Galahad at Blandings

by P. G. Wodehouse

  Constable Evans, on the other hand, had found in her statement all the uplifting properties of some widely advertised tonic. Where Beach mourned, he rejoiced. The cross which all English country policemen have to bear is the lack of spirit and initiative in the local criminal classes. A man like New York’s Officer Garroway has always more dope pushers and heist guys and fiends with hatchet slaying six at his disposal than he knows what to do with, but in Market Blandings you were lucky if you got an occasional dog without a collar or Saturday-night drunk and disorderly. It was months since Constable Evans had made a decent pinch, and this sudden outbreak of crime brought out all the best in him. To leap on his machine and begin pedalling like a contestant in a six-day bicycle race was with him the work of an instant. He did not even stop to say ‘Ho’, his customary comment on the unusual.

  It was not long before he sighted the man wanted by the police. Sam had soon given up the chase, realising the futility of trying to overtake on foot a cyclist who had had fifty yards’ start. He was standing now in the middle of the road, his lips moving in a silent soliloquy which, if audible, would have had no chance of passing the censors even in these free—speaking days.

  The sunny mood in which he had begun the day had changed completely. Five minutes before, he had been the little friend of all the world and could have stepped straight into a Dickens’ novel and no questions asked, but now he viewed the human race with a jaundiced eye and could see no future for it. When Constable Evans came riding up, he thought he had never beheld a police officer he liked the looks of less. The man seemed to him to have not a single quality to recommend him to critical approval.

  Nor did the constable appear to be liking him. It would have taken a very poor physiognomist to have read into his glance anything even remotely resembling affection. He had a face that seemed to have been carved from some durable substance like granite, and it was with a baleful glitter in his eye that he lowered his bicycle to the ground. As he advanced on Sam, a traveller in the East who knew his tigers of the jungle would have been struck by his resemblance to one of them about to leap on its prey.

  ‘Ho!’ he said.

  The correct response to this would of course have been a civil ‘Ho to you,’ but Sam was too preoccupied with his gloomy thoughts to make it. He stared bleakly at Constable Evans. He was at a loss to know why this flatty had thrust his society on him, and he resented his presence.

  ‘Well?’ he said briefly, speaking from between clenched teeth. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You,’ said the constable even more briefly. ‘What are you doing with that watch?’

  ‘What watch?’

  ‘This watch,’ said Constable Evans, and deftly removed it from the right-hand pocket of Sam’s coat by the chain which dangled from it.

  Sam stared as, when a child, he had so often stared at a conjurer who had just produced from a borrowed top hat two rabbits and a bowl of goldfish.

  ‘Good Lord!’ he said. ‘That belongs to the fat man at the Emsworth Arms.’

  ‘You’re right it belongs to the fat man at the Emsworth Arms.’

  ‘I took it away by mistake.’

  Constable Evans was a man who did not laugh readily. Even at the sergeant’s anecdote, droll though it was, he had merely smiled. But this drew a quick guffaw from him, and having guffawed he sneered. Another man would have said, ‘A likely story!’ He merely said, ‘Ho!’

  Sam saw that explanations were in order.

  ‘What happened was this. The girl behind the bar was showing it to me, and I suddenly saw someone — er — someone I wanted to have a word with pass the door, so I ran out.’

  ‘With the watch in your pocket.’

  ‘I must have put it there without knowing.’

  ‘Ho!’

  Remorse for having inadvertently deprived a good man of what was no doubt a treasured possession had calmed Sam down a little. He still felt hostile to the human race and would have been glad to do without it, but he could see that he had put himself in the wrong and would have to make apologies. He clicked his tongue self-reproachfully.

  ‘Idiotic of me. I’ll take it back to the owner.’

  ‘I’ll take it back to the owner.’

  ‘Will you? That’s very nice of you. He’ll be amused. You’ll have a good laugh together.’

  ‘Ho!’

  The monosyllable intensified the dislike which Sam had been feeling from the first for this intrusive bluebottle.

  ‘Can’t you say anything except Ho?’ he snapped.

  ‘Yus,’ said Constable Evans. He was not as a rule a quick man with a repartee, but it was not often that he was given an opening like this. With the insufferably complacent air of a comedian who has been fed the line by his straight man he proceeded. ‘Yus, I can say something except Ho. I can say “You’re pinched”,’ he said, and laid a heavy hand on Sam’s shoulder.

  It was not the moment to lay hands on Sam’s shoulder. He had been finding it difficult enough to endure the conversation of one who seemed to him to combine in his single person all the least attractive qualities of a race — the human — which he particularly disliked, and to have his collarbone massaged by him was, if one may coin a phrase, the last straw. With a reflex action which would have interested Doctor Pavlov his fist shot out and there was a chunky sound as it impinged on the constable’s eye with all the weight of his muscular body behind it. It sent him staggering back, his foot tripped over a loose stone and he fell with a crash loud enough for two constables. And Sam, leaping at the bicycle, flung himself on it and rode off at a speed which Beach in his hot youth might have equalled but could not have surpassed. Had he been alive forty years before and a member of the choir attended by Beach, and had his voice by some lucky chance not broken before the first Sunday in Epiphany, thus enabling him to enter for the contest in which the butler had won his spectacular triumph, the race in all probability would have ended in a dead heat.

  III

  If you start two hundred yards or so from Market Blandings on a bicycle you have stolen from one of the local police force and continue to pedal along the high road, you come before long to the little hamlet of Blandings Parva, which lies at the gates of Blandings Castle. It consists of a few cottages, a church, a vicar— age, a general store, a pond with ducks on it, a filling station (its only concession to modernity) and the Blue Boar Inn. The last named was where Sam’s trip came to an end.

  It was on foot that he completed its final stages, for some time before he reached Blandings Parva the thought had crossed his mind that the sooner he got rid of his Arab steed the better. It is never wise to remain for long in possession of a hot bicycle, particularly one formerly the property of a member of the constabulary. Some quarter of a mile before journey’s end, accordingly, he propped the machine against a stile at the side of the road and was able to enter the premises of the Blue Boar in the guise of a blameless hiker. He took a seat in the cool, dim taproom and started to review the situation in which he found himself.

  It fell, he immediately perceived, into the category of situations which may be described as not so good. Try to gloss over the facts though he might, he could not reach any conclusion other than that he was a fugitive from justice and one jump, if that, ahead of the police. Totting up the various crimes he had committed — watch stealing, bicycle stealing, resisting an officer in the execution of his duty and causing him bodily injury — he had the feeling that if he got off with a life sentence, he would be lucky.

  The problem of what to do next was one beyond his power of solution. It called for a wiser head than his, and most fortunately there was just such a head within easy reach.

  ‘I wonder if you could let me have a piece of paper and an envelope,’ he said to the landlord. And is there someone who could take a note for me to Mr Galahad Threepwood at the castle?’

  The landlord said his son Gary would be happy to, if sixpence changed hands.

  ‘I’ll give him a shilling,’ said Sa
m.

  He was not a rich man and a shilling was a shilling to him, but if a shilling would provide for him a conference with one for whose ingenuity and resource he had come to feel a profound respect, it would in his opinion be a shilling well spent.

  CHAPTER 6

  I

  A night’s rest and a strengthening cocktail before lunch had quite dispelled any fatigue Gally might have been feeling as the result of his yesterday’s motoring. His superb health, fostered by tobacco, late hours and alcohol, always enabled him to recuperate quickly, and he could be alert and bubbling with energy after activities which would have sent most teetotallers tottering off to their armchairs, to lie limply in them with their feet up.

  Sam’s telephone call just before lunch, announcing his arrival at the Emsworth Arms, had completed his sense of well being, and he was about to seek Sandy out and tell her of the treat in store for her when as he passed the door of Lord Emsworth’s study it flew open and its occupant came out, his face contorted, his pince-nez flying in the breeze, his whole demeanour that of a man who has been pushed too far.

  ‘Galahad,’ he cried passionately, ‘I won’t stand it. I shall assert myself. I shall take a firm line.’

  ‘Take two if you wish, my dear fellow,’ said Gally equably. ‘This is Liberty Hall. What are you planning to take firm lines about?’

  ‘This Callender girl. She’s driving me mad. She’s an insufferable pest. She’s worse than Baxter.’

  These were strong words. It had always been Lord Emsworth’s opinion that the Efficient Baxter, now happily in the employment of an American millionaire and three thousand miles away in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had, when it came to irritating, harrying and generally oppressing him, set a mark at which all other secretaries would shoot in vain.

  ‘She’s worse than that Briggs woman.

  Here, too, was an impressive statement. Lavender Briggs, who had resigned her portfolio and gone to London to conduct a typewriting agency, may not have been as intolerable as Rupert Baxter, but she had come very close to achieving that difficult feat.

  ‘She covers my desk with letters which she says I must answer immediately. She keeps producing them like a dashed dog bringing his dashed bones into the dining-room. Where she digs them out from I can’t imagine. Piles and piles of them.’

  ‘Fan mail, do you think?’

  ‘And what she has done to my study! It stinks of disinfectant and I can’t find a thing.’

  ‘Yes, I saw her tidying it up.’

  ‘Messing it up, you mean. It’s hard,’ said Lord Emsworth, quivering with self—pity. ‘I go to America to attend a sister’s wedding, and when I come back expecting to have a little peace at last, what do I find? I find not only that another sister has come to stay but that she has introduced into my home a spectacled girl with red hair whose object seems to be to give me a nervous breakdown.’

  Gally nodded sympathetically. There was nothing he could do to soothe, but he put in a mild word on Sandy’s behalf.

  ‘It’s just zeal, Clarence. You get it in the young. She’s a trier.’

  ‘I find her trying,’ Lord Emsworth retorted, one of the most brilliant things he had ever said. It was so good that he repeated it, and Gally gave another sympathetic nod.

  ‘I can understand that her ministrations must be hard to bear,’ he said, ‘but put yourself in her place. She’s a young girl eager to make good. She’s told by her agency or whatever they call those concerns that they’ve found a job for her at Blandings Castle, and her eyes widen. “Isn’t that where the great Lord Emsworth hangs out?” she says. “Quite correct,” they say. She quivers from head to foot and a startled cry escapes her. “Hell’s bells!” she says. “Then I’ll have to spit on my hands and pull up my socks and leave no stone unturned or my name will be mud. That boy will expect good service.” What you’ve got to realise, Clarence, is that you’re a godlike figure to young Sandy. She has heard about you in legend and song. You awe her. She looks on you as a cross between a Sultan of the old school and a grandfather.’

  ‘Grandfather?’ said Lord Emsworth, stung.

  ‘Great-grandfather,’ said Gally, correcting himself. ‘Well, if she has given you all that homework to do, you’d better buckle down to it.’

  ‘I’m going to see my pig.’

  ‘I’ll come with you. I often say there is nothing so bracing as a good after—luncheon look at the Empress. Well known Harley Street physicians recommend it. But you’ll catch it from her if she finds you’ve been playing hooky.’

  ‘I do not allow myself to be dictated to by my secretary,’ said Lord Emsworth haughtily.

  As they made their way to the buttercup—dabbled meadow in a corner of which the Empress’s self-contained flat was situated, Gally enlivened their progress with the story of the girl who said to her betrothed, ‘I will not be dictated to!’ and then went and got a job as a stenographer while Lord Emsworth, who never listened to stories and very seldom to anything else, continued to explain why he found Sandy Callender such a thorn in the flesh. They had reached their destination and were gazing with suitable reverence on the silver medalist’s superb contours, when a voice hailed them and, turning, they perceived a long, thin young man approaching. To Lord Emsworth, though they had frequently met, he appeared a total stranger and he merely blinked enquiringly, but Gally, having a better memory for faces, recognised him as Tipton Plimsoll and gave him a cheery greeting. He had always been fond of Tipton, sometimes going so far as to feel that, if that famous club had still existed, he would have been perfectly willing to put him up for membership at the old Pelican.

  ‘Well, when did you get here, Tipton?’ he said.

  ‘Hello, Mr Threepwood. I’ve just arrived. Hello, Lord Emsworth. They told me in the house they thought you might be out here. You don’t happen to know if Vee’s around?’

  The name conveyed nothing to Lord Emsworth.

  ‘Vee? Vee?’

  ‘She’s in London,’ said Gally.

  ‘Oh, shoot. When do you expect her back?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say. I understand she’s buying clothes, so I doubt if you can hope to see her for some little time. Still, you’ve always got me. Did you have a good trip?’

  ‘Swell, thanks.’

  ‘You’re looking very bobbish.’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  It seemed to Lord Emsworth that for a man who had so recently been reduced to beggary by losses on the Stock Exchange this Tipton, whom with a powerful effort of the memory he had now recognised, was extraordinarily buoyant, and he honoured him for his courage and resilience. He was reminded of a Kipling poem the curate had recited at a village entertainment his sister Constance had once made him attend — something about if you can something something and never something something, you’ll be a man, my son, or words to that effect.

  ‘How was the coffee, Tipton?’ he said.

  ‘Pull yourself together, Clarence,’ said Gally. ‘You’re dithering.’

  ‘I am doing nothing of the sort,’ said Lord Emsworth warmly. ‘We had a most interesting conversation on the telephone one night in New York, and he told me that he was going to have a cup of coffee and a piece of pie.’

  ‘Oh, sure, yes, I remember,’ said Tipton. ‘And talking of that, I owe you twenty dollars.’

  ‘My dear fellow!’

  ‘I’ll give you a cheque when I get back to the house.’

  Lord Emsworth was horrified.

  ‘No, really, you must not dream of it. I am amply provided with funds and you cannot possibly afford it. Let us forget the whole thing. Tipton,’ he explained to Gally, ‘has lost all his money on the Stock Exchange.’

  Gally looked grave. As has been said, he liked Tipton and wished him well, and being familiar with his sister Hermione’s prejudice against penniless aspirants for her daughter’s hand he feared that this was going to affect his matrimonial plans to no little extent. Like so many mothers, Lady Hermione expected a son-in-la
w to ante up and contribute largely to the kitty.

  ‘Is this true?’ he asked, concerned.

  Tipton laughed amusedly.

  ‘No, of course it isn’t. I’m afraid I misled Lord Emsworth that night in New York. I’ve never lost a nickel in the market. All I wanted was twenty bucks to get self and friend out of the pokey.

  Somebody had got away with my roll, leaving me without a cent, and a cop told me bail could be arranged if somebody would loan me the needful. So I thought of Lord Emsworth.’

  Illumination came to Gally, and with it a renewed feeling that this young man would have been just the sort of new blood the Pelican would have welcomed.

  ‘Oh, you had been pinched?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Drunk and disorderly?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I see.’ A wave of nostalgia flooded over Gally as his thoughts went back to the time when he, too, had lived in Arcady. ‘I was always getting pinched ford. and d. myself in my younger days. This was especially so when I supped at the old Gardenia —pulled down now, I regret to say, to make room for a Baptist chapel of all things. I was more or less of a marked man there. The bouncers used to fight for the privilege of throwing me out, and there seldom failed to be a couple of the gendarmerie waiting in the street as I shot through the door, on me like wolves and intensely sceptical of my sobriety. I always felt I was slipping in those days if it didn’t take two of them to get me to the police bin, with another walking behind carrying my hat. How are the prisons in New York? I have visited that great city constantly, but oddly enough I was never arrested there. Much the same as on this side, I imagine. The place not to get jugged in is Paris, where similar establishments have no home comforts whatsoever. I remember on one occasion, after a rather sprightly do at the Bal Bullier—’