve got to be a real expert to demolish a big building like Handyman Hall.’

  ‘I don’t know. The bigger they is the harder they falls is what I say,’ said the driver, flattered by Blott’s interest.

  ‘Let me get you another pint,’ said Blott
.

  Three pints later the driver was explaining the niceties of demolition to a fascinated Blott.

  ‘It’s a question of hitting the corner stone,’ he said. ‘Find that, swing the ball back and let it go and Bob’s your uncle, the whole house is down like a pack of cards. I tell you I’ve done that more times than you’ve had hot dinners.’

  Blott said he could well believe it. By closing time he knew a great deal about demolition work and the driver said he looked forward to meeting him again. Blott helped Mrs Wynn with washing the glasses and then did his duty by her but his heart wasn’t in it. Mrs Wynn noticed it.

  ‘You’re not your usual self tonight,’ she said when they had finished. Blott grunted. ‘Mind you I can’t say I’m any great shakes myself. My legs are killing me. What I need is a holiday.’

  ‘Why don’t you take a day off?’ said Blott.

  ‘How can I? Who would look after the customers?’

  ‘I would,’ said Blott.

  At five he was up and cycling down the main street of Guildstead Carbonell towards Handyman Hall. At seven he had fed the lions and when Lady Maud came down to breakfast Blott was waiting for her.

  ‘I’m taking the day off,’ he announced.

  ‘You’re what?’ said Lady Maud. Blott didn’t take days off.

  ‘Taking the day off. And I’ll need the Land-Rover.’

  ‘What for?’ said Lady Maud who wasn’t used to being told by her gardener that he needed her Land-Rover.

  ‘Never you mind,’ said Blott.

  ‘No names, no pack drill.’ ‘No names, no pack drill? Are you feeling all right?’

  ‘And a note for Mr Wilkes at the Brewery to say he’s to give me Very Special Brew.’

  Lady Maud sat down at the kitchen table and looked at him doubtfully. ‘I don’t like the sound of this, Blott. You’re up to something.’

  ‘And I don’t like the sound of that,’ said Blott as a dull thump came from the Gorge. Lady Maud nodded. She didn’t like the sound of it either.

  ‘Has it got anything to do with that?’ she asked. Blott nodded. ‘In that case you can have what you want but I don’t want you getting into any trouble on my account, you understand.’

  She went through to the study and wrote a note to Mr Wilkes, the manager of the Handyman Brewery in Worford, telling him to give Blott whatever he asked for.

  At ten Blott was in the manager’s office.

  ‘Very Special?’ said Mr Wilkes. ‘But Very Special is for special occasions. Coronations and suchlike.’

  ‘This is a special occasion,’ said Blott.

  Mr Wilkes looked at the letter again. ‘If Lady Maud says so, I suppose I must, but it’s strictly against the law to sell Very Special. It’s twenty per cent proof.’

  ‘And ten bottles of vodka,’ said Blott. They went down to the cellar and loaded the Land-Rover.

  ‘Forget you’ve seen me,’ Blott said when they had finished.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said the manager, ‘this is all bloody irregular.’

  *

  Blott drove to the Royal George and saw Mrs Wynn on to the bus. Then he went back into the pub and set to work. By lunchtime he had emptied one barrel of Handyman Bitter down the drain and had refilled it with bottles of Very Special and five bottles of vodka. He tried it out on a couple of customers and was delighted with the result. During the afternoon he had a nap and then took a stroll through the village and up past the Bullett-Finches’ house. It was a large house in mock Tudor set back from the road and with a very fine garden. Outside the gates a sign announced that Finch Grove was For Sale. The Bullett-Finches didn’t fancy living within a hundred yards of a motorway. Blott didn’t blame them. Then he walked back through the village and looked at Miss Percival’s cottage. That wasn’t for sale. It was due for demolition and Miss Percival had already vacated it. A large crane with a steel ball on the end of its arm stood nearby. Blott climbed into the driver’s seat and played with the controls. Then he walked back to the pub and sat behind the bar, waiting for opening time.

  22

  Sir Giles busied himself in Mrs Forthby’s flat. He altered the date on the clock on the mantelpiece. He turned the pages of the Radio Times to the following day and hid the newspaper. Several times he asserted that today was Wednesday.

  ‘That just goes to show what a muddlehead I am,’ said Mrs Forthby, who was busy making supper in the kitchen, ‘I could have sworn it was Tuesday.’

  ‘Tomorrow’s Thursday,’ said Sir Giles.

  ‘If you say so, dear,’ said Mrs Forthby. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what day of the week it is. My memory is simply shocking.’

  Sir Giles nodded approvingly. It was on Mrs Forthby’s appalling memory that his alibi depended, that and sleeping pills. ‘Silly old bitch won’t miss a day in her life,’ he thought as he crunched six tablets up in the bottom of a glass with the handle of a toothbrush before adding a large tot of whisky. According to his doctor the lethal dose was twelve. ‘Six would probably put you out for twenty-four hours,’ the doctor had told him and twenty-four hours was all Sir Giles needed. He went through to the kitchen and had supper.

  ‘What about a nightcap?’ he said when they had finished.

  ‘You know I never drink,’ said Mrs Forthby.

  ‘You did the other night. You finished half a bottle of cooking brandy.’

  ‘That was different. I wasn’t feeling myself.’

  It was on the tip of Sir Giles’ tongue to tell her that she wouldn’t feel anything let alone herself by the time she had finished that little lot but he restrained himself. ‘Cheers,’ he said, and finished his glass.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Mrs Forthby doubtfully and sipped her whisky.

  Sir Giles poured himself another glass. ‘Down the hatch,’ he said.

  Mrs Forthby took another sip. ‘You know I could have sworn today was Tuesday,’ she said.

  Sir Giles could have sworn, period. ‘Today is Wednesday.’

  ‘But I’ve got a hair appointment on Wednesday. If today is Wednesday I must have missed it.’

  ‘You have,’ said Sir Giles truthfully. Whatever happened, Mrs Forthby had missed her hair appointment. He raised his glass. ‘Mud in your eye.’

  ‘Mud in your eye,’ said Mrs Forthby and sipped again. ‘If today is Wednesday, tomorrow must be Thursday in which case I’ve got a pottery class in the afternoon.’

  Sir Giles poured himself another whisky hurriedly. It was on just such insignificant details that the best plans foundered. ‘I was thinking of going down to Brighton for the weekend,’ he improvised. ‘I thought you would like that.’

  ‘With me?’ said Mrs Forthby, her eyes shining.

  ‘Just us two together,’ said Sir Giles.

  ‘Oh, you are thoughtful.’

  ‘A votre santé,’ said Sir Giles.

  Mrs Forthby finished her drink and got to her feet. ‘It’s Nurse Catheter tonight, isn’t it?’ she said, moving unsteadily towards him.

  ‘Forget it,’ said Sir Giles. ‘I’m not in the mood.’ Nor was Mrs Forthby. He carried her through to the bedroom and put her to bed. When he left the flat five minutes later she was snoring soundly. By the time she woke up he would be back and in bed beside her. He got into his car and began the drive north.

  At the Royal George in Guildstead Carbonell Blott’s experiment in induced narcosis proceeded more slowly but with gayer results. By nine o’clock the pub was filled with singing dumper drivers, two fights had erupted and died down before they could get well under way, a darts match had had to be cancelled when a non-participant had been pinned by his ear to last year’s calendar, and two consenting adults had been ejected from the Gents by Blott and Mrs Wynn’s Alsatian. By ten o’clock Blott’s promise that the Very Special was needed for a special occasion had been fulfilled to the letter. Two more fights, this time between locals and the men from the motorway, had started and had not died down but had spread to the Saloon Bar where the operator of a piledriver was att
empting to demonstrate his craft to the fiancée of the secretary of the Young Conservatives, the darts match had been resumed using a portrait of Sir Winston Churchill as a dartboard, and half a dozen bulldozer drivers were giving an exhibition of clog dancing on the bar-billiards table. In between whiles Blott had coaxed Mr Edwards, who claimed to have knocked down more houses than Blott had had hot dinners, into a nicely belligerent mood.

  ‘I can knock any damned house you like to show me down with one bloody blow,’ he shouted.

  Blott raised an eyebrow. ‘Tell me another one.’

  ‘I tell you I can,’ Mr Edwards asserted. ‘One knock in the right place and Bob’s your uncle.’

  ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ said Blott, and poured him another pint of Very Special.

  ‘I’ll show you. I’ll bloody show you,’ said Mr Edwards, and took a swig.

  By closing time Very Special had cast if not a healing balm at least a soporific one on the whole proceedings. As the motorway men stumbled off to their cars and the Young Conservatives drove off nursing their wounds, Blott shut up shop and helped Mr Edwards to his feet.

  ‘I tell you I can,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Never,’ said Blott.

  Together they staggered off down the street towards Miss Percival’s cottage, Blott clutching a bottle of vodka and Mr Edwards’ arm.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said Mr Edwards as they crossed the field to the cottage. ‘I’ll fucking show you.’

  He climbed into the crane and started it up. Blott stood behind him and watched.

  ‘Oh what a pity she’s only one titty to bang against the wall,’ Mr Edwards sang as the crane jerked forward through the hedge and into the garden. Behind them the iron ball wobbled and swung. Mr Edwards stopped the crane and adjusted the controls. The arm of the crane swung round and the ball followed. It went wide.

  ‘I thought you said you could do it in one,’ said Blott.

  ‘That,’ said Mr Edwards, ‘was just a practice swing.’ He lowered the crane and a sundial disintegrated. Mr Edwards raised it again.