Young Men in Spats (8 page)

However, he tried to be as bright as possible.

‘Ah, Bradbury!' he replied, with a lilting laugh.

Captain Bradbury's right eyebrow had now become so closely entangled with his left that there seemed no hope of ever extricating it without the aid of powerful machinery.

‘I understand that you called at Tudsleigh Court today.'

‘Oh, rather. We missed you, of course, but, nevertheless, a pleasant time was had by all.'

‘So I gathered. Miss Carroway tells me that you have invited her to picnic up the river with you tomorrow.'

‘That's right. Up the river. The exact spot.'

‘You will, of course, send her a note informing her that you are unable to go, as you have been unexpectedly called back to London.'

‘But nobody's called me back to London.'

‘Yes, they have. I have.'

Freddie tried to draw himself up. A dashed difficult thing to do, of course, when you're sitting down, and he didn't make much of a job of it.

‘I fail to understand you, Bradbury.'

‘Let me make it clearer,' said the Captain. ‘There is an excellent train in the mornings at twelve-fifteen. You will catch it tomorrow.'

‘Oh, yes?'

‘I shall call here at one o'clock. If I find that you have not gone, I shall . . . Did I ever happen to mention that I won the Heavyweight Boxing Championship of India last year?'

Freddie swallowed a little thoughtfully.

‘You did?'

‘Yes.'

Freddie pulled himself together.

‘The Amateur Championship?'

‘Of course.'

‘I used to go in quite a lot for amateur boxing,' said Freddie with a little yawn. ‘But I got bored with it. Not enough competition. Too little excitement. So I took on pros. But I found them so extraordinarily brittle that I chucked the whole thing. That was when Bulldog Whacker had to go to hospital for two months after one of our bouts. I collect old china now.'

Brave words, of course, but he watched his visitor depart with emotions that were not too fearfully bright. In fact, he tells me, he actually toyed for a moment with the thought that there might be a lot to be said for that twelve-fifteen train.

It was but a passing weakness. The thought of April Carroway soon strengthened him once more. He had invited her to this picnic, and he intended to keep the tryst even if it meant having to run like a rabbit every time Captain Bradbury hove in sight. After all, he reflected, it was most improbable that a big heavy fellow like that would be able to catch him.

His frame of mind, in short, was precisely that of the old Crusading Widgeons when they heard that the Paynim had been sighted in the offing.

The next day, accordingly, found Freddie seated in a hired row-boat at the landing-stage by the Town Bridge. It was a lovely summer morning with all the fixings, such as blue skies, silver wavelets, birds, bees, gentle breezes and what not. He had stowed the luncheon basket in the stern, and was whiling away the time of waiting by brushing up his ‘Lady of Shalott', when a voice spoke from the steps. He looked up and perceived the kid Prudence gazing down at him with her grave, green eyes.

‘Oh, hullo,' he said.

‘Hullo,' said the child.

Since his entry to Tudsleigh Court, Prudence Carroway had meant little or nothing in Freddie's life. He had seen her around, of course, and had beamed at her in a benevolent sort of way, it being his invariable policy to beam benevolently at all relatives and connections of the adored object, but he had scarcely given her a thought. As always on these occasions, his whole attention had been earmarked for the adored one. So now his attitude was rather that of a bloke who wonders to what he is indebted for the honour of this visit.

‘Nice day,' he said, tentatively.

‘Yes,' said the kid. ‘I came to tell you that April can't come.'

The sun, which had been shining with exceptional brilliance, seemed to Freddie to slip out of sight like a diving duck.

‘You don't mean that!'

‘Yes, I do.'

‘Can't come?'

‘No. She told me to tell you she's awfully sorry, but some friends of Mother's have phoned that they are passing through
and would like lunch, so she's got to stay on and help cope with them.'

‘Oh, gosh!'

‘So she wants you to take me instead, and she's going to try to come on afterwards. I told her we would lunch near Griggs's Ferry.'

Something of the inky blackness seemed to Freddie to pass from the sky. It was ajar, of course, but still, if the girl was going to join him later . . . And, as for having this kid along, well, even that had its bright side. He could see that it would be by no means a bad move to play the hearty host to the young blighter. Reports of the lavishness of his hospitality and the suavity of his demeanour would get round to April and might do him quite a bit of good. It is a recognized fact that a lover is never wasting his time when he lushes up the little sister.

‘All right,' he said. ‘Hop in.'

So the kid hopped, and they shoved off. There wasn't anything much in the nature of intellectual conversation for the first ten minutes or so, because there was a fairish amount of traffic on the river at this point and the kid, who had established herself at the steering apparatus, seemed to have a rather sketchy notion of the procedure. As she explained to Freddie after they had gone about half-way through a passing barge, she always forgot which of the ropes it was that you pulled when you wanted to go to the right. However, the luck of the Widgeons saw them through and eventually they came, still afloat, to the unfrequented upper portions of the stream. Here in some mysterious way the rudder fell off, and after that it was all much easier. And it was at this point that the kid, having no longer anything to occupy herself with, reached out and picked up the book.

‘Hullo! Are you reading Tennyson?'

‘I was before we started, and I shall doubtless dip into him again later on. You will generally find me having a pop at the bard under advisement when I get a spare five minutes.'

‘You don't mean to say you like him?'

‘Of course I do. Who doesn't?'

‘I don't. April's been making me read him, and I think he's soppy.'

‘He is not soppy at all. Dashed beautiful.'

‘But don't you think his girls are awful blisters?'

Apart from his old crony, the Lady of Shalott, Freddie had not yet made the acquaintance of any of the women in Tennyson's poems, but he felt very strongly that if they were good enough for April Carroway they were good enough for a green-eyed child with freckles all over her nose, and he said as much, rather severely.

‘Tennyson's heroines,' said Freddie, ‘are jolly fine specimens of pure, sweet womanhood, so get that into your nut, you soulless kid. If you behaved like a Tennyson heroine, you would be doing well.'

‘Which of them?'

‘Any of them. Pick 'em where you like. You can't go wrong. How much further to this Ferry place?'

‘It's round the next bend.'

It was naturally with something of a pang that Freddie tied the boat up at their destination. Not only was this Griggs's Ferry a lovely spot, it was in addition completely deserted. There was a small house through the trees, but it showed no signs of occupancy. The only living thing for miles around appeared to be an elderly horse which was taking a snack on the river bank. In other words, if only April had been here and the kid hadn't, they would
have been alone together with no human eye to intrude upon their sacred solitude. They could have read Tennyson to each other till they were blue in the face, and not a squawk from a soul.

A saddening thought, of course. Still, as the row had given him a nice appetite, he soon dismissed these wistful yearnings and started unpacking the luncheon basket. And at the end of about twenty minutes, during which period nothing had broken the stillness but the sound of champing jaws, he felt that it would not be amiss to chat with his little guest.

‘Had enough?' he asked.

‘No,' said the kid. ‘But there isn't any more.'

‘You seem to tuck away your food all right.'

‘The girls at school used to call me Teresa the Tapeworm,' said the kid with a touch of pride.

It suddenly struck Freddie as a little odd that with July only half over this child should be at large. The summer holidays, as he remembered it, always used to start round about the first of August.

‘Why aren't you at school now?'

‘I was bunked last month.'

‘Really?' said Freddie, interested. ‘They gave you the push, did they? What for?'

‘Shooting pigs.'

‘Shooting pigs?'

‘With a bow and arrow. One pig, that is to say. Percival. He belonged to Miss Maitland, the headmistress. Do you ever pretend to be people in books?'

‘Never. And don't stray from the point at issue. I want to get to the bottom of this thing about the pig.'

‘I'm not straying from the point at issue. I was playing William Tell.'

‘The old apple-knocker, you mean?'

‘The man who shot an apple off his son's head. I tried to get one of the girls to put the apple on her head, but she wouldn't, so I went down to the pigsty and put it on Percival's. And the silly goop shook it off and started to eat it just as I was shooting, which spoiled my aim and I got him on the left ear. He was rather vexed about it. So was Miss Maitland. Especially as I was supposed to be in disgrace at the time, because I had set the dormitory on fire the night before.'

Freddie blinked a bit.

‘You set the dormitory on fire?'

‘Yes.'

‘Any special reason, or just a passing whim?'

‘I was playing Florence Nightingale.'

‘Florence Nightingale?'

‘The Lady with the Lamp. I dropped the lamp.'

‘Tell me,' said Freddie. ‘This Miss Maitland of yours. What colour is her hair?'

‘Grey.'

‘I thought as much. And now, if you don't mind, switch off the childish prattle for the nonce. I feel a restful sleep creeping over me.'

‘My Uncle Joe says that people who sleep after lunch have got fatty degeneration of the heart.'

‘Your Uncle Joe is an ass,' said Freddie.

How long it was before Freddie awoke, he could not have said. But when he did the first thing that impressed itself upon him was that the kid was no longer in sight, and this worried him a bit. I mean to say, a child who, on her own showing, plugged pigs with arrows and set fire to dormitories was not a child he
was frightfully keen on having roaming about the countryside at a time when he was supposed to be more or less in charge of her. He got up, feeling somewhat perturbed, and started walking about and bellowing her name.

Rather a chump it made him feel, he tells me, because a fellow all by himself on the bank of a river shouting ‘Prudence! Prudence!' is apt to give a false impression to any passer-by who may hear him. However, he didn't have to bother about that long, for at this point, happening to glance at the river, he saw her body floating in it.

‘Oh, dash it!' said Freddie.

Well, I mean, you couldn't say it was pleasant for him. It put him in what you might call an invidious position. Here he was, supposed to be looking after this kid, and when he got home April Carroway would ask him if he had had a jolly day and he would reply: ‘Topping, thanks, except that young Prudence went and got drowned, regretted by all except possibly Miss Maitland.' It wouldn't go well, and he could see it wouldn't go well, so on the chance of a last-minute rescue he dived in. And he was considerably surprised, on arriving at what he had supposed to be a drowning child, to discover that it was merely the outer husk. In other words, what was floating there was not the kid in person but only her frock. And why a frock that had a kid in it should suddenly have become a kidless frock was a problem beyond him.

Another problem, which presented itself as he sloshed ashore once more, was what the dickens he was going to do now. The sun had gone in and a nippy breeze was blowing, and it looked to him as if only a complete change of costume could save him from pneumonia. And as he stood there wondering where this change of costume was to come from he caught sight of that house through the trees.

Now, in normal circs. Freddie would never dream of calling on a bird to whom he had never been introduced and touching him for a suit of clothes. He's scrupulously rigid on points like that and has been known to go smokeless through an entire night at the theatre rather than ask a stranger for a match. But this was a special case. He didn't hesitate. A quick burst across country, and he was at the front door, rapping the knocker and calling ‘I say!' And when at the end of about three minutes nobody had appeared he came rather shrewdly to the conclusion that the place must be deserted.

Well, this, of course, fitted in quite neatly with his plans. He much preferred to nip in and help himself rather than explain everything at length to someone who might very easily be one of those goops who are not quick at grasping situations. Observing that the door was not locked, accordingly he pushed in and toddled up the stairs to the bedroom on the first floor.

Everything was fine. There was a cupboard by the bed, and in it an assortment of clothes which left him a wide choice. He fished out a neat creation in checked tweed, located a shirt, a tie, and a sweater in the chest of drawers and, stripping off his wet things, began to dress.

As he did so, he continued to muse on this mystery of the child Prudence. He wondered what Sherlock Holmes would have made of it, or Lord Peter Wimsey, for that matter. The one thing certain was that the moment he was clothed he must buzz out and scour the countryside for her. So with all possible speed he donned the shirt, the tie, and the sweater, and had just put on a pair of roomy but serviceable shoes when his eye, roving aimlessly about the apartment, fell upon a photograph on the mantelpiece.