Blott on the Landscape

Chapter 7

To Dundridge, travelling up the M1, the underlying complexities of the situation in South Worfordshire were quite unknown. For the first time in his life he was armed with authority and he intended to put it to good use. He would make a name for himself. The years of frustration were over. He would return to London with his reputation for swift, decisive action firmly established.

At Warwick he stopped for lunch, and while he ate he studied the file on the motorway. There was a map of the district, the outline of the alternative routes, and a list of those people through whose property the motorway would run and the sums they would receive as compensation. Dundridge concentrated his attention on the latter. A single glance was enough to explain the urgency of his appointment and the difficulty of his mission. The list read like a roll-call of the upper class in the county. Sir Giles Lynchwood, General Burnett, Colonel Chapman, Mr Bullett-Finch, Miss Percival. Dundridge peered uncomfortably at the names and incredulously at the sums they were being offered. A quarter of a million pounds for Sir Giles. One hundred and fifty thousand to General Burnett. One hundred and twenty thousand to Colonel Chapman. Even Miss Percival whose occupation was listed as schoolteacher was offered fifty-five thousand. Dundridge compared these sums with his own income and felt a surge of envy. There was no justice in the world and Dundridge (whose socialism was embodied in the maxim “To each according to his abilities, from each according to his needs,” the “his” in both cases referring to Dundridge himself) found his thoughts wandering in the direction of money. It had been Dundridge’s mother who had instilled in him the saying “Don’t marry money, go where money is” and since this had been easier said than done, Dundridge’s sex life had been largely confined to his imagination. There, safe from the disagreeable complexities of real life, he had indulged his various passions. In his imagination Dundridge was rich, Dundridge was powerful and Dundridge was the possessor of an entourage of immaculate women – or to be precise of one woman, a composite creature made up of bits and pieces of real women who had once partially attracted him but without any of their concomitant disadvantages. Now for the first time he was going where money was. It was an alluring prospect. He finished his lunch and drove on.

And as he drove he became increasingly aware that the countryside had changed. He had left the motorway and was on a minor road that twisted and turned. The hedgerows grew taller and more rank. Hills rose up and fell away into empty valleys and woods took on a rougher, less domesticated air. Even the houses had lost the comfortable homogeneous look of the North London suburbs. They were either large and isolated, standing in their own grounds, or stone-built farmhouses surrounded by dark corrugated iron sheds and barns. Every now and again he passed through villages, strange conglomerations of cottages and shops, buildings that loomed mis-shapenly over the road or retreated behind hedges with an eccentricity of ornaments he found disturbing. And finally there were churches. Dundridge disliked churches most of all. They reminded him of death and burial, guilt and sin and the hereafter. Archaic reminders of a superstitious past. And since Dundridge lived if not for the present at least the immediate future, these memento mori held no attractions for him. They cast horrid doubts on the rational nature of existence. Not that Dundridge believed in reason. He placed his faith in science and numeration.

Now as he drove northwards he had to admit that he was entering a world far removed from his ideal. Even the sky had changed with the landscape and the shadows of large clouds slid erratically across the fields and hills. By the time he reached South Worfordshire he was distinctly perturbed. If Worford was anything like the surrounding countryside it must be a horrid place filled with violent, irrational creatures swayed by strange emotions. It was. As he drove over the bridge that spanned the Cleene he seemed to have moved out of the twentieth century into an earlier age. The houses below the town gate were huddled together higgledy-piggledy and only their scrubbed doorsteps redeemed their squalid lack of uniformity. The gate, a great stuccoed tower with a dark narrow entrance, loomed up before him. He drove nervously through and emerged into a street lined with eighteenth-century houses. Here he felt temporarily more at home but his relief evaporated when he reached the town centre. Dark narrow alleyways, half-timbered medieval houses jutting over the pavement, cobbled streets, and shopfronts which retained the format of an earlier age. Pots and pans, spades and sickles hung outside an ironmongers. Duffel coats, corduroy trousers and breeches were displayed outside an outfitters. A mackerel gleamed on a fishmonger’s marble slab while a saddler’s was adorned with bits and bridles and leather belts. Worford was in short a perfectly normal market town but to Dundridge, accustomed to the soothing anonymity of supermarkets, there was a disturbing, archaic quality about it. He drove into the Market Square and asked the car-park attendant for the Regional Planning Office. The attendant didn’t know or if he did, Dundridge was none the wiser. The accents of Wales and England met in South Worfordshire, met and mingled incomprehensibly. Dundridge parked his car and went into a telephone kiosk. He looked in the Directory and found the Planning Office in Knacker’s Yard.

“Where’s Knacker’s Yard?” he asked the car-park attendant.

“Down Giblet Walk.”

“Very informative,” said Dundridge with a shudder. “And Where’s Giblet Walk?”

“Well now, let’s see, you can go down past the Goat and Goblet or you can take a short cut through the Shambles,” said the old man and spat into the gutter.

Dundridge considered this unenticing alternative. “Where are the Shambles?” he asked finally.

“Behind you,” said the attendant.

Dundridge turned round and looked into the shadow of a narrow alley. It was cobbled and led down the hill and out of sight. He walked down it uncomfortably. Several of the houses were boarded up and one or two had actually fallen down and the alleyway had a peculiar smell that he associated with footpaths and tunnels under railway lines. Dundridge held his breath and hurried on and came out into Knacker’s Yard where a sign in front of a large red-brick building said Regional Planning Board. He opened an iron gate and went down a path to the door.

“Planning Board’s on the second floor,” said a dentist’s assistant who emerged from a room holding a metal bowl in which a pair of false teeth rested pinkly. “You’ll be lucky if you find it open though. You looking for anyone in particular?”

“Mr Hoskins,” said Dundridge.

“Try the Club,” said the woman. “He’s usually there this time of day. It’s on the first floor.”

“Thank you,” said Dundridge and went upstairs. On the first landing there was a door marked Worford and District Gladstone Club. Dundridge looked at it doubtfully and went on up. As the woman had said, the Regional Planning Board was shut. Dundridge went downstairs and stood uncertainly on the landing. Then, reminding himself that he was the Minister’s plenipotentiary and troubleshooter, he opened the door and looked inside.

“You looking for someone?” asked a large red-faced man who was standing beside a billiard table.

“I’m looking for Mr Hoskins, the Planning Officer,” said Dundridge. The red-faced man put down his cue and stepped forward.

“Then you’ve come to the right place,” he said. “Bob, there’s a bloke wants to see you.”

Another large red-faced man who was sitting at the bar in the corner turned round and stared at Dundridge. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I’m from the Ministry of the Environment,” said Dundridge.

“Christ,” said Mr Hoskins and got down from his bar stool. “You’re early aren’t you? Wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow.”

“The Minister is most anxious that I should get down to work as rapidly as possible.”

“Quite right,” said Mr Hoskins more cheerfully now that he could see that Dundridge wasn’t sixty, didn’t wear gold-rimmed glasses and didn’t carry an air of authority about him. “What will you have?”

Dundridge hesitated. It wasn’t his habit to drink in the middle of the afternoon. “A half of bitter,” he said finally.

“Make it two pints,” Hoskins told the barman. They took their glasses across to a small table in the corner and sat down. At the billiard table the men resumed their game.

“Awkward business this,” said Mr Hoskins, “I don’t envy you your job. Local feeling’s none too good.”

“So I’ve noticed,” said Dundridge sipping his beer. It tasted, as he had anticipated, both strong and unpleasantly organic. On the wall opposite a portrait of Mr Gladstone glared relentlessly down on this dereliction of the licensing laws. Spurred on by his example, Dundridge attempted to explain his mission. “The Minister is particularly anxious that the negotiations should be handled tactfully. He has sent me to see that the outcome of these negotiations has the backing of all the parties involved.”

“Has he?” said Mr Hoskins. “Well all I can say is that you’ll have your work cut out.”

“Now as I see it, the best approach would be to propose an alternative route,” Dundridge continued.

“We’ve done that already. Through Ottertown.”

“Out of the question,” said Dundridge.

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Mr Hoskins. “Which leaves the Cleene Gorge.”

“Or the hills to the south?” suggested Dundridge hopefully.

Mr Hoskins shook his head. “Cleene Forest is an area of natural beauty, a designated area. Not a hope in hell.”

“Well that doesn’t leave us with many alternatives, does it?”

“It doesn’t leave us with any,” said Mr Hoskins.

Dundridge drank some more beer. The mood of optimism with which he had started the day had quite left him. It was all very well to talk about negotiating but there didn’t seem any negotiations to conduct. He was faced with the uneviable task of enforcing a thoroughly unpopular decision on a group of extremely influential and hostile landowners. It was not a prospect he relished. “I don’t suppose there is any chance of persuading Sir Giles Lynchwood and General Burnett to drop their opposition,” he said without much hope.

“Not a hope in hell,” Hoskins told him, “and anyway if they did it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. It’s Lady Maud you’ve got to worry about. And she isn’t going to budge.”

“I must say you make it sound all extremely difficult,” said Dundridge and finished his beer. By the time he left the Gladstone Club he had a clear picture of the situation. The stumbling block was Handyman Hall and Lady Maud. He would explore the possibilities of that more fully in the morning. He walked back up the Shambles and Giblet Walk to the Market Square and booked in at the Handyman Arms.

At the Hall Sir Giles spent the day sequestered in his study. This seclusion was only partly to be explained by the presence in the house and grounds of half a dozen guard dogs who seemed to feel that he was an intruder in his own home. More to the point was the fact that Lady Maud had expressed herself very forcibly on the matter of his lunch with Lord Leakham. If the Judge regretted that lunch, and from the reports of the doctors at the Cottage Hospital he had cause to, so did Sir Giles.

“I was only trying to help,” he had explained. “I thought if I gave him a good lunch he might be more prepared to see our side of the case.”

“Our side of the case?” Lady Maud snorted. “If it comes to that we didn’t have a case at all. It was perfectly obvious he was going to recommend the route through the Gorge.”

“There is the Ottertown alternative,” Sir Giles pointed out.

“Alternative my foot,” said Lady Maud. “If you can’t see a red herring when it’s thrust under your nose, you’re a bigger fool than I take you for.”

Sir Giles had retreated to his study cursing his wife for her perspicacity. There had been a very nasty look in her eye at the mention of Ottertown, and one or two unpleasant cracks about property speculators and their ways over breakfast had made him wonder if she had heard anything about Hoskins’ new house. And now there was this damned official from Whitehall to poke his nose into the affair. Finally and most disturbing of all there had been the voices. Or rather one voice: his own. While putting the car away before lunch he had distinctly heard himself assuring nobody in particular that they could look to him to see that nothing was done that would in any way jeopardize… Sir Giles had stared round the yard with a wild surmise. For a moment he had supposed that he had been talking to himself but the presence in his mouth of a cigar had ended that explanation. Besides the voice had been quite distinct. It had been a most disturbing experience and one for which there was no rational explanation. It had taken two stiff whiskies to convince him that he had imagined the whole thing. Now to take his mind off the occurrence he sat at his desk and concentrated on the motorway.

“Red herring indeed,” he muttered to himself, “I wonder what she would have said if Leakham had decided in favour of Ottertown.” It was an idle thought and quite out of the question. They would never build a motorway through Ottertown. Old Francis Puckerington would have another heart attack. Old Francis Puckerington… Sir Giles stopped in his tracks, amazed at his own intuitive brilliance. Francis Puckerington, the Member for Ottertown, was a dying man. What had the doctors said? That he’d be lucky to live to the next general election. There had been rumours that he was going to resign his seat. And his majority at the last election had been a negligible one, somewhere in the region of fifty. If Leakham had decided on the Ottertown route it would have killed old Francis. And then there would have to be a bye-election. Sir Giles’ devious mind catalogued the consequences. A bye-election fought on the issue of the motorway and the demolition of seventy-five council houses with a previous majority of fifty. It wasn’t to be thought of. The Chief Whip would go berserk. Leakham’s decision would be reversed. The motorway would come through the Cleene Gorge after all. And best of all not a shred of suspicion would rest on Sir Giles. It was a brilliant stratagem. It would put him in the clear. He was about to reach for the phone to call Hoskins when it occurred to him that he had better wait to hear what the man from the Ministry had to say. There was no point in rushing things now. He would go and see Hoskins in the morning. Imbued with a new spirit of defiance he left the study and selecting a large walking-stick from the rack in the hall he went out into the garden for a stroll.

It was a glorious afternoon. The sun shone down out of a cloudless sky. Birds sang. The flowering cherries by the kitchen garden flowered and Sir Giles himself blossomed with smug self-satisfaction. He paused for a moment to admire the goldfish in the ornamental pond and was just considering the possibility of pushing up the compensation to three hundred thousand when for the second time that day he heard himself speaking. “I’m damned if I’m going to allow the countryside to be desecrated by a motorway, I shall take the earliest opportunity of raising the matter in the House.” Sir Giles stared round the garden panic-stricken, but there was no one in sight. He turned and looked at the Hall but the windows were all shut. To his right was the wall of the kitchen garden. Sir Giles hurried across the lawn to the door in the wall and peered inside. Blott was busy in a cucumber frame.

“Did you say anything?” Sir Giles asked.

“Me?” said Blott. “I didn’t say anything. Did you?”

Sir Giles hurried back to the house. It was no longer a glorious afternoon. It was a quite horrible afternoon. He went into his study and shut the door.