Death of a Delft Blue

‘All right, you win,’ said Laura. ‘And thanks,’ she added. ‘It will be rather nice to have Gavin to myself for a bit. Besides, I expect he’s tired. It’s been the brute of a case, I believe.’

So Laura betook herself to Hampshire. After a hectic week in London (during which he visited London Airport, spent a day in the Science Museum, went to two plays, two films, two restaurant lunches, one restaurant dinner, was given a tape recorder and chose a dozen ‘pop’ records) her son was driven to the village of Stanton St John in Oxfordshire, there to spend a blissful couple of weeks on Carey Lestrange’s pig-farm.

‘Pigs,’ he wrote to his mother, ‘are quite heaven.’

‘So I suppose they do have wings, after all,’ said his father, when Laura passed him their son’s letter. ‘Lewis Carroll seems to have been uncertain about it, but Hamish has clinched the matter.’

They spent an idyllic holiday, riding, walking and driving in the New Forest, and in Dorset, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire. They also spent one unforgettable day with their son.

‘It’s not that I want you,’ said Hamish, ‘but you may as well see me in action.’ He released a year-old Landrace boar and gave it a playful slap on the hindquarters before he ran away. The boar galloped after him, tried to run between his legs and screamed with delight as it sent him sprawling. Hamish got up and chased the animal. When it turned on him, he tore away again. Carey came up and joined Laura and Gavin.

‘I don’t worry at all about Hamish, but is it all right for the boar?’ asked Laura. ‘He seems rather excited, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, yes, but Kelvedon King Arthur likes a game. I’m keeping him off service for a bit. He damaged himself a little at the last one, and fooling about like this with Hamish keeps him interested and lively. That boy is a born pigman.’

Laura expressed delight. Her husband guffawed. Carey collected the boar and shut him up again. Hamish dusted himself down and joined them. He wore a self-satisfied smile.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘How did I do?’

‘Trot up to the house, old man,’ said Gavin. ‘The postman was in the lane as I came along.’

‘A postal order from Mrs Dame,’ said Hamish. ‘I was expecting it. She said she thought she could sell my golden hamsters for me, and I expect she’s done it. She’s awfully gifted, isn’t she?’

His elders declined to reply, so he trotted off, fully aware of his own grace, beauty and strength.

‘I don’t know!’ said Laura, with a groan. ‘He gets more and more dreadful every day!’

‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Gavin.

‘Very much all right,’ said Carey. ‘If you don’t like him, why didn’t you have a girl?’

‘I wouldn’t know how to bring up a girl,’ said Laura.

‘Well, you don’t bring Hamish up. He brings himself up,’ said her husband. ‘And not making at all a bad job of it, either,’ he added, watching his son’s progress towards the house. ‘Hope he gets his postal order all right. If not, we’ll have to give him one.’

‘Oh, Mrs Croc. spoils him,’ said Laura, crossly, ‘and so do you!’

‘With the result that when, in the years to come, he gets into all the scrapes a young man is heir to, Aunt Adela will haul him out of them by the scruff of his neck and a few words that will inevitably blister his ears,’ said Carey, ‘and I’m all for it. She has a wonderfully good influence on him.’

Hamish capered up to them, an envelope in each hand. He gave one to Laura and then, flourishing the other, performed a silent war-dance.

‘May I open it?’ he said politely to Laura, when she had read her own letter and was scowling thoughtfully at it.

‘Eh?’ she said, coming to. ‘Yes, of course. Why do you ask?’

‘Because I saw yours was from Mrs Dame, too, so I thought perhaps you’d rather discuss yours first.’

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve a few manners after all!’

‘You shock me, Mamma,’ replied Hamish, seriously. ‘Did you suppose you had begotten a monster? That’s the sort of thing old Caveat says to us in R.E. at school. He’s always talking about begottings and reading them to us out of the O.T.’

‘Begettings.’ said Gavin, taking the letter which Laura handed to him.

‘Actually, begattings,’ said his son. ‘You know…’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Gavin, hastily cutting short the genealogical tables of the patriarchs. ‘Read your letter and then trot along to the village post-office and cash your postal-order. What do you intend to do about this?’ he added to his wife as he handed back the letter she had passed to him. Laura drew her brows together.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘We’re both invited and it would make a couple of days out. What do you think?’

‘So long as Grandmother Rebekah is going to be there, I can’t wait to get started,’ replied Gavin. ‘On the other hand… well, we don’t get very much time to ourselves, and now that we’ve paid this duty visit to Hamish, I wondered whether, perhaps, a bit of peace and quiet, far from the madding crowd, and all that…’

‘Say no more,’ said Laura. ‘About dining out I’m like P. G. Wodehouse’s vicar on the subject of orphreys — I can take dinner parties or I can leave them alone. Let’s ditch this one. I’d much rather we did.’

Dame Beatrice, therefore, with a mental commendation of their good sense, and driven by her impeccable chauffeur George, went to Norfolk without Laura and Gavin, and arrived at Bernard van Zestien’s square-built seventeenth-century mansion at six o’clock on the evening of the proposed festivity. This, she had been informed, was to be held in celebration of the engagement of Binnie to Bernardo, an arrangement with which (so Binnie informed Dame Beatrice when she had conducted her to her room) Granduncle Bernard was exceptionally well