Busman’s Honeymoon (8 page)

  ‘DEAR MOTHER,—I write from an “unknown destination”—’

  ‘What was that you called me?’

  ‘Oh, Peter—how absurd! I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘
What
did you call me?’

  ‘My lord!’

  ‘The last two words in the language I ever expected to get a kick out of. One never values a thing till one’s earned it, does one? Listen, heart’s lady—before I’ve done I mean to be king and emperor.’

  It is not part of the historian’s duty to indulge in what a critic has called ‘interesting revelations of the marriage-bed’. It is enough that the dutiful Mervyn Bunter at length set aside his writing materials, blew out the candle and composed his limbs to rest; and that, of the sleepers beneath that ancient roof, he that had the hardest and coldest couch enjoyed the quietest slumbers.

  Sir, he made a chimney in my father’s house,

  and the bricks are alive to this day to testify it.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE:
II Henry VI: IV. 2.

  Lady Peter Wimsey propped herself cautiously on one elbow and contemplated her sleeping lord. With the mocking eyes hidden and the confident mouth relaxed, his big bony nose and tumbled hair gave him a gawky, fledgling look, like a schoolboy. And the hair itself was almost as light as tow—it was ridiculous that anything male should be as fair as that. No doubt when it was damped and sleeked down for the day his head would go back to its normal barley-corn colour. Last night, after Bunter’s ruthless pumping, it had affected her much as the murdered Lorenzo’s glove affected Isabella, and she had had to rub it dry with a towel before cradling it where, in the country phrase, it ‘belonged to be’.

  Bunter? She spared him a stray thought from a mind drugged with sleep and the pleasure that comes with sleep. Bunter was up and about; she could faintly hear doors opening and shutting and furniture being moved down below. What an amazing muddle it had all been! But he would miraculously put everything right—wonderful Bunter—and leave one free to live and not bother one’s head. One vaguely hoped Bunter had not spent the whole night chasing black beetles, but for the moment what was left of one’s mind was concentrated on Peter—being anxious not to wake him, rather hoping he would soon wake up of his own accord, and wondering what he would say when he did. If his first words were French one would at least feel certain that he retained an agreeable impression of the night’s proceedings; on the whole, however, English would be preferable, as showing that he remembered quite distinctly who one was.

  As though this disturbing thought had broken his sleep, he stirred at that moment, and, without opening his eyes, felt for her with his hand and pulled her down against him. And his first word was neither French nor English, but a long interrogative ‘M’mmm?’

  ‘M’m!’ said Harriet, abandoning herself. ‘
Mais quel tact, mon dieu! Sais-tu enfin qui je suis?
’

  ‘Yes, my Shulamite, I do, so you needn’t lay traps for my tongue. In the course of a mis-spent life I have learnt that it is a gentleman’s first duty to remember in the morning who it was he took to bed with him. You are Harriet, and you are black but comely. Incidentally, you are my wife, and if you have forgotten it you will have to learn it all over again.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the baker. ‘I thought there was visitors here. You don’t catch old Noakes or Martha Ruddle putting “please” into an order for bread. How many loaves would you be wanting? I calls every day. Righty-ho! a cottage and a sandwich. And a small brown? Okay, chief. Here they are.’

  ‘If,’ said Bunter, retreating into the passage, ‘you would kindly step in and set them on the kitchen table, I should be obliged, my hands being covered with paraffin.’

  ‘Okay,’ said the baker, obliging him. ‘Trouble with the stove?’

  ‘A trifle,’ admitted Bunter. ‘I have been compelled to dismantle and reassemble the burners, but I am in hopes that it will now function adequately. We should, however, be more comfortable if we could induce the fires to draw. We have sent a message by the milkman to a person called Puffett who, as I understand, is willing to oblige in the chimney-sweeping way.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ agreed the baker. ‘He’s a builder by rights, is Tom Puffett, but he ain’t above obliging with a chimbley. You stopping here long? A month? Then maybe you’d like me to book the bread. Where’s old Noakes?’

  ‘Over at Broxford, as I understand,’ said Mr Bunter, ‘and we should like to know what he means by it. No preparations made for us and the chimneys out of order, after distinct instructions in writing and promises of compliance which have
not
been adhered to.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the baker. ‘It’s easy to promise, ain’t it?’ He winked. ‘Promises cost nothing, but chimbleys is eighteenpence apiece and the soot thrown in. Well, I must scram. Anything I can do for you in a neighbourly way in the village?’

  ‘Since you are so good,’ replied Mr Bunter, ‘the dispatch of the grocer’s assistant with streaky rashers and eggs would enable us to augment the deficiencies of the breakfast menu.’

  ‘Say, boy,’ said the baker, ‘that’s okay by me. I’ll tell Willis to send his Jimmy along.’

  ‘Which,’ observed Mrs Ruddle, suddenly appearing from the sitting-room in a blue-checked apron and with her sleeves rolled up, ‘there’s no call to let George Willis think ’e’s to ’ave all me lord’s custom, seein’ the ’Ome & Colonial is a ’apenny cheaper per pound not to say better and leaner and I can ketch ’im w’en ’e goes by as easy as easy.’

  ‘You’ll ’ave to do with Willis today,’ retorted the baker, ‘unless you wants your breakfast at dinner-time, seein’ the ’Ome & Colonial don’t get here till past eleven or nearer twelve more like. Nothing more today? Okay. ’Mornin’, Martha. So long, chief.’

  The baker hastened down the path, calling to his horse, and leaving Bunter to deduce that somewhere at no great distance the neighbourhood boasted a picture-palace.

  ‘Peter!’

  ‘Heart’s desire?’

  ‘Somebody’s frying bacon.’

  ‘Nonsense. People don’t fry bacon at dawn.’

  ‘That was eight by the church clock and the sun’s simply blazing in.’

  ‘Busy old fool, unruly sun—but you’re right about the bacon. The smell’s coming up quite distinctly. Through the window, I think. This calls for investigation.... I say, it’s a gorgeous morning.... Are you hungry?’

  ‘Ravenous.’

  ‘Unromantic but reassuring. As a matter of fact, I could do with a large breakfast myself. After all, I work hard for my living. I’ll give Bunter a hail.’

  ‘For God’s sake put some clothes on—if Mrs Ruddle sees you hanging out of the window like that she’ll have a thousand fits.’

  ‘It’ll be a treat for her. Nothing so desirable as novelty. I expect old man Ruddle went to bed in his boots. Bunter! Bun-ter! ... Damn it, here
is
the Ruddle woman. Stop laughing and chuck me my dressing-gown.... Er—good-morning, Mrs Ruddle. Tell Bunter we’re ready for breakfast, would you?’

  ‘Right you are, me lord,’ replied Mrs Ruddle (for after all, he
was
a lord). But she expressed herself later in the day to her friend Mrs Hodges.

  ‘Mother-naked, Mrs ’Odges, if you’ll believe
me.
I declare I was that ashamed I didden know w’ere to look. And no more ’air on ’is chest that wot I ’as meself.’

  ‘That’s gentry,’ said Mrs Hodges, referring to the first part of the indictment. ‘You’ve only to look at the pictures of them there sun-bathers as they call them on the Lydoh. Now, my Susan’s first were a wunnerful ’airy man, jest like a kerridge-rug if you take my meaning. But,’ she added cryptically, ‘it don’t foller, for they never ’ad no family, not till ’e died and she married young Tyler over at Pigott’s.’

  When Mr Bunter tapped discreetly at the door and entered with a wooden bucket full of kindling, her ladyship had vanished and his lordship was sitting on the window-ledge smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Good-morning, Bunter. Fine morning.’

  ‘Beautiful autumn weather. I trust your lordship found everything satisfactory.’

  ‘H’m. Bunter, do you know the meaning of
arrière-pensée?
’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Have you remembered to pump up the cistern?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. I have put the oil-stove in order and summoned the sweep. Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes, my lord, if you will kindly excuse tea for this morning, the local grocer not being acquainted with coffee except in bottles. While you are breakfasting, I will endeavour to kindle a fire in the dressing-room, which I would not attempt last night, on account of the time being short and there being a board in the chimney—no doubt to exclude draughts and pigeons. I fancy, however, it is readily removable.’

  ‘All right. Is there any hot water?’

  ‘Yes, my lord—though I would point out there is a slight leak in the copper which creates difficulty as tending to extinguish the fire. I would suggest bringing up the baths in about forty minutes’ time, my lord.’

  ‘Baths? Thank God! Yes—that’ll do splendidly. No word from Mr Noakes, I suppose?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘We’ll see to him presently. I see you’ve found the fire-dogs.’

  ‘In the coal-house, my lord. Will you wear the Lovats or the grey suit?’

  ‘Neither—find me an open shirt and a pair of flannel bags and—did you put in my old blazer?’

  ‘Certainly, my lord.’

  ‘Then buzz off and get breakfast before I get like the Duke of Wellington, nearly reduced to a skellington....I say, Bunter.’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘I’m damned sorry you’re having all this trouble.’

  ‘Don’t mention it, my lord. So long as your lordship is satisfied—’

  Yes. All right, Bunter. Thanks.’

  He dropped his hand lightly on the servant’s shoulder in what might have been a gesture of affection or dismissal as you chose to take it, and stood looking thoughtfully into the fireplace till his wife rejoined him.

  ‘I’ve been exploring—I’d never been in that part of the house. After you go down five steps to the modern bit you turn a corner and go up six steps and bump your head and there’s another passage and a little ramification and two more bedrooms and a triangular cubby-hole and a ladder that goes up to the attics. And the cistern lives in a cupboard to itself—you open the door and fall down two steps
and
bump your head, and bring up with your chin on the ballcock.’

  ‘My god! You haven’t put the ballcock out of order? Do you realise, woman, that country life is entirely conditioned by the ballcock in the cistern and the kitchen boiler?’

  ‘I do—but I didn’t think you would.’

  ‘Don’t I? If you’d spent your childhood in a house with a hundred and fifty bedrooms and perpetual house-parties, where every drop had to be pumped up by hand and the hot water carried because there were only two bathrooms and all the rest hip-baths, and had the boiler burst when you were entertaining the Prince of Wales, what you didn’t know about insanitary plumbing wouldn’t be worth knowing.’

  ‘Peter, I believe you’re a fraud. You may play at being a great detective and a scholar and a cosmopolitan man-about-town, but at bottom you’re nothing but an English country gentleman, with his soul in the stables and his mind on the parish pump.’

  ‘God help all married men! You would pluck out the heart of my mystery. No—but my father was one of the old school and thought that all these new-fangled luxuries made you soft and merely spoilt the servants.... Come in! ... Ah! I have never regretted
Paradise Lost
since I discovered that it contained no eggs-and-bacon.’

  ‘The trouble with these here chimneys,’ observed Mr Puffett, oracularly, ‘is that they wants sweeping.’

  He was an exceedingly stout man, rendered still stouter by his costume. This had reached what, in recent medical jargon, is known as ‘a high degree of onionisation’, consisting as it did of a greenish-black coat and trousers and a series of variegated pullovers one on top of the other, which peeped out at the throat in a graduated scale of
décolleté.

  ‘There ain’t no sweeter chimneys in the county,’ pursued Mr Puffett, removing his coat and displaying the outermost sweater in a glory of red and yellow horizontal stripes, ‘if they was given half a chance, as who should know better than me what’s been up them time and again as a young lad, me ole Dad being’ in the chimney-sweeping line.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Mr Bunter.

  ‘The law wouldn’t let me do it now,’ said Mr Puffett, shaking his head, which was crowned with a bowler hat. ‘Not as me figure would allow of it at my time of life. But I knows these here chimneys from ’earth to pot as I may say, and a sweeter-drawing pair of chimneys you couldn’t wish for. Not when properly swep’. But no chimney can be sweet if not swep’, no more than a room can, as I’m sure you’ll agree with me, Mr Bunter.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Mr Bunter. ‘Would you be good enough to proceed to sweep them?’

  ‘To oblige you, Mr Bunter, and to oblige the lady and gentleman, I shall be ’appy to sweep them. I’m a builder called upon. I ’ave, as you might say, a soft spot for chimneys, ’avin’ been brought up in ’em, like, and though I says it, Mr Bunter, there ain’t no one ’andles a chimney kinder nor wot I does. It’s knowing ’em, you see, wot does it knowing w’ere they wants easin’ and ’umourin’ and w’ere they wants the power be’ind the rods.’

  So saying, Mr Puffett turned up his various sleeves, flexed his biceps once or twice, picked up his rods and brushes, which he had laid down in the passage, and asked where he should begin.

  ‘The sitting-room will be required first,’ said Mr Bunter. ‘In the kitchen I can, for the immediate moment, manage with the oil-stove. This way, Mr Puffett, if you please.’

  Mrs Ruddle, who, as far as the Wimseys were concerned, was a new broom, had made a clean and determined sweep of the sitting-room, draping all the uglier pieces of furniture with particular care in dust-sheets, covering the noisy rugs with newspaper, decorating with handsome dunce’s caps two exceptionally rampageous bronze cavaliers which flanked the fireplace on pedestals and were too heavy to move, and tying up in a duster the withered pampas-grass in the painted drain-pipe near the door, for, as she observed, ‘them things do ’old the dust so.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Mr Puffett. He removed his top sweater to display a blue one, spread out his apparatus on the space between the shrouded settles and plunged beneath the sacking that enveloped the chimney-breast. He emerged again, beaming with satisfaction. ‘What did I tell you? Full ’o sut this chimney is. Ain’t bin swep’ for a mort o’ years, I reckon.’