Nuts in May by Richard Gordon

Author:Richard Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

14

The Trafalgar Club in the middle of a warm May afternoon was calm to the point of sepulchral. Lord Brickwood threw himself into one of the elephantine armchairs and announced, ‘How utterly exhausting everyone seems to be today. Teddy, be a good lad and ring for the waiter.’

‘Uncle,’ announced Teddy, obliging but feeling pretty narked. ‘I think I am entitled to an explanation.’

‘Explanation, dear boy? What about?’

‘About the story you told the woman in the funny hat.’

‘Really, Teddy, you can’t expect me to go into the nuance of all that before I’ve had a drink. I can assure you at once it was all done with the highest motives. Whisky and soda,’ he ordered from the arthritic waiter. ‘Dear me, I must have left my wallet behind. Do you have a little change, Teddy? Perhaps you could let me borrow three or four of those fivers as well,’ he added, as Teddy produced the remains of the fifty pounds his father had left for expenses. ‘Thank you, dear boy. You will remind me about it, won’t you?’

Lord Brickwood sat back, seeming disinclined for conversation. Teddy reached for The Field and scanned it all the way through forwards and backwards. He was wondering how to tell his relative he thought it a pretty poor show accusing him in public of fiddling about with a girl he wouldn’t have touched with the end of a sterilised bargepole, when Uncle Horatio abruptly drained his glass, rose to his feet, and announcing he had to write some important letters crossed to the writing desk in the corner and sat down.

The Trafalgar Club liked to furnish its members with everything they might need for their correspondence. There were six kinds of club paper of different sizes and colours, letter-cards, postcards, airmail forms, telegraph pads, and black-edged sheets in case of need. In a trough waited half-a-dozen steel-nibbed pens, should you have forgotten your biro. Beyond the four shades of blotting paper stood a spectrum of inks, and there were paper clips, little green tags, sharp instruments for making holes, pen-wipers, rubbers, drawing pins, tiny sponges, sealing wax, pencil sharpeners, an armoury of paperknives, and some rather nice rulers.

None of these aids to composition seemed to stimulate Lord Brickwood. He just sat there, drawing little squiggles on the blotting paper. He wrote a few words, then tossed them into one of the wastepaper baskets. He picked up elastic bands and made cat’s cradles. He reached for a paperknife and started tapping his teeth. Teddy meanwhile read all the way through the Sphere, Country Life, and the Illustrated London News, and after trying to bury himself in The Statesman’s Yearbook got up and stared idly out of the window.

The rush-hour tide was starting to ebb through Pall Mall and he stood watching the passers-by with his mind prowling round the mysterious history of Uncle Horatio. Even in these days of broadminded morals, it comes as a psychological jar to any young man to discover that a near relative has done a stretch in the chokey.

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