Vintage Stuff

'He'll be lounging about the house all day unless I can get him into the Army.'

'All the same, it will be nice...'

'It won't,' said Mr Clyde-Browne. 'It'll be pure hell.'

But his attitude changed when he found among the mail cluttering the floor in the hall a letter from the Headmaster apologizing for the cancellation of the Overactive Underachiever's Survival Course in Wales owing to unforeseen circumstances. 'Unforeseen circumstances, my foot, every circumstance ought to be foreseen. That's what we're given brains for, to foresee circumstances and make contingency plans. Now if that infernal idiot at the travel agent's had done his homework, he'd have foreseen that our bloody holiday would be a downright catastrophe.'

'Yes, but where's Peregrine?' asked Mrs Clyde-Browne before her husband could launch too thoroughly into an impassioned rehearsal of his claim against the firm.

'Peregrine? What do you mean, where is he? He's bound to be at the school. You don't imagine they'd be mad enough to let him try and find his own way home?'

But Mrs Clyde-Browne had already gone into the study and was dialling the school's number. 'I want to speak to my son, Peregrine Clyde-Browne,' she told the School Secretary, only to be told in turn that Peregrine wasn't there.

'He's not there? Then where is he?'

'I'm afraid I've no idea. If you'll just hold the line I'll try and find out.'

Mrs Clyde-Browne held the line and beckoned to her husband who was examining a gas bill suspiciously. 'They don't know where he is.'

'Probably lurking in the school bogs.'

'He isn't at Groxbourne. He's somewhere else.'

'If he isn't there, he's bound to be somewhere else. It stands to reason...What?'

'The secretary's gone to see if she can find out where he went to.'

But the strain of his holiday and his fury at the travel agency had been exacerbated by the gas bill. Mr Clyde-Browne seized the phone. 'Now listen to me,' he shouted, 'I demand to know...'

'It's no use bawling like that, dear,' said Mrs Clyde-Browne pacifically, 'There's no one there to hear you.'

'Then who the hell were you talking to?'

'The School Secretary. I told you she's gone to see if anyone knows where Peregrine '

'Damn,' said Mr Clyde-Browne, cursing both the school and the state of his bowels. 'Then call me back the moment...' He shot into the downstairs lavatory and it was left to his wife to learn that Peregrine had gone to stay with his uncle.

'His uncle?' she asked, 'You wouldn't happen to know which one?'

The secretary didn't. Mrs Clyde-Brown put the phone down, picked it up again and called her sister-in-law in Aylesbury, only to find that Peregrine wasn't there. It was the same with Uncle Martin and all the other uncles and aunts. Mrs Clyde-Browne broke down. 'They said he'd gone to stay with one of his uncles but he hasn't,' she moaned through the lavatory door. Inside, Mr Clyde-Brown was heard to mutter that he wasn't surprised and gave vent to his paternal feelings by flushing the pan.

'You don't seem to care,' she wept when he came out and headed for the medicine cupboard. 'Don't you have any normal feelings as a father?'

Mr Clyde-Brown took two tablespoonfuls of kaolin and morphine before replying. 'Considering I have just flown halfway across Europe wearing one of your sanitary napkins to contain myself, what feelings I have whether as a father or not can't by any stretch of the imagination be called normal. When I think what might have happened if the Customs officer you tried to bluff about that silk had given me a body search, my blood runs cold. As a matter of fact, it's running cold now.'

'In that case, if you're not prepared to do anything, I'm going to call the police,' said Mrs Clyde-Browne, realizing for the first time in her married life that she was in a strong position.

Mr Clyde-Browne, who had been heading for the stairs and bed, stopped in his tracks. 'Police? What on earth are you going to do that for?'

'Because Peregrine is a missing person.'

'He's certainly missing something, though I'd qualify the word "person", but if you think for one moment the police are going to be involved...'

It was an acrimonious exchange and was only ended by Mr Clyde-Browne's inability to be in the lavatory and to stop his wife reaching the phone at the same time. 'All right,' he conceded frantically, 'I promise to do everything humanly possible to find him as soon as I'm physically able provided you don't call the police.'

'I can't see why not. It seems the sensible thing to do.'

'Because,' snarled her husband, 'if there's one thing a prospective employer and God know they're few and far between in Peregrine's case dislikes as a reference it is a police record.'

'But Peregrine wouldn't have a police record. He'd be...'

'Listed on the Missing Persons Computer at New Scotland Yard, and where the Army and banks are concerned that constitutes a police record. Oh, damnation.' He stumbled back into the lavatory and sat there thinking dark thoughts about dysentery and idiot sons. He emerged to find his wife standing by the front door.

'We're leaving now,' she said.

'Leaving? Leaving for where?'

'Groxbourne. You said you'd do everything possible to find poor Peregrine and I'm holding you to it.'

Mr Clyde-Browne hung onto the door sill. 'But I can't drive all that way in my condition.'

'Possibly not,' said Mrs Clyde-Browne, 'but I can. And since we haven't unpacked, we can leave straight away.'

Mr Clyde-Browne climbed submissively into the seat beside her. 'I just hope to hell you know what you're doing,' he moaned, 'and you'd better be prepared to stop fairly frequently.'

'I do and I am,' she said with a terseness he'd never heard before.

An hour later, his experience of the three motorway toilets his wife had allowed him to use had been so revolting that he was half disposed to think more highly of Italians. 'If further proof were needed that this country's gone to the dogs...'

'Never mind about the country,' snapped Mrs Clyde-Browne, hurtling past a petrol tanker at ninety miles an hour, 'What I want to know is where Peregrine has gone to. You don't seem to realize our son is lost.'

Mr Clyde-Browne checked his safety belt again. 'Not the only thing we'll lose if you continue to drive...Mind that flaming motorbike! Dear God!'

All in all it had been a hair-raising journey and by the time the car skidded to a halt outside the school office Mr Clyde-Browne was in a state of shock and his wife wasn't to be trifled with.

'I'm not trifling with you,' said the School Secretary indignantly, 'I am simply telling you that the Headmaster is on holiday.'

'Where?'

'On the Isle of Skye. I can find the address of his cottage if you like. He's not on the phone.'

But Mr Clyde-Browne had heard enough. To ward off the terrifying possibility that his wife might insist on driving through the night to the West Coast of Scotland he interposed himself between them. 'Our son Peregrine is missing,' he said, 'He was supposed to go on the Survival Course in Wales. He has not returned home. Now since Major Fetherington was in charge of the course he's in loco parentis, and...'

'He's not,' said the secretary, 'he's in the Sanatorium. If you ask Matron nicely she may let you see him. It's across the quad and up the steps by the chapel.'

'Impudent hussy,' said Mrs Clyde-Browne when they left the office. Her husband said nothing. As they marched across the grim quad and past the looming chapel, he was praying that Peregrine hadn't been left in Wales. The notion of being driven there was almost as bad as Scotland.

'Is there anyone about?' Mrs Clyde-Browne shouted when they found the Sanatorium and had tried several empty rooms in vain. At the end of the passage a door opened and a woman peered out.