The Summer of Sir Lancelot Read online

  There is a time when even the most steadfast martyr is liable to cave in and tell the lads with the iron bars to lay off, now he comes to think of it he was probably in the wrong all the time. Sir Lancelot gave a sigh.

  ‘Very well,‘ he muttered. ‘Very well.‘

  ‘Perhaps one leg over the windowsill?‘ invited Mr Finnimore, producing his Leica and brightening up.

  ‘Like that?‘ demanded the subject dully.

  ‘Perfect! A posture of elegant repose. If you can just hold it... Perhaps a little farther forward... ‘

  ‘Ahhhhhhhh!‘ said Sir Lancelot.

  The Vicar, cycling up the drive, had his mind on the best strategy for extracting the cost of a new church stove from Sir Lancelot. It would be the hard touch, he reflected sadly, on a morning that put stoves as laughably out of mind as plum puddings. Perhaps something could be managed with the fruits of the earth, Harvest Home, the countryside glittering prettily under six feet of snow, and the organist‘s bronchitis. But at least he was in for a decent lunch, and the claret - w hich he took for his blood — was the best in the diocese.

  ‘Oh, horror!‘ he cried.

  The scene by the front door resembled the final stages in the Plaza de Tows. Sir Lancelot lay on the flower-bed, bellowing. Dancing round were Lady Spratt, that pretty little niece, and Mr Evans of all people, trying to set him on his feet. On the fringe a little man with a camera was recording the event for posterity.

  ‘Flat, damn you, leave me flat!‘ Sir Lancelot was advising his ministering angels. ‘Do you want to wreck what‘s left of my blasted intervertebral discs?‘

  ‘I‘ll run and phone Dr Tolly,‘ offered Euphemia breathlessly.

  ‘No you bloody well won‘t! I‘m not having that callow charlatan lay a finger on me.‘

  ‘Well, you can‘t lie here all night,‘ Lady Spratt pointed out. ‘You‘ll get damp.‘

  ‘Haven‘t you people got the nous of a troop of Boy Scouts? Go and get something hard and flat to shift me on.‘

  ‘Hard?‘ pondered Lady Spratt. ‘Flat?‘

  ‘Screw the ruddy lid off the grand piano, if you like.‘

  ‘Why, here‘s the Vicar,‘ she broke off affably. ‘My poor husband‘s gone and sprained his old back again. Will you be a good Samaritan while we find some sort of litter? Thank you so much. Come along, everybody, we must search the lumber room. I‘m sure we‘ll discover an old billiard table, or something.‘

  ‘My dear, dear Sir Lancelot,‘ sympathized the Vicar, kneeling beside him and for the moment regretfully shelving stoves. ‘I am indeed sorry to find you in this plight. Only today I was thinking with quite unforgivable envy of your enjoying these lovely mornings beside that delightful Witches‘ Pool of yours —‘

  A scream came from the kitchen.

  ‘Heaven save us!‘ The cook had observed the holy gentleman with hands clasped over the casualty. ‘He‘s dead! The old b‘s dead! And after all my trouble with those sandwiches, too!‘

  3

  Half-hours between young ladies and young gentlemen before breakfast, according to the novelist Trollope, arc very serious things. You‘d have gathered as much from Euphemia‘s expression as she slipped out of Sir Lancelot‘s house at seven the next morning, glanced nervously at her uncle‘s window, tripped hurriedly over the damp lawn, and scampered anxiously down the path between the brambles towards Witches‘ Pool. Tim Tolly was waiting beside the hawthorn bush as usual. He‘d set his alarm before six, to ensure he wouldn‘t be late.

  ‘Darling!‘ Euphemia came running down the slope. ‘Darling!‘ She threw herself into his arms like an express overrunning the buffers. ‘Darling,‘ she added breathlessly, ‘Uncle seems to have taken a dislike to you.‘

  ‘That,‘ agreed Tim, ‘is the biggest understatement since Queen Victoria was not amused.‘

  ‘But why on earth?‘ Her blue eyes were as round as any of Sir Lancelot‘s stuffed trouts‘. The notion of anyone taking a dislike to Tim struck the girl as outrageous as anyone taking a dislike to Father Christmas. ‘You don‘t even know him,‘ she exclaimed, strengthening her argument.

  ‘We did meet once professionally,‘ Tim mentioned. ‘And yesterday we had a bit of fishing together. Though it seems Uncle has it in for Charlie Chadwick as well.‘

  They sat on the flat rock w here Percival had swum away into the darker waters of the Styx.

  ‘Uncle‘s a bit peculiar at the moment, admittedly,‘ Euphemia added feelingly. ‘He fell out of a window yesterday and hurt his back.‘

  ‘Good lord, not serious?‘ Tim looked up. ‘Fractured spine? Totally incapacitated, perhaps?‘

  ‘No, I don‘t think it‘s bad, but he‘s making a frightful fuss. I wanted to send for you — I thought how wonderful it would be if you just came along and cured him with a quick twist.‘

  ‘H'm,‘ said Tim Tolly.

  ‘All yesterday evening,‘ she went on, snuggling up, ‘he lay in bed drinking champagne and saying things about you.‘

  ‘What — er, sort of things?‘

  ‘I don‘t know, darling. I shut my ears to them. But some men called Burke and Hare seemed to come into it a good deal.‘

  ‘Dear Uncle is a bit of a monster, I must say.‘ Tim nuzzled her round the left angle of the mandible. ‘You can almost hear him saying, “Fe fi fo fum” at the start of his operating list.‘

  ‘He absolutely scares the daylights out of me,‘ confessed Euphemia. ‘As well as treating me as if I were about ten years old. Do you know, he‘d no sooner met me at the airport than he gave me a terrible lecture about using all the bathwater. I have to stand up and sponge down in about an inch of it.‘

  Tim Tolly closed his eyes, the better to picture this scene of self-denial. ‘And his house! It quite gives me the creeps. All fish and antlers. Those horrid angling stories, too!‘ She shuddered. ‘Surely, darling, it can‘t be such a complicated business simply catching a beastly trout?‘

  ‘Seemed pretty straightforward to me, Effie my sweet.‘ Tim tickled the back of her neck. ‘Nothing to it, I‘d say.‘

  ‘Uncle makes it sound like naval manoeuvres,‘ she pouted, snuggling further.

  Tim Tolly felt that discovering Euphemia in the village was like biting on a diamond in a black pudding. We have perhaps not seen the poor doctor at his best, for he was really an intelligent, gay, even dashing young man — but Sir Lancelot would have wiped the smile from the face of the Laughing Cavalier.

  A couple of months‘ locum in the Welsh hills had struck him as just the thing for a quiet rest while waiting to start his new job. Once Dr Ewenny had disappeared to see his daughter in Canada, leaving behind a good cook and not a bad cellar of tonic wine (like the other professional men in the district Dr Ewenny was strictly teetotal), Tim settled quietly every evening among the over-polished furniture in the parlour catching up with all the books he‘d been meaning to read while busy getting qualified. The weather was wonderful, and he‘d cured a marmalade tycoon‘s gout. He should have radiated quiet contentment like the tranquillizer advertisements in the Lancet.

  But a strange feeling of sadness began to hang round him, like his stethoscope. All alone in a strange house it‘s easy to imagine you‘re developing something, probably nastily neurological. Tim tested his patella reflexes so often with his little rubber hammer, at the end of a week he‘d developed housemaid‘s knee. Or perhaps, he wondered nervously, he was switchbacking down a manic-depressive psychosis? You can‘t imagine how difficult it is, propping The Practice of Psychiatry against the bathroom mirror and performing a do-it-yourself psychoanalysis. He even thought of consulting Dr Uanrhys across the valley, but he‘d already discovered the old fellow became as testy with patients as with any other interruptions to the fishing season.

  The diagnosis dawned when Tim found himself making too many visits to Davis the chemist‘s, where young Bronwen Davis dispensed bottles with the air of an overtired film star signing autographs. You can‘t suddenly give up all your usual female company without ill
-effects, Tim told himself soberly, any more than you can give up all your usual vitamins.

  Meanwhile, Euphemia was feeling exactly the same. She put it down to Sir Lancelot‘s fishing stories.

  They met when Euphemia called at Davis‘ shop for Sir Lancelot‘s toothpaste. Tim offered her a lift home in his car. Their love grew as quickly and firmly as a prize marrow. Already they were coyly discussing together those exciting fundamental questions, like whether to have oil-fired or gas central heating. And all this before breakfast, mind you, a time when Don Juan might be forgiven for preferring his morning paper.

  ‘But Tim — !‘ Euphemia unsnuggled suddenly. ‘You must do something about Uncle.‘

  ‘I suppose I can‘t go on being a blot on his bad books,‘ he agreed gloomily. ‘Without his clearance, your father wouldn‘t let you marry Dr Kildare himself.‘

  ‘He‘d make me a ward of court, or whatever it is. Then we‘d have to fly to Gretna Green. Or would that be unprofessional conduct?‘

  ‘I don‘t think the General Medical Council‘s had much experience of the situation.‘ Tim rubbed a well-shaved chin. ‘Odd, isn‘t it, how some people positively invite you to put your foot in it, like an old slipper? That‘s exactly the case with old Slasher — I mean, dear Uncle. For some reason we don‘t seem to drive through life on the same side of the road. I‘ve half a mind you know, Effie, simply to march up the front drive, ring the doorbell, and tell the old boy to his bearded face that I‘m going to marry you. Do you think that would do the trick? You could always see the dogs were chained up somewhere, I suppose.‘

  He stared for a moment across the swirling surface of Witches‘ Pool.

  ‘Anyway, darling, I‘ve a month left to work on him before you start at St Swithin‘s.‘

  ‘Tim‘ - Euphemia bit her lip. ‘Do you know why I really decided to be a nurse?‘

  ‘So that you could marry a charming young doctor, like all the others. And in the end you needn‘t have bothered, you see.‘

  ‘No, it wasn‘t that, but I think I‘d better tell you that in fact I want to — ‘

  ‘Good lord!‘ Tim leapt up. ‘Is that the time? I‘ve all my visits to finish this morning before surgery. I‘ve got to be in town by ten.‘

  ‘You‘re wanted at the hospital?‘

  ‘Well, no, not exactly, it‘s a sort of civic meeting I‘m obliged to attend.‘

  ‘Darling! That sounds frightfully impressive.‘

  ‘Yes, I‘m sure it will be. See you tomorrow, dear - same time, same place? One day we‘ll uproot this hawthorn bush and plant it in our front garden. And rely on me to cook up something for Uncle,‘ he added, as she resnuggled briefly. ‘With a little applied psychology I guarantee I‘ll soon have him eating out of my hand like a bearded budgerigar. Meanwhile, though,‘ he reflected, ‘I think I‘d better keep out of his sight for a bit.‘

  Ten minutes later Sir Lancelot, rising stiffly from his bed, glanced through the window to observe his niece walking briskly in the garden. He gave a grunt of approval. He had always advocated to his patients a sharp walk before breakfast, and these early strolls certainly seemed to be doing the child a world of good. He stretched painfully. ‘Enter,‘ he commanded, as a knock came at the door.

  It would be seven forty-five precisely, and Millichap with his tea.

  ‘Good morning, Sir Lancelot. I hope the back is somewhat better?‘

  ‘Thank you, Millichap, the spasm is definitely less. I should like a couple of codeine, if you please, and you‘d better give me half an hour‘s massage.‘

  ‘Certainly, sir.‘

  ‘You know, Millichap,‘ conceded Sir Lancelot generously, rolling over for him to start operations, ‘I really don‘t know how we could exist without you, especially so far from civilization here in the country.‘

  ‘Most good of you to mention it, sir,‘ returned Millichap gravely.

  ‘I certainly couldn‘t struggle to court today without your expert assistance,‘ Sir Lancelot added warmly. ‘What‘s for breakfast?‘

  ‘Mrs Jones is doing you some kidneys and a chop, sir.‘

  ‘Excellent!‘ He rubbed his hands. ‘You can‘t dispense justice on an empty stomach. “Fair round belly with good capon lin‘d”, eh, Millichap? She‘s got that jar of Chivers‘ marmalade for me, I hope?‘ he remembered suddenly.

  A couple of hours later the faithful servitor was asking, ‘May I tuck this rug round your knees, sir?‘ as he eased his master into the seats of justice at the local magistrates‘ court. ‘We must not be deceived by the sunshine from noticing quite a nip in the air this morning.‘

  Sir Lancelot drew out his half-moon glasses.

  ‘Thank you, Millichap, most considerate. You may withdraw now.‘

  ‘Very good, sir.‘

  ‘Oh, and Millichap — ‘

  ‘Sir?‘

  ‘I intend to fish Witches‘ Pool this afternoon. I expect I shall be needing some assistance to get down the bank.‘

  ‘I expect you will, sir,‘ agreed Millichap politely, bowing himself off into the wings.

  ‘Sir Lancelot has ricked his back,‘ Mr Caradoc Evans explained sombrely to their fellow magistrate, Miss Morgan-Griffiths, a woman with rimless glasses and a hat like a trifle. ‘He fell out of a window.‘

  ‘Indeed?‘ she remarked, not at all sympathetically. She knew Sir Lancelot to be an unabashed consumer of spirits while she was, of course, a total abstainer, apart from the invalid port prescribed by her doctor for after dinner.

  ‘Well, what have we today?‘ Sir Lancelot looked benignly round the little outpost of justice and rubbed his hands as though launching into a list of gastrectomies. He rather liked being a magistrate. I suppose after thirty years of crushing into place students, housemen, nurses, and even theatre sisters, it was a pity not to use his talents for the benefit of the community. ‘The usual homicidal maniacs, I suppose?‘ he added.

  Leading into the town was a straight stretch of highway, where motorists who had been winding among the mountains astern of lorries like ambling mammoths could at last clap their feet joyfully to their floorboards. Unfortunately they ignored the forbidding glance from those red-rimmed eyes marked ‘30‘, affording such a keen couple of local sportsmen as Constables Howells and Jenkins, patrolling in their little black MG, as much fun as fishing their favourite stretch of river.

  ‘Quite a good bag today, I see,‘ murmured Sir Lancelot, adjusting his glasses and glancing briefly at a list. ‘About eighteen brace, I‘d say.‘

  Mr Evans blew his nose loudly, which seemed accepted as the starting signal.

  I won‘t harrow you with the heart-rending stories behind each case conjured from the shiny black notebooks of Police Constables Howells and Jenkins. Old grandmothers were on their deathbeds, distant wives seized with sudden illness, children had rained down from trees, boilers burst, houses blazed, tremendous business deals hung in the balance. None of these reasons struck Sir Lancelot as an excuse for proceeding to the scene of the tragedy at over thirty miles an hour.

  ‘I am not in the slightest interested if your wife had gone off with a hairy great sailor,‘ he declared after some time, when his back was starting to hurt again. ‘If you wished to catch the lady in flagrante delicto at Cardiff docks you should have started earlier.‘

  ‘But I couldn‘t, Your Worship. When she left she took the alarm clock.‘

  ‘There is a perfectly good call system on the telephone designed for exactly those circumstances. It is no excuse whatever for your proceeding along the highway at a rate which threatens to make the casualty departments of our overworked hospitals resemble the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo. Your behaviour was utterly antisocial, and I only regret the treatment I am empowered to prescribe can‘t be more radical.‘

  He glanced down at the dock, as though having something in mind involving drawing and quartering.

  ‘Fined five pounds and licence endorsed,‘ he ended briefly. ‘By the way,‘ he added in an undertone to Mr Evans on
his left, ‘I want another word with you later about Witches‘ Pool.‘

  ‘I fear there is nothing you can do about it.‘ The solicitor blew his nose twice, as though sounding the Last Post. ‘I‘ve looked up the deeds again. They are quite specific.‘

  ‘Rubbish, man! I believe you‘re merely scared of that swindler Chadwick and his money. You wait till I‘ve stoked up a bit of fire in your belly. Next case.‘

  ‘Ernest Herbert Millichap,‘ came a voice below him.

  Sir Lancelot frowned. ‘Who?‘

  ‘Ernest Herbert Millichap,‘ the Clerk of the Court repeated helpfully. Sir Lancelot glared at the Clerk. He glared down at his list. He glared at his brother justices on each flank.

  ‘What the devil are you doing there?‘ he demanded, finally glaring at the accused.

  ‘Your own chauffeur it is, Sir Lancelot.‘ Mr Evans raised his eyebrows. ‘Dear, dear! I suppose you‘d better withdraw.‘

  ‘Withdraw? How the hell can I withdraw? I can‘t get out of this ruddy chair without Millichap down there to help me.‘

  ‘It would be most improper otherwise,‘ added Miss Morgan-Griffiths, wagging her trifle.

  ‘Most improper indeed,‘ agreed Mr Evans, glancing heavenwards to see the remark registered.

  ‘Very well.‘ Sir Lancelot folded his arms loftily. ‘I shall withdraw in spirit. With my back in this condition you can hardly expect me to embark on a game of musical chairs. Or possibly you do not trust me, Evans,‘ he added cuttingly, ‘to avoid involving myself in the slightest with the case? My dear man, everyone in court can simply ignore me completely. Now do get on with it. Millichap has plenty to do except stand there all day.‘ Constable Howells rendered an account of the crime while Millichap stood with dignity in the dock, like a Victorian bishop waiting for the hymn to finish before he could pitch into the sermon. Sir Lancelot sat tugging his beard, his complexion steadily progressing through the colours at the lower end of the spectrum.

  ‘That would be his third offence,‘ concluded Mr Evans, as Sir Lancelot hit ultraviolet.