Plum Pie (17 page)

There remained the problem of choosing a partner for the round of pleasure. His wife, Rosie M. Banks the widely read author of novels of sentiment, was at Droitwich with her mother and Algernon Aubrey, the bouncing baby who had recently appeared on the London scene. He thought of Mr. Purkiss, but rejected the idea. Eventually he decided to go and ask his Aunt Myrtle, Mrs. J. G. Beenstock, if she would like to come along. It would mean an uncomfortable evening. She would overflow into his seat, for she was as stout a woman as ever paled at the sight of a diet sheet and, had she been in Parliament, would have counted two on a division, but she was a lonely, or fairly lonely, widow and he felt it would be a kindly act to bring a little sunshine into her life. He ankled round, accordingly, to her house and his ring at the bell was answered by Wilberforce, her butler, who regretted to say that Madam was not in residence, being on one of those Mediterranean cruises. He was anticipating her return, said Wilberforce, either tomorrow or the day after, and Bingo was about to push off when the butler, putting a hand over his mouth and speaking from the side of it, said in a hushed whisper:

"Do you want to make a packet, Mr. Richard?"

A packet being what above all things Bingo was always desirous of making, his reply in the affirmative was both immediate and eager.

"Put your shirt on Whistler's Mother for the two o'clock at Hurst Park tomorrow," whispered Wilberforce, and having added that prompt action would enable him to get odds of eight to one he went about his butlerine duties, leaving Bingo in a frame of mind which someone like the late Gustave Flaubert, who was fussy about the right word, would have described as chaotic.

What to do, what to do, he was asking himself, this way and that dividing the swift mind. On the one hand, Wilberforce was a knowledgeable man who enjoyed a wide acquaintance with jockeys, race course touts, stable cats and others who knew a bit. His judgment of form could surely be trusted. On the other hand, Mrs. Bingo, who like so many wives was deficient in sporting blood, had specifically forbidden him to wager on racehorses, and he shrank from the scene which must inevitably ensue, should the good thing come unstuck and she found out about it. The situation was unquestionably one that provided food for thought.

And then he realized that his problem was after all only an academic one, for he was down to his last five bob with nothing coming in till pay day and with bookies money has to change hands before a deal can be consummated. If a dozen Whistler's Mothers were entered for a dozen two o'clock races, he was in no position to do anything about it.

It was quite a relief really to have the thing settled for him, and he was in excellent spirits when he got home. He took off his shoes, mixed himself a mild gin and tonic, and was about to curl up on the sofa with a good book, when the telephone rang.

A well-remembered voice came over the wire.

"Sweetie?"

"Oh, hullo, sweetie."

"When did you get back?"

"Just clocked in."

"How are you?"

"I'm fine, though missing you sorely. And you?"

"I'm fine."

"And Algy?"

"He's fine."

"And your mother?"

"Only pretty good. She swallowed some water at the brine baths this morning. She's better now, but she still makes a funny whistling sound when she breathes."

The receiver shook in Bingo's right hand. The good book with which he had been about to curl up fell limply from his left. He had always been a great believer in signs and omens, and if this wasn't a sign and omen he didn't know a sign and omen when he saw one.

"Did you say your mother was a Whistler's—or rather a whistling mother?" he gasped at length.

"Yes, it sounds just like gas escaping from a pipe."

Bingo tottered to a chair, taking the telephone with him. He was feeling bitter, and he had every excuse for feeling bitter. Here he was with a sure thing at his disposal, barred from cashing in on it for lack of funds. Affluence had been offered to him on a plate with watercress round it, and he must let it go because he did not possess the necessary entrance fee. He could not have had a more vivid appreciation of the irony of life if he had been Thomas Hardy.

"Oh, by the way," said Mrs. Bingo, "what I really rang up about. You know it's Algy's birthday next week. I've bought him a rattle and some sort of woolly animal, but I think we ought to put something in his little wee bank account, as we did last year. So I'm sending you ten pounds. Goodbye, sweetie, I must rush. I'm having a perm and I'm late already."

She rang off, and Bingo sat-tingling in every limb. He continued to tingle not only till bedtime but later. Far into the silent night he tossed on his pillow, a prey to the hopes and fears he had experienced when Wilberforce had mooted the I idea of his making a packet. Once more the question 'What to do?' raced through his fevered mind. It was not qualms about touching his offspring for a temporary loan that made him waver and hesitate. That end of it was all right. Any son of his, he knew, would be only too glad to finance a father's sporting venture, particularly when that sporting venture was in the deepest and fullest sense of the words money for jam. And he did not need to tell the child that when the bookie brassed up on settling day he would get his cut and find his little wee bank account augmented not by one tenner but by two.

No, it was the thought of Mrs. Bingo that made him irresolute. Wilberforce was confident that Whistler's Mother would defy all competition, giving the impression that having a bit on her was virtually tantamount to finding money in the street, but these good things sometimes go wrong. The poet Burns has pointed this out to his public. 'Gang agley' was how he put it, for he did not spell very well, but it meant the same thing. And if this one went agley, what would the harvest be? He fell asleep still wondering if he dared risk it.

But the next morning he was his courageous self again. The luncheon hour found him in the offices of Charles ('Charlie Always Pays') Pikelet, the well-known turf accountant, handing over the cash, and at 2.13 sharp he was in a chair in the Drones Club smokingroom with his face buried in his hands. The result of the two o'clock race at Hurst Park had just come over the tape, and the following horses had reached journey's end ahead of Whistler's Mother—Harbour Lights, Sweet Pea, Scotch Mist, Parson's Pleasure, Brian Boru, Ariadne and Christopher Columbus. Eight ran. Unlike Wilberforce, the poet Burns had known what he was talking about.

How long he sat there, a broken man, he could not have said. When he did emerge from his coma, it was to become aware that a good deal of activity was in progress in the smokingroom. A Crumpet was sitting at a table near the door with a pencil in his hand and a sheet of paper before him, and there was a constant flowing of members to this table. He could make nothing of it, and he turned for an explanation to Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, who had just taken the chair next to him.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"It was the Fat Uncles Sweep," Catsmeat said.

"The what?"

Catsmeat was amazed.

"Do you mean to say you don't know about the Fat Uncles Sweep? Weren't you here last year when it started?"

"I must have been away."

"The race is run on the first day of the Eton and Harrow match."

"Ah, then I was away. I always have to take my holiday early, and don't get back for the Eton and Harrow match. I did this time, but not as a rule. What is it?"

Catsmeat explained. An intelligent Drone, he said, himself the possessor of one of the fattest uncles in London, had noticed how many of his fellow members had fat uncles, too, and had felt it a waste of good material not to make these the basis of a sporting contest similar, though on a smaller scale, to those in operation in Ireland and Calcutta. The mechanics of the thing were simple. You entered your uncle, others entered theirs, the names were shaken up in a hat and the judging was done by McGarry the club bartender, who had the uncanny gift of being able to estimate to an ounce the weight of anything, from a Pekinese to a Covent Garden soprano, just by looking at it.

"And the fellow who draws the winning ticket," Catsmeat concluded, "scoops the jackpot. Except, of course, for the fifty pounds allotted to the winning uncle's owner as prize money."

A loud gasp escaped Bingo. A passer-by would have noticed that his eyes were shining with a strange light.

"Fifty pounds?"

"That's right."

Bingo shot from his chair and gazed wildly about the room.

"Where's Oofy?" he cried, alluding to Oofy Prosser, the club's millionaire.

"In the bar, I believe. What do you want him for?"

"I want to enter my Aunt Myrtle and sell him a piece of her to enable me to meet current expenses."

"But---"

"Don't sit there saying 'But'. When's the drawing?"

"Three days from now."

"Plenty of time. I'll approach him at once."

"But---"

"That word again! What's bothering you? If you think Oofy won't make a deal, you're wrong. He's a business man. He'll know he'll be on a sure thing. You've seen my Aunt Myrtle and you can testify to her stoutness. There can't possibly be an uncle fatter than her. Let's go and find Oofy now and have him draw up an agreement."

"But aunts aren't eligible. Only uncles."

Bingo stared at him, aghast.

"What...what did you say?"

Catsmeat repeated his statement, and Bingo quivered in every limb.

"You mean to tell me that if a man has the stoutest aunt in the West End of London, an aunt who, if she were not independently wealthy, could be making a good living as the Fat Woman in a circus, he can't cash in on her?"

"I'm afraid not."

"What a monstrous thing! Are you sure?"

"Quite sure. It's all in the book of rules."

It was a Bingo with heart bowed down and feeling more like a toad beneath a harrow than the editor of a journal for the nursery and the home who returned to the offices of
Wee Tots
and endeavoured to concentrate on the letters which had come in from subscribers for the Correspondence page. He took up a communication from Edwin Waters (aged seven) about his Siamese cat Miggles, but he found his attention wandering. He found the same difficulty in becoming engrossed in four pages from Alexander Allbright (aged six) about his tortoise Shelley, and he had started on a lengthy screed from Anita Ellsworth (aged eight) which seemed to have to do with a canary of the name of Birdie, when the door of the inner office opened and Mr. Purkiss appeared.

"Ah, there you are, Mr. Little," said H. C. Purkiss. "Are you engaged for dinner tonight?"

Which, if you remember, is where we came in. Bingo replied hollowly that he was not, and might have added that if his employer was about to invite him to share the evening meal, he was prepared to defend himself with tooth and claw.

"I thought that Mrs. Little might be having guests."

"She's at Droitwich with her mother. Her mother is taking the brine baths. She has rheumatism."

"Splendid. Excellent. Capital," said Mr. Purkiss, hastening to, explain that it was not the fact of Bingo's mother-in-law having trouble with her joints that exhilarated him. "Then you are free. I am delighted to hear it. Tell me, Mr. Little, are you familiar with the work of an American author of juvenile fiction named Kirk Rockaway? No? I am not surprised. He is almost unknown on this side of the Atlantic, but his Peter the Pup, Kootchy the Kitten and Hilda the Hen are, I understand, required reading for the children of his native country. I have glanced at some of his works and they are superb. He is just the circulation-builder
Wee Tots
needs. He is here in London on a visit."

Bingo was a conscientious editor. His personal affairs might be in a state of extreme disorder, but he was always able to shelve his private worries when it was a matter of doing his paper a bit of good.

"We'd better go after him before those blighters at
Small Fry
get ahead of us," he said.

Mr. Purkiss smiled triumphantly.

"I have already done so. I met him at a tea party given in his honour yesterday, and he has accepted an invitation to dine with me tonight at Barribault's Hotel."

"That's good."

"And this," said Mr. Purkiss,, "is better. At that tea party a most significant thing happened. Somebody mentioned Mrs. Little's books, and he turned out to be a warm admirer of them. He spoke of them with unbounded enthusiasm. You see what I am about to say, Mr. Little?"

"He wants her autograph?"

"That, of course, and I assured him that he could rely on her. But  obviously   tonight's  arrangements  must  be  changed. You, not I, must be his host. As Mrs. Little's husband, you are the one he will want to meet. I will ring him up now."

Mr. Purkiss went back to his room, to return a few moments later, beaming.

"All is settled, Mr. Little. I had, I am afraid, to stoop to a slight prevarication. I told him I was subject to a bronchial affection which rendered it inadvisable for me to venture out at night, but that my editor, the husband of Rosie M. Banks, would be there in my place. He was all enthusiasm and is looking forward keenly to meeting you. I will, of course, defray your expenses. Here are ten pounds. That will amply cover the cost of dinner, for Mrs. Rockaway tells me he is a lifelong teetotaller, so there will be no wine bill. You can bring me the change tomorrow."

To say that Bingo was elated at the prospect of an evening out with a man who wrote about hens and kittens and drank only lemonade would be incorrect. Nor did he fail to writhe at the thought that Life had sprung another of its ironies on him by putting ten pounds in his trouser pocket but making it impossible for him to divert the sum into Algernon Aubrey's little wee bank account. For one mad moment he toyed with the idea of not giving Kirk Rockaway dinner and holding on to Mr. Purkiss's tenner, but he discarded it. If he stood Kirk Rockaway up, the hen and kitten specialist would be bound to contact Mr. Purkiss and ask him what the hell, and Mr. Purkiss, informed of the circumstances, would instantly relieve his young assistant of his editorial post. And if he suddenly ceased to occupy the editorial chair, Mrs. Bingo would want to know why, and...but here Bingo preferred to abandon this train of thought. Shortly before eight o'clock he was in the lobby of Barribault's Hotel, and in due course Kirk Rockaway appeared.