Alan Hunter: Landed Gently

‘ Come in, Dutt.’

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

‘Grab yourself one of Mrs Jarvis’s mince pies and have a warm by the fire.’

‘Don’t mind if I do, sir. It’s perishing cold enough for brass monkeys outside.’

Gratefully the cockney sergeant tugged off his gauntlets and spread his numbed hands before the blaze. There was always a good fire in Gently’s room, he remembered; his senior had picked himself a jewel among landladies. It wasn’t all bunce, being a family man…

Down below the frosty dusk of a December afternoon was settling in the quiet Finchley road. Opposite Gently’s rooms the trees of a public garden made a gloomy and forbidding mass, and the streetlights, old-fashioned and inadequate, seemed to withdraw inside their tear-shaped globes. Another dose of fog on the way, no doubt. Up here you didn’t notice it so much, but as soon as you got down to St John’s Wood or a bit further in that direction… Dutt shivered and sank his teeth into one of the still hot mince pies.

‘These is a bit of all right, sir!’ he mumbled crumbily.

His chief grinned at him over the expensive new pike-rod he was playing with. ‘They’re laced with brandy, Dutt… it’s Mrs Jarvis’s special recipe. And talking of brandy, how about a drop of something?’

‘Yes, sir — you bet.’

‘Whisky would you like?’

‘Same as you, sir.’

Gently put down the rod with care and went over to the tray on his sideboard. Strange it was going to be, spending Christmas away from his familiar and comfortable rooms. Here were his usual collection of bottles, beside them a lavish bowl of fruit and a dish of nuts; holly garnished the photographs of his police college days, the case of his twenty-six-pound pike, the top of the bookcase with its rows of Notable British Trials and angling classics. And in the deep, generous Edwardian fireplace, magnificently wasteful, burned the sort of fire that Mrs Jarvis knew he liked, casting its flickering glow on the copper coal scuttle. Twenty… no, twenty-one Christmases he had spent in this room, with Dutt and the others dropping in, sometimes bringing their families.

‘Cheers, Dutt.’

‘All the best, sir.’

‘Let’s hope it’s a quiet Christmas.’

‘Would make a change, sir, wouldn’t it?’

Gently picked up the rod again and swished it once or twice experimentally. A real beauty, that. It must have cost his colleagues over a tenner. And his name on it, too, engraved on a little oval silver plate let into the butt.

‘Anyway, they won’t be calling me out! That’s one consolation.’

‘No, sir. You’re fireproof this time. They can’t call out the guest of a flipping chief constable.’

‘And it’s a long way away, up there in North Northshire. I shan’t look at a paper, Dutt, all the time I’m away.’

‘Don’t blame you either, sir. Shut the hangar door is what I says.’

Gently sighed softly and delicately dismantled the rod. He had to keep on telling himself that he liked the idea of being out of London for Christmas. Out of the blue it had come, that invitation. Two mornings ago he’d found a memo on his desk saying that the assistant commissioner wanted to see him.

‘Didn’t know you were a pal of Sir Daynes Broke, Gently.’

‘Sir Daynes Broke…?’ Gently had stared at him.

‘He’s been on the phone about that escaped convict, and asked if you were getting a break over Christmas. I said yes, probably, and he asked if you’d be interested in some good pike-fishing. You are, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘That’s what I told him. And he came up with an invitation for you to spend Christmas with him. I must say some of you blokes don’t waste your time when you’re out in the country.’

They’d all envied him, of course. They’d been collecting several weeks to make him a present to commemorate his twenty years with the Central Office, and a pike-rod was just the thing. But Gently himself wasn’t so sure of his good fortune. After twenty-one Christmases spent with Mrs Jarvis, he’d got into a pleasant rut, a rut that just suited him.

And all he knew of Sir Daynes, anyway, was what he had seen of him when he’d been out on a case.

‘That’s a good drop of Scotch, sir!’ Dutt was smacking his lips appreciatively.

‘Have another one, Dutt.’

‘No, sir. Not if you don’t mind.’

‘I suppose I’d better be getting my traps together. That train goes in an hour. And if I know Liverpool Street two days before Christmas…’

Dutt fumbled in the pocket of his overcoat and produced a small package done up in Christmas wrapping paper.

‘Here, sir. From the missus and me and the kids.’

Gently untied a wealth of tinselled tape to reveal a pretty little sandblasted briar, almost an exact replica of the one Dutt had seen in his chief’s mouth so often.

‘If you don’t like it, sir, they says they’ll change it, but I reckoned it was round about the mark…’

‘It’s perfect, Dutt. It’s the one I’d have chosen myself.’

‘The missus thought as how you might like a change, but I never see you smoke nothing different.’

‘I wouldn’t, Dutt, not if anyone paid me. And while we’re on the subject of presents, there are some things here for the missus, you and the kids.’

He pulled open the door of one of the cupboards under the bookcase and revealed a giant Christmas stocking. It was packed very tight, and looked excitingly nobbly, and the label that floated from it was cut in the shape of a dangling pair of handcuffs.

‘Don’t open it now… it’d take too long. By the way, what size was it you said the missus took?’

Dutt clasped the stocking to him grotesquely, something suspiciously like moisture in his eye. ‘Thanks, sir… you’re one of the best! The kiddies are going to miss you coming round, sir.’

‘I’m going to miss them too, but I’ll look in when I get back. You’ll be having a party at New Year, won’t you?’

‘Yes, sir — I got a split duty.’

‘All right then, that’s a date.’

They stood for some moments in silence, one each side of the lazy flames. Down below the paperboy was doing his rounds, and footfalls sounded sharply on the frosty pavement. Gently pulled two cigars from his breast pocket and shoved one of them into Dutt’s mouth.

‘Come on… I’ve got to go. It’s me for the wide-open spaces.’

Dutt nodded and scratched a light for them. ‘You won’t have to phone for a taxi, sir.’

‘Won’t have to… Why not, Dutt?’

‘’Cause I got a Jag outside, sir.’ The sergeant grinned at him guiltily. ‘It was going spare in the garage, sir. I reckoned nobody wasn’t going to miss it for an hour.’

Gently shook his head with mock gravity. ‘You’ll wind up bashing a beat, Dutt my lad! But since it’s here, we’d better not waste the Yard’s petrol. Get hold of that suitcase, and let’s try to look as though we own a Jag anyway.’

In spite of himself, Gently couldn’t help feeling a mild thrill of excitement as he and Dutt, laden with luggage and the precious pike-rod, plunged into the icy pandemonium of Liverpool Street Station. So many people going home — going home for Christmas! There were queues at every platform and every ticket-window, surging crowds of people, burdened, like himself, with suitcases, parcels, Christmas trees, everything under the sun. How could one fail to catch the spirit? How could one be chilled by the cold, or depressed by the great, dark, sooty vaults of the station, which echoed above the seething crowds below? Home for Christmas! All of London seemed to be in one mind. Pack your things — catch a train. Leave the streets and shop-windows, soon to be shuttered, leave the gloomy world of offices and work and worry. All that was over. A truce had been called. Now one could lock the door and forget the shabbiness, one could hasten to meet old friends, to renew oneself in the heart of the family. Catch a train, come home for Christmas!