Authors: P G Wodehouse
George Cyril Wellbeloved found himself at a loss.
‘What’s the trouble?’ he inquired. ‘Have you two had a row?’
Binstead shrugged his shoulders.
‘I would not describe it as a row. We did not see eye to eye on a certain matter, but I was perfectly civil to the old geezer. “If that’s the way you feel about it, Mr Bulstrode,” I said, “righty-ho,” and I walked out of the shop.’
‘Feel about what?’
‘I’m telling you. I must begin by saying that a few days ago Sir Gregory Parsloe said to me “Binstead,” he said, “a distant connexion of mine wants me to get him some of this stuff Slimmo. So order a half dozen bottles from Bulstrode in the High Street, the large economy size.” And I done so.’
‘Slimmo? What’s that?’
‘Slimmo, George, is a preparation for reducing the weight. It makes you thin. Putting it in a nutshell, it’s an anti-fat. You take it, if you see what I mean, and you come over all slender. Well, as I was saying, I got this Slimmo from Bulstrode, and then Sir Gregory says he doesn’t want it after all, and I can have it, and if I can get Bulstrode to refund the money, I can keep it.’
‘Bit of luck.’
‘So I thought. Five bob apiece those bottles cost, so I naturally estimated that that would be thirty bob for me, and very nice, too.’
‘Very nice.’
‘So I went to Bulstrode’s and you could have knocked me down with a feather when he flatly refused to cough up a penny.’
‘Coo!’
‘Said a sale was a sale, and that was all there was about it.’
‘So you’re stuck with the stuff?’
‘Oh, no. I’ve passed it on.’
‘How do you mean passed it on? Who to?’
‘A lady of our acquaintance.’
‘Eh?’
Binstead chuckled quietly.
‘You know me, George. I’m the fellow they were thinking about when they said you can’t keep a good man down. It was a bit of a knock at first, I’ll admit, when I found myself landed with six bottles of anti-fat medicine the large economy size, and no way of cashing in on them, but it wasn’t long before I began to see that those bottles had been sent for a purpose. Here are you, Herbert Binstead, I said to myself, with a lot of money invested on Queen of Matchingham for the Fat Pigs event at the Agricultural Show, and there, in a sty at your elbow as you might say, is Empress of Blandings, the Queen’s only rival. What simpler, Herbert, I said to myself, than to empty those large economy size bottles of Slimmo into the Empress’s trough of food …’
He broke off. A loud, agonized cry had proceeded from his companion’s lips. George Cyril Wellbeloved was gaping at him pallidly.
‘You didn’t?’
‘Yes, I did. All six bottles. A man’s got to look after his own interests, hasn’t he? Here, where are you off to?’
George Cyril Wellbeloved was off to get his bicycle, to pedal like a racing cyclist to Matchingham Hall, trusting that he might not be too late, that there might still be time to snatch the tainted food from Queen of Matchingham’s lips.
It was an idle hope. The Queen, like the Empress, was a pig who believed in getting hers quick. If food was placed in her trough, she accorded it her immediate attention. George Cyril, leaning limply on the rail of the sty, gave a low moan and averted his eyes.
The moon shone down on an empty trough.
(From the
Bridgnorth, Shifnal and Albrighton Argus
, with which is incorporated the
Wheat Growers’ Intelligencer and Stock Breeders’ Gazetteer
). It isn’t often, goodness knows, that we are urged to quit the prose with which we earn our daily bread and take to poetry instead. But great events come now and then which call for the poetic pen. So you will pardon us, we know, if, dealing with the Shropshire Show, we lisp in numbers to explain that Emp. of Blandings won again.
This year her chance at first appeared a slender one, for it was feared that she, alas, had had her day. On every side you heard folks say ‘She’s won it twice. She can’t repeat. ’Twould be a super-porcine feat.’ ’Twas freely whispered up and down that Fate would place the laurel crown this time on the capacious bean of Matchingham’s up-and-coming Queen. For though the Emp. is fat, the latter, they felt, would prove distinctly fatter. ‘Her too, too solid flesh,’ they said, ‘’ll be sure to cop that silver medal.’
Such was the story which one heard, but nothing of the sort occurred, and, as in both the previous years, a hurricane of rousing cheers from the nobility and gentry acclaimed the Blandings Castle entry as all the judges – Colonel Brice, Sir Henry Boole and Major Price (three minds with but a single thought whose verdict none can set at naught) – announced the Fat Pigs champ to be Lord Emsworth’s portly nominee.
With reference to her success, she gave a statement to the Press. ‘Although,’ she said, ‘one hates to brag, I knew the thing was in the bag. Though I admit the Queen is stout, the issue never was in doubt. Clean living did the trick,’ said she. ‘To that I owe my victory.’
Ah, what a lesson does it teach to all of us, that splendid speech!
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First published in the United Kingdom in 1952 by Herbert Jenkins Ltd
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