A Pelican at Blandings (17 page)

Gally stared at her, amazed.

'You aren't thinking of leaving?'

'I certainly am. I don't propose to be among those present
when you pass my story along to Lady Constance. You don't
catch me waiting to be looked at through a lorgnette as if I
were a deceitful cockroach. Never outstay your welcome is the
motto of this branch of the Polks.'

It was very rarely that Gally, who prided himself on his
ability to preserve an unmoved front on all occasions, was
heard to emit a gasp of horrified incredulity, but he did so now.
It sounded like the bursting of a paper bag.

'You don't think I'm going to squeal to Connie?'

'Aren't you?'

'Of course I'm not.'

'But I'm an impostor.'

'And why shouldn't you be? Practically everyone else who
comes here is. Man and boy I have seen more impostors at
Blandings Castle than you could shake a stick at in a month of
Sundays. It would have surprised me greatly if you
hadn't
been
an impostor. You've gone to endless trouble to get here. Do
you think I'm going to dash the cup from your lips? Secrecy
and silence, my wench, secrecy and silence.'

Vanessa was visibly moved.

'I call that pretty good of you.'

'Not at all.'

'I don't know what to say.'

'Say nothing. And I'll impress it upon Beach that he must
do the same. His lips must be sealed. I'll go and seal them
now,' said Gally.

He had scarcely trotted off, all zeal and willingness to
oblige, when Wilbur Trout appeared on the roof.

Wilbur was looking pale and anxious. He had just come
from the portrait gallery, where he had been scrutinizing the
reclining nude with a good deal less enthusiasm than he
usually accorded it.

At the time when she had outlined it, Wilbur, it may be
remembered, had expressed wholehearted approval of
Vanessa's scheme for the picture's removal, but with the
passing of the hours doubts had set in. Except in the matter of
marrying blondes he was not an adventurous man, and
contemplation of the shape of things to come, as sketched out
by Vanessa, had had the worst effect on his nervous system.

When, therefore, her opening words as he joined her on the
roof were 'Willie, we'll have to get that picture tonight', it was
with panic rather than joy that his heart leaped up. His
emotions were not unlike those which he had experienced in
mid-air as he dived into the Plaza fountain—regret that he had
undertaken something which had seemed a good idea at the
time, and the disturbing realization that it was too late to go
back now.

Having gulped twice, he said:

'Why the hurry?'

'Essential, I'm afraid. If Lady Constance finds out—'

'Finds out what?'

'Something about me.'

'What about you?'

'Something Gally Threepwood has discovered. If she hears
of it, I shall be thrown out of the place on my ear not more
than sixty seconds later. He says he won't breathe a word, but
you can't be sure. It's such a good story that he may not be able
to resist telling it. No, we can't take a chance. Chesney will
have got to London by now. I'll phone him this afternoon and
tell him to be waiting under the window at two in the
morning. You can go to sleep till then. I'll knock on your door
and wake you. What's the matter? You don't seem pleased.'

'Oh, I am.'

'You ought to be. Think of having that picture for your very
own. You ought to be strewing roses from your hat. Though
Genevieve would say "woses", wouldn't she?'

'She always did.'

'No wonder you miss her,' said Vanessa.

The alarm clock beside Vanessa's bed tinkled softly,
announcing that the hour was two in the morning, and she sat
up and brushed the last vestiges of sleep from her attractive
eyes. She had retired early in order to approach the tasks of the
night with a clear mind, and it was with a clear mind that she
now examined the programme in detail and found it
satisfactory. She had the torch and the stout cord which is so
essential when pictures of stout nudes in stout frames have
to be lowered from second storey windows, and in addition to
these she had remembered to equip herself with a large flask in
case her colleague's morale should require building up. It was
a possibility that unquestionably had to be budgetted for. At
their last meeting she had noticed that he seemed to be
suffering from an attack of nerves, but nothing, she felt, that a
good flask could not cure.

Strange, she was thinking, that a big strong man who had
once won fame on the football field should be so timorous in a
situation which she, a poor weak woman, was regarding
merely as a pleasant and stimulating deviation from the dull
round of everyday life, but timorous apparently he was. Where
she looked forward with bright anticipation to what lay before
them, he, unless her senses deceived her, was what Lady
Macbeth would have called infirm of purpose. A flask,
accordingly, would seem to be indispensable.

As she slipped a becoming peignoir over her pyjamas, she
mused on Wilbur and was surprised at the warmth and tenderness
with which she found herself thinking of him.

At the time of their brief engagement he had aroused in her
only a mild liking, but in these last days at Blandings Castle
liking had become something more.

No question that for her he was an easy man to get along
with—pleasant, amiable and speaking her own language. Not
too many brains, either, which was an added attraction, for she
mistrusted clever men. Too bad, she thought, that he was such
an answer to the gold-digger's prayer. What he needed was
someone to look after him, to protect him, to check that
disastrous tendency of his to make a fool of himself at the
slightest opportunity, and unfortunately there was no chance
that she would be able to take on the assignment, for once in
possession of the picture he would be off with it to New York,
and the next thing she would hear would be that he had
married another repulsive female and more work for the
divorce lawyers. It saddened her.

However, brooding on the matrimonial future of Wilbur
Trout was not business. Briskly she collected cord, torch and
flask and started to grope her way along the dark corridor.

Wilbur's room was the one in which, according to legend,
an Emsworth of the fifteenth century had dismembered his
wife with a battle axe, as husbands in those days were so apt to
do when the strain of married life became too much for them.
The unfortunate woman must have experienced a good deal of
apprehension when she heard him at the door, but not much
more than did Wilbur when Vanessa's knock sounded in the
silent night. Not even Lord Emsworth at the top of his table-upsetting
form could have produced a deeper impression.
After lying awake for several hours he had at last fallen into a
doze, and the knock had coincided with the point in his
nightmare when a bomb had exploded under his feet.

What was causing Wilbur's lack of enthusiasms for
tonight's operation was principally the fact that it was at
Blandings Castle that it was to be carried out. He feared
interruption by the castle's chatelaine. What the Duke had
described as Lady Constance's habit of coming the
grande
dame
over people had daunted him from their first meeting,
when she had been in a mood much the same as that in which
she had greeted John. In his wide experience he had never
encountered anything like her before, and what was chilling
him as he answered Vanessa's knock was the thought that she
might join them just as they were getting down to the work of
the night. His imagination pictured her striding into the
portrait gallery with a 'What the hell goes on here?', or
whatever it is that British aristocrats said when they found
their guests looting the premises at two in the morning.
Contemplating his chances of getting through till daybreak
without a nervous breakdown, he thought very little of them.

It was consequently with profound relief that he saw the
flask, and not for the first time since their reunion he was
conscious of a surge of admiration for this super-efficient girl
who thought of everything.

'Gimme,' he said, for at times like this he was a man of few
words, and she gave it to him. What seemed a torchlight
procession wandering through his interior had the effect of
banishing temporarily the terror beneath which he had
cringed, and it was with quite a gay insouciance that he said:

'You look like a million dollars in that bath robe.'

It was a stately compliment, and Vanessa accepted it
gratefully.

'It happens to be a peignoir, Willie, but thanks for the kind
words.'

'Genevieve has one rather like that.'

Vanessa's lips tightened, but she controlled herself. There
was nothing in her voice to show that he had touched on a
distasteful subject.

'Has she now? That's very interesting. Tell me more about
Genevieve.'

The request seemed to find Wilbur at a loss. He fingered his
chin dubiously.

'There isn't much to tell.'

'Search the memory.'

'She was a great looker.'

'I'll bet.'

'Blonde.'

'I was betting on that, too.'

'She hadn't much to say.'

'One of those strong, silent girls.'

'Except when she got mad at me.'

'That made her chatty?'

'Generally. Though sometimes she would just throw things
at me.'

'What sort of things?'

'Oh, anything that came to hand.'

'Woses, perhaps?'

'And she used to lock me out a good deal. I remember one
time we got arguing about something at a night club, and she
beat it back to the apartment, and when I got there she had
smashed every stick of the furniture with a poker, all the
pictures and everything. "Hi, honey", she said. "I've been
cleaning house." Then she chased me out with the poker.'

'And then she got a divorce?'

'Soon after that.'

'On what grounds?'

'Inhuman cruelty.'

'Poor soul, how she must have suffered.'

'But of course the real reason was that she had got this crush
on this trumpeter.'

'Oh yes, I was forgetting the trumpeter. Not in a name
band, I think you told me.'

'No, that's what puzzled me. I always thought she was kind
of choosy about who she mixed with.'

'Very much the lady?'

'Oh, quite.'

'Well, it ought to be some consolation to you to think that
she's chasing him with a poker now. Finished that flask?'

'There's still a little left.'

'Save it for a celebration later. Come on,' said Vanessa.
'Let's go.'

It had been her intention to confine the illumination of the
proceedings to the torch, but it's thin gleam made the portrait
gallery seem so sinister and ghostly that in deference to
Wilbur's tremors she switched on the light. She could hardly
have done anything more encouraging to those tremors. The
sudden brilliance threatened to undo all the stiffening of the
backbone he had derived from the flask's liquid fire. It revealed
rows of Emsworth ancestors staring out of their frames with a
silent rebuke which had the worst effect on his nervous system.
He had not been present when the Duke in an inspired flight
had compared them to the occupants of the Chamber of
Horrors at Madame Tussaud's, but had he been he would have
endorsed the critique with the utmost fervour. The Earls, in
his opinion, were bad enough, but their Countesses eclipsed
them. To his fevered eye they all looked like Lady Constance's
twin sisters.

'Gimme that flask again,' he muttered.

Vanessa performed the humane act as requested, but she did
it absently like one whose thoughts were elsewhere. Though
not oppressed as was Wilbur by the Earls and Countesses, she
had lost the gay exuberance with which she had started out on
this expedition. A feeling that something was wrong was
beginning to creep over her.

Two o'clock sharp, she had told Howard Chesney on the
telephone that afternoon, and he had said 'Okay, two o'clock
sharp. Right', but though it was now long past the hour a
glance from the window showed that he was not at his post. In
the world outside there were rabbits, weasels, moths, bats and
even the white owl of which Gally had spoken to John, but no
Howard Chesney. Beach would have felt that this was just
what the grounds of Blandings Castle needed to bring them to
perfection. Vanessa was unable to share such a sentiment. She
had no deep affection for Howard Chesney, but his presence
was essential to her plan of campaign, and his absence bred the
suspicion that all was not well.

Gradually the suspicion grew, and at last the clock over the
stables crushed any faint hope that might have lingered by
chiming the half hour. With the dull weight of failure on her
which all good organizers dislike so much, she turned to break
the news to Wilbur.

She was a good loser. She saw eye to eye with the
philosopher, whoever he was, who first deplored the futility of
crying over spilt milk. This, she told herself, was just one of
those things, and nothing to be done about it. Where Howard
Chesney was concerned, she had no hard feelings. She knew
that only some misadventure on a major scale could have
prevented him coming to collect a thousand dollars. All she
felt was sympathy for Wilbur's disappointment.

'I'm afraid, Willie,' she began, but got no further, for she
saw that for the time being explanations and commiserations
would be wasted. Sunk in a chair, his long legs stretched out
and his head on one side, Wilbur Trout was catching up with
his sleep.

She stood watching him, and was surprised at the wave of
maternal tenderness that surged over her. His best friends
would not have claimed that Wilbur, asleep in a chair with his
head lolling to one side, was a feast for the eye, but for her the
spectacle had an appeal that grew stronger with every minute
that passed. She felt that she could have stayed drinking it in
for ever.

This, however, in the circumstances was scarcely advisable.
No invasion of their privacy had occurred as yet, but there was
no saying how long this happy state of things would last.
Reluctantly she became her practical self again. Attaching
herself to his ginger hair, she gave it a pull.

'Bedtime, Willie.'

He came slowly to life with a grunt and a gurgle.

'Eh?'

'Time for bye-bye.'

'What?'

'Oh, wake up. The party's over.'

Wilbur sat up, blinking.

'Was I asleep?'

'Fast asleep.'

'Odd thing, that. It isn't as if I wasn't used to late nights.'
His eye fell on the reclining nude. He registered surprise.
'Hullo! It's still there. What's the time?'

'It must be nearly three.'

'And Chesney hasn't got here yet? Something must have
happened to him.'

Wilbur's surmise was right. Headed in his car for
Shropshire and his thousand dollars, Howard Chesney had
won through only as far as Worcestershire. He was lying with
a broken leg in the cottage hospital of the village of Wibley-in-the-Vale
in that county, a salutary object lesson to the
inhabitants of the hamlet not to go to sleep at the wheel of a
car when on the wrong side of the road with a truck laden with
mineral water bottles coming the other way.

'Yes, something must have happened to him,' Vanessa
agreed, 'and we can't do anything without him, so, as I said
before, the party's over. I'm sorry.'

Wilbur did not speak. He had gone to the picture and was
staring at it, deep in thought. Slowly he became aware that he
had been spoken to, and he turned.

'What was that?'

'Nothing.'

'You said something.'

'Only that I was sorry.'

'Why?'

'Well, aren't you?'

'You mean about this?'

'I know how much you wanted it.'

'Listen,' said Wilbur. 'Let me tell you something. I don't
want the damned thing.'

'What!'

'And it beats me how I ever got the idea that I did. I
wouldn't have it as a gift. It makes me sick to look at it. You
know what I do want?'

'What?'

'You.'

'Me?'

'Yes, you. I realize now what a sap I was letting you go and
wasting my time marrying a bunch of blondes who didn't
amount to a row of beans. I ought to have known they were a
lot of false alarms and that you were the only one for me. I
could kick myself. It just shows what a fool a guy can make of
himself when he tries. I ought to have my head examined.
Well, how about it?'

Vanessa was conscious of a thrill of happiness which had the
effect of making even the Earls and Countesses appear
beautiful. Their painted eyes seemed to gaze benevolently
from their frames as if this romance pleased them. Even the
third Earl, who could have walked into any gathering of
Chicago gangsters and been welcomed by all present as one of
the mob, had taken on the aspect of a kindly uncle. She drew
a long breath.

'Willie! Is this a proposal of marriage?'

'Sure it's a proposal of marriage. What did you think it was?'

'Well, one never knows. Of course I'll marry you, Willie.'

'That's the way to talk,' said Wilbur.

He crossed to where she stood and folded her in his arms
with the practised dexterity of a man who had been folding
girls in his arms since he was a slip of a boy, and would have
been content to let this state of things continue indefinitely,
but she released herself and stepped back.