Colonel Butler's Wolf

'Oh, he phoned to say he'd got hung up somewhere. He probably won't be back until tomorrow some time—he said for me to apologise to you, but apparently there aren't any seminars tomorrow anyway.'

'There aren't indeed. And there aren't many senior members either.' Gracey frowned.

'And Dr Handforth-Jones sent his apologies too—'

'Ah, I know about Tony Handforth-Jones. He's in the middle of another of his fund-raising frauds,'

Gracey's gaze returned to Butler. 'I trust you haven't any charitable funds in your gift, Butler. Because if you have, then you'll have Handforth-Jones after you for a contribution to his archaeological enterprises.

I never knew a man who was better at raising money from unlikely sources. And at spending it. He has a passion for hiring expensive machinery.'

He smiled, shaking his head in mock disapproval, and it struck Butler that Audley's apparent hold over the archaeologist might well stem from a use of departmental funds never envisaged by the Defense Minister.

'On the other hand, if nobody's doing any work tomorrow, that may solve the problem of tomorrow night's dinner party —eh, Mike?'

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'Sir?' Klobucki cocked his head questioningly.

'My dear boy, if I'm to honour you with a dinner cooked with my own hand, then I must have something to cook— and something worth cooking. So you're going to have to work for your supper in the manner of your ancestors in the days when Pittsburg was Fort Pitt.'

'Sir?'

Gracey considered the young American gravely for a moment, then shook his head. 'On the other hand, I doubt very much whether you could hit a barn door. But as it happens you have anticipated me in your choice of guest. I assume you are a crack shot, Colonel Butler?'

Butler stared back at him utterly at a loss.

'I'm a—a tolerable shot,' he spluttered finally.

'Better than tolerable, I hope! Could you hit a moving target. . .' Gracey paused dramatically '. . . if your dinner depended on it?'

Polly burst out laughing. 'Uncle John—the poor man doesn't understand a word anyone's been saying to him this afternoon. First Terry and Mike—and now you!' She turned apologetically to Butler. 'Colonel, you see Uncle John just fancies he's one of the world's great cooks—'

'My dear, I don't fancy anything of the sort. I am a very good cook—'

'And once in a while he has to prove it. And when this frightful American won the Newdigate Poetry Prize with a perfectly incomprehensible bit of doggerel—'

'Now hold on, Polly-Anna!'

'Perfectly incomprehensible—Uncle John promised him one of his dinners. And it seems you're going to be honoured too.'

'If he can bag a brace of good Cumberland hares before lunch, that is,' amended Gracey. 'I know it is a bit late in the year, but we're far enough north here for them to be still in their prime. By rights I should jug them—hares always ought to be jugged—but that would take ten days, or seven at the very least, and we haven't time for that. So it must be a stew, a hare stew ...'

Butler gaped at him, but the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cumbria had passed beyond his immediate audience into a paradisal world of his own.

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'. . . a cream of vegetable soup, the imported celery is very acceptable just now. And quenelles—we shouldn't have them at this time of year either, but I can't resist them even though you can't get pike . . .

haddock poached in a bouillon of good chicken stock with a drop of white wine. Loire—or a bottle of Charles's Vouvray-—we can start with that and end with it... And something sweet to go with it then—

like a syllabub. Yes, a syllabub.' Gracey looked accusingly at Butler. 'And none of that nonsense about syllabub being too difficult, either. People in England just can't cook the way they used to. Why, syllabub used to be one of the glories of the English table.'

His voice dropped an octave into the reverential range. 'And the hare—in a fine brown stock, with lots of onions and carrots and just a hint of curry powder—just a hint, mind you.'

He swung towards Polly. 'How many guns has your father got locked in that cupboard of his? He's got two or three 12-bores, hasn't he?'

Polly nodded. 'He's got a matched pair of Ferguson 12-bores, and there's an old 410.'

'Good, very good!' Gracey rubbed his hands. 'Well tomorrow, my girl, you will take a shooting party up on the Wall—you can start from the Gap up there and go westward towards Aesica.'

'Are there really hares there, sir?'

'My dear Mike, it is hare stew, not wild goose, that I intend to serve—of course there are hares there. I have it on good authority that there are. Just stay south of the Wall—along the Vallum is as good a line as any—and you should be able to bag something there, Colonel. And if you can get 'em back to me before lunch, there'll just be time to have it all ready for a late dinner.'

Dr Gracey's eyes glinted again. 'We shall drink the Chateau Pape Clement with it. And at the end you and I will drink a bottle of Cockburn '45, which we will not waste on these young people, beyond one small glass anyway.'

Butler did his best to look enthusiastic. He had encountered this terrifying enthusiasm for food and wine before, and he knew better than to trifle with it. It was certainly no time to explain that it would all be wasted on him, that a couple of decent whiskeys and one good plateful of meat and vegetables was enough for him, and that rich