Blott On The Landscape (23 page)

“Oh, you are thoughtful.”

“A votre santé,” said Sir Giles.

Mrs Forthby finished her drink and got to her feet. “It’s Nurse Catheter tonight, isn’t it?” she said moving unsteadily towards him.

“Forget it,” said Sir Giles, “I’m not in the mood.” Nor was Mrs Forthby. He carried her through to the bedroom and put her to bed. When he left the flat five minutes later she was snoring soundly. By the time she woke up he would be back and in bed beside her. He got into his car and began the drive north.

At the Royal George in Guildstead Carbonell Blott’s experiment in induced narcosis proceeded more slowly but with gayer results. By nine o’clock the pub was filled with singing dumper drivers, two fights had erupted and died down before they could get well under way, a darts match had had to be cancelled when a non-participant had been pinned by his ear to last year’s calendar, and two consenting adults had been ejected from the Gents by Blott and Mrs Wynn’s Alsatian. By ten o’clock Blott’s promise that the Very Special was needed for a special occasion had been fulfilled to the letter. Two more fights, this time between locals and the men from the motorway, had started and had not died down but had spread to the Saloon Bar where the operator of a piledriver was attempting to demonstrate his craft to the fiancée of the secretary of the Young Conservatives, the darts match had been resumed using a portrait of Sir Winston Churchill as a dartboard, and half a dozen bulldozer drivers were giving an exhibition of clog dancing on the bar-billiards table. In between whiles Blott had coaxed Mr Edwards, who claimed to have knocked down more houses than Blott had had hot dinners, into a nicely belligerent mood.

“I can knock any damned house you like to show me down with one bloody blow,” he shouted.

Blott raised an eyebrow. “Tell me another one.”

“I tell you I can,” Mr Edwards asserted. “One knock in the right place and Bob’s your uncle.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Blott and poured him another pint of Very Special.

“I’ll show you. I’ll bloody show you,” said Mr Edwards and took a swig.

By closing time Very Special had cast if not a healing balm at least a soporific one on the whole proceedings. As the motorway men stumbled off to their cars and the Young Conservatives drove off nursing their wounds, Blott shut up shop and helped Mr Edwards to his feet.

“I tell you I can,” he mumbled.

“Never,” said Blott.

Together they staggered off down the street towards Miss Percival’s cottage, Blott clutching a bottle of vodka and Mr Edwards’ arm.

“I’ll show you,” said Mr Edwards as they crossed the field to the cottage. “I’ll fucking show you.”

He climbed into the crane and started it up. Blott stood behind him and watched.

“Oh what a pity she’s only one titty to bang against the wall,” Mr Edwards sang as the crane jerked forward through the hedge and into the garden. Behind them the iron ball wobbled and swung. Mr Edwards stopped the crane and adjusted the controls. The arm of the crane swung round and the ball followed. It went wide.

“I thought you said you could do it in one,” said Blott.

“That,” said Mr Edwards, “was just a practice swing.” He lowered the crane and a sundial disintegrated. Mr Edwards raised it again.

“Never been laid, never been made, Queen of all the Fairies,” he bawled. The crane swung round and Blott darted out of the way as the iron ball lolloped past him. The next moment it hurtled into the side of the cottage. There was a roar of falling bricks, tiles, breaking glass and a great cloud of dust momentarily obscured what had once been Miss Percival’s attractive home. When the dust finally cleared what remained of the cottage held few attractions. On the other hand it was not entirely demolished. A chimney still stood and the roof while hanging at a disreputable angle was still recognizably the roof. Blott regarded the result sceptically.

“I don’t think much of that,” he said superciliously. “Still I suppose there’s always a first time.”

“Whadja mean always a first time?” said Mr Edwards. “I knocked it down, didn’t I?”

“No,” said Blott, “not with one blow.”

Mr Edwards consoled himself with vodka. “’sonly a fucking cottage. Can’t expect much with a cottage. Got no bulk to it. Gotta have bulk, got to have weight. Show me a house, a proper house, a big bulky house and I’ll …” He slumped over the controls. Blott climbed up into the cab and shook him.

“Wake up,” he shouted. Mr Edwards woke up.

“Show me a proper house …”

“All right, I will,” said Blott. “Show me how to drive this thing and I’ll show you a proper house.”

Mr Edwards did his best to show him. “You pull that lever and you press that ‘cellerator.” Five minutes later Guildstead Carbonell, already disturbed by the eruption of violence at the Royal George, was convulsed a second time as Blott with Mr Edwards’ assistance attempted to negotiate the High Street at something over the statutory speed limit. As the mobile crane hurtled into the first of several corners at forty miles per hour Blott struggled to keep it on the road. He wasn’t helped by Mr Edwards’ inertia nor by that of the iron ball which, swinging behind, tended to demonstrate the attractions of centrifugal force. On the first corner it gave a glancing blow to the plateglass window of a newly opened mini-market, bounced off the roof of a parked car, entered the front parlour of Mrs Tate’s house and came out through Mr and Mrs Williams’ sitting-room, decapitated the War Memorial and took a telegraph pole and fifty yards of wire in tow. On the second it took a short cut through the forecourt of Mr Dugdale’s garage neatly severing the stanchions that had formerly supported the roof and demolishing four petrol pumps and a sign advertising free tumblers. By the time they had traversed the rest of the High Street, the ball had left its imprint on seven more cars and the facades of twelve splendid examples of eighteenth-century domestic architecture while the telegraph pole, not to be left out of things, had vaulted through every third window before disentangling itself from the crane and coming to rest in the vestry of the Primitive Methodist Chapel taking with it a large sign announcing the Coming of the Lord. As they left the village, the iron ball made its last contribution to the peace and tranquillity of the place by nudging an electricity transformer which exploded with a galaxy of blue sparks and plunged the entire district into darkness. At this point Mr Edwards woke up.

“Where are we?” he mumbled.

“Almost there,” said Blott, managing to slow the crane down. Mr Edwards took another swig of vodka.

“Show me the way to go home,” he sang, “I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”

“Not yet,” said Blott and turned the crane up the drive towards the Bullett-Finches’ house.

It was one of Mrs Bullett-Finch’s pleasanter qualities from her husband’s point of view that she went to bed early. “It’s the early bird that catches the worm,” she would say at nine o’clock every night and take herself upstairs, leaving Mr Bullett-Finch to sit up by himself and read about lawns in peace and quiet. And lawns interested him. They held a charm for him that Ivy Bullett-Finch had long since relinquished. Lawns improved with age, which was more than could be said for wives and what Mr Bullett-Finch didn’t know about browntop and chewing fescue and velvet bent was not worth knowing. And the lawns around Finch Grove were in his opinion among the finest in the country. They stretched immaculately in front of the house down to the stream at the bottom of the garden. Not a dandelion scarred their surface, not a plantain, not a daisy. For six years Mr Bullett-Finch had nurtured his lawns, sanding, mowing, spiking, fertilizing, weedkilling, even going so far as to prohibit visitors with high heels from walking on them. And when Ivy wanted to go down to the orchard she had to wear her bedroom slippers. It may have been this insistence on his part that the front garden was sacrosanct that had contributed to her nervous disposition and sense of guilt. What the garden was to her husband, the house was to Ivy, a source of obsessive concern in which everything had its place, was dusted twice a day and polished three times a week so that she went to bed early less out of indolence than from sheer exhaustion and lay there wondering if she had turned everything off.

On this particular night Mr Bullett-Finch was deep in a chapter on hormone weedkillers when the lights went out. He got up and stumbled through to the fusebox only to find that the fuses were intact.

“Must be a power failure,” he thought and went up to bed in the dark. He had just undressed and was putting on his pyjamas when he became aware that something extremely large and powered by an enormous diesel engine appeared to be making its way up his drive. He rushed to the window and peered out into two powerful headlights. Temporarily blinded, he groped for his dressing-gown and slippers, found them and put them on and looked out of the window again. What looked like a gigantic crane had stopped on the gravel forecourt and was backing on to his lawn. With a scream of rage Mr Bullett-Finch told it to stop but it was too late. A moment later there was a winching noise and the crane began to swing. Mr Bullett-Finch pulled his head in the window and raced for the stairs. He was halfway down them when all concern for his precious lawn disappeared, to be replaced by the absolute conviction that Finch Grove was at the very centre of some gigantic earthquake. As the house disintegrated around him – Mr Edwards’ claim to be a demolition expert entirely vindicated – Mr Bullett-Finch clung to the banisters and peered through a duststorm of plaster and powdered brick while the furnishings of which his wife had been so rightly proud hurtled past him from the upstairs rooms. Among them came Mrs Bullett-Finch herself, screaming and hysterically proclaiming her innocence, which had until then never been in doubt, and he was just debating why she should assume responsibility for what was obviously a natural cataclysm when he was saved the trouble by the roof collapsing on top of him and the staircase collapsing underneath. Mr Bullett-Finch descended into the cellar and lay unconscious, surrounded by his small stock of claret. Mrs Bullett-Finch, still clinging to her mattress and the conviction that she had left the gas on, had meanwhile been catapulted into the herb-garden where she sobbed convulsively among the thyme.

From the cab of his crane Mr Edwards regarded his handiwork with pride.

“Told you I could do it,” he said and seized the bottle of vodka from Blott who had been steadying his nerves with it. Blott let him finish it. Then he dragged him down from the cab and climbed back to wipe any fingerprints from the controls. Finally, hoisting Mr Edwards over his shoulder, he set off down the drive.

By the time he reached the Royal George Mrs Wynn was back from Worford, and washing glasses by candlelight.

“Look at all this mess,” she said irately, “I leave you to look after the place for one day and what do I find when I get back. Anyone would think there had been an orgy here. And what’s been going on in the village, I’d like to know? The place looks like it’s been bombed.”

Blott helped with the glasses and then went out to the Land-Rover. Mr Edwards was still sleeping soundly in the back. He drove slowly out of the yard and turned towards Ottertown. It was a longer way round but Blott didn’t want to be seen in the High Street. He stopped at the caravan site where the motorway workers lived and deposited Mr Edwards on the grass. Then he drove on towards the Gorge and Handyman Hall. At two o’clock he was in bed in the Lodge. All in all it had been a good day’s work.

In Dundridge’s flat the phone rang. He groped for it sleepily and switched on the light. It was Hoskins. “What the hell do you want? Do you realize what time it is?”

“Yes,” said Hoskins, “as a matter of fact I do. I just wanted to tell you that you’ve gone too far this time.”

“Gone too far?” said Dundridge. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“Don’t give me that,” said Hoskins. “You and your random sorties and your task forces and assault groups. Well you’ve certainly landed us in it this time. There were people living in that fucking house, you know, and it wasn’t even scheduled for demolition in the first place and as for what you’ve done to Guildstead Carbonell … I hope you realize that the motorway wasn’t supposed to go within a mile of that village. It’s a historical monument, Guildstead Carbonell is … was. It’s a fucking ruin now, a disaster area.”

“A disaster area?” said Dundridge. “What do you mean a disaster area?”

“You know very well what I mean,” shouted Hoskins hysterically, “I always thought you were mad but now I know it.” He slammed the phone down, leaving Dundridge mystified. He sat on the edge of his bed and wondered what to do. Clearly something had gone wrong with Operation Overland. He was just about to call Hoskins back when the phone rang again. This time it was the police.

“Is that Mr Dundridge?”

“Yes, speaking.”

“This is the Chief Constable. I wonder if I could have a word with you. It’s about this business at Guildstead Carbonell …”

Dundridge got dressed.

Sir Giles parked his car outside Wilfrid’s Castle Church. It was an unfrequented spot and nobody was likely to be out and about at two o’clock in the morning. It was one of the great advantages of a Bentley that it was not a noisy car. For the last five miles Sir Giles had driven without lights, coasting past farmhouses and keeping to back roads. He had seen no other vehicles and, as far as he could tell, had been seen by nobody. So far so good. Leaving the car he made his way down the footpath to the bridge. It was dark down there under the trees and he had some difficulty in finding his way. On the far side of the bridge he came to a wire mesh gate. Using his torch briefly he unlatched it and went through into the pinetum. The gate puzzled Sir Giles. It was a long time since he had been over the bridge, not since the day of his wedding in fact, but he felt sure there had been no gate there then. Still he hadn’t time to worry about little things like that. He had to move quickly. It wasn’t easy. The pinetum was dark enough by daylight. At night it was pitch black. Sir Giles shone his torch on the ground and moved forward cautiously grateful to the carpet of pine needles that deadened his footsteps. He was halfway through the wood when he became conscious that he was not alone. Something was breathing nearby.