Then, after having given Mr Hockley a minute or two to recover from the emotional stimulus of his own toast, he set about his task.
Tell me, Mr Mayor,” said Mr Kebble, with the gravest expression of interest, “tell me—have you ever thought of fighting a duel?”
Chapter Six
The following morning, there arrived at the rented retreat of Clive Grail and his colleagues a Sunday Herald staff car. The driver, a Londoner in whose estimation anywhere as distant from the capital as Flaxborough was dangerously near the unfenced brink of the world, got out and made a rapid, nervous survey of the house and its setting before going up to the front door.
He told Mrs Patmore that he was from the office and had brought some gear and that Mr Grail or somebody had better lend a hand and show him where it had to be put.
“What gear?” asked Mrs Patmore, whose private view was strengthening daily that her obligation to Mr Stamper should not include ministering to the unpredictable and sometimes quite unreasonable demands of what she called “that newspaper lot”.
Just a film and projector and stuff, the driver said, but it was heavy and he wasn’t going to rupture himself on top of a morning of being misdirected by a bunch of idiots who couldn’t speak English.
At which point, Grail appeared at the door and looked pleasantly surprised. “Hello, Tone!” he said.
“Heh, wossorl this abaht a dool, then?” inquired the driver, with reciprocally approving recognition.
“Dool?”
“Yeah, dool. Wiv some mayor geyser. Pistols at dorn’norl that. Sin the bladdy mile. Sun’norl.”
Tone illustrated the truth of this statement by producing from various pockets closely folded copies of the Daily Mail and the Sun. “And the bladdy garjun,” he added, with a sneer, but in this case without the evidence.
“Yes, I did see something in the Guardian,” Grail said. He glanced with expert speed through the stories which Tone had handed him. “I suppose,” he said, half to himself, “that we have the enterprising Josiah to thank for these. He must have made himself quite a bob or two.”
“ ‘Ere, you an’ this nutter’s not really goin’ ter blarst orf at each uvver?” The question was probably intended to be purely rhetorical and to imply loyal rejection of any such crazy possibility, but somehow—perhaps because he was tired after the journey—Tone allowed his inflection to suggest a delicious optimism rather than ridicule.
Grail looked at him coolly and handed back his papers. He gave a quick shake of the head. “Nutter is right,” he said. “They’re ten deep in these parts. Look, I’ll give you a lift in with that projector.”
When the heavier items had been shifted to the house, Tone delved suddenly, as if in response to an afterthought, into one of the door pockets and handed Grail three flat, circular cans. “Won’t be much of a film show withoht the bladdy film.” He indicated the labels on the cans. “ ’Ere—sorlinarabic.” To this observation he lent emphasis by doing some snake-like dance steps accompanied by a nasal wail.
“See yer in the kasbah!” was Tone’s parting sally as he climbed back into the car. The memory of it sustained his spirit all the way to Peterborough.
Birdie had slept late and bathed without haste. She was just coming downstairs when Becket and Lanching joined Grail in the hall, like explorers eager to see the latest batch of provisions from base.
Grail sought out Mrs Patmore and asked if there were a small room in the house which could be darkened for the showing of a film.
“What sort of film?” She looked from one to another with beetling suspicion.
“I don’t really see that that matters, so long as the lighting can be controlled,” Grail replied.
“Aye, but...I don’t think Mr Stamper would like it if...” She stared down at the largest package as if expectant of seeing it heave. “I mean, it won’t be something mucky, will it? Mr Stamper wouldn’t like that.”
Grail managed to look hurt and stern at the same time. “Mrs Patmore, really...” He turned to Birdie, as if seeking vindication from the most obviously virtuous person present.
Without hesitation, Birdie said goodness me, Mrs Patmore wasn’t to worry, the film was just a sort of travel documentary, terribly dull, actually, but all part of a journalist’s job, worse luck.
“A gentleman is coming up from London tomorrow or the day after,” added Grail. “We are just setting this up for him to see and do some translation for us. He is what we call a foreign correspondent.” A benevolent smile, then: “Just work, Mrs Patmore, just work. Alas.”
The protector of Farmer Stamper’s sensibilities finally agreed to their making use of a spare bedroom, at present unfurnished but curtained and with enough space for a small table and a few chairs.
When she had gone back to the kitchen, Becket examined the projector and pronounced it simple enough to use and probably in good order despite its having been, however temporarily, in the charge of Tone.
Grail was opening a large manilla envelope. “These will be the stills Richardson mentioned. They should make the job of identification a good deal easier.”
Birdie peered over Grail’s shoulder as he withdrew a sheaf of prints, enlarged to some ten inches wide. “Christikins! There’s glamour for you.”
The uppermost picture was a head and shoulders shot of a woman in her middle forties. Her eyes were half closed, her mouth, heavily lipsticked, half open. There was a faintly furry rotundity about her features, suggestive of a home life blameless save for over-indulgence in starch.
Grail slid her to the bottom of the pile and revealed a photograph of a much thinner lady, apparently in heated argument with a youngish man wearing a very false moustache. The background also was patently false: it included a pagoda-like structure and a distant battleship. The woman wore a dressing gown; the man a sports blazer and flannels.
“There’s a very sophisticated conception of pornography behind all this,” Grail remarked, thoughtfully.
He exposed the next print.
It represented a bedroom scene. There was no one actually on the bed but a woman and a man in police uniform lay beneath it. A second man, wearing dress shirt and dinner jacket but no trousers, was ogling the camera with a sort of lunatic jollity, while a girl attired in a cap and apron stood at his left and rear and made play with a feather duster.
“I must admit I’ve never gone a bundle on this transvestite thing,” remarked Birdie, after they had silently contemplated the print for some seconds.
Another still showed an encounter inside a hut or shelter between a man in shirt and riding breeches and a girl with a much soiled face and protruding eyes. She was half recumbent on the floor and held an arm protectively across her breasts. The sundry rents in her dress looked to have been rather neatly done. Their effect upon her companion were difficult to judge, as he wore a pith helmet several sizes too big for him. Handfuls of hay lay around and a cab-horse whip stood in one corner.