Blott On The Landscape (9 page)

In the entrance hall Lady Maud, radiant in Tootal, lurked among the ferns. High above her head the stained-glass roof-light 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 re-open the Enquiry. 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 Dundridge 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 Lady 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.

“It’s just that I wouldn’t have thought it was financially viable,” Sir Giles said. “The cost would be enormous. I can’t see the Ministry taking to the idea at all readily.”

“I can,” said Lady Maud, “with a little prodding.” She went out through the french windows on to the terrace and looked lovingly across the park. With Dundridge’s help she had solved one problem. The house had been saved. There remained the question of an heir and it had just occurred to her that here again Dundridge might prove invaluable. Over lunch he had waxed quite eloquent about his work. Once or twice he had mentioned cementation. The word had struck a chord in her. Now as she leant over the balustrade and stared into the depths of the pinetum it returned to her insistently. “Sementation,” she murmured, “sementation.” It was a new word to her and strangely technical for such an intimate act, but Lady Maud was in no mood to quibble.

Sir Giles was. He waddled off to the study and phoned Hoskins. “What’s all this about that bastard Dundridge being a nincompoop?” he snarled. “Do you know what he’s come up with now? A tunnel. You heard me. A bloody tunnel under the Cleene Hills.”

“A tunnel?” said Hoskins, “that’s out of the question. They can’t put a tunnel under the Forest.”

“Why not? They’re putting one under the blasted Channel. They can put tunnels wherever they bloody well want to these days.”

“I know that, but it would be cost-prohibitive,” said Hoskins.

“Cost-prohibitive my arse. If this sod goes round bleating about tunnels he’ll whip up support from every environmental crank in the country. He’s got to be stopped.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Hoskins doubtfully.

“You’ll do better than that,” Sir Giles snarled. “You get him on to the idea of Ottertown.”

“But what about the seventy-five council houses -“

“Bugger the seventy-five council houses. Just get him off the bloody tunnel.” Sir Giles put down the phone and stared out of the window vindictively. If he didn’t do something drastic he would be saddled with Handyman Hall. And with Lady Maud to boot. He got up and kicked the wastepaper basket into the corner.

Dundridge drove back to Worford with no thought for the landscape. His encounter with Lady Maud had left him stunned and with his sense of self-importance greatly inflated. Lunch had been most enjoyable and Dundridge with two large gins inside him had found Lady Maud a most appreciative audience. She had listened to his exposition of the theory of non-interruptive constant-flow transportation with an evident fervour usually quite absent in his audience and Dundridge had found her enthusiasm extraordinarily refreshing. Moreover she exuded confidence, a supreme self-confidence which was contagious and which exerted an enormous fascination over him. In spite of her lack of symmetry, of beauty, in spite of the manifest discrepancy between her physique and that of the ideal woman of his imagination, he had to admit that she held charms for him. After lunch she had shown him over the house and garden and Dundridge had followed her from room to room with a quite inexplicable sense of weak-kneed excitement. Once when he had stumbled in the rockery Lady Maud had taken his arm and Dundridge had felt limp with pleasure. Again when he had squeezed past her in the doorway of the bathroom he had been conscious of a delicious passivity. By the time he left the house he felt quite childishly happy. He was appreciated. It made all the difference.

He got back to the Handyman Arms to find Hoskins waiting for him in the lounge.

“Just thought I’d drop in to see how you were getting on.”

“Fine. Fine. Just fine,” said Dundridge.

“Got on all right with Leakham?”

The warm glow in Dundridge cooled. “I can’t say I liked his attitude,” he said. “He seems determined to go ahead with the Gorge route. He has evidently developed a quite irrational hatred for Lady Maud. I must say I find his attitude inexplicable. She seems a perfectly charming woman to me.”

Hoskins stared at him incredulously. “She does?”

“Delightful,” said Dundridge, the warm glow returning gently.

“Delightful?”

“Charming,” said Dundridge dreamily.

“Good God,” said Hoskins unable to contain his astonishment any longer. The notion that anyone could find Lady Maud charming and delightful was quite beyond him. He looked at Dundridge with a new interest. “She’s a bit large, don’t you think?” he suggested.

“Comely,” said Dundridge benevolently. “Just comely.”

Hoskins shuddered and changed the subject. “About this tunnel,” he began. Dundridge looked at him in surprise.

“How did you hear about that?”

“News travels fast in these parts.”

“It must,” said Dundridge, “I only mentioned it this morning.”

“You’re not seriously proposing to recommend the construction of a tunnel under the Cleene Hills, are you?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Dundridge, “it seems a sensible compromise.”

“A bloody expensive one,” said Hoskins, “it would cost millions and take years to put through.”

“At least it would avoid another riot. I came up here to try to find a solution that would be acceptable to all parties. It seems to me that a tunnel would be a very sensible alternative. In any case the plan is still in the formative stage.”