Nothing Serious (28 page)

I
clutched his sleeve. “This house? What was it called?”

“One of
those fatheaded names they have out in those parts. The Beeches, or The Weeping
Willows, or something.”

“The
Cedars?”

“That’s
right. You know it, do you? Well, I’ve practically decided to give that nest of
crooks a sharp lesson. I’m going—”

I left
him. I wanted to be alone, to think; to ponder, Corky; to turn this ghastly
thing over in my mind and examine it in pitiless detail … And the more I
turned it over and examined it, the more did I recoil in horror from the dark
pit into which I was peering. If there is one thing that gives your clean-living,
clean-thinking man the pip, it is being compelled to realize to what depths
human nature can sink, if it spits on its hands and really gets down to it.

For it
was only too revoltingly obvious what had happened. That fiend in butler’s
shape had done the dirty on me. He stood definitely revealed as a twister of
the first order. From the very moment I had started outlining my proposition,
he must have resolved to swipe the fruits of my vision and broad outlook. No
doubt he had begun putting matters in train directly I left him.

To go
and confront him was with me the work of an instant. Well, not exactly an
instant, because it’s a long way to Wimbledon and a cab was not within my
means. This time he was in my aunt’s bedroom, having apparently decided to move
in there for the duration. I found him reclining in an armchair, smoking a
cigar and totting up figures on a sheet of paper, and it was not long before I
saw that the fourpence which the journey had cost me was going to be money
chucked away.

The idea
I had had was that on beholding me the man would quail. But he didn’t. I
suppose a man like that doesn’t quail. Quailing, after all, is the result of
conscience doing its
stuff,
and no doubt his conscience had packed up
and handed in its portfolio during his early boyhood. When I towered over him
with folded arms and said “Serpent!” he merely said “Sir?” and took another suck
at the cigar. It made it rather difficult to know what to say next.

However,
I got down to it, accusing him roundly of having sneaked my big idea and
chiselled me out of my legitimate earnings, and he admitted the charge with a
complacent smirk. He even—though with your pure mind, Corky, you will find this
hard to believe—thanked me for putting him on to a good thing. Finally, with incredible
effrontery, he offered me a flyer in full settlement of all claims, saying that
one of these days softheartedness would be his ruin.

First,
of course, I took a pop at coercing him into a partnership by threatening to
inform my aunt, but he waved this away airily by saying that he knew a few
things about me too. And that clinched that, because there was a pretty good
chance that he did. Then, laddie, I began to speak my mind.

I am a
pretty eloquent chap, when stirred, and I can’t remember leaving out much.
Waving away his degrading bribe, I called him names which I had heard second
mates use to able-bodied seamen, and others which the able-bodied seamen had
used in describing the second mates later on in the privacy of the foc’s’le.
Then, turning on my heel, I strode out, pausing at the door to add something
which a trimmer had once said to the barman of a Montevideo bar in my presence
when the latter had refused to serve him on the ground that he had already had
enough. And as I slammed the door, I was filled with a glow of exaltation. It
seemed to me that in a difficult situation I had borne myself extremely well.

I don’t
know, Corky, if you have ever done the fine, dignified thing, refusing to
accept money because it was tainted and there wasn’t enough of it, but I have
always noticed on these occasions that there comes a time when the glow of
exaltation begins to ebb. Reason returns to its throne, and you find yourself
wondering whether in doing the fine, dignified thing you have not behaved like a
silly ass.

With me
this happened as I was about half-way through a restorative beer at a pub in
Jermyn Street. For it was at that moment that the Bottleton East bloke came in
and said he had been looking for me everywhere. What he had to tell me was that
I must make my decision about that M.C. job within the next twenty-four hours,
as the authorities could not hold it open any longer. And the thought that I
had deliberately rejected the flyer which would have placed a second-hand suit
of dress clothes within my grasp seemed to gash me like a knife.

I
assured him that I would let him know next day without fail, and went out, to
pace the streets and ponder.

The
whole thing was extraordinarily difficult and complex. On the one hand, pride
forbade me to crawl back to that inky-souled butler and tell him that I would
accept his grimy money after all. And yet, on the other hand …

You
see, with old Tuppy out of town I hardly knew where to turn for the ready, and
it was imperative that I obtain employment at an early date. And, apart from
that, what the bloke had said about watching me standing in the ring in my
soup-and-fish had inflamed my imagination. I could see myself dominating that
vast audience with upraised hand and, silence secured, informing it that the
next item on the programme would be a four-round bout between Porky Jones of
Bermondsey and Slugger Smith of the New Cut, or whoever it might be, and I
confess that I found the picture intoxicating. The thought of being the
cynosure of all eyes, my lightest word greeted with respectful whistles, moved
me proudly. Vanity, of course, but is any of us free from it?

That
night I set out once more for The Cedars. I was fully alive to the fact that
the pride of the Ukridges was going to get one of the worst wallops it had ever
sustained, but there are moments when pride has to take the short end.

IV

It was fortunate that I
had gone prepared to have my
amour propre
put through the wringer, for
the first thing that happened was that I was refused admittance at the front
door because I was not dressed. It was Oakshott himself who inflicted this
indignity upon me, bidding me curtly to go round to the back and wait for him
in his pantry. He added that he would be glad if I did it quick, as the guests
would be arriving shortly. He seemed to think that the sight of what he
evidently looked on as a Forgotten Man would distress them.

So I
went to the pantry and waited, and presently I could hear cars driving up and
merry voices calling to one another and all the other indications of a big
night; sounds which, as you may imagine, were like acid to the soul. It must
have been nearly an hour before Oakshott condescended to show up, and when he
did his manner was curt and forbidding.

“Well?”
he said. I tried to think that he had said: “Well, sir?” but I knew he had’t.
It was only too plain from the very outset that the butler side of him was in
complete abeyance. It was more like being granted an audience by a successful
company promoter.

I got
down to the
res
immediately, informing him—for there is never any sense
in wasting time on these occasions—that I had been thinking things over and had
decided to take that flyer of his. Whereupon he informed me that he had been
thinking it over and had decided not to ruddy well let me have it. There was a
nasty glint in his eye, as he spoke, which I didn’t like. In the course of a
long career I have seen men who wore that indefinable air of not intending to
part with flyers, but never one in whom it was so well-marked.

“Your
manner this morning was extremely offensive,” he said.

I sank
the pride of the Ukridges another notch, and urged him not to allow mere
surface manner to influence him. Had he, I asked, never heard of the gruff
exterior that covers the heart of gold?

“You
called me a—”

“I
could not deny it.”

“And a—”

Again I
was forced to admit that this was substantially correct. “And just as you were
about to leave you turned at the door and called me a — — —”

I saw
that something must be done to check this train of thought.

“Did I
hurt your feelings, Oakshott?” I said sympathetically. “Did I wound you,
Oakshott, old pal? It was quite unintentional. If you had been watching my
face, you would have seen a twinkle in my eye. I was kidding you, old friend.
These pleasantries are not intended to be taken
au pied de la lettre.”

He said
he didn’t know what
au pied de la lettre
meant, and I was supplying a
rough diagram when an underling of sorts appeared and told him he was wanted at
the front. He left me flat, departing without a backward glance, and I started
hunting round for the port. There should be some, I felt, in this pantry. “If butlers
come, can port be far behind?” is always a pretty safe rule to go on.

I
located it eventually in a cupboard, and took a stimulating swig. It was just
what I had been needing. It has frequently happened that a good go in at the
port at a critical moment has made all the difference to me as a thinking
force. The stuff seems to act directly on the little grey cells, causing them
to flex their muscles and chuck their chests out. A stiff whisky and soda
sometimes has a similar effect, I have noticed, but port never fails.

It did
not fail me now. Quite suddenly, as if I had pressed a button, there rose
before me a picture of my aunt’s bedroom, and in the foreground of it was the
mantelpiece with its handsome clock, worth, I estimated, fully five quid on the
hoof.

My aunt
is a woman who likes to surround herself with costly objects of
vertu,
and
who shall blame her? She has the price, earned with her gifted pen, and if that
is how she feels like spending it, good luck to her, say I. Everywhere
throughout her cultured home you will find rich ornaments, on any one of which
the most cautious pawnbroker would be delighted to spring a princely sum.

No,
Corky, you are wrong. You choose your expressions carelessly. It was not my
intention to
pinch
this clock. The transaction presented itself to my
mind purely in the light of a temporary loan. No actual figures had been talked
by the representative of the Bottleton East Mammoth Palace of Pugilism, but I
considered that I was justified in assuming that for such a post as announcer
and master of ceremonies a very substantial salary might be taken as read.
Well, dash it, my predecessor had died of cirrhosis of the liver. It costs
money to die of cirrhosis of the liver. It seemed to me that it would be child’s
play to save enough out of that substantial salary in the first week to de-pop
the clock and restore it to its place.

The
whole business deal, in short, would be consummated without my aunt being
subjected to any annoyance or inconvenience whatsoever. It shows what a good
whack at the port will do, when I say that there was actually a moment, as I
raced upstairs, when I told myself that, could she know the facts, she would be
the first to approve and applaud.

I had
modified this view somewhat by the time I reached the door, but I did not allow
this to deter me. I flung myself at the handle and turned it with zip and
animation. And you may picture my chagrin, Corky, when not a damn thing
happened. Oakshott had locked the door and taken away the key, creating a
situation which would have compelled most men to confess themselves nonplussed,
and one which, I must own, rattled even me for a bit.

Then my
knowledge of the terrain stood me in good stead. I had spent a considerable
amount of time as an inmate of this house— it rarely happens that my aunt kicks
me out before the middle of the second week—and I was familiar with its
workings. I knew, for instance, that behind the potting shed down by the
kitchen garden there was always kept a small but serviceable ladder. I was also
aware that my aunt’s bedroom had French windows opening on a balcony. With the
aid of this ladder and a chisel I would be able to laugh at locksmiths.

Butlers
always have chisels, so I went back to the pantry and had no difficulty in
finding Oakshott’s. There was an electric torch in the same drawer, and I felt
that I might need that, too. I had just pocketed these useful objects, when
Oakshott came in, and conceive my emotion when I saw that he was carrying a
roll the size of a portmanteau. I presumed that he had come to the pantry to
bank the stuff. A man in his position, with ready money raining down on him in
a steady stream, would naturally wish to cache it from time to time, so as to
leave room on his person for more.

The
sight of me seemed to give him little or no pleasure. His eyes took on a cold,
poached-egg look.

“You
still here?”

“Still
here,” I assured him.

“It’s
no good your waiting,” he said churlishly. “You won’t get a smell of that
flyer.”

“I need
it sorely.”

“So do
I.”

“And
how easy it would be to give of your plenty. With a wad like that, you’d never
know it was gone.”

“It won’t
be gone.”

I
sighed. “So be it, Oakshott. You won’t grudge me a drop of port?”