Tom Sharpe - Blott on the Landscape

In London Mrs Forthby woke with a vague sense that something was missing. She rolled over in bed, switched on the light and looked at the clock. It said eleven forty-eight and since it was dark it must be nearly midnight. On the other hand it didn’t feel like midnight. She felt as though she had been asleep a lot longer than four hours, and where was Giles? She got out of bed and looked in the kitchen, the bathroom, but he wasn’t in the flat. Oh well, he had probably gone out. She went back to the kitchen and made herself some tea. She was feeling very hungry too. That was strange because she had had a big dinner. She made some toast and boiled an egg. And all the time she had the nagging feeling that something was wrong. She had gone to bed at eight o’clock and here she was at midnight wide awake and famished. To while away the time she picked up a book but she didn’t feel like reading. She turned on the radio and caught the news headlines. “… Lynchwood, Member of Parliament for South Worfordshire, who was killed at his home Handyman Hall near Worford by a lion. In Arizona a freak whirlwind destroyed…” Mrs Forthby switched off the radio and poured herself another cup of tea before remembering what the announcer had just said. “Oh dear,” she said, “this afternoon? But…” She went through to the sitting-room and looked at the date on the clock. It read Friday the 20th. But yesterday was Wednesday. Giles had said so. She had said it was Tuesday and he had said Wednesday. And now it was Friday morning and Giles had been killed by a lion. What was a lion doing at Handyman Hall? What was Sir Giles doing there, come to that? They had been going to Brighton together for the weekend. It was all too awfully perplexing and horrible. It couldn’t be true. Mrs Forthby dialled the nice lady who told the time. “At the third stroke it will be twelve ten and twenty seconds.”

“But what’s the date? What day is it?” Mrs Forthby asked.

“At the third stroke it will be twelve ten and thirty seconds.”

“Oh dear, you really aren’t being very helpful,” said Mrs Forthby, and began to cry. Giles hadn’t been a very nice man but she had been fond of him and it was all her fault.

“If I hadn’t been so forgetful and had remembered to wake up he would still be alive,” she murmured.

At his Mobile HQ Dundridge greeted the news next morning jubilantly.

“That’ll teach the stupid bitch to build a bloody Wildlife Park,” he told Hoskins.

“I don’t see how you can say that,” said Hoskins. “All it’s done is to create another vacancy in Parliament. There will have to be a bye-election and you know what happened last time.”

“All the more reason for pressing ahead as quickly as possible.”

“What? With Maud Lynchwood in mourning? The poor woman has just lost her husband under the most tragic circumstances and you -”

“Don’t give me that bull,” said Dundridge. “If you ask me she’s probably delighted. Wouldn’t surprise me to learn she’d arranged the whole thing just to stop us.”

“That’s bloody libel, that is,” said Hoskins. “She may be a bit of a tartar but…”

“Listen,” said Dundridge, “she didn’t give a tuppenny damn about her husband, I know.”

“You know?”

“Yes I do know as a matter of fact. I’ll tell you something. That old cow tried to seduce me one night and when I wouldn’t play ball she took a potshot at me with a twelve-bore. So don’t come that crap about a sorrowing widow. We’re going ahead, and fast.”

“Well all I can say is that you’re flying in the face of public opinion,” said Hoskins, stunned by Dundridge’s story of his attempted seduction. “There’s Bullett-Finch dead and now Sir Giles. There’s bound to be a public outcry. I should have thought now was the time to lie doggo.”

“Now is the time to establish ourselves at the Park itself,” said Dundridge. “I’m going to move two bulldozers and a base camp up by that arch of hers. If she wants to squawk let her squawk.”

But Lady Maud didn’t squawk. She had been more shocked by Sir Giles’ death than she would have expected and she felt personally responsible for what had happened to Mr Bullett-Finch. She went about her duties automatically but with an abstracted air, occupied with the moral dilemma in which she found herself. On the one hand she was faced with the destruction of everything she loved, the Hall, the Gorge, the wild landscape, the garden, the world her ancestors had fought for and created. All this would go, to be replaced by a motorway which would be a useless, obsolescent eyesore in fifty years when fossil fuel ran out. It wasn’t as if the motorway was needed. It had been concocted by Giles to make himself a paltry sum of money, a mean, cruel gesture to hurt her. Well, Giles had got his comeuppance but the legacy of the motorway remained and the methods she had had to use had degraded her. She had fought fire with fire and other people had been burnt, Bertie Bullett-Finch and – quite literally – the poor man who had put the paraffin lamp in front of Mr Dugdale’s garage.

It was in this mood of self-recrimination that she attended the coroner’s inquest which returned a verdict of accidental death on Sir Giles Lynchwood and commended his widow on her bravery while pointing out the unforeseen dangers of keeping undomesticated animals on domestic premises. It was in the same mood that she superintended the removal of the lions, the last giraffe and the ostriches, before going off to a Memorial Service at Worford Abbey. All this time she avoided Blott, who stuck to the kitchen garden in low dudgeon. It was only when, on her return from the Abbey, she saw the bulldozers parked near the iron suspension bridge opposite the Lodge that she felt a pang of remorse for the way she had upbraided him. She found him sulking among the blackcurrants.

“Blott, I’m sorry,” she said. “I feel I owe you an apology. We all make mistakes from time to time and I’ve come to say how grateful I am to you for all the sacrifices you’ve made on my behalf.”

Blott blushed under his tanned complexion. “It was nothing,” he mumbled.

“That’s just not true,” said Lady Maud graciously, “I don’t know how I would have managed without you.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” said Blott.

“I just wanted you to know that I appreciate it,” said Lady Maud. “By the way as I came in I noticed the bulldozers by the Lodge…”

“You want them stopped, I suppose?”

“Well, now that you come to mention it…” Lady Maud began.

“Leave it to me,” said Blott, “I’ll stop them.” Lady Maud hesitated. This was the moment of decision. She chose her words carefully.

“I wouldn’t like to think that you were going to do anything violent.”

“Violent? Me?” said Blott sounding almost convincingly aggrieved at the suggestion.

“Yes, you,” said Lady Maud. “Now, I don’t mind spending money if it’s needed. You can have what you want but I won’t have anyone else getting hurt. There’s been quite enough of that already.”

“Your forefathers fought for…”

“I think I’m a rather better authority on what my ancestors did than you are,” said Lady Maud. “I don’t need telling. That was quite different. For one thing they were agents of the Crown and acting within the law and for another the only people to get hurt were the Welsh and they were savages. Besides, I’m a Justice of the Peace and I can’t condone anything illegal. Whatever you do must be lawful.”

“But…” began Blott.

Lady Maud interrupted him. “I don’t want to hear any more. What you do is your own affair. I want no part of it.”

She strode away and left Blott to consider her words.