Uncle Fred in the Springtime Read online

  A flicker of animation lit up Pongo’s sombre eyes.

  ‘I’ll be dashed if I squash in with any domestic staff.’

  ‘Well, we’ll try you on the nobs,’ said Lord Ickenham doubtfully. ‘But don’t blame me if it turns out that that’s the wrong thing and Lady Constance takes her lorgnette to you. God bless my soul, though, you can’t compare the lorgnettes of today with the ones I used to know as a boy. I remember walking one day in Grosvenor Square with my aunt Brenda and her pug dog Jabberwocky, and a policeman came up and said that the latter ought to be wearing a muzzle. My aunt made no verbal reply. She merely whipped her lorgnette from its holster and looked at the man, who gave one choking gasp and fell back against the railings, without a mark on him but with an awful look of horror in his staring eyes, as if he had seen some dreadful sight. A doctor was sent for, and they managed to bring him round, but he was never the same again. He had to leave the Force, and eventually drifted into the grocery business. And that is how Sir Thomas Lipton got his start.’

  He broke off. During his remarks, a face had been peering in through the glass door of the compartment, and now entered a portly man of imposing aspect with a large, round head like the dome of St Paul’s. He stood framed in the doorway, his manner majestic but benevolent.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘So it was you, Ickenham. I thought I recognized you on the platform just now. You remember me?’

  Now that he was seeing him without his hat, Lord Ickenham did, and seemed delighted at the happy chance that had brought them together again.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘May I come in, or am I interrupting a private conversation?’

  ‘Of course come in, my dear fellow. We were only talking about lorgnettes. I was saying that in the deepest and fullest sense of the word there are none nowadays. Where are you off to?’

  ‘My immediate objective is an obscure station in Shropshire of the name of Market Blandings. One alights there, I understand, for Blandings Castle.’

  ‘Blandings Castle?’

  ‘The residence of Lord Emsworth. That is my ultimate destination. You know the place?’

  ‘I have heard of it. By the way, you have not met my daughter and nephew. My daughter Gwendoline and my nephew Basil — Sir Roderick Glossop.’

  Sir Roderick Glossop seated himself, shooting a keen glance at Polly and Pongo as he did so. Their demeanour had aroused his professional interest. From the young man, as Lord Ickenham performed the ceremony of introduction, there had proceeded a bubbling grunt like that of some strong swimmer in his agony, while the girl’s eyes had become like saucers. She was now breathing in an odd, gasping sort of way. It was not Sir Roderick’s place to drum up trade by suggesting it, but he found himself strongly of the opinion that these young folks would do well to place themselves in the care of a good nerve specialist.

  Lord Ickenham, apparently oblivious to the seismic upheaval which had left this nephew a mere pile of ruins, had begun to prattle genially.

  ‘Well, Glossop, it’s extraordinary nice, seeing you again. We haven’t met since that dinner of the Loyal Sons of Hampshire, where you got so tight. How are all the loonies? It must be amazingly interesting work, sitting on people’s heads and yelling to somebody to hurry up with the strait waistcoat.’

  Sir Roderick Glossop, who had stiffened, relaxed. The monstrous suggestion that he had been intemperate at the annual banquet of the Loyal Sons of Hampshire had offended him deeply, nor had he liked that reference to sitting on people’s heads. But he was a man who pined without conversation, and in order to carry on this particular conversation it appeared to be necessary to accept his companion’s peculiar way of expressing himself.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the work, though sometimes distressing, is as you say, full of interest.’

  ‘And you’re always at it, I suppose? You are going to Blandings Castle now, no doubt, to inspect some well-connected screwball?’

  Sir Roderick pursed his lips.

  ‘You are asking me to betray confidences, I fear, my dear Ickenham. However, I may perhaps gratify your curiosity to the extent of saying that my visit is a professional one. A friend of the family has been giving evidence of an over-excited nervous condition.’

  ‘There is no need to be coy with me, Glossop. You are going to Blandings to put ice on the head of the chap with the egg-throwing urge.’

  Sir Roderick started.

  ‘You appear singularly well informed.’

  ‘I had that one straight from the stable. Emsworth told me.’

  ‘Oh, you know Emsworth?’

  ‘Intimately. I was lunching with him yesterday, and he went off to see you. But when I ran into him later in the day, he rather hinted that things had not gone too well between you, with the result that you had refused to interest yourself in this unbalanced egg-jerker.’

  Sir Roderick flushed.

  ‘You are perfectly correct. Emsworth’s manner left me no alternative but to decline the commission. But this morning I received a letter from his sister, Lady Constance Keeble, so charming in its tone that I was constrained to change my mind. You know Lady Constance?’

  ‘What, dear old Connie? I should say so! A lifelong friend. My nephew Basil there looks on her as a second mother.’

  ‘Indeed? I have not yet met her myself.’

  ‘You haven’t? Capital!’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You still have that treat in store,’ explained Lord Ickenham.

  ‘Lady Constance expressed so strong a desire that I should go to Blandings that I decided to overlook Emsworth’s discourtesy. The summons comes at a singularly inopportune time, unfortunately, for I have an important conference in London tomorrow afternoon. However, I have been looking up the trains, and I see that there is one that leaves Market Blandings at eight-twenty in the morning, arriving at Paddington shortly before noon, so I shall be able to make my examination and return in time.’

  ‘Surely a single examination won’t work the trick?’

  ‘Oh, I think so.’

  ‘I wish I had a brain like yours,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘What an amazing thing. I suppose you could walk down a line of people, giving each of them a quick glance, and separate the sheep from the goats like shelling peas…. “Loony … not loony…. This one wants watching…. This one’s all right…. Keep an eye on this chap. Don’t let him get near the bread-knife….” Extraordinary. What do you do exactly? Ask questions? Start topics and observe reactions?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you might say — broadly — that that is the method I employ.’

  ‘I see. You bring the conversation round to the subject of birds, for instance, and if the fellow says he’s a canary and hops on to the mantelpiece and starts singing, you sense that there is something wrong. Yes, I understand. Well, it seems to me that, if it’s as simple as that, you could save yourself a lot of trouble by making your examination now.’

  ‘I do not understand you.’

  ‘You’re in luck, Glossop. The man Emsworth wants you to run the rule over is on the train. You’ll find him in the compartment next door. A dark chap with spectacles. Emsworth asked me to keep an eye on him during the journey, but if you want my opinion — there’s nothing wrong with the fellow at all. Connie was always such a nervous little soul, bless her. I suppose some chance remark of his about eggs gave her the idea that he had said he wanted to throw them, and she went all of a twitter. Why don’t you go in and engage him in conversation and note the results? If there’s anything wrong with him, that sixth sense of yours will enable you to spot it in a second. If he’s all right, on the other hand, you could leave the train at Oxford and return to London in comfort.’

  ‘It is a most admirable idea.’

  ‘Don’t mention my name, of course.’

  ‘My dear Ickenham, you may trust me to exercise perfect discretion. The whole thing will be perfectly casual. I shall embark on our little talk quite simply and naturally by asking him if he can oblige
me with a match.’

  ‘Genius!’ said Lord Ickenham.

  The silence which followed Sir Roderick’s departure was broken by a groan from Pongo.

  ‘I knew something like this would happen,’ he said.

  ‘But my dear boy,’ protested Lord Ickenham, ‘what has happened, except that I have been refreshed by an intelligent chat with a fine mind, and have picked up some hints on deportment for brain specialists which should prove invaluable? The old Gawd-help-us will alight at Oxford—’

  ‘So will I jolly well alight at Oxford!’

  ‘And return to your flat? I wonder if you will find Erb waiting for you on the doorstep?’

  ‘Oh, gosh!’

  ‘Yes, I thought you had overlooked that point. Pull yourself together, my dear Pongo. Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. Everything is going to be all right. You seem thoughtful, Polly.’

  ‘I was only wondering why Lord Emsworth called him Pimples.’

  ‘You mean he hasn’t any now? No, I noticed that,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘It is often the way. We start out in life with more pimples than we know what to do with, and in the careless arrogance of youth think they are going to last for ever. But comes a day when we suddenly find that we are down to our last half-dozen. And then those go. There is a lesson in this for all of us. Ah, Glossop, what news from the front?’

  Sir Roderick Glossop radiated satisfaction.

  ‘You were perfectly correct, my dear Ickenham. Absolutely nothing wrong. No indication whatsoever of any egg-fixation. There was no basis at all for Lady Constance’s alarm. I should describe the man as exceptionally intelligent. But I was surprised to find him so young.’

  ‘We all were once.’

  ‘True. But I had imagined from Lady Constance’s letter that he was far older. Whether she said so or not, I cannot recall, but the impression I gathered was that he was a contemporary of Emsworth’s.’

  ‘Probably looks younger than he is. The country air. Or as a child he may have been fed on Bevo.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sir Roderick non-committally. ‘Well, if I am to leave the train at Oxford, I must be getting back to my compartment and collecting my things. It has been a great pleasure meeting you again, Ickenham, and I am exceedingly obliged for that very thoughtful suggestion of yours. I confess that I was not looking forward to an early morning journey. Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Pongo, speaking last and speaking with difficulty. He had been sitting for some moments in a deep silence, broken only by an occasional sharp, whistling intake of breath. Sir Roderick carried away with him an impression of a sombre and introspective young man. He mentioned him later in a lecture to the Mothers of West Kensington as an example of the tendency of post-war youth towards a brooding melancholia.

  Lord Ickenham, too, seemed to feel that he needed cheering up, and for the remainder of the journey spared no effort to amuse and entertain. All through the afternoon he maintained a high level of sprightliness and gaiety, and it was only when they had alighted at Market Blandings station that he found himself compelled to strike a jarring note.

  Market Blandings station, never a congested area, was this evening more than usually somnolent and deserted. Its only occupants were a porter and a cat. The swarthy young man got out and walked to the end of the train, where the porter was extracting luggage from the van. Polly wandered off to fraternize with the cat. And Lord Ickenham, having bought Pongo a pennyworth of butterscotch from the slot machine, was just commenting on the remissness of his host and hostess in not sending anyone down to meet so distinguished a guest, when there came on to the platform a solid man in the middle thirties. The afterglow of the sunset lit up his face, and it was at this point that Lord Ickenham struck the jarring note.

  ‘I wonder if you remember, Pongo,’ he said, ‘that when you looked in on me at Ickenham the day before yesterday I mentioned that it had always been the ambition of my life to play the confidence trick on someone? Owing to all the rush and bustle of this Emsworth business, I quite forgot to tell you that yesterday morning the opportunity arose.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Yes. Before coming to the Drones, I went to call on Horace Davenport, and finding him not at home, waited for a while in the street outside his flat. And while I was doing so a pink chap came along, and it seemed to me that if ever I was going to make the experiment, now was the time. There was something about this fellow that told me that I could never hope for a better subject. And so it proved. He handed me over his wallet, and I walked off with it. The whole affair was a triumph of mind over matter, and I am modestly proud of it.’

  It had always been an axiom with Pongo Twistleton that his Uncle Fred was one of those people who ought not to be allowed at large, but he had never suspected that the reasons for not allowing him at large were so solidly based as this. He clutched his brow.’ As had happened that day at the Dog Races, this man seemed to have taken him into a strange nightmare world.

  ‘I sent the wallet back, of course. My interest in the experiment was purely scientific. I had no thought of vulgar gain. The chap’s card was inside, and I shipped it off by registered post. And the reason why I mention it now…. Do you see the fellow coming along the platform?’

  Pongo turned an ashen face.

  ‘You don’t mean —?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lord Ickenham, with a breezy insouciance which cut his nephew like a knife, ‘that’s the chap.’

  9

  ‘His name,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘is Bosham. It was on the card I found in his wallet. But I distinctly remember that the address on the card was some place down in Hampshire, not far from my own little dosshouse, so it seems extremely odd that he should be here. It looks to me like one of those strained coincidences which are so inartistic. Unless he’s a ghost.’

  Pongo, who might have been taken for one himself by a short-sighted man, found speech. For some moments he had been squeaking and gibbering like the sheeted dead in the Roman streets a little ere the mightiest Julius fell.

  ‘Bosham is Lord Emsworth’s son,’ he said hollowly.

  ‘Is he, indeed? I am not very well up in the Peerage. I seldom read it except to get a laugh out of the names. Then that explains it,’ said Lord Ickenham heartily. ‘He must have been on a visit to Blandings, and when he ran up to London for the day to get his hair cut the Duke told him on no account to fail, while there, to go and slap his nephew Horace on the back and give him his best. It was perfectly natural that his pilgrimage to Bloxham Mansions should chance to synchronize with mine. How simple these apparently extraordinary things are, when you go into them.’

  ‘He’s coming this way.

  ‘He would be. I presume he is here to escort us to the castle.’

  ‘But, dash it, what are you going to do?’

  ‘Do? Why, nothing.’

  ‘Well, I’ll bet he will. Do you mean to tell me that if a chap has the confidence trick played on him by a chap, and meets the chap again, he isn’t going to set about the chap?’

  ‘My dear boy, for a young man who has enjoyed the advantage of having a refined uncle constantly at his elbow, you seem singularly ignorant of the manners and customs of good society. We bloods do not make scenes in public places.’

  ‘You think he will wait till later before having you pinched?’

  Lord Ickenham clicked his tongue.

  ‘My dear Pongo, you have a gift for taking the dark view that amounts almost to genius. I should imagine that the prophet Isaiah as a young man must have been very like you. Tell me — I don’t want to turn till I can see the whites of his eyes — where is our friend? Does he approach?’

  ‘He’s sort of backing and filling at the moment.’

  ‘I quite understand. It is the decent diffidence of the English upper classes. All his life he has been brought up in the creed that there is nothing that is more beastly bad form than accosting a stranger, and he is wondering if I am indeed the Sir Glossop of w
hom he has heard so much. He shrinks from taking a chance. I think it must be your presence that is bothering him. No doubt Emsworth completely forgot to mention that I should be accompanied by my secretary, and this has made him confused. “It may be Glossop,” he is saying to himself. “I wouldn’t be prepared to bet it isn’t Glossop. But if it is Glossop, who’s the chap with him? There was nothing in my instructions about chaps-with-Glossop.” And so he backs and fills. Well, this gives us time to go further into the matter we were discussing. What on earth leads you to suppose that this Bosham will denounce me for having played the confidence trick on him? The moment I say that I am Sir Roderick Glossop, the eagerly awaited guest, he will naturally assume that he was deceived by a chance resemblance. Where is he now?’

  ‘Just abaft the try-your-weight machine.’

  ‘Then watch me turn and nonplus him,’ said Lord Ickenham, and pivoted gracefully. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you could inform me if there is any possibility of my obtaining a vehicle of some sort here, to take me to Blandings Castle?’

  He had not overestimated the effect of his manoeuvre. Lord Bosham halted as if he had walked into a lamp-post, and stood gaping.

  The heir to the Earldom of Emsworth was a slow thinker, but he was not incapable of inductive reasoning. He had been told to meet an elderly gentleman who would arrive on the two-forty-five train en route for Blandings Castle. The only elderly gentleman who had arrived on the two-forty-five train en route for Blandings Castle was the elderly gentleman before him. This elderly gentleman, therefore, must be that elderly gentleman. In which case, he was Sir Roderick Glossop, the eminent brain specialist, and so could not be, as in that first instant of seeing his face he had been prepared to swear he was, the pleasant stranger who had relieved him of his wallet in Park Lane.