Service with a Smile (11 page)

‘You
will have a colleague, working with you.’

‘I
will?’

‘Quate.’

‘Who
pays him?’

‘He will
not requiah payment.’

‘Must
be barmy. All right, then, we’ve got that straight. We now come to the
financial aspect of the thing. To speak expleasantly, what is there in it for
me?’

‘Five
pounds.’

‘Five?’

‘Let us
say ten.’

‘Let us
ruddy well say fifty.’

‘That
is a lot of money.’

‘I like
a lot of money.’

It was
a moment for swift decisions. Lavender Briggs shared the Duke’s views on
watching the pennies, but she was a realist sad knew that if you do not
speculate, you cannot accumulate.

‘Very
well. No doubt I can persuade the Duke to meet you on the point. He is a rich
man.’

‘R!’ said
George Cyril Wellbeloved, so far forgetting himself as to spit out of the side
of his mouth. ‘And how did he get his riches? By grinding the face of the poor
and taking the bread out of the mouths of the widow and the orphan. But the red
dawn will come,’ he said, warming up to his subject. ‘One of these days you’ll
see blood flowing in streams down Park Lane and the corpses of the oppressors
hanging from lampposts. And His Nibs of Dunstable’ll be one of them. And who’ll
be there, pulling on the rope? Me, and happy to do it.’

Lavender
Briggs made no comment on this. She was not interested in her companion’s plans
for the future, though in principle she approved of suspending Dukes from
lamp-posts. All she was thinking at the moment was that she had concluded a
most satisfactory business deal, and hike a good business girl she was feeling
quietly elated. She stood to make four hundred and fifty pounds instead of five
hundred, but then she had always foreseen that there would be overheads.

The
conference having been concluded and terms arranged, George Cyril Wellbeloved
felt justified in raising the beer bottle to his lips, and the spectacle
reminded her that there was something else that must be added.

‘There
is just one thing,’ she said. ‘No more fuddling yourself with alcoholic
liquor. This is a very delicate operation which you will be undertaking, and we
cannot risk failure. I want you bright and alert. So no more drinking.’

‘Except
beer, of course.’

‘No
beer.’

If
George Cyril had not been sitting on an upturned wheelbarrow, he would have
reeled.

‘No
beer?’

‘No
beer.’

‘When
you say no beer, do you mean no
beer?’

‘Quate.
I shall be keeping an eye on you, and I have my way of finding out things. If I
discover that you have been drinking, you will lose your fifty pounds. Do I
make myself clear?’

‘Quate,’
said George Cyril Wellbeloved gloomily.

‘Then
that is understood,’ said Lavender Briggs, ‘Keep it well in mind.’

She
left the shed, glad to escape from its somewhat cloying atmosphere, and started
to return to the house. She was anxious now to have a word with Lord Ickenham’s
friend Cuthbert Meriwether.

3

Lying in his hammock, a
soothing cigarette between his lips and his mind busy with great thoughts, Lord
Ickenham became aware of emotional breathing in his rear and realized with
annoyance that his privacy had been invaded. Then the breather came within the
orbit of his vision and he saw that it was not, as for an instant he had
feared, the Duke of Dunstable, but only his young friend, Myra Schoonmaker, He
had no objection to suspending his thinking in order to converse with Myra.

It
seemed to him, as he rose courteously, that the child was steamed up about
something. Her eyes were wild, and there was in her manner a suggestion of the
hart panting for cooling streams when heated in the chase. And her first words
told him that his diagnosis had been correct.

‘Oh,
Uncle Fred! The most awful thing has happened!’

He
patted her shoulder soothingly. Those who brought their troubles to him always
caught him at his best. Such was his magic that there had been times — though
not on the occasion of their visit to the dog races — when he had even been
able to still the fluttering nervous system of his nephew Pongo.

‘Take a
hammock, my dear, and tell me all about it,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t let yourself
get so agitated. I have no doubt that when we go into it we shall find that
whatever is disturbing you is simply the ordinary sort of thing you have to
expect when you come to Blandings Castle. As you have probably discovered for
yourself by now, Blandings Castle is no place for weaklings. What’s on your
mind?’

‘It’s
Bill.’

‘What
has Bill been doing?’

‘It’s
not what he’s been doing, poor lamb, it’s what’s being done to him. You know
that secretary woman?’

‘Lavender
Briggs? We’re quite buddies. Emsworth doesn’t like her, but for me she has a
rather gruesome charm. She reminds me of the dancing mistress at my first
kindergarten, on whom I had a crush in my formative years. Though when I say
crush, it wasn’t love exactly, more a sort of awed respect. I feel the same
about Lavender Briggs, I had a long chat with her the other day. She was
telling me she wanted to start a typewriting bureau, but hadn’t enough capital,
Why she should have confided in me, I don’t know. I suppose I have one of those
rare sympathetic natures you hear about. A cynic would probably say that she
was leading up to trying to make a touch, but I don’t think so. I think it was
simply… Swedish exercises?’ he asked, breaking off, for his companion had
flung her arms out in a passionate gesture.

‘Don’t
talk
so much, Uncle Fred!’

Lord
Ickenham felt the justice of the rebuke. He apologized.

‘I’m
sorry. A bad habit of mine, which I will endeavour to correct. What were you
going to say about La Briggs?’

‘She’s
a loathsome blackmailer!’

‘She’s
what?
You astound me. Who — or, rather, whom — is she blackmailing?’

‘Bill,
the poor angel. She’s told him he’s got to steal Lord Emsworth’s pig.’

It took
a great deal to make Lord Ickenham start. These words, however, did so. The
rule by which he lived his life was that the prudent man, especially when at Blandings
Castle, should be ready at all times for anything, but he had certainly not
been prepared for this. His was a small moustache, not bushy and billowy like the
Duke’s, and it did not leap as the Duke’s would have done, but it quivered
perceptibly. He stared at his young friend as at a young friend who has had a
couple.

‘What
on earth do you mean?’

‘I’m
telling you. She says Bill has got to steal Lord Emsworth’s pig. I don’t know who’s
behind her, but somebody wants it and she’s working for him, and she’s drafted
my poor darling Bill as her assistant.’

Lord
Ickenham whistled softly. Never a dull moment at Blandings Castle, he was
thinking. At first incredulous, he now saw how plausible the girl’s story was.
People who employ people to steal pigs know that the labourer is worthy of his
hire, and the principal in this venture, whoever he was, would undoubtedly
reward Lavender Briggs with a purse of gold, thus enabling her to start her
typewriting bureau. All that was plain enough, and one could understand the
Briggs enthusiasm for the project, but there remained the perplexing problem of
why she had selected the Rev Cuthbert Bailey as her collaborator. Why, dash it,
thought Lord Ickenham, they hardly knew one another.

‘But
why Bill?’

‘You
mean Why
Bill?’

‘Exactly.
Why is he the people’s choice?’

‘Because
she’s got the goods on him. Shall I tell you the whole thing?’

‘It
would be a great help.’

Prefacing
her remarks with the statement that if girls like Lavender Briggs were skinned
alive and dipped in boiling oil, this would be a better and sweeter world, Myra
embarked on her narrative.

‘Bill
was out taking a stroll just now, and she came along. He said, “Oh, hello. Nice
morning.”‘

‘And
she said “Quate”?’

‘No,
she said, “I should like a word with you, Mr Bailey.”‘

‘Mr
Bailey?
She knew who he was?’

‘She’s
known from the moment he got here. Apparently when she lived in London, she
used to mess about in Bottleton East, doing good works among the poor and all
that, so of course she saw him there and recognized him when he showed up at
the Castle. Bill’s is the sort of face one remembers.’

Lord
Ickenham agreed that it did indeed stamp itself on the mental retina. He was
looking grave. Expecting at the outset to be called on to deal with some
trifling girlish malaise, probably imaginary, he saw that here was a major
crisis. If defied, he realized, Lavender Briggs would at once take Lady
Constance into her confidence, with the worst results. Hell has no fury like a
woman scorned, and very few like a woman who finds that she has been tricked
into entertaining at her home a curate at the thought of whom she has been
shuddering for weeks. Unquestionably Lady Constance would take umbrage. There
would be pique on her part, and even dudgeon, and Bill’s visit to Blandings
Castle would be abruptly curtailed. In a matter of minutes the unfortunate
young pastor of souls would be slung out of this Paradise on his ear like
Lucifer, son of the morning.

‘And
then?’

‘She
said he had got to steal the pig.’

‘And
what did he say?’

‘He
told her to go to hell.’

‘Strange
advice from a curate.’

‘I’m
just giving you the rough idea.’

‘Quate.’

‘Actually,
he said Lord Emsworth was his host and had been very kind to him, and he was
very fond of him and he’d be darned if he’d bring his grey hairs in sorrow to
the grave by pinching his pig, and apart from that what would his bishop have
to say, if the matter was drawn to his attention?’

Lord
Ickenham nodded.

‘One
sees what he meant. Curates must watch their step. One false move, like being
caught stealing pigs, and bang goes any chance they may have had of rising to
become Princes of the Church. And she —?’

‘Told
him to think it over, the —’

Lord
Ickenham raised a hand.

‘I know
the word that is trembling on your lips, child, but don’t utter it. Let us keep
the conversation at as high a level as possible. Well, I agree with you that
the crisis is one that calls for thought. I wonder, if the simplest thing might
not be for Bill just to fold his tent like the Arabs and silently steal away.’

‘You
mean leave the castle? Leave me?’

‘It
seems the wise move.

‘I won’t
have him steal away!’

‘Surely
it is better to steal away than a pig?’

‘I’d
die here without him. Can’t you think of something better than that?’

‘What
we want is to gain time.’

‘How
can we? The —’

‘Please!’

‘The
woman said she had to have his answer tomorrow.’

‘As
soon as that? Well, Bill will have to consent and tell her that she must give
him a couple of days to nerve himself to the task.’

‘What’s
the good of that?’

‘We
gain time.’

‘Only
two days.’

‘But
two days during which I shall be giving the full force of the Ickenham brain to
the problem, and there are few problems capable of standing up to that treatment
for long. They can’t take it.’

‘And
when the two days are up and you haven’t thought of anything?’

‘Why,
then,’ admitted Lord Ickenham, ‘the situation becomes a little sticky.’

Chapter
Six

1

Among other notable
observations, too numerous to mention here, the poet Dryden (1631—1700) once
said that mighty things from small beginnings grow, and all thinking men are
agreed that in making this statement he called his shots correctly.

If a
fly had not got into his bedroom and started buzzing about his nose in the
hearty way flies have, it is improbable that Lord Emsworth would have awoken on
the following morning at twenty minutes to five, for he was as a rule a sound
sleeper who seldom failed to enjoy his eight hours. And if he had not woken and
been unable to doze off again, he would not have lain in bed musing on the
Church Lads. And if he had not mused on the Church Lads, he would not have
recalled Lord Ickenham’s advice of the previous day. Treacherous though his
memory habitually was, it all came back to him.

Sneak
down to the lake in the small hours of the morning and cut the ropes of the
boys’ tent, Ickenham had said, and the more he examined the suggestion, the
more convinced he became that this was the manly thing to do. These fellows
like Ickenham, he told himself, cautious conservative men of the world, do not
make snap decisions; they think things over before coming to a conclusion, and
when they tell you how to act, you know that by following their instructions
you will be acting for the best.