by Tom Sharpe
‘It’s just that I wouldn’t have thought it was financially viable,’ Sir Giles said. ‘The cost would be enormous. I can’t see the Ministry taking to the idea at all readily.’
‘I can,’ said Lady Maud, ‘with a little prodding.’ She went out through the french windows on to the terrace and looked lovingly across the park. With Dundridge’s help she had solved one problem. The house had been saved. There remained the question of an heir and it had just occurred to her that here again Dundridge might prove invaluable. Over lunch he had waxed quite eloquent about his work. Once or twice he had mentioned cementation. The word had struck a chord in her. Now as she leant over the balustrade and stared into the depths of the pinetum it returned to her insistently. ‘Sementation,’ she murmured, ‘sementation.’ It was a new word to her and strangely technical for such an intimate act, but Lady Maud was in no mood to quibble.
Sir Giles was. He waddled off to the study and phoned Hoskins. ‘What’s all this about that bastard Dundridge being a nincompoop?’ he snarled. ‘Do you know what he’s come up with now? A tunnel. You heard me. A bloody tunnel under the Cleene Hills.’
‘A tunnel?’ said Hoskins. ‘That’s out of the question. They can’t put a tunnel under the Forest.’
‘Why not? They’re putting one under the blasted Channel. They can put tunnels wherever they bloody well want to these days.’
‘I know that, but it would be cost-prohibitive,’ said Hoskins.
‘Cost-prohibitive my arse. If this sod goes round bleating about tunnels he’ll whip up support from every environmental crank in the country. He’s got to be stopped.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ said Hoskins doubtfully.
‘You’ll do better than that,’ Sir Giles snarled. ‘You get him on to the idea of Ottertown.’
‘But what about the seventy-five council houses—’
‘Bugger the seventy-five council houses. Just get him off the bloody tunnel.’ Sir Giles put down the phone and stared out of the window vindictively. If he didn’t do something drastic he would be saddled with Handyman Hall. And with Lady Maud to boot. He got up and kicked the wastepaper basket into the corner.
10
Dundridge drove back to Worford with no thought for the landscape. His encounter with Lady Maud had left him stunned and with his sense of self-importance greatly inflated. Lunch had been most enjoyable and Dundridge with two large gins inside him had found Lady Maud a most appreciative audience. She had listened to his exposition of the theory of non-interruptive constant-flow transportation with an evident fervour usually quite absent in his audience and Dundridge had found her enthusiasm extraordinarily refreshing. Moreover she exuded confidence, a supreme self-confidence which was contagious and which exerted an enormous fascination over him. In spite of her lack of symmetry, of beauty, in spite of the manifest discrepancy between her physique and that of the ideal woman of his imagination, he had to admit that she held charms for him. After lunch she had shown him over the house and garden and Dundridge had followed her from room to room with a quite inexplicable sense of weak-kneed excitement. Once when he had stumbled in the rockery Lady Maud had taken his arm and Dundridge had felt limp with pleasure. Again when he had squeezed past her in the doorway of the bathroom he had been conscious of a delicious passivity. By the time he left the house he felt quite childishly happy. He was appreciated. It made all the difference.
He got back to the Handyman Arms to find Hoskins waiting for him in the lounge.
‘Just thought I’d drop in to see how you were getting on.’
‘Fine. Fine. Just fine,’ said Dundridge.
‘Got on all right with Leakham?’
The warm glow in Dundridge cooled. ‘I can’t say I like his attitude,’ he said. ‘He seems determined to go ahead with the Gorge route. He has evidently developed a quite irrational hatred for Lady Maud. I must say I find his attitude inexplicable. She seems a perfectly charming woman to me.’
Hoskins stared at him incredulously. ‘She does?’
‘Delightful,’ said Dundridge, the warm glow returning gently.
‘Delightful?’
‘Charming,’ said Dundridge dreamily.
‘Good God,’ said Hoskins unable to contain his astonishment any longer. The notion that anyone could find Lady Maud charming and delightful was quite beyond him. He looked at Dundridge with a new interest. ‘She’s a bit large, don’t you think?’ he suggested.
‘Comely,’ said Dundridge benevolently. ‘Just comely.’
Hoskins shuddered and changed the subject. ‘About this tunnel,’ he began. Dundridge looked at him in surprise.
‘How did you hear about that?’
‘News travels fast in these parts.’
‘It must,’ said Dundridge, ‘I only mentioned it this morning.’
‘You’re not seriously proposing to recommend the construction of a tunnel under the Cleene Hills, are you?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Dundridge, ‘it seems a sensible compromise.’
‘A bloody expensive one,’ said Hoskins, ‘it would cost millions and take years to put through.’
‘At least it would avoid another riot. I came up here to try to find a solution that would be acceptable to all parties. It seems to me that a tunnel would be a very sensible alternative. In any case the plan is still in the formative stage.’
‘Yes, but …’ Hoskins began but Dundridge had risen and with an airy remark about the need for vision had gone up to his room. Hoskins went back to the Regional Planning Board in a pensive mood. He had been wrong about Dundridge. The man wasn’t such a nincompoop after all. On the other hand he had found Lady Maud charming and delightful. ‘Bloody pervert,’ Hoskins muttered as he picked up the phone. Sir Giles wasn’t going to like this.
Nor was Blott. He had had a relatively phone-free day in the kitchen garden. There had been Dundridge’s call in the morning but for the most part he had been left in peace. At half past four he had heard Sir Giles call Hoskins and tell him about the tunnel. At half past five he was watering the tomatoes when Hoskins called back to say that Dundridge was serious about the tunnel.
‘He can’t be,’ Sir Giles snarled. ‘It’s an outrageous idea. A gross waste of taxpayers’ money.’
Blott shook his head. The tunnel sounded a very good idea to him.
‘You try telling him that,’ said Hoskins.
‘What about Leakham?’ Sir Giles asked. ‘He’s not going to buy it, is he?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say. Depends what sort of weight this fellow Dundridge carries in London. The Ministry may bring pressure to bear on Leakham.’
There was a silence while Sir Giles considered this. In the greenhouse Blott wrestled with the intricacies of the English language. Why should Lord Leakham buy the tunnel? How could Dundridge carry weight in London? And in any case why should Sir Giles dislike the idea of a tunnel? It was all very odd.
‘I’ve got another bit of news for you,’ Hoskins said finally. ‘He’s keen on your missus.’
There was a strangled sound from Sir Giles. ‘He’s what?’ he shouted.
‘He has taken a fancy to Maud,’ Hoskins told him. ‘He said he found her charming and delightful.’
‘Charming and delightful?’ said Sir Giles. ‘Maud?’
‘And comely.’
‘Good God. No wonder she’s looking like the cat that’s swallowed the canary,’ said Sir Giles.
‘I just thought you ought to know,’ said Hoskins. ‘It might give us some sort of lever.’
‘Kinky?’
‘Could be,’ said Hoskins.
‘Meet me at the Club at nine,’ said Sir Giles, suddenly making up his mind. ‘This needs thinking about.’ He rang off.
In the greenhouse Blott stared lividly into the geraniums. If Sir Giles had been surprised, Blott’s reaction was stronger still. The sudden discovery that he was in love with Lady Maud had coloured his day. The thought of Dundridge sharing his feelings for her infuriated hi
m. Sir Giles he discounted. It was quite clear that Lady Maud despised her husband and from what she had said Blott had gathered that there was another woman in London. Dundridge was another matter. Blott left the greenhouse, tidied up and went home.
Home for Blott was the Lodge. The architect of the arch had managed to combine monumentality with utility and at one time the Lodge had housed several families of estate workers in rather cramped and insanitary conditions. Blott had the place to himself and found it quite adequate. The arch had its little inconveniences; the windows were extremely small and hidden among the decorations on the exterior; there was only one door so that to get from one side of the arch to the other one had to climb the staircase to the top and then cross over, but Blott had made himself very comfortable in a large room that spanned the arch. Through a circular window on one side he could keep an eye on the Hall and through another he could inspect visitors crossing the bridge. He had converted one small room into a bathroom and another into a kitchen, while he stored apples in some of the others so that the whole place had a pleasant smell to it. And finally there was Blott’s library filled with books that he had picked up on the market stalls in Worford or in the second-hand bookshop in Ferret Lane. There were no novels in Blott’s library, no light reading, only books on English history. In its way it was a scholar’s library born of an intense curiosity about the country of his adoption. If the secret of being an Englishman was to be found anywhere it was to be found, Blott thought, in the past. Through the long winter evenings he would sit in front of his fire absorbed in the romance of England. Certain figures loomed large in his imagination, Henry VIII, Drake, Cromwell, Edward I, and he tended to identify if not himself at least other people with the heroes and villains of history. Lady Maud, in spite of her marriage, he saw as the Virgin Queen, while Sir Giles seemed to have the less savoury aspects of Sir Robert Walpole.
But that was for winter. During the summer he was out and about. Twice a week he cycled over to Guildstead Carbonell to the Royal George and sat in the bar until it was time for bed, the bed in question belonging to Mrs Wynn who ran the pub and whose husband had obligingly left her a widow as a result of enemy action on D-Day. Mrs Wynn was the last of Blott’s wartime customers and the affair had lingered on owing more to habit than to affection. Mrs Wynn found Blott useful, he dried glasses and carried bottles, and Blott found Mrs Wynn comfortable, undemanding and accommodating in the matter of beer. He had a weakness for Handyman Brown.
But now as he washed his neck – it was Friday night and Mrs Wynn was expecting him – he was conscious that he no longer felt the same way about her. Not that he had ever felt very much, but that little had been swept aside by his sudden surge of feeling for Maud. He was sensible enough not to entertain any expectations of being able to do anything about it. It just didn’t seem right to go off to Mrs Wynn any more. In any case it was all most peculiar. He had always had a soft spot for Lady Maud but this was different and it occurred to him that he might be sickening for something. He stuck out his tongue and studied it in the bathroom mirror but it looked all right. It might be the weather. He had once heard someone say something about spring and young men’s fancies but Blott wasn’t a young man. He was fifty. Fifty and in love. Daft.
He went downstairs and got on his bicycle and cycled off across the bridge towards Guildstead Carbonell. He had just reached the crossroads when he heard a car coming up fast behind him. He got off the bike to let it go by. It was Sir Giles in the Bentley. ‘Going to the Golf Club to see Hoskins,’ he thought, and looked after the car suspiciously. ‘He’s up to something.’ He got back on to his bike and freewheeled reluctantly down the hill towards the Royal George and Mrs Wynn. Perhaps he ought to tell Maud what he had heard. It didn’t seem a good idea and in any case he wasn’t going to let her know that Dundridge fancied her. ‘He can sow his own row,’ he said to himself and was pleased at his command of the idiom.
In the Worford Golf Club, Sir Giles and Hoskins discussed tactics.
‘He’s got to have a weakness,’ said Sir Giles. ‘Every man has his price.’
‘Maud?’ said Hoskins.
‘Be your age,’ said Sir Giles. ‘She isn’t going to fartarse around with some tinpot civil servant with that reversionary clause in the contract at stake. Besides, I don’t believe it.’
‘I distinctly heard him say he found her charming. And comely.’
‘All right, so he likes fat women. What else does he like? Money?’
Hoskins shrugged. ‘Hard to tell. You need time to find that out.’
‘Time is what we haven’t got. He’s only got to start blabbing about that bleeding tunnel and the fat’s in the fire. No, we’ve got to act fast.’
Hoskins looked at him suspiciously. ‘What’s all this “we” business?’ he asked. ‘It’s your problem, not mine.’
Sir Giles gnawed a fingernail thoughtfully. ‘How much?’
‘Five thousand.’
‘For what?’
‘Whatever you decide.’
‘Make it five per cent of the compensation. When it’s paid.’
Hoskins did a quick calculation and made it twelve and a half thousand. ‘Cash on the nail,’ he said.
‘You’re a hard man, Hoskins, a hard man,’ Sir Giles said sorrowfully.
‘Anyway what do you want me to do? Sound him out?’
Sir Giles shook his head. His little eyes glittered. ‘Kinky,’ he said. ‘Kinky. What made you say that?’
‘I don’t know. Just wondered,’ said Hoskins.
‘Boys, do you think?’
‘Difficult to know,’ said Hoskins. ‘These things take time to find out.’
‘Drink, drugs, boys, women, money. There’s got to be some damned thing he’s itching for.’
‘Of course, we could frame him,’ said Hoskins. ‘It’s been done before.’
Sir Giles nodded. ‘The unsolicited gift. The anonymous donor. It’s been done before all right. But it’s too risky. What if he goes to the police?’
‘Nothing ventured nothing gained,’ said Hoskins. ‘In any case there would be no indication where it came from. My bet is he’d take the bait.’
‘If he didn’t we would have lost him. No, it’s got to be something foolproof.’
They sat in silence and considered a suitably compromising future for Dundridge.
‘Ambitious would you say?’ Sir Giles asked finally. Hoskins nodded.
‘Very.’
‘Know any queers?’
‘In Worford? You’ve got to be joking,’ said Hoskins.
‘Anywhere.’
Hoskins shook his head. ‘If you’re thinking what I’m thinking …’
‘I am.’
‘Photos?’
‘Photos,’ Sir Giles agreed. ‘Nice compromising photos.’
Hoskins gave the matter some thought. ‘There’s Bessie Williams,’ he said. ‘Used to be a model, if you know what I mean. Married a photographer in Bridgeminster. She’d do it if the money was right.’ He smiled reminiscently. ‘I can have a word with her.’
‘You do that,’ said Sir Giles. ‘I’ll pay up to five hundred for a decent set of photos.’
‘Leave it to me,’ Hoskins told him. ‘Now then, about the cash.’
By the time Sir Giles left the Golf Club the matter was fixed. He drove home in a haze of whisky. ‘The stick first and then the carrot,’ he muttered. Tomorrow he would go to London and visit Mrs Forthby. It was just as well to be out of the way when things happened.
11
Dundridge spent the following morning at the Regional Planning Board with Hoskins poring over maps and discussing the tunnel. He was rather surprised to find that Hoskins had undergone a change of heart about the project and seemed to favour it. ‘It’s a brilliant idea. Pity we didn’t think of it before. Would have saved no end of trouble,’ he said, and while Dundridge was flattered he wasn’t so sure. He had begun to have doubts about the feasibility of a tunnel. The Ministry wouldn’t exactly
like the cost, the delay would be considerable and there was still Lord Leakham to be persuaded. ‘You don’t think we could find an alternative route?’ he asked but Hoskins shook his head.
‘It’s either the Cleene Gorge or Ottertown or your tunnel.’ Dundridge, studying the maps, had to concede that there wasn’t any other route. The Cleene Hills stretched unbroken save for the Gorge from Worford to Ottertown.
‘Ridiculous fuss people make about a bit of forest,’ Dundridge complained. ‘Just trees. What’s so special about trees?’
They had lunch at a restaurant in River Street. At the next table a couple in their thirties seemed to find Dundridge quite fascinating and more than once Dundridge looked up to find the woman looking at him with a quiet smile. She was rather attractive, with almond eyes.
In the afternoon Hoskins took him on a tour of the proposed route through Ottertown. They drove over and inspected the council houses and returned through Guildstead Carbonell, Hoskins stopping the car every now and again and insisting that they climb to the top of some hill to get a better view of the proposed route. By the time they got back to Worford Dundridge was exhausted. He was also rather drunk. They had stopped at several pubs along the way and, thanks to Hoskins’ insistence that pints were for men and that only boys drank halves – he put rather a nasty inflection on boys – Dundridge had consumed rather more Handyman Triple XXX than he was used to.
‘We’re having a little celebration party at the Golf Club tonight,’ Hoskins said as they drove through the town gate. ‘If you’d care to come over …’
‘I think I’ll get an early night,’ said Dundridge.
‘Pity,’ Hoskins said. ‘You’d meet a number of influential local people. Doesn’t do to give the locals the idea you’re hoity-toity.’
‘Oh all right,’ said Dundridge grudgingly. ‘I’ll have a bath and something to eat and see how I feel.’
‘See you later, old boy,’ said Hoskins as Dundridge got out of the car and went up to his room in the Handyman Arms. A bath and a meal and he’d probably feel all right. He fetched a towel and went down the passage to the bathroom. When he returned having immersed himself briefly in a lukewarm bath – the geyser still refused to operate at all efficiently – he was feeling better. He had dinner and decided that Hoskins was probably right. It might be useful to meet some of the more influential local people. Dundridge went out to his car and drove over to the Golf Club.