Galahad at Blandings (8 page)

There
fell upon the room a silence of the kind usually described as stunned. Eyes
widened, jaws dropped. Then the Wedges, colonel and wife, spoke simultaneously.

‘Done
what?’
cried the colonel.

‘Lost
his
money?’
cried Lady Hermione.

‘Yes,
didn’t you know?’ said Lord Emsworth, mildly surprised. ‘I’d have thought he
would have told you. He’s completely destitute. He’s selling apples.’

Lady
Hermione clutched her forehead, Colonel Wedge his moustache.

Apples?’
said Lady Hermione in a low voice.

‘How do
you mean, apples?’ said Colonel Wedge.

Lord
Emsworth saw that he would have to do some careful explaining.

According
to Galahad, that is what everybody in America is doing now. I could not quite
follow what he was telling me, but as far as I could gather there has been what
is called a crash on the Stock Exchange. What that is I’m afraid I don’t know,
but apparently it is something that causes people to lose money, and when they
have lost all their money, they sell apples. Oddly enough, though most people
like them, I have never been very fond of apples. Still, they are said to keep
the doctor away, so no doubt there is a market for them. I suppose your friends
tell you how much to charge. I wouldn’t know myself, but Tipton has probably
found someone who understands these things. One would sell them by the pound, I
imagine, but— ‘Clarence!’

‘Eh?’

‘Where
did you hear this?’ ‘Hear what?’

About
Tipton losing his money.

‘He
told me himself. I remember the conversation quite distinctly. It took place,
as I say, on the telephone. All these New York hotels have telephones in the
bedrooms. You order your meals through them. A very obliging housemaid told me
that. She said that if I wanted let us say breakfast, all I had to do was to
pick up the telephone and ask for Room Service, and she was perfectly right,
too. I tried it several times and always with success. Did you know that when
you order tea in America, they bring it to you in little bags?’

Lady
Hermione did not strike her brother with a bludgeon, but this was simply
because she had no bludgeon.

‘Clarence!’

‘Eh?’

‘Stop
rambling!’

‘Yes,
tell us about this conversation you had with Tipton,’ said Colonel Wedge.

‘I
am
telling you,’ said Lord Emsworth, aggrieved. As I was saying, it took place
on the telephone. It was very late at night, and I had gone to bed, and
suddenly the telephone rang and a voice said “Is that Lord Emsworth?” No, I’m
wrong. It said “Hello” and
then
it asked if I was Lord Emsworth. Of
course I was, so I said so and it said it was sorry to disturb me at this time
of night. “Quite all right, my dear fellow,” I said. As a matter of fact, I
wasn’t asleep. Somebody else had woken me a short while before, another
mysterious voice. It wanted to know if I was the Oil of Emsworth, and when I
said I was, it rang off Rather odd, I thought, but I suppose that sort of thing
is happening all the time in America. Very strange country.’

‘Clarence!’

‘Eh?’

‘Will
you
please
stop dithering and get on with your story.’

‘My
story? Ah yes. Yes, yes, quite. Where had I got to? Ah yes. This voice — the
second voice — said it was sorry to disturb me at this time of night and I said
“Quite all right, my dear fellow” or it may have been “Perfectly all right, my
dear fellow. By the way, who are you?” I said, and he said he was Tipton
Plimsoll. “I’ve lost all my money,” he said, and I said I was sorry to hear that,
and he asked me if I would lend him twenty dollars. I forget what this is in
our currency, but something quite small, so I said of course I would. I should
mention that he had begun by telling me that he was the man who was engaged to
my niece Veronica and that he had actually stayed at the castle, though I have
no recollection of it. Well, to cut a long story short, I said of course I
would, and he thanked me profusely and burst into song.

It was
some minutes since Lady Hermione had clutched her forehead. She repaired this
omission.

‘Song?’

‘Yes,
he began singing. Something, if I remember about there being a rainbow in the
sky, so let’s have another cup of coffee and let’s have another piece of pie. I
wasn’t at all surprised. I suppose it was a long time since he had had a
square meal, and pie is very filling. They eat cheese with pie in America,
which no doubt is all right for those who like it, but I wouldn’t care to do it
myself Well, I asked him if he would be calling for the money in the morning, but
he said no, he needed it at once. They’re like that over there. Hustle, bustle,
do it now. He said would I send it by messenger and I said certainly, and I
heard him asking someone called Garroway what was the address of the prison
where he was.’

‘Prison?’

‘This
Garroway seems to have been a knowledgeable chap, for he told him all right.
Galahad used to know a policeman named Garroway, but he died years ago, so it
can’t have been him. Or he? I remember being rapped on the knuckles by that
governess we had when we were children, Hermione, some name like Biggs or
Postlethwaite, because I couldn’t get that he/him thing right. Yes, apparently
he was in custody.’

Lady
Hermione had stopped clutching her forehead, probably feeling that it was
using up energy and getting her nowhere. She was looking like a cook who on the
night of the big dinner party suddenly discovered that the fishmonger has not
sent the lobsters. Her immediate impulse was to scream, but she forced herself
to speak quietly, and if her voice bore a close resemblance to a voice from the
tomb, the most censorious critic can hardly blame her.

‘Clarence,
is this a joke?’

‘It
can’t have been much of a joke for Plimsoll. Nobody likes having to plead for
money.

‘I
mean, are you making up all this?’

Lord
Emsworth was justly offended. It was difficult for a man as lean and limp as he
was to bridle, but he came as near to bridling as was within the scope of his
powers.

‘Of
course I’m not making it up. Why would I make it up? And how could I if I
wanted to? Dash it, do you think I’m capable of making up a story like that?
I’m not Shakespeare.

‘But
how can he have been in prison?’

The
question surprised Lord Emsworth.

‘Well,
lots of fellows do go to prison. Galahad in his younger days frequently spent
the night at Bow Street and if I’m not mistaken once nearly did fourteen days
without the option of a fine. He was arrested so often that he tells me he got
to know most of the policemen in the West End of London by their first names.
Extraordinary names some of them had, too. One of them was called Egbert. Why,
bless my soul, Egbert, that’s your name, isn’t it? Shows what a small world it
is.’

Too
small, Lady Hermione was thinking, to be large enough to contain with anything
like comfort her brother Clarence and herself. Lord Emsworth in one of his
rambling moods never failed to affect her powerfully. She hoped she was a
charitable woman, but the best she could find to say about the ninth Earl at
this juncture was that he did not wear a monocle.

‘Good
God!’ said Colonel Wedge, and this seemed to sum the situation up.

It was
growing dark now and as always when the light began to fade his study and his
Whipple
On The Care Of The Pig
called to Lord Emsworth. He edged towards
the door and such was the preoccupation his tale had caused that he was through
it and down the stairs before his sister or his brother-in-law had observed his
going. Years of sliding away from the other sex had given him a technique
second to none.

III

In the room he had left,
silence, for some moments, hung like a pall. It was as if his simple narrative
of night life in New York had robbed its occupants of speech. Lady Hermione’s
vocal cords were the first to recover.

‘Egbert!’

‘Yes,
old girl?’

‘Do you
think this is true?’ ‘Must be, I’m afraid.’

‘You
know how Clarence gets things muddled up.’

‘He
does, I agree. As a rule, I write off anything he tells me as just babble from
the padded cell. Normally, I wouldn’t take Clarence’s unsupported word if I saw
the countryside flooded and he told me it had been raining. But in this case I
don’t see how we can doubt. I mean to say, Tipton told him himself.’

‘Yes.’

And
touched him for twenty dollars.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well,
there you are, then. Obviously he had been speculating on the Stock Exchange
and the crash wiped him out. He isn’t the first millionaire that’s happened to,
and I don’t suppose he’ll be the last.’

A
gloomy silence fell. Colonel Wedge cleared his throat.

‘What
steps do you propose to take, old girl?’

‘Veronica
must be told.’

‘Of
course. Can’t have her going blindly into marriage and having the bridegroom
reveal to her in the vestry that he hasn’t a bean.’

Lady
Hermione frowned. She considered that her husband was showing a lack of tact.
These military men often do.

‘Money
has nothing to do with it,’ she said. ‘If it were simply a matter of Tipton not
being as rich as we had supposed, I would have nothing to say. But Clarence
says he was in prison.’

‘I
wonder what they jugged him for.’

‘Vagrancy
probably or begging in the streets. What does it matter? The point is that we
cannot allow Veronica to marry a man with a prison record.’

‘So
you’ll write to Vee?’

‘I
shall go and see her.’

‘Yes,
that’s the best plan.’

‘Ring
for Beach and tell him to tell Voules to have the car ready as quickly as
possible. He must drive me to London tonight.’

‘You’ll
get there pretty late.’

‘Too
late, of course, to see her, but I will talk to her in the morning and tell her
she must write to Tipton breaking the engagement.’

‘Do you
think she will?’

‘Of
course she will. I shall see to that. Veronica always does what I tell her.’

‘That’s
true,’ said Colonel Wedge, who resembled his daughter in this respect.

He
stepped to the wall and pressed the bell.

CHAPTER 5

I

The little country town of
Market Blandings is one at which Shropshire points with pride, and not without
reason. Its decorous High Street, its lichened church, its red-roofed shops
and its age-old inns with their second storeys bulging comfortably over the
pavements combine to charm the eye, and this is particularly so if that eye
has been accustomed to look daily on Halsey Court, London W.1.

To Sam
the place had appealed aesthetically immediately on his arrival, and on the
following afternoon, as he sat with pad and pencil in the garden of the
Emsworth Arms, he found its spell was being of great assistance to him
professionally. It is a fact well known to all authors that there is nothing
like a change of scene for stimulating the powers of invention. At Halsey
Chambers Sam had had no success as a chronicler of the adventures of Pinky-Poo
the kitten, but now he found the stuff simply flowing out. It was not long
before he was able to write ‘The End’ with the satisfactory feeling that,
provided the editor was not suffering from softening of the brain, always an occupational
risk with editors, a cheque from
Wee Tots
was to all intents and
purposes in his pocket.

His
task done, his thoughts, like those of every author who has completed a testing
bit of work, turned in the direction of beer. At dinner on the previous night
and again at lunch he had tried out that of the Emsworth Arms and found it
superb. Rising, he replaced pad and pencil in his room and made for the bar.
And at that precise moment Beach the butler, looking hot and exhausted,
tottered into it.

His duties
at the luncheon table concluded and no further buttling being required of him
until the dinner hour Beach had started ponderously down the long drive of Blandings
Castle and carried on through the great gate at the end of it and into the high
road. Something approximating to a heat wave was in progress and the sun was
very sultry, but though the poet Coward has specifically stressed the
advisability of avoiding its ultraviolet ray, it was his intention to walk to
the Emsworth Arms, a distance of fully two miles, and in due season to walk
back again.

It
would have gratified Huxley Winkworth had he known that this athletic feat was
the direct result of his critique of the previous morning. His words had stung
Beach at the time, for there had been a tactlessness in their candour
calculated to wound, but he was a fair-minded man and realised on reflection
that the child, though one might frown on his mode of expressing himself,
might possibly have been right. His figure
was
perhaps a little too full
and in need of streamlining. The sedentary life of a butler is apt to take its
toll.