Tom Sharpe - Blott on the Landscape

“No violence,” he muttered. It was going to make things a little difficult but he would think of something. Women, even the best of them, were illogical creatures. He walked out of the garden and down the drive to the Lodge. On the far side of the suspension bridge two bulldozers, symbols of Dundridge’s task force, stood under the trees. It would have been so easy to disable them with the PIAT or even to put sugar in their fuel tanks but if Maud said he must stay within the law… Stay within the law? That was another strange expression. As if the law was some sort of fortress. Blott looked up at the great arch towering above him.

He had just had an idea.

In spite of his intention to act swiftly the Controller Motorways Midlands found it difficult to act at all. Work on the motorway came to a virtual standstill while the various authorities responsible for the preservation of Guildstead Carbonell and law and order on the one hand wrangled with those responsible for the construction of the motorway and the destruction of the village on the other. To make matters worse there was a walk-out by dumper drivers who claimed they were being victimized by being barred from the Royal George for the damage done to the bar-billiards table by the clog-dancing of the bulldozer men, and a work-to-rule by the demolition experts who asserted that the arrest of Mr Edwards constituted a threat to their basic rights as Trade Unionists. To end the dispute Dundridge paid for the bar-billiards table out of incidental expenses and interceded with the police to release Mr Edwards on bail pending a psychiatrist’s report. In the middle of the confusion he was summoned to London to explain remarks he had made in a television interview filmed in front of the ruins of Finch Grove.

“Couldn’t you have thought of something better than ‘That is the way the cookie crumbles’?” Mr Rees demanded. “And what in God’s name did you mean by ‘There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip’?”

“All I meant was that accidents do happen,” Dundridge explained. “I was being bombarded with -”

“Bombarded? What do you think we’ve been since then? How many letters have we had?”

Mr Joynson consulted his list. “Three thousand four hundred and eighty-two to date, not including postcards.”

“And what about ‘We all have to make sacrifices’? What sort of impression do you think that makes on three million viewers?” shouted Mr Rees. “A man living peacefully in a quiet corner of rural England minding his own business is battered to death in the middle of the night by some fucking idiot with an iron ball weighing two tons and you talk about making sacrifices!”

“As a matter of fact he wasn’t minding his own business,” Dundridge protested, “he was continually ringing up to -”

“And I suppose you think that justifies… I give up.”

“I think we have to look at it from the point of view of the potential housebuyer,” said Mr Joynson tactfully. “It’s difficult enough for the average wage-earner to get a mortgage these days. We don’t want to give people the idea that they run the risk of having their houses demolished without the slightest warning.”

“But the house wasn’t even scheduled for demolition,” Mr Rees pointed out.

“Quite,” said Mr Joynson. “The point I’m trying to make is that Dundridge here must adopt a more tactful approach. He should use persuasion.”

But Dundridge had had enough. “Persuasion?” he snarled. “You don’t seem to understand what I’m up against. You seem to think all I’ve got to do is serve a compulsory purchase order and people simply get out of their houses and everything is hunky-dory. Well let me tell you it isn’t that simple. I’m supposed to be in charge of building a motorway through a house and park belonging to a woman whose idea of persuasion is to take potshots at me with a twelve-bore.”

“And evidently missing,” sighed Mr Rees.

“Why didn’t you inform the police?” Mr Joynson asked more practically.

“The police? She is the police,” said Dundridge. “They eat out of her hand.”

“Like those lions I suppose,” said Mr Rees.

“And what do you think she built that Wildlife Park for?” Dundridge asked.

“I suppose you’re going to tell us next that she wanted to find a way of disposing of her husband,” Mr Rees said wearily.

“To stop the motorway. She intended to whip up public support, gain sympathy and generally cause as much confusion as possible.”

“I should have thought she could have safely left that to you,” said Mr Rees.

Dundridge looked at him balefully. It was obvious that he did not enjoy the confidence of his superiors.

“If that’s the way you feel I can only resign my position as Controller Motorways Midlands and return to London,” he said. Mr Rees looked at Mr Joynson. This was the ultimatum they had feared. Mr Joynson shook his head.

“My dear Dundridge, there is absolutely no need for you to do that,” said Mr Rees with forced affability. “All we ask is that you try to avoid any more unfavourable publicity.”

“In that case I look to you to give me your full support,” said Dundridge. “I can’t be expected to overcome the sort of opposition I’m faced with unless the Ministry is prepared to throw its weight behind my efforts.”

“Anything we can do,” said Mr Rees, “to help, we will certainly do.”

Dundridge left the office mollified and with the feeling that his authority had been enhanced after all.

“Give the swine enough rope and I daresay he’ll hang himself,” said Mr Rees when he had gone. “And frankly I wish Lady Maud the best of British luck.”

“Must be a terrible thing to lose a husband like that,” said Mr Joynson. “No wonder the poor woman is upset.”

But it was less the loss of her husband that was upsetting Lady Maud than the bills she was receiving from various shops in Worford.

“One hundred and fifty tins of frankfurters? One thousand candles? Sixty tons of cement? Two hundred yards of barbed-wire? Forty six-foot reinforcing rods?” she muttered as she went through the bills. “What on earth can Blott be thinking of?” But she paid the bills without question and kept herself to herself. Whatever Blott was up to she wanted to know as little about it as possible. “Ignorance is bliss,” she thought, demonstrating a lack of understanding of the law which did her little credit as a magistrate.

And Blott was busy. He had spent the lull provided by Dundridge’s troubles in preparing his defence. Lady Maud had specified that there must be no violence on his part and as far as he was concerned there would be no necessity for it. The Lodge was practically impregnable to anything short of a full-scale assault by tanks and artillery. He had filled all the rooms on either side of the archway with bits of old iron and cement and had sealed the stairway with concrete. He had covered the roof with sharpened iron rods embedded in concrete and entangled with barbed-wire. To secure an independent water supply he had run a plastic pipe down to the river before the concrete was poured into the rooms below and to ensure that he could withstand a prolonged siege he had laid in enough foodstuffs to last him for two years. If his electricity was cut off he had a thousand candles and several dozen containers of bottled gas and finally, to prevent any attempt to drive him out with tear gas, he had unearthed an old army gas-mask from his cache in the forest. Just in case the mask was no longer proof against the latest gases he had turned his library into an airtight room to which he could retreat. All in all he had converted the Lodge from a very large ornamental arch into a fortress. The only entrance was through a hatch in the roof under the barbed-wire and spikes, and to enable him to leave when he wanted Blott had constructed a rope ladder which he could let down. Finally and just in case things did get violent he had collected a rifle, a Bren gun, a two-inch mortar, several cases of ammunition and hand-grenades with which to deter boarders. “Of course, I’ll only fire over their heads,” he told himself. But there would be no need. Blott knew the British too well to suppose they would do anything to endanger life. And yet without endangering life, and Blott’s life in particular, there was no way of building the motorway on through the Park and Handyman Hall. The Lodge, now Festung Blott, stood directly in the path of the motorway. On either side the cliffs rose steeply. Before anything could be done the Lodge would have to be demolished and since Blott was encased within it, demolishing the arch would mean demolishing him. They couldn’t even use dynamite to blast the cliffs on either side without seriously risking his life and threatening the collapse of the arch. Finally to ensure that no one could even drive through the gateway he erected a series of concrete blocks in the middle of the archway. It was this last that forced Lady Maud to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing.