“Nothing must be wasted,” the Earl had declared, and nothing was. Under his direction the Hall’s sewage system had been diverted to empty into the compost pits and Blott and the Earl had spent happy hours observing the layers of cabbage stalks, potato peelings, and excrement which made up the day’s leavings. As each pit filled Blott dug another one and the process began again. The results were quite astonishing. Enormous cabbages and alarming marrows and cucumbers proliferated. So, in summer, did the flies until the situation became intolerable and Lady Handyman, who had lost her appetite since the recycling began, put her foot down and insisted that either the flies went or she would. Blott diverted the sewage system back to its proper place while the Earl, evidently inspired by the rate of reproduction of the flies, turned his attention to rabbits. Blott had constructed several dozen hutches built one above the other on the lines of apartment buildings in which the Earl installed the largest rabbits he could buy, a breed called Flemish Giants. Like all the Earl’s schemes, the rabbits had not been an unqualified success. They consumed enormous quantities of vegetation and the family had developed an aversion for rabbit pie, roast rabbit, rabbit stew and lapin a l’orange, while Blott had been driven to distraction trying to keep pace with their voracious appetites. To add to his problems Maud, then ten, had identified her father with Mr McGregor and had aided and abetted the rabbits to escape. As peace broke out in Europe the Gorge was overrun with Flemish Giants. By then Lord Handyman’s enthusiasm had waned. He turned to ducks and particularly to Khaki Campbells, a species which had the advantage that they were largely self-supporting and produced an abundance of eggs.
“Can’t go wrong with ducks,” he had said cheerfully as the family switched from a diet of rabbit to duck eggs. As usual with his prophecies this one had proved unfounded. It was all too easy to go wrong with ducks, as the family found out when the Earl succumbed to a lethal egg that had been laid too close to one of his old compost pits. Passing away as peacefully as ptomaine poisoning allowed, he had left Maud and her mother to manage alone. It was largely thanks to his death that Blott had been allowed to stay on at the Hall.
Chapter 4
Over the next few weeks Lady Maud was intensely active. She took legal advice from Mr Turnbull daily. She canvassed opposition to the proposed motorway from every quarter of South Worfordshire and she sat almost continuously on committees. In particular she made her considerable presence felt on the Committee for the Preservation of the Cleene Gorge. General Burnett of the Grange, Guildstead Carbonell, was elected President but as Secretary Lady Maud was the driving force. Petitions were organized, protest meetings held, motions proposed, seconded and passed, money raised and posters printed.
“The price of justice is eternal publicity,” she said with an originality that startled her hearers, but which in fact she had found in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. “It is not enough to protest, we must make our protest known. If the Gorge is to be saved it will not be by words alone but by action.” On the platform beside her Sir Giles nodded his apparent approval, but inwardly he was alarmed. Publicity was all very well, and justice was fine when it applied to other people but he didn’t want public attention focused too closely on his role in the affair. He had expected the motorway to upset Lady Maud; he had not foreseen that she would turn into a human tornado. He certainly hadn’t supposed that his seat would be jeopardized by the uproar she seemed bent on provoking.
“If you don’t see that the Hall is saved,” Lady Maud told him, “I’ll see to it that you don’t sit for South Worfordshire at the next election.” Sir Giles took the threat seriously and consulted Hoskins at the Planning Authority in Worford.
“I thought you wanted the thing to go through the Gorge,” Hoskins told him as they sat in the bar of the Handyman Arms.
Sir Giles nodded unhappily. “I do,” he admitted, “but Maud has gone berserk. She’s threatening… well, never mind.”
Hoskins was reassuring. “She’ll get over it. They always do. Got to give them time to get used to the idea.”
“It’s all very well for you to talk,” said Sir Giles, “but I have to live with the beastly woman. She’s up half the night thundering about the bloody house and I’m having to cook for myself. Besides, I don’t like the way she keeps cleaning her father’s shotgun in the kitchen.”
“You know she took a potshot at one of the surveyors last week,” Hoskins said.
“Can’t you have her charged?” Sir Giles asked eagerly. “That would take the heat off for a bit. Haul her up before the local beaks.”
“She is a local magistrate,” Hoskins pointed out, “and anyway there’s no proof. She would just claim she was shooting rabbits.”
“And that’s another thing. She’s got the house full of bloody great Alsatians. Hired them from some damned security firm. I tell you I can’t go down the passage for a pee in the night without running the risk of being bitten.” He ordered another two whiskies and considered the problem. “There’ll have to be an Enquiry,” he said finally. “Promise them an Enquiry and they’ll calm down a bit. Secondly, offer the Enquiry a totally unacceptable alternative. Like we did with the block of flats in Shrewton.”
“You mean give planning permission for a sewage farm?”
“That’s what we did there. Worked like a charm,” Sir Giles said. “Now if we could come up with an alternative route which nobody in his right mind would accept…”
“There’s always Ottertown,” said Hoskins.
“What about Ottertown?”
“It’s ten miles out of the way and you’d have to go through a council estate.”
Sir Giles smiled. “Right through the middle?”
“Right through the middle.”
“It sounds promising,” Sir Giles agreed. “I think I shall be the first to advocate the Ottertown route. You’re quite sure it’s unacceptable?”
“Quite sure,” said Hoskins. “And, by the way, I’ll take my fee in advance.”
Sir Giles looked round the bar. “My advice is to buy…” he began.
“Cash this time,” said Hoskins, “I lost on United Oils.”
Sir Giles returned to Handyman Hall in a fairly good humour. He disliked parting with money but Hoskins was worth it and the Ottertown idea was the sort of strategy he liked. It would take Maud’s mind off eternal publicity. Tempers would cool and the Enquiry would decide in favour of the Gorge. By then it would be too late to inflame public opinion once again. Enquiries were splendid soporifics. He ran the gauntlet of the guard dogs and spent the evening in his study writing a letter to the Minister of the Environment demanding the setting up of an Enquiry. No one could say that the Member of Parliament for South Worfordshire had not got the interests of his constituents at heart.
While Sir Giles connived and Lady Maud committeed, Blott in the kitchen garden had his work cut out trying to do his conflicting duties. He would settle down to weed the lettuces only to be interrupted by the bell in the greenhouse. Blott spent hours listening to long conversations between Sir Giles and officials at the Ministry, between Sir Giles and members of his constituency or his stockbroker or his business partners, but never between Sir Giles and Mrs Forthby. Sir Giles had been forewarned. Mrs Forthby’s remark that she had received a call from someone called Blott who had ordered a ton of pig manure had alarmed Sir Giles. There was obviously some mistake though how Blott could have got hold of the number in the first place he couldn’t imagine. It wasn’t in the telephone index on his desk. He kept it in his private diary and the diary was in his pocket. Sir Giles memorized the number and then erased it from the diary. There would be no more calls to Mrs Forthby from Handyman Hall.