All The Nice Girls (9 page)

‘Do me a favour Ollie and just drop dead. Let’s have a look at the directory.’

Dagwood rapidly riffled through the pages. ‘. . . This must be him. Rear-Admiral R. I. MacGregor, King’s Monachorum. Telephone number King’s Monachorum 27.’

The telephone was answered by a cool, feminine voice. ‘Hello?’

‘I wonder if I could speak to the Admiral, please?’

‘I’m afraid the Admiral’s busy at the moment. May I take a message? I am his daughter.’

‘His
daughter
?’

‘Yes.’ The voice grew several degrees less cordial. ‘Is that so strange?’

‘He’s
got
a daughter?’

‘I am his daughter,’ said the voice frostily; Dagwood could almost feel the rime forming on the receiver.

‘I’m sorry to be so rude . . . I’m in the Navy here ... In Oozemouth ... I wondered if I could call ...’

‘
Who’s that?
’ Another voice, roaring like a Force Nine gale, drowned Dagwood out. It could only be the Admiral himself, speaking from another extension.

‘Who’s that? What’s he saying, Patricia?’

‘I think he’d like to call on us, Daddy ...’

‘
Splendid
! Who is he?’

‘He’s...’

‘What?’

Dagwood thought it time he rejoined the conversation. ‘My name is Lieutenant Jones, sir, I . . .’

‘Good morning, Jones!’

‘Good morning, sir. I’m refitting a submarine here and I...’

‘
Submariner
, eh?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You must come and see us. Come on Saturday. Come for lunch! ‘

‘I’d be delighted, sir ....’

‘Good. We’ll expect you. Good-bye!’

‘Good-bye, sir ….’

‘Daddy, hadn’t we better explain how to get here?’

‘Nonsense! He’s got a tongue in his head, hasn’t he? Goodbye, Jones!’

‘Good-bye, sir, I . . .’

The line went dead.

‘All fixed up?’ said Ollie.

‘Well, I gather so.’

‘I suppose the voice I could hear plainly from here was the Admiral himself?’

‘Right. He’s invited me to lunch on Saturday. Now where the devil is King’s Monachorum?’

Dagwood took down the AA Handbook from the shelf which also contained the Navy List, Bradshaw’s, Whitaker’s, Pears Cyclopaedia, Wisden’s, Timeform and other volumes without which no submarine refitting office would have been completely furnished.

‘It’s not here. It must be a pretty obscure sort of place.’ The AA Handbook should have warned Dagwood. By a quarter past twelve on Saturday he was lost. A succession of knowledgeable-looking locals had listened to the name Admiral MacGregor and had directed him unerringly to two deserted farmyards, one clump of impenetrable bramble bushes at the end of a stony lane, and an abandoned quarry. At last Dagwood met a woman on a bicycle who looked like the local midwife.

‘Rear-Admiral MacGregor? How ever did you get up here? You’ll have to turn and go back the way you’ve come until you reach a signpost. One way says ‘King’s Monachorum’ and the other says ‘Tilsey Caldicote.’ Don’t take the King’s Monachorum one. Take the other one and keep going until you reach a long copper beech hedge on your right with a white gate in it. That’s where the Admiral lives.’

‘Thank you very much,’ Dagwood said gratefully, recognising in the copper beech hedge and the white gate landmarks he had already passed and repassed many times.

When Dagwood got out of his car to open the gate he saw a notice in the hedge.

‘Don’t Drive. Walk.’

Obediently, Dagwood parked his car on the grass verge and began to walk.

The Admiral’s house lay a full hundred and fifty yards back from the road and was approached by a gravel drive which had clearly been laid down by a madman or a somnambulist for it meandered towards the house in a series of sweeping bends and zigzags. Daffodils grew in clumps in the grass which was still unmown and unkempt after the winter. A double row of lime trees bordered the grass on each side.

A window in the front of the house opened and the gale blew out of it.

‘What’s your height, Jones?’

‘Five foot ten, sir,’ Dagwood shouted, quick as a flash.

‘Thought so.’

The window shut. Dagwood continued his walk with the uncomfortable feeling that his every movement was being watched and, furthermore, predicted. After a little while it occurred to him that his walk was being considerably lengthened by the eccentricities of the drive. It would be far quicker to leave the drive and walk straight towards the house on the grass. Dagwood stepped off the drive.

‘Don’t walk on the grass! Stay on the drive! ‘

Dagwood returned to the drive. He was a philosophical young man and believed that every man was king on his own land; if the voice from the window had ordered him to walk the remainder of the distance on his hands he would have done his best to comply.

Patricia was waiting for him at the front door.

‘Good morning, Mr Jones. I’m sorry you had all those instructions. It was just Daddy practising.’

‘Oh yes?’ Dagwood said, lamely. Perhaps it was his imagination but he thought he could hear a sound from inside the house. It was a familiar sound, very faint, the faintest of whispers, but it struck a responsive chord in Dagwood’s memory. Like a name that was on the tip of his tongue, Dagwood could remember it well but could not quite recapture it.

‘Do come in. I’m Patricia. The Admiral’s daughter,’ she added.

‘How do you do?’

When he tried to describe Patricia MacGregor to Ollie, Dagwood could only think of the Snow Maiden. She made him think at once of that tragic pale princess who could never fall in love because of the ice splinter buried in her heart. She was tall for a woman, as tall as Dagwood himself, and she had long blonde hair to her shoulders, hair which was brushed but not waved or styled in any way. Her eyes were large and blue and appeared not to be focusing upon Dagwood at all but on some point behind him. She was wearing a grey cardigan and a tweed skirt and she had a single string of pearls round her neck. Dagwood looked down and noted the inevitable brown brogue shoes and lisle stockings. Dagwood put her age at about twenty-nine or thirty and she looked as though she had spent all her life in this house, walking and dreaming of the man who would one day come to claim her. She looked as though she had already waited so long that she would not recognise him when he arrived; Dagwood had a suspicion that when Prince Charming came to call Patricia MacGregor would send him round to the tradesman’s entrance.

‘Are you going to come in?’

‘Oh, of course, yes.’

The Force Nine gale blew once more, explosively down the Hall.

‘Jones!’

Dagwood hurried into the drawing-room and shook hands with his host. He became aware of a russet-coloured dressing-gown and a pair of bright blue eyes.

‘Sherry or whisky, Jones?’

‘Sherry please, sir.’

‘I hope you didn’t mind my firing six fish into you as you passed that last lot of daffodils?’

‘Not at all, sir,’ Dagwood murmured politely, adding the remark to the sum of other inexplicable features of this house. He studied the Admiral closely while he was pouring the sherry. Dagwood was very conscious that he was in the presence of a man who was the paragon of his generation, who was still held up as the mirror of perfection amongst submarine captains. Working in tiny boats with elementary torpedo firing gear and a short dived endurance, this stooping figure in the faded dressing-gown and the ragged bedroom slippers had laid down principles of offensive submarine warfare which were still taught in the service. But time had taken its revenge. Dagwood was looking at the ruin of a once powerful and magnificent face. The eyes were still there, and the mouth, but the rest had decayed ....

Dagwood was startled by the jangling of a bell above the door. Patricia leaped to the window.

‘It’s the postman, Daddy!’

‘Action stations! Attack team close up! Jump about a bit, young Jones, you can be my range and bearing recorder!’ Dagwood set down his drink carefully on a table, determined not to allow himself to be further surprised. His ears had not deceived him after all. The familiar sound which had puzzled him at the front door had been the authentic slither of a periscope moving through its gland. In an alcove at the far end of the room a periscope was rising from the floor. It was not a type Dagwood had ever seen before but it was the genuine article and the Admiral was handling it as though it were an extension of himself.

‘It’s the postman all right! What’s his height?’

Patricia consulted a long board which hung against one of the bookcases. It appeared to Dagwood to be a list of names. He could just read the heading - ‘Jane’s Fighting Hawkers, Costers & Vendors.’

‘Five feet eight inches, Daddy.’

‘Set five feet eight inches!’

‘Set,’’

‘Range on five feet eight inches is ...
that
,’’

‘Thirty-two, sir.’

‘Speak up!’

‘
Thirty-two
, sir!’ bawled Dagwood.

‘Very good. Bearing is . . . that!’

‘Green three five, sir! ‘

‘Very good. I am forty degrees on his starboard bow. Down periscope.’

The Admiral glared at a stop-watch he had taken from the top pocket of his dressing-gown. ‘I’ll give him five seconds. By that time he should have reached the third lime tree. He’ll have to turn to starboard then whether he likes it or not.’

‘That’s cheating, Daddy!’

‘No it’s not, my dear. It comes under the heading of local knowledge. Up periscope.’

The Admiral seized the handles as they rose towards him, unfolded them, and put his eyes to apertures in one fluid graceful movement.

‘No he hasn’t by God! He’s fooled me! He’s cut across the grass! I’m now five degrees on his
port
bow!’

Dagwood could quite understand why the ‘
Hohenzollern
’ had been doomed. Such was the Admiral’s driving personality that it was difficult for Dagwood to remember that the enemy was only the postman, a public servant, dodging from daffodil to daffodil with the afternoon mail.

‘. . . Range, boy, range! ‘ roared the Admiral.

‘Th-three nine, sir! ‘

‘Bearing is ….
that
,’’

‘Green three, sir.’

The postman evaded. The Admiral followed. The postman jinked. The Admiral tracked him. It was an exciting attack and the postman only received the salvo as he made his final dash towards the front door where he rapped the knocker twice and, catching sight of Dagwood through the window, waved cheerily as he turned away.

‘Good sort, that postman,’ the Admiral said, approvingly. ‘Used to be a submarine leading stoker. Not like those bloody dustmen. Bolshie lot of buggers. The paper boy is the best. Enters into the spirit of the thing. He’ll make a good submariner when he grows up.’

The Admiral caught Dagwood’s look. ‘You must forgive an old man’s foibles. This looks odd to you but it gives me a lot of innocent pleasure.’

‘I don’t think it’s odd at all, sir,’ Dagwood replied, loyally. ‘May I just take a look at your “Jane’s” for a moment, sir?’

‘Patricia, show Jones our masterpiece.’

‘Jane’s Fighting Hawkers, Costers & Vendors’ was an extraordinary document. It was a list of everybody who had ever called at the Admiral’s house, together with their height, gait, periodicities of visits and any relevant information. Most of the entries were commonplace: ‘Joe Glubb, green-grocer, 5’ 7” stiff walk (arthritis), calls about tea-time every Tuesday

& Friday’, but some of the other descriptions might have caused some heart-burning if they had ever been published amongst the Admiral’s neighbours. The Vicar, for instance, would have been taken aback to find himself described as ‘6’0”, walks like a nancy-boy, calls at lunch time on Sat. before 8th Sun. after Trinity.’ The Lord Lieutenant of the county, a retired Major-General whom the Admiral detested, was dismissed as: ‘Pompous five foot nothing, walks as though he had 2 hairs in his arse tied together, calls when he wants to borrow binoculars for Cheltenham.’ Altogether ‘Jane’s Fighting Hawkers, Costers & Vendors’ was a curious document. Dagwood found it hard to comment adequately upon it.

‘I must say it’s an interesting list, sir,’ he said.

‘D’you like it? Patricia and I get a lot of fun writing it up.’

‘There’s one more to go in now,’ Patricia said. She took the list from Dagwood, wrote swiftly in it and handed it back to him. Dagwood read: ‘Lieut. Jones, R.N. ‘5’ 10”, quick walk but liable to erratic alterations of course. Reason for visit - duty.’

Dagwood revised his earlier opinion of Patricia MacGregor. When Prince Charming arrived, Patricia would not only direct him to the tradesman’s entrance but would log his height, gait and excuse for visiting. Dagwood could even visualise the entry: ‘Prince Charming, tall, dark and handsome, walks as though he owns the place, left a glass slipper in the coal shed.’

‘What do you think of my periscope, eh, Jones?’

‘I was a bit staggered to see it, sir . . .’

‘It came from a German U-boat. They were breaking up a lot of boats just after the war and I asked the Admiral Submarines at the time to let me have one of the periscopes. I was his captain when he was a sprog sub-lieutenant . . .’ A malicious gleam entered the Admiral’s eye ‘.... so he could hardly refuse me. They sent me the periscope, the press, the wires, the pump and all the piping. I got our local builder to fix up the well and Mr Maggs our plumber did the piping ...’

‘Do you use ordinary telemotor oil in the system, sir?’ Dagwood asked.

‘No, it’s anti-freeze!’ The Admiral chuckled. He was obviously delighted by the question; it was not one which would have occurred to the majority of his visitors. It reminded him, pleasurably, that his present visitor spoke his own language. ‘I tried ordinary oil from the car at first but it made a mess of the deck. I’ll show you round . . .’

Dagwood had once been taken round a model train layout belonging to a retired spice merchant who was a neighbour of Dame’s at home. He recognised the same fanaticism as the Admiral showed him the brick well in the drawing-room floor, the hoist wires concealed in conduits in the walls and the ceilings, the press hidden behind the bookcase and the pump stowed away in a niche under the window seat. The periscope was controlled by a lever fashioned out of a Rolls Royce Flying Lady which projected from the wall by the fireplace.