Blott on the Landscape

Chapter 8

Dundridge spent a perfectly foul night at the Handyman Arms. His room there had a sloping floor, a yellowed ceiling, an ochre chest of drawers and a wardrobe whose door opened of its own accord ten minutes after he had shut it. It did so with a hideous wheeze and would then creak softly until he got out of bed and shut it again. He spent half the night trying to devise some method of keeping it closed and the other half listening to the noises coming from the next room. These were of a most disturbing sort and suggested an incompatibility of size and temperament that played havoc with his imagination. At two o’clock he managed to get to sleep, only to be woken at three by a sudden eruption in the drainpipe of his washbasin which appeared to be most unhygienically connected to the one next door. At half past three a dawn breeze rattled the signboard outside his window. At four the man next door asked if someone wanted it again. “For God’s sake,” Dundridge muttered and buried his head under the pillow to shut out this evidence of sexual excess. At ten past four the wardrobe door, responding to the seismic tremors from the next room, opened again and creaked softly. Dundridge let it creak and turned for relief to his composite woman. With her assistance he managed to get back to sleep to be woken at seven by a repulsive-looking girl with a tea tray. “Is there anything else you wanted?” she asked coyly. “Certainly not,” said Dundridge wondering what there was about him that led only the most revolting females to offer him their venereal services. He got up and went along to the bathroom and wrestled with the intricacies of a gas-fired geyser which had evidently set its mind on asphyxiating him or blowing him up. In the end he had a cold wash.

By the time he had finished breakfast he was in a thoroughly bad mood. He had been unable to formulate any coherent strategy and had no idea what to do next. Hoskins had advised him to have a word with Sir Giles Lynchwood and Dundridge decided he would do that later. To begin with he would pay a call on Lord Leakham at the Cottage Hospital.

After wandering down narrow lanes and up a flight of steps behind the Worford Museum he found the hospital, a grey gaunt stone building that looked as though it had once been a workhouse. It fronted on to the Abbey and in the small front garden a number of geriatric patients were sitting around in dressing-gowns. Stifling his disgust, Dundridge went inside and asked for Lord Leakham.

“Visiting hours are two to three,” said the nurse at Admissions.

“I’m here on Government business,” said Dundridge feeling that it was about time someone understood he was not to be trifled with.

“I’ll have to ask Matron,” said the nurse. Dundridge went outside into the sunshine to wait. He didn’t like hospitals. They were not, he felt, his forte, particularly hospitals which overlooked graveyards, stank of disinfectant and had the gall to call themselves Cottage Hospitals when they were situated in the middle of towns. He was just considering the awful prospect of being treated for a serious complaint in such a dead-and-alive hole when the Matron appeared. She was gaunt, grey-haired and grim.

“I understand you want to see Lord Leakham,” she said.

“On Government business,” said Dundridge pompously.

“You can have five minutes,” said the Matron and led the way down the passage to a private room. “He’s still suffering from concussion and shock.” She opened the door and Dundridge went inside. “Now nothing controversial,” said the Matron. “We don’t want to have a relapse, do we?”

On the bed, ashen-faced and with his head swathed in bandages, Lord Leakham regarded her venomously. “There’s nothing the matter with me apart from food poisoning,” he said. Dundridge sat down beside the bed.

“My name is Dundridge,” he said. “The Minister of the Environment has asked me to come up to see if I can do something to… er… well to negotiate some sort of settlement in regard to the motorway.”

Lord Leakham looked at him vindictively over the top of his glasses. “Has he indeed? Well let me tell you what I intend to do about the motorway first and then you can inform him,” he said. He raised himself on his pillows and leant towards Dundridge. “I was appointed to head the Enquiry into the motorway and I do not intend to relinquish my responsibility.”

“Oh quite,” said Dundridge.

“Furthermore,” said the Judge, “I have no intention whatsoever of allowing myself to be influenced by hooliganism and riot from doing my duty as I see it.”

“Oh definitely,” said Dundridge.

“As soon as these damnfool doctors get it into their thick heads that there is nothing wrong with me except a peptic ulcer, I shall re-open the Enquiry and announce my decision.” Dundridge nodded.

“Quite right too,” he said. “And what will your decision be? Or is it too early to ask that?”

“It most certainly isn’t,” shouted Lord Leakham. “I intend to recommend that the motorway goes through the Cleene Gorge, plumb through it, you understand. I intend to see that that damned woman’s home is levelled to the ground, brick by brick. I intend…” He sank back on to the bed exhausted by his outburst.

“I see,” said Dundridge, wondering what possible use there was in trying to negotiate a compromise between an irresistible force and an immovable object.

“Oh no you don’t,” said Lord Leakham. “That woman deliberately sent her husband to poison me. She interrupted the proceedings. She insulted me in my own court. She incited to riot. She made a mockery of the legal process and she shall rue the day. The law shall not be mocked, sir.”

“Oh quite,” said Dundridge.

“So you go and negotiate all you want but just remember the decision to go through the Gorge is mine and I do not for one moment intend to forgo the pleasure of making it.”

Dundridge went out into the passage and conferred with the Matron.

“He seems to think someone tried to poison him,” he said carefully skirting the law of libel. The Matron smiled gently.

“That’s the concussion,” she said. “He’ll get over that in a day or two.”

Dundridge went out into the Abbey Close past the geriatric patients and wandered disconsolately down the steps and out into Market Street. It didn’t seem likely to him that Lord Leakham would get over his conviction that Lady Maud had tried to poison him and he had a shrewd suspicion that the Judge had in some perverse way enjoyed the contretemps in court and was looking forward to pursuing his vendetta as soon as he was up and about. He was just considering what to do next when he caught sight of his reflection in a shop window. It was not that of a man of authority. There was a sort of dispirited look about it, a hangdog look quite out of keeping with his role as the Minister’s troubleshooter. It was time to take the bull by the horns. He straightened his back, marched across the road to the Post Office and telephoned Handyman Hall. He got Lady Maud and explained that he would like to see Sir Giles.

“I’m afraid Sir Giles is out just at present,” she said modulating her tone to suggest a secretary. “He’ll be back shortly. Would eleven o’clock be convenient?”

Dundridge said it would. He left the Post Office and threaded his way through the market stalls to the car park to collect his car.

At Handyman Hall Lady Maud congratulated herself on her performance. She was rather looking forward to a private chat with the man from the Ministry. Dundridge, he had said his name was. From the Ministry. Sir Giles had mentioned the fact that someone had been sent up from London on a fact-finding mission. And since Giles had said he would be out until late in the afternoon this seemed an ideal opportunity to provide this Mr Dundridge with facts that would suit her book. She went upstairs to change, and to consider her tactics. She had spiked Lord Leakham’s guns by frontal assault but Dundridge on the phone had sounded far less self-assured than she had expected. It might be better to try persuasion, perhaps even a little charm. It would confuse the issue. Lady Maud selected a cotton frock and dabbed a little Lavender Water behind her ears. Mr Dundridge would get the meek treatment, the helpless little girl approach. If that didn’t work she could always revert to sterner methods.

In the greenhouse Blott put down the earphones and went back to the broad beans. So an official was coming to see Sir Giles, was he? An official. Blott felt strongly about officials. They had made his early life a misery and he had no time for them. Still, Lady Maud had invited this one to the Hall so presumably she knew what she was doing. It was a pity. Blott would have liked to have been ordered to give this Dundridge the reception he deserved and he was just considering what sort of reception he would have organized for him when Lady Maud came into the garden. Blott straightened up and stared at her. She was wearing a cotton frock and to Blott at least she looked quite beautiful. It was not a notion anyone else would have shared but Blott’s standards of beauty were not determined by fashion. Large breasts, enormous thighs and hips were attributes of a good or at least ample mother, and since Blott had never had a good, ample or even any mother in a postnatal sense he placed great emphasis on these outward signs of potential maternity. Now, standing among the broad beans, he was filled with a sudden sense of desire. Lady Maud in a cotton frock dappled with a floral pattern combined botany with biology. Blott goggled.

“Blott,” said Lady Maud, oblivious of the effect she was having, “there’s a man from the Ministry of the Environment coming to lunch. I want some flowers in the house. I want to make a good impression on him.”

Blott went into the greenhouse and looked for something suitable while Lady Maud bent low to select a lettuce for lunch. As she did so Blott glanced out of the greenhouse door. It was the turning point in his life. The silent devotion to the Handyman family which had been the passive mainspring of his existence for so long was gone, to be replaced by an active urgency of feeling.

Blott was in love.