Vintage Stuff (22 page)

'Really?' said Mr Clyde-Browne with an inflection he relied on in cases involving consenting
adults charged with making improper use of public urinals, and before the Headmaster could invite
him to use the toilet upstairs he was back inside and had locked the door.

'You don't think...'said Slymne injudiciously.

'Get lost,' said the Headmaster. 'And see that...the Major doesn't stir.'

Slymne took the hint and hurried back to the armoury. The Major was looking disconsolately at
several empty boxes in the ammunition locker. 'Bad news, Slimey old chap,' he said. 'Two hundred
bloody rounds gone. The Army isn't going to like it one little bit. I've got to account for every
fucking one.'

'Not your fault,' said Slymne. 'If Glodstone chooses to go mad and pinch the key...'

'He didn't. Peregrine had the thing. And to think I used to like that boy.'

'Well, the Head's got his hands full with the Clyde-Brownes and I don't think he's having an
easy time.'

The Major almost sympathized. 'I don't see how he can avoid sacking me. I'd sack myself in the
circumstances. More than flesh and blood can stand, that bloody couple.' He wheeled himself
across to a rack of bayonets.

'Don't tell me they've taken some of those too,' said Slymne.

'I wish to God they had,' said the Major. 'The Army wouldn't worry so much. Mind you, I hate
to think what Perry would get up to. Born bayoneteer. You should see what he can do with a rifle
and bayonet to a bag of straw. And talking about guts I suppose if I were a Jap the Head would
expect me to commit Mata Hari.'

Slymne ignored the mistake. He was beginning to feel distinctly sorry for the Major. After
all, the man might be a fool but he'd never been as malicious as Glodstone and it had been no
part of Slymne's plan to get him sacked.

'They probably won't use any of those bullets,' he said by way of consolation and wondered
what he could do to save the Major's job.

It was not a consideration that had top priority with the Headmaster. Mr Clyde-Browne's
eruption from the lavatory clutching the two replica revolvers he had dredged from the cistern in
an attempt to make the thing flush had honed to a razor's edge the Headmaster's only gift, the
capacity for extempore evasions.

'Well I never,' he said. 'Would you believe it?'

'No,' said Mr Clyde-Browne.

'Boys will be boys,' continued the Headmaster in the face of this blunt refusal to accept his
rhetoric, 'always up to some practical jokes.'

Mr Clyde-Browne fingered the revolvers dangerously. He had yet to realize they were replicas.
'And maniacs will presumably be maniacs. Since when have you and that man Slymne made a habit of
hiding offensive weapons in the cistern of your lavatory?'

'Are you suggesting '

'No. I'm stating,' said Mr Clyde-Browne, 'I intend to present these firearms to the police as
proof that you are wholly unfit either by virtue of insanity or criminal tendency to be in charge
of anything more morally responsible than an abattoir or a brickyard.'

The Headmaster struggled with these alternatives but Mr Clyde-Browne was giving tongue again.
'Marguerite!' he yelled, 'Come here at once.'

Mrs Clyde-Browne crept from the study. 'Yes, dear,' she said meekly.

'I want you to bear witness that I have discovered these two guns in the water closet of this
'

But the sight of her husband aiming two revolvers at the Headmaster was witness enough.

'You're mad, mad, mad!' she wailed and promptly had a fit of hysterics.

The Headmaster seized his opportunity. 'Now look what you've done,' he said appealing to Mr
Clyde-Browne's better feelings in vain. 'Your poor wife...'

'Keep your hands off that woman,' snarled her husband, 'I give you fair warning...' He waved
the revolvers as the Headmaster tried to calm her.

'There, there,' he said, 'now come and sit down and...'

Mr Clyde-Browne was more forthright. Putting the guns on a side table, he whisked a bowl of
faded roses from it and did what he had been longing to do for years. It was not a wise move.
With water running down her face and a Wendy Cussons in her hair, Mrs Clyde-Browne's hysterics
turned to fury.

'You bastard,' she yelled and seizing one of the guns, aimed it at her husband and pulled the
trigger. There was a faint click and Mr Clyde-Browne cowered against the wall.

The Headmaster intervened and took the gun from her. 'Toys,' he explained, 'I told you it was
simply a prank.'

Mr Clyde-Browne said nothing. He knew now where Peregrine had got his demonic gifts from and
he no longer cared where the sod was.

'Come into the study,' said the Headmaster, making the most of the domestic rift. 'The School
Secretary will see to Mrs Clyde-Browne's needs and I'm sure we could all do with a drink.'

The respite was only temporary. By the time the Clyde-Brownes drove off half an hour later,
Mrs Clyde-Browne had threatened to divorce her husband if Peregrine wasn't found and Mr
Clyde-Browne had passed the threat on in terms that included legal damages, the end of the
Headmaster's career and the publicity that would result when the News of the World learnt that
Major Fetherington, instead of being in loco parentis, had been in loco matronae and wearing a
french tickler to boot. The Headmaster watched them go and then crossed the quad at a run to the
Armoury.

'Off your butts,' he shouted, evidently inspired by the place to use Army language and
ignoring the Major's patent inability to do more than wobble in his wheelchair. 'You're going to
France and you're going to bring that bloody boy back within the week even if you have to drug
the little bugger.'

'France?' said Slymne with a quaver. That country still held terrors for him. 'But why me?
I've got '

'Because this stupid sex-maniac can't drive. By this time tomorrow you'll be at the damned
Château.'

'More than I will,' said the Major. 'You can sack me on the spot but I'm fucked if I'm going
to be hurtled across Europe in a fucking wheelchair. I can't put it plainer than that.'

'I can,' said the Headmaster, who had learnt something from Mr Clyde-Browne when it came to
blunt speaking. 'Either you'll use your despicable influence on your loathsome protégé, Master
Peregrine Clyde-Bloody-Browne, and hopefully murder Glodstone in the process, or that damned man
will have the police in and you'll not only lose your job but you'll be explaining to the CID and
the Army why you gave those guns to a couple of lunatics.'

'But I didn't. I told you '

'Shut up! I'll tell them,' said the Headmaster, 'because you were screwing the Matron with a
french tickler and Glodstone threatened to blow your cover.'

'That's a downright lie,' said the Major without much conviction.

'Perhaps,' yelled the headmaster, 'but Mrs Clyde-Browne evidently didn't see it that way and
since her husband claims to be a personal friend of every High-Court Judge in the country, not to
mention the Lord Chancellor, I don't fancy your chances in the witness box.'

'But can't we phone the Countess and explain...' Slymne began.

'What? That the school employs maniacs like Glodstone to come and rescue her? Anyway the
secretary's tried and the woman isn't in the directory.'

'But the cost '

'Will be funded from the school mission on the Isle of Dogs which is at least designated for
the redemption of delinquents and no one can say it's not being put to its proper purpose.'

Later that afternoon, Slymne drove down the motorway towards Dover once again. Beside him the
Major sat on an inflated inner tube and cursed the role of women in human affairs. 'It was her
idea to use that beastly thingamajig,' he complained, 'I couldn't stop her. Had me at her mercy
and anyway I couldn't feel a thing. Can't imagine why they call them French letters.' Slymne kept
his thoughts to himself. He was wondering what the Countess had had to say about the letters she
hadn't written.

He needn't have worried. For the moment the Countess had other problems in mind. In fact the
day had been fraught with problems. Mr Hodgson had refused to spend another night in a place
where he was liable to be mugged every time he went to the loo and had left without paying his
bill; Mr Rutherby had added to his wife's and Mr Coombe's little difficulties by threatening to
commit a crime passionnell if he ever caught them together again, and Mr Coombe had told him in
no uncertain terms that Mr Rutherby wouldn't know what a crime fucking passionnell was until he'd
been clamped in Mrs Rutherby for three bloody hours with people pulling his legs to get him
out.

But it had been the delegates who had given the most trouble. Dr Abnekov still maintained that
he'd been the victim of a CIA conspiracy to silence him, while Professor Botwyk was equally
adamant that a terrorist group had tried to assassinate him and demanded a bodyguard from the US
Embassy in Paris. Dr Grenoy had temporized. If the American delegate wanted protection he would
have him flown by helicopter to the nearest military hospital but he could rest assured there
would be no recurrence of the previous night's dreadful events. The Château had been searched,
the local gendarmerie alerted, all entrances were guarded and he had installed floodlights in the
courtyard. If Professor Botwyk wished to leave the symposium he was perfectly welcome to, and
Grenoy had hinted his absence wouldn't be noticed. Botwyk had risen to the taunt and had insisted
on staying with the proviso that he be given the use of a firearm. Dr Abnekov had demanded
reciprocal rights, and had so alarmed Botwyk that he'd given way on the issue. 'All the same I'm
going to hold the French government fully responsible if I get bumped off,' he told Dr Grenoy
with a lack of logic that confirmed the cultural attaché in his belief that Anglo-Saxons were
incapable of rational and civilized thought. Having settled the problem temporarily he had taken
other measures in consultation with the Countess. 'If you refuse to leave,' he told her, 'at
least see that you serve a dinner that will take their minds off this embarrassing incident. The
finest wines and the very best food.'

The Countess had obliged. By the time the delegates had gorged their way through a
seven-course dinner, and had adjourned to discuss the future of the world, indigestion had been
added to their other concerns. On the agenda the question was down as 'Hunger in the Third World:
A Multi-modular Approach', and as usual there was dissension. In this case it lay in defining the
Third World.

Professor Manake of the University of Ghana objected to the term on the reasonable grounds
that as far as he knew there was only one world. The Saudi delegate argued that his country's
ownership of more oil and practically more capital in Europe and America than any other nation
put Arabia in the First World and everyone not conversant with the Koran nowhere. Dr Zukacs
countered, in spite of threats from Dr Abnekov that he was playing into the hands of
Zionist-Western Imperialism, by making the Marxist-Leninist point that Saudi Arabia hadn't
emerged from the feudal age, and Sir Arnold Brymay, while privately agreeing, silently thanked
God that no one had brought up the question of Ulster.

But the main conflict came, as usual, in the differing interpretation by Dr Abnekov and
Professor Botwyk. Dr Abnekov was particularly infuriated by Botwyk's accusation that the Soviet
Union was by definition an underdeveloped country because it couldn't even feed itself and didn't
begin to meet consumer demand.

'I demand a retraction of that insult to the achievements of the Socialist system,' shouted
Abnekov. 'Who was the first into space? Who supports the liberationist movements against
international capitalism? And what about the millions of proletarians who are suffering from
malnutrition in the United States?'

'So who has to buy our grain?' yelled Botwyk. 'And what do you give the starving millions in
Africa and Asia? Guns and rockets and tanks. You ever tried eating a goddam rocket?'

'When all peoples are freed '

'Like Afghanistan and Poland? And what about Czechoslovakia and Hungary? You call killing
people liberating them?'

'So Vietnam was freeing people? And how many murders are there in America every year? You
don't even know, there are so many.'

'Yeah, well that's different. That's freedom of choice,' said Botwyk, who was against the
uncontrolled sale of hand-guns but didn't feel like saying so.

Dr Grenoy tried to get the meeting back to the original topic. 'I think we ought to approach
the problem rationally,' he pleaded, only to be asked by Professor Manake what rational role the
French Foreign Legion were playing in Central Africa in solving anyone's problems except those of
French Presidents with a taste for diamonds.

'I suppose the Foreign Legion absorbs some of the scum of Europe,' said Sir Arnold, trying to
support Dr Grenoy, 'I remember once when I was in Tanganyika '

'Tanzania,' said Professor Manake. 'You British don't own Africa any longer, in case it's
escaped your attention.'

Dr Zukacs stuck his oar in. 'Untrue. Financial imperialism and neo-colonialism are the new
'

'Shut up, you damned Magyar,' shouted Dr Abnekov, who could see the insult to Ghana coming,
'not every country in Africa is a neo-colony. Some are highly progressive.'

'Like Uganda, I suppose,' said Botwyk. 'And who gave support to that cannibal Idi Amin? He
kept heads in his deep-freeze for a quick snack.'

'Protein deficiency is rife in the Belgian Congo,' said Sir Arnold.

'Zaïre,' said Professor Manake.

Dr Grenoy tried again. 'Let us examine the structuralism of economic distribution,' he said
firmly. 'It is a functional fact that the underdeveloped nations of the world have much to
contribute on a socio-cultural and spiritual basis to modern thinking. Levi-Strauss has shown
that in some parts of...'

'Listen, bud,' said Botwyk, who imagined Dr Grenoy was about to bring up the question of
Israel, 'I refuse to equate that bastard Khomeini with any spiritual basis. If you think holding
innocent US citizens hostage is a Christian act...'