Pigs Have Wings: Read online

  Ichabod, felt Lord Emsworth, and was still in a disturbed state of mind, though gradually becoming soothed by listening to that sweetest of all music, the sound of the Empress restoring her tissues, when there appeared at his side, leaning on the rail and surveying the champ through a black-rimmed monocle, a slim, trim, dapper little gentleman in his late fifties, whom he greeted with a cordial ‘Ah, Galahad.’

  ‘Ah, to you, Clarence old bird, with knobs on,’ responded the newcomer, equally cordial.

  The Hon. Galahad Threepwood was the only genuinely distinguished member of the family of which Lord Emsworth was the head. The world, it is said, knows little of its greatest men, but everyone connected with the world of clubs, bars, theatres, restaurants, and race courses knew Gally, if only by reputation. He was one of that determined little band who, feeling that London would look better painted red, had devoted themselves at an early age to the task of giving it that cheerful colour. A pain in the neck to his sister Constance, his sister Julia, his sister Dora, and all his other sisters, he was universally esteemed in less austere quarters, for his heart was of gold and his soul overflowing with the milk of human kindness.

  As he stood gazing at the Empress, something between a gulp and a groan at his side caused him to transfer his scrutiny to his elder brother, and he was concerned to note that there was a twisted look on those loved features, as if the head of the family had just swallowed something acid.

  ‘Hullo, Clarence!’ he said. ‘The old heart seems a bit bowed down. What’s the matter? Not brooding on that incident at the Emsworth Arms, are you?’

  ‘Eh? Incident? What incident was that?’

  ‘Has no word of it reached your ears? I had it from Beach, who had it from the scullery maid, who had it from the chauffeur. It appears that that butler of Parsloe’s – Binstead is his name, I believe – was swanking about in the tap room of the Emsworth Arms last night, offering five to one on Parsloe’s pig.’

  Lord Emsworth stared.

  ‘On Pride of Matchingham? The fellow’s insane. How can Pride of Matchingham possibly have a chance against the Empress?’

  ‘That’s what I felt. It puzzled me, too. The simple explanation is, I suppose, that Binstead had got a snootful and was talking through his hat. Well, if that’s not what’s worrying you, what is? Why are you looking like a bereaved tapeworm?’

  Lord Emsworth was only too glad to explain to a sympathetic ear what had caused the resemblance.

  ‘That girl Simmons upset me, Galahad. You will scarcely credit it, but she called the Empress a piggy-wiggy.’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘I assure you. “Hullo, Lord Emsworth,” she said. “Have you come to see the piggy-wiggy?”’

  Gally frowned.

  ‘Bad,’ he agreed. ‘The wrong tone. If this is true, it seems to show that the child is much too frivolous in her outlook to hold the responsible position she does. I may mention that this is the view which Beach takes. He has put a considerable slice of his savings on the Empress’s nose to cop at the forthcoming Agricultural Show, and he is uneasy. He asks himself apprehensively is La Simmons fitted for her sacred task? And I don’t blame him. For mark this, Clarence, and mark it well. The girl who carelessly dismisses Empress of Blandings as a piggy-wiggy today is a girl who may quite easily forget to give her lunch tomorrow. Whatever induced you, my dear fellow, to entrust a job that calls for the executive qualities of a Pierpont Morgan to the pop-eyed daughter of a rural vicar?’

  Lord Emsworth did not actually wring his hands, but he came very near to it.

  ‘It was not my doing,’ he protested. ‘Connie insisted on my engaging her. She is some sort of protégé of Connie’s. Related to someone she wanted to oblige, or something like that. Blame Connie for the whole terrible situation.’

  ‘Connie!’ said Gally. ‘The more I see of this joint, the more clearly do I realize that what Blandings Castle needs, to make it an earthly Paradise, is fewer and better Connies. Sisters are a mistake, Clarence. You should have set your face against them at the outset.’

  ‘True,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘True.’

  Silence fell, as nearly as silence could ever fall in the neighbourhood of a trough at which Empress of Blandings was feeding. It was broken by Lord Emsworth, who was peering about him with the air of a man who senses something missing in his surroundings.

  ‘Where,’ he asked, ‘is Alice?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Or, rather, Penelope. Penelope Donaldson. I thought you were out for a walk together.’

  ‘Oh, Penny? Yes, we have been strolling hither and thither, chewing the fat. There’s a nice girl, Clarence.’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘Not only easy on the eye and a conversationalist who holds you spellbound on a wide variety of subjects, but kind-hearted. I happened to express a wish for a whisky -and- soda, and she immediately trotted off to tell Beach to bring me one, to save me trudging to the house.’

  ‘You are going to have a whisky and soda?’

  ‘You follow me like a bloodhound. It will bring the roses back to my cheeks, which is always so desirable, and it will enable me to drink Beach’s health with a hey-nonny-nonny and a hot-cha-cha. It’s his birthday.’

  ‘Beach’s birthday?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘God bless my soul.’

  Lord Emsworth was fumbling in his pocket.

  ‘By the afternoon post, Galahad, I received an extraordinary communication. Most extraordinary. It was one of those picture postcards. It said “Many happy returns, old dear. Love and kisses”, and it was signed Maudie. Now that you tell me it is Beach’s birthday, I am wondering … Yes, as I thought. It was intended for Beach and must have got mixed up with my letters. Look.’

  Gally took the card and scrutinized it through his monocle. On the reverse side were the words:

  Mr Sebastian Beach,

  Blandings Castle,

  Shropshire

  A grave look came into his face.

  ‘We must inquire into this,’ he said. ‘How long has Beach been at the castle? Eighteen years? Nineteen? Well, the exact time is immaterial. The point is that he has been here long enough for me to have grown to regard him as a son, and any son of mine who gets picture postcards of nude Venuses from girls named Maudie has got to do some brisk explaining. We can’t have Sex rearing its ugly head in the butler’s pantry. Hoy, Beach!’

  Sebastian Beach was approaching, his customary measured step rather more measured than usual owing to the fact that he was bearing a tall glass filled to the brim with amber liquid. Beside him tripped a small, slender girl with fair hair who looked as if she might have been a wood nymph the butler had picked up on his way through the grounds. Actually, she was the younger daughter of an American manufacturer of dog biscuits.

  ‘Here come the United States Marines, Gally,’ she said, and Gally, having replied with a good deal of satisfaction that he could see them with the naked eye, took the glass and drank deeply.

  ‘Happy birthday, Beach.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Galahad.’

  ‘A sip for you, Penny?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Clarence?’

  ‘Eh? No, no thank you.’

  ‘Right,’ said Gally, finishing the contents of the glass. ‘And now to approach a painful task. Beach!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Peruse this card.’

  Beach took the postcard. As his gooseberry eyes scanned it, his lips moved the fraction of an inch. He looked like a butler who for two pins, had he not been restrained by the rigid rules of the Butlers’ Guild, might have smiled.

  ‘Well, Beach? We are waiting. Who is this Maudie?’

  ‘My niece, Mr Galahad.’

  ‘That is your story, is it?’

  ‘My brother’s daughter, Mr Galahad. She is what might be termed the Bohemian member of the family. As a young girl she ran away from home and became a barmaid in London.’

  Gally pricked up hi
s ears, like a specialist whose particular subject has come up in the course of conversation. It was as if razor blades had been mentioned in the presence of Mr Gillette.

  ‘A barmaid, eh? Where?’

  ‘At the Criterion, Mr Galahad.’

  ‘I must have known her, then. I knew them all at the Criterion. Though I don’t remember any Maudie Beach.’

  ‘For business purposes she adopted the nom de guerre of Montrose, sir.’

  Gally uttered a glad cry.

  ‘Maudie Montrose? Is that who she was? Good heavens, of course I knew her. Charming girl with blue eyes and hair like a golden bird’s nest. Many is the buttered rum I have accepted at her hands. What’s become of her? Is she still working the old beer engine?’

  ‘Oh no, Mr Galahad. She married and retired.’

  ‘I hope her husband appreciates her many sterling qualities.’

  ‘He is no longer with us, sir. He contracted double pneumonia, standing outside a restaurant in the rain.’

  ‘What on earth did he do that for?’

  ‘It was in pursuance of his professional duties, sir. He was the proprietor of a private investigation bureau, Digby’s Day and Night Detectives. Now that he has passed on, my niece conducts the business herself, and I believe gives general satisfaction.’

  Penny gave an interested squeak.

  ‘You mean she’s a sleuth? One of the bloodstain and magnifying glass brigade?’

  ‘Substantially that, miss. I gather that she leaves the rougher work to her subordinates.’

  ‘Still she’s a genuine private eye. Golly, it takes all sorts to make a world, doesn’t it?’

  ‘So I have been given to understand, miss,’ said Beach indulgently. He turned to Lord Emsworth, who, finding the Maudie topic one that did not grip, had started to scratch the Empress’s back with a piece of stick. ‘I should have mentioned, m’lord, that Sir Gregory has arrived.’

  ‘Oh, dash it. Where is he?’

  ‘I left him in the morning-room, m’lord, taking off his shoes. I received the impression that his feet were paining him. He expressed a desire to see your lordship at your lordship’s earliest convenience.’

  Lord Emsworth became peevish.

  ‘What on earth does the man want, coming here? He knows that I regard him with the deepest suspicion. But I suppose I shall have to see him. If I don’t, it will only mean an unpleasant scene with Connie. She is always telling me I must be neighbourly.’

  ‘Thank goodness I don’t have to be,’ said Gally. ‘I can look young Parsloe in the eye and make him wilt. That’s the advantage of not having a position to keep up. That was interesting, what Beach was telling us, Clarence.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘About Maudie.’

  ‘Who is Maudie?’

  ‘All right, master-mind, let it go. Trot along and see what that thug wants.’

  Lord Emsworth ambled off, followed at just the right respectful distance by his faithful butler, and Gally looked after them musingly.

  ‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘Do you know how long I have known Beach? Eighteen years, or it may have been nineteen, ever since I was a slip of a boy of forty. And only today have I discovered that his name is Sebastian. The same thing happened with Fruity Biffen. I don’t think you met my old friend Fruity Biffen, did you? He was living down here at a house along the Shrewsbury road till a short time ago, but he left before you arrived. In the old days he used to sign his I.O.U’s George J. Biffen, and it was only after the lapse of several years, one night when we were having supper together at Romano’s and he had lost some of his reserve owing to having mixed stout, crème de menthe, and old brandy, to see what it tasted like, that he revealed that the J. stood for –’

  ‘Gally,’ said Penny, who for some moments had been tracing arabesques on the turf with her shoe and giving other indications of nerving herself to an embarrassing task, ‘can you lend me two thousand pounds?’

  4

  It was never an easy matter to disconcert the Hon. Galahad. For half a century nursemaids, governesses, tutors, schoolmasters, Oxford dons, bookmakers, three-card-trick men, jellied eel sellers, skittle sharps, racecourse touts and members of the metropolitan police force had tried to do it, and all had failed. It was an axiom of the old Pelican Club that, no matter what slings and arrows outrageous fortune might launch in his direction, Gally Threepwood could be counted upon to preserve the calm insouciance of a pig on ice. But at these words a spasm definitely shook him, causing his black-rimmed monocle to leap as nimbly from his eye as the pince-nez had ever leaped from the nose of his brother Clarence. His look, as he stared at the girl, was the look of a man unable to believe his ears.

  ‘Two thousand pounds?’

  ‘It’s sorely needed.’

  Gally gave a little sigh. He took her hand and patted it.

  ‘My child, I’m a pauper. I’m a younger son. In English families the heir scoops in the jackpot and all the runners-up get are the few crumbs that fall from his table. I could no more raise two thousand pounds than balance that pig there on the tip of my nose.’

  ‘I see. I was afraid you mightn’t be able to. All right, let’s forget about it.’

  Gally looked at her, astounded. Did she really think that Galahad Threepwood, one of the most inquisitive men who ever knocked back a Scotch and soda, a man who wished he had a quid, or even ten shillings, for every time he had been called a damned old Nosey Parker, was as easily put off as this?

  ‘But, good heavens, aren’t you going to explain?’

  ‘Shall I? It depends whether you can keep a secret.’

  ‘Of course I can keep a secret. Why, if I were to reveal one tithe of the things I know about my circle of acquaintance, it would rock civilization. You can confide in me without a tremor.’

  ‘It would be a relief, I must say. Don’t you hate bottling things up?’

  ‘I prefer unbottling them. Go on. What’s all this about two thousand pounds? What on earth do you want it for?’

  ‘Well, it isn’t exactly for me. It’s for a man I know. It’s the old, old story, Gally. I’m in love.’

  ‘Aha!’

  ‘Aha to you. Why shouldn’t I be in love? People do fall in love, don’t they?’

  ‘I’ve known of cases.’

  ‘Well, I’m in love with Jerry.’

  ‘Jerry what?’

  ‘Jerry Vail.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose he’s ever heard of you.’

  Gally was indignant.

  ‘What do you mean, he’s never heard of me? Of course he’s heard of me. England’s been ringing with my name for the last thirty years. If you weren’t a benighted Yank on your first visit to the British Isles, you would have my life history at your fingertips and treat me with the respect I deserve. But to return to the dream man. From the fact that you are going about trying to bite people’s ears on his behalf, I deduce that he is short of cash. A bit strapped for the ready, eh? What is sometimes called an impecunious suitor?’

  ‘Well, he gets by. He’s self-supporting.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He’s an author.’

  ‘Good heavens! Oh, well, I suppose authors are also God’s creatures.’

  ‘He writes thrillers. But you know the old gag. “Crime doesn’t pay … enough.” We couldn’t possibly get married on what he makes, even in a good year.’

  ‘But your father, the well-to-do-millionaire. Won’t he provide?’

  ‘Not for an impecunious suitor. If I were to write and tell Father I wanted to marry someone with an annual income of about thirty cents, he would whisk me back to America by the next boat, and I should be extremely lucky if I didn’t get interned at my old grandmother’s in Ohio.’

  ‘Stern parent stuff, eh? I thought all that sort of thing went out in the eighties.’

  ‘Yes, but they forgot to tell Father. And anyway, Jerry’s much too full of high principles and what have you to let himself
be supported by his wife.’

  ‘You could talk him out of that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to. I admire him for it. If you’d seen some of the fortune-hunting dead-beats I’ve had to keep off with a stick since I ripened into womanhood, you could understand my thinking it’s a pleasant change to meet someone like Jerry. He’s swell, Gally. He has to be seen to be believed. And if only he can get this two thousand pounds …’

  ‘You might give me the inside stuff on that. Does he want it for some particular reason, or is it just that he likes two thousand pounds?’

  ‘He has a friend, a doctor, who wants to start one of those health places. Did you ever hear of Muldoon’s in America?’

  ‘Of course. I was always popping in and out of America in the old days.’

  ‘This would be something on the same sort of lines, only, being in England, more … what’s the word?’

  ‘Posh?’

  ‘I was going to say plushy. It would cater for tired Dukes and weary millionaires, all paying terrific fees. There’s a place like it up in Wales, Jerry tells me, which simply coins money. This would be the same sort of thing, only easier to get at because the house Jerry’s doctor friend has his eye on is in Surrey or Sussex or somewhere, much nearer London. The idea is that if Jerry could raise this two thousand pounds and buy in, he would become a junior partner. The boy friend would feel the patients’ pulses and prescribe diets and so on, and Jerry would take them out riding and play tennis and golf with them and generally be the life and soul of the party. It’s the sort of thing that would suit him down to the ground, and he would be awfully good at it. And he would have time to write his great novel.’

  ‘Is he writing a great novel?’