The Complete Stories (24 page)

  "No, no. But I think it perfectly charming," he added politely.

  There was a pause.

  "I wanted to talk to you," said Colonel Hodge superfluously. "Have a drink."

  "Thank you."

  Another pause.

  "I'm afraid you won't find it a very healthy site," said the Colonel. "Down in the hollow there."

  "I never mind things like that. All I need is seclusion."

  "Ah, a writer no doubt."

  "No."

  "A painter?"

  "No, no. I suppose you would call me a scientist."

  "I see. And you would be using your house for weekends?"

  "No, no, quite the reverse. I and my staff will be working here all the week. And it's not exactly a house I'm building, although of course there will be living quarters attached. Perhaps, since we are going to be such close neighbours, you would like to see the plans....."

  "... You never saw such a thing," said Colonel Hodge next morning to Mr. Metcalfe. "An experimental industrial laboratory he called it. Two great chimneys—have to have those, he said, by law, because of poison fumes, a water tower to get high pressures, six bungalows for his staff ... ghastly. The odd thing was he seemed quite a decent sort of fellow. Said it hadn't occurred to him anyone would find it objectionable. Thought we should all be interested. When I brought up the subject of re-selling—tactful, you know—he just said he left all that to his lawyer....."

  III

  Much Malcock Hall.

  Dear Lady Peabury,

  In pursuance of our conversation of three days ago, I beg to inform you that I have been in communication with Mr. Hargood-Hood, the purchaser of the field which separates our two properties, and his legal representative. As Col. Hodge has already informed you, Mr. Hargood-Hood proposes to erect an experimental industrial laboratory fatal to the amenities of the village. As you are doubtless aware, work has not yet been commenced, and Mr. Hargood-Hood is willing to re-sell the property if duly compensated. The price proposed is to include re-purchase of the field, legal fees and compensation for the architect's work. The young blackguard has us in a cleft stick. He wants £500. It is excessive, but I am prepared to pay half of this if you will pay the other half. Should you not accede to this generous offer I shall take steps to safeguard my own interests at whatever cost to the neighbourhood.

  Yours sincerely,

  Beverley Metcalfe.

  P.S.—I mean I shall sell the Hall and develop the property as building lots.

  Much Malcock House.

  Lady Peabury begs to inform Mr. Metcalfe that she has received his note of this morning, the tone of which I am unable to account for. She further begs to inform you that she has no wish to increase my already extensive responsibilities in the district. She cannot accept the principle of equal obligation with Mr. Metcalfe as he has far less land to look after, and the field in question should rightly form part of your property. She does not think that the scheme for developing his garden as a housing estate is likely to be a success if Mr. Hargood-Hood's laboratory is as unsightly as is represented, which I rather doubt.

  "All right," said Mr. Metcalfe. "That's that and be damned to her."

  IV

  It was ten days later. The lovely valley, so soon to be defiled, lay resplendent in the sunset. Another year, thought Mr. Metcalfe, and this fresh green foliage would be choked with soot, withered with fumes; these mellow roofs and chimneys which for two hundred years or more had enriched the landscape below the terrace, would be hidden by functional monstrosities in steel and glass and concrete. In the doomed field Mr. Westmacott, almost for the last time, was calling his cattle; next week building was to begin and they must seek other pastures. So, in a manner of speaking, must Mr. Metcalfe. Already his desk was littered with house-agents' notices. All for £500, he told himself. There would be redecorations; the cost and loss of moving. The speculative builders to whom he had viciously appealed showed no interest in the site. He was going to lose much more than £500 on the move. But so, he grimly assured himself, was Lady Peabury. She would learn that no one could put a fast one over on Beverley Metcalfe.

  And she, on the opposing slope, surveyed the scene with corresponding melancholy. The great shadows of the cedars lay across the lawn; they had scarcely altered during her long tenancy, but the box hedge had been of her planting; it was she who had planned the lily pond and glorified it with lead flamingoes; she had reared the irregular heap of stones under the west wall and stocked it with Alpines; the flowering shrubs were hers; she could not take them with her where she was going. Where? She was too old now to begin another garden, to make other friends. She would move, like so many of her contemporaries, from hotel to hotel, at home and abroad, cruise a little, settle for prolonged rather unwelcome visits, on her relatives. All this for £250, for £12 10s. a year, for less than she gave to charity. It was not the money; it was Principle. She would not compromise with Wrong; with that ill-bred fellow on the hill opposite.

  Despite the splendour of the evening an unhappy spirit obsessed Much Malcock. The Hornbeams moped and drooped; Colonel Hodge fretted. He paced the threadbare carpet of his smoking room. "It's enough to make a fellow turn Bolshie, like that parson," he said. "What does Metcalfe care? He's rich. He can move anywhere. What does Lady Peabury care? It's the small man, trying to make ends meet, who suffers."

  Even Mr. Hargood-Hood seemed affected by the general gloom. His lawyer was visiting him at the Brakehurst. All day they had been in intermittent, rather anxious consultation. "I think I might go and talk to that Colonel again," he said, and set off up the village street, under the deepening shadows, for the Manor House. And from this dramatic, last-minute move for conciliation sprang the great Hodge Plan for appeasement and peace-in-our-time.

  V

  "... the Scouts are badly in need of a new hut," said Colonel Hodge.

  "No use coming to me," said Mr. Metcalfe. "I'm leaving the neighbourhood."

  "I was thinking," said Colonel Hodge, "that Westmacott's field would be just the place for it....."

  And so it was arranged. Mr. Hornbeam gave a pound, Colonel Hodge a guinea, Lady Peabury £250. A jumble sale, a white-elephant-tea, a raffle, a pageant, and a house-to-house collection, produced a further 30s. Mr. Metcalfe found the rest. It cost him, all told, a little over £500. He gave with a good heart. There was no question now of jockeying him into a raw deal. In the rôle of public benefactor he gave with positive relish, and when Lady Peabury suggested that the field should be reserved for a camping site and the building of the hut postponed, it was Mr. Metcalfe who pressed on with the building and secured the old stone tiles from the roof of a dismantled barn. In the circumstances, Lady Peabury could not protest when the building was named the Metcalfe-Peabury Hall. Mr. Metcalfe found the title invigorating and was soon in negotiation with the brewery for a change of name at the Brakehurst Arms. It is true that Boggett still speaks of it as "the Brakehurst," but the new name is plainly lettered for all to read: The Metcalfe Arms.

  And so Mr. Hargood-Hood passed out of the history of Much Malcock. He and his lawyer drove away to their home beyond the hills. The lawyer was Mr. Hargood-Hood's brother.

  "We cut that pretty fine, Jock. I thought, for once, we were going to be left with the baby."

  They drove to Mr. Hargood-Hood's home, a double quadrangle of mellow brick that was famous far beyond the county. On the days when the gardens were open to the public, record crowds came to admire the topiary work, yews and boxes of prodigious size and fantastic shape which gave perpetual employment to three gardeners. Mr. Hargood-Hood's ancestors had built the house and planted the gardens in a happier time, before the days of property tax and imported grain. A sterner age demanded more strenuous efforts for their preservation.

  "Well, that has settled Schedule A for another year and left something over for cleaning the fishponds. But it was an anxious month. I shouldn't care to go through it again. We must be more careful next time, Jock. How about moving east?"

  Together the two brothers unfolded the inch ordnance map of Norfolk, spread it on the table of the Great Hall and began their preliminary, expert search for a likely, unspoilt, well-loved village.

  THE SYMPATHETIC PASSENGER

  As Mr. James shut the side door behind him, radio music burst from every window of his house. Agnes, in the kitchen, was tuned in to one station; his wife, washing her hair in the bathroom, to another.

  The competing programmes followed him to the garage and into the lane.

  He had twelve miles to drive to the station, and for the first five of them he remained in a black mood.

  He was in most matters a mild-tempered person—in all matters, it might be said, except one; he abominated the wireless.

  It was not merely that it gave him no pleasure; it gave active pain, and, in the course of years, he had come to regard the invention as being directed deliberately against himself, a conspiracy of his enemies to disturb and embitter what should have been the placid last years of his life.

  He was far from being an old man; he was, in fact, in his middle fifties; he had retired young, almost precipitously, as soon as a small legacy had made it possible. He had been a lover of quiet all his life.

  Mrs. James did not share this preference.

  Now they were settled in a small country house, twelve miles from a suitable cinema.

  The wireless, for Mrs. James, was a link with the clean pavements and bright shop windows, a communion with millions of fellow beings.

  Mr. James saw it in just that light too. It was what he minded most—the violation of his privacy. He brooded with growing resentment on the vulgarity of womankind.

  In this mood he observed a burly man of about his own age signalling to him for a lift from the side of the road. He stopped.

  "I wonder if by any chance you are going to the railway station?" The man spoke politely with a low, rather melancholy voice.

  "I am; I have to pick up a parcel. Jump in."

  "That's very kind of you."

  The man took his place beside Mr. James. His boots were dusty, and he sank back in his seat as though he had come from far and was weary.

  He had very large, ugly hands, close-cut grey hair, a bony, rather sunken face.

  For a mile or so he did not speak. Then he asked suddenly, "Has this car got a wireless?"

  "Certainly not."

  "What is that knob for?" He began examining the dashboard. "And that?"

  "One is the self-starter. The other is supposed to light cigarettes. It does not work. If," he continued sharply, "you have stopped me in the hope of hearing the wireless, I can only suggest that I put you down and let you try your luck on someone else."

  "Heaven forbid," said his passenger. "I detest the thing."

  "So do I."

  "Sir, you are one among millions. I regard myself as highly privileged in making your acquaintance."

  "Thank you. It is a beastly invention."

  The passenger's eyes glowed with passionate sympathy. "It is worse. It is diabolical."

  "Very true."

  "Literally diabolical. It is put here by the devil to destroy us. Did you know that it spread the most terrible diseases?"

  "I didn't know. But I can well believe it."

  "It causes cancer, tuberculosis, infantile paralysis, and the common cold. I have proved it."

  "It certainly causes headaches," said Mr. James.

  "No man," said his passenger, "has suffered more excruciating headaches than I.

  "They have tried to kill me with headaches. But I was too clever for them. Did you know that the BBC has its own secret police, its own prisons, its own torture chambers?"

  "I have long suspected it."

  "I know. I have experienced them. Now it is the time of revenge."

  Mr. James glanced rather uneasily at his passenger and drove a little faster.

  "I have a plan," continued the big man. "I am going to London to put it into execution. I am going to kill the Director-General. I shall kill them all."

  They drove on in silence. They were nearing the outskirts of the town when a larger car driven by a girl drew abreast of them and passed. From inside it came the unmistakable sounds of a jazz band. The big man sat up in his seat, rigid as a pointer.

  "Do you hear that?" he said. "She's got one. After her, quick."

  "No good," said Mr. James. "We can never catch that car."

  "We can try. We shall try, unless," he said with a new and more sinister note in his voice, "unless you don't want to."

  Mr. James accelerated. But the large car was nearly out of sight.

  "Once before," said his passenger, "I was tricked. The BBC sent one of their spies. He was very like you. He pretended to be one of my followers; he said he was taking me to the Director-General's office. Instead he took me to a prison. Now I know what to do with spies. I kill them." He leaned towards Mr. James.

  "I assure you, my dear sir, you have no more loyal supporter than myself. It is simply a question of cars. I cannot overtake her. But no doubt we shall find her at the station."

  "We shall see. If we do not, I shall know whom to thank, and how to thank him."

  They were in the town now and making for the station. Mr. James looked despairingly at the policeman on point duty, but was signalled on with a negligent flick of the hand. In the station yard the passenger looked round eagerly.

  "I do not see that car," he said.

  Mr. James fumbled for a second with the catch of the door and then tumbled out. "Help!" he cried. "Help! There's a madman here."

  With a great shout of anger the man dodged round the front of the car and bore down on him.