by Tom Sharpe
Mr Clyde-Browne read the letter with delight. ‘He’s done it. By golly, he’s done it,’ he whooped.
‘Of course he has,’ said Mrs Clyde-Browne, ‘I always knew he was gifted.’
Mr Clyde-Browne stopped whooping. ‘Not him …’ he began, and decided to say no more.
7
But Peregrine’s future was being decided by more subtle influences than those of the military Doctor. Mr Glodstone had spent the holidays in search, as he put it, ‘of some damned woman’ to marry. ‘The thing is one doesn’t want to marry beneath one,’ he confided to Major Fetherington over several nightcaps of whisky in his rooms.
‘Absolutely,’ said the Major, whose wife had died of boredom ten years before. ‘Still, if there’s lead in your pencil, you’ve got to make your mark somewhere.’
Glodstone glanced at him dubiously. The Major’s metaphor was too coarse for his romantic imagination. ‘Perhaps, but love’s got to be there too. I mean, only a cad would marry a girl he didn’t love, don’t you think?’
‘Suppose so,’ said the Major, enjoying the whisky too much to argue from his own experience. ‘Still, a fellow’s got to think of the future. Knew a chap once, must have been eighty if he was a day, keen tennis-player in his time, married a woman he happened to be sitting next to in the Centre Court at Wimbledon. Splendid match. Died in her arms a fortnight later desperately in love. Never can tell till you try.’
Glodstone considered the moral of this example and found it hardly illuminating. ‘That sort of thing doesn’t happen to me,’ he said, and put the cap back on the whisky bottle.
‘The trouble with you,’ said the Major, ‘is that you’ve got champagne tastes and a beer income. My advice is to lower your sights. Still, you never know. Chance has a funny way of arranging things.’
*
For once Mr Slymne would have shared Glodstone’s unspoken disagreement. He was leaving as little as possible to chance. Having discovered Glodstone’s wildly romantic streak, he was determined to exploit it, but there were still problems to cope with. The first concerned Sports Day. La Comtesse de Montcon might put in an appearance, and if the wretched woman turned out to be as formidable as the conversation he had overheard in the house-room suggested, all his preparations would be wasted. Glodstone would hardly go to the aid of a woman who was manifestly capable of looking after herself. No, it was vital that the image in Glodstone’s imagination should be that of a poor, defenceless, or to be exact, a rich defenceless sylph-like creature with an innocence beyond belief. Slymne had a shrewd idea that La Comtesse was more robust. Any mother who could send her son to Groxbourne had to be. Slymne checked his dossier and found that Tambon had said, ‘The Countess is a real old cow,’ and was reassured. He also surreptitiously took a look at the Visiting Parents’ Book in the Bursar’s office and found no evidence that La Comtesse had ever visited the school.
But to be on the safe side, he used a Geography lesson to ask all those boys whose mothers were coming to Sports Day to put up their hands. Wanderby didn’t. Having dealt with that problem, Slymne concentrated on the next one; how to phrase his letter to Glodstone. In the end be decided on the direct approach. It would appeal to Glodstone’s gallantry more effectively than anything too subtle. On the other hand, there had to be more definite instructions as well. Slymne penned the letter, tracing La Comtesse’s handwriting again and again for practice, and then on a weekend visit to London, spent the night in a hotel room making a number of direct-dialled calls to France. By the time he returned to Groxbourne, he was ready to provide the instructions. Only one uncertainty remained. Glodstone might have made arrangements for his summer holidays already. In which case, the timing of the letter would be vital. And Wanderby’s own movements in the holidays might prove awkward too. Again Slymne made use of a Geography lesson to find out where the boy was spending the summer.
‘I’m going to Washington to stay with my father and his girlfriend,’ Wanderby announced brashly. Mr Slymne was delighted and used the statement in the common-room that evening to good advantage.
‘I must say we have some pretty peculiar parents,’ he said loudly, ‘I was discussing time zones with 2B this morning and that American boy, Wanderbury, suddenly said his father’s got a mistress in Washington.’
Glodstone stopped sucking his pipe. ‘Can’t you even remember the names of the boys you teach?’ he asked angrily. ‘It’s Wanderby. And what’s all this about his father having a mistress?’
Slymne appeared to notice Glodstone for the first time. ‘In your house, isn’t he? Typical product of a broken home. Anyway, I’m merely repeating what he said.’
‘Do you make a habit of poking your nose into the boys’ family affairs in your lessons?’
‘Certainly not. As I said, I was discussing time zones and jet-lag and Wandleby—’
‘Wanderby, for God’s sake,’ snapped Glodstone.
‘—voluneeered the information that he was going to Washington at the end of term and that his father—’
‘All right, we heard you the first time,’ said Glodstone, and finished his coffee hurriedly and left the room. Later that evening as he crossed the quad, Slymne was pleased to notice Glodstone sitting at his desk by the window with a cigar box beside him. The crack about the broken home and Wanderby’s father having a mistress would enhance Glodstone’s romantic image of La Comtesse. That night, Slymne completed the task of writing out her instructions and locked the letter away in his filing cabinet.
*
It was to remain there for another five weeks. The summer term dragged on. Sports Day came and went, cricket matches were won or lost and Glodstone’s melancholy grew darker with the fine weather and the liveliness of youth around him. He took to polishing the Bentley more frequently and it was there in the old coach house one evening that he asked Peregrine what he was going to do when he left.
‘Father’s got me down for the Army. But now I’ve got O levels, he’s talking about my going into a bank in the City.’
‘Not your sort of life I would have thought. Dashed dull.’
‘Well, it’s on account of my Maths,’ said Peregrine. ‘That and Mother. She’s all against my going into the Army. Anyway, I’ve got a month free first because I’m going on the Major’s course in Wales. It’s jolly good fun doing those night marches and sleeping out in the open.’
Glodstone sighed at the remembrance of his youth and came to a sudden decision. ‘Damn the Head,’ he muttered, ‘let’s take the old girl out for a spin. After all, it is your last term and you’ve done more than your fair whack in keeping her shipshape and Bristol fashion. You go off down to the school gates and I’ll pick you up there in ten minutes.’
And so for an hour they bowled along country lanes with the wind in their faces and the great exhaust murmuring gently behind them.
‘You drive jolly well,’ said Peregrine, as they swung round a corner and headed through an overhang of oaks, ‘and she goes like a dream.’
Beside him, Glodstone smiled. ‘This is the life, eh. Can’t beat a vintage Bentley. She’s a warhorse just raring to go.’
They came to a village and on the same impulse that had carried him so far, Glodstone stopped outside a pub. ‘Two pints of your best bitter, Landlord,’ said Glodstone loudly, provoking the man into enquiring if Peregrine was eighteen.
‘No …’ said Peregrine but his answer was drowned by the boom of Glodstone’s voice.
‘Of course he is. Damnation, man, you don’t imagine I’d bring an under-age drinker into your place?’
‘I’ve known it happen,’ said the barman, ‘so I’ll make it one bitter and a lemonade shandy and you can take your glasses outside to a table.’
‘We can do better than that and take our custom elsewhere,’ said Glodstone and stalked out of the pub. ‘That’s the trouble with the damned world today, people don’t know their place any more. In my father’s day, that fellow would have lost his licence and no mistake. Anyway, with a mann
er like that, the beer was probably flat.’
They drove on to the next village and stopped again. This time Glodstone lowered his voice and they were served. As they sat on a bench outside admiring their reflections in the shining waxed coachwork of the great car and basking in the comments it caused, Glodstone cheered up.
‘You can say what you like but there’s nothing to touch a pint of the best British bitter,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Peregrine, who had hardly touched his beer and didn’t much like it anyway.
‘That’s something you won’t find in any other country. The Hun swills lager by the gallon and the Dutch have their own brew which isn’t bad but it’s got no body to it. Same with the Belgians, but it’s all bottled beer. Mind you, it’s better than the Frog muck. Charge the earth for the stuff too but that’s the French all over. Dashed odd, when you come to think of it, that the wine-drinking countries have never been a match for the beer ones when it comes to a good scrap. Probably something in the saying they’ve got no guts and no stomach for a fight.’
Peregrine drank some more beer to mark his allegiance while Glodstone spouted his prejudices and the world shrank until there was only one decent place to be, and that was sitting in the summer twilight in an English village drinking English beer and gazing at one’s reflection in the coachwork of an English car that had been made in 1927. But as they drove back to the school, Glodstone’s melancholy returned. ‘I’m going to miss you,’ he said. ‘You’re my sort of chap. Dependable. So if there’s anything I can ever do for you, you’ve only to ask.’
‘That’s jolly good of you, sir,’ said Peregrine.
‘And another thing. We can forget the “sir” bit from now on. I mean, it’s the end of term and all that. All the same, I think you’d better hop out when we get to the school gates. No need to give the Head any reason to complain, eh?’
So Peregrine walked back up the avenue of beeches to the school while Glodstone parked the Bentley and morosely considered his future. ‘You and I are out of place here, old girl,’ he murmured, patting the Bentley’s headlight affectionately, ‘we were born in a different world.’
He went up to his room and poured himself a whisky and sat in the darkening twilight wondering what the devil he was going to do with himself during the holidays. If only he’d been younger, he’d be inclined to join Major Fetherington’s walkabout in Wales. But no, he’d look damned silly now and anyway the Major didn’t like anyone poaching on his own private ground. It was a fairly desperate Glodstone who finally took himself off to bed and spent half an hour reading The Thirty-nine Steps again. ‘Why the hell can’t something challenging come my way for once?’ he thought as he switched out the light.
A week later it did. As the last coach left for the station and the cars departed, Slymne struck. The Secretary’s office was conveniently empty when he tucked the envelope addressed to G. P. Glodstone, Esq., into the pigeonhole already jammed with Glodstone’s uncollected mail. Slymne’s timing was nicely calculated. Glodstone was notorious for not bothering with letters until the pigeonhole was full. ‘A load of bumpf,’ he had once declared. ‘Anyone would think I was a penpusher and not a schoolmaster.’ But with the end of term, he would be forced to deal with his correspondence. Even so, he would leave it until the last moment. It was in fact three days before Glodstone took the bundle of letters up to his room and shuffled through them and came to the envelope with the familiar crest, an eagle evidently tearing the entrails from a sheep. For a moment Glodstone gazed almost rapturously at the crest before splitting the envelope open with a paperknife. Again he hesitated. Letters from parents were too often lists of complaints about the treatment of their sons. Glodstone held his breath as he took it out and laid it flat on the desk. But his fears were unfounded.
‘Dear Mr Glodstone,’ he read, ‘I trust you will forgive me writing to you but I have no one else to turn to. And, although we have never met, Anthony has expressed such admiration for you – indeed maintains you are the only gentleman among the masters at Groxbourne – that I feel you alone can be trusted.’ Glodstone re-read the sentence – he had never suspected the wretched Wanderby of such perception – and then continued in a ferment of excitement.
‘I dare express nothing in a letter for fear that it will be intercepted, except that I am in the greatest danger and urgently need help in a situation which is as hazardous as it is honourable. Beyond that I cannot go in writing. Should you feel able to give me that assistance I so desperately require, go to the left-luggage office at Victoria Station and exchange the enclosed ticket. I can say no more but know you will understand the necessity for this precaution.’
The letter was signed, ‘Yours in desperation, Deirdre de Montcon. P.S. Burn both the letter and the envelope at once.’
Glodstone sat transfixed. The call had been awaiting for over thirty years had finally come. He read the letter several times and then, taking the left-luggage ticket, which he put into his wallet, he ceremoniously burnt the letter in its envelope and as an extra precaution flushed the ashes down the lavatory. Seconds later, he was packing and within the half-hour the Bentley rolled from the coach house with a rejuvenated Glodstone behind the wheel.
*
From the window of his rooms in the Tower, Slymne watched him leave with a different excitement. The loathsome Glodstone had taken the bait. Then Slymne too carried his bags down to his car and left Groxbourne, though less hurriedly. He would always be one step ahead of his enemy.
8
It was late afternoon by the time Glodstone parked the Bentley in a street near Victoria Station. He had driven down in a state of euphoria interspersed with occasional flashes of insight which told him the whole affair was too good to be true. There must be some mistake. Certainly his judgement of Wanderby had been wholly wrong. What had the letter said? ‘Maintains that you are the only gentleman among the masters.’ Which was true enough, but he’d hardly expected Wanderby to have recognized it. Still, the boy’s mother was La Comtesse, and he evidently knew a gentleman when he saw one.
But for the most part, Glodstone had spent the drive concentrating on ways of reaching the Château Carmagnac as speedily as possible. It would depend on what message he found at the left-luggage office, but if he took the Weymouth to Cherbourg ferry, he could drive through the night and be there in twenty-four hours. He had his passport with him and had stopped at his bank in Bridgnorth to withdraw two thousand pounds from his deposit account and change them into travellers’ cheques. It was the sum total of his savings but he still had his small inheritance to fall back on. Not that money counted in his calculations. He was about to embark on the expedition of his dreams. He was also going alone. It was at this point that a feeling of slight disappointment crept over him. In his fantasies, he had always seen himself accompanied by one or two devoted friends, a small band of companions whose motto would be that of the Three Musketeers, ‘All for one and one for all’. Of course when he was young it had been different, but at fifty Glodstone felt the need for company. If only he could have taken young Clyde-Browne with him – but there was no time for that now. He must act with speed.
But the message he found waiting for him at the left-luggage office changed his opinion. He had been rather surprised to find that it was in fact a piece of luggage, a small brown suitcase. ‘Are you sure this is the article?’ he asked the attendant rather incautiously.
‘Listen, mate, it’s yours isn’t it? You gave me the ticket for it and that’s the luggage,’ said the man and turned away to deal with another customer. Glodstone glanced at a label tied to the handle and was satisfied. Neatly typed on it was his own name. He walked back to the car with a new sense of caution and twice stopped at a corner to make sure he was not being followed. Then with the case on the seat beside him he drove to the flat of an aged aunt in Highgate which he was forced to use when he was in London. In keeping with his background, Glodstone would have much preferred his club, The Ancient Automobile, b
ut it didn’t run to rooms.
‘Well I never, if it isn’t Gerald,’ said the old lady, rather gratuitously in Glodstone’s opinion, ‘and you didn’t even write to say you were coming.’
‘I didn’t have time. Urgent business,’ said Glodstone.
‘It’s a good thing your room is still ready just as you left it, though I’ll have to put a hot-water bottle in to air the sheets. Now you just sit down and I’ll make a nice pot of tea.’
But Glodstone was in no mood for these domestic details. They clashed too prosaically with his excitement. All the same, his aunt disappeared into the kitchen while he went up to his room and opened the suitcase. Inside it was stuffed with French newspapers and it was only when he had taken them all out that he found the second envelope. He ripped it open and took out several sheets of notepaper. They were all crested and the handwriting was unmistakeably that of La Comtesse.
‘Dear Mr Glodstone, Thank you for coming thus far,’ he read. ‘It was to be expected of you but, though I would have you came to my aid, I fear extremely you do not appreciate the dangers you will face and I would not put you at your peril without fair warning. Desperate as my situation is, I cannot allow you to come unprepared. Those about me are wise in the ways of crime whereas you are not. This is perhaps to your advantage but for your own sake and for mine, be on your guard and come, if you can, armed, for this is a matter of life and death and murder has already been done.’
‘Your tea is ready, dear,’ the old lady called from her cluttered sitting room.
‘All right, I’ll be there in a minute,’ said Glodstone irritably. Here he was about to engage in a matter of life and death and with murder already done, and aged aunts who called him dear and served tea were distinctly out of place. He read on. ‘I enclose the route you must follow. The ports are watched and on no account must you appear to be other than an English gentleman touring through France. It is vital therefore that you take your time and trust no one. The men against whom you are set have agents among the gendarmerie and are themselves above suspicion. I cannot state their influence too highly. Nor dare I catalogue their crimes in writing.’ This time the letter was signed ‘Yours in gratitude, Deirdre de Montcon,’ and as before the postscript ordered him to burn both letter and envelope.