In Bill Oakshott’s demeanour, as he approached, there was the suggestion of a somnambulist who, in addition to having blisters on both feet, is wrestling with an unpleasant nightmare. The scene through which he had recently passed, following so swiftly upon his election as judge of the Bonny Babies contest, had shaken to its foundations a system already weakened by the knowledge that Hermione Bostock loved another, and that other a libertine who kissed housemaids on doorsteps. In response to Lord Ickenham’s whoop of welcome he stared dully, like a dying halibut.
‘Oh, hullo, Lord Ickenham,’ he said.
‘Well, well, well!’ cried the fifth earl buoyantly. The hour or two which he had spent with this massive youth had left him with a strong appreciation of his sterling worth, and he was delighted to see him again. ‘Well, well well, well, well! Bill Oakshott in person. Well met by moonlight, proud Oakshott.’
‘Eh?’
‘Adaptation of Shakespearian quotation. But let it go. It is not of the slightest importance. And how is every little thing with you, Bill Oakshott? Fine?’
‘Well, to be absolutely accurate,’ said Bill, ‘no.‘
Lord Ickenham raised his eyebrows.
‘Not fine?’
‘No. Bloody awful.’
‘My dear chap, you surprise and shock me. I should have thought you would have been so glad to get back from a ghastly country like Brazil that life would have been roses, roses all the way. What’s wrong?’
With his affairs in such disorder, Bill was in need of all the sympathy he could get. He decided to withhold nothing from this cordial and well-disposed old buster. It would not have taken much to make him sob on Lord Ickenham’s chest.
‘Well, to start with,’ he said, touching on the most recent of the spiritual brickbats which had assailed his soul, ‘my uncle’s gone off his onion.
Lord Ickenham pursed his lips.
‘Nuts?’
‘Completely nuts.’
‘Indeed? That must jar you a good deal. Nothing spoils the quiet home atmosphere more than a goofy uncle on the premises. When did this tragedy occur?’
‘Just now.’
‘It came on suddenly?’
‘Like a flash.’
‘What caused it?’
‘Pongo.’
Lord Ickenham seemed at a loss.
‘You aren’t telling me that a single day of Pongo has been enough to set a host sticking straws in his hair? If it had been two weeks…. What were the symptoms?’
‘Well, he gibbered a good bit, and now he’s driven over to your place to get a photograph of Pongo.’
‘Why?’
‘To find out what he looks like.’
‘Can’t he see what he looks like?’
‘He doesn’t believe Pongo is Pongo.’
‘But doesn’t Pongo admit it?’
‘He thinks he’s an impostor.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I tell you he’s potty. I was out on the terrace and I heard him yelling for me, and I went to the study, and he said Hadn’t I known Pongo when he was a kid? And I said Yes. And he said How did I know after all these years that this was the same chap and he was absolutely convinced that Pongo wasn’t Pongo, and the only way to settle it was to drive to your place and get a photograph of him.’
Lord Ickenham shook his head.
‘A fruitless quest. A man like myself, refined, sensitive, with a love for the rare and the beautiful, does not surround himself with photographs of Pongo. I could do him a nude Venus, if he would like one. Yes, it certainly looks as though you were right, Bill Oakshott, and that Mugsy’s brain has come unstuck; the result, no doubt, of some sunstroke in the days when he was the curse of Africa. I’m not surprised that you are worried. The only thing I can suggest is that you give him plenty of aspirins, humour him in conversation and keep him away from razors, dinner knives and other sharp instruments. But apart from this everything is pretty smooth?’
Bill Oakshott laughed one of those hollow, mirthless laughs.
‘Is it! If that was all I had to worry me, I should be singing like a lark.’
Lord Ickenham eyed him with concern. In his look, disappointment that he would not be able to hear his young friend singing like a lark was blended with distress at the news that he had further reasons for gloom.
‘Don’t tell me there is more? What else has happened, my ill-starred youth?’
Bill quivered, and for a moment could not speak.
‘I saw Pongo kiss the housemaid,’ he said in a low throaty voice.
Lord Ickenham was perplexed.
‘But why shouldn’t he?’
‘Why shouldn’t he? Dash it, he’s engaged to my cousin Hermione.’
Lord Ickenham’s face cleared.
‘I see. Ah, yes, I understand. Her happiness is a matter of concern to you, and you do not like to think that she may be linking her lot with that of a Casanova. My dear chap, don’t give the matter another thought. He does that sort of thing automatically. Where you or I would light a cigarette and throw off an epigram, Pongo kisses the housemaid. It means nothing. A purely unconscious reflex action.’
‘H’m,’ said Bill.
‘I assure you,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘You’ll find it in all the case books. They have a scientific name for it. Housemaiditis? No. No, it’s gone. But that ends your catalogue of woe? Apart from your uncle’s strange seizure and this mannerism of Pongo’s, you have nothing on your mind?’
‘Haven’t I!’
‘You have? Is this the head upon which all the sorrows of the world have come? What is the next item?’
‘Babies!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Bonny babies.’
Lord Ickenham groped cautiously for his meaning.
‘You are about to become a father?’
‘I’m about to become a blasted judge.’
‘You speak in riddles, Bill Oakshott. What do you mean, a judge?’
‘At the fete.’
‘What fete?’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘You are forgetting that I am a stranger in these parts. Tell me the whole story in your own words.’
He listened with interest while Bill did so, and the latter had no lack of sympathy to complain of when he had finished revealing the facts in connection with Sir Aylmer Bostock’s hideous vengeance.
‘Too bad, too bad,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘But we might have foreseen something of the sort. As I warned you, these ex-Governors are tough eggs. They strike like lightning. So you are for it?’
‘Unless I can find someone else to take on the job.’ A sudden thought flushed Bill’s brow. ‘I say, will you do it?’
Lord Ickenham shook his head.
‘Were the conditions right,’ he said. ‘I would spring to the task, for I can imagine no more delightful experience than judging a gaggle of bonny babies at a rural fete. But the conditions are not right. Mugsy would not accept my nomination. Between him and myself there is, alas, an unfortunate and I fear insurmountable barrier. As I told you on the train it is only the other day that he was curving his person into the posture best adapted for the receipt of six of the juiciest with a fives bat, and I was the motivating force behind the fives bat.’
‘But, dash it, he’ll have forgotten that.’
‘Already?’
‘Wasn’t it forty years ago?’
‘Forty-two. But you grievously underestimate the suppleness of my wrist at the age of eighteen, if you suppose that anyone to whom I administered six with a fives bat would forget it in forty—two years.’
‘Well, if he hasn’t forgotten it, what does it matter? You’ll just have a good laugh together over the whole thing.’
‘I disagree with you, Bill Oakshott. Why after your recent experience of his dark malignity you should suppose young Mugsy to be a sort of vat or container for the milk of human kindness, I cannot imagine. You must know perfectly well that in the warped soul of Mugsy Bostock there is no room for sweetness and light. Come
now, be honest. Does he not chew broken glass and conduct human sacrifices at the time of the full moon? Of course he does. And yet you cling to this weak pretence that, with the old wounds still throbbing, he will forget and forgive.’
‘We could try him.’
‘Useless. He would merely scowl darkly and turn me from his door — or your door, didn’t you tell me it was? And suppose he did not? Suppose he welcomed me? What then? It would mean starting an association which would last the rest of our lives. He would always be popping over to my place, and I would be expected to pop over here. Wife would meet wife, presents would be exchanged at Christmas, it would be appalling. Even to oblige you, my dear fellow, I could not contemplate such a thing. Did you say “Oh, hell!”‘
‘Yes.’
‘I thought you did, and it wrung my heart.’
There was a silence. Bill stared moodily at a passing beetle.
‘Then I’m sunk.’
‘But why? Have you no friends?’
‘I’ve lost touch with them all, being away. The only one I could lay my hands on is Plank.’
‘Who is Plank? Ah, yes, I remember. The head of the expedition you went on.’
‘That’s right. Major Brabazon-Plank.’
‘Brabazon-Plank? You interest me strangely. I was at school with a fellow named Brabazon-Plank. He still owes me two bob. Is your Brabazon-Plank a pear-shaped chap, rather narrow in the shoulders and very broad in the beam?’
‘Yes.’
‘Practically all backside?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it must be the same fellow. Bimbo we used to call him. Extraordinary what a mine of my old schoolmates you are turning out to be. You don’t seem able to mention a name without it proving that of someone with whom in one way or another I used once to pluck the gowans fine. And you think you could contact Bimbo?’
‘I have his address in London. We came back on the boat together. But it wouldn’t be any use contacting him. If anyone suggested that he should judge bonny babies, he would run like a rabbit. He has a horror of them.’
‘Indeed? The well-known baby fixation. See the case books.’
‘All the way home on the boat he was moaning that when he got to England he would have to go and see his sisters, and he didn’t know how he was going to face it, because all of them were knee-deep in babies which he would be expected to kiss. No, Plank’s no good.’
‘Then really,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘it looks as if you would have to fall back on me.’ Bill, who had been staring dully at the bettle, transferred his gaze to his companion. It was a wide-eyed, gaping gaze, speaking eloquently of a mind imperfectly adjusted to the intellectual pressure of the conversation.
‘Eh?’
‘I say that you will be compelled, for want of anything better, to avail yourself of my poor services. Invite me to your home, and in return for this hospitality I will judge these bonny babies.’
Bill continued to gape.
‘But you said you wouldn’t.’
‘Surely not?’
‘Yes, you did. Just now.’
Lord Ickenham’s perplexity vanished.
‘Ah, I see where the confusion of thought has arisen,’ he said. ‘You misunderstood me. I merely meant that, for the reasons which I explained to you, it was impossible for that fine old English aristocrat, Frederick Altamont Cornwallis, Earl of Ickenham, to come barging in on an establishment of which Mugsy Bostock formed a part. What I am proposing now is that I shall throw a modest veil over my glittering identity.’
‘Eh?’
‘You do keep saying “Eh?” don’t you? It is surely quite simple. I am most anxious to visit Ashenden Manor, of which I hear excellent reports, and I suggest that I do so incognito.’
‘Under another name, do you mean?’
‘Exactly. What a treat it is to deal with an intelligence like yours, Bill Oakshott. Under, as you put it so luminously, another name. As a matter of fact, I never feel comfortable going to stay at houses under my own name. It doesn’t seem sporting.’
Bill Oakshott’s was not a mind readily receptive of new ideas. As he stared at Lord Ickenham, his resemblance to a fish on a slab was more striking than ever.
‘You’ll call yourself something else?’ he said, for he was a man who liked to approach these things from every angle.
‘Precisely.’
‘But —
‘I never like that word “But.”‘
‘You couldn’t get away with it.’ Lord Ickenham laughed lightly.
‘My dear fellow, at The Cedars, Mafeking Road, in the suburb of Mitching Hill last spring I impersonated in a single afternoon and with complete success not only an official from the bird shop, come to clip the claws of the parrot, but Mr Roddis, lessee of The Cedars, and a Mr J. G. Bulystrode, a resident of the same neighbourhood. It has been a lasting grief to me that I was given no opportunity of impersonating the parrot, which I am convinced I should have done on broad artistic lines. Have no anxiety about my not being able to get away with it. Introduce me into the house, and I will guarantee to do the rest.’
The clearness with which he had expounded his scheme had enabled Bill to grasp it, but he was looking nervous and unhappy, like a man who has grasped the tail of a tiger.
‘It’s too risky. Suppose my uncle found out.’
‘Are you afraid of Mugsy?’
‘Yes.’
‘More than of the bonny babies?’
Bill quivered. In every limb and feature he betrayed his consciousness of standing at a young man’s cross-roads.
‘But what’s the procedure? You mean you just blow in, calling yourself Jones or Robinson?’
‘Not Robinson. I have had occasion in the past to call myself Robinson, but it would not do now. You overlook the fact that the judge of a contest of this importance must be a man who counts. He must have authority and presence. I suggest that I come as Major Brabazon-Plank. It would give me genuine pleasure to impersonate old Bimbo, and I can think of no one more suitable. The whole thing is so plausible. You run into your old chief Plank, who happens to be passing by on a motor tour, and what more natural than that you should insist on him stopping off for a day or two at your home? And, having stopped off, what more natural than that he, learning of this very important and attractive job, a job which will render him the cynosure of all eyes and is in addition right up his street, he being passionately fond of babies, should insist on having it assigned to him? And the crowning beauty of the scheme is that I don’t see how Mugsy can do anything about it. We’ve got him cold. It isn’t as if Plank were just an ordinary man. Plank is a hell of a celebrity, and his wishes have to be deferred to. If you ask me, Bill Oakshott, if you care to have my unbiased opinion of the set-up, I think the thing’s in the bag.’
Into Bill’s fishlike eyes a gleam of enthusiasm had crept. His air was that of a red-faced young man who has been convinced by the voice of reason. He still feared the shape of things to come, should he fall in with his benefactor’s suggestion, but he feared still more the shape of things to come, should he not.
Stamped indelibly on his mental retina was the memory of last year’s fete, when he had watched the Rev. Aubrey Brotherhood preparing to embark on his duties in the big tent. Intrepid curate though he was, a man who could dominate the rowdiest Mothers’ Meeting, the Rev. Aubrey had paled visibly at the task confronting him. Forty-three village matrons, holding in their arms in the hope of catching the judge’s eye forty-three. babies of almost the maximum repulsiveness….
‘Right!’ he cried with sudden resolution. ‘Fine. Let’s go.’
‘Yes, let’s,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘You can carry the suitcase.’
They walked down the road. Bill, who had begun to think things over again, was a little silent and thoughtful, but Lord Ickenham was all gaiety and animation. He talked well and easily of this and that, and from time to time pointed out objects of interest by the wayside. They had just reached the manor gates, when the up
roar of an approaching car caused Bill to turn his head: and, having turned it, he paled beneath his tan and tottered slightly.
‘Oh, golly, here comes my uncle. I say, do you think we really ought —‘
‘Tush, Bill Oakshott,’ said Lord Ickenham, prompt in the hour of peril to stimulate and encourage. ‘This is weakness. Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. Let us stand our ground firmly, and give him a huge hullo.’
Sir Aylmer Bostock had spent four minutes at Ickenham Hall, all on the front door-step, and of these four minutes there had not been one which he had not disliked. Sometimes in our wanderings about the world we meet men of whom it is said that they have passed through the furnace. Of Sir Aylmer it would be more correct to say that he had passed through the frigidaire.
If you call at a country house where you are not known and try to get the butler to let you come in and search the premises for photographs of his employer’s nephew, you will generally find this butler chilly in his manner, and Coggs, the major-domo of Ickenham Hall, had been rather chillier than the average. He was a large, stout, moon-faced man with an eye like that of a codfish, and throughout the proceedings he had kept his eye glued on Sir Aylmer’s, as if peering into his soul. And anyone who has ever had his soul peered into by a codfish will testify how extremely unpleasant such an ordeal is.
The message in that eye had been only too easy to read. Coggs had not actually accused Sir Aylmer of being after the spoons, but the charge might just as well have been clothed in words. In a voice of ice he had said, No, sir, I fear I cannot accede to your request, sir, and had then terminated the interview by backing a step and shutting the door firmly in the visitor’s face. And when we say firmly, we mean with a bang which nearly jarred the latter’s moustache loose from its foundations.
All this sort of thing is very galling to a proud and arrogant man, accustomed for years to having his lightest word treated as law, and it was consequently in no sunny mood that Sir Aylmer heard Lord Ickenham’s huge hello. He was still snorting and muttering to himself, and a native chief who had, encountered him in this dangerous mental condition would have called on his protecting ju-ju for quick service and climbed a tree.
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