The Summer of Sir Lancelot (2 page)

‘My dear Maud, I wish you‘d realize I have left St Swithin‘s finally and completely. I wouldn‘t attempt to influence goings-on in the place any more than I would in the blasted Kremlin.‘

‘Very well.‘ She filed the letter under a plate for further action.

‘Most
unethical.‘ Sir Lancelot reached for the stoneware jar of Beaulieu‘s Bespoke Marmalade, the treacly stuff which has apparently stickied our royal fingers every morning since George the Fourth. He was very fond of it. Breakfast at the Spratts‘ was always quite a spread with interesting things sizzling in little dishes round the edge, Sir Lancelot believing the modern habit of everyone sitting at the kitchen table neurotically shaking it out of packets to be the cause of such contemporary phenomena as juvenile delinquency, road accidents, broken homes, and the decline and fall of the British Empire.

‘And how are you intending to occupy today?‘ she asked.

‘I‘m going after that trout in Witches‘ Pool, ifl don‘t happen to find the place in use as a lido.‘

‘And tomorrow?‘

‘In the morning I am on the Bench, of course. In the afternoon I shall go fishing again.‘

‘I simply can‘t understand how you manage to spend day alter day doing absolutely nothing.‘

‘I wish you wouldn‘t fall into the vulgar error of thinking angling is doing nothing,‘ objected Sir Lancelot, munching a slice of toast loftily. ‘It is a skilful and absorbing pursuit, blessed by some of the finest pens in the English language. Ah, good morning, my dear,‘ he broke oft, as his eighteen-year-old niece Euphemia came in for breakfast.

‘Good morning, Uncle. Good morning, Auntie. What a delightful day! I‘ve been up for simply hours walking down by the river. It was so marvellous! The water seemed to be chortling to itself over some delicious secret it was hurrying to confide in the sea.‘

‘Any fish rising?‘ asked Sir Lancelot.

‘Surely, Effie,‘ Lady Spratt cut in, pushing across the Beaulieu‘s Bespoke, ‘you‘d like me to take you down to London for a week or two? Just to see a few shops and shows and have a little fun? You must find it quite as dull here as Cinderella in that beastly kitchen. And I‘m afraid you won‘t have much time for gadding about once you start at St Swithin‘s.‘

‘But I don‘t find it dull here at all, Auntie.‘ Euphemia opened her big blue eyes a couple more stops. ‘Honestly, I don‘t. I sometimes wish I could stay with you for ever.‘

You may be surprised to find a delicate blossom like Euphemia sprouting on such rugged ancestral timber. The daughter of Sir Lancelot‘s younger brother Jasper, who‘d settled out East and opened some of the most influential stomachs ever to be filled in Raffles Hotel, Singapore, she was a little blonde with a figure as slim as a bottle of hock, a laugh as gay as the splash of a fountain, and a smile which would have melted an abominable snowman. It had, in fact, managed to achieve a certain liquefaction of Sir Lancelot.

‘What the devil does that cadger Jasper think I am?‘ he‘d demanded, slamming down a letter on that same breakfast table three months before. ‘A cross between Little Nell‘s grandfather and the YWCA?‘

‘I expect Effie will be extremely nice,‘ Lady Spratt countered briskly. ‘She certainly looks it in our photograph.‘

‘Might I suggest that certain hormonal changes have possibly taken place since the age of five?‘

Sir Lancelot glared at the letter. It appeared that Euphemia had suddenly declared in Singapore she wanted to uphold family tradition by training as a nurse at St Swithin‘s Hospital, and Mr Jasper Spratt, FRCS, had agreed only on condition that she solemnly promised to put herself in the strict moral guardianship of Uncle Lancelot. After all, Jasper had once been a student in the place himself. Much to the surprise of her family

Euphemia had accepted the plan with enthusiasm, which was more than could be said for Uncle.

‘I know exactly what she‘ll be like. The same as all those other ghastly lank-haired adolescents hanging round coffee bars, doting on weedy young men in atrocious trousers playing the banjo, or whatever it is, and staying out till all hours. No wonder the Registrar-General‘s annual report these days reads like
Lolita.
Anyway she‘s bound to pinch all the bathwater,‘ Sir Lancelot ended briefly. ‘The whole project‘s out of the question.‘

‘We‘ll see,‘ said Lady Spratt.

But that May morning, a month alter meeting Euphemia with his Rolls at London Airport, Sir Lancelot had to confess himself impressed with the child‘s qualities - her quietness, her serious-mindedness, her love of the country, her appetite for surgical reminiscence and gluttony for fishing stories. Odd, he felt, a bounder like Jasper should have produced such a daughter. The feller must have married into a decent set of genes. He bestowed on his niece across the breakfast table a look of approval wobbling on affection.

‘The early dew was sparkling on the lawn so,‘ Euphemia continued, reaching for the toast, ‘I wanted to take off my shoes and sing and dance.‘

‘You mustn‘t do that, my dear, you might get a chill,‘ advised Sir Lancelot, furling
The Times
and pushing back his chair. ‘Do you suppose that demobilized druid we have in the kitchen has prepared my sandwiches?‘ He dabbed the last speck of Beaulieu‘s Bespoke from his beard with a yellow silk handkerchief. ‘I shall be out on the river till dinner.‘

‘Lancelot! You know perfectly well the Vicar is coming to lunch.‘

‘Although it is extremely unlikely the Vicar will go to hell,‘ remarked Sir Lancelot affably, making for the door, ‘I will simply record that I should have no objection.‘

An old-fashioned Englishman out for a day‘s fishing needs a good deal of equipment. Apart from such essentials as rods, lines, nets, and all those pretty flies, he requires chicken sandwiches, Stilton and Bath Olivers, a slice or two of fruit cake, bottled beer, Thermos of tea, the morning paper, pipe and tobacco, shooting-stick, anti-midge lotion, sunglasses, raincoat, hip-flask, and
The Angling Letters of G E M Skues.
All these supplies swung from various parts of Sir Lancelot as he majestically descended the front steps to a garden set for the opening of summer, with roses bursting at the seams, gladioli impatiently awaiting their cue, and the laburnum in the corner dripping on to the lawn like split scrambled eggs. Contentedly sniffing the day and softly whistling a snatch from
The Gondoliers,
he strode towards that world of woods and water where the peace of the fisherman passeth all understanding.

Fishing, as Izaak Walton would have argued more elegantly with Lady Spratt, is a rest to the mind, a cheerer of the spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness, that begets habits of peace and patience in those who profess and practise it. This list, Sir Lancelot admitted when the year before he retired prematurely from the St Swithin‘s surgical staff, neatly matched his needs.

But Sir Lancelot, like God, with whom he was sometimes understandably confused, moved in mysterious ways. He‘d simply delivered the St Swithin‘s annual Founders‘ Lecture — his theme was ‘The Importance of the Family Doctor‘, and he‘d never been in better form at a lectern — dropped his resignation into the Secretary‘s office, collected his hat, and disappeared. Admittedly, he was known to have trouble with his intervertebral discs, but as most consultant surgeons hang on to their jobs as doggedly as prime ministers he left his colleagues trying to decide if they were more astonished than affronted.

‘I have saved sufficient lives to satisfy my conscience,‘ he‘d explained to his surgical friend Mr Hubert Cambridge. ‘I have saved sufficient money to satisfy my needs, and sufficient students from the errors of their ways to satisfy posterity. I have no intention whatever of chasing guineas through the London traffic until I have one foot on the coroner‘s doormat. I simply wish to pass such time as may remain to me quietly fishing.‘

‘I fancy Professor Hindehead was rather put out you said goodbye only to Harry the doorman,‘ Mr Cambridge ventured.

‘Harry the doorman provided me with valuable racing information for twenty years. Professor Hindehead wouldn‘t even give me a second opinion.‘

The St Swithin‘s consultants didn‘t elect his successor at once, but invited an amiable urologist from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to take over his wards for ayear. They hadn‘t forgotten when Sir Lancelot diagnosed an inoperable cancer of the stomach from his own X-rays, gave his Rolls to Mr Cambridge, and left for Italy to die. Six months later he was back with a new set of X-rays announcing he‘d made a mistake, which was awkward for everybody, particularly as he wanted the Rolls back.

The surgeon was so deep in agreeable reflections on fish as he tramped down the path towards Witches‘ Pool that he nearly bowled over Millichap, his faithful gillie, gardener, chauffeur, handyman, and former theatre porter.

‘Ah, Millichap.‘ Sir Lancelot beamed. On such a delightful morning he radiated generosity like the men in the trading stamp advertisements. ‘I shan‘t be needing you on the river. Take the day off,‘ he invited handsomely.

‘That‘s very good of you, sir.‘ Millichap was a tall red-faced man whom twenty years in Sir Lancelot‘s service, unhooking fish and carrying from his presence such offensive items as amputated legs and fainting first-year students, had left with the look of rotund dignity seen in those really well-nourished Victorian bishops.

‘Not at all, Millichap, you deserve it. By the way,‘ Sir Lancelot recalled, ‘I believe Lady Spratt would like you to drop into Abergavenny with the Rolls first, to pick up the groceries.‘

‘As you say, sir.‘

‘And I suppose this afternoon those new flies will be ready in Brecon, if you‘ve an hour to spare to drive over and collect them.‘

‘Yes, sir.‘

‘And I mentioned, I believe, I may have guests to collect from Cardiff this evening? Good. Well — enjoy yourself.‘

Millichap shifted his feet. ‘Will you be going to court tomorrow, sir?‘

‘Of course I shall. Car at the door by nine sharp, if you please. I say, is anything the matter?‘ He caught the man‘s eye. ‘Not a recurrence of the dyspepsia?‘

‘No, sir. I am burdened with a problem of a rather personal nature.‘

‘But you must let me share it!‘ Sir Lancelot offered heartily.

‘I fancy you may well,‘ ended Millichap gloomily, moving off through the undergrowth with a rich episcopal sigh.

Sir Lancelot shrugged his shoulders. Arriving at Witches‘ Pool, he set up camp behind the hawthorn bush, detached a small butterfly net from somewhere on his knickerbocker suit, and danced excitedly with it for some minutes among the brambles.

‘Baetis bioculatus
,‘ he grunted, inspecting his catch with some surprise. ‘The pale watery olive.‘

Selecting a pale watery olive from the buffet of flies on the peak of his deerstalker, he tell on his face. He inched towards the bank. The hands which had explored an army of abdomens gently parted the final tufts, and the eyes which had scanned half a million umbilicuses relaxed in watchful repose across the water. Sir Lancelot was waiting for Percival.

Percival was the only local inhabitant for whom he had any affection. They‘d eyed each other on and off over the past few summers, but to Sir Lancelot‘s disappointment they had never met. Percival was the largest trout in the legends of the river — and believe me, those Welsh legends all come in Vistavision and Technicolor - who filled the surgeon‘s idle thoughts with the problem of his transference from the little backwater opposite to a glass case over the dining-room door. Sir Lancelot now lay on his stomach waiting excitedly for the plop like a hippopotamus leaving a bog, which would announce that Percival was coming up for his elevenses.

The surgeon suddenly quivered all over. His face wrinkled like an animated walnut. You might have thought someone had connected him up to the mains. A yard away stood a little bird-faced man in gold-rimmed glasses, busy trying to sort out a tangle in his cast.

2

‘Ye gods,‘ muttered Sir Lancelot to himself,
‘what
is the world coming to?‘

He decided the beastly fellow was a straying guest of his neighbour, one of those pleasantly dotty admirals with which the Royal Navy so agreeably enriches the English countryside. The tongue would regretfully have to be substituted for the toecap.

‘Here, let me do that.‘

Sir Lancelot rose with his rod from the camouflage.

‘Oh!‘ The little man jumped. Tm sorry. I thought you were some kind of animal.‘

‘The name is Spratt.‘

‘How do you do? I am Mr Chadwick. You seem quite an expert,‘ he added admiringly, as his fellow-fisherman deftly sorted out the coils.

‘Not the first time I‘ve had my fingers on a length of nylon thread,‘ Sir Lancelot returned a shade smugly. ‘I happen to be a surgeon.‘

‘Of course, of course.‘ The birdlike head gave a few pecks. ‘The Admiral did mention it.‘

‘You are staying at Trafalgar Lodge for a day or two?‘ inquired Sir Lancelot, leading up to frontier demarcation.

Mr Chadwick gave a beaky smile.

‘A week?‘ demanded Sir Lancelot more shortly. ‘Even a month?‘ he added anxiously.