Uncle Dynamite (15 page)

Bill
drank deeply, gasped a little and spoke with a sort of frozen calm.

‘In
response to which he said, his bally face lighting up joyfully, “Major
Brabazon-Plank? Did you say Major Brabazon-Plank? Coo, I know him well. He
comes from old village. Played cricket with him, I have — ah, hundreds of
times. If convenient Mr William, I’ll step up and shake him by the hand after
I’ve had my tea.” So now what?’

Lord
Ickenham remained for a moment in thought.   ‘You’re kidding me, Bill
Oakshott. Nobody but a practised writer could have told that story so superbly.
Beneath your magic touch Potter seems to hive and breathe. You publish your
stuff secretly under another name. I believe you’re one, if not more, of the
Sitwells. But we can go into that later. “So now what?” you say. Yes, I agree
that the problem is one that presents certain features of interest, but all
problems can be solved with a little earnest thought. How did you articulate when
you spoke the words “Brabazon-Plank”? Distinctly?’

‘Yes.’

‘You
didn’t mumble?’

‘No.’

‘So you
couldn’t say that what you had really said was “Smith” or “Knatchbull-Huguessen”?’

‘No.’

Lord
Ickenham reflected.

‘Well,
then, what we must do is tell him that I am your Plank’s brother.’

‘Do you
think you could get away with that?’

‘There
are no limits to what I can get away with when I am functioning properly. We
might go and call upon him now. Where does he live?’

‘Just
round the corner.’

‘Then
finish up your beer and let’s be off.’

Except
for the royal arms over the door and a notice saying ‘Police Station’, there
was nothing about the residence of Constable Potter to suggest that here was
the dreadful headquarters of Law and Justice. Like so many police stations in
English villages, it was at cheerful little cottage with a thatched roof and a
nice little garden, the latter at the moment occupied by Mr Potter’s nephew
Basil, aged nine months, who was taking a nap in his perambulator. Lord
Ickenham, reaching the garden gate, cocked an enquiring eye at this vehicle.

‘Is
Potter a married man?’

‘No.
That’s his sister’s baby. She lives with him. Her husband’s a steward on one of
the South American boats. He’s away most of the time. Of course, he comes back
sometimes.’

‘Yes,
one guesses that.’

Through
an open window there came the sound of a female voice, high and penetrating.
It was touching on the subject of socks. How, it was asking, did the invisible
person it was addressing contrive to get so many and such large holes in his
all the time? The voice itself attributed the phenomenon to carelessness and a
wilful lack of consideration for those who had to work their fingers to the
bone, darning them. Lord Ickenham consulted Bill with a raised eyebrow.

‘Would
that be the lady speaking now?’

‘Yes.’

‘To
Potter?’

‘I
suppose so.’

‘She
seems to be giving him beans.’

‘Yes.
He’s scared stiff of her, so Elsie tells me. ‘‘ Elsie?’

The
housemaid.’

‘Ah,
yes, the one Pongo … I forget what I was going to say. ‘’I know what you were
going to say.’

‘Well,
well, we need not go into that now. Let us saunter in, and let our first move
be to examine this bonny baby more closely. It will all be practice for the
great day.’

7

Inside the cottage, in the
cosy little kitchen, Constable Potter, guardian of Ashenden Oakshott’s peace,
at his ease in his shirt sleeves, was enjoying high tea.

The
word ‘enjoying’ is perhaps ill chosen, for he was partaking of the meal under
the eye of his sister, Mrs Bella Stubbs, who, if not his best friend, had
always been his severest critic. She had already told him not to put his elbows
on the table, not to gollop his food like that and not to help himself to
butter with his herringy knife, and at the moment when Bill and Lord Ickenham
arrived had begun, as has been shown, to touch on the subject of his socks, one
of which she held in her hand for purposes of demonstration.

Constable
Potter was twenty-eight years old, his sister thirty-three. The simplest of
mathematical calculations, therefore, will show that when he was seven she had
been twelve, and a strong-willed sister of twelve can establish over a brother
of seven a moral ascendancy which lasts a lifetime. In those formative years
which mean so much, Harold Potter had been dragged about by the hand, slapped,
scolded and told by the future mother of George Basil Percival Stubbs not to do
practically everything he wanted to do. She had even — crowning indignity —
blown his nose.

These
things leave their mark. It was the opinion of Elsie Bean, repeatedly
expressed, that her Harold was a cowardy custard; and in the main, one feels,
the verdict of history will be that Elsie was right. It is unpleasant to think
of an officer of the Law cowering in his chair when a woman puts a finger
through a hole in one of his socks and waggles it, but it cannot be disputed
that while watching Mrs Stubbs do this Constable Potter had come very near to
cowering.

To ease
the strain, he bent forward to help himself to butter, being careful this time
to use the knife allotted to that purpose, and the movement enabled him to see
through the window the corner of the garden where George Basil Percival was
taking his siesta.

‘‘Ullo,’
he said, glad to change the subject. ‘There’s somebody on the lawn.’

‘Never
mind about the lawn. I’m talking about this sock.’

‘It’s a
tall gentleman.’

‘Look
at it. Like a sieve.’

‘A tall
gentleman with a grey moustache. He’s poking your Basil in the stomach.’

He had
said the one thing calculated to divert his companion’s thoughts from the sock
topic. A devoted mother, Mrs Stubbs held the strongest possible views on the
enormity of gentlemen, whether tall or short, coming into the garden and poking
her offspring in the stomach at a moment when his well-being demanded
uninterrupted repose.

‘Then
go and send him away!’

‘Right
ho.’

Constable
Potter was full to the brim. He had eaten three kippered herrings, four boiled
eggs and half a loaf of bread, and his impulse would have been to lean back in
his chair like a gorged python and give his gastric juices a chance to fulfil
themselves. But, apart from the fact that his sister Bella’s word was law,
curiosity overcame the urge to digest. Scrutinizing Lord Ickenham through the
window, he had a sort of feeling that he had seen him before. He wanted to get
a closer view of this mysterious stranger.

In the
garden, when he reached it, Lord Ickenham, wearying of his attentions to
Basil’s stomach, had begun to tickle the child under the chin. Bill, who was
not very fond of babies and in any case preferred them to look less like Edward
G. Robinson, had moved aside as if anxious to disassociate himself from the
whole unpleasant affair, and was thus the first to see the newcomer.

‘Oh,
hullo, Potter,’ he said. ‘We thought we’d look in.’

‘I was
anxious,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘to make the acquaintance of one of whom I had
heard so much.’

Constable
Potter seemed a little dazed by these civilities.

‘Ho!’
he said. ‘I didn’t catch the name, sir.’

‘Plank.
Brabazon-Plank.’

There
was a loud hiccough. It was Constable Potter registering astonishment; and more
than astonishment, suspicion. There were few men, in Ashenden Oakshott at any
rate, more gifted with the ability to recognize funny business when they were
confronted with it, and here, it seemed to Harold Potter, was funny business
in excelsis. He fixed on Lord Ickenham the stern and accusing gaze which he
would have directed at a dog caught in the act of appearing in public without a
collar.

‘Brabazon-Plank?’

‘Brabazon-Plank.’

‘You’re
not the Major Brabazon-Plank I used to play cricket with at
Lower Shagley
in Dorsetshire.’

‘His
brother.’

‘I
didn’t know he had a brother.’

‘He
kept things from you, did he? Too bad. Yes, I am his elder brother. Bill
Oakshott was telling me you knew him.’

‘He
said you was him.’

‘Surely
not?’

‘Yus,
he did.’ Constable Potter’s gaze grew sterner. He was resolved to probe this
thing to the bottom. ‘He give me your suitcase to take to the house, and he
said “This here belongs to Major Brabazon-Plank.”‘

Lord
Ickenham laughed amusedly.

‘Just a
slip of the tongue, such as so often occurs. He meant Brabazon-Plank,
major.
As opposed to my brother, who, being younger than me, is, of course,
Brabazon-Plank,
minor.
I can understand you being confused,’ said Lord
Ickenham with a commiserating glance at the officer, into whose face had crept
the boiled look of one who finds the conversation becoming too abstruse. Three
kippers, four eggs and half a loaf of bread, while nourishing the body, take
the keen edge off the mental powers. ‘And what renders it all the more complex
is that as I myself am a mining engineer by profession, anyone who wants to get
straight on the Brabazon-Plank situation has got to keep steadily before him
the fact that the minor is a major and the major a miner. I have known strong
men to break down on realizing this. So you know my minor, the major, do you?
Most interesting. It’s a small world, I often say. Well, when I say “often”,
perhaps once a fortnight. Why are you looking like a stuck pig, Bill Oakshott?’

Bill
came with a start out of what appeared to be a sort of trance. Pongo, who had
had so many opportunities of observing his Uncle Fred in action, could have
told him that a trancelike condition was almost always the result of being
associated with this good old man when he was going nicely.

‘Was
I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t
mention it. Ah, whom have we here?’

Mrs
Stubbs had made her appearance, coming towards them with a suggestion in her
manner of a lioness hastening to the aid of an imperilled cub. Annoyed by her
brother’s tardiness in getting rid of these intruders, she had decided to take
the matter in hand herself.

‘Oh,
hullo, Mrs Stubbs,’ said Bill. ‘We were just giving your baby the once over.
‘Lord Ickenham started.

‘Your
baby? Is this remarkably fine infant yours, madam?’

His
bearing was so courteous, his manner so reverent that Mrs Stubbs, who had come
in like a lioness, began to envisage the possibility of going out like a lamb.

‘Yes,
sir,’ she said, and went so far as to curtsy. She was not a woman who often
curtsied, but there was something about this distinguished-looking elderly
gentleman that seemed to call for the tribute. ‘It’s my little Basil.’

‘A
sweet name. And a sweet child. A starter I hope?’

‘Sir?’

‘You
have entered him for the Bonny Baby contest at the fete?’

‘Oh,
yes, sir.’

‘Good.
Excellent. It would have been madness to hide his light under a bushel. Have
you studied this outstanding infant closely, Bill Oakshott? If not, do so now,’
said Lord Ickenham, ‘for you will never have a better chance of observing a
classic yearling. What hocks! What pasterns! And what lungs!’ he continued, as
George Basil Percival, waking, like Abou ben Adhem, from a deep dream of peace,
split the welkin with a sudden howl. ‘I always mark heavily for lungs. I should
explain, madam, that I am to have the honour of acting as judge at the contest
to which I have referred.’

‘You
are, sir?’

‘I am,
indeed. Is your husband at home? No? A pity. I would have advised him to pick
up a bit of easy money by putting his shirt on this child for the Bonny Baby
stakes. Have you a shirt, Mr Potter? Ah, I see you have. Well, slap it on the
stable’s entry and fear nothing. I have at present, of course, no acquaintance
with local form, but I cannot imagine that there will be another competitor of
such supreme quality as to nose him out. I see myself at the close of the
proceedings raising Basil’s hand in the air with the words “The winnah!” Well,
Mrs Stubbs,’ said Lord Ickenham, with a polished bow in the direction of his
hostess and a kindly ‘Kitchy-kitchy’ to the coming champ, who was staring at
him with what a more sensitive man would have considered offensive curiosity,
‘we must be pushing along. We have much to do. Goodbye, Mrs Stubbs. Goodbye,
baby. Goodbye, off—’

He
paused, the word unspoken. Constable Potter had suddenly turned and was making
for the cottage at a high rate of speed, and Lord Ickenham stared after him at
little blankly.

‘Gone
without a cry!’ he said. ‘I suppose he forgot something.’

‘His
manners,’ said Mrs Stubbs tartly. ‘The idea!’