Service with a Smile (19 page)

‘He
owns it,’ she said, taking the cheque. ‘I used to be his secretary. Lord
Tilbury.’

‘Oh, that
chap? Good heavens, what are you doing?’

‘I’m
tearing up his cheque.’

Lord
Ickenham stopped her with a horrified gesture.

‘My
dear child, you mustn’t dream of doing such a thing. You need it in your
business.’

‘But I
can’t take his money now.’

‘Of
course you can. Stick to it like glue. He has far too much money, anyway, and
it’s very bad for him. Look on adhering to this five hundred as a kindly act in
his best interests, designed to make him a better, deeper man. It may prove a
turning point in his life. I would take five hundred pounds off Tilbury myself,
if only I could think of a way of doing it. I should feel it was my duty. But
if you have scruples, though you haven’t any business having any, not being a
curate, look on it as a loan. You could even pay him interest. Not too much, of
course. You don’t want to spoil him. I would suggest a yearly fiver,
accompanied, as a pretty gesture, by a bunch of white violets. But you can
think that over at your leisure. The problem that presents itself now, it
seems to me, is Where do you go from here? I take it that you will wish to
return to London, but you don’t want another stuffy journey in the train. I’ll
tell you what,’ said Lord Ickenham, inspired. ‘We’ll hire a car. I’ll pay for
it, and you can reimburse me when that typewriting bureau of yours gets going.
Don’t forget the bunch of white violets.’

‘Oh,
Lord Ickenham!’ said Lavender Briggs devoutly. ‘What a help you are!’

‘Help
is a thing I am always glad to be of,’ said Lord Ickenham in his courteous
way.

3

As he turned from waving a
genial hand at the departing car and set out on the two-mile walk back to the
castle, Lord Ickenham was feeling the gentle glow of satisfaction which comes
to a man of goodwill conscious of having acted for the best. There had been a
moment when his guardian angel, who liked him to draw the line somewhere, had
shown a disposition to become critical of his recent activities, whispering in
his ear that he ought not to have abetted Lavender Briggs in what, in the
guardian angel’s opinion, was pretty raw work and virtually tantamount to
robbery from the person, but he had his answer ready. Lavender Briggs, he
replied in rebuttal, needed the stuff, and when you find a hard-up girl who
needs the stuff, the essential thing is to see that she gets it and not to be
fussy about the methods employed to that end.

This,
moreover, he pointed out, was a special case. As he had reminded La Briggs, it
was imperative for the good of his soul that Lord Tilbury should receive an
occasional punch in the bank balance, and to have neglected this opportunity of
encouraging his spiritual growth would have been mistaken kindness. His
guardian angel, who could follow a piece of reasoning all right if you
explained it carefully to him, apologized and said he hadn’t thought of that.
Forget the whole thing, the guardian angel said.

With
the approach of evening the day had lost much of its oppressive warmth, but
Lord Ickenham kept his walking pace down to a quiet amble, strolling in
leisurely fashion and pausing from time to time to inspect the local flora and
fauna: and he had stopped to exchange a friendly glance with a rabbit whose
looks he liked, when he became aware that there were others more in tune than
himself with the modern spirit of rush and bustle. Running footsteps sounded
from behind him, and a voice was calling his name. Turning, he saw that the
Duke of Dunstable’s nephew, Archie Gilpin, was approaching him at a high rate
of m.p.h.

With
Archie’s brother Ricky, the poet, who supplemented the meagre earnings of a
minor bard by selling onion soup in a bar off Leicester Square, Lord Ickenham
had long been acquainted, but Archie, except for seeing him at meals, he
scarcely knew. Nevertheless, he greeted him with a cordial smile. The urgency
of his manner suggested that here was another fellow human being in need of his
advice and counsel, and, as always, he was delighted to give it. His services
were never confined to close personal friends.

‘Hullo
there,’ he said. ‘Getting into training for the village sports?’

Archie
came to a halt, panting. He was a singularly handsome young man. Pongo at the
Milton Street registry office had described him as good-looking, but Lord
Ickenham, now that he had met him, considered this an understatement. Tall and
slim and elegant, he looked like a film star of the better type. He also, Lord
Ickenham was sorry to see, looked worried, and he prepared to do all that was in
his power to brighten life for him.

Archie
seemed embarrassed. He ran a hand through his hair, which was longer than Lord
Ickenham liked hair to be. A visit to a hairdresser would in his opinion have
done this Gilpin a world of good. But artists, he reminded himself, are
traditionally shy of the scissors, and to do the lad justice he did not wear
sideburns.

‘I say,’
said Archie, when he had finished panting. ‘Could you spare me a moment?’

‘Dozens,
my dear fellow. Help yourself.’

‘I don’t
want to interrupt you, if you’re thinking about something.’

‘I am
always thinking about something, but I can Switch it off in a second, just like
that. What seems to be the trouble?’

‘Well,
I’m in a bit of a jam, and my brother Ricky once told me that if ever I got
into a jam of any kind, you were the man to get me out of it. When it comes to
fixing things, he said, you have to be seen to be believed.’

Lord
Ickenham was gratified as any man would have been. One always likes a word of
praise from the fans.

‘He
probably had in mind the time when I was instrumental in getting him the money
that enabled him to buy that onion soup bar of his. Oddly enough, it was not
till I had it explained to me by my nephew Pongo that I knew what an onion soup
bar was. My life is lived in the country, and we rustics so soon get out of
touch. Pongo tells me these bars abound in the Piccadilly Circus and Leicester
Square neighbourhoods of London, staying open all night and selling onion soup
to the survivors of bottle parties. It sounds the ideal life. Is Ricky still
gainfully employed in that line?’

‘Oh,
rather. But may I tell you about my
jam?’

Lord
Ickenham clicked an apologetic tongue.

‘Of
course, yes. I’m sorry. I’m afraid we old gaffers from the country have a
tendency to ramble on. When I start talking you must stop me, even if you haven’t
heard it before. This jam of yours, you were saying. Not a bad jam, I trust?’

Once
more, Archie Gilpin ran a hand through his hair. The impression he conveyed was
that if the vultures gnawing at his bosom did not shortly change their act, he
would begin pulling it out in handfuls.

‘It’s
the dickens of a jam. I don’t know what to do about it. Have you ever been
engaged to two girls at the same time?’

‘Not to
my recollection. Nor, now I come to think of it, do I know of anyone who has,
except of course King Solomon and the late Brigham Young.’

‘Well,
that’s what I am.’

‘You?
Engaged to two girls? Half a second, let me work this out.’

There
was a pause, during which Lord Ickenham seemed to be doing sums in his head.

‘No,’
he said at length. ‘I don’t get it. I am aware that you are betrothed to my
little friend Myra Schoonmaker, but however often I tot up the score, that
only makes one. You’re sure you haven’t slipped up somewhere in your figures?’

Archie Gilpin’s
eye rolled in a fine frenzy, glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to
heaven, though one would more readily have expected that sort of thing from his
poetic brother.

‘Look
here,’ he said. ‘Could we sit down somewhere? This is going to take some time.’

‘Why,
certainly. There should be good sitting on that stile over there. And take all
the time you want.’

Seated
on the stile, his deportment rather like that of a young Hindu fakir lying for
the first time on the traditional bed of spikes, Archie Gilpin seemed still to
find a difficulty in clothing his thoughts in words. He cleared his throat a
good deal and once more disturbed his hair with a fevered hand. He reminded
Lord Ickenham of a nervous after-dinner speaker suddenly aware, after rising to
his feet, that he has completely forgotten the story of the two Irishmen, Pat
and Mike, on which he had been relying to convulse his audience.

‘I don’t
know where to begin.’

‘At the
beginning, don’t you think? I often feel that that is best. Then work through the
middle and from there, taking your time, carry on to the end.’

This
appeared to strike Archie Gilpin as reasonable. He became a little calmer.

‘Well,
it started with old Tilbury. You know I had a job on one of old Tilbury’s
papers?’

‘Had?’

‘He
fired me last week.’

‘Too
bad. Why was that?’

‘He
didn’t like a caricature I’d drawn of him.’

‘You
shouldn’t have shown it to him.’

‘I didn’t,
not exactly. I showed it to Millicent. I thought she would get a laugh out of
it.’

‘Millicent?’

‘His
secretary. Millicent Rigby. Girl I was engaged to.’

‘That
you
were
engaged to?’

‘Yes.
She broke it off.’

‘Of
course, yes,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘I remember now that Pongo told me he had met
a fellow who knew a. chap who was acquainted with Miss Rigby, and she had told
him — the chap, not the fellow — that she had handed you the pink slip. What
had you done to incur her displeasure? You showed her this caricature, you say,
but why should that have offended her? Tilbury, if I followed you correctly,
was its subject, not she.’

A curious
rumbling sound told Lord Ickenham that his companion had uttered a hollow
groan. It occurred to him, as the other’s hand once more shot to his head, that
if this gesture was to be repeated much oftener, Archie, like Lady Constance,
would have to go to Shrewsbury for a hair-do.

‘Yes, I
know. Yes, that’s right. But I ought to have mentioned that, thinking Tilbury
was out at lunch, I went and showed it to her in his office. I put it on his
desk, and we were looking at it with our heads together.’

‘Ah,’
said Lord Ickenham, beginning to understand. ‘And he wasn’t out at lunch? He
came back?’

‘Yes.’

‘Saw
your handiwork?’

‘Yes.’

‘Took
umbrage?’

‘Yes.’

‘And
erased your name from the list of his skilled assistants?’

‘Yes.
It was his first move. And later on Millicent ticked me off in no uncertain
manner for being such a fool as to bring the thing into the old blighter’s
office, because anyone but a perfect idiot would have known that he was bound
to come in, and hadn’t I any sense at all, and … Oh, well, you know what
happens when a girl starts letting a fellow have it. One word led to another,
if you know what I mean, and it wasn’t long before she was breaking the
engagement and telling me she didn’t want to see or speak to me again in this
world or the next. She didn’t actually return the ring, because I hadn’t given
her one, but apart from that she made the thing seem pretty final.’

Lord
Ickenham was silent for a moment. He was thinking of the six times his Jane had
done the same thing by him years ago, and he knew how the other must be
feeling.

‘I see,’
he said. ‘Well, my heart bleeds for you, my poor young piece of human wreckage,
but this bears out what I was saying, that the sum total of your fiancées is
not two, but one. It’s nice to have got that straight.’

Another
hollow groan escaped Archie Gilpin. His hand rose, but Lord Ickenham caught it
in time.

‘I
wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t touch it. It looks lovely.’

‘But
you don’t know what happened just now. You could have knocked me down with a
toothpick. I was coming along by the Emsworth Arms, and I saw her.’

‘Miss
Rigby?’

‘Yes.’

‘Probably
a mirage.’

‘No she
was there in the flesh.’

‘What
in the world was she doing in Market Blandings?’

‘Apparently
old Tilbury came here for some reason …

Lord
Ickenham nodded. He knew that reason.

‘…
and he brought her with him, to do his letters. She had popped out for a breath
of air, and I came along, and we met, face to face, just about opposite the
Jubilee Memorial watering-trough in the High Street.’

‘Dramatic.’

‘I was
never so surprised in my life.’

‘I can
readily imagine it. Was she cold and proud and aloof?’

‘Not by
a jugful. She was all over me. Remorse had set in. She said she was sorry she
had blown a fuse, and wept a good deal and … well, there we were, so to
speak.’