Tom Sharpe - Blott on the Landscape

“I just thought you ought to know,” said Hoskins. “It might give us some sort of lever.”

“Kinky?”

“Could be,” said Hoskins.

“Meet me at the Club at nine,” said Sir Giles, suddenly making up his mind. “This needs thinking about.” He rang off.

In the greenhouse Blott stared lividly into the geraniums. If Sir Giles had been surprised, Blott’s reaction was stronger still. The sudden discovery that he was in love with Lady Maud had coloured his day. The thought of Dundridge sharing his feelings for her infuriated him. Sir Giles he discounted. It was quite clear that Lady Maud despised her husband and from what she had said Blott had gathered that there was another woman in London. Dundridge was another matter. Blott left the greenhouse, tidied up and went home.

Home for Blott was the Lodge. The architect of the arch had managed to combine monumentality with utility and at one time the Lodge had housed several families of estate workers in rather cramped and insanitary conditions. Blott had the place to himself and found it quite adequate. The arch had its little inconveniences; the windows were extremely small and hidden among the decorations on the exterior; there was only one door so that to get from one side of the arch to the other one had to climb the staircase to the top and then cross over, but Blott had made himself very comfortable in a large room that spanned the arch. Through a circular window on one side he could keep an eye on the Hall and through another he could inspect visitors crossing the bridge. He had converted one small room into a bathroom and another into a kitchen, while he stored apples in some of the others so that the whole place had a pleasant smell to it. And finally there was Blott’s library filled with books that he had picked up on the market stalls in Worford or in the second-hand bookshop in Ferret Lane. There were no novels in Blott’s library, no light reading, only books on English history. In its way it was a scholar’s library born of an intense curiosity about the country of his adoption. If the secret of being an Englishman was to be found anywhere it was to be found, Blott thought, in the past. Through the long winter evenings he would sit in front of his fire absorbed in the romance of England. Certain figures loomed large in his imagination, Henry VIII, Drake, Cromwell, Edward I, and he tended to identify if not himself at least other people with the heroes and villains of history. Lady Maud in spite of her marriage, he saw as the Virgin Queen, while Sir Giles seemed to have the less savoury aspects of Sir Robert Walpole.

But that was for winter. During the summer he was out and about. Twice a week he cycled over to Guildstead Carbonell to the Royal George and sat in the bar until it was time for bed, the bed in question belonging to Mrs Wynn who ran the pub and whose husband had obligingly left her a widow as a result of enemy action on D-Day. Mrs Wynn was the last of Blott’s wartime customers and the affair had lingered on owing more to habit than to affection. Mrs Wynn found Blott useful, he dried glasses and carried bottles, and Blott found Mrs Wynn comfortable, undemanding and accommodating in the matter of beer. He had a weakness for Handyman Brown.

But now as he washed his neck – it was Friday night and Mrs Wynn was expecting him – he was conscious that he no longer felt the same way about her. Not that he had ever felt very much, but that little had been swept aside by his sudden surge of feeling for Maud. He was sensible enough not to entertain any expectations of being able to do anything about it. It just didn’t seem right to go off to Mrs Wynn any more. In any case it was all most peculiar. He had always had a soft spot for Lady Maud but this was different and it occurred to him that he might be sickening for something. He stuck out his tongue and studied it in the bathroom mirror but it looked all right. It might be the weather. He had once heard someone say something about spring and young men’s fancies but Blott wasn’t a young man. He was fifty. Fifty and in love. Daft.

He went downstairs and got on his bicycle and cycled off across the bridge towards Guildstead Carbonell. He had just reached the crossroads when he heard a car coming up fast behind him. He got off the bike to let it go by. It was Sir Giles in the Bentley. “Going to the Golf Club to see Hoskins,” he thought, and looked after the car suspiciously. “He’s up to something.” He got back on to his bike and freewheeled reluctantly down the hill towards the Royal George and Mrs Wynn. Perhaps he ought to tell Maud what he had heard. It didn’t seem a good idea and in any case he wasn’t going to let her know that Dundridge fancied her. “He can sow his own row,” he said to himself and was pleased at his command of the idiom.

In the Worford Golf Club, Sir Giles and Hoskins discussed tactics.

“He’s got to have a weakness,” said Sir Giles. “Every man has his price.”

“Maud?” said Hoskins.

“Be your age,” said Sir Giles. “She isn’t going to fartarse around with some tinpot civil servant with that reversionary clause in the contract at stake. Besides, I don’t believe it.”

“I distinctly heard him say he found her charming. And comely.”

“All right, so he likes fat women. What else does he like? Money?”

Hoskins shrugged. “Hard to tell. You need time to find that out.”

“Time is what we haven’t got. He’s only got to start blabbing about that bleeding tunnel and the fat’s in the fire. No, we’ve got to act fast.”

Hoskins looked at him suspiciously. “What’s all this ‘We’ business?” he asked. “It’s your problem, not mine.”

Sir Giles gnawed a fingernail thoughtfully. “How much?”

“Five thousand.”

“For what?”

“Whatever you decide.”

“Make it five per cent of the compensation. When it’s paid.”

Hoskins did a quick calculation and made it twelve and a half thousand. “Cash on the nail,” he said.

“You’re a hard man, Hoskins, a hard man,” Sir Giles said sorrowfully.

“Anyway what do you want me to do? Sound him out?”

Sir Giles shook his head. His little eyes glittered. “Kinky,” he said. “Kinky. What made you say that?”

“I don’t know. Just wondered,” said Hoskins.

“Boys, do you think?”

“Difficult to know,” said Hoskins. “These things take time to find out.”

“Drink, drugs, boys, women, money. There’s got to be some damned thing he’s itching for.”

“Of course, we could frame him,” said Hoskins. “It’s been done before.”

Sir Giles nodded. “The unsolicited gift. The anonymous donor. It’s been done before all right. But it’s too risky. What if he goes to the police?”

“Nothing ventured nothing gained,” said Hoskins. “In any case there would be no indication where it came from. My bet is he’d take the bait.”

“If he didn’t we would have lost him. No, it’s got to be something foolproof.”

They sat in silence and considered a suitably compromising future for Dundridge.

“Ambitious would you say?” Sir Giles asked finally. Hoskins nodded.

“Very.”

“Know any queers?”

“In Worford? You’ve got to be joking,” said Hoskins.

“Anywhere.”

Hoskins shook his head. “If you’re thinking what I’m thinking…”

“I am.”

“Photos?”

“Photos,” Sir Giles agreed. “Nice compromising photos.”

Hoskins gave the matter some thought. “There’s Bessie Williams,” he said. “Used to be a model, if you know what I mean. Married a photographer in Bridgeminster. She’d do it if the money was right.” He smiled reminiscently. “I can have a word with her.”

“You do that,” said Sir Giles. “I’ll pay up to five hundred for a decent set of photos.”