Tom Sharpe - Blott on the Landscape

Dundridge thought wistfully of Mr Edwards. He turned to Hoskins.

“I think,” said Hoskins, “that we ought to contact the Ministry in London. This thing’s too big for us.”

At the Hall Lady Maud heard the shot and picked up a pair of binoculars. Through them she could see Blott on the roof with the shotgun. She telephoned the Lodge.

“They’re not shooting at you, are they?” she asked hopefully.

“No,” said Blott, “I was just shooting a pigeon. They’re still talking.”

“Remember what I said about violence,” Lady Maud told him. “We must keep public sympathy on our side. I am going to get in touch with the BBC and ITV and all the national newspapers. I think we can make a big song and dance about this business.”

Blott put down the phone. Song and dance. The English language was most expressive. Song and dance.

At his Mobile HQ Dundridge was on the phone to London.

“Are you seriously trying to tell me that Lady Lynchwood’s gardener has cemented himself into an ornamental arch?” said Mr Rees incredulously. “It doesn’t sound possible.”

“The arch in question happens to be eighty feet high,” Dundridge explained. “It has rooms inside. He’s filled all the bottom ones with concrete. There’s barbed-wire on the roof and short of blowing the place up there’s no way of getting him out.”

“I should try the local fire brigade,” Mr Rees suggested. “They use them to get cats out of trees.”

“I have tried the fire brigade,” said Dundridge.

“Well, what do they say?”

“They say their business is putting out fires, not storming fortresses.”

Mr Rees considered the problem. “I imagine he’ll have to come out sometime,” he said finally.

“Why?”

“Well, to eat for one thing.”

“Eat?” shouted Dundridge. “Eat? He doesn’t have to come out to eat. I’ve got a list here of the things he ordered from the local supermarket. Four hundred tins of baked beans, seven hundred cans of corned beef, one hundred and fifty tins of frankfurters. Need I go on?”

“No,” said Mr Rees hastily, “the fellow must have a constitution like an ox. You would have thought he would have chosen something a little more appetizing.”

“Is that all you’ve got to say?” said Dundridge.

“Well I must admit that it does sound as if he intends to make a long stay of it,” Mr Rees agreed.

“And what are we going to do? Cancel the motorway for a couple of years while he munches his way through that little lot?”

Mr Rees tried to think. “Can’t you talk him down?” he asked. “That’s what they usually do with people threatening to commit suicide.”

“But he isn’t threatening suicide,” Dundridge pointed out.

“It amounts to the same thing,” said Mr Rees. “A diet of corned beef, baked beans and frankfurters in the quantities you’ve mentioned would certainly kill me. Still, I see what you mean. A man who can even contemplate living off that muck obviously means business. Have you any ideas on the subject?”

“As a matter of fact I have,” said Dundridge.

“Not another ball and crane job I hope,” said Mr Rees anxiously. “We can’t have another little episode of that sort so shortly after the last one.”

“I was thinking of using the army,” said Dundridge.

“The army? My dear fellow, this is a free country. We can’t possibly ask the army to blast a perfectly innocent Englishman out of his own home with tanks and artillery.”

“To be precise,” said Dundridge, “he doesn’t happen to be an Englishman and I wasn’t thinking of blasting him out with tanks and artillery.”

“I should think not. The public would never stand for it.” Mr Rees said. “But if he’s not an Englishman what is he?”

“An Italian.”

“An Italian? Are you sure? It doesn’t sound like them to go in for this sort of thing,” said Mr Rees.

“He’s naturalized,” said Dundridge.

“That explains it,” said Mr Rees. “In that case I can’t see any objection to using the army. They’re used to dealing with foreigners. What precisely did you have in mind?”

Dundridge explained his plan.

“Well I’ll see what I can do,” said Mr Rees. “I’ll call you back when I’ve had a word with the Minister.”

In Whitehall the wires buzzed. Mr Rees spoke to the Minister of the Environment and the Minister spoke to Defence. By five o’clock Army Command had agreed to supply a team of commandos trained in rock climbing on the explicit understanding that they were to be used simply in a police support role and would not use firearms. As the Minister of the Environment explained, the essence of the operation was to occupy the Lodge and hold Blott until the police could evict him in a lawful fashion. “The great thing is that the media haven’t got on to the story yet. If we can get him out of there before the newsmen start nosing around we can hush the whole thing up. The essence of the thing must be speed.”

It was a point that Dundridge made to the commandos when they arrived for briefing that night at his Mobile HQ. “I have here a number of photographs taken this afternoon of the target,” he said handing them round. “As you can see it is amply provided with handholds and there are two means of access. The two circular windows on either side and the hatch in the roof. I should have thought the best method of attack would be a diversionary move to the rear and a frontal assault -”

“I think you can leave the tactical details of the exercise to us,” said the Major in charge who didn’t like being told his business by a civvy.

“I was only trying to help,” said Dundridge.

“Now then,” said the Major. “We’ll rendezvous at the Gibbet at twenty-four hundred hours and proceed on foot…” Dundridge left them to it and went into the other office.

“Well, for once we’re getting things done,” he told Hoskins. “That old bitch isn’t going to know what’s hit her.”

Hoskins nodded doubtfully. He had been in the army himself and he didn’t have Dundridge’s faith in the efficiency of the military machine.

Blott spent the evening reading Sir Arthur Bryant but his mind was not on the past. He was considering the immediate future. They would either act quickly or try to wear him down psychologically by sending a succession of well-meaning people to talk to him. Blott had seen the sort of visitor he could expect on the television. Social workers, psychiatrists, priests and policemen, all of them imbued with an invincible faith in the possibility of compromise. They would argue and cajole (Blott looked the word up in his dictionary to see if it meant what he thought and found he was right) and do their best to make him see the error of his ways and they would fail, fail hopelessly because their assumptions were all wrong. They would assume he was an Italian whereas he wasn’t. They would think he was acting on instructions or that he was simply being loyal, whereas he was in love. They would think a compromise was possible… With a motorway? Blott smiled to himself at the stupidity of the idea. The motorway would either go through the Park and Handyman Hall or it wouldn’t. Nothing they could tell him would alter that fact. But above all the people who came to talk to him would be city-dwellers for whom talk was currency and words were coins. An Englishman’s word is his bond, Blott thought, but then he had never had much time for stocks and shares. “Word merchants” old Lord Handyman had called such people, with contempt in his voice, and Blott agreed with him. Well they could talk themselves blue in the face but they wouldn’t shift him. Everything that he cared for and loved and was lay there in the Park and the Garden and the Hall. Handyman Hall. And Blott was the handyman. He would die rather than give up the right to be needed. He undressed and climbed into bed and lay listening to the river tumbling by and the wind in the trees. Through his window he could see the light on in Lady Maud’s bedroom. Blott watched it until it went out and then he fell asleep.