Galahad at Blandings (11 page)

‘That’s
right.’

‘I
see.’ A wave of nostalgia flooded over Gally as his thoughts went back to the
time when he, too, had lived in Arcady. ‘I was always getting pinched ford. and
d. myself in my younger days. This was especially so when I supped at the old
Gardenia —pulled down now, I regret to say, to make room for a Baptist chapel
of all things. I was more or less of a marked man there. The bouncers used to
fight for the privilege of throwing me out, and there seldom failed to be a
couple of the gendarmerie waiting in the street as I shot through the door, on
me like wolves and intensely sceptical of my sobriety. I always felt I was
slipping in those days if it didn’t take two of them to get me to the police
bin, with another walking behind carrying my hat. How are the prisons in New
York? I have visited that great city constantly, but oddly enough I was never
arrested there. Much the same as on this side, I imagine. The place not to get
jugged in is Paris, where similar establishments have no home comforts whatsoever.
I remember on one occasion, after a rather sprightly do at the Bal Bullier—’

He was
unable to complete what would no doubt have been a diverting anecdote full of
inspiring hints for the younger generation, for at this moment a stalwart
figure in smock and trousers came striding up. Monica Simmons back from lunch.
She greeted her employer with a hearty bellow which echoed over hill and dale.

‘Heard
you’d arrived, Lord Emsworth,’ she boomed. ‘Glad to be back, I shouldn’t
wonder. No place like home, I often say. How do you think the piggy-wiggy’s
looking?’

‘Capital,
capital,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Capital, capital, capital.’

He
spoke with genuine enthusiasm. There had been a time when both he and Gally had
entertained the gravest doubts as to Monica Simmons’s fitness for her high
position, due to this habit of hers of referring to the Empress as the
piggy-wiggy. As Gally had said, it was the wrong tone and seemed to show that
she was too frivolous in her outlook to hold so responsible a post. The girl,
he pointed out, who carelessly dismisses a three-times silver medalist at the
Shropshire Agricultural Show as a piggy— wiggy today is a girl who may quite
easily forget to give the noble animal lunch tomorrow. And according to
Augustus Whipple in his monumental work a pig cannot afford to skip meals. If
it does not consume daily nourishment amounting to fifty-seven hundred
calories, these to consist of proteins four pounds five ounces, carbohydrates
twenty—five pounds, it becomes a spent force.

But
that was all in the past. The term piggy-wiggy no longer made him wince. Monica
Simmons had proved herself a worthy daughter of the agricultural college from
which she had graduated and more than equal to the tremendous task of keeping
Empress of Blandings up to bursting point.

Nor did
her conception of her duties stop at providing her charge with calories. Her
next words showed that she had its welfare at heart in other directions.

‘Oh, by
the way, Lord Emsworth,’ she said, ‘I nearly forgot to ask you. Who would that
boy be? A small boy with a face like a prune run over by a motor bus.’

Lord
Emsworth was baffled. He had no solution to offer. It was left to Gally to
supply the information. The description, he said, fitted Dame Daphne
Winkworth’s son Huxley like the paper on the wall and could scarcely have been
improved upon by the most meticulous stylist.

‘But
why do you bring him up?’ he asked. ‘How has he thrust himself on your
attention?’

‘He
keeps hanging round trying to let the Empress out of her sty.’

‘He
does that?’ cried Lord Emsworth, appalled.

‘I
caught him at it yesterday and again this morning.’

‘The
next time he does it, give him a good hard knock.’

‘I’ll
rub his face in the mud.’

And
Sandy Callender will rub yours in the mud, Clarence, if you don’t go back and
attend to your correspondence,’ said Gally. ‘Come along. The party’s over.’

II

Left alone with Monica
Simmons and scanning her with a critical eye, Tipton found a difficulty in
detecting those glamorous qualities in her which appeared to make so strong an
appeal to Wilfred Allsop. He willingly conceded that if attacked by a mad bull
or a gang of youths with switch knives and brass knuckles he would be happy to
have her at his side, for the muscles of her brawny arms were obviously strong
as iron bands, if not stronger, but as an arouser of the softer emotions he
could not see her with a spyglass. He was thinking, indeed, as so many men have
thought on meeting their friends’ loved ones, that given the choice between
linking his lot with hers and going over Niagara Falls in a barrel he would
greatly prefer the latter form of unpleasantness.

However,
being aware that Wilfred held other views, he prepared to do all that was within
his power to further his interests, employing more direct methods than his
friend had done. Wilfred, he had gathered from his observations in their mutual
cell, had been conducting his wooing on remote control or
Patience-on-a-monument lines, and it was a policy of which he thoroughly
disapproved. In matters of the heart he was solidly in favour of laying cards
on the table and talking turkey. Only so could business result.

‘Fat
pig, that,’ he said by way of easing into the deeper topic he had in mind.

‘The
fattest in Shropshire, Herefordshire and South Wales,’ said Monica proudly.

‘Not on
a diet, I notice.’

‘No,
sir, you don’t catch this piggy—wiggy slimming. She believes in getting hers
and to hell with what it does to her figure. You’re the fellow who’s marrying
Veronica Wedge, aren’t you?’

‘That’s
me. Plimsoll is the name. Tipton Plimsoll.’

‘Monica
Simmons at this end.’

‘I
thought as much. Willie Allsop was speaking to me of you not long ago.

‘Oh,
was he?’

And in
the highest terms, I don’t mind telling you. He gave you a rave notice. He
couldn’t have gone overboard more completely if you had been the current Miss
America.’

When it
came to blushing, Monica Simmons was handicapped by the fact that her face was
obscured by the mud inseparable from her chosen walk in life. It is virtually
impossible to retain that schoolgirl complexion unimpaired if you are looking
after pigs all the time. Even more closely than Sandy Callender when tidying up
Lord Emsworth’s study she resembled one of those sons of toil buried beneath
tons of soil of whom Gally had spoken. Nevertheless, probing beyond the
geological strata Tip— ton thought he could discern a pinkness. Her substantial
foot, moreover, had begun to trace coy arabesques on the turf These phenomena
encouraged him to proceed.

‘In
fact,’ he went on, laying the whole deck of cards on the table and talking
turkey without reserve, ‘he loves you like a ton of bricks, and his dearest
wish is that you will consent to sign your future correspondence Monica
Allsop.’

It was
impossible for a girl constructed on Monica’s lines to leap like a startled
fawn, but she quivered perceptibly. A sound not unlike the Empress’s grunt
proceeded from her, and her eyes rounded to about the dimensions of standard
golf balls. It was some moments before she could speak. When she did, the words
came out in a husky whisper.

‘I
can’t believe it!’

‘Why
not? All pretty straightforward, it seems to me. What’s your problem?’

‘He’s
so far above me.’

‘Couple
of inches shorter, I’d have said.’

‘Intellectually,
I mean.’

‘Who
ever told you Willie Allsop had an intellect?’

‘He
looks so spiritual.’

‘So do
I, but you can’t go by that. He may look spiritual, but you can take it from me
that he’s a regular guy all right. I’ve seen him when he was going good, and
he’s well worth watching. But putting that aside for the moment, what I want to
know is what his rating is with you. Where does he stand in your book? How
would you react if he asked you to marry him? Would you feel he had the right
idea, or would you give him the horse’s laugh and say “Drop dead, you little
squirt”?’

Beneath
the mud Monica Simmons flushed hotly. It was plain that an exposed nerve had
been touched.

‘He is
not a little squirt!’

‘Well,
that’s what he says he is. It was precisely how he described himself when he
was talking to me about you. “She’s so majestic, and I’m such a little squirt”
were his exact words. But you appear to think otherwise, so am I to infer that
he’d really have a chance of bringing home the bacon?’

‘If you
mean would I accept him if he asked me to marry him, yes I would. I’d jump into
his arms.

‘Well,
I’m not sure I’d advise that. I don’t want to seem personal, but you’re on the
solid side and he’s kind of flimsy. You might fracture something. Still, the
point, the thing we’ve been trying to get at, is that your views on the subject
of centre-aisleing coincide with his, so that’s all right. I’ll go and tell
him.’

‘Will
you really?’

‘Right
away.’

‘Oh, Mr
Plimsoll!’

‘Call
me Tipton.’

‘Oh,
Tipton!’

‘Or,
rather, Tippy.’

‘Oh,
Tippy, you’re an angel.’

‘I’m
like Officer Garroway, a buddy of mine whom you haven’t met,’ said Tipton. ‘I
started out in life as a Boy Scout, and I can’t seem to shake off the habit of
doing my day’s good deed. And now to find Willie.’

III

It was no easy task to do
this, for Wilfred Allsop had been detained on the terrace by Dame Daphne
Winkworth. Dame Daphne liked to become acquainted with her staff and she had
kept him answering personal questions for a full hour, after which he had gone
to his room to bathe his forehead. When he emerged, feeling somewhat better
though still weak, the first person he met was Tipton, who had almost decided
to give up the search.

There
took place, of course, something in the nature of a joyous reunion. It was
their first meeting since they had parted with mutual civilities outside the
New York police station, and each was thinking how greatly the other’s looks
had improved in the interim. Tipton’s face then had seemed to Wilfred to be an
unwholesome yellow in colour and to flicker a good deal like an early silent
motion picture, and so had Wilfred’s to Tipton. Even now neither could have
entered a beauty competition with any real confidence of success unless Officer
Garroway had been the sole other contestant, but there had been a distinct
change for the better.

When
two friends meet after a separation, the conversation tends as a rule to begin
with enquiries from both regarding old Joes and Jacks and Jimmys whom they have
seen or not seen anything of lately, but as Tipton Plimsoll and Wilfred Allsop
had met only once and the only acquaintance they had in common was Officer
Garroway, a few exchanges on the subject of that golden-hearted city employee
were enough to cover these preliminaries and Tipton was almost immediately at
liberty to get down to those brass tacks to which he always liked to get down
as soon as possible.

‘Well,
Willie,’ he said, going straight to the
res.
‘I’ve just been having a
chat with the Simmons broad. We had quite a visit.’

An
austere look came into Wilfred’s face. He had had to complain before of
Tipton’s freedom of speech when alluding to the girl he worshipped. It was the
other’s only fault, but a grave one.

‘Would
you mind not referring to Miss Simmons as a broad,’ he said coldly.

‘Sorry.
Slip of the tongue. I should have said I’ve been talking to your little serving
of peaches and cream, and I have some rather interesting news to impart. It
appears that you are her dream man.

‘What!’

‘That’s
what she told me. You’re ace high with her. She didn’t actually say she would
die for one little rose from your hair, but that was the impression she
conveyed. What she said was that if you asked her to marry you, she would jump
into your arms. I don’t see what more you want than that.’

Wilfred
stared, gulped and tottered.

‘You
aren’t kidding?’

‘No,
I’m not, and nor was she. All you’ve got to do is walk up to her, wipe some of
the mud off her face, clasp her in your arms, and you’re home.’

The
programme, as outlined, plainly attracted Wilfred. Nevertheless he hesitated.

‘Clasp
her in my arms?’

‘And
kiss her. Having of course cleaned her up a little first. She needs thoroughly
going over with soap and hot water.’

Wilfred
shook his head.

‘I
couldn’t do it.’

‘Why
not?’

‘I
haven’t the nerve.’

Tipton
smiled indulgently.

‘The
very words I said to a girl called Prudence Garland when she urged me to
propose to Vee.’