We arrived at Llawrfaennenogstumdwy as the sun stretched western mountain shadows across the river Abergynolwnfi, frothing its way excitedly among boulders before pausing to catch its breath in smooth, tree-canopied pools. I drove along the twisting riverbank road tingling with the prospect of hauling out trout like a piscine sausage machine.
‘Now, I don’t want you to fret about me at all this holiday,’ Sandra implored. ‘I only want you to relax and enjoy yourself.’
I said defensively, ‘I know you’d prefer the Med, but honestly, I’m fed up with crowded airports, garlic and lunatic Alfa drivers. Anyway, bright sunlight has a worse effect on the skin than neat vodka on the stomach.’
‘I was being utterly selfish, darling,’ she continued contritely. ‘I shan’t be in the slightest bored, I shall sit on the bank and watch. I’ve brought lots of Agatha Christies and my tatting, and if it rains there’s always television in Welsh, which must he interesting. It’s
you
who needs to unwind and recharge your batteries after the stress of overwork, and if I
did
want to see Cannes, well, there’s other years.’
‘You sound like Dr Quaggy,’ I grumbled.
A final twist revealed the Rising Trout Hotel, a turreted red-brick wysteria-decked mansion arising amid hydrangeas, with croquet lawn, putting green and gazebo.
‘Looks all right,’ Sandra admitted.
‘Well, I heard about it from this Panacea Drugs salesman, and they do themselves sybaritically, travelling on expenses.’
A slight, sandy man in blue blazer, sharply creased grey trousers and striped tie hurried down the stone front steps.
‘Mr Gordon? Colonel Coots. A pleasure, welcoming you to my hotel.’
‘How’s the fishing?’ I demanded.
‘Stupendous. Fantastic. Never known it better. Last week’s guests were thinking of clubbing together for a Birdseye frozen-food lorry, to take their catch home. Sniffed our wonderful mountain air? Does miracles for tired businessmen. You’re in life insurance, I believe?’
I nodded. I was also fed up on holiday with fellow-guests cadging medical advice, having fits or babies, or dropping dead, putting me to endless trouble.
‘I’m sure you’ll be very satisfied with the Cyhiraeth room – a Celtic goddess of the streams, you know. Bronwen! The bags!’
From the Gothic front door appeared a grinning teenage blonde in black skirt and thin white blouse. She was the most advanced case of mammary hyperplasia I had seen. They were like Belisha beacons.
‘You’d be from London, would you?’ Bronwen led us into a mullion-windowed room overlooking the river.
‘Yes, I have an office there, insuring lives.’ I stared, fascinated. They seemed about to burst from their bra like the start of a hot-air balloon race.
‘It must be lovely, living in London and that, and going to all those discos.’
‘We don’t terribly often,’ murmured Sandra.
‘I’m sure you’ll find the bed comfy. Brand-new mattress. Sponge rubber.’ She bounced it vigorously.
‘Very pneumatic,’ I agreed.
‘You’d like me to give you a cup of tea in bed?’
‘Very much.’
‘Dinner’s roast chicken. If you want me any time, just ring.’ I fumbled for money. ‘Oooo! Thank you, sir.’
‘You grossly overtipped that girl,’ complained Sandra as the door shut.
‘In a place like this it’s essential to establish good relations with the staff. Bad service would utterly ruin my relaxing holiday.’
I swished in the lofty room my expensive new carbon rod, which the tackle-shop man assured me would catch fish in the Sahara. I inspected my costly aluminium reels, floating and sinking lines, and buffet of mouth-watering fishing flies. I had visited the shop for a couple of cheap nylon casts, but was carried away like Aladdin and ended with hand-warmer, boot-dryer, trout-smoker, pairs of thermal underwear, dozen salmon-decorated sherry glasses, set of hunting-scene tablemats, and ultrasonic Japanese device for scientifically repelling mosquitoes, which I later suspected of emitting the mating call of Welsh ones.
Leaving Sandra to unpack, I descended to a timbered bar decorated with the cased corpses of fish. Already into his gin and tonic was Sir Rollo Basingstoke, Surgeon to the Queen.
‘Rollo, you old bastard!’ He was a handsome thickset man with thick grey wavy hair and thick-framed glasses. ‘Haven’t seen you since that wine and cheese party.’
He grabbed my lapels. ‘I am Mr Basingstoke, director of the Mayfair estate agents Basingstoke and Bolingbroke.’ He hissed, glaring into my eyes, ‘I heard of this hideaway from a Panacea Drugs rep, and I’ve already had enough holidays ruined by acute abdomens at two in the morning. Can’t charge a fee, either. So keep your mouth shut, doctor.’
I objected, ‘You’ve got the wrong chap. I’m Mr Gordon, a life insurance salesman. Ask the Colonel,’ I mentioned, as he appeared behind the bar.
We guffawed loudly. ‘Written any good policies lately?’ Rollo inquired.
‘Not bad. We’re doing jolly well out of hang-gliding. How’s the property racket?’
‘Land’s the one commodity they can’t make any more of, you know.’
‘What a brilliant thought!’
‘Rollo!’ exclaimed Sandra from the door.
‘Ssssshhhhh!’ He applied his lips to her ear.
She smiled. ‘But how nice to enjoy Lady Basingstoke’s company,’ she whispered back, ‘while our menfolk are catching our dinner.’
Sandra is impressed with her Ladyship. She does not know her as I did, a sexy staff nurse on orthopaedics who threw up over the sub-dean at a hospital party.
The dining room was dark-panelled, decorated with sporting prints, and staffed by Bronwen embellished with a little frilly apron.
She leaned over me solicitously. ‘Breast or leg?’
‘Breast.’
‘But you
never
eat the white meat at home!’ exclaimed Sandra.
‘Holiday’s time for a change,’ I said uneasily.
The next day was lovely. I caught nothing.
The colonel shook his head knowingly. ‘The water’s too murky. The peat, you understand. Ruins it, bad as dregs in port. Wait till next week, you’ll be beating off the rising fish with the butt end of your rod.’
Rollo caught nothing, either. I found him chatting over gin and tonics in the bar before dinner with a pleasant-looking fellow introduced as Dalrymple.
‘I’m a chartered accountant,’ Dalrymple conveyed at once. ‘You’re in life insurance? Must be a jolly harrowing job, I mean, wondering which customer will expire next and demand his money back.’
I agreed quickly. ‘Give me Russian Roulette before breakfast any time. But you,’ I diverted him, ‘must be frightfully clever fiddling people’s income tax?’
‘Nothing to it,’ he assured me airily. ‘All done by computers, easy as playing Space Invaders in amusement arcades.’
I was outraged. ‘My accountant claims he sweats blood over those bits about woodlands and housekeeper being a relative and payments under the Irish Church Acts.’
Dalrymple grinned. ‘And charges for it? Got to preserve the mumbo-jumbo of the accountancy profession.’
Rollo laughed. ‘Like the medical profession.’
I winked at him fiercely.
Rollo added hastily, ‘Wasn’t it Shaw who said all professions were conspiracies against laity?’
‘Oh, doctors,’ said Dalrymple disgustedly. ‘Never tell you
anything
, do they? You should hear about my sister.’
‘Please,’ invited Rollo eagerly.
‘She went to the doctor and said she’d this funny feeling up and down her spine. The doctor gave her some pills. They give pills for everything, don’t they? Broken legs, I wouldn’t be surprised. You won’t believe it, but the very next week she came out all over with chicken-pox.’
I rubbed my chin. ‘Sure it wasn’t shingles? The two conditions are related, you know, same virus. Shingles often starts off with funny feelings in the skin.’ Rollo violently elbowed me. ‘My aunt had it during the war,’ I explained. ‘She has talked of little else since.’
We were joined by another decent-looking chap introducing himself as Harrington.
‘I’m a commissioner for oaths,’ he volunteered.
‘Must be interesting,’ I murmured politely.
He gave a low whistle. ‘You’d be amazed at some of the oaths people commission these days. You’re in the Cyhiraeth room? Did you know the shriek she used to utter foretold imminent death?’
‘Like a crash bleep for the cardiac arrest trolley,’ mentioned Dalrymple with a laugh. ‘I mean, you’re always seeing it on television.’
‘I’m hooked on the medical programmes,’ Harrington agreed. ‘Those miraculous heart transplants! Mind, they don’t seem to do the patients much good, but they’re wonderful for the surgeons’ exhibitionism.’
‘The sight of blood makes me faint.’ Rollo held a hand over his eyes.
‘I’ve a distant cousin who’s a surgeon,’ Harrington amplified. ‘Specializes in the feet. Never examined a patient above the ankle in his life.’
I asked about big property deals up Rollo’s sleeve.
He dropped his voice. ‘Yes! Top secret. I’ve been retained by Her Majesty to dispose of Windsor Castle to a consortium of Arabs. Unbelievable, isn’t it?’ The accountant and commissioner of oaths stared wide-eyed. ‘It’s for pressing reasons of State, which I certainly won’t divulge. I’ve just sent out the particulars: period residence, easy reach London and airport, stone-built, extensive views and many interesting features. I was putting my name on a board outside the front gate, but the authorities are proving rather petty.’
Bronwen appeared behind the bar. We fell silent. We gazed upon the Delectable Mountains. ‘Can I get you anything to drink, now?’
‘Four gin and titties,’ I said. ‘Tonics,’ I said.
‘Large ones?’
‘Enormous,’ I said.
A week passed. I had caught nothing. Neither had Rollo. The colonel eyed the river penetratingly. He said the water was too clear.
I met in the bar an agreeable new arrival called Forshaw.
‘What’s your line of country?’ he asked amiably. ‘Snap! So am I. What insurance company?’
‘The Rocksolid,’ I replied hastily. I knew of it only because my life’s savings were deposited therein.
He whistled. ‘Lucky sod.’
‘Really?’ I asked vaguely.
‘Their sales commission, of course. Know what we say in the trade?’ He grinned. ‘Rocksolid bribe their reps so much to flog policies, it’s a wonder there’s anything left in the kitty for the customers.’
I asked in alarm, ‘I hope they’re not going bust?’
He laughed. ‘Well, they say your directors sleep with tickets to South America and dark glasses at the bedside. Tell me, how do you calculate your actuarial index?’
‘Never talk shop on holiday,’ I said severely.
I slunk out, saying I had just remembered that I never drank before meals, doctor’s orders.
It rained for three days. I had still caught nothing. Neither had Rollo. The colonel declared thoughtfully that the water was too drumbly. I asked shortly what drumbly meant. He looked pained, and said he imagined that every real fisherman knew about drumbly.
Sandra said at dinner, ‘Don’t keep looking down Bronwen’s cleavage like that when she serves the soup, people are beginning to nudge.’
I said, flustered, ‘If Quasimodo was serving it, I wouldn’t notice the hump?’
She persisted severely, ‘I’d have imagined boobs as boringly commonplace to you as udders to farmers.’
I took a lofty artistic tone. ‘The female breast is never drained of its Rubenesque beauty. As a sixteenth-century poet carolled,
Heigh ho, fair Rosaline! Her paps are centres of delight, Her breasts are orbs of heavenly frame
. Quite charming.’
‘You’re just a dirty old doctor,’ Sandra corrected me.
Rollo, Dalrymple, Harrington and myself enjoyed a long talk in the bar after dinner about the effect of property values on life insurance, accountancy and oath commissioning, and vice versa. We were surprised when the colonel announced testily it was well past midnight and he was locking up. I tripped over a suitcase which Sandra had stupidly left in the middle of the bedroom floor. She expressed the hope from the pillow that next year I should be able to find an alcoholics’ home with fishing rights.
In the morning Sandra stayed in the lounge with a book of crossword puzzles. She said that my catching nothing for ten days gave her the feeling of sitting to watch the trees grow, which was hardly less interesting, furthermore Lady Basingstoke seemed to imagine she was a combination of Princess Di and Mrs Thatcher, also she sensed a nasty cold coming on, but if the holiday was relaxing me she would not give all this a second thought.
I caught a fish! I hastened back to display it.
‘
That?
’ cried Sandra. ‘Why, if it was in a tin of sardines, it would contravene the Trade Descriptions Act.’
I was deeply hurt. ‘I shall lay it in state with the other catches on that marble slab in the hall,’ I told her with dignity.
‘Then I shall disown both of you.’ She returned to her crossword. ‘I’ve just turned said Pepys into dyspepsia.’
Rollo was laying a fish on the slab, too.
‘Mine’s bigger than yours,’ I claimed at once.
‘Of course it isn’t,’ he replied huffily.
‘It is.’
‘It is
not
!’
‘A good quarter-inch in it. Look.’
‘Rubbish. It’s the way you’re positioning them.’
‘Are you accusing me of being unsporting?’
He drew himself up. ‘I shall obtain a ruler.’
Measuring, he exclaimed triumphantly, ‘There! A clear three-eighths of an inch in my favour. I should be obliged if in future you did not cast slurs on my veracity.’
I decided that surgeons fish in the same spirit as they practise, ruthlessly competitively. The colonel told me as I returned the ruler that the water was now too high. Tomorrow the fish would be leaping thicker than the midges.
Rollo was up to something. Next morning after breakfast he slipped off with a veal and ham pie and a bottle of claret. In Cyhiraeth, Bronwen was making the bed. She asked as she bent to her work about the availability of pop concerts in London and if I knew any of the stars. Lovely view.
On the front steps stood Mr and Mrs Forshaw, whom I had been avoiding by dodging behind trees and into the loo. After chatting about the weather, Mr Forshaw asked, ‘What’s your portfolio?’
‘Samsonite,’ I said.
He stared, then laughed. ‘I like it! But what are you holding?’
I looked. ‘A fishing rod.’
He slapped his thigh. ‘We need a few comics in the business. Who’s your broker?’
‘I don’t know, except he’s got three balls.’
He did not laugh so heartily, and looked at me from the sides of his eyes. I strolled away noticing him muttering something to his wife and tapping his forehead.
I caught nothing. The colonel stared, assessing the water, and expertly pronounced it too flat. We thought of leaving for home early. Sandra had finished the crosswords.
As everyone sat down to dinner, the colonel appeared, agitated.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he implored. ‘Could you help yourselves from the kitchen hatch? Young Bronwen’s been suddenly taken ill. I must phone for the doctor.’
I exclaimed, ‘What’s she got?’
He replied distractedly, ‘I don’t know, but it’s something the matter with her chest.’
I instantly stood and pronounced, ‘Don’t worry! I am a doctor.’
So did Rollo, Dalrymple and Harrington.
I persuaded Sandra to stay.
On our last day, the colonel eyed the river, shook his head and declared that the water was too normal. I caught a huge fish.
‘Well, it’s Moby Dick compared to the other one,’ Sandra conceded. ‘It’ll end your holiday usefully relaxed, even if it’s the biggest miracle since the feeding of the five thousand.’
As I proudly lay it on the post-mortem slab, Rollo appeared puffing under the weight of two supermarket bags crammed with fish.
‘Congratulations!’ I exclaimed, green as the river weed with envy. ‘What brilliance. What skill.’
‘It’s easy if you know how,’ Rollo imparted modestly. ‘Like surgery.’
‘I suppose,’ I advanced under the camouflage of a laugh, ‘you weren’t using one of those powerful hormonal baits? Or maybe a lump of gorgonzola?’
He lowered his voice. ‘No, but I found from the local community medicine feller where the village sewer’s been leaking into the river all summer. The fish are as thick there as customers in McDonald’s on a Saturday night.’
‘You might have told
me
,’ I complained bitterly.
‘I wanted to, after breakfast. But you’d disappeared to go over Bronwen’s chest again. You can’t have everything, can you? Will you and Sandra join us tonight, to help out with the eating? I happen to know that the colonel has an excellent bottle or two of Mersault ’78.’