A Pelican at Blandings Page 6

  He hoped Mr. Galahad had not got mixed up with a gang of some kind.

  4

  The hollowness of John's voice over the telephone had deepened Gally's conviction that this rift between him and the Gilpin popsy must be the real West End stuff, and when he reached his destination and saw him, he realized how well-founded his apprehensions had been.

  What with the excellence of its beer and the charm of the shady garden running down to the river in which its patrons drink it, haggard faces are rarely seen at the Emsworth Arms, and the haggardness of John's was all the more noticeable. In these idyllic surroundings it could not but attract attention, and Gally was reminded of his old friend Fruity Biffen on the occasion when he had gone into the ring at Hurst Park wearing a long Assyrian beard in order to avoid recognition by the half dozen bookmakers there to whom he owed money, and the beard, insufficiently smeared with fish glue, had come off. The same wan, drawn look.

  Until they were seated at one of the garden tables with tankards of Emsworth Arms beer before them no word was spoken. But it was never in Gally to refrain from speech for long, and after he had fortified himself with a draft of the elixir he leaned forward and gave his companion's shoulder a fatherly pat.

  'Tell me all about it, my boy,' he said in the hushed voice of one addressing a stretcher case on his stretcher. 'I should mention that it was only an hour or so ago that Miss Gilpin and I were in conference, so I understand the situation more or less. That is to say, while short on details, I'm pretty clear on the general all-over picture. Your engagement, I gather from her, is off, and as it's only a day or so since you plighted your troth it struck me as quick work. I was mystified.'

  'What did she say about me?'

  'Better, far better not to enquire. Suffice it that her obiter dicta differed substantially from the sort of thing Juliet used to say about Romeo. What on earth happened?'

  A beetle, descending from the tree in the shade of which they were sitting, fell on the table. John gave it a cold look.

  'It wasn't my fault,' he said. 'I was simply doing my duty. Women don't understand these things.'

  'What things?'

  'She ought to have realized that I couldn't let Clutterbuck down.'

  'Clutterbuck?'

  'G. G. Clutterbuck.'

  Gally had intended to be all gentleness and sympathy at this interview, but he could not repress an irritated snort. If he had to listen to a story instead of telling one, he liked it to be clear and straightforward.

  'Who the hell is G. G. Clutterbuck?'

  'A chartered accountant for whom I was appearing in the action of Clutterbuck versus Frisby. And Frisby is the retired meat salesman whose car collided with Clutterbuck's in the Fulham Road, shaking Clutterbuck up and possibly causing internal injuries. The defence, of course, pleaded that Clutterbuck had run into Frisby, and everything turned on the evidence of a Miss Linda Gilpin, who happened to be passing at the time and was an eye witness of the collision. It was my duty to examine her and make it plain to the jury that she was cockeyed and her testimony as full of holes as a Swiss cheese.'

  It is probable that Gally would have made at this point some ejaculation expressive of interest and concern, but he chanced at the moment to be drinking beer. It was not till he had finished choking and had been slapped on the back by a passing waiter that he was in a condition to offer any comment, and even then he was unable to, for John had resumed his narrative.

  'You can imagine my feelings. The court reeled about me. I thought for a moment I wouldn't be able to carry on.'

  The drama of the situation was not lost on Gally. His eyeglass flew from its base.

  'But you did carry on?'

  'I did, and in about a minute and a half I had her tied in knots. She hadn't a leg to stand on.'

  'You led her on to damaging admissions?'

  'Yes.'

  'All that "Would it be fair to say" and "Is it not a fact" sort of thing?'

  'Yes.'

  'Did you wag a finger in her face?'

  'Of course I didn't.'

  'I thought that was always done. But you gave her the works?'

  'Yes.'

  'And she resented it?'

  'Yes.'

  'Did you win your case?'

  'Yes.'

  'That must have pleased Clutterbuck.'

  'Yes.'

  'Did you see her afterwards?'

  'No. She wrote me a note saying the engagement was off.'

  Gally replaced his monocle. The look in the eye to which he fitted it and in the other eye which went through life in the nude was not an encouraging one. Nor was his 'H'm' a 'H'm' calculated to engender optimism.

  'You're in a spot, Johnny.'

  'Yes.'

  'You will have to do some heavy pleading if those wedding bells are to ring out in the little village church or wherever you were planning to have them ring out. And the problem that confronts us is How is that pleading to be done?'

  'I don't follow you. She's at the castle.'

  'Exactly, and you aren't.'

  'But you'll invite me there.'

  Gally shook his head. It pained him to be compelled to act as a black frost in his young friend's garden of dreams, but facts had to be faced.

  'Impossible. Nothing would please me more, Johnny, than to slip you into the old homestead, but you don't realize what my position there is. Connie can't exclude me from the premises, I being a chartered member of the family, but she views me with concern and her conversation on the rare occasions when she speaks to me generally consists of eulogies of the various trains back to the metropolis. Any attempt on my part to ring in a friend would rouse the tigress that sleeps within her. You would be lucky if you lasted five minutes. She would have you by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the trousers and be giving you the bum's rush before you had finished brushing your feet on the mat. I know just how you are feeling, and I couldn't be sorrier not to be able to oblige you, but there it is. You'll have to go back to London and leave me to look after your affairs. And if I may say so,' said Gally modestly, 'they could scarcely be in better hands. I will do the pleading with L. Gilpin, and I confidently expect to play on her as on a stringed instrument.'

  The words brought to his mind a very funny story about a member of the Pelican Club who had once tried to learn to play the banjo, but something whispered to him that this was not the moment to tell it. He gave John's shoulder another fatherly pat and set off on the long trek back to the castle.

  John, his face more than ever like that of Fruity Biffen, put in an order for another beer.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In order to avoid the glare of the sun and the society of the Duke of Dunstable, who had suddenly become extremely adhesive, Vanessa Polk had slipped away after lunch to one of the shady nooks with which the grounds of Blandings Castle were so liberally provided, and was sitting there on a rustic bench. Lord Emsworth's father had been a man much given to strewing rustic benches hither and thither. He had also, not that it matters, collected birds' eggs and bound volumes of the proceedings of the Shropshire Archaeological Society.

  As she sat there, she was thinking of Wilbur Trout. The news that he was expected on the afternoon train had given her a nostalgic thrill. He had probably forgotten it, his having been a life into which feminine entanglements had entered so largely, but they had once for a short time been engaged to be married, and though it was she who had broken the engagement, she had always retained a maternal fondness for him. Whenever she read of another of his marriages she could not help feeling that she had been wrong to desert her post and stop looking after him. Lacking her gentle supervision, he had lost all restraint, springing from blonde to blonde with an assiduity which seemed to suggest that he intended to go on marrying them till the supply gave out.

  Wilbur Trout was a young man of great amiability whose initial mistake in life had been to have a father who enjoyed making money and counted that day lost which had gone by without increasing
his bank balance. Had he been the son of someone humble in the lower income tax brackets, he would have gone through the years as a blameless and contented filing clerk or something on that order, his only form of dissipation an occasional visit to Palisades Park or Coney Island. Inheriting some fifty million dollars in blue chip securities unsettled him, and he had become New York's most prominent playboy, fawned on by head waiters, a fount of material to gossip columnists and a great giver of parties whose guests included both the rich and the poor. It was at one of these that Vanessa had met him, and she now sat in the shady nook thinking of old times.

  In favour of this shady nook there was much to be said. It was cool. It was pleasantly scented. The streamlet that trickled through it on its way to the lake gave out a musical tinkle. And above all Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, was not there. But against these advantages had to be set the fact that it was a sort of country club for all the winged insects in Shropshire. Wearying of their society after a while, Vanessa rose and made her way back to the house, and as she approached it Lord Emsworth came down the front steps.

  She greeted him cordially.

  'Playing hooky, Lord Emsworth?'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'Or has the Empress given you the afternoon off? Aren't you usually on duty at this time of day?'

  Lord Emsworth, who had been looking gloomy, brightened a little. He was fond of Vanessa. He found her sympathetic, and a sympathetic ear into which to pour his troubles was just what he had been wanting. He explained the reason for his despondency.

  'Connie told me to meet this man Trout at the station. He is arriving on a train that gets in soon. I forget when, but Voules will know. And I ought to be with the Empress every minute. She needs me at her side.'

  'Why didn't you tell Lady Constance that you had a previous engagement?'

  The blankness behind Lord Emsworth's pince-nez showed that this revolutionary idea had not occurred to him. When Connie told you to do things, you did not say that you had a previous engagement. Galahad, of course, would be capable of such an act of reckless courage, but Galahad, in addition to being a man of steel and iron, veteran of a hundred battles with bookmakers, process servers and racecourse touts, wore an eyeglass and had only to twiddle it to daunt the stoutest sister. It was not a feat to be expected of a man in pince-nez. With a shiver at the mere thought of such a thing, he said:

  'Oh, I couldn't do that.'

  'Why not?'

  'She would be furious.'

  Wheels grated on gravel, and the car came round the corner, chauffeur Voules at the helm.

  'Oh dear,' sighed Lord Emsworth, seeing it.

  'Look,' said Vanessa. 'Why don't I go and meet Trout?'

  The start Lord Emsworth gave at this suggestion was so violent that it detached his pince-nez from the parent nose. Hauling them in on their string, he gazed at her reverentially. On his visit to New York to attend the wedding of Connie and James Schoonmaker he had become a great admirer of the American girl, but he had never supposed that even an American girl could be as noble as this.

  'Would you? Would you really?'

  'Sure. A privilege and pleasure.'

  'There would be no need to tell Connie.'

  'None whatever.'

  'Well, it is extremely kind of you. I don't know how to thank you.'

  'Don't give it a thought.'

  'You see, it's the Empress. I mean—'

  'I know what you mean. Your place is at her side.'

  'Exactly. I ought not to leave her for a moment. They keep assuring me that there is no reason for concern, Banks said so in so many words, but the fact remains that she refused to eat a potato which I had offered her.'

  'Bad.'

  'No, that is what is so sinister about it. It was a perfectly good potato, but she merely sniffed at it and—'

  'Turned on her heel?'

  'Precisely. She sniffed at it and walked away. Naturally I am anxious.'

  'Anyone would be.'

  'If only I could consult Wolff-Lehman.'

  'Why can't you?'

  'He's dead.'

  'I see what you mean. That does rather rule him out as an adviser. Though you might get him on the ouija board.'

  'So if you will really go to the station—'

  'I'm on my way. Market Blandings, here I come.'

  'I'm afraid it is asking a great deal of you. You will find it boring having to talk to Mr. Trout as you drive back. It is always a strain finding anything to say to a stranger.'

  'That's all right. Willie Trout's not a stranger. I knew him on the other side.'

  'Where?'

  'In America.'

  'Oh, ah, yes, of course, yes. The other side of the Atlantic, you mean.'

  'We'll have all sorts of things to talk about. Not a dull moment.'

  'Capital,' said Lord Emsworth. 'Capital, capital, capital.'

  The train was just coming in as the car reached the station, and as Wilbur Trout stepped from it Vanessa started picking up the threads with a genial 'Hi!', and he responded with the same cordial monosyllable. There was no embarrassment on his side at this unexpected meeting with a woman he had loved and lost. If meeting women he had loved and lost could have embarrassed Wilbur Trout, he would have had to spend most of his time turning pink and twiddling his fingers. Vanessa was an old friend whom he was delighted to see. If he was a little vague as to who she was, he distinctly recalled having met her before. And when she told him, after he had called her Pauline, that her name was Vanessa, he had her placed. It helped, of course, that she was the only one on his long list to whom he had been engaged and not married.

  She explained the circumstances which had led to her being at Blandings Castle, and they spoke for awhile of the old days, of parties he had given at Great Neck and Westhampton Beach, of guys and dolls who had been her fellow guests at those parties, and of the night when he had dived into the Plaza fountain in correct evening dress. But the frivolous memories did not detain him long. His mind was on deeper things.

  'Say, is there anywhere around here where you can get a drink?' he asked, and she replied that beverages of all kinds were to be obtained at the Emsworth Arms not a stone's throw distant. There were other hostelries in Market Blandings . . . one does not forget the Goose and Gander, the Jolly Cricketers, the Wheatsheaf, the Waggoner's Rest, the Blue Cow and the Stitch In Time . . . but these catered for the proletariat rather than for millionaire visitors from New York. This she explained to Wilbur, and soon, having brightened Voules's afternoon by telling him to go and refresh himself at the bar, they were seated at one of the tables in the Emsworth Arms' charming garden with gin and tonics within easy reach and Vanessa was clothing in speech a thought which had been in her mind from the first moment of their meeting.

  'Willie,' she said, 'you look like the Wreck of the Hesperus.'

  He took no offence at an old friend's candour. He had indeed arrived at the same conclusion himself when peering into the mirror that morning. He merely heaved a sombre sigh.

  'I've had a lot of trouble.'

  'What's gone wrong this time?'

  'It's a long story.'

  'Then before you start on it tell me how in the name of everything mysterious you come to be headed for Blandings Castle.'

  'That's part of the story.'

  'All right, then, carry on. You have the floor.'

  Wilbur drank deeply of his gin and tonic to assist the marshalling of his thoughts. After a moment's brooding he appeared to have got them in order.

  'It started with my divorce.'

  'Which one? Luella?'

  'No, not Luella.'

  'Marlene?'

  'No, not Marlene. Genevieve.'

  'Oh, Genevieve? Yes, I read about that.'

  'It was a terrible shock when she walked out on me.'

  The thought crossed Vanessa's mind that after his ample experience of that sort of thing the exodus of another wife should have seemed pure routine, but she did not say so. She was a tac
tful girl, and it was plain to her that for some inscrutable reason the loss of the third Mrs. Trout, who had chewed gum and talked baby-talk, had affected him deeply.

  'I loved her, Pauline I mean Vanessa. I worshipped her. And she ditched me for a guy who plays the trumpet in a band. And not a name band, either.'

  'Tough,' said Vanessa, but purely out of politeness. The character in the drama calling for sympathy was, she considered, the guy who played the trumpet. Unsuccessful in his profession, chained to a band that was not a name band, and now linked to Mrs. Genevieve Trout. One would have had to be hard-hearted indeed not to feel a pang of pity for a man with a record like that.

  Wilbur attracted the attention of a waiter and ordered two more gin and tonics. Even if his heart is broken, the prudent man does not neglect the practical side of life.

  'Where was I?' he said, passing a weary hand over his forehead.

  'You had got as far as the trumpeter, and you were saying how much you loved Genevieve.'

  'That's right.'

  'Still?'

  'Do you mean Do I love her still? I certainly do. I think of her all the time. I lie awake nights. I seem to hear her voice. She used to say the cutest things.'

  'I can imagine.'

  'She used to call roses woses.'

  'So she did.'

  'And rabbits wabbits.'

  'Yes, I remember.'

  'So you can understand how I felt when I saw that picture.'

  'What picture would that be?'

  'It was in the window of one of those art galleries on Bond Street, and it was the image of Genevieve.'

  'You mean a portrait?'

  'No, not a portrait, a picture of a girl by some French guy. And I said to myself I'd got to have it to remind me of her.'

  'So you bought it, and they threw in an invitation to Blandings Castle? Sort of like trading stamps?'

  'Don't joke about it.'

  'I'm not joking. Something must have happened, to bring you here, and I'm waiting to be told what.'

  'That was the Duke.'

  'What Duke?'

  'Dunstable he calls himself. He invited me.'