Uncle Fred in the Springtime Page 3

  ‘He isn’t.’

  ‘You said he was.’

  ‘I didn’t say he was. I said Horace was. ‘The name was new to Lord Emsworth. ‘Who,’ he asked, ‘is Horace?’

  ‘I told you two seconds ago,’ said the Duke, with the asperity which never left him for long, ‘that he was my nephew. I have no reason to believe that conditions have altered since.

  ‘Oh?’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Ah? Yes. Yes, to be sure. Your nephew. Well, we must try to make his stay pleasant. Perhaps he is interested in pigs. Are you interested in pigs, Alaric? You know my sow, Empress of Blandings, I think. I believe you met when you were here in the summer.’

  He moved aside to allow his guest an uninterrupted view of the superb animal. The Duke advanced to the rail, and there followed a brief silence — on Lord Emsworth’s side reverent, on that of the Duke austere. He had produced a large pair of spectacles from his breast pocket and through them was scrutinizing the silver medallist in a spirit only too plainly captious and disrespectful.

  ‘Disgusting!’ he said at length.

  Lord Emsworth started violently. He could scarcely believe that he had heard aright.

  ‘What!’

  ‘That pig is too fat.’

  ‘Too fat?’

  ‘Much too fat. Look at her. Bulging.’

  ‘But my dear Alaric, she is supposed to be fat.’

  ‘Not as fat as that.’

  ‘Yes, I assure you. She has already been given two medals for being fat.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Clarence. What would a pig do with medals? It’s no good trying to shirk the issue. There is only one word for that pig — gross. She reminds me of my Aunt Horatia, who died of apoplexy during Christmas dinner. Keeled over half-way through her second helping of plum pudding and never spoke again. This animal might be her double. And what do you expect? You stuff her and stuff her and stuff her, and I don’t suppose she gets a lick of exercise from one week’s end to another. What she wants is a crackling good gallop every morning, and no starchy foods. That would get her into shape.’

  Lord Emsworth had recovered the pince-nez which emotion had caused, as it always did, to leap from his nose. He replaced them insecurely.

  ‘Are you under the impression,’ he said, for when deeply moved he could be terribly sarcastic, ‘that I want to enter my pig for the Derby?’

  The Duke had been musing. He had not liked that nonsense about pigs being given medals and he was thinking how sad all this was for poor Connie. But at these words he looked up sharply. An involuntary shudder shook him, and his manner took on a sort of bedside tenderness.

  ‘I wouldn’t, Clarence.’

  ‘Wouldn’t what?’

  ‘Enter this pig for the Derby. She might not win, and then you would have had all your trouble for nothing. What you want is to get her out of your life. And I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Listen, my dear Clarence,’ said the Duke, patting his host’s shoulder, ‘I’ll take this pig over — lock, stock and barrel. Yes, I mean it. Have her sent to my place — I’ll wire them to expect her — and in a few weeks’ time she will be a different creature. Keen, alert, eyes sparkling. And you’ll be different, too. Brighter. Less potty. Improved out of all knowledge …. Ah, there’s Bosham. Hi, Bosham! Half a minute, Bosham, I want a word with you.’

  For some moments after his companion had left him, Lord Emsworth remained leaning limply against the rail of the sty. The sun was bright. The sky was blue. A gentle breeze caressed the Empress’s tail, as it wiggled over the trough. But to him the heavens seemed darkened by a murky mist, and there appeared to be an east wind blowing through the world. It was not for some time that he became aware that a voice was speaking his name, but he heard it at last and pulling together with a powerful effort, saw his sister Constance.

  She was asking him if he was getting deaf. He said No, he was not getting deaf.

  ‘Well, I’ve been shouting at you for ever so long. I wish you would listen to me sometimes. Clarence, I have come to have a talk about Alaric. I am very worried about him. He seems to have got so odd.’

  ‘Odd? I should say he was odd. Do you know what, Connie? He came to me just now —’

  ‘He was asking me to give him eggs to throw at the gardeners.’

  At a less tense moment, her words would have shocked Lord Emsworth. An English landed proprietor of the better type comes to regard himself as in loco parentis to those in his employment, and if visitors start throwing eggs at them he resents it. But now he did not even lose his pince-nez.

  ‘And do you know what he said to me?’

  ‘He can’t be sane, if he wants to throw eggs at gardeners.’

  ‘He can’t be sane, if he wants me to give him the Empress.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then, of course,’ said Lady Constance, ‘you will have to.’

  This time Lord Emsworth did lose his pince-nez, and lose them thoroughly. They flew at the end of their string like leaves in a storm. He stared incredulously.

  ‘What!’

  ‘You are getting deaf.’

  ‘I am not getting deaf. When I said “What!” I didn’t mean “What?” I meant “What!!”‘

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about this extraordinary remark of yours. I tell you this frightful Duke wants me to give him the Empress, and instead of being appalled and horrified and — er — appalled you say “Of course you will have to!” Without turning an eyelash! God bless my soul, do you imagine for an instant —’And do you imagine for an instant that I am going to run the risk of having Alaric career through the castle with a poker? If he destroyed all the furniture in his nephew Horace’s sitting room just because Horace wouldn’t go to the station and see him off, what do you think he would do in a case like this? I do not intend to have my home wrecked for the sake of a pig. Personally, I think it’s a blessing that we are going to get rid of the miserable animal.’

  ‘Did you say “miserable animal”?’

  ‘Yes, I did say “miserable animal”. Alaric was telling me that he thought it a very bad influence in your life.’

  ‘Dash his impertinence!’

  ‘And I quite agree with him. In any case, there is no use arguing about it. If he wants the pig, he must have it.’

  ‘Oh, very well, very well, very well, very well,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘I suppose the next thing he’ll want will be the castle, and you’ll give him that. Be sure to tell him not to be afraid to ask for it, if he takes a fancy to it. I think I will go and read a little in the library, before Alaric decides to have all my books packed up and shipped off.’

  It was a good exit speech — mordant — bitter, satirical — but it brought no glow of satisfaction to Lord Emsworth as he uttered it. His heart was bowed down with weight of woe. The experience gained from a hundred battles had taught him that his sister Constance always got her way. One might bluster and one might struggle, one might raise hands to heaven and clench fists and shake them, but in the end the result was always the same — Connie got what she wanted.

  As he sat some ten minutes later in the cloistered coolness of the library, vainly trying to concentrate his attention on Whiffle On The Care Of The Pig, a feeling of being alone and helpless in a hostile world came upon Lord Emsworth. What he needed above all else in this crisis which had come to blast his life was a friend … an ally … a sympathetic adviser. But who was there to whom he could turn? Bosham was useless. Beach, his butler, was sympathetic, but not a constructive thinker. And his brother Galahad, the only male member of the family capable of coping with that family’s females, was away….

  Lord Emsworth started. A thought had struck him. Musing on Galahad, he had suddenly remembered that friend of his, that redoubtable Lord Ickenham of whom the Duke had been talking just now.

  The Hon. Galahad Threepwood was a man of high standards. He weighed people before stamping them with the seal of his approval, and picked h
is words before he spoke. If Galahad Threepwood said a man was hot stuff, he used the phrase not carelessly but in its deepest sense. And not once but many times had Lord Emsworth heard him bestow this accolade on Frederick, Earl of Ickenham.

  His eyes gleamed behind their pince-nez with a new light. He was planning and scheming. Debrett’s Peerage, standing over there on its shelf, would inform him of this wonder-man’s address, and what more simple than to ring him up on the telephone and arrange a meeting and then pop up to London and place the facts before him and seek his advice. A man like that would have a hundred ideas for the saving of the Empress ….

  The gleam died away. In classing the act of popping up to London as simple, he saw that he had erred. While this ghastly Duke remained on the premises, there was not the slightest hope of Connie allowing him to get away, even for a night. Boys who stood on burning decks had a better chance of leaving their post than the master of Blandings Castle when there were visitors.

  He was just reaching feebly for his Whiffle, which he had dropped in his anguish, hoping that its magic pages would act as an opiate, when Lady Constance burst into the room.

  ‘Clarence!’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Clarence, did you tell Alaric you wanted to enter your pig for the Derby?’

  ‘No, I told him I didn’t.’

  ‘Then he misunderstood you. He said you did. And he wants me to get a brain specialist down to observe you.’

  ‘I like his dashed cheek!’

  ‘So you must go to London immediately.’

  Once more Whiffle fell from Lord Emsworth’s limp hand.

  ‘Go to London?’

  ‘Now, please, Clarence, don’t be difficult. There is no need for you to tell me how you dislike going to London. But this is vitally important. Ever since Alaric arrived, I have been feeling that he ought to be under the observation of some good brain specialist, but I couldn’t think how it was to be managed without offending him. This has solved everything. Do you know Sir Roderick Glossop?’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘He is supposed to be quite the best man in that line. Lady Gimblett told me he had done wonders for her sister’s problem child. I want you to go to London this afternoon and bring him back with you. Give him lunch at your club tomorrow and explain the whole situation to him. Assure him that expense is no object, and that he must come back with you. He will tell us what is the best thing to be done about poor Alaric. I am hopeful that some quite simple form of treatment may be all that is required. You must catch the two o’clock train.

  ‘Very well, Connie. If you say so.’

  There was a strange look on Lord Emsworth’s face as the door closed. It was the look of a man who has just found himself on the receiving end of a miracle. His knees were trembling a little as he rose and walked to the bookcase, where the red and gold of Debrett’s Peerage gleamed like the ray of a lighthouse guiding a storm-tossed mariner.

  Beach, the butler, hearing the bell, presented himself at the library.

  ‘M’lord?’

  ‘Oh, Beach, I want you to put in a trunk telephone call for me. I don’t know the number, but the address is Ickenham Hall, Ickenham, Hampshire. I want a personal call to Lord Ickenham.’

  ‘Very good, m’lord.’

  ‘And when you get it,’ said Lord Emsworth, glancing nervously over his shoulder, ‘have it put through to my bedroom.’

  3

  If your Buffy-Porson is running well, the journey from London to Hampshire does not take long. Pongo Twistleton, making good time, arrived at Ickenham Hall a few minutes before noon — at about the moment, in fact, when Lord Emsworth in far-off Shropshire was sitting down in the library of Blandings Castle to his Whiffle On The Care Of The Pig.

  Half-way up the drive, where the rhododendrons masked a sharp turning, he nearly collided with the Hall Rolls, proceeding in the opposite direction, and a glimpse of luggage on its grid caused him to fear that he might just have missed his uncle. But all was well. Reaching the house, he found him standing on the front steps.

  Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham, was a tall, slim, distinguished-looking man with a jaunty moustache and an alert and enterprising eye. In actual count of time, he was no longer in his first youth. The spring now enlivening England with its alternate sunshine and blizzards was one of many that had passed over his head, leaving it a becoming iron-grey. But just as the years had failed to deprive him of his slender figure, so had they been impotent to quench his indomitable spirit. Together with a juvenile waistline, he still retained the bright enthusiasms and the fresh, unspoiled outlook of a slightly inebriated undergraduate — though to catch him at his best, as he would have been the first to admit, you had to catch him in London.

  It was for this reason that Jane, Countess of Ickenham, had prudently decided that the evening of her husband’s life should be spent exclusively at his rural seat, going so far as to inform him that if he ever tried to sneak up to London she would skin him with a blunt knife. And if, as he now stood on the steps, his agreeable face seemed to be alight with some inner glow, this was due to the reflection that she had just left for a distant spot where she proposed to remain for some considerable time. He was devoted to his helpmeet, never wavering in the opinion that she was the sweetest thing that had ever replied ‘Yes’ to a clergyman’s ‘Wilt thou?’ but there was no gainsaying the fact that her absence would render it easier for him to get that breath of London air which keeps a man from growing rusty and puts him in touch with the latest developments of modern thought.

  At the sight of his nephew, his cheerfulness increased. He was very fond of Pongo, in whose society many of his happiest and most instructive hours had been passed. A day which they had spent together at the Dog Races some months before still haunted the young man’s dreams.

  ‘Why, hullo, my boy,’ he cried. ‘Delighted to see you. Park the scooter and come in. What a morning! Warm, fragrant, balmy, yet with just that nip in the air that puts a fellow on his toes. I saw one of those Western pictures at our local cinema last night, in which a character described himself as being all spooked up with zip and vinegar. That is precisely how I feel. The yeast of spring is fermenting in my veins, and I am ready for anything. You’ve just missed the boss.’

  ‘Was that Aunt Jane I saw going off in the car?’

  ‘That was the Big White Chief.’

  The information relieved Pongo. He respected and admired his aunt, but from boyhood days she had always inspired him with a certain fear, and he was glad that he had not got to meet her while he was passing through his present financial crisis. Like so many aunts, she was gifted with a sort of second sight and one glance at his face would almost certainly have told her that he was two hundred in the red. From that to the confession that his difficulties were due to unsuccessful speculations on the turf would have been the shortest of steps. He did not like to think what would happen if she discovered his recent activities.

  ‘She’s motoring to Dover to catch the afternoon boat. She is off to the South of France to nurse her mother, who is having one of her spells.’

  ‘Then you’re all alone?’

  ‘Except for your sister Valerie.’

  ‘Oh, my gosh. Is she here?’

  ‘She arrived last night, breathing flame through her nostrils. You’ve heard about her broken engagement? Perhaps you have come here with the idea of comforting her in her distress?’

  ‘Well, not absolutely. In fact, between you and me, I’m not any too keen on meeting her at the moment. I rather took Horace’s side in the recent brawl, and our relations are distant.’

  Lord Ickenham nodded.

  ‘Yes, now that you mention it, I recollect her saying something about your being some offensive breed of insect. An emotional girl.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I can’t understand her making such heavy weather over the thing. Everybody knows a broken engagement doesn’t amount to anything. Your
aunt, I remember, broke ours six times in all before making me the happiest man in the world. Bless her! The sweetest, truest wife man ever had. I hope her mother responds to treatment and that she will be back with me soon. But not too soon. You know, Pongo, it’s an odd thing that the detective Horace commissioned to chase Valerie across the ice with bloodhounds should have been old Pott. Mustard Pott, we used to call him. I’ve known him for years.’

  ‘Yes, he was telling me. You started him as a sleuth.’

  ‘That’s right. A versatile chap, Mustard. There aren’t many things he hasn’t done in his time. He was on the stage once, I believe. Then he took to Silver Ring bookeying. Then he ran a club. And I rather suspect him of being a defrocked butler. Though what Nature really intended him to be, I have always felt, was a confidence-trick man. Which, by the way, is a thing I’ve wanted to have a shot at all my life, but never seemed able to get round to somehow.’

  ‘What rot.’

  ‘It isn’t rot. You shouldn’t mock at an old man’s daydreams. Every time I read one of those bits in the paper about Another Victim Of The Confidence Trick, I yearn to try it for myself, because I simply cannot bring myself to believe that there are people in the world mugs enough to fall for it. Well, young Pongo, how much?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I can see in your eye that you’ve come to make a touch. What’s the figure?’

  Such ready intelligence on the part of an uncle should have pleased a nephew, but Pongo remained sombre. Now that the moment had come, his natural pessimism had asserted itself again.

  ‘Well, it’s rather a lot.’

  ‘A flyer?’

  ‘A bit more than that.’ ‘Ten?’

  ‘Two hundred.’

  ‘Two — what? How in the world did you manage to get in the hole for a sum like that?’

  ‘I came a bit of a mucker at Lincoln, being led astray by my advisers, and when I tried to get it back at Hurst Park things came unstuck again, and the outcome and upshot is that I owe a bookie named George Budd two hundred quid. Do you know George Budd?’