Tom Sharpe - Blott on the Landscape

“Oh all right,” said Hoskins gloomily. He knew better than to argue with Dundridge now.

Lady Maud drove back to the Hall pensively. She could have sworn that the thin legs in the photographs were the legs she had seen twinkling across the marble floor but evidently she had been wrong. Dundridge’s self-righteous indignation had been wholly convincing. She had expected the wretched little man to blush and stammer and make excuses but instead he had stood up to her and ordered her out of his office. He had even suggested she should take the photographs to the police and, considering his pusillanimity in other less threatening circumstances, it was impossible to suppose he had been bluffing. No, she had been wrong. It was a pity. She would have liked to have seen Sir Giles in court, but it hardly mattered. She had enough to be going on with. Sir Giles would move heaven and earth to see that the motorway was stopped now and if he failed she would force him to resign his seat. There would have to be another bye-election and what had worked in the case of Ottertown would work again in the case of the Gorge. The Government would cancel the motorway. And finally if that too failed there was always the Wildlife Park. It was one thing to demolish half a dozen houses and evict the families that lived there, but it was quite a different kettle of fish to deprive ten lions, four giraffes, a rhinoceros and a dozen ostriches of their livelihood. The British public would never stand for cruelty to animals. She arrived at the Hall to find Blott busy washing his films in the kitchen.

“I’ve turned the boiler-room into a darkroom,” he explained, and held up a film for her to look at. Lady Maud studied it inexpertly.

“Have they come out all right?” she asked.

“Very nicely,” said Blott. “Quite lovely.”

“I doubt if Giles would share your opinion,” said Lady Maud and went out into the garden to pick a lettuce for lunch. Blott finished washing his films in the sink and took them down to the boiler-room and hung them up to dry. When he came back lunch was ready on the kitchen table.

“You’ll eat in here with me,” said Lady Maud. “I’m very pleased with you, Blott, and besides, it’s nice to have a man about the house.”

Blott hesitated. It seemed an illogical remark. There appeared to be a great many men about the house, tramping up and down the servants’ stairs to their bedrooms and working day and night on the fencing. Still, if Lady Maud wanted him to eat with her, he was not going to argue. Things were looking up. She was going to get a divorce from her husband. He was in love and while he had no hope of ever being able to do anything about it, he was happy just to sit and eat with her. And then there was the fence. Blott was delighted by the fence. It brought back memories of the war and his happiness as a prisoner. It would shut out the world and he and Maud would live singly but happily ever after.

They had just finished lunch and were washing-up when there was a dull boom in the distance and the windows rattled.

“I wonder what that was,” said Lady Maud.

“Sounded, like blasting,” said Blott.

“Blasting?”

“In a quarry.”

“But there aren’t any quarries round here,” said Lady Maud. They went out on to the lawn and stood looking at a cloud of dust rising slowly into the sky a mile or two to the east.

Operation Overland had begun.

And Operation Overland continued. Day after day the silence of the Gorge was broken by the rumbling of bulldozers and the dull thump of explosions as the cliffs were blasted and the rocks cleared. Day after day the contractors complained to Hoskins that the way to build a motorway was to start at the beginning and go on to the end, or at least to stick to some sort of predetermined schedule and not go jumping all over the place digging up a field here and rooting out a wood there, starting a bridge and then abandoning construction to begin a flyover. And day after day Hoskins took their complaints and some of his own to Dundridge, and was overruled.

“The essential feature of Operation Overland lies in the random nature of our movements,” Dundridge explained. “The enemy never knows where we are going to be next.”

“Nor do I, come to that,” said Hoskins bitterly. “I had a job finding this place this morning. You might have warned me you were going to move it before I went home last night.”

Dundridge looked round the Mobile Headquarters. “That’s odd,” he said, “I thought you had it moved.”

“Me? Why should I do that?”

“I don’t know. To be nearer the front line I suppose.”

“Nearer the front line?” said Hoskins. “All I want is to be back in my bloody office, not traipsing round the countryside in a fucking caravan.”

“Well anyway, whoever had it moved had a good idea,” said Dundridge. “We are nearer the scene of action.”

Hoskins looked out of the window as a giant dumper rumbled past.

“Nearer?” he shouted above the din. “We’re bloody well in it if you ask me.” As if to confirm his words there was a deafening roar and two hundred yards away a portion of cliff collapsed. As the dust settled Dundridge surveyed the scene with satisfaction. This was nature as man, and in particular Dundridge, intended. Nature conquered, nature subdued, nature disciplined. This was progress, slow progress but inexorable. Behind them cuttings and embankments, concrete and steel, ahead the Gorge and Handyman Hall.

“By the way,” said Hoskins when he could hear himself speak, “we’ve had a complaint from General Burnett. He says one of our trucks damaged his garden wall.”

“So what?” said Dundridge. “He won’t have a garden or a wall in two months’ time. What’s he complaining about?”

“And Mr Bullett-Finch phoned to say -”

But Dundridge wasn’t interested. “File all complaints,” he said dismissively, “I haven’t got time for details.”

In London Sir Giles didn’t share his opinion. He was obsessed with details, particularly those concerned with the sale of his shares and what Lady Maud was going to do with those damned photographs.

“I lost half a million on those shares,” he yelled at Blodger. “Half a bleeding million.”

Blodger commiserated. “I said at the time I thought you were being a little hasty,” he said.

“You thought? You didn’t think at all,” Sir Giles screamed. “If you’d thought you would have known that wasn’t me on the phone.”

“But it sounded like you. And you asked me to call you back at your flat.”

“I did nothing of the sort. You don’t seriously imagine I would sell four thousand President Rand when the market was at rock bottom. I’m not fucking insane you know.”

Blodger looked at him appraisingly. The thought had crossed his mind. It was Schaeffer who brought the altercation to an end.

“If you must swear,” he said, “I can only suggest that you would do so more profitably before a Commissioner of Oaths.”

“And what would I want with a Commissioner of Fucking Oaths?”

“A sworn statement that the signatures on the share transfer certificates were forgeries,” said Schaeffer coldly.

Sir Giles picked up his hat. “Don’t think this is the end of the fucking matter,” he snarled. “You’ll be hearing from me again.” Schaeffer opened the door for him. “I can only hope fucking not,” he said.

But if his stockbrokers were not sympathetic, Mrs Forthby was.

“It’s all my fault,” she wailed squinting at him through the two black eyes he had given her for her pains. “If only I hadn’t gone out for those fish fingers this would never have happened.”

“Fish fucking…” he began and pulled himself up. He had to keep a grip on his sanity and Mrs Forthby’s self-denunciations didn’t help. “Never mind about that. I’ve got to think what to do. That bloody wife of mine isn’t going to get away with this if I can help it.”