Pigs Have Wings (3 page)

‘Here come the United States Marines, Gally,’ she said, and Gally, having replied with a good deal of satisfaction that he could see them with the naked eye, took the glass and drank deeply.

‘Happy birthday, Beach.’

‘Thank you, Mr Galahad.’

‘A sip for you, Penny?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Clarence?’

‘Eh? No, no thank you.’

‘Right,’ said Gally, finishing the contents of the glass. ‘And now to approach a painful task. Beach!’

‘Sir?’

‘Peruse this card.’

Beach took the postcard. As his gooseberry eyes scanned it, his lips moved the fraction of an inch. He looked like a butler who for two pins, had he not been restrained by the rigid rules of the Butlers’ Guild, might have smiled.

‘Well, Beach? We are waiting. Who is this Maudie?’

‘My niece, Mr Galahad.’

‘That is your story, is it?’

‘My brother’s daughter, Mr Galahad. She is what might be termed the Bohemian member of the family. As a young girl she ran away from home and became a barmaid in London.’

Gally pricked up his ears, like a specialist whose particular subject has come up in the course of conversation. It was as if razor blades had been mentioned in the presence of Mr Gillette.

‘A barmaid, eh? Where?’

‘At the Criterion, Mr Galahad.’

‘I must have known her, then. I knew them all at the Criterion. Though I don’t remember any Maudie Beach.’

‘For business purposes she adopted the
nom de guerre
of Montrose, sir.’

Gally uttered a glad cry.

‘Maudie Montrose? Is that who she was? Good heavens, of course I knew her. Charming girl with blue eyes and hair like a golden bird’s nest. Many is the buttered rum I have accepted at her hands. What’s become of her? Is she still working the old beer engine?’

‘Oh no, Mr Galahad. She married and retired.’

‘I hope her husband appreciates her many sterling qualities.’

‘He is no longer with us, sir. He contracted double pneumonia, standing outside a restaurant in the rain.’

‘What on earth did he do that for?’

‘It was in pursuance of his professional duties, sir. He was the proprietor of a private investigation bureau, Digby’s Day and Night Detectives. Now that he has passed on, my niece conducts the business herself, and I believe gives general satisfaction.’

Penny gave an interested squeak.

‘You mean she’s a sleuth? One of the bloodstain and magnifying glass brigade?’

‘Substantially that, miss. I gather that she leaves the rougher work to her subordinates.’

‘Still she’s a genuine private eye. Golly, it takes all sorts to make a world, doesn’t it?’

‘So I have been given to understand, miss,’ said Beach indulgently. He turned to Lord Emsworth, who, finding the Maudie topic one that did not grip, had started to scratch the Empress’s back with a piece of stick. ‘I should have mentioned, m’lord, that Sir Gregory has arrived.’

‘Oh, dash it. Where is he?’

‘I left him in the morning-room, m’lord, taking off his shoes. I received the impression that his feet were paining him. He expressed a desire to see your lordship at your lordship’s earliest convenience.’

Lord Emsworth became peevish.

‘What on earth does the man want, coming here? He knows that I regard him with the deepest suspicion. But I suppose I shall have to see him. If I don’t, it will only mean an unpleasant scene with Connie. She is always telling me I must be neighbourly.’

‘Thank goodness I don’t have to be,’ said Gally. ‘I can look young Parsloe in the eye and make him wilt. That’s the advantage of not having a position to keep up. That was interesting, what Beach was telling us, Clarence.’

‘Eh?’

‘About Maudie.’

‘Who is Maudie?’

‘All right, master-mind, let it go. Trot along and see what that thug wants.’

Lord Emsworth ambled off, followed at just the right respectful distance by his faithful butler, and Gally looked after them musingly.

‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘Do you know how long I have known Beach? Eighteen years, or it may have been nineteen, ever since I was a slip of a boy of forty. And only today have I discovered that his name is Sebastian. The same thing happened with Fruity Biffen. I don’t think you met my old friend Fruity Biffen, did you? He was living down here at a house along the Shrewsbury road till a short time ago, but he left before you arrived. In the old days he used to sign his I.O.U’s George J. Biffen, and it was only after the lapse of several years, one night when we were having supper together at Romano’s and he had lost some of his reserve owing to having mixed stout,
crème de menthe
, and old brandy, to see what it tasted like, that he revealed that the J. stood for –’

‘Gally,’ said Penny, who for some moments had been tracing arabesques on the turf with her shoe and giving other indications of nerving herself to an embarrassing task, ‘can you lend me two thousand pounds?’

It was never an easy matter to disconcert the Hon. Galahad. For half a century nursemaids, governesses, tutors, schoolmasters, Oxford dons, bookmakers, three-card-trick men, jellied eel sellers, skittle sharps, racecourse touts and members of the metropolitan police force had tried to do it, and all had failed. It was an axiom of the old Pelican Club that, no matter what slings and arrows outrageous fortune might launch in his direction, Gally Threepwood could be counted upon to preserve the calm insouciance of a pig on ice. But at these words a spasm definitely shook him, causing his black-rimmed monocle to leap as nimbly from his eye as the pince-nez had ever leaped from the nose of his brother Clarence. His look, as he stared at the girl, was the look of a man unable to believe his ears.

‘Two thousand pounds?’

‘It’s sorely needed.’

Gally gave a little sigh. He took her hand and patted it.

‘My child, I’m a pauper. I’m a younger son. In English families the heir scoops in the jackpot and all the runners-up get are the few crumbs that fall from his table. I could no more raise two thousand pounds than balance that pig there on the tip of my nose.’

‘I see. I was afraid you mightn’t be able to. All right, let’s forget about it.’

Gally looked at her, astounded. Did she really think that Galahad Threepwood, one of the most inquisitive men who ever knocked back a Scotch and soda, a man who wished he had a quid, or even ten shillings, for every time he had been called a damned old Nosey Parker, was as easily put off as this?

‘But, good heavens, aren’t you going to explain?’

‘Shall I? It depends whether you can keep a secret.’

‘Of course I can keep a secret. Why, if I were to reveal one tithe of the things I know about my circle of acquaintance, it would rock civilization. You can confide in me without a tremor.’

‘It would be a relief, I must say. Don’t you hate bottling things up?’

‘I prefer unbottling them. Go on. What’s all this about two thousand pounds? What on earth do you want it for?’

‘Well, it isn’t exactly for me. It’s for a man I know. It’s the old, old story, Gally. I’m in love.’

‘Aha!’

‘Aha to you. Why shouldn’t I be in love? People do fall in love, don’t they?’

‘I’ve known of cases.’

‘Well, I’m in love with Jerry.’

‘Jerry what?’

‘Jerry Vail.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose he’s ever heard of you.’

Gally was indignant.

‘What do you mean, he’s never heard of me? Of course he’s heard of me. England’s been ringing with my name for the last thirty years. If you weren’t a benighted Yank on your first visit to the British Isles, you would have my life history at your fingertips and treat me with the respect I deserve. But to return to the dream man. From the fact that you are going about trying to bite people’s ears on his behalf, I deduce that he is short of cash. A bit strapped for the ready, eh? What is sometimes called an impecunious suitor?’

‘Well, he gets by. He’s self-supporting.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s an author.’

‘Good heavens! Oh, well, I suppose authors are also God’s creatures.’

‘He writes thrillers. But you know the old gag. “Crime doesn’t pay … enough.” We couldn’t possibly get married on what he makes, even in a good year.’

‘But your father, the well-to-do-millionaire. Won’t he provide?’

‘Not for an impecunious suitor. If I were to write and tell Father I wanted to marry someone with an annual income of about thirty cents, he would whisk me back to America by the next boat, and I should be extremely lucky if I didn’t get interned at my old grandmother’s in Ohio.’

‘Stern parent stuff, eh? I thought all that sort of thing went out in the eighties.’

‘Yes, but they forgot to tell Father. And anyway, Jerry’s much too full of high principles and what have you to let himself be supported by his wife.’

‘You could talk him out of that.’

‘I wouldn’t want to. I admire him for it. If you’d seen some of the fortune-hunting dead-beats I’ve had to keep off with a stick since I ripened into womanhood, you could understand my thinking it’s a pleasant change to meet someone like Jerry. He’s swell, Gally. He has to be seen to be believed. And if only he can get this two thousand pounds …’

‘You might give me the inside stuff on that. Does he want it for some particular reason, or is it just that he likes two thousand pounds?’

‘He has a friend, a doctor, who wants to start one of those health places. Did you ever hear of Muldoon’s in America?’

‘Of course. I was always popping in and out of America in the old days.’

‘This would be something on the same sort of lines, only, being in England, more … what’s the word?’

‘Posh?’

‘I was going to say plushy. It would cater for tired Dukes and weary millionaires, all paying terrific fees. There’s a place like it up in Wales, Jerry tells me, which simply coins money. This would be the same sort of thing, only easier to get at because the house Jerry’s doctor friend has his eye on is in Surrey or Sussex or somewhere, much nearer London. The idea is that if Jerry could raise this two thousand pounds and buy in, he would become a junior partner. The boy friend would feel the patients’ pulses and prescribe diets and so on, and Jerry would take them out riding and play tennis and golf with them and generally be the life and soul of the party. It’s the sort of thing that would suit him down to the ground, and he would be awfully good at it. And he would have time to write his great novel.’

‘Is he writing a great novel?’

‘Well, naturally he hasn’t been able to start it yet, being so busy winning bread, but he says it’s all there, tucked away behind the frontal bone, and give him a little leisure, he says, a few quiet hours each day with nothing to distract him, and he’ll have it jumping through hoops and snapping sugar off its nose. Why are you looking like a stuffed frog?’

‘If you mean why am I looking like Rodin’s
Le Penseur
, I was wondering how the dickens you ever managed to get acquainted with this chap. Connie met you when you landed at Southampton, and after a single night in London brought you down here, where you have been ever since. I don’t see where you fitted in your billing and cooing.’

‘Think, Gally. Use the bean.’

‘No, it beats me.’

‘He was on the boat, chump. Jerry’s got vision. He realized that the only way for a writer to make a packet nowadays is to muscle in on the American market, so he took time off and dashed over to study it.’

‘How do you study an American market?’

‘I suppose you … well, study it, as it were.’

‘I see. Study it.’

‘That’s right. And when he had finished studying it, he hopped on the boat and came home.’

‘And who should be on the boat but you?’

‘Exactly. We met the second day out, and never looked back. Ah, those moonlight nights!’

‘Was there a moon?’

‘You bet there was a moon.’

Gally scratched his chin. He removed his monocle and polished it thoughtfully.

‘Well, I don’t know quite what to say. You have rather stunned your grey-haired old friend. You really love this chap?’

‘Haven’t you been listening?’

‘But you can’t have known him for more than about four days?’

‘So what?’

‘Well, I was just thinking … Heaven knows I’m not the man to counsel prudence and all that sort of thing. The only woman I ever wanted to marry was a music-hall serio who sang songs in pink tights. But –’

‘Well?’

‘I think I’d watch my step, if I were you, young Penny. There are some queer birds knocking around in this world. You can’t always go by what fellows say on ocean liners. Many a man who swears eternal devotion on the boat deck undergoes a striking change in his outlook when he hits dry land and gets among the blondes.’

‘Gally, you make me sick.’

‘I’m sorry. Just thought I’d mention it. Facts of life and all that sort of thing.’

‘If I found Jerry was like that, I’d give him the air in a second, though it would break my heart into a million quivering pieces. We Donaldsons have our pride.’

‘You betcher.’

‘But he isn’t. He’s a baa-lamb. And you can’t say a baa-lamb isn’t a nice thing to have around the house.’

‘Nothing could be nicer.’

‘Very well, then.’

The Empress uttered a plaintive grunt. A potato, full of calories, had detached itself from the rest of her ration and rolled outside the sty. Gally returned it courteously, and the noble animal thanked him with a brief snuffle.

‘But if he’s a baa-lamb, it makes it all the worse. I mean, it must be agony for you being parted from such a paragon. Here you are at Blandings, and there he is in London. Don’t you chafe?’

‘I did until today.’

‘Why until today?’

‘Because this morning sunshine broke through the clouds. Lady Constance told me she is taking me to London tomorrow for a fitting. Lord Vosper is driving us in his car.’

‘What do you think of Vosper?’

‘I like him.’

‘He likes you.’

‘Yes, so I’ve noticed.’

‘Good-looking chap.’

‘Very. But I was telling you. The expedition arrives in London tomorrow afternoon, so tomorrow night I shall be dining with my Jerry.’