The Twilight of the Vilp by Paul Ableman

Author:Paul Ableman [Paul Ableman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571314188
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2014-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

THE MIXTURE AND THE BAG

Chapter 4

Dr. Sonya Guildenkrantz stepped into the “Jolly Buddha,” a country inn in Connemara. There was an immediate hush. Beautiful white women, carrying microscopes, were not often seen in this remote part of Ireland.

“Which of you,” she asked, in a low, imperious voice, “is Pad Dee Murphy?”

There was no answer but Sonya’s quick eye detected the mere quiver of a glance which Lucian Neath, the barman, bestowed on one of the golden peasants clustered around the dart board. She approached its recipient and said ceremoniously:

“Is it you, O farmer, that has written to the great science master, Guthrie Pidge at his palace in Arkansota across the wide ocean, complaining of a melancholy condition of your beans, whereby they wither and dwindle?”

The peasant bowed ceremoniously and replied:

“Sure, and it’s me own beans that have got the staggers. ’Tis a thurrible thing for an honest peasant. Is it you, missus, that will be lifting the blight from them?”

“I hope to, O farmer,” Sonya assured him, her glance dwelling appreciatively on the lithe limbs of the sun-warmed man. “Know you that I am the assistant to Professor Pidge and know all the deep penetrations of his skill. Therefore, take me, O farmer, to your beans and I will make them large to see through this little tube I carry.”

“Sure, and it’s large I would be seeing them, missus. So just you jump into the old jaunting car and away we’ll go.”

However, before they could set out for Pad Dee’s paddy, there was an interruption. A slight, white youth, holding a model of a yak skilfully wraught out of milk cartons, stepped out from a corner of the bar where he had been sitting concealed. He approached Dr. Guildenkrantz slowly and when he was within a few inches of her murmured softly:

“Don’t trust them!”

“Who are you?” asked the lovely scientist peremptorily. She was not accustomed to having her scientific work hindered by hitch-hikers, such as this youth appeared to be, for all that he carried a model of a yak.

“Glebe’s the name. Son of the great Henry Glebe of Bangor, the genius that gave us the earth-borer.”

Naturally, at this, Sonya’s eyes widened in involuntary respect.

“Are they then not trustworthy?” she asked in an aristocratic sibilant whisper that hissed softly through the little rude tavern.

“No, they’re not,” Glebe hissed sibilantly back. “These boys are all Buddhists. That’s why I made this model of a yak as a token of friendship.”

“But Buddhism,” hissed back Sonya, “is surely a religion of peace.”

“Sure it is—tha’s right, missus—religion of peace,” muttered a drunken old peasant who had caught her sibilant hiss.

“It may be a religion of peace,” deferred young Glebe grimly, “but these bastards have got it all screwed up. They keep getting drunk and thumping each other….

Bill Glebe sat at a rude trestle table in the “Jolly Buddha”, a country inn in Connemara, constructing a model of a yak out of bottle tops. He heard a wailing and keening and, turning to the peasant seated next to him, asked its cause.

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