Nothing Serious (5 page)

To
cadge an invitation was with Freddie the work of a moment, and a few days later
he arrived with suitcase and two-seater, deposited the former, garaged the
latter, kissed the baby and settled in.

Many
fellows might have objected to the presence on the premises of a bib-and-bottle
juvenile, but Freddie has always been a good mixer, and he and this infant hit
it off from the start like a couple of sailors on shore leave. It became a
regular thing with him to take the half-portion down to the beach and stand by
while it mucked about with its spade and bucket. And it was as he was acting as
master of the revels one sunny day that there came ambling along a
well-nourished girl with golden hair, who paused and scrutinized the Bingo
issue with a genial smile.

“Is the
baby building a sand castle?” she said.

“Well,
yes and no,” replied Freddie civilly. “It thinks it is, but if you ask me,
little of a constructive nature will result.”

“Still,
so long as it’s happy.”

“Oh,
quite.”

“Nice
day.”

“Beautiful.”

“Could
you tell me the correct time?”

“Precisely
eleven.”

“Coo!”
said the girl. “I must hurry, or I shall be late. I’m meeting a gentleman
friend of mine on the pier at half-past ten.”

And
that was that. I mean, just one of those casual encounters which are so common
at the seashore, with not a word spoken on either side that could bring the
blush of shame to the cheek of modesty. I stress this, because this substantial
blonde was to become entangled in Freddie’s affairs and I want to make it clear
at the outset that from start to finish he was as pure as the driven snow. Sir
Galahad could have taken his correspondence course.

It was
about a couple of days after this that a picture postcard, forwarded from his
London address, informed him that Mavis and her father were already in
residence at the Magnifique, and he dashed into the two-seater and drove round
there with a beating heart. It was his intention to take the loved one for a
spin, followed by a spot of tea at some wayside shoppe.

This
project, however, was rendered null and void by the fact that she was out. Old
Bodsham, receiving Freddie in the suite, told him that she had gone to take her
little brother Wilfred back to his school.

“We had
him for lunch,” said the Bod.

“No,
did you?” said Freddie. “A bit indigestible, what?” He laughed heartily for
some moments at his ready wit; then, seeing that the gag had not got across,
cheesed it. He remembered now that there had always been something a bit
Wednesday-matineeish about the fifth Earl of Bodsham. An austere man, known to
his circle of acquaintances as The Curse of the Eastern Counties. “He’s at
school here, is he?”

“At St.
Asaph’s. An establishment conducted by an old college friend of mine, the Rev.
Aubrey Upjohn.”

“Good
Lord!” said Freddie, feeling what a small world it was. “I used to be at St.
Asaph’s.”

“Indeed?”

“Absolutely.
I served a three years’ sentence there before going on to Eton. Well, I’ll be
pushing along, then. Give Mavis my love, will you, and say I’ll be round bright
and early in the morning.”

He
buzzed off and hopped into the car again, and for the space of half an hour or
so drove about Bramley, feeling a bit at a loose end. And he was passing
through a spot called Marina Crescent, a sort of jungle of boarding-houses,
when he became aware that stirring things were happening in his immediate
vicinity.

Along
the road towards him there had been approaching a well-nourished girl with
golden hair. I don’t suppose he had noticed her—or, if he had, it was merely to
say to himself “Ah, the substantial blonde I met on the beach the other
morning” and dismiss her from his thoughts. But at this moment she suddenly
thrust herself on his attention by breaking into a rapid gallop, and at the
same time a hoarse cry rent the air, not unlike that of the lion of the desert
scenting its prey, and Freddie perceived charging out of a side street an
elderly man with whiskers, who looked as if he might be a retired sea captain
or a drysalter or something.

The
spectacle perplexed him. He had always known that Bramley was bracing, but he
had never supposed that it was as bracing as all this. And he had pulled up in
order to get a better view, when the substantial blonde, putting on a burst of
speed in the straight, reached the car and hurled herself into it.

“Quick!”
she said.

“Quick?”
said Freddie. He was puzzled. “In what sense do you use the word ‘Quick’?” he
asked, and was about to go further into the thing when the whiskered bird came
dashing up and scooped the girl out of the car as if she had been a winkle and
his hand a pin.

The
girl grabbed hold of Freddie, and Freddie grabbed hold of the steering wheel,
and the whiskered bird continued to freeze on to the girl, and for a while the
human chain carried on along these lines. Then there was a rending sound, and
the girl and Freddie came apart.

The
whiskered bozo regarded him balefully.

“If we
weren’t in a public place,” he said, “I would horsewhip you. If I had a
horsewhip.”

And
with these words he dragged the well-nourished girl from the scene, leaving
Freddie, as you may well suppose, quite a bit perturbed and a long way from
grasping the inner meaning.

The
recent fracas had left him half in and half out of the car, and he completed
the process by alighting. He had an idea that the whiskered ancient might have
scratched his paint. But fortunately everything was all right, and he was
leaning against the bonnet, smoking a soothing cigarette, when Mavis Peasmarch
spoke behind him.

“Frederick!”
she said.

Freddie
tells me that at the sound of that loved voice he sprang six feet straight up
in the air, but I imagine this to be an exaggeration. About eighteen inches,
probably. Still, he sprang quite high enough to cause those leaning out of the
windows of Marina Crescent to fall into the error of supposing him to be an
adagio dancer practising a new step.

“Oh,
hullo, darling!” he said.

He
tried to speak in a gay and debonair manner, but he could not but recognize
that he had missed his objective by a mile. Gazing at Mavis Peasmarch, he noted
about her a sort of rigidity which he didn’t like. Her eyes were stern and
cold, and her lips tightly set. Mavis had inherited from her father that
austere Puritanism which makes the old boy so avoided by the County, and this
she was now exuding at every pore.

“So
there you are!” he said, still having a stab at the gay and debonair.

“Yes,”
said Mavis Peasmarch.

“I’m
here, too,” said Freddie.

“So I
see,” said Mavis Peasmarch.

“I’m
staying with a pal. I thought I’d come here and surprise you.”

“You
have,” said Mavis Peasmarch. She gave a sniff that sounded like a nor’easter
ripping the sails of a stricken vessel. “Frederick, what does this mean?”

“Eh?”

“That
girl.”

“Oh,
that
girl?
” said Freddie. “Yes, I see what you mean. You are speaking of
that girl. Most extraordinary, wasn’t it?”

“Most.”

“She
jumped into my car, did you notice?”

“I did.
An old friend?”

“No,
no. A stranger, and practically total, at that.”

“Oh?”
said Mavis Peasmarch, and let go another sniff that went echoing down the
street. “Who was the old man?”

“I don’t
know. Another stranger, even more total.”

“He
said he wanted to horsewhip you.”

“Yes, I
heard him. Dashed familiar.”

“Why
did he want to horsewhip you?”

“Ah,
there you’ve got me. The man’s thought processes are a sealed book to me.”

“The
impression I received was that he resented your having made his daughter the
plaything of an idle hour.”

“But I
didn’t. As a matter of fact, I haven’t had much spare time since I got here.”

“Oh?”

“The
solution that suggests itself to me is that we have stumbled up against one of
those E. Phillips Oppenheim situations. Yes, that would explain the whole
thing. Here’s how I figure it out. The girl is an international spy. She got
hold of the plans of the fortifications and was taking them to an accomplice,
when along came the whiskered bird, a secret service man. You could see those
whiskers were a disguise. He thought I was the accomplice.”

“Oh?”

“How’s
your brother Wilfred?” asked Freddie, changing the subject.

“Will
you please drive me to my hotel?” said Mavis, changing it again.

“Oh,
right,” said Freddie. “Right.”

That
night, Freddie lay awake, ill at ease. There had been something in the adored
object’s manner, when he dropped her at the hotel, which made him speculate as
to whether that explanation of his had got over quite so solidly as he had
hoped. He had suggested coming in and having a cosy chat, and she had said No, please,
I have a headache. He had said how well she was looking, and she had said Oh?
And when he had asked her if she loved her little Freddie, she had made no
audible response.

All in
all, it looked to Freddie as if what is technically called a lover’s tiff had
set in with a good deal of severity, and as he lay tossing on his pillow he
pondered quite a bit on how this could be adjusted.

What
was needed here, he felt, was a gesture—some spectacular performance on his
part which would prove that his heart was in the right place.

But
what spectacular performance?

He
toyed with the idea of saving Mavis from drowning, only to dismiss it when he
remembered that on the rare occasions when she took a dip in the salty she
never went in above the waist.

He
thought of rescuing old Bodsham from a burning building.

But how
to procure that burning building? He couldn’t just set a match to the Hotel
Magnifique and expect it to go up in flames.

And
then, working through the family, he came to little Wilfred, and immediately
got a Grade-A inspiration. It was via Wilfred that he must oil back into Mavis’s
esteem. And it could be done, he saw, by going to St. Asaph’s and asking the
Rev. Aubrey Upjohn to give the school a half-holiday. This kindly act would put
him right back in the money.

He
could picture the scene. Wilfred would come bounding in to tea one afternoon. “Coo!”
Mavis would exclaim. “What on earth are you doing here? Have you run away from
school?”

“No,”
Wilfred would reply, “the school has run away from me. In other words, thanks
to Freddie Widgeon, that prince of square-shooters, we have been given a
half-holiday.”

“Well,
I’m blowed!” Mavis would ejaculate. “Heaven bless Freddie Widgeon! I had a
feeling all along that I’d been misjudging that bird.”

At this
point, Freddie feel asleep.

Often,
when you come to important decisions overnight, you find after sleeping on them
that they are a bit blue around the edges. But morning, when it came, found
Freddie still resolved to go through with his day’s good deed. If, however, I
were to tell you that he liked the prospect, I should be deceiving you. It is
not too much to say that he quailed at it. Years had passed since his
knickerbocker days, but the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn was still green in his memory. A
man spiritually akin to Simon Legree and the late Captain Bligh of the
Bounty,
with whose disciplinary methods his own had much in common, he had made a
deep impression on Freddie’s plastic mind, and the thought of breezing in and
trying to sting him for a half-holiday was one that froze the blood more than a
bit.

But two
things bore him on: (a) his great love, and (b) the fact that it suddenly
occurred to him that he could obtain a powerful talking point by borrowing
Bingo’s baby and taking it along with him.

Schoolmasters,
he knew, are always anxious to build for the future. To them, the infant of
to-day is the pupil at so much per of to-morrow. It would strengthen his
strategic position enormously if he dangled Bingo’s baby before the man’s eyes
and said:

“Upjohn,
I can swing a bit of custom your way. My influence with the parents of this
child is stupendous. Treat me right, and down it goes on your waiting list.” It
would make all the difference.

So,
waiting till Bingo’s back and Mrs Bingo’s back were turned, he scooped up
Junior and started out. And presently he was ringing the front door bell of St.
Asaph’s, the younger generation over his arm, concealed beneath a light
overcoat. The parlourmaid showed him into the study, and he was left there to
drink in the details of the well-remembered room which he had not seen for so
many years.

Now, it
so happened that he had hit the place at the moment when the Rev. Aubrey was
taking the senior class in Bible history, and when a headmaster has got his
teeth into a senior class he does not readily sheathe the sword. There was
consequently a longish stage wait, and as the minutes passed Freddie began to
find the atmosphere of the study distinctly oppressive.