‘The bathroom?’ said Dundridge gazing at her astonished. In the dim light of the hall Lady Maud had been a mere if substantial shape but now he could see the full extent of her abundant charms. Her face was extraordinary too. Lady Maud smiled, a crimson gash with teeth. And the perfume!
‘It’s down the corridor on the left.’
Dundridge stumbled down the corridor and tried several doors before he found the bathroom. He went inside and locked the door. When he came out he found the corridor in darkness. He groped his way back to the landing and tried to remember which room she had given him. Finally he found one that was open. It was dark inside. Dundridge felt for the switch but it wasn’t where he had expected.
‘Is there anyone there?’ he whispered but there was no reply. ‘This must be the room,’ he muttered and closed the door. He edged across the room and felt the end of the bed. A faint light came from the window. Dundridge undressed and noticed that Lady Maud’s perfume still lingered heavily on the air. He went across to the window and opened it and then, moving carefully so as not to stub his toes, he went back and got into bed. As he did so he knew there was something terribly wrong. A blast of Chanel No. 5 issued from the bed-clothes overpoweringly. So did Lady Maud. Her arms closed round him and with a husky, ‘Oh you wicked boy,’ her mouth descended on his. The next moment Dundridge was engulfed. Things seemed to fold round him, huge hot terrible things, legs, arms, breasts, lips, noses, thighs, bearing him up, entwining him, and bearing him down again in a frenzy of importunate flesh. He floundered frantically while the waves of Lady Maud’s mistaken response broke over him. Only his mind remained untrammelled, his mind and his inhibitions. As he writhed in her arms his thoughts raced to a number of ghastly conclusions. He had chosen the wrong room; she was in love with him; he was in bed with a nymphomaniac; she was providing her husband with grounds for divorce; she was seducing him. There was no question about the last. She was seducing him. Her hands left him in no doubt about that, particularly her left hand. And Dundridge, accustomed to the wholly abstract stimulus of his composite woman, found the inexperience of a real woman – and Lady Maud was both real and inexperienced – hard to put up with.
‘There’s been a terr—’ he managed to squeak as Lady Maud surfaced for air, but a moment later her mouth closed over his, silencing his protest while threatening him with suffocation. It was this last that gave him the desperation he needed. With a truly Herculean revulsion Dundridge hurled himself and Lady Maud, still clinging limpetlike to him, out of the bed. With a crash the bedside table fell to the floor as Dundridge broke free and leapt to his feet. The next moment he was through the door and running down the corridor. Behind him Lady Maud staggered to the bed and pulled the light cord. Stunned by the vigour of his rejection and by the bedside table which had caught her on the side of the head, she lumbered into the corridor and turned on the light but there was no sign of Dundridge.
‘There’s no need to be shy,’ she called but there was no reply. She went into the next room and switched on the light. No Dundridge. The next room was empty too. She went from room to room switching on lights and calling his name, but Dundridge had vanished. Even the bathroom was unlocked and empty and she was just wondering where to look next when a sound from the landing drew her attention. She went back and switched on the hall light and caught him in the act of tiptoeing down the stairs. For an instant he stood there, a petrified satyr, and turned pathetic eyes towards her and then he was off down the stairs and across the marble floor, his slender legs and pale feet twinkling among the squares. Lady Maud leant over the balustrade and laughed. She was still laughing as she went down the staircase, laughing and holding on to the banister to keep herself from falling. Her laughter echoed in the emptiness of the hall and filtered down the corridors.
In the darkness by the kitchen Dundridge listened to it and shuddered. He had no idea where he was and there was a demented quality about that laughter that appalled him. He was just wondering what to do when, silhouetted against the hall light at the end of the passage he saw her bulky outline. She had stopped laughing and was peering into the gloom.
‘It’s all right, you can come out now,’ she called, but Dundridge knew better. He understood now why his car had two flat tyres, why he had been invited to the Hall when Sir Giles was away. Lady Maud was a raving nymphomaniac. He was alone in a huge house in the middle of the back of beyond with no clothes on, a disabled car and an enormously powerful and naked female lunatic. Nothing on God’s earth would induce him to come out now. As Lady Maud lumbered down the passage Dundridge turned and fled, collided with a table, lurched into some iron banisters and was off up the servants’ stairs. Behind him a light went on. As he reached the landing he glanced back and saw Lady Maud’s face staring up at him. One glance was enough to confirm his fears. The smudged lipstick, the patches of rouge, the disordered hair … mad as a hatter. Dundridge scampered down another corridor and behind him came the final proof of her madness.
‘Tally ho!’ shouted Lady Maud. ‘Gone away.’ Dundridge went away as fast as he could.
In the Lodge, Blott woke up and stared out through the circular window. Dimly below the rim of the hills he could see the dark shape of the Hall and he was about to turn over and go back to sleep when a light came on in an upstairs room to be followed almost immediately by another and then a third. Blott sat up in bed and watched as one room after another lit up. He glanced at his clock and saw it was ten past two. He looked back towards the house and saw the stained glass roof-light above the hall glowing. He got up and opened the window and stared out and as he did so there came the faint sound of hysterical laughter. Or crying. Lady Maud. Blott pulled on a pair of trousers, put on his slippers, took his twelve-bore and ran downstairs. There was something terribly wrong up at the house. He ran up the drive, almost colliding in the darkness with Dundridge’s car. The bastard was still around. Probably chasing her from room to room. That would explain the lights going on and the hysterical laughter. He’d soon put a stop to that. Clutching his shotgun he went through the stable yard and in the kitchen door. The lights were on. Blott went across to the passage and listened. There was no sound now. He went down the passage to the hall and stood there. Must be upstairs. He was halfway up when Lady Maud emerged from a corridor on to the landing breathlessly. She ran across the landing to the top of the stairs and stood looking down at Blott naked as the day she was born. Blott gaped up at her open mouthed. There above him was the woman he loved. Clothed she had been splendid. Naked she was perfection. Her great breasts, her stomach, her magnificent thighs, she was everything Blott had ever dreamed of and, to make matters even better, she was clearly in distress. Tear-stains ran down her daubed cheeks. His moment of heroism on her behalf had arrived.
‘Blott,’ said Lady Maud, ‘what on earth are you doing here? And what are you doing with that gun?’
‘I am here at your service,’ said Blott gallantly assuming the language of history.
‘At my service?’ said Lady Maud, oblivious of the fact that she wasn’t exactly dressed for discussions about service with her gardener. ‘What do you mean by my service? You’re here to look after the garden, not to wander about the house in the middle of the night in your bedroom slippers armed with a shotgun.’
On the staircase Blott bowed before the storm. ‘I came to protect your honour,’ he murmured.
‘My honour? You came to protect my honour? With a shotgun? Are you out of your mind?’
Blott was beginning to wonder. He had come up expecting to find her lying raped and murdered, or at least pleading for mercy, and here she was standing naked at the top of the stairs dressing him down. It didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem exactly right to Lady Maud now that she came to think of it. She turned and went into her bedroom and put on a dressing-gown.
‘Now then,’ she said with a renewed sense of authority, ‘what’s all this nonsense about my honour?’
‘I thought I heard you call for help,
’ Blott mumbled.
‘Call for help indeed,’ she snorted. ‘You heard nothing of the sort. You’ve been drinking. I’ve spoken to you about drinking before and I don’t want to mention it again. And what’s more when I need any help protecting my so-called honour, which God knows I most certainly don’t, I won’t ask you to come up here with a twelve-bore. Now then go back to the Lodge and go to bed. I don’t want to hear any more about this nonsense, do you understand?’
Blott nodded and slunk down the staircase.
‘And you can turn the lights off down there as you go.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Blott and went down the passage to the kitchen filled with a new and terrible sense of injustice. He turned the kitchen light off and went back to the ballroom and switched off the chandeliers. Then he made his way through the conservatory to the terrace and was about to shut the door when he glimpsed a figure cowering among the ferns. It was the man from the Ministery, and like Lady Maud he was naked. Blott slammed the door and went off down the terrace steps, his mind seething with dreams of revenge. He had come up to the house with the best of intentions to protect his beloved mistress from the sexual depravity of that beastly little man and instead he had been blamed and abused and told he was drunk. It was all so unfair. In the middle of the park he paused and aimed the shotgun into the air and fired both barrels. That was what he thought of the bloody world. That was all that the bloody world understood. Force. He stamped off across the field to the Lodge and went upstairs to his room.
To Dundridge, still cowering in the conservatory, the sound of the shotgun came as final proof that Lady Maud’s intentions towards him were homicidal. He had been lured to the Hall, his tyres had been punctured, he had suffered attempted rape, he had been chased naked around the house by a laughing and demented woman and now he was being hunted by a man with a gun. And finally he was in danger of freezing to death. He stayed in the conservatory for twenty minutes anxiously listening for any sounds that might indicate pursuit, but the house was silent. He crept out from his hiding-place and went through the door to the terrace and peered outside. There was no sign of the man with the gun. He would have to take a chance. There was a light look about the eastern sky which suggested the coming of dawn and he had to get away while it was still dark. He ran across the terrace and scampered down the steps towards his car.
Two minutes later he was in the driver’s seat and had started the engine. He drove off as fast as the flat tyre would allow, crouching low and waiting for the blast of the shotgun. But nothing came and he passed under the Lodge and into the darkness of the wood. He switched on the headlights, negotiated the suspension bridge and headed up the hill, his flat tyre thumping on the road and the steering pulling violently to the left. Around him the Cleene Forest closed in, his headlights picked out monstrous shapes and weird shadows but Dundridge had lost his terror of the wild landscape. Anything was preferable to the human horrors he had left behind and even when two miles further on the tyre finally came away from the rim and he had to jack the car up and change it for the other flat spare he did so without hesitation. After that he drove more slowly and reached Worford as dawn broke. He parked his car on the double yellow line outside his flat, made sure there was nobody about and flitted across the pavement and down the alley to the outside stairs that led up to his apartment. Even here he was balked. The key of his flat was in the pocket of his dinner-jacket.
Dundridge stood on the landing outside his door, naked, shivering and livid. Deprived of dignity, pretensions, authority and reason, Dundridge was almost human. For a moment he hesitated and then with a sudden ferocity he hurled himself against the door. At the second attempt the lock gave. He went inside slamming it to behind him. He had made up his mind. Come hell or high water he would do his damnedest to see that the route of the motorway was changed. They could bribe him and blackmail him for all they were worth but he’d get his own back. By the time he had finished that fat insane bitch would laugh on the other side of her filthy face.
16
His opportunity came sooner than he had expected and from an unforeseen quarter. Overwhelmed by the volume of complaints arriving at his office from the tenants of the seventy-five council houses due for demolition, harried by the Ottertown Town Council, infuriated by the refusal of the Minister of the Environment to reopen the Inquiry, and warned by his doctors that unless he curtailed most of his activities his heart would end them all, Francis Puckerington resigned his seat in Parliament. Sir Giles was the first to congratulate him on the wisdom of his withdrawal from public life. ‘Wish I could do the same myself,’ he said, ‘but you know how things are.’
Mr Puckerington didn’t but he had a shrewd idea that lurking behind Sir Giles’ benevolent concern there was financial advantage. Lady Maud shared his suspicion. Ever since the Inquiry there had been something strange about Giles’ manner, an air of expectation and suppressed excitement about him which she found disturbing. Several times she had noticed him looking at her with a smile on his face and when Sir Giles smiled it usually meant that something unpleasant was about to happen. What it was she couldn’t imagine and since she took no interest in politics the likely consequences of Mr Puckerington’s resignation escaped her. Hoskins was understandably more informed. He realized at once why Sir Giles had agreed so readily to the Ottertown route. ‘Brilliant,’ he told him when he saw him at the Golf Club. Sir Giles looked mystified.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I had no idea the poor fellow was so ill. A great loss to the party.’
‘My eye and Betty Martin,’ said Hoskins.
‘I’d rather have your Bessie Williams myself,’ Sir Giles said, relaxing a little. ‘I trust she is keeping well?’
‘Very well. She and her husband took a holiday in Majorca I believe.’
‘Sensible of them,’ Sir Giles said. ‘So our young friend Dundridge must be a little puzzled by now. No harm in keeping him hanging in the wind, as someone once put it.’
‘He’s probably blown that money you gave him.’
‘I gave him?’ said Sir Giles who preferred not to let his right hand know what his left was doing.
‘Say no more,’ said Hoskins. ‘I’ll tell you one thing though. He’s lost all interest in your wife.’
Sir Giles sighed. ‘Such a pity,’ he said. ‘There was a time when I entertained the hope that he would … One can’t expect miracles. Still, it was a nice thought.’
‘He’s got it in for her now, anyway. Hates her guts.’
‘I wonder why,’ said Sir Giles thoughtfully. ‘Ah well, it happens to us all in the end. Still, it couldn’t have come at a better time.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Hoskins. ‘He’s already sent three memoranda to the Ministry asking for the motorway to be re-routed through the Gorge.’
‘Quite the little weathercock, isn’t he? I trust you tried to dissuade him.’
‘Every time. Every time.’
‘But not too hard, eh?’
Hoskins smiled. ‘I try to keep an open mind on the matter.’
‘Very wise of you,’ said Sir Giles. ‘No point in getting yourself involved. Well, things seem to be moving.’
Things certainly were. In London Francis Puckerington’s resignation had immediate repercussions.
‘Seventy-five council houses due for demolition in a constituency with a by-election pending?’ said the Prime Minister. ‘And what did you say his last majority was?’
‘Forty-five,’ said the Chief Whip. ‘A marginal seat.’
‘Marginal be damned. It’s lost.’
‘It does rather look that way,’ the Chief Whip agreed. ‘Of course if the motorway could be re-routed …’
The Prime Minister reached for the phone.
Ten minutes later Mr Rees sent for Mr Joynson.
‘Done it,’ he said beaming delightedly.
‘Done what?’
‘Pulled the fat out of the fire. The Ottertown scheme is dead and
buried. The M101 is going ahead through the Cleene Gorge.’
‘Oh, that is good news,’ said Mr Joynson. ‘How on earth did you do it?’
‘Just a question of patience and gentle persuasion. Ministers may come and Ministers may go but in the end they do tend to see the errors of their ways.’
‘I suppose this means you’ll be recalling Dundridge,’ said Mr Joynson, who was inclined to look on the dark side of things.
‘Not on your Nelly,’ said Mr Rees. ‘Dundridge is coping very well. I look forward to his perpetual absence.’
Dundridge received the news with mixed emotions. On the one hand here was his golden opportunity to teach that bitch Lady Maud a lesson. On the other the knowledge that he had accepted a bribe from Sir Giles bothered him. He looked forward to Lady Maud’s misery when she learnt that Handyman Hall was going to be demolished after all but he didn’t relish the thought of her husband’s reaction. He need not have worried. Sir Giles, anxious to be out of the way when the storm broke, had taken the precaution of being tied up in London in advance of the announcement. In any case Hoskins was reassuring.
‘You don’t have to worry about Giles,’ he told Dundridge. ‘It’s Maud who’ll be out for blood.’
Dundridge knew exactly what he meant. ‘If she calls I’m not in,’ he told the girl on the switchboard. ‘Remember that. I am never in to Lady Maud.’
While Hoskins concentrated on the actual details of the new route and arranged for the posting of advance notices of compulsory purchase, Dundridge spent much of his time on field work, which meant in fact sitting in his flat and not answering the telephone. To occupy his mind and to lend some sort of credibility to his title of Controller Motorways Midlands, he set about devising a strategy for dealing with the campaign to stop construction which he was convinced Lady Maud would initiate.