Service with a Smile (15 page)

He was
musing thus, and had closed his eyes in order to muse the better, when a
stately figure approached the hammock and stood beside it. Shrewdly realizing
that there was but the slimmest chance of her brother Clarence remembering to
tell Lord Ickenham that his presence was desired in her boudoir, Lady Constance
had rung for Beach and sent him off to act as a substitute messenger. The
butler coughed respectfully, and Lord Ickenham opened his eyes.

‘Pardon
me for disturbing you, m’lord —’

‘Not at
all, Beach, not at all,’ said Lord Ickenham heartily. He was always glad to
chat with this pillar of Blandings, for a firm friendship had sprung up between
them during his previous sojourn at the castle, and this second visit had
cemented it. ‘Something on your mind?’

‘Her
ladyship, m’lord.’

‘What
about her?’

‘If it
is convenient to you m’lord, she would be glad to see you for a moment in her
boudoir.’

This
struck Lord Ickenham as unusual. It was the first time his hostess had gone out
of her way to seek his company, and he was not sure that he liked the look of
things. He had never considered himself psychic, but he was conscious of a
strong premonition that trouble was about to raise its ugly head.

‘Any
idea what she wants?’

Butlers
rarely display emotion, and there was nothing in Beach’s manner to reveal the
sympathy he was feeling for one who, in his opinion, was about to face an
ordeal somewhat comparable to that of the prophet Daniel when he entered the
lion’s den.

‘I
rather fancy, m’lord, her ladyship wishes to confer with you on the subject of
Mr Meriwether. With reference to the gentleman’s name being in reality the
Reverend Cuthbert Bailey.’

Once in
his cowboy days Lord Ickenham, injudiciously standing behind a temperamental
mule, had been kicked by the animal in the stomach. He felt now rather as he
had felt then, though only an involuntary start showed that he was not his
usual debonair self.

‘Oh,’
he said thoughtfully. ‘Oh. So she knows about that?’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

‘How
did you come to get abreast?’

‘I was
inadvertently an auditor of his lordship’s conversation with her ladyship. I
chanced to be passing the door, and his lordship had omitted to close it.’

‘And
you stopped, looked and listened?’

‘I I
had paused to tie my shoelace,’ said Beach with dignity. found it impossible
not to overhear what his lordship was saying.’

‘And
what was he saying?’

He was
informing her ladyship that Miss Briggs, having discovered Mr Meriwether’s
identity, was seeking to compel the gentleman to assist her in her project of
stealing his lordship’s pig, but that Mr Meriwether refused to be a party to
the undertaking, having scruples. It was in the course of his remarks on this
subject that his lordship revealed that Mr Meriwether was not Mr Meriwether,
but Mr Bailey.’

Lord
Ickenham sighed. In principle he approved of his young friend’s rigid code of
ethics, but there was no denying that that high-mindedness of his could be
inconvenient, lowering as it did his efficiency as a plotter. The ideal person
with whom to plot is the furtive, shifty-eyed man who stifled his conscience at
the age of six and would not recognize a scruple if you served it up to him on
an individual blue plate with béarnaise sauce.

‘I see,’
he said. ‘How did Lady Constance take this piece of hot news?’

‘She
appeared somewhat stirred, m’lord.’

‘One
sees how she might well be. And now she wants to have a word with me?’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

‘To
thresh the thing out, no doubt, and consider it from every angle. Oh, what a
tangled web we weave, Beach, when first we practise to deceive.’

‘We do,
indeed, m’lord.’

‘Well,
all right,’ said Lord Ickenham, rising. ‘I can give her five minutes.’

3

The time it had taken
Beach to deliver his message and Lord Ickenham to make the journey between lawn
and boudoir was perhaps ten minutes, and with each of those minutes Lady
Constance’s wrath had touched a new high. At the moment when her guest entered
the room she had just been thinking how agreeable it would be to skin him with
a blunt knife, and the genial smile he gave her as he came in seemed to go
through her nervous system like a red-hot bullet through butter. ‘My tablets —
Meet it is I set it down that one may smile and smile and be a villain. At
least, I’m sure it may be so in Blandings Castle,’ she was saying to herself.

‘Beach
says you want to see me, Lady Constance,’ said Lord Ickenham, smiling another
affectionate smile. His manner was that of a man looking forward to a
delightful chat on this and that with an attractive woman, and Lady Constance,
meeting the smile head on, realized that in entertaining the idea of skinning
him with a blunt knife she had been too lenient. Not a blunt knife, she was
thinking, but some such instrument as the one described by the poet Gilbert as
looking far less like a hatchet than a dissipated saw.

‘Please
sit down,’ she said coldly.

‘Oh,
thanks,’ said Lord Ickenham doing so. His eye fell on a photograph on the desk.
‘Hullo, this face seems familiar. Jimmy Schoonmaker?’

‘Yes.’

‘Taken
recently?’

‘Yes.’

‘He
looks older than he used to. One does, of course, as the years go on. I suppose
I do, too, though I’ve never noticed it. Great chap, Jimmy. Did you know that
he brought young Myra up all by himself after his wife died? With a certain
amount of assistance from me. The one thing he jibbed at was giving her her
bath, so he used to call me in of an evening, and I would soap her back,
keeping what the advertisements call a safe suds level. It was a little like
massaging an eel. Bless my soul, how long ago it seems. I remember once —’

‘Lord
Ickenham!’ Lady Constance’s voice, several degrees below zero at the outset,
had become even more like that of a snow queen. The hatchet that looked like a
dissipated saw would not have seemed to her barely adequate. ‘I did not ask you
to come here because I wished to hear your reminiscences. It was to tell you
that you will leave the castle immediately.
With,’
added Lady Constance,
speaking from between clenched teeth, ‘your friend Mr Bailey.’

She
paused, and was conscious of a feeling of flatness and disappointment. She had
expected her words to bathe this man in confusion and shatter his composure to
fragments, but he had not turned a hair of his neatly brushed head. He was looking
at another photograph. It was that of Lady Constance’s late husband, Joseph Keeble,
but she gave him no time to ask questions about it.

‘Lord
Ickenham!’

He
turned, full of apology.

‘I’m
sorry. I’m afraid I let my attention wander. I was thinking of the dear old
days. You were saying that you were about to leave the castle, were you not?’

‘I was
saying that
you
were about to leave the castle.’

Lord
Ickenham seemed surprised.

‘I had
made no plans. You’re sure you mean me?’

‘And
you will take Mr Bailey with you. How dare you bring that impossible young man
here?’

Lord
Ickenham fingered his moustache thoughtfully.

‘Oh,
Bill Bailey. I see what you mean. Yes, I suppose it was a social solecism. But
reflect. I meant well. Two young hearts had been sundered in springtime …
well, not in springtime, perhaps, but as near to it as makes no matter, and I
wanted to adjust things. I’m sure Jimmy would have approved of the kindly act.’

‘I
disagree with you.’

‘He
wants his ewe lamb to be happy.’

‘So do I.
That is why I do not intend to allow her to marry a penniless curate. But there
is no need to discuss it. There are —’

‘You’ll
be sorry when Bill suddenly becomes a bishop.’

‘— good
trains —’

‘Why did
I not push this good thing along, you’ll say to yourself.’

‘— throughout
the day. I recommend the 2.15,’ said Lady Constance. ‘Good morning, Lord
Ickenham. I will not keep you any longer.’

A
nicer-minded man would have detected in these words a hint — guarded, perhaps,
but nevertheless a hint — that his presence was no longer desired, but Lord
Ickenham remained glued to his chair. He was looking troubled.

‘I
agree that you are probably right in giving this plug to the 2.15 train,’ he
said. ‘No doubt it is an excellent one. But there are difficulties in the way
of Bill and me catching it.’

‘I see
none.’

‘I will
try to make myself clearer. Have you studied Bill Bailey at ail closely during
his visit here? He’s an odd chap. Wouldn’t hurt a fly in the ordinary way, in
fact I’ve known him not to do so —’

‘I am
not interested in Mr —’

‘But,
when driven to it, ruthless and sticking at nothing. You might think that,
being a curate, he would suppress those photographs, and of course I feel that
that is what he ought to do. But even curates can be pushed too far, and I’m
afraid if you insist on him leaving the castle, however luxurious the
2.15
train,
that that is how he will feel he is being pushed.’

‘Lord
Ickenham!’

‘You
spoke?’

‘
What
are you talking about?’

‘Didn’t
I explain that? I’m sorry. I have an annoying habit of getting ahead of my
story. I was alluding to the photographs he took of Beach and saying that, if
driven out into the snow, he will feel so bitter that he will give them wide
publicity. vindictive, yes, and not at all the sort of thing one approves of in
a clerk’ in holy orders, but that is what will happen, I assure you.’

Lady
Constance placed a hand on a forehead which had become fevered. Not even when
conversing with her brother Clarence had she ever felt so marked a swimming
sensation.

‘Photographs?
Of Beach?’

‘Cutting
those tent ropes and causing alarm and despondency to more church lads than one
likes to contemplate. But how foolish of me. I didn’t tell you, did I? Here is
the thing in a nutshell. Bill Bailey, unable to sleep this morning possibly because
love affects him that way, started to go for a stroll, saw young George’s
camera lying in the hall, picked it up with a vague idea of photographing some
of the local fauna and was surprised to see Beach down by the lake, cutting
those ropes. He took a whole reel of him and I understand they have come out
splendidly. May I smoke?’ said Lord Ickenham, taking out his case.

Lady
Constance did not reply. She seemed to have been turned into a pillar of salt,
like Lot’s wife. It might have been supposed that, having passed her whole life
at Blandings Castle, with the sort of things happening that happened daily in
that stately but always somewhat hectic home of England, she would have been
impervious to shocks. Nothing, one would have said, would have been able to
surprise her. This was not so. She was stunned.

Beach!
Eighteen years of spotless buttling, and now this! If she had not been seated,
she would have reeled. Everything seemed to her to go black, including Lord
Ickenham. He might have been an actor, made up to play Othello, lighting an
inky cigarette with a sepia lighter.

‘Of
course,’ this negroid man went on, ‘one gets the thought behind Beach’s rash
act. For days Emsworth has been preaching a holy war against these Church
Lads, filling the listening air with the tale of what he has suffered at their
hands, and it is easy to understand how Beach, feudally devoted to him, felt
that he could hold himself back no longer. Out with the knife and go to it, he
said to himself. It will probably have occurred to you how closely in its
essentials the whole set-up resembles the murder of the late St Thomas à
Becket. King Henry, you will remember, kept saying, “Will no one rid me of this
turbulent priest?” till those knights of his decided that something had to be
done about it. Emsworth, perhaps in other words, expressed the same view about
the Church Lads, and Beach, taking his duties as a butler very seriously,
thought that it was part of them to show the young thugs that crime does not
pay and that retribution must sooner or later overtake those who knock top hats
off with crusty rolls at school treats.’

Lord
Ickenham paused to cough, for he had swallowed a mouthful of smoke the wrong
way. Lady Constance remained congealed. She might have been a statue of herself
commissioned by a group of friends and admirers.

‘You
see how extremely awkward the situation is? Whether or not Emsworth formally
instructed Beach to take the law into his hands, we shall probably never know,
but it makes very little difference. If those photographs are given to the
world, it is inevitable that Beach, unable to bear the shame of exposure, will
hand in his portfolio and resign office, and you will lose the finest butler in
Shropshire. And there is another thing. Emsworth will unquestionably confess
that he inflamed the man and so was directly responsible for what happened, and
one can see the County looking very askance at him, pursing their lips, raising
their eyebrows, possibly even cutting him at the next Agricultural Show.
Really, Lady Constance, if I were you, I think I would reconsider this idea of
yours of giving Bill Bailey the old heave-ho. I will leave the castle on the
2.15, if you wish, though sorry to go, for I like the society here, but Bailey,
I’m afraid, must stay. Possibly in the course of time his winning personality
will overcome your present prejudice against him. I’ll leave you to think it
over,’ said Lord Ickenham, and with another of his kindly smiles left the
room.