Uncle Fred in the Springtime (11 page)

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.’