Galahad at Blandings

by P. G. Wodehouse

  And she recoiled from the thought of being found by him. She did not want to see him even in the distance. All she asked of him was to stay out of her life. She did not conceal from herself that his absence from it had left a gap in her heart like the excavation for the foundation of a skyscraper, but that could not be helped. Time would presumably fill it up again, and even if that did not happen a man who had called her the things he had called her at their last meeting was obviously a man she was better without.

  Reaching the library, she went about her work, but she did it absently. She dusted books, she tidied papers, but her thoughts were not with them. Her mind was concentrated on the problem of how this distasteful encounter could be avoided. It was as she removed from the coal scuttle a letter addressed to her employer which had somehow managed to find that unusual resting place that the solution came to her, and she hurried to Lord Emsworth’s study.

  Her arrival there startled Lord Emsworth. He peered at her in quick alarm. She looked to him like a girl who had come to bring him some more letters demanding his instant attention. Unless his eyes deceived him, it was a letter she was holding in her hand. He feared the worst, and her words, when she spoke, were music to his ears.

  ‘I wonder if you could possibly spare me for a day or two, Lord Emsworth,’ she said. ‘My father is very ill.’

  This would have struck old friends like Gally and Tipton Plimsoll as peculiar, knowing as they did that the late Ernest Callender had passed away shortly before her eighth birthday, but Lord Emsworth, lacking this knowledge, tut-tutted courteously.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘Too bad. Quite.’

  ‘Will it be all right if I go away for a few days?’

  ‘Certainly, certainly, certainly, certainly,’ said Lord Emsworth with perhaps a greater enthusiasm than was tactful. ‘Stay away as long as you like. My brother-in—law Colonel Wedge is catching some sort of a train this afternoon, got to go to Sussex or somewhere. You could drive into Market Blandings in the car. An excellent idea. Yes, quite.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all.’

  ‘I’ll go and pack my things. Oh, by the way, I found this letter in the coal scuttle in the library. I think you should answer it at once.

  Lord Emsworth took the letter gloomily. He was saying to himself that he had thought as much. If Sandy Callender’s come, he would have said if he had been more poetic than he was, can letters to be answered at once be far behind?

  II

  Gally on returning to the house had wandered off to the smoking-room and begun to glance through the illustrated weekly papers. But their pages, filled mostly with photographs of Society brides who looked like gangsters’ molls and the usual gargoyles who attend Hunt Balls, failed to grip him, and the thought having occurred to him that another chat with one whose conversation he always enjoyed might offer greater entertainment, he made his way to Lord Emsworth’s study. And he had just reached the door when Lord Emsworth came popping out like a cuckoo from a cuckoo clock.

  ‘Oh, Galahad,’ he said. ‘The very man I was looking for.’

  To Gally’s surprise he seemed, despite the fact that Blandings Castle had been filling up so much of late, in excellent spirits. On their way to the sty he had been moody and peevish and, when speaking of his current secretary, inclined to wallow in self-pity, but now he was not merely cheerful but exuberantly cheerful.

  ‘Galahad,’ he cried, as sunnily as if there had been no Lady Hermione, no Colonel Wedge, no Dame Daphne Winkworth, no little Huxley Winkworth and no Sandy Callender in the house, ‘the most wonderful thing has happened. I have never been so pleased in my life.’

  ‘Don’t tell me they’ve made you a Dame?’

  ‘Eh? No, not so far as I know. You told me yourself that such a thing was most unlikely. But you have heard me speak of Augustus Whipple?’

  ‘The chap who wrote that book you’re always reading? Put Me Among The Pigs, isn’t it called?’

  ‘On The Care Of The Pig.’

  ‘That’s right. Banned in Boston, I believe.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Let it go. What about Augustus Whipple?’

  ‘Miss Callender has just found a letter from him.’

  ‘In the wastepaper basket?’

  ‘No, actually in the library coal scuffle, oddly enough. I cannot imagine how it got there.’

  ‘Sherlock Holmes used to keep his tobacco in the toe of a Persian slipper.’

  ‘I don’t think I have ever seen a Persian slipper.’

  ‘Nor have I. It is my secret sorrow. Tell me about this letter from old Pop Whipple. Does he want an exclusive interview with the Empress?’

  ‘He wants to come here and see her. He had heard so much about her, he says, and would like to take some photographs. He writes from the Athenaeum Club.’

  ‘That morgue?’ said Gally, who did not think highly of the Athenaeum. There was not a bishop or a Cabinet Minister there whom he would have taken to the old Pelican and introduced to Plug Basham and Buffy Struggles. He might be wronging the institution, but he doubted if it contained on its membership list a single sportsman capable of throwing soft-boiled eggs at an electric fan or smashing the piano on a Saturday night. ‘I lunched with him there once.’

  Lord Emsworth gasped, astounded.

  ‘You mean you know Augustus Whipple?’

  ‘Well, I’ve met him.’

  ‘Why have you never told me?’

  ‘I suppose the subject didn’t come up. It was when I was thinking of writing my memoirs. I wanted some first-hand facts about an uncle of his who grew a second set of teeth in his eightieth year and used to crack Brazil nuts with them. Not at all a bad fellow. Whipple, I mean, not the uncle, who perished of a surfeit of Brazil nuts at the age of eighty-two. Are you going to have him to stay at the castle?’

  ‘Of course. It will be a pleasure and a privilege.’

  ‘The old shack’s certainly filling up.

  ‘I have written a telegram explaining that I have only just seen his letter and inviting him to come here for as long as he wishes. I shall give it to Voules to send off He is going to Market Blandings to take Egbert to his train.’

  ‘Why don’t you phone it?’

  ‘I never seem able to make myself understood when I telephone the post office. There is an idiotic girl there who keeps saying “Pardon? Woodger mind repeating that?” No, I’ll give it to Voules.’

  ‘Give it to me. I’m going to the great city. There’s a man there I want to see.

  ‘Why, thank you, Galahad. That will be capital.’

  It was in mellow mood that Gally some minutes later set off down the drive, his hat jauntily on one side and his little legs twinkling. He was not actually singing a gipsy song as he trudged along, but it would have been unwise to have betted against his starting to do so at any moment, for this Whipple business had, he perceived, solved all the problems confronting him in his capacity of Sam’s guardian angel. Reviewing the position of affairs, he summed it up as looking pretty smooth. He was well pleased with the way everything seemed to be turning out for the best.

  The afternoon had now cooled off to some extent, but it was still warm enough to bring visions of the Emsworth Arms beer rising before the mental retina, and they rose before his. At the Emsworth Arms there was a large shady garden running down to the river, where you could sit and quaff beneath a spreading tree, your thirst agreeably stimulated by the spectacle of perspiring oarsmen toiling under the sun in boats often laden with a wife, two of her relations, three children, a dog and a picnic basket: and he was just thinking how extraordinarily well a foaming tankard would go down in these delightful surroundings, when he was aware of a voice saying ‘Hoy!’ and perceived a small boy at his side. The landlord of the Blue Boar’s son Gary had proved faithful to his trust.

  ‘Got a letter for you, Mr Threepwood,’ he said. He had never met Gally socially, but like everyone else for miles around he knew him by sight
.

  Gally took the letter, mystified. The sepia maelstrom of the child’s thumb had soiled it a good deal outwardly, but its contents were legible, and he found them disturbing. Sam had written briefly, confining himself to broad outlines rather than going into details, but he had made the main facts clear. He was not, it appeared, at the Emsworth Arms in Market Blandings but at the Blue Boar in Blandings Parva and for some reason he was in sore straits and would be glad of a word of advice from the addressee as to what to do for the best. Now, he implied though not actually saying so, was the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.

  No one had ever made a plea of this kind to Galahad Threepwood and found him unresponsive. The beer at the Blue Boar would, he knew, be vastly inferior to that of the Emsworth Arms, but he had always been a man able to take the rough with the smooth and he did not hesitate. A bare five minutes had elapsed before he crossed the Blue Boar’s threshold.

  III

  In Sam’s greeting of him there was a touch of the shipwrecked mariner sighting a sail, for the interval between dispatching the note and seeing this friendly face had given him time for a further review of his situation. It had left him even more apprehensive than he had been at the beginning, and he had been distinctly apprehensive then. The day was warm, but his feet were cold. A bird twittering in the bushes outside sounded to his sensitive ear exactly like a police whistle.

  Gally listened attentively as he poured out his tale. His manner, as it proceeded, gave no suggestion that he was shocked and horrified, nor was he. Of the broad general principle of hitting the police force in the eye he had always thoroughly approved. You could not, in his opinion, do it too much and too often. He could, however, see that his young friend had placed himself in a somewhat equivocal position. Steps would have to be taken through the proper channels if he was to be extricated from it and fortunately he was able to take such steps.

  ‘Tell me that bit about Sandy again,’ he said. ‘You say you saw her. Did she see you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And instantly, after one glance, streaked over the horizon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t like that.’

  ‘I don’t like it myself.’

  ‘Not too promising, her attitude. It gives the impression that she didn’t want to speak to you.’

  ‘I thought of that, too.’

  ‘This will have to be corrected. You then bared after her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With the watch in your pocket?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The cop followed you and seemed anxious to effect a pinch?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And you slugged him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now I have it all straight. Your position, as I see it, is more or less that of the hart that pants for cooling streams when heated in the chase. You’re a marked man. You can’t go back to the Emsworth Arms.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘It isn’t a question of supposing. Show your face there for a single instant and you haven’t hope of escaping arrest. The arm of the law will grab you before you can say What-ho. You need a hide-out, and you will be glad to hear that I can provide one.

  Sam shook visibly.

  ‘You can?’

  ‘Most fortunately I am able to. For the next few days, till the hue and cry has died down, you must come and stay at the castle.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘But didn’t you tell me you weren’t allowed to invite people to the castle?’

  ‘I did. But it will be my brother Clarence who invites you, not I. He is at this very moment ordering the vassals and serfs to get busy bringing the red carpet up from the cellar and dusting it off in preparation for your arrival. But I was forgetting that you are not abreast of the latest developments. Let me briefly bring you up to date. I happened to run into Clarence just now and found him wreathed in smiles. His favourite reading, I must mention, is a book on pigs by a fellow named Whipple. He pores over it incessantly, savouring its golden words like artichoke leaves. He is never happier than when curled up with it. He must know it by heart, I should think. All straight so far?’

  ‘If you mean Do I follow you, yes. But I don’t see—”

  ‘Whither all this is tending? It won’t be long before it dawns on you. Shall I proceed?’

  ‘Do.’

  ‘Questioned, he revealed that young Sandy Callender had found a letter from this Whipple asking if he can drop in some time and have a look at Empress of Blandings. You can readily imagine how it affected Clarence. He started strewing roses from his hat and dancing the Can-Can all over the premises. My cup runneth over, he said, and he handed me a telegram to send to Whipple urging him to pack a toothbrush and come running. He gave him to understand that Blandings Castle was his for as long as he cared to stay. Now do you begin to get it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t see how this solves all your little difficulties and makes your path straight?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not very quick at the uptake, are you? Your father would have grasped it in a second. All you have to do is present yourself at the front door and say “Yoo-hoo, I’m Whipple” and you’re in like Flynn, as the expression is. After which, getting hold of young Sandy and making her see the light will be a simple task. Extraordinarily fortunate, Whipple having taken it into his head to write to Clarence at just this time. Providential, I call it. One feels that one is somehow being protected.’

  He had chosen a bad moment for placing his proposition before Sam, for the latter was in the very act of refreshing himself from his mug of beer. It was not until he had choked and gasped for a considerable space and been slapped a number of times on the back that he was able to speak. When he did, there was incredulity in his voice.

  ‘You’re crazy! What happens when Whipple turns up?’

  ‘He won’t.’

  ‘Not when he gets that telegram?’

  ‘He won’t get it. What will reach him will be a regretful bob’s-worth saying it’s impossible to have him at the castle at the moment, as Clarence is in bed with German measles. I sent it off before I left.’

  ‘Well, suppose there’s somebody at the castle who knows me?’

  ‘There isn’t. You surely don’t imagine I didn’t think of that. You’ve never met my sister Hermione or her husband or Dame Daphne Winkworth, and you told me Tipton Plimsoll didn’t know you by sight. Nothing to cause anxiety there.’

  ‘How about Sandy?’

  Gally was shocked.

  A nice girl like Sandy wouldn’t dream of giving you away. I’m not saying she won’t split a gusset when she finds how we have outmanoeuvred her, but her lips will be sealed. No, I can see no possible objection to what I suggest.’

  ‘I can. I wouldn’t do it for a thousand pounds. The mere thought of it makes my toes curl. I shall spend the night at this pub and after I’ve seen Sandy tomorrow I shall go back to London.’

  Gally sighed.

  ‘There’s something wrong with the younger generation,’ he said with a sad shake of the head. ‘One notices it on all sides. No dash, no enterprise, none of the up-and-doing spirit. Any member of the old brigade would have leaped to the task with his hair in a braid. You won’t reconsider?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You would be under the same roof as the girl you love.’

  ‘For perhaps five minutes. At the end of that period I can see the Lady somebody you spoke of, the one who grabs people by their trouser seats, attaching herself to mine and starting heaving. No, I am always willing to oblige when feasible, but there are limits.’

  ‘What if that copper finds you here and pinches you?’

  ‘It would be unpleasant, I admit.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘But I’d prefer it to going to Lord Emsworth and saying “Yoo-hoo, I’m Whipple”.’

  Gally shrugged his shoulders resignedly, as Napoleon might have do
ne if he had asked his army to advance and been told by them that they were not in the mood.

  ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘if you won’t, you won’t. But I still consider your objections finicky. Then we’ll just have to carry on with the Visitors’ Day programme.

  IV

  The car which was to take Colonel Wedge to Market Blandings station and start him off on the first leg of his journey into Worcestershire stood at the front door of the castle with chauffeur Voules at the wheel. It was a good car as cars went, but it paled into insignificance beside the superlative Rolls which had been parked a little farther along the drive. Colonel Wedge, coming out of the house, eyed this ornate vehicle with respectful admiration.

  ‘Whose car is that, Voules?’ he asked.

  ‘Belongs to Mr Plimsoll, sir.’

  Colonel Wedge could make nothing of this. ‘To Mr Plimsoll?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The gentleman arrived in it just now.

  The colonel continued bewildered. After what he had heard of the state of Tipton’s finances, he would have expected him to arrive on roller skates. And it was as he stood blinking and trying to digest this piece of information that Tipton appeared in person, coming out of the house with an oblong object in his hand that seemed to be, as indeed it was, one of those cases in which jewellers put jewels.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Colonel,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for you all over. Wanted to show you a necklace I picked up in London for Vee. I was hoping to give it to her directly I hit the joint, but darn it, they tell me she’s not here. Great disappointment.’ He opened the case. ‘I think she’ll like it, don’t you?’ he said, for he knew his loved one’s fondness for bijouterie. Veronica Wedge was one of those girls who if they have not plenty of precious stones on their persons, feel nude. Her aim in life was to look as like a chandelier as possible.