Uncle Dynamite (34 page)

‘Sheep,’
said Sir Aylmer firmly. ‘A poor, spineless sheep who can’t say boo to a goose.’

A more
practised debater would have turned this charge to his advantage by challenging
the speaker to name three sheep who could say boo to a goose, but Bill merely
stood rigid, his fists clenched, his nostrils dilated, his face mantled with
the blush of shame and indignation, regretting that ties of blood and his
companion’s advanced years rendered impossible that slosh in the eye for which
the other seemed to him to be asking, nay pleading, with his every word.

‘Sheep,’
said Sir Aylmer, winding up the speech for the prosecution. ‘She told me so
herself.’

It was
in this delicate situation that Major Plank intruded.

‘Hullo
there,’ he said, striding in with the calm assurance of a man accustomed for
years to walk uninvited into the huts of native chiefs. ‘Hullo, Bill.’

It
would be difficult to advance more conclusive proof of the turmoil into which
Bill Oakshott’s soul had been thrown by his uncle’s words than by saying that
the unexpected entry of the last man he would have wished to see in the
drawing-room of Ashenden Manor did not cause so much as a gleam of horror to
come into his eyes. He regarded him dully, his mind still occupied by that
sheep sequence. Did Hermione, he was asking himself, really look on him as a
sheep? And, arising from that, had she a prejudice against sheep? The evidence
went to show that she had none against baa-lambs, but sheep, of course, might
be a different matter.

It was
left to Sir Aylmer to do the honours.

‘Who
the hell are you?’ he asked, not unthankful that here was another object on
which he could work off some of the spleen induced by the chit-chat of
daughters and policemen.

Major
Plank had had far too much experience of this sort of thing, to be abashed by
nervous irritability on the part of a host. Many of the householders on whom he
had dropped in in his time had said it with spears.

‘Who
the hell are
you?’
he replied agreeably. ‘I’m looking for Mugsy
Bostock.’

Sir
Aylmer started.

‘I am
Sir Aylmer Bostock,’ he said, and Major Plank stared at him incredulously.

‘You?’
he said. ‘Don’t be an ass. Mugsy Bostock is younger than me, and you look a
million. Have you seen your Uncle Mugsy anywhere, Bill?’

It was
at this point that Jane, the parlourmaid, entered bearing strawberries in a
bowl, for they did themselves well at tea time at Ashenden Manor — cucumber
sandwiches, muffins, strawberries and everything. Sir Aylmer addressed her in
the carrying voice which was so characteristic of him.

‘JANE!’

A
lesser girl would have dropped the bowl. Jane merely shook like an aspen.

‘Yes,
sir?’

‘Tell
this son of a … this gentleman who I am.’

‘Sir
Aylmer Bostock, sir.’

‘Right,’
said Sir Aylmer, like the judge of one of those general knowledge quizzes which
are so popular nowadays.

Major
Plank said he was dashed.

‘It’s
that ghastly moustache that misled me,’ he explained. ‘If you go about the place
behind a whacking great white moustache, you can’t blame people for taking you
for a centenarian. Well, nice to see you again, Mugsy, and all that, but,
cutting the guff, I came here on business. Plank’s my name. ‘‘Plank!’

‘Brabazon-Plank.
You may remember me at school. I’ve just discovered that that raving lunatic,
Barmy Twistleton — Lord Ickenham he calls himself now — has been passing
himself off as me under your roof, and it’s got to stop. I don’t know what made
him do it, and I don’t care, the point is I’ll be damned if I’m going to have
people thinking that Barmy Twistleton is me. Good God! How would you like it
yourself?’

There
had been an instant, just after the words, ‘Plank’s my name,’ when Sir Aylmer
had given a quick and extraordinarily realistic impersonation of a harpooned
whale, shaking from stem to stern as if a barb had entered his flesh. But as
the speaker continued, this had given place to a frozen calm, the dangerous
calm that heralds the storm.

‘I can
tell you what made him do it,’ he said, allowing his eyes to play upon Bill
like flame-throwers. ‘He wished to be of assistance to my nephew here. We are
holding our annual village fete shortly, and one of its features is a contest
for bonny babies. My nephew was to have acted as judge.’

‘Barmy
told me he was going to be the judge.’

‘That
was the latest arrangement. My nephew persuaded him to take his place.’

‘Very
sensible of you, Bill,’ said Major Plank cordially. ‘Dashed dangerous things,
these baby contests. The little beasts are bad enough themselves, but it’s the
mothers you want to watch out for. Look,’ he said, baring his leg and
indicating a cicatrice on the calf. ‘That’s what I got once in Peru for being
fool enough to let myself be talked into judging a competition for bonny babies.
The mother of one of the Hon. Mentions got after me with a native dagger.’

‘The
problem then arose,’ proceeded Sir Aylmer, still speaking evenly and spacing
his words with care, ‘of how to introduce Lord Ickenham into my house. He was
well aware that I would never allow him to enter my house, if I knew who he
was. So he said he was Major Brabazon-Plank, the explorer, and my nephew
endorsed this statement. What do you mean,’ roared Sir Aylmer, suddenly
abandoning the calm, judicial method and becoming a thing of fire and fury,
‘what do you mean, you infernal young scallywag, by introducing impostors into
my house?’

He
would have spoken further, for it was obvious that the greater part of his
music was still in him, but at this moment Bill exploded.

A good
deal is always required to change a mental attitude which has endured for a
number of years. From early boyhood Bill Oakshott had regarded this uncle of
his with respectful awe, much as a nervous young prehistoric man might have
regarded the leader of his tribe. He had quailed before his wrath, listened
obsequiously to his stories, done all that lay in his power to humour him. And
had this scene taken place at a time when he was in normal mood, there is
little doubt that he would have folded like an accordion and allowed himself to
be manhandled without protest.

But
Bill was not in normal mood. His soul was seething in rebellion like a cistern
struck by a thunderbolt. The interview with Hermione had left him raw and
wincing. The information that she regarded him as a sheep had dropped vitriol
on the wounds. And now, not once but three times, this white-moustached cuckoo
in the nest had alluded to Ashenden Manor as ‘my house’. At these emotional
moments there is always something, generally trivial in itself, which fulfils
the function of the last straw, and with Bill now it was this description of
Ashenden Manor.

In the
automatic, barely conscious fashion of the Englishman at tea time he had been
continuing to eat and drink throughout his uncle’s exposition, and for an
instant a muffin prevented him expressing his views. He swallowed it, and was
at liberty to proceed.

‘“My
house?”‘ he said. ‘I like that. Where do you get that “my house” stuff?’

Sir
Aylmer said that that was not the point, and was starting to indicate once more
what the point was, when he was swept away as if by a tidal wave.

‘“My
house!”‘ repeated Bill, choking on the words like one who chokes upon a muffin.
‘Of all the crust! Of all the nerve! It’s about time, Uncle Aylmer, that we got
this thing cleared up about who this ruddy house belongs to. Let’s do it now.’

‘Yes,
let’s,’ said Major Plank, interested. A man with five sisters and seven aunts,
he was well versed in family rows and thought that this one promised to be in
the first rank and wanted pushing along. ‘Whose house is it?’

‘Mine,’
thundered Bill. ‘Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.’

‘I
see,’ said Major Plank, getting his drift. ‘Yours. Then where does Mugsy come
in?’

‘He
planted himself here when I was a mere kid, unable to do anything about it. I
was only sixteen when my father died, and he barged over from
Cheltenham
and got into the woodwork.’

‘What
happened when you came of age?’

‘Nothing.
He stuck on.’

‘You
should have booted him out.’

‘Of
course I should.’

‘That
was the moment.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why
didn’t you?’

‘I
hadn’t the heart.’

‘Mistaken
kindness.’

‘Well,
I’m going to do it now. I’ve had enough of this business of being a … what’s
the word?’

‘Fathead?’

‘Cipher
in the home. I’m sick and tired of being a cipher in the home. You can jolly
well clear out, Uncle Aylmer. You understand me? Buzz off. Where you buzz to, I
don’t care, but buzz. Go back to
Cheltenham
, if you like. Or Bexhill.’

‘Or
Bognor Regis,’ suggested Major Plank.

‘Or
Bognor Regis. Go anywhere you like, but you’re not going to stay here. Is that
clear?’

‘Quite
clear,’ said Major Plank. ‘Very well put.’

‘Right,’
said Bill.

He
strode out through the french window, and Major Plank helped himself to a
muffin.

‘Nice
chap, Bill,’ he said. ‘I like a young fellow who knows his own mind. Extraordinarily
good muffins, these, Mugsy. I’ll have another.’

Emerging through the
french window, Bill passed along the terrace, walking rapidly towards the spot
where the drive began. His eyes glowed. He was breathing stertorously.

The
appetite grows by what it feeds on. So far from soothing him and restoring him
to everyday placidity, his throwing off of the shackles had left Bill Oakshott
in a mood for fresh encounters. He had tasted blood, and wanted more. It is
often so with quiet young men who at long last assert themselves.

He was
in the frame of mind when he would have liked to meet Joe Louis and pick a
quarrel with him, and as he turned the corner and came into the drive there
caught his eye something which seemed to have been sent in direct answer to
prayer.

It was
not Joe Louis, but it was the next best thing. What he had seen was a stout
young man with a pink nose and horn-rimmed spectacles in conversation with
Hermione Bostock. And just as he beheld him this young man suddenly folded
Hermione in his embrace and started to kiss her.

Bill
broke into a gallop, the glow in his eyes intensified, the stertorousness of
his breathing still more marked. His general mental attitude was that of the
war-horse which said ‘Ha!’ among the trumpets.

14

It is never easy for a
high-strung young man whose whole future as a publisher of the book beautiful
is being decided at a country house to sit in an inn two miles from that house,
waiting patiently for news to be brought to him from the front. With each long
minute that goes by his nervousness increases. The limbs twitch, the eyeballs
roll, the illusion that there are ants in his pants becomes more and more
pronounced, until eventually the urge to be closer to the centre of things
grows so imperious that he yields to it.

That
was why Otis Painter had been absent from the Bull’s Head when Hermione arrived
there. He had started to walk to Ashenden Manor. Like Edith of the swan’s neck
after the Battle of Hastings, he wanted to find out what had been going on.

When we
say that Otis had started to walk to Ashenden Manor, it would be more correct
to put it that he thought he had; in actual fact, having got his instructions
twisted, he had turned to the left instead of to the right on leaving the inn,
and it was only after he had proceeded a mile and three quarters through
delightful country that he discovered that though he was improving his figure
and getting lots of pure air into his lungs, he was diminishing his chances of
reaching his destination with every step that he took.

Returning
to the Bull’s Head, he had borrowed a bicycle from the boy who cleaned the
boots, a courteous and obliging lad of the name of Erbut with blacking all over
his face, and after a couple of unpleasant spills, for it was many years since
he had cycled and the old skill had rather deserted him, had found himself at
the top of the drive. There, feeling that this was as far as it was prudent to
penetrate into territory where there was a grave risk of meeting Sir Aylmer
Bostock, he deposited his machine behind a tree, concealed himself in the
bushes and resumed his waiting. And presently Hermione appeared, walking
briskly.

As she
drew near and he was enabled to get a clear view of her, his heart sank, for he
could see that her lips were tightly set, her bosom heaving and her eyes bright
and stormy. She looked, in a word, like a daughter who, approaching her father
in the matter of withdrawing legal actions against publishers, has come up
against something too hot to handle.