‘Oh quite,’ said Dundridge.
‘So you go and negotiate all you want but just remember the decision to go through the Gorge is mine and I do not for one moment intend to forgo the pleasure of making it.’
Dundridge went out into the passage and conferred with the Matron.
‘He seems to think someone tried to poison him,’ he said carefully skirting the law of libel. The Matron smiled gently.
‘That’s the concussion,’ she said. ‘He’ll get over that in a day or two.’
Dundridge went out into the Abbey Close past the geriatric patients and wandered disconsolately down the steps and out into Market Street. It didn’t seem likely to him that Lord Leakham would get over his conviction that Lady Maud had tried to poison him and he had a shrewd suspicion that the Judge had in some perverse way enjoyed the contretemps in court and was looking forward to pursuing his vendetta as soon as he was up and about. He was just considering what to do next when he caught sight of his reflection in a shop window. It was not that of a man of authority. There was a sort of dispirited look about it, a hangdog look quite out of keeping with his role as the Minister’s troubleshooter. It was time to take the bull by the horns. He straightened his back, marched across the road to the Post Office and telephoned Handyman Hall. He got Lady Maud and explained that he would like to see Sir Giles.
‘I’m afraid Sir Giles is out just at present,’ she said modulating her tone to suggest a secretary. ‘He’ll be back shortly. Would eleven o’clock be convenient?’
Dundridge said it would. He left the Post Office and threaded his way through the market stalls to the car park to collect his car.
At Handyman Hall Lady Maud congratulated herself on her performance. She was rather looking forward to a private chat with the man from the Ministry. Dundridge, he had said his name was. From the Ministry. Sir Giles had mentioned the fact that someone had been sent up from London on a fact-finding mission. And since Giles had said he would be out until late in the afternoon this seemed an ideal opportunity to provide this Mr Dundridge with facts that would suit her book. She went upstairs to change, and to consider her tactics. She had spiked Lord Leakham’s guns by frontal assault but Dundridge on the phone had sounded far less self-assured than she had expected. It might be better to try persuasion, perhaps even a little charm. It would confuse the issue. Lady Maud selected a cotton frock and dabbed a little lavender water behind her ears. Mr Dundridge would get the meek treatment, the helpless little girl approach. If that didn’t work she could always revert to sterner methods.
In the greenhouse Blott put down the earphones and went back to the broad beans. So an official was coming to see Sir Giles, was he? An official. Blott felt strongly about officials. They had made his early life a misery and he had no time for them. Still, Lady Maud had invited this one to the Hall so presumably she knew what she was doing. It was a pity. Blott would have liked to have been ordered to give this Dundridge the reception he deserved and he was just considering what sort of reception he would have organized for him when Lady Maud came into the garden. Blott straightened up and stared at her. She was wearing a cotton frock and to Blott at least she looked quite beautiful. It was not a notion anyone else would have shared but Blott’s standards of beauty were not determined by fashion. Large breasts, enormous thighs and hips were attributes of a good or at least ample mother, and since Blott had never had a good, ample or even any mother in a post-natal sense he placed great emphasis on these outward signs of potential maternity. Now, standing among the broad beans, he was filled with a sudden sense of desire. Lady Maud in a cotton frock dappled with a floral pattern combined botany with biology. Blott goggled.
‘Blott,’ said Lady Maud, oblivious of the effect she was having, ‘there’s a man from the Ministry of the Environment coming to lunch. I want some flowers in the house. I want to make a good impression on him.’
Blott went into the greenhouse and looked for something suitable while Lady Maud bent low to select a lettuce for lunch. As she did so Blott glanced out of the greenhouse door. It was the turning point in his life. The silent devotion to the Handyman family which had been the passive mainspring of his existence for so long was gone, to be replaced by an active urgency of feeling.
Blott was in love.
9
Dundridge left Worford by the town gate, crossed the river and took the Ottertown road. On his left the Cleene wandered through meadows and on his right the Cleene Hills rose steeply to a wooded crest. He drove for three miles and turned up a side road that was signposted Guildstead Carbonell and found himself in evidently hostile territory. Every barn had the slogan ‘Save the Gorge’ whitewashed on it and there were similar sentiments painted on the road itself. At one point an avenue of beeches had been daubed with letters that spelt out ‘No to the Motorway’ so that as he drove down it Dundridge was left in no doubt that local feeling was against the scheme.
Even without the slogans Dundridge would have been alarmed. The Cleene Forest was nature un-domesticated. There was none of that neatness that he found so reassuring in Middlesex. The hedges were rank, the few farmhouses he passed looked medieval, and the forest itself dense with large trees, humped and gnarled with bracken growing thickly underneath. He was relieved when the road ran into an open valley with hedges and little fields. The respite was brief. At the top of the next hill he came to a crossroads marked by nothing more informative than a decayed gibbet.
Dundridge stopped the car and consulted his map. According to his calculations Guildstead Carbonell lay to the left while in front was the Gorge and Handyman Hall. Dundridge wished it wasn’t. Below him the forest lay thicker than before and the road less metalled, with moss and grass growing down the middle. He drove on for a mile and was beginning to wonder if the map had misled him when the trees thinned and he found himself looking down into the Gorge itself.
He stopped the car and got out. Below him the Cleene tumbled between cliffs overgrown with brambles, ivy and creepers. Ahead lay Handyman Hall. It stood, an amalgam in stone and brick, timber and tile and turret, a monument to all that was most eclectic and least attractive in English architecture. To Dundridge, himself a devotee of function, for whom simplicity was all, it was a nightmare. Ruskin and Morris, Gilbert Scott, Vanbrugh, Inigo Jones and Wren to name but a few had all lent their influence to a building that combined the utility of a water-tower with the homeliness of Wormwood Scrubs. Around it lay a few acres of parkland, a wall, and beyond the wall a circle of hills, heavily wooded. Over the whole scene there lay a sense of isolation. Somewhere to the west there were presumably towns and houses, shops and buses, but to Dundridge it seemed that he was standing on the very edge of civilization if not actually beyond it. With the sinking feeling that he was committing himself to the unknown he got back into the car and drove on, down the hill into the Gorge. Presently he came to a small iron suspension bridge across the river which rattled as he drove over. On the far side something large and strange loomed through the trees. It was the Lodge. Dundridge stopped the car and gaped at the building through the windshield.
Constructed in 1904 to mark the occasion of the visit of Edward the Seventh, the Lodge, in deference to the King’s Francophilia, had been modelled on the Arc de Triomphe. There were differences. The Lodge was slightly smaller, its frieze did not depict scenes of battle, but for all that the resemblance was remarkable and to Dundridge its existence in the heart of Worfordshire came as final proof that whoever had built Handyman Hall had been an architectural kleptomaniac. Above all the Lodge bespoke a lofty arrogance which, coming so shortly after Lord Leakham’s outburst, made a tactful approach all the more necessary. As he stood looking up at it Dundridge was recalled to his task. Some sort of compromise was clearly necessary to avoid his becoming embroiled in an extremely nasty situation. If the Ottertown route was out of the question and he had it on the highest authority that it was, and if the Gorge … There was no if about the Gorge, Dundridge had seen enough to convi
nce him of that, then a third route was imperative. But there was no third route. Dundridge got back into his car and drove thoughtfully through the great arch and as he did so a vision of the third route dawned upon him. A tunnel. A tunnel under the Cleene Hills. A tunnel had all the merits of simplicity, of straightness and, best of all, of leaving undisturbed the hideous landscape that so many irate and influential people inexplicably admired. There would be no more wrangles about property rights, no compensation, no trouble. Dundridge had discovered the ideal solution.
In the entrance hall Lady Maud, radiant in Tootal, lurked among the ferns. High above her head the stained-glass rooflight cast a reddish glow upon the marble staircase and lent a fresh air of apoplexy to the ruddy faces of her ancestors glowering down from the walls. Lady Maud patted her hair in readiness. She had laid her plans. Mr Dundridge would get the gracious treatment, at least to begin with. After that she would see how he responded. As his car crunched on the gravel outside she adjusted her step-in and gave a practice smile to a vase of snapdragons. Then she stepped forward and opened the door.
‘Nincompoop? Nincompoop? Did you say nincompoop?’ said Sir Giles. In his constituency office situated conveniently close to Hoskins’ Regional Planning Board the word had a reassuring ring to it.
‘A perfect nincompoop,’ said Hoskins.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive. A first rate, Grade A nincompoop.’
‘It sounds too good to be true,’ said Sir Giles doubtfully. ‘You can’t always go by appearances. I’ve known some very slippery customers in my time who looked like idiots.’
‘I’m not going by appearances,’ Hoskins said. ‘He doesn’t look an idiot. He is one. Wouldn’t know one end of a motorway from the other.’
Sir Giles considered the statement. ‘I’m not sure I would come to that,’ he said.
‘You know what I mean,’ said Hoskins. ‘He’s no more an expert on motorways than I am.’
Sir Giles pursed his lips. ‘If he’s such a dimwit why did the Minister send him up? He’s given him full authority to negotiate.’
‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, is what I say.’
‘I daresay there’s something in that,’ said Sir Giles. ‘So you don’t think there’s anything to worry about?’
Hoskins smiled. ‘Not a thing in the world. He’ll nosey around a bit and then he will do just what we want. I tell you this bloke takes the biscuit. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.’
Sir Giles considered this mixture of metaphors and found it to his taste. ‘I hear Lord Leakham’s still foaming at the mouth.’
‘He can’t wait to reopen the Inquiry. Says he’s going to put the motorway through the Gorge if it’s the last thing he does.’
‘It probably will be if Maud has anything to do with it,’ said Sir Giles. ‘She’s in a very nasty frame of mind.’
‘There’s nothing much she can do about it once the decision is taken,’ said Hoskins.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’
Sir Giles got up and stared out of the window and considered his alternative plan. ‘You don’t think this fellow Dundridge will advise against the Gorge?’ he asked finally.
‘Lord Leakham wouldn’t listen to him if he did. He’s got it into his head you tried to poison him,’ said Hoskins and went back to his office leaving Sir Giles to ponder on the best-laid plans of mice and men. It was all very well for Hoskins to talk confidently about nincompoops from the Ministry. He had nothing to lose. Sir Giles had. His seat in Parliament for one thing. Well, if the worst came to the worst and Maud carried out her threat he could always get another. It was worth the risk. Reassured by the thought that Lord Leakham had made up his mind to route the motorway through the Gorge Sir Giles went out to lunch.
At Handyman Hall Lady Maud’s gracious approach had worked wonders. Like some delicate plant in need of water, Dundridge had blossomed out. He had come expecting to meet Sir Giles but, after the first shock of finding himself alone in a large house with a large woman had worn off, Dundridge began to enjoy himself. For the first time since he had arrived in Worfordshire he was being taken seriously. Lady Maud treated him as a person of consequence.
‘It is so good to know that you have come to take over from Lord Leakham,’ Lady Maud said as she led him down a corridor to the drawing-room.
Dundridge said he hadn’t actually come to take over. ‘I’m simply here in an advisory capacity,’ he said modestly.
Lady Maud smiled knowingly. ‘Oh quite, and we all know what that means, don’t we?’ she murmured, drawing Dunbridge into a warm complicity he found quite delightful.
Dundridge relaxed on the sofa. ‘The Minister is most anxious that the proposed motorway should fit in with the needs of local residents as much as possible.’
Maud smothered a snarl with another smile. The notion that she was a local resident made her blood boil, but she had set out to humour this snivelling civil servant and humour him she would. ‘And there is the landscape to consider too,’ she said. ‘The Cleene Forest is one of the few remaining examples of virgin woodland left in England. It would be a terrible shame to spoil it with a motorway, don’t you think?’
Dundridge didn’t think anything of the sort but he knew better than to say so, and besides this seemed as good an opportunity as any to test out his theory of a tunnel. ‘I think I’ve found a solution to the problem,’ he said. ‘Of course it’s only an idea, you understand, and it has no official standing, but it should be possible to build a tunnel under the Cleene Hills.’ He stopped. Lady Maud was staring at him intently. ‘Of course, as I say, it’s only an idea …’
Lady Maud had risen and for one terrible moment Dundridge thought she was about to assault him. She lurched forward and took his hand. ‘Oh how wonderful,’ she said. ‘How absolutely brilliant. You dear, dear man,’ and she sat down beside him on the sofa and gazed into his face ecstatically. Dundridge blushed and looked down at his shoes. He was quite unused to married women taking his hand, gazing into his face ecstatically and calling him their dear, dear man. ‘It’s nothing. Only an idea.’
‘A splendid idea,’ said Lady Maud, engulfing him in a blast of lavender water. Out of the corner of his eye Dundridge could see her bosom quivering beneath a nosegay of marigolds. He shrank into the sofa.
‘Of course, there would have to be a feasibility study …’ he began but Lady Maud brushed his remark aside.
‘Of course there would, but that would take time wouldn’t it?’
‘Months,’ said Dundridge.
‘Months!’
‘Six months at least.’
‘Six months!’ Lady Maud relinquished his hand with a sigh and contemplated a respite of six months. In six months so much could happen and if she had anything to do with it a great deal would. Giles would throw his weight behind the tunnel or she would know the reason why. She would drum up support from conservationists across the country. In six months she would do wonders. And she owed it all to this insubstantial little man with plastic shoes. Now that she came to look at him she realized she had misjudged him. There was something almost appealing about his vulnerability. ‘You’ll stay to lunch,’ she said.
‘Well … er … I really …’
‘Of course you will,’ said Lady Maud. ‘I insist. And you can tell Giles all about the tunnel when he gets back this afternoon.’ She rose and, leaving Dundridge to wonder how it was that Sir Giles who had been coming back at eleven had delayed his return until the afternoon, Lady Maud swept from the room. Left to himself, Dundridge sat stunned by the enthusiasm his suggestion had unleashed. If Sir Giles’ reaction was as favourable as that of his wife he would have made some influential friends. And rich ones. He ran his fingers appreciatively over the moulding of a rosewood table. So this was how the other half lived, he thought, before realizing that the cliché was inappropriate. The other two per cent. Useful people to know.
Sir Giles returned from Worford at four to find Lad
y Maud in a remarkably good mood.
‘I had a visit from such a strange young man,’ she told him when he enquired what the matter was.
‘Oh really?’
‘He was called Dundridge. He was from the Ministry of the—’
‘Dundridge? Did you say Dundridge?’
‘Yes. Such a very interesting man …’
‘Interesting? I understood he was a nincom … oh never mind. What did he have to say for himself?’
‘Oh, this and that,’ said Lady Maud, gratified by her husband’s agitation.
‘What do you mean “this and that”?’
‘We talked about the absurdity of putting a motorway through the Gorge,’ said Lady Maud.
‘I suppose he’s in favour of the Ottertown route.’
Lady Maud shook her head. ‘As a matter of fact he isn’t.’
‘He isn’t?’ said Sir Giles, now thoroughly alarmed. ‘What the hell is he in favour of then?’
Lady Maud savoured his concern. ‘He has in mind a third route,’ she said. ‘One that avoids both Ottertown and the Gorge.’
Sir Giles turned pale. ‘A third route? But there isn’t a third route. There can’t be. He’s not thinking of going through the Forest, is he? It’s an area of designated public beauty.’
‘Not through it. Under it,’ said Lady Maud triumphantly.
‘Under it?’
‘A tunnel. A tunnel under the Cleene Hills. Don’t you think that’s a marvellous idea?’
Sir Giles sat down heavily. He was looking quite ill.
‘I said, “Don’t you think that’s a marvellous idea?”’ said Lady Maud.
Sir Giles pulled himself together. ‘Er … What … oh yes … splendid,’ he muttered. ‘Quite splendid.’
‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic,’ said Lady Maud.