‘As a matter of fact, dear chappie, I do happen to know a girl who rather specializes in such roles,’ Basil remarked in the corridor.
‘Very decent of you to rally round, I must say.’
‘Always glad to help you or your friends, naturally.’ Basil paused. ‘How strange that you should know Lucy Squiffington.’
‘Lucy’s an old chum of my childhood.’
‘Yes, and a pretty nasty little beast you must have been, by all accounts.’ Basil laughed. ‘I don’t know how I could go through life myself with the knowledge that I’d once dropped a jellyfish on a lady’s tummy.’
‘We all have our little secrets, don’t we Basil?’ I reminded him.
‘Naturally, dear chappie.’ Basil suddenly looked solemn, like the time the gasman called a week early. ‘I might add that I took every opportunity during that ghastly dress rehearsal to impress Lucy what a sterling fellow you were. I praised you to the skies, absolutely. I knew, of course, that you yourself would never go out of your way to burden Lucy with any of my own little immature pranks. Even the greatest of us have tended to be a trifle irresponsible in our youth.’
‘All right, Basil. I shall never reveal the slugs in your salad days.’
‘Not that Lucy wouldn’t be terribly amused,’ added the actor, looking relieved. ‘We are such very, very close friends. The stage, you know. Such a bond. Now I must go and rehearse,’ he broke off, reaching the studio door. ‘There’s the little girl’s phone number. And I am sure for your part you’ll do me a favour by not trying to hobnob with dear Lucy too much? H’m? I am sure it will be for the best, dear chappie. After all, you are not quite – er, in her class, are you? One must simply face these things.’
‘I have no earthly reason ever to see Lucy again.’
‘Good,’ said Basil. ‘And do remind me, dear chappie, when
Saint Joan
comes on to let you have a couple of free stalls.’
Basil went in to rehearse his big mystery serial, which brings the entire nation to a standstill from six-thirty to seven on Tuesdays. I hurried back to my own studio, asking myself if it mattered a hoot whether I saw Lucy again in my life. Particularly as our income brackets were as wide apart as the Bank of England and the local slate club. Lucy was merely another female in my social life, I decided, like Connie or Mrs Hildenborough. After all, I told myself, I was a lucky chap. I was still firmly engaged to quite the nicest girl in the whole world.
‘The train standing at number fifteen platform,’ announced the loudspeaker, ‘is the two-thirty-five to Whortleton-on-Sea. Please form an orderly queue and do not rush the ticket barrier.’
‘That’s us,’ I said to Miles.
‘Eh? What?’
‘Our train. We join the end of the queue behind the kid with the bucket being sick over the policeman.’
‘This is incredible,’ muttered Miles.
‘For heaven’s sake, man, cheer up! You’re supposed to be ruddy Casanova, not Marley’s ghost.’
‘It’s only that I imagined the business wouldn’t be quite so public as this,’ Miles added miserably. ‘It always seems much simpler in the newspapers.’
My cousin was standing beside me under the clock, in his holiday tweeds and dark glasses, clutching his briefcase. All round us surged the normal activity of Victoria Station on a hot Saturday afternoon in July.
There’s nowhere on earth more wonderful than England in summertime – if the sun happens to shine – with the long evenings, the strawberries and cream, the sweet peas, the lazy rivers, the smell of new-mown grass, and the dozy afternoons ticking softly away with the click of bat on ball. For all the isles of Bermuda, Honolulu, or Tahiti I’ll settle for this sceptred one, even though it is largely uninhabitable between Guy Fawkes Night and the Boat Race. And admittedly when the season does arrive to enjoy the silver sea this precious stone is set in, there’s an awful lot of the happy breed of men to share it with.
‘Sure you still want to go?’ I asked Miles, as somebody walked over his foot.
He gave a determined nod. ‘Decidedly. Besides, I have already bought the tickets.’
We started to push our way across the sea-going current towards platform fifteen.
‘I suppose she’s going to turn up at the hotel?’ muttered Miles. ‘Thank heavens I decided against our making the journey together.’
‘Absolutely guaranteed it. Seems a reliable type, too. Fully experienced.’
‘I should hate to think all this effort completely wasted.’
‘So should I,’ I agreed warmly. ‘Watch out for that porter practising tank tactics with his luggage truck.’
Miles licked his lips. ‘You know, Gaston, it’s – it’s very decent of you to go to all this trouble.’
‘Always ready to help one of the family.’
‘I know we have perhaps had our little differences in the past,’ he conceded, as somebody caught him in the middle with a cricket bat.
‘Clash of cousinly temperaments. Very common. Gave Shakespeare half his plots.’
‘But I’d like to say how much I appreciate your doing all this for me.’
‘No trouble at all,’ I told him. ‘Mind that kid with the yacht. I diagnose him as a case of incipient vomiting, too.’
I hadn’t done all that for Miles, of course. I’d done it for Connie.
‘I’ve brought round Miles’ woolly slippers,’ she had said, when I found her on the mat after that episode of
Ambulance Entrance
had been safely tele-recorded. ‘He seemed to have forgotten them. And his poor feet do get so cold at night.’
‘I hope you haven’t been waiting long?’ I asked, letting her into the empty flat. ‘I also hope,’ I added, ‘you know Miles is planning to go ahead and help himself to a divorce?’
‘Yes.’ Connie felt for her handkerchief. ‘He sent me a letter. Twenty pages, some of it very, very lovely indeed. Quite poetic.’
‘But dash it, Connie! Surely you’re not going to let this fooling go any further?’
‘I shall not stand in his way, Gaston.’ Connie took on the air of a steadfast martyr offered pen and ink at the stake. ‘I know my duty. Miles has a great future, and young Bartholomew and I are mere encumbrances. How proud I shall be, as I hold up my child in my arms, to catch a glimpse of him riding past in his robes to take his seat as a life peer in the House of Lords.’
I fancied Connie had an enthusiastic view of the procedure, but merely suggested it would be nice for Miles to have her at home to polish his coronet in the evenings.
‘Do you think I should tell young Bartholomew all?’ asked Connie.
‘I fancy that would only confuse the issue,’ I laughed.
But I don’t think she was in the mood to see it.
‘Young Bartholomew and I shall start a new life.’ Connie dabbed her eyes. ‘We shall manage somehow. It will be best for Miles if we spend the rest of our days in exile. In St Moritz or Cannes, or somewhere.’
‘You know Miles has actually asked me to tee up the divorce for him? Not, of course, that I want to be his ruddy caddy in your twosome.’
‘I only ask, Gaston, that you do all in your power to smooth the way for us.’
‘Look – why don’t you nip down to Lincoln’s Inn and see one of those slick lawyer chaps? They extract divorces from the courts like dentists extracting teeth. All perfectly painless, and no complications once the numb feeling has worn off.’
‘I’d much rather you did as Miles wanted, Gaston.’ She laid her head on my shoulder. ‘Please…for my sake.’
‘Oh, all right,’ I said.
I rather absent-mindedly patted her hand.
‘Besides,’ she added, nestling up a bit, ‘Miles was absolutely horrid to a very nice friend of mine in that nightclub. Do you think St Moritz would really be the right place for my exile? Or should I try somewhere like Jamaica or Rio instead?’
Connie had hardly left before Miles appeared, announcing he’d saved up a whole twelve hundred calories for his dinner.
‘Your missus must have dropped your woolly slippers on the mat,’ I told him, putting on my little apron to grill his steak. ‘And you’ll be glad to know I’ve got someone lined up for you to do your compromising with.’
‘Excellent!’ Miles rubbed his hands. ‘I’ve had hardly a moment to give thought to the matter today, dashing round the docks looking for Mr Odysseus. He seems a most elusive gentleman. I suppose I shall have to pay this compromising woman handsomely? How much will be adequate? Three hundred pounds? Four hundred? Five?’
If I’d known that Miles had five hundred quid lying about I’d have already suggested a bit down for board and lodging. But I merely said I would give her a ring and ask the fees in her private practice.
‘It’ll cost you quite a bit, darling,’ said Dolores, when I called to see her. ‘Plus expenses, of course,’ she added, shifting a pair of Sealyhams which were growling at some Scotties.
‘Naturally.’ I moved uneasily away from a parrot who was eyeing me suspiciously. ‘You will find the gentleman for whom I am acting perfectly reasonable about terms. To the point of generosity.’
‘Of course, I wouldn’t do it for anyone except a friend of Basil Beauchamp’s.’ We edged discreetly among the hamsters. ‘Are you really a friend of Basil’s? No funny business, mind you.’
‘Of course I am,’ I pointed out. ‘I could hardly have found you here otherwise, could I?’
Dolores, who turned out to be a dark, emaciated-looking girl in a mauve overall, worked in the Pet Boutique in Bond Street, ‘Not that I’ve seen Basil for simply ages.’ She sorted out a pile of puppies. ‘Isn’t he a darling man? I met him when I was an extra in the studio, during
St George and the Dragon
. He looked absolutely divine in a visor.’
‘Quite. Now - er, how about the lolly?’
She sprinkled ants’ eggs into a bowl of goldfish. ‘It depends what you want, dear.’
‘Just - well, a decent compromise, that’s all,’ I returned, beginning to feel rather lost.
‘I mean, does your gentleman want me in bed or out? It’s extra in bed of course.’
‘Naturally. I think he’d be glad enough to have you up and about.’
‘I could do it for fifty keeping all my things on. It’s a hundred in my slip, a hundred and twenty-five showing my legs, a hundred and fifty showing my–’
‘We’ll have the hundred quid one,’ I interrupted, feeling this the best value in the tariff.
‘Of course, dear, if your gentleman really wanted to go the limit–’
‘Exactly. When can we fix a date for the operation?’ I asked quickly.
‘Not till next month, darling.’
‘Next month?’ I remembered Miles’ holiday would be up. ‘Couldn’t you manage to squeeze in a day, or rather a night, before then?’
‘But darling, I don’t see how I possibly can. Not till I start my own holidays. We’re utterly overwhelmed this time of the year, and I always help out Miss Treadburn – she’s the boss, a complete darling – with the summer kennelling. Absolutely everyone is going out of Town just now and leaving their pets. You’d never believe what I’ve had in my flat – a pair of alsatians, six budgies, and a monkey, not to mention the fish. And then there’s the poodle-clipping. “Dolores,” Miss Treadburn said to me only yesterday, “for poodle-clipping there’s no one to touch you in London.” So I said–’
‘I expect we can fix up some time convenient for you and the animals,’ I hazarded, though feeling rather doubtful,
‘I expect we can, darling. Give me another ring. Oh, and don’t make it Brighton, will you, darling? A girl can always do with a change.’
‘Fixing up your co-respondent was pretty easy,’ I reflected to Miles some time later, when he was already coming up for his second turn on the divan. ‘It’s the theatre of operations which presents the difficulty. Why the devil do you want to get a divorce in July, particularly when it looks as though we’re in for a heatwave? It’s absolutely ruddy impossible to book a double room at the seaside anywhere. At least, in a hotel where they have waiters to bring up the breakfast.’
‘We shall need a single room as well, of course.’
‘What on earth for?’ I was becoming rather testy with the chap. ‘You’re not asking our old grandma along for sea-water treatment of the back or anything, are you?’
‘You will be accompanying me, naturally,’ announced Miles calmly. ‘You don’t imagine I intend to suffer this extremely unusual and somewhat alarming experience by myself do you?’
‘Me? I am most definitely not going to play gooseberry.’
‘I have the final execution of the plan carefully worked out,’ Miles continued, taking no notice. ‘The co-respondent will sleep in the single room, while you and I share the double. In the morning, the kippers already being ordered, you and she will rapidly change places. As soon as the waiter has left, you may return and enjoy your breakfast.’ He gave one of his smiles. ‘You see, Gaston, I am not devoid of guile when necessary. It is simply that I usually manage to conceal it beneath my engagingly frank exterior. You will now continue to ring round all the seaside hotels in the Automobile Association handbook. Only the four-star ones, of course.’
That was typical of my cousin, imagining he could cast off the bonds of matrimony like a dirty shirt and then leaving all the work to me. But the trouble with modern Britain, whether it’s hotels or hospitals, is too many people chasing too few beds. The hotels kept regretting they were booked to the eaves. I started to feel that Miles, Dolores, and myself would end up with a jolly night of it on the rocks at Land’s End.
Then I had a terrific stroke of luck.
‘Sir Lancelot Spratt’s lipstick,’ I announced, ‘is a trifle on the thick side. Though he could do with a touch more eye-shadow.’
‘How about his powder, Dr Grimsdyke?’
‘A dab or two, I’d say.’
The pretty girl in the pink overall ran her puff over the surgeon’s forehead.
‘Grimsdyke,’ said Sir Lancelot.
‘Sir?’
‘Is it not a frightening reflection on our age that every evening not only consultant surgeons but bishops, barristers, business men, and backbenchers sit back and let themselves be made up like one of the girls from Madame Tellier’s?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, sir,’
‘I wonder,’ growled Sir Lancelot, ‘what Mr Gladstone would have said.’
It hadn’t been half as tough as I expected, persuading the old boy to go on the telly. I suppose with the fishing season half over he was eager to raise public support for his idea of a teenagers’ re-adjustment centre. Though I must say, he didn’t seem quite so keen, now he sat glaring at himself in that bright bulb-fringed mirror they have up in the studio make-up department.
‘Not nervous, I hope, sir?’ I jollied him along.
‘Exceedingly. Unlike that blunted battleaxe Dame Hilda – I beg your pardon, Grimsdyke, I quite overlooked for the moment your impending relationship – unlike Dame Hilda I am not accustomed to making regular exhibitions of myself in public. However, our views differ so greatly I should be lacking moral strength if I declined to cross swords with her whenever the occasion demands.’
I nodded. ‘As you’re on the air in ten minutes, sir, we’d better get down to the studio. The hospitality room’s at the end of the corridor,’ I added, remembering that even the bishops like to drop in for a quick spot of hospitality before facing the cameras.
‘Thank you, Grimsdyke. You have some flair as an anaesthetist.’
The studio, like all television studios before transmission, resembled the Black Hole of Calcutta wired for electronics. It was all cameras and cables and men in frayed khaki pullovers. Among them stumbled the studio manager, with a rapt and vacant look on his face and his own walkie-talkie, through which he was receiving messages from on high, like Joan of Arc.
I’d already lunched that day with Dame Hilda – she brought me some very nice messages from Anemone – and I knew she was as much at ease as Pavlova having another bash at
Swan Lake
. But poor Sir Lancelot, settled on one of those hard chairs they give people to squirm in during television interviews, simply stared in alarm at the monitor set, showing a couple of sporty seals tossing balls to each other.
‘Two minutes, everyone,’ called the studio manager, getting the call from above.
Sir Lancelot’s face went blank, like the monitor screen.
‘I intend to be
quite
merciless towards you, Sir Lancelot,’ smiled Dame Hilda, shaking a finger. ‘Nor do I expect you to pull any punches with me. All’s fair in war and television, you know.’
Sir Lancelot’s face took on a confused jagged look, like the monitor. I stood quietly in the background. Personally, if Evan Crippen had wanted to interview me, I should have gone abroad, grown a beard, and changed my name. As I waited for the red light and watched the girl who did the announcing adjusting her television neckline, I could only feel acutely sorry for the old boy.
‘Ten seconds,’ said the studio manager.
The red light went up, and the one-thousand and-fifty-fourth edition of
This Evening
took the air.
The programme started off as usual, with a chap holding forth about the political situation, a girl explaining how she made bedspreads from old typewriter ribbons, another girl singing a witty little song, and then another chap holding forth about something else. Finally, the light flashed on Sir Lancelot’s camera, and Evan Crippen started introducing them to God knows how many millions sitting agog over their high tea or cocktails, according to taste.
‘Sir Lancelot–’ Evan Crippen turned on the surgeon. ‘You wrote recently in the press that far too much fuss is made over the problems of the modern teenager?’
‘Well, I–’
‘You seriously mean that this, probably the greatest social question of our country, is receiving not too little but far too much public attention?’
‘I hardly said–’
‘Sir Lancelot, I am utterly surprised that a man of your standing – particularly in the great profession of medicine – should take such a miserably mean attitude.’
‘I assure you that I–’
‘Many teenagers are watching this programme, and I need hardly tell you their reaction. I am appalled at your harsh Victorian approach to the problem of these delicate saplings growing in the mysterious forest of adulthood,’ ended Evan Crippen, seeming rather pleased with the remark.
‘Let me tell you that–’
‘Sir Lancelot, would you regard yourself as a square?’
‘Would I regard myself as a
what
?’
‘Thank you, Sir Lancelot. I am sure that was very enlightening. Dame Hilda–’ He swivelled the sanitary inspector’s nose. ‘You are, of course, our greatest national authority on juvenile delinquency?’
Dame Hilda smiled.
‘I believe I am admitted to be.’
‘Quite. Dame Hilda, I have here a cutting from a local paper of some years ago. Will you explain to the viewers, if you please, how you were once convicted in a magistrates’ court and fined five pounds for stealing a hat from a milliner’s shop?’
Dame Hilda gave a gasp, and so did everyone else in the studio. ‘But…but…that was so long ago.’
‘Quite so. But it
was
shoplifting.’
‘I…I was a mere girl at the time…and it was such a pretty hat…I don’t know for the life of me what came over…’
‘Go on, Dame Hilda.’
‘Oh, dear!’ Dame Hilda produced a handkerchief. ‘I thought everyone had forgotten…it’s terrible after all these years…’
Evan Crippen smiled. ‘Go on, Dame Hilda, if you please.’
Sir Lancelot tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Just a minute, sonny.’
‘Would you mind!’ rounded the interviewer.
‘Do you know what I think of you?’ growled Sir Lancelot, taking him by the lapel. ‘I think you have the mentality of a nasty-minded youth prowling round suburban back gardens at night, in the hope of espying through some uncurtained window the sight of a respectable housewife standing in her underclothes.’
‘Really!’ cried Evan Crippen.
‘Furthermore,’ continued Sir Lancelot, taking the other lapel, ‘you have the manners of a school bully, the gallantry of a Soho pimp, the compassion of a Barbary slave-driver, and about as much tact as an elephant reversing into a greenhouse.’
‘Let me go at once! The viewers–’
‘Do you know what I should like to do with you?’ Sir Lancelot shook him a bit. ‘I should like to take you down to St Swithin’s Hospital and lock you for the night in the mortuary. Then you might begin to see we are all feeble human beings made of the same flesh and blood, even though our egos sometimes become inflated like toy balloons.’
‘If you do not take your hands off me instantly – !’
‘Let me give you some advice, sonny. If you wish to continue making fools of people through this contraption you are perfectly at liberty to do so. I would only counsel you to read the Fables of Aesop, with particular attention to the Ass in the Lion’s Skin, and a side glance at the Fox and the Sour Grapes. You will now kindly apologize to the lady.’
‘This programme never apologizes to anybody,’ snapped Evan Crippen.
‘In that case, I shall break your ruddy neck.’
‘Oh, Sir Lancelot!’ cried Dame Hilda, falling into his arms.
‘Cut!’ cried the studio manager. ‘We’re running that film of village life instead.’
‘I’ll have you thrown out of here!’ stormed Evan Crippen, pointing a finger in my direction. ‘Has everyone gone mad?’
‘Wonderful programme,’ said the producer through the intercom. ‘Pure television.’
‘I want a drink,’ said Sir Lancelot.
‘So do I,’ I told him.
I hustled the two performers out of the studio. I pushed them into the local round the back. I bought Dame Hilda a large brandy. She drank it gazing up at Sir Lancelot like one of her own ruddy teenagers stuck in the studio lift with the latest pop singer.
‘My dear lady.’ Sir Lancelot wiped off his make-up with one hand and took hers in the other. ‘I trust you are not too distressed?’
‘But Sir Lancelot! That dreadful man! You were so wonderful.’
‘I hope, madam, I shall never stand idly by to witness a lady being humiliated by a cad.’
‘And that dreadful revelation!’
‘I can assure you, madam, my own cupboard contains many interesting pieces of osteology.’
‘Surely you can no longer think anything of me?’
‘On the contrary, I think a great deal more of you.’
‘But you must call me Hilda.’
‘But I should be delighted.’
‘Sir Lancelot, you were so forceful…so strong. A true knight, in shining armour.’
‘Another brandy, Hilda?’
‘Thank you. How often have I suspected a beard indicated inner strength!’
‘That is kind of you, Hilda.’
‘A beard does not lend a man character. It expresses it.’
‘A charitable observation.’
‘You must in your youth have been such an athletic man.’
‘I did indeed enjoy some success at putting the shot.’
I began to feel rather out of this.
‘Now Sir Lancelot, I must do everything in my power to help your new scheme down in Wales. Perhaps I could bring down a party of London girls for a fortnight’s holiday? I could easily arrange for you to receive a most generous grant for their maintenance, and it would be a fine beginning for your clinic.’
‘Excellent, Hilda! Why not next week-end?’
‘Of course. Next weekend–’ Dame Hilda caught sight of me. ‘But next Saturday I am due to begin my own summer holiday with Anemone and Gaston at Whortleton.’
‘Ah, tut,’ said Sir Lancelot.
‘And of course Gaston and Anemone couldn’t possibly go down to Whortleton alone. That wouldn’t be at all nice.’
‘Look here, Dame Hilda,’ I suggested quickly. ‘Why don’t you, I and Anemone all start on the Monday, instead? I mean, Monday’s a far better day to begin a trip to the seaside. Much more room in the sea, and the pierrots will be all fresh with a new show.’
‘If you really wouldn’t mind, Gaston–’ said Dame Hilda doubtfully.
‘Not a bit. I mean, really, I’m terribly disappointed. But I’m sure Sir Lancelot needs a little of your time too, Dame Hilda,’ I added, with a bit of a smirk.
‘In that case, I will alter the hotel reservations.’
‘Don’t you worry, Dame Hilda. I’ll attend to that.’
‘But I could easily send them a wire–’
‘No bother at all,’ I told her. ‘I’ll pick up the phone just as soon as I get back to my flat.’
I didn’t, of course. I left Sir Lancelot to take Dame Hilda out to dinner, and nipped back to find my cousin. And that was why Miles and myself, that Saturday afternoon, were in a compartment with about two dozen other people, all going to Whortleton.