by Tom Sharpe
By the time the Inquiry reopened on Monday, Dundridge’s nerves were frayed to breaking point. He had taken his seat inconspicuously at the back of the courtroom and had hardly listened to the evidence. The presence of a large number of policemen, brought in to ensure that there was no further outbreak of violence, had done nothing to reassure him. Dundridge had misconstrued their role and had finally left the courtroom before Lord Leakham announced his decision. He was standing in the hall downstairs when a burst of cheering indicated that the Inquiry was over.
Sir Giles and Lady Maud were the first to congratulate him. They issued from the courtroom and down the stairs followed by General Burnett and Mr and Mrs Bullett-Finch.
‘Splendid news,’ said Sir Giles. Lady Maud seized Dundridge’s hand.
‘I feel we owe you a great debt of gratitude,’ she said staring into his face significantly.
‘It was nothing,’ murmured Dundridge modestly.
‘Nonsense,’ said Lady Maud, ‘you have made me very happy. You must come and see us before you leave.’
Sir Giles had winked prodigiously – Dundridge had come to loathe that wink – and had whispered something about a bet being a bet and Hoskins had insisted on their going to have a drink together to celebrate. Dundridge couldn’t see anything to celebrate about.
‘You’ve got friends at court,’ Hoskins explained.
‘Friends at court?’ said Dundridge. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘A little bird has told me that someone has put in a good word for you. You wait and see.’
Dundridge had waited in the hope (though that was hardly the right word) that Miss Boles would call but instead of a demand for a thousand pounds he had received a letter of appointment. ‘“Controller Motorways Midlands with responsibility for co-ordinating …” Good God!’ he muttered. He made a number of frantic phone calls to the Ministry threatening to resign unless he was brought back to London, but the enthusiasm with which Mr Rees endorsed his decision was enough to make him retract it.
Even Hoskins, who might have been expected to resent Dundridge’s appointment as his superior, seemed relieved. ‘What did I tell you, old boy,’ he said when Dundridge told him the news. ‘Friends at court. Friends at court.’
‘But I don’t know anything about motorway construction. I’m an administrator not an engineer.’
‘All you have to do is see that the contractors keep to schedule,’ Hoskins explained. ‘Nothing to it. You leave all the rest of it to me. Basically yours is a public-relations role.’
‘But I’m responsible for coordinating construction work. It says so here,’ Dundridge protested, waving his letter of appointment, ‘“and in particular problems relating to environmental factors and human ecology”. I suppose that means dealing with the tenants of those council houses in Ottertown.’
‘That sort of thing,’ said Hoskins. ‘I shouldn’t worry about that too much. Cross your bridges when you come to them is my motto.’
‘Oh well, I suppose I’ll just have to get used to the idea.’
‘I’ll fix you up an office here. You’d better set about finding somewhere to live.’
Dundridge had spent two days looking at flats in Worford before settling on an apartment overlooking Worford Castle. It wasn’t a prospect he found particularly pleasing, but the flat had the merit of being comparatively modern and was certainly better than some of the squalid rooms he had looked at elsewhere. And besides it had a telephone and was partly furnished. Dundridge placed particular emphasis upon the telephone. He didn’t want Miss Boles to get the false idea that he wasn’t prepared to pay a thousand pounds for the photographs and negatives. But as the days passed and there was still no demand from her he began to relax. Perhaps the whole thing had been some sort of filthy practical joke. He even asked Hoskins if he knew anything about the girl at the party but Hoskins said he couldn’t remember much about the evening and hadn’t known half the people who were there.
‘My mind’s a blank on the whole evening, old chap,’ he said. ‘Had a good time, though. I do remember that. Why? Are you thinking of looking her up again?’
‘Just wondered who she was,’ said Dundridge and went back to his office to draw up plans for the opening ceremony to mark the start of the construction of the motorway. It was going to be a grand affair, he had decided.
So had Lady Maud, though the affair she had in mind was of quite a different sort. She waited until Sir Giles said he was going to spend a fortnight in London before inviting Dundridge to dinner. She sent a formal invitation.
Dundridge hired a dinner-jacket and expected to find a number of other guests. He was extremely nervous and had fortified himself in advance with two stiff gins. In the event he need not have bothered. He arrived to find Lady Maud dressed, if not to kill, at least seriously to endanger anyone who came near her.
‘I’m so glad you could come,’ she said taking his arm almost as soon as he had entered the front door. ‘I’m afraid my husband has had to go to London on business. I hope you don’t mind having to put up with me.’
‘Not at all,’ said Dundridge, conscious once again of that weakness in his legs that Lady Maud’s presence seemed to induce in him. They went into the drawing-room and Lady Maud mixed drinks. ‘I did think of inviting General Burnett and the Bullett-Finches but the General does tend to monopolize the conversation and Ivy Bullett-Finch is a bit of a wet blanket.’
Dundridge sipped his drink and wondered what the hell she had put into it. It looked innocuous, but clearly wasn’t. Lady Maud’s dress, on the other hand, practised no such deception. A thing of silk designed to emphasize the curvature of the female form, it had evidently been created with someone more lissom in mind. It bulged where it should have hung and wheezed when it should have rustled. Above all it was so clearly breathtaking in its constriction that Dundridge found himself almost panting in empathy. Besides Lady Maud’s voice had undergone a strange alteration. It was curiously husky.
‘How do you like your new flat?’ she asked, sitting down beside him with a squeak of pre-stressed silk.
‘Flat?’ said Dundridge momentarily unable to make the transition between adjective and noun. ‘Oh flat. Yes. Very pleasant.’
‘You must let me come up and see it some time,’ said Lady Maud. ‘Unless you feel I might be compromising you.’ She sighed, and her great bosom heaved like an approaching breaker.
‘Compromising?’ said Dundridge, who couldn’t imagine that he was likely to be compromised by being alone in his flat with her any more than he was already by those beastly photographs. ‘I’d be delighted to have you.’
Lady Maud tittered coyly. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to miss the excitement of life in London,’ she murmured. ‘We must do what we can to see that you don’t get bored.’
It seemed a remote prospect to Dundridge. He sat rigid on the sofa and tried to keep his eyes averted from the incomprehensible fascinations of her body.
‘Let me get you another drink,’ she breathed softly, and once again he was conscious of a feeling of being overcome. It was partly the drink, partly the waft of perfume, but it was mostly the strength of her self-assurance that held him fascinated. In spite of her size, in spite of her assertiveness, in spite of everything about her that conflicted with his idea of a beautiful woman, Lady Maud was wholly confident. And Dundridge, who wasn’t (or at best only partially and whose completeness, depending on achievement and money, lay in the future) was intoxicated by her presence. If the past could confer such assurance there was more to be said for it than Dundridge had previously admitted. Dundridge sipped his drink and smiled at her. Lady Maud smiled back.
By the time they went in to dinner, Dundridge was incongruously gay. He opened the door for her; he held her arm; he pulled back her chair and nudged it forward against her thighs meaningfully; he opened the champagne with a nonchalance that suggested he seldom drank anything else and laughed debonairly as the cork tinkled among the glass lustres of the c
handelier. And through the meal, oysters followed by cold duck, Dundridge no longer cared what the world might think of him. Lady Maud’s appreciative smile, half yawn and half abyss, beckoned him on to be himself. And Dundridge was. For the first time in his life he lived up to his own expectations, up to and far beyond. The champagne cork flew a second time into the upper reaches of the room, the duck disappeared to be followed by strawberries and cream, and Dundridge lost the last vestiges of inhibition or even the apprehension that there was anything at all unusual about dining alone with a married woman whose husband was away on business. All such considerations vanished in the bubble of his gaiety and in the light of Lady Maud’s approval. Under the table her knee confirmed the implications of her smile; on top her hand lay heavily on his and traced the contours of his fingers; and when, their coffee finished, she took his arm and suggested that they dance Dundridge heard himself say he would be delighted to. Arm-in-arm they went down the passage to the ballroom with the sprung floor. Only then, with the chandeliers lighting the great room brilliantly and a record on the turntable, did he realize what he had let himself in for. Dundridge had never danced in his life.
Blott walked down the hill from Wilfrid’s Castle. For a week he had been avoiding the Royal George in Guildstead Carbonell and Mrs Wynn’s favours. He had taken to going over to a small pub on the lane leading from the church to the Ottertown Road. It wasn’t up to the standard of the Royal George, merely a room with benches round the walls and a barrel of Handyman beer in one corner, but its dismal atmosphere suited Blott’s mood. By the time he had silently consumed eight pints he was ready for bed. He wobbled up the hill past the church and stood gazing down at the Hall in amazement. The great ballroom lights were on. Blott couldn’t remember when he had last seen them on, certainly not since Lady Maud’s marriage. They cast yellow rectangles on to the lawn, and the conservatory which opened out of the ballroom glowed green with ferns and palms. He stumbled down the path and across the bridge into the pinetum. Here it was pitch-dark but Blott knew his way instinctively. He came out at the gate and crossed the lawn to the terrace. Music, old-fashioned music, floated out towards him. Blott went round the corner and peered through the window.
Inside Lady Maud was dancing. Or learning to dance. Or teaching someone to dance. Blott found difficulty in making up his mind. Under the great chandeliers she moved with a tender gracelessness that took his breath away. Up and down, round and about, in great sweeps and double turns she went, the floor moving visibly beneath her, and in her arms she held a small thin man with an expression of intense concentration on his face. Blott recognized him. He was the man from the Ministry who had stayed to lunch the previous week. Blott hadn’t liked the look of him then and he liked it even less now. And Sir Giles was away. Sick with disgust Blott blundered off the flower bed and away from the window. He had half a mind to go in and say what he thought. It wouldn’t do any good. He walked unsteadily round the front of the house. There was a car standing there. He peered at it. The man’s car. Serve him right if he had to walk home, the bastard. Blott knelt by the front tyre and undid the valve. Then he went round to the boot and let the air out of the spare tyre. That would teach the swine to come messing about with other people’s wives. Blott staggered off down the drive to the Lodge and climbed into bed. Through the circular window he could see the lights of the Hall. They were still on when he fell asleep and through the night air there came the faint sound of trombones.
15
What drinks, dinner and Lady Maud’s assiduous coquetry had done for Dundridge, dancing had undone. In particular her interpretation of the hesitation waltz – Dundridge considered the probability of a slipped disc – while her tango had threatened hernia. All his attempts to get her to do something a little less complicated had been ignored.
‘You’re doing splendidly,’ she said treading on his toes. ‘All you need is a little practice.’
‘What about something modern?’ said Dundridge.
‘Modern dancing is so unromantic,’ said Maud, changing the record to a quickstep. ‘There’s no intimacy in it.’
Intimacy was not what Dundridge had in mind. ‘I think I’ll sit this one out,’ he said limping to a chair. But Lady Maud wouldn’t hear of it. She whirled him on to the floor and strode off through a series of half-turns clasping him to her bosom with a grip that brooked no argument. When the record stopped Dundridge put his foot down politely.
‘I really think it is time I was off,’ he said.
‘What? So early? Just one more teeny weeny glass of champers,’ said Lady Maud, relapsing rather prematurely into the language of the nursery.
‘Oh all right,’ said Dundridge choosing the devil of drink to the deep blue sea of the dance floor. They took their glasses through to the conservatory and stood for a moment among the ferns.
‘What a wonderful night. Let’s go out on the terrace,’ said Lady Maud and took his arm. They leant on the stone balustrade and looked into the darkness of the pinetum.
‘All we need now is a lovers’ moon,’ Lady Maud murmured and turned to face him. Dundridge looked up into the night sky. It was long past his bedtime and besides not even the champagne could disguise the fact that he was in an ambiguous situation. He had had enough of ambiguous situations lately to last him a lifetime and he certainly didn’t relish the thought of Sir Giles returning home unexpectedly to find him on the terrace drinking champagne with his wife at one o’clock in the morning.
‘It looks as if it’s going to rain,’ he said to change the topic from lovers’ moons.
‘Silly boy,’ cooed Lady Maud. ‘It’s a lovely starlit night.’
‘Yes. Well, I really do think I must be getting along,’ Dunbridge insisted. ‘It’s been a lovely evening.’
‘Oh well if you must go …’ They went indoors again.
‘Just one more glass …?’ Lady Maud said but Dundridge shook his head and limped on down the passage.
‘You must look me up again,’ said Lady Maud as he climbed into his car. ‘The sooner the better. It’s been ages since I had so much fun.’ She waved goodbye and Dundridge drove off down the drive. He didn’t get very far. There was something dreadfully wrong with the steering. The car seemed to veer to the left all the time and there was a thumping sound. Dundridge stopped and got out and went round to the front.
‘Damn,’ said Dundridge feeling the flat tyre. He went to the boot and got the jack out. By the time he had jacked the car up and taken the left front wheel off, the lights in the Hall had gone out. He fetched the spare wheel from the boot and bolted it into place. He let the jack down and stowed it away. Then he got back into the car and started the engine and drove off. There was a thumping noise and the car pulled to the left. Dundridge stopped with a curse.
‘I must have put the flat tyre on again,’ he muttered and got out the jack.
In the Hall Lady Maud switched off the ballroom lights sadly. She had enjoyed the evening and was sorry it had ended so tamely. There had been a moment earlier in the evening when she had thought Dundridge was going to prove amenable to her few charms.
‘Men,’ she said contemptuously as she undressed and stood looking at herself dispassionately in the mirror. She was not, and she was the first to admit it, a beautiful woman by contemporary standards of beauty but then she didn’t pay much heed to contemporary standards of any sort. The world she lived for had admired substantial things, large women, heavy furniture, healthy appetites and strong feelings. She had no time for the present with its talk of sex, its girlish men and boyish women and its reducing diets. She longed to be swept off her feet by a strong man who knew the value of bed, board and babies. She wasn’t going to find him in Dundridge.
‘Silly little goose doesn’t know what he’s missing,’ she said, and climbed into bed.
Outside the silly little goose knew only too well what he was missing. An inflated tyre. He had changed the wheel again and had let down the jack only to find that his spare tyre h
ad been flat after all. He got back into the car and tried to think what to do. Nearby something moved heavily through the grass and a night bird called. Dundridge shut the door. He couldn’t sit there all night. He got out of the car and trudged back up the drive to the house and rang the doorbell.
Upstairs Lady Maud climbed out of bed and turned on the light. So the silly little goose had come back after all. He had caught her unprepared. She grabbed a lipstick and daubed her lips hastily, powdered her face and put a dollop of Chanel behind each ear. Finally she changed out of her pyjamas and slid into a see-through nightdress and went downstairs and opened the door.
‘I’m sorry to bother you like this but I’m afraid I’ve had a puncture,’ said Dundridge nervously. Lady Maud smiled knowingly.
‘A puncture?’
‘Yes, two as a matter of fact.’
‘Two punctures?’
‘Yes. Two,’ said Dundridge conscious that there was something rather improbable about having two punctures at the same time.
‘You had better come in,’ said Lady Maud eagerly. Dundridge hesitated.
‘If I could just use the phone to call a garage …’
But Lady Maud wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Of course you can’t,’ she said, ‘it’s far too late for anyone to come out now.’ She took his arm and led him into the house and closed the door.
‘I’m terribly sorry to be such a nuisance,’ said Dundridge but Lady Maud shushed him.
‘What a silly boy you are,’ she cooed. ‘Now come upstairs and we’ll see about a bed.’
‘Oh really …’ Dundridge began but it was no good. She turned and led the way, a perfumed spinnaker, up the marble staircase. Dundridge followed miserably.
‘You can have this room,’ she said as they stood on the landing and she switched on the light. ‘Now you go down to the bathroom and have a wash and I’ll make the bed up.’