Uncle Fred in the Springtime Read online

  Pongo felt that the moment had come to clear up a mystery. Voices could be heard in the passage, but there was just time to put the question which had been perplexing him ever since Polly Pott had glided imperceptibly into his life.

  ‘I say, how does a chap like that come to be her father?’

  ‘He married her mother. You understand the facts of life, don’t you?’

  ‘You mean she’s his stepdaughter?’

  ‘I was too elliptical. What I should have said was that he married the woman who subsequently became her mother. A delightful creature she was, too.’

  ‘But why did a delightful creature marry Pott?’

  ‘Why does anyone marry anybody? Why does Polly want to marry a modern poet of apparently homicidal tendencies? Why have you wanted to marry the last forty-six frightful girls you’ve met?… But hist!’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I said “Hist!”‘

  ‘Oh, hist?’ said Pongo, once more catching his drift. The door had opened, and Polly was with them again.

  She was accompanied by Lord Emsworth, not looking his best.

  The ninth Earl of Emsworth was a man who in times of stress always tended to resemble the Aged Parent in an old-fashioned melodrama when informed that the villain intended to foreclose the mortgage. He wore now a disintegrated air, as if somebody had removed most of his interior organs. You see the same sort of thing in stuffed parrots when the sawdust has leaked Out of them. His pince-nez were askew, and his collar had come off its stud.

  ‘Gould I have a glass of water?’ he asked feebly, like a hart heated in the chase.

  Polly hurried off solicitously, and Lord Ickenham regarded his brother Peer with growing interest.

  ‘Something the matter?’

  ‘My dear Ickenham, a disastrous thing has happened.’

  ‘Tell me all.’

  ‘What I am to say to Connie, I really do not know.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘She will be furious.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘And she is a woman who can make things so confoundedly uncomfortable about the place when she is annoyed. Ah, thank you, my dear.’

  Lord Emsworth drained the contents of the glass gratefully, and became more lucid.

  ‘You remember, my dear Ickenham, that I left you to keep an appointment with Sir Roderick Glossop, the brain specialist. My sister Constance, I think I told you, had given me the strictest instructions to bring him back to Blandings, to observe Dunstable. Dunstable’s behaviour has been worrying her. He breaks furniture with pokers and throws eggs at gardeners. So Connie sent me to bring Glossop.’

  ‘And —?’

  ‘My dear fellow, he won’t come!’

  ‘But why should that upset you so much? Lady Constance surely can’t blame you for not producing brain specialists, if they’re too busy to leave London.’

  Lord Emsworth moaned softly.

  ‘He is not too busy to leave London. He refuses to come because he says I insulted him.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, it started with my calling him “Pimples”. He didn’t like it.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow you.’

  ‘Who do you think this Sir Roderick Glossop turned out to be, Ickenham? A boy whom I had known at school. A most unpleasant boy with a nasty, superior manner and an extraordinary number of spots on his face. I was shown in, and he said: “Well, it’s a long time since we met, eh?” And I said: “Eh?” And he said: “You don’t remember me, eh?” And I said: “Eh?” And then I took a good look at him, and I said “God bless my soul! Why, it’s Pimples!”‘

  ‘An affecting reunion.

  ‘I recall now that he seemed to flush, and his manner lost its cordiality. It took on that supercilious superiority which I had always so much resented, and he asked me brusquely to state my business. I told him all about Dunstable wanting the Empress, and he became most offensive. He said something about being a busy man and having no time to waste, and he sneered openly at what he called “this absurd fuss” that was being made about what he described as “a mere pig”.’

  Lord Emsworth’s face darkened. It was plain that the wound still throbbed.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t going to stand that sort of thing from young Pimples. I told him not to be a conceited ass. And he, I think, called me a doddering old fool. Something of that general nature, at any rate. And one word led to another, and in the end I confess that I did become perhaps a little more outspoken than was prudent. I remembered that there had been a scandal connected with his name — something to do with overeating himself and being sick at the house supper — and rather injudiciously I brought this up. And shortly afterwards he was ringing the bell for me to be shown out and telling me that nothing would induce him to come to Blandings after what had occurred. And now I am wondering how I am to explain to Constance.’

  Lord Ickenham nodded brightly. There had come into his eyes a gleam which Pongo had no difficulty in recognizing. He had observed it on several previous occasions, notably during that visit to the Dog Races just before his uncle’s behaviour had attracted the attention of the police. He could read its message. It means that some pleasing inspiration had floated into Lord Ickenham’s mind, and it caused a strong shudder to pass through his frame, together with a wish that he were far away. When pleasing inspirations floated into Lord Ickenham’s mind, the prudent man made for the nearest bombproof shelter.

  ‘This is all most interesting.’

  ‘It is a terrible state of affairs.’

  ‘On the contrary, nothing more fortunate could have happened. I now see daylight.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You were not here when we were holding our conference just now, my dear Emsworth, or your lightning mind would long ere this have leaped at my meaning. Briefly, the position is as follows. It is essential that young Polly…. By the way, you don’t know each other, do you? Miss Polly Pott, only daughter of Claude (“Mustard”) Pott — Lord Emsworth.’

  ‘How do you do?’

  ‘It is essential, I was saying, that Polly goes to Blandings and there meets and fascinates Dunstable.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She desires his approval of her projected union with his nephew, a young thug named Ricky Gilpin.’

  ‘Ah?’

  ‘And the snag against which we had come up, when you arrived, was the problem of how to get her to Blandings. You, we felt, were scarcely in a position to invite her by herself and there are various reasons, into which I need not go, why old Mustard should not trail along. Everything is now simple. You are in urgent need of a Sir Roderick Glossop. She is in urgent need of an impressive father. I am prepared to play both roles. Tomorrow, by a suitable train, Sir Roderick Glossop will set out with you for Blandings Castle, accompanied by his daughter and secretary —’

  ‘Hey!’ said Pongo, speaking abruptly.

  Lord Ickenham surveyed him with mild surprise.

  ‘You are surely not proposing to remain in London, my dear boy? Didn’t you tell me that you were expecting a visit from Erb on Wednesday?’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Exactly. You must obviously get away and lie low somewhere. And what better haven could you find than Blandings Castle? But perhaps you were thinking that you would rather go there as my valet?’

  ‘No, I’m dashed if I was.’

  ‘Very well, then. Secretary it shall be. You follow what I am driving at, Emsworth?’

  ‘No,’ said Lord Emsworth, who seldom followed what people were driving at.

  ‘I will run through the agenda again.’

  He did so, and this time a faint light of intelligence seemed to brighten Lord Emsworth’s eye.

  ‘Oh, ah, yes. Yes, I think I see what you mean. But can you —’Get away with it? My dear fellow! Pongo here will tell you that on one occasion last year, in the course of a single afternoon in the suburb of Valley Fields, I impersonated with complete
success not only an official from the bird shop, come to clip the claws of the parrot at The Cedars, Mafeking Road, but Mr Roddis, owner of The Cedars, and a Mr J. G. Bulstrode, a resident of the same neighbourhood. And I have no doubt that, if called upon to do so, I could have done them a very good parrot, too. The present task will be a childishly simple one to a man of my gifts. When were you thinking of returning to Blandings?’

  ‘I should like to catch the five o’clock train this afternoon.’

  ‘That will fit in admirably with our plans. You will go down today on the five o’clock train and announce that Sir Roderick Glossop will be arriving tomorrow with his secretary, and that you have invited him to bring his charming daughter. What good trains have you? The two-forty-five? Excellent. We will catch that, and there we shall be. I don’t think that even you, Pongo, can pick any holes in that scenario.’

  ‘I can tell you this, if you care to hear it, that you’re definitely cuckoo and that every-thing is jolly well bound to go wrong and land up in the soup.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind. I hope he isn’t frightening you, Polly.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Don’t let him. When you get to know Pongo better,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘you will realize that he is always like this — moody, sombre, full of doubts and misgivings. Shakespeare drew Hamlet from him. You will feel better, my boy, when you have had a drink. Let us nip round to my club and get a swift one.’

  8

  The two-forty-five express — Paddington to Market Blandings, first stop Oxford — stood at its platform with that air of well-bred reserve which is characteristic of Paddington trains, and Pongo Twistleton and Lord Ickenham stood beside it, waiting for Polly Pott. The clock over the bookstall pointed to thirty-eight minutes after the hour.

  Anyone ignorant of the difference between a pessimist and an optimist would have been able to pick up a useful pointer or two by scanning the faces of this nephew and his uncle. The passage of time had done nothing to relieve Pongo’s apprehensions regarding the expedition on which he was about to embark, and his mobile features indicated clearly the concern with which he was viewing the future. As always when fate had linked his movements with those of the head of the family, he was feeling like a man floating over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

  Lord Ickenham, on the other hand, was all that was jovial and debonair. Tilting his hat at a jaunty angle, he gazed about him with approval at the decorous station which has for so many years echoed to the tread of county families.

  ‘To one like myself,’ he said, ‘who, living in Hampshire, gets out of the metropolis, when he is fortunate enough to get into it, via Waterloo, there is something very soothing in the note of refined calm which Paddington strikes. At Waterloo, all is hustle and bustle, and the society tends to be mixed. Here a leisured peace prevails, and you get only the best people — cultured men accustomed to mingling with basset hounds and women in tailored suits who look like horses. Note the chap next door. No doubt some son of the ruling classes, returning after a quiet jaunt in London to his huntin’, shootin’, and fishin’.’

  The individual to whom he alluded was a swarthy young man who was leaning out of the window of the adjoining compartment, surveying the Paddington scene through a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. Pongo, who thought he looked a bit of a blister, said so, and the rancour of his tone caused Lord Ickenham to shoot a quick, reproachful glance at him. Feeling himself like a schoolboy going home for Christmas, he wanted happy, smiling faces about him.

  ‘I don’t believe you’re enjoying this, Pongo. I wish you would try to get the holiday spirit. That day down at Valley Fields you were the life and soul of the party. Don’t you like spreading sweetness and light?’

  ‘If by spreading sweetness and light, you mean gatecrashing a strange house and —’

  ‘Not so loud,’ said Lord Ickenham warningly, ‘stations have ears.’

  He led his nephew away down the platform apologizing with a charming affability to the various travellers with whom the latter collided from time to time in his preoccupation. One of these, a portly man of imposing aspect, paused for an instant on seeing Lord Ickenham, as if wavering on the verge of recognition. Lord Ickenham passed on with a genial nod.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Pongo dully.

  ‘I haven’t an idea,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘I seem to have a vague recollection of having met him somewhere, but I can’t place him and do not propose to institute enquiries. He would probably turn out to be someone who was at school with me, though some years my junior. When you reach my age, you learn to avoid these reunions. The last man I met who was at school with me, though some years my junior, had a long white beard and no teeth. It blurred the picture I had formed of myself as a sprightly young fellow on the threshold of life. Ah, here’s Polly.’

  He moved forward with elastic step and folded the girl in a warm embrace. It seemed to Pongo, not for the first time, that this man went out of his way to kiss girls. On the present occasion, a fatherly nod would amply have met the case.

  ‘Well, my dear, so here you are. Did you have any trouble getting away?’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘I should have supposed that your father would have been curious as to where you were off to. But no doubt you told him some frank, straightforward story about visiting a school friend.’

  ‘I told him I was going to stay with you for a few days. Of course, he may have thought I meant that I was going to Ickenham.’

  ‘True. He may. But it wouldn’t have done to have revealed the actual facts to him. He might have disapproved. There is an odd, Puritan streak in old Mustard. Well, everything seems to be working out capitally. You’re looking wonderful, Polly. If this Duke has a spark of human feeling in him, he cannot fail to fall for you like a ton of bricks. You remind me of some radiant spirit of the spring. Pongo, on the other hand, does not. There is something worrying Pongo, and I can’t make out what it is.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘Don’t say “Ha!” my boy. You ought to be jumping with joy at the thought of going to a delightful place like Blandings Castle.’

  ‘I ought, ought I? How about Lady Constance?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s waiting for us at the other end, isn’t she? And what a pal! Ronnie Fish says she has to be seen to be believed. Hugo Carmody paled beneath his tan as he spoke of her. Monty Bodkin strongly suspects that she conducts human sacrifices at the time of the full moon.’

  ‘Nonsense. These boys exaggerate so. Probably a gentle, sweet-faced lady of the old school, with mittens. You must fight against this tendency of yours to take the sombre view. Where you get your streak of pessimism from, I can’t imagine. Not from my side of the family. Nothing will go wrong. I feel it in my bones. I am convinced that this is going to be one of my major triumphs.’

  ‘Like that day at the Dog Races.’

  ‘I wish you would not keep harping on that day at the Dog Races. I have always maintained that the constable acted far too precipitately on that occasion. They are letting a rather neurotic type of man into the Force nowadays. Well, if we are going to Blandings Castle for a restful little holiday, I suppose we ought to be taking our seats. I notice an official down the platform fidgeting with a green flag.’

  They entered their compartment. The young man in spectacles was still leaning out of the window. As they passed him, he eyed them keenly — so keenly, indeed, that one might have supposed that he had found in these three fellow-travellers something to view with suspicion. This, however, was not the case. Rupert Baxter, formerly secretary to Lord Emsworth and now secretary to the Duke of Dunstable, always eyed people keenly. It was pure routine.

  All that he was actually feeling at the moment was that the elder of the two men looked a pleasant old buffer, that the younger seemed to have something on his mind, and that the girl was a pretty girl. He also had a nebulous idea that he had seen her before somewhere. But he did not follow up this train of thought. Substituting
a travelling-cap for the rather forbidding black hat which he was wearing, he took his seat and leaned back with closed eyes. And presently Rupert Baxter slept.

  In the next compartment, Lord Ickenham was attending to some minor details.

  ‘A thing we have got to get settled before our arrival,’ he said, ‘is the question of names. Nothing is more difficult than to think of a good name on the spur of the moment. That day at the Dog Races, I remember, we were well on our way to the police station before I was able to select “George Robinson” for myself and to lean over to Pongo and whisper that he was Edwin Smith. And I felt all the while that, as names, they were poor stuff. They did not satisfy the artist in me. This time we must do much better. I, of course, automatically become Sir Roderick Glossop. You, Polly, had better be Gwendoline. “Polly” seems to me not quite dignified enough for one in your position. But what of Pongo?’

  Pongo bared his teeth in a bitter smile.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about me. What I am going to be called is “this man”. “Ptarmigan,” Lady Constance will say, addressing the butler —’

  ‘Ptarmigan isn’t a bad name.’

  ‘“Ptarmigan, send for Charles and Herbert and throw this man out. And see that he lands on something sharp.”‘

  ‘That pessimistic streak again! Think of some movie stars, Polly.’

  ‘Fred Astaire?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Warner Baxter?’

  ‘Baxter would be excellent, but we can’t use it. It is the name of the Duke’s secretary. Emsworth was telling me about him. It would be confusing to have two Baxters about the place. Why, of course. I’ve got it. Glossop. Sir Roderick Glossop, as I see it, was one of two brothers and, as so often happens, the younger brother did not equal the elder’s success in life. He became a curate, dreaming away the years in a country parish, and when he died, leaving only a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern and a son called Basil, Sir Roderick found himself stuck with the latter. So with the idea of saving something out of the wreck he made him his secretary. That’s what I call a nice, well-rounded story. Telling it will give you something to talk about to Lady Constance over the pipes and whisky in her boudoir. If you get to her boudoir, that is to say. I am not quite clear as to the social standing of secretaries. Do they mingle with the nobs or squash in with the domestic staff?’