Tom Sharpe - Blott on the Landscape

“Yes, you’re quite right,” said Mrs Forthby. “But it’s very difficult. It’s not in my nature to be unkind.”

“And before I forget, here’s a little honorarium for your assistance.” Lady Maud produced a cheque from her bag but Mrs Forthby shook her head.

“I may be a silly woman and not very nice but I do have my standards,” she said. “And besides I’d probably forget to cash it.” She went upstairs a little wistfully.

“That woman,” said Lady Maud as they drove to Paddington to catch the train to Worford, “is far too good for Giles. She deserves something better.” On the way they stopped to post the share transfers to Messrs Schaeffer, Blodger and Vaizey.

By the time they reached Handyman Hall it was two o’clock in the morning but the park was well lit. Under the floodlights men were busily engaged in erecting the fencing posts and already one side of the park was fenced in. Lady Maud drove round to have a look and congratulated Mr Firkin, the manager, on the progress.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to pay the bonus,” he told her. “At this rate we’ll be finished in ten days.”

“Make it a week,” said Lady Maud. “Money’s no problem.” She went into the house and up to bed well content. Money was no object now. In the morning she would withdraw every penny from their joint account at Westland Bank in Worford and deposit it in her own private account at the Northern. Sir Giles would scream blue murder but there was nothing he could do. He had signed the share transfer certificates if not of his own free will at least in circumstances which made it impossible for him to argue otherwise. And besides she still held one card up her sleeve, the photographs of Dundridge. She would call on the little goose and force him to admit that he had been blackmailed by Giles. Once she had proof of that there would be no question of the motorway continuing. She wouldn’t even have to bother with her own awful photographs. Giles would be in jail, his seat in Parliament empty, a bye-election, and the whole wretched business finished.

Whatever happened now she was safe and so was the Hall. “Fight fire with fire,” she thought and lay in bed considering the strange set of circumstances that had turned her from a plain, simple home-loving woman, a Justice of the Peace and a respectable member of the community, into a blackmailer dealing in obscene photographs and extorting signatures under threat of torture. Evidently the blood of her ancestors who had held the Gorge (by fair means and foul) against all comers still ran in her veins.

“You can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs,” she murmured, and fell asleep.

In Mrs Forthby’s flat one of the eggs in question lay in his frilly bonnet desperately trying to think of some way out of both his predicaments and promising himself that he would murder Nanny Fucking Whip as soon as he got free. Not that there seemed much chance of that before morning. Nanny Whip was snoring loudly on the sofa in the sitting-room. One look at Sir Giles’ suffused face had been enough to persuade her that Naughty Boy’s naughtiness had not diminished during her absence. A policy of continued restraint seemed called for. Nanny Whip went into the kitchen and hit the bottle of cooking brandy. “A drop will give me some Dutch courage,” she thought and poured herself a large glass. By the time she had finished it she had forgotten what she had been taking it for. “A little of what you fancy does you good,” she murmured, and collapsed on to the sofa.

A little of what Sir Giles fancied wasn’t doing him any good at all. Besides, eight hours wasn’t a little. As the clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hours Sir Giles’ thoughts turned from murder to the more lurid forms of slow torture and in between he tried to think what the hell to do about Maud. There didn’t seem anything he could do short of applying for the Chiltern Hundreds, resigning from all his clubs, realizing his assets and taking a quick trip to Brazil where the extradition laws didn’t apply. And even then he wasn’t sure he had any assets to realize. At about four in the morning it dawned on him that some of those pieces of paper he had signed had looked remarkably like share transfer certificates. At the time he hadn’t been in any shape to consider them at all carefully. Not that he was in any better shape now but at least the threat of following Edward the Second to an agonizing death had been removed. Finally exhausted by his ordeal he fell into a semi-coma, waking every now and then to consider new and more awful fates for that absent-minded old sot in the next room.

Mrs Forthby woke with a hangover. She staggered off the sofa and ran a bath and it was only when she was drying herself that she remembered Sir Giles.

“Oh dear, he will be cross,” she thought, and went through to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. She carried the tray through to the bedroom and put it down on the bedside table. “Wakey, wakey, rise and shine,” she said cheerfully and untied the straps. Sir Giles spat the dummy out of his mouth. This was the moment he had been waiting twelve hours for but there was no rising and shining for Sir Giles. He slithered sideways off the bed and crawled towards Mrs Forthby like a crab with rheumatoid arthritis.

“No, no, you naughty boy,” said Mrs Forthby horrified at his colour. She rushed out of the room and locked herself in the bathroom. There was no need to hurry. Behind her Sir Giles was stuck in the bedroom door and one of his legs had attached itself inextricably to a standard lamp.

In his office at the Regional Planning Board the Controller Motorways Midlands was having second thoughts about his plan for proving that Lady Maud was a blackmailer. The wretched woman had phoned the switchboard to say that she was coming in to Worford and wanted a word in private with him. Dundridge could well understand her desire for privacy but he did not share it. He had seen more than enough of Lady Maud in private and he had no intention of seeing any more. On the other hand she was hardly likely to threaten him with blackmail in front of a large audience. Dundridge paced up and down his office trying to find some way out of the quandary. In the end he decided to use Hoskins as a bodyguard. He sent for him.

“We’ve flushed the old cow out with that dynamiting,” he said.

“We’ve done what?” said Hoskins.

“She’s coming to see me this morning. I want you to be present.”

Hoskins had his doubts. “I don’t know about that,” he muttered. “And anyway, we haven’t started dynamiting yet.”

“But the task force has moved in, hasn’t it?”

“Yes, though I do wish you wouldn’t call it a task force. All this military jargon is getting on my nerves.”

“Never mind that,” said Dundridge. “The point is that she’s coming. I want you to conceal yourself somewhere where you can hear what she has to say and make an appearance if she turns nasty.”

“ Turns nasty?” said Hoskins. “The bloody woman is nasty. She doesn’t have to turn it.”

“I mean if she becomes violent,” Dundridge explained. “Now then, we’ve got to find somewhere for you to hide.” He looked hopefully at a filing cabinet but Hoskins was adamant.

“Why can’t I just sit in the corner?” he asked.

“Because she wants to see me in private.”

“Well then see her in private for God’s sake,” said Hoskins. “She isn’t likely to assault you.”

“That’s what you think,” said Dundridge. “And in any case I want you as a witness. I have reason to believe that she is going to make an attempt to blackmail me.”

“Blackmail you?” said Hoskins turning pale. He didn’t like that “reason to believe”. It smacked of a policeman giving evidence.