Blott on the Landscape

by Tom Sharpe

  ‘You filthy little swine,’ she shouted and tossed the photographs on to his desk. ‘Take a good look at yourself.’ Dundridge did. So did Hoskins.

  ‘Well?’ continued Lady Maud. ‘And what have you got to say now?’

  Dundridge stared up at her and tried to think of words to match his feelings. It was impossible.

  ‘If you think you can get away with this you’re mistaken,’ bawled Lady Maud.

  Dundridge clutched the telephone. The filthy bitch had come back to haunt him with those horrible photographs and this time there was no mistaking who was playing the main role in these obscene contortions and this time too Hoskins was present. The look of horror on Hoskins’ face decided him. There was no way of avoiding a scandal. Dundridge dialled the police.

  ‘Don’t think you can wriggle out of this by calling a lawyer,’ Lady Maud yelled.

  ‘I’m not,’ said Dundridge finding his voice at last, ‘I am calling the police.’

  ‘The police?’ said Lady Maud.

  ‘The police?’ whispered Hoskins.

  ‘I intend to have you charged with attempted blackmail,’ said Dundridge.

  Lady Maud launched herself across the desk at him. ‘Why, you filthy little bastard!’ she screamed. Dundridge lurched off his chair and ran for the door. Lady Maud turned and raced after him. Behind them Hoskins replaced the telephone and picked up the photographs. He went into the lavatory and shut the door. When he came out Dundridge was cowering behind a bulldozer, Lady Maud was being restrained by six bulldozer drivers and the photographs had been reduced to ashes and flushed down the pan. Hoskins sat down and wiped his face with a handkerchief. It had been a near thing.

  ‘Don’t think you’re going to get away with this,’ Lady Maud shouted as she was escorted back to her car. ‘I’ll sue you for slander. I’ll take every penny you’ve got.’ She drove away and Dundridge staggered back to the caravan.

  ‘You heard her,’ he said to Hoskins slumping into his chair. ‘You heard her attempt to blackmail me.’ He looked around for the photographs.

  ‘I burnt them,’ said Hoskins. ‘I didn’t think you’d want them lying around.’

  Dundridge looked at him gratefully. He certainly didn’t want them lying around. On the other hand the evidence of an attempted crime had been destroyed. There was no point in calling in the police now.

  ‘Well at least if she does sue me you were a witness,’ he said finally.

  ‘Definitely,’ said Hoskins. ‘But she’ll never dare.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put anything past that bitch,’ said Dundridge recovering his confidence now that both Lady Maud and the photographs were out of the way. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing. We’re going to move into Handyman Hall now. I’ll teach her to threaten me.’

  ‘Without the photographs I’m afraid you would have no case,’ said Mr Ganglion when Lady Maud returned to his office.

  ‘But he told you that I was blackmailing him. You told me so yourself,’ said Lady Maud.

  Mr Ganglion shook his head sadly. ‘What he said to me, my dear Lady Maud, was by way of being a confidential communication. He was after all consulting me as a solicitor and since I represent you in any case my evidence would never be accepted by a court. Now if we could get Hoskins to testify that he had heard him accuse you of blackmail …’ He phoned the Regional Planning Board and was put through to Hoskins at the Mobile HQ.

  ‘Certainly not. I never heard anything of the sort,’ said Hoskins. ‘Photographs? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The last thing he wanted to do was to appear in court to testify about those bloody photographs.

  ‘Peculiar,’ said Mr Ganglion. ‘Most peculiar, but there it is. Hoskins won’t testify.’

  ‘That just goes to show you can’t trust anyone these days,’ said Lady Maud.

  She drove home in a filthy temper which wasn’t improved by having to park the Bentley outside the Lodge and walk up the drive.

  26

  If her temper was bad when she returned to the Hall that afternoon, it was ten times worse the next morning. She woke to the sound of lorries driving down the Gorge road and men shouting outside the Lodge. Lady Maud picked up the phone and called Blott.

  ‘What the devil is going on down there?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s started,’ said Blott.

  ‘Started? What’s started?’

  ‘They’ve come to begin work.’

  Lady Maud dressed and hurried down the drive to find Dundridge, Hoskins and the Chief Constable and a group of policemen standing looking at the concrete blocks under the archway.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ she demanded.

  ‘We have come to begin work here,’ said Dundridge keeping close to the Chief Constable. ‘You are in receipt of a compulsory purchase order served on you on the 25th of June and …’

  ‘This is private property,’ said Lady Maud. ‘Kindly leave.’

  ‘My dear Lady Maud,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘I’m afraid these gentlemen are within their rights …’

  ‘They are within my property,’ said Lady Maud. ‘And I want them off it.’

  The Chief Constable shook his head sorrowfully. ‘I’m sorry to have to say this …’

  ‘Then don’t,’ said Lady Maud.

  ‘But they are fully entitled to act in accordance with their instructions and begin work on the motorway through the Park. I am here to see that they are not hindered in any way. Now if you would be so good as to order your gardener to vacate these … er … premises.’

  ‘Order him yourself.’

  ‘We have attempted to serve an eviction order on him but he refuses to come down. He appears to have barricaded the door. Now we don’t want to have to use force but unless he is prepared to come out I’m afraid we will have to make a forcible entry.’

  ‘Well, I’m not stopping you,’ said Lady Maud. ‘If that’s what you have to do, go ahead and do it.’

  She stood to one side while the policemen went round the side of the Lodge and hammered at the door. Lady Maud sat on a concrete block and watched them.

  The police battered at the door for ten minutes and finally broke it down only to find themselves confronted by a wall of concrete. Dundridge sent for a sledgehammer but it was quite clear that something more than a sledgehammer would be required to make an entry.

  ‘The bastard has cemented himself in,’ said Dundridge.

  ‘I can see that for myself,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘What are you going to do now?’

  Dundridge considered the problem and consulted Hoskins. Together they walked back to the bridge and looked up at the arch. In the circumstances it had assumed a new and quite daunting stature.

  ‘There’s no way round it,’ said Hoskins, indicating the cliffs. ‘We would have to move thousands of tons of rock.’

  ‘Can’t we blast a way round?’

  Hoskins looked up at the cliffs and shook his head. ‘Could do but we’d probably kill the stupid bugger in that arch in the process.’

  ‘So what?’ said Dundridge. ‘If he won’t come down it’s his own fault if he gets hurt.’ He didn’t say it very convincingly. It was quite clear that killing Blott would come under the heading of very unfavourable publicity at the Ministry of the Environment.

  ‘In any case,’ Hoskins pointed out, ‘the authorized route runs through the Gorge, not round it.’

  ‘What about the blasting we did back at the entrance?’

  ‘We were authorized to widen the Gorge there because of the river and besides that section doesn’t come within the area designated as of natural beauty.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Dundridge. ‘I knew that old bitch would come up with something like this.’

  They went back to the arch where the Chief Constable was arguing with Lady Maud.

  ‘Are you seriously suggesting that I ordered my gardener to cement himself into the Lodge?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Chief Constable.

  ‘In that case, Percival
Henry,’ said Lady Maud, ‘you’re a bigger fool than I took you for.’

  The Chief Constable winced. ‘Listen, Maud,’ he said, ‘you know as well as I do he wouldn’t have done this without your permission.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Lady Maud, ‘I told him he could do what he wanted with the Lodge. He’s been living there for thirty years. It’s his home. If he chooses to fill the place with cement that’s his business. I refuse to accept any responsibility for his actions.’

  ‘In that case I shall have no option but to arrest you,’ said the Chief Constable.

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘For obstruction.’

  ‘Codswallop,’ said Lady Maud. She got down from the block and walked round to the back of the arch and looked up at the window.

  ‘Blott,’ she called. Blott’s head appeared at the circular window.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Blott, come down this instant and let these men get on with their work.’

  ‘Won’t,’ said Blott.

  ‘Blott,’ shouted Lady Maud, ‘I am ordering you to come down.’

  ‘No,’ said Blott and shut the window.

  Lady Maud turned to the Chief Constable. ‘There you are. I have told him to come down and he won’t. Now then, are you still going to have me arrested for obstruction?’

  The Chief Constable shook his head. He knew when he was beaten. Lady Maud strode back up the drive to the Hall. He turned to Dundridge. ‘Well, what do you suggest now?’

  ‘There must be something we can do,’ said Dundridge.

  ‘If you’ve got any bright ideas, just let me know,’ said the Chief Constable.

  ‘What happens if we just go ahead and demolish the arch with him in it?’

  ‘The question is,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘what would happen to him if you did that?’

  ‘That’s his problem,’ said Dundridge. ‘We’ve got a legal right to remove that arch and if he’s in it when we do we’re not responsible for what happens to him.’

  The Chief Constable shook his head. ‘You try telling that to the judge when they try you for manslaughter. I should have thought you’d have learnt your lesson from what happened at Guildstead Carbonell.’ He got into his car and drove away.

  Dundridge walked back across the bridge and spoke to the foreman of the demolition gang.

  ‘Is there any way of taking that arch down without injuring the man inside?’ he asked.

  The foreman looked at him doubtfully. ‘Not if he doesn’t want us to.’

  As if to give added weight to his argument Blott appeared on the roof. He was carrying a shotgun.

  ‘You see what I mean,’ said the foreman.

  Blott looked expectantly over their heads, raised his gun and fired. A wood pigeon plummeted out of the sky. Dundridge could see exactly what he meant.

  ‘There’s nothing in our contract to say we’ve got to take unnecessary risks,’ said the foreman, ‘and a bloke who cements himself into an arch and shoots pigeons on the wing constitutes more than an unnecessary risk. He’s a bloody loony, and a crack shot into the bargain.’

  Dundridge thought wistfully of Mr Edwards. He turned to Hoskins.

  ‘I think,’ said Hoskins, ‘that we ought to contact the Ministry in London. This thing’s too big for us.’

  At the Hall Lady Maud heard the shot and picked up a pair of binoculars. Through them she could see Blott on tbe roof with the shotgun. She telephoned the Lodge.

  ‘They’re not shooting at you, are they?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘No,’ said Blott, ‘I was just shooting a pigeon. They’re still talking.’

  ‘Remember what I said about violence,’ Lady Maud told him. ‘We must keep public sympathy on our side. I am going to get in touch with the BBC and ITV and all the national newspapers. I think we can make a big song and dance about this business.’

  Blott put down the phone. Song and dance. The English language was most expressive. Song and dance.

  At his Mobile HQ Dundridge was on the phone to London.

  ‘Are you seriously trying to tell me that Lady Lynchwood’s gardener has cemented himself into an ornamental arch?’ said Mr Rees incredulously. ‘It doesn’t sound possible.’

  ‘The arch in question happens to be eighty feet high,’ Dundridge explained. ‘It has rooms inside. He’s filled all the bottom ones with concrete. There’s barbed-wire on the roof and short of blowing the place up there’s no way of getting him out.’

  ‘I should try the local fire brigade,’ Mr Rees suggested. ‘They use them to get cats out of trees.’

  ‘I have tried the fire brigade,’ said Dundridge.

  ‘Well, what do they say?’

  ‘They say their business is putting out fires, not storming fortresses.’

  Mr Rees considered the problem. ‘I imagine he’ll have to come out sometime,’ he said finally.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, to eat for one thing.’

  ‘Eat?’ shouted Dundridge. ‘Eat? He doesn’t have to come out to eat. I’ve got a list here of the things he ordered from the local supermarket. Four hundred tins of baked beans, seven hundred cans of corned beef, one hundred and fifty tins of frankfurters. Need I go on?’

  No,’ said Mr Rees hastily, ‘the fellow must have a constitution like an ox. You would have thought he would have chosen something a little more appetizing.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ said Dundridge.

  ‘Well I must admit that it does sound as if he intends to make a long stay of it,’ Mr Rees agreed.

  ‘And what are we going to do? Cancel the motorway for a couple of years while he munches his way through that little lot?’

  Mr Rees tried to think. ‘Can’t you talk him down?’ he asked. ‘That’s what they usually do with people threatening to commit suicide.’

  ‘But he isn’t threatening suicide,’ Dundridge pointed out.

  ‘It amounts to the same thing,’ said Mr Rees. ‘A diet of corned beef, baked beans and frankfurters in the quantities you’ve mentioned would certainly kill me. Still, I see what you mean. A man who can even contemplate living off that muck too obviously means business. Have you any ideas on the subject?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I have,’ said Dundridge.

  ‘Not another ball and crane job I hope,’ said Mr Rees anxiously. ‘We can’t have another little episode of that sort so shortly after the last one.’

  ‘I was thinking of using the army,’ said Dundridge.

  ‘The army? My dear fellow, this is a free country. We can’t possibly ask the army to blast a perfectly innocent Englishman out of his own home with tanks and artillery.’

  ‘To be precise,’ said Dundridge, ‘he doesn’t happen to be an Englishman and I wasn’t thinking of blasting him out with tanks and artillery.’

  ‘I should think not. The public would never stand for it,’ Mr Rees said. ‘But if he’s not an Englishman what is he?’

  ‘An Italian.’

  ‘An Italian? Are you sure? It doesn’t sound like them to go in for this sort of thing,’ said Mr Rees.

  ‘He’s naturalized,’ said Dundridge.

  ‘That explains it,’ said Mr Rees. ‘In that case I can’t see any objection to using the army. They’re used to dealing with foreigners. What precisely did you have in mind?’

  Dundridge explained his plan.

  ‘Well I’ll see what I can do,’ said Mr Rees. ‘I’ll call you back when I’ve had a word with the Minister.’

  In Whitehall the wires buzzed. Mr Rees spoke to the Minister of the Environment and the Minister spoke to Defence. By five o’clock Army Command had agreed to supply a team of commandos trained in rock climbing on the explicit understanding that they were to be used simply in a police support role and would not use firearms. As the Minister of the Environment explained, the essence of the operation was to occupy the Lodge and hold Blott until the police could evict him in a lawful fashion. ‘The great thing is that the media haven’t got
on to the story yet. If we can get him out of there before the newsmen start nosing around we can hush the whole thing up. The essence of the thing must be speed.’

  It was a point that Dundridge made to the commandos when they arrived for briefing that night at his Mobile HQ. ‘I have here a number of photographs taken this afternoon of the target,’ he said handing them round. ‘As you can see it is amply provided with handholds and there are two means of access. The two circular windows on either side and the hatch in the roof. I should have thought the best method of attack would be a diversionary move to the rear and a frontal assault—’

  ‘I think you can leave the tactical details of the exercise to us,’ said the Major in charge, who didn’t like being told his business by a civvy.

  ‘I was only trying to help,’ said Dundridge.

  ‘Now then,’ said the Major. ‘We’ll rendezvous at the Gibbet at twenty-four hundred hours and proceed on foot …’ Dundridge left them to it and went into the other office.

  ‘Well, for once we’re getting things done,’ he told Hoskins. ‘That old bitch isn’t going to know what’s hit her.’

  Hoskins nodded doubtfully. He had been in the army himself and he didn’t have Dundridge’s faith in the efficiency of the military machine.

  Blott spent the evening reading Sir Arthur Bryant but his mind was not on the past. He was considering the immediate future. They would either act quickly or try to wear him down psychologically by sending a succession of well-meaning people to talk to him. Blott had seen the sort of visitor he could expect on the television. Social workers, psychiatrists, priests and policemen, all of them imbued with an invincible faith in the possibility of compromise. They would argue and cajole (Blott looked the word up in his dictionary to see if it meant what he thought and found he was right) and do their best to make him see the error of his ways and they would fail, fail hopelessly because their assumptions were all wrong. They would assume he was an Italian whereas he wasn’t. They would think he was acting on instructions or that he was simply being loyal, whereas he was in love. They would think a compromise was possible … With a motorway? Blott smiled to himself at the stupidity of the idea. The motorway would either go through the Park and Handyman Hall or it wouldn’t. Nothing they could tell him would alter that fact. But above all the people who came to talk to him would be city-dwellers for whom talk was currency and words were coins. An Englishman’s word is his bond, Blott thought, but then he had never had much time for stocks and shares. ‘Word merchants’ old Lord Handyman had called such people, with contempt in his voice, and Blott agreed with him. Well they could talk themselves blue in the face but they wouldn’t shift him. Everything that he cared for and loved and was lay there in the Park and the Garden and the Hall. Handyman Hall. And Blott was the handyman. He would die rather than give up the right to be needed. He undressed and climbed into bed and lay listening to the river tumbling by and the wind in the trees. Through his window he could see the light on in Lady Maud’s bedroom. Blott watched it until it went out and then he fell asleep.