Pigs Have Wings (26 page)

‘You are surprised to find her here? The explanation is quite simple. It seemed to Clarence that she was looking a bit peaked, and he thought a change of air and scenery might do her good. So he asked Vail to put her up for a day or two, and Vail of course said he would be delighted. That was what happened, wasn’t it, Clarence?’

‘Eh?’

‘He says yes,’ said Gally.

Sir Gregory stood for a moment staring incredulously, then he strode to the kitchen door and flung it open, and Lord Emsworth, unable to restrain himself any longer, shot through. Grunts and endearing exclamations made themselves heard. Gally closed the door on the sacred reunion.

Sir Gregory was puffing in a distraught sort of way.

‘That’s not my pig!’

‘Of course it isn’t,’ said Gally soothingly. ‘That’s what I keep telling you. It’s the Empress. You see now how groundless those charges of yours were. I don’t want to be censorious, Parsloe, but I must say that when you go about accusing the cream of the British aristocracy of pinching pigs purely on the strength of a chap like George Cyril Wellbeloved having heard one grunt, it looks like the beginning of the end. If that sort of thing is to become habitual, it seems to me that the whole fabric of Society must collapse. The thing I can’t understand is how you ever got the idea into your head that Queen of Matchingham had been stolen. Bizarre is the word that springs to the lips. You must have known that she has been in her sty right along.’

‘What!’

‘Well, all I can tell you is that I was round at your place this afternoon, and she was there then. I thought I would look you up and have a friendly chat, because I feel so strongly how important pleasant neighbourly relations are in the country. When I got to Matchingham, you were out, so I took a turn about the grounds, just to see how your flowers were doing, and I noticed her sty. I’d have given her a potato, only I didn’t happen to have one on me. But if you still feel doubtful, let’s go to Matchingham now, and you can see for yourself.’

The drive to Matchingham Hall was a silent one, and so was the quick walk through the grounds to the Parsloe piggeries. Only when the sty had been reached and its occupant inspected did Sir Gregory speak.

When he did so, it was in a strangled voice.

‘That pig wasn’t here this morning!’ he cried hoarsely.

‘Who says so?’

‘Wellbeloved.’

Gally gave a light laugh. He was amused.

‘Wellbeloved! Do you think any credence is to be attached to what a chap like that tells you? My dear fellow, George Cyril Wellbeloved is as mad as a March hatter. All the Wellbeloveds have been. Ask anyone in Market Blandings. It was his grandfather, Ezekiel Wellbeloved, who took off his trousers one snowy afternoon in the High Street and gave them to a passer-by, saying he wouldn’t be needing them any longer, as the end of the world was coming that evening at five-thirty sharp. His father, Orlando Wellbeloved –’

Sir Gregory interrupted to say that he did not wish to hear about George Cyril’s father, Orlando Wellbeloved, and Gally said that was quite all right, many people didn’t.

‘I was only trying to drive home my point that it is foolish ever to listen to the babblings of any Wellbeloved. Especially George Cyril. He’s the dottiest of the lot. I understand that he’s always being approached with flattering offers by the talent scouts of Colney Hatch and similar institutions.’

Sir Gregory gave him a long look, a look fraught with deep feeling. His mind was confused. He was convinced that there was a catch in this somewhere, if one could only put one’s finger on it, but he was a slow thinker and it eluded him.

‘Ha!’ he said.

Gally tut-tutted.

‘Surely that is not all you are going to say, my dear fellow,’ he said mildly.

‘Eh?’

‘I should have thought a touch of remorse would have been in order. I mean to say, you have been throwing your weight about a bit, what?’

Sir Gregory struggled with his feelings for a moment.

‘Yes. Yes, I see what you mean. All right. I apologize.’

Gally beamed.

‘There spoke the true Gregory Parsloe!’ he said. ‘You will, of course, immediately telephone to the cops that Beach is to be released without delay. It would be a graceful act if you sent your chauffeur down in your car to bring him home. I’d do it myself, only I have to take Clarence and the Empress back to Blandings. Now that she has had this rest cure at Sunnybrae, he will want her back in her old quarters.’

HAVING DEPOSITED LORD
Emsworth in his library and the Empress in her headquarters, Gally returned to his car and drove it into the garage of Blandings Castle. He almost collided with another which was coming out with Lord Vosper at its wheel.

‘Hullo,’ said Gally, surprised. ‘You off somewhere?’

‘That’s right.’

‘A little late, isn’t it?’

‘It is a bit, I suppose.’

Lord Vosper seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then he remembered that this was the man in whom he had confided. As such, he was entitled to hear the latest news.

‘As a matter of fact, Gloria and I are driving to London to get married.’

‘Well, I’ll be dashed. You are?’

‘That’s right. We both rather shrank from the thought of explaining things to Lady Constance, so we decided we’d just slide off and spring the news in our bread-and-butter letters.’

‘Very sensible. “Dear Lady Constance. How can we thank you enough for our delightful visit to your beautiful home? Such a treat meeting your brother Galahad. By the way, we’re married. Yours faithfully, The Vospers.” Something on those lines?’

‘That’s right. We shall drive through the silent night, hitting the metropolis about dawn, I imagine. A couple of hours sleep, a quick shower, the coffee, the oatmeal, the eggs and bacon, and then off to the registrar’s.’

‘It sounds a most attractive programme.’

‘So Penny was saying. She was wishing that she and Jerry Vail could do the same.’

‘They may be able to ere long. You’ve seen Penny, then?’

‘Just now.’

‘I’m looking for her.’

‘She’s looking for you. Between ourselves, she seems a bit disgruntled.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. What about?’

‘Ah, there you rather have me. Pigs entered into it, I remember, but if you ask me if I definitely got a toe-hold on the gist, I must answer frankly that I didn’t. But you appear to have been upsetting Jerry Vail in some way somehow connected with pigs, and, as I say, she’s looking for you. She struck me as being a shade below par, and she spoke with a good deal of animation of skinning you with a blunt knife.’

Gally remained calm.

‘She won’t want to do that when she hears my news. Her only thought will be to dance about the premises, clapping her little hands. Where is she?’

‘In Beach’s pantry. At least, I left her there five minutes ago.’

‘Beach is back, then?’

‘I didn’t know he’d gone anywhere.’

‘Yes, I believe he went into Market Blandings about something.’

‘Oh? Well, he’s back, all right. I was looking for him, to tip him, and finally located him in his pantry. He was having a spot of port with Penny and Jerry Vail. Which struck me as odd, as I understood Jerry had got the push.’

‘He had. But he bobbed up again. Well, I’ll be running along and seeing them. Good luck to your matrimonial venture. I wish you every happiness.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’ll enjoy being married. Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing. It was King Solomon who said that, and he knew, eh! I mean, nothing much you could tell
him
about wives, what?’

‘That’s right,’ said Lord Vosper.

It seemed to Gally, who was quick to notice things, that there was a certain strain in the atmosphere of Beach’s pantry when he entered it a few minutes later. The port appeared to be circulating, as always when the hospitable butler presided over the revels, but he sensed an absence of the mellow jollity which port should produce. Beach had a dazed, stunned look, as if something hard and heavy had recently fallen on his head. So had Jerry. Penny’s look, which came shooting in his direction as he crossed the threshold, was of a different quality. It was like a death ray or something out of a flame-thrower, and he saw that in describing her as disgruntled Orlo Vosper had selected the
mot juste
.

‘Oh, there you are!’ she said, speaking from between pearly teeth.

‘And just in time for a drop of the right stuff, it seems,’ said Gally genially. ‘How pleasant a little something is at this hour of the day, is it not, and how much better a firkin of port than the barley-water which our good host takes into the drawing-room at nine-thirty each night on the tray of beverages. Thank you,’ he said, accepting his glass.

Penny continued to glare.

‘I’m not speaking to you, Gally Threepwood,’ she said. ‘I suppose you know,’ she went on, with feminine inconsistency, ‘that you’ve reduced my poor darling Jerry and my poor precious Beach to nervous wrecks?’

‘They look all right to me,’ said Gally, having inspected her poor darling Jerry and her poor precious Beach.

‘Outwardly,’ said Jerry coldly. ‘Inside, I’m just a fluttering fawn.’

‘So is Beach,’ said Penny. ‘Say Boo.’

‘Boo!’

‘There! See him jump. Now drop a plate or something.’

Beach quivered.

‘No, please, miss. My nerves could not endure it.’

‘Nor mine,’ said Jerry.

‘Come, come,’ said Gally. ‘This is not the spirit I like to see. You were made of sterner stuff when we three fought side by side at the battle of Agincourt. Well, I must say this surprises me. Who would have thought that a mere half hour in the jug would have affected you so deeply, Beach? Why, in my hot youth I frequently spent whole nights in the oubliettes of the old Vine Street police station, and came out rejoicing in my strength. And you, Jerry. Fancy you being so allergic to pigs.’

‘I should prefer not to have the word pig mentioned in my presence,’ said Jerry stiffly. He brooded for a moment. ‘I remember,’ he went on, ‘hearing my uncle Major Basham once speak of you. I cannot recall in what connexion your name came up, but he said: “If ever you find yourself getting entangled with Galahad Threepwood, my boy, there is only one thing to do – commend your soul to God and try to escape with your life.” How right he was, how terribly right!’

‘He knew!’ said Penny. ‘He, too, had suffered.’

Gally seemed puzzled.

‘Now why would he have said a thing like that? Ah!’ He brightened. ‘He must have been thinking of the time when Puffy Benger and I put old Wivenhoe’s pig in his bedroom the night of the Bachelors’ Ball at Hammer’s Easton.’

Jerry frowned.

‘I think I expressed a wish that that word –’

‘Quite, quite,’ said Gally. ‘Let us change the subject. I’ve just been talking to young Vosper,’ he said, doing so.

‘Oh?’ said Penny coldly.

‘Orlo Vosper,’ said Gally, ‘is not what I would call one of our brightest intellects, but he does occasionally get good ideas. His latest, as you know, is to drive up to London tonight with that dark-eyed serpent, Gloria Salt, and get married at a registrar’s, and he was saying that you were wishing you could do the same. Why don’t you? You could borrow the small car.’

Jerry gave him a frigid look.

‘You are suggesting that Penny and I should go to London and get married?’

‘Why not?’

Jerry laughed bitterly.

‘Let me supply you with a few statistics relating to my financial position,’ he said. ‘My income last year, after taxes, was –’

‘Yes, yes, I know. But Penny was telling me of this magnificent opening you’ve got with this health cure place. She stunned me with her story of its possibilities. It is not too much to say that I was electrified. You may argue that you cannot be both stunned
and
electrified, but I say you can, if the conditions are right. “Stap my vitals!” I said to myself. “I must keep in with this fellow Vail, endear myself to him in every possible way, so that in time to come I shall be in a position to get into his ribs for occasional loans. A young man with a future.”’

Penny regarded him with distaste.

‘Go on. Twist the knife in the wound.’

‘I don’t follow you, my dear.’

‘You know perfectly well that Jerry has to raise two thousand pounds and hasn’t a hope of getting it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Who’s going to give it to him?’

Gally’s eyebrows rose.

‘Why, Clarence, of course.’

‘Lord Emsworth?’

‘Who else?’

Penny stared.

‘You’re crazy, Gally. There isn’t a hope. I told you about him and Jerry straining their relations. Don’t you remember?’

‘Certainly, I remember. That point came up in the course of conversation as we were driving back from Matchingham. I mentioned Jerry’s name, and he drew in his breath sharply. “He called me a muddleheaded old ass,” he said. “Well, you are a muddleheaded old ass,” I pointed out, quick as a flash, and he seemed to see the justice of this. He didn’t actually say “Egad, that’s true,” but he drew in his breath sharply, and seeing that I had got him on the run, I pressed my advantage. Didn’t he realize, I said, that it was entirely through Jerry’s efforts that the Empress had been restored to him? He would be showing himself a pretty degenerate scion of a noble race, I said, if he allowed a few heated words spoken under the stress of emotion to outweigh a signal service like that. He drew in his breath sharply. “Was it young Vail who recovered the Empress?” he said, his voice a-quaver and his pince-nez a-quiver. “Of course it was,” I said. “Who the dickens did you think it was? How on earth do you suppose she got into that kitchen at Sunnybrae, if Vail didn’t put her there – at great personal peril, I may add,” I added. “God bless my soul!” he said, and drew in his breath sharply. It was one of those big evenings for sharp-breath-drawers.’

Gally paused, and accepted another glass of port. He was experiencing the quiet satisfaction of the raconteur who sees that his story is going well. A good audience, Beach and these two young people, he felt. Just the right hushed silence, and the eyes protruding just the correct distance from their sockets.