And muttering to himself about barbarians he went out to his car and drove off. In the kitchen, the Countess busied herself with the preparations for breakfast but her thoughts were still on the bizarre events of the night. A one-eyed Englishman? Where had she heard of such a person before? It was only when Marie-Louise brought the two men's clothes down to be laundered and dry-cleaned that the puzzle was resolved. And made more mysterious. Inside Glodstone's shirt and underpants were sewn little labels on which were written his name. It was something the school laundry demanded and he had entirely forgotten.
Chapter 16
In the case of Mr and Mrs Clyde-Browne there would never be any forgetting their holiday in Italy. From the first it had been an unmitigated disaster. The weather had been lousy; their hotel accommodation had included cockroaches; the Adriatic had been awash with untreated sewage and the whole damned place, in Mr Clyde-Browne's opinion, polluted by ubiquitous Italians.
'You'd think they'd have the gumption to go to Greece or Turkey for their own blasted holidays instead of cluttering up the beaches here,' he complained, 'their economy's on the brink of collapse and without the money they get from tourism the lira would be worth even less than it is now.'
'Yes, dear,' said Mrs Clyde-Browne with her usual apathy when politics came up in their conversation.
'I mean, no sane Englishman would dream of going to Brighton or even Torquay in August. Mind you, you'd have less chance of bumping into a turd in the Channel than you do here.'
In the end a bout of Adriatic tummy had persuaded them to cut their losses and fly home a week early. Mr Clyde-Browne waddled off the plane at Gatwick wearing one of his wife's tampons and determined to institute legal action against the travel agent who had misled them. His wife, more philosophically, looked forward to being with Peregrine again. 'We've hardly had a chance to see him all year,' she said as they drove home, 'And now that he's left Groxbourne...'
'He'll be lounging about the house all day unless I can get him into the Army.'
'All the same, it will be nice...'
'It won't,' said Mr Clyde-Browne. 'It'll be pure hell.'
But his attitude changed when he found among the mail cluttering the floor in the hall a letter from the Headmaster apologizing for the cancellation of the Overactive Underachiever's Survival Course in Wales owing to unforeseen circumstances. 'Unforeseen circumstances, my foot, every circumstance ought to be foreseen. That's what we're given brains for, to foresee circumstances and make contingency plans. Now if that infernal idiot at the travel agent's had done his homework, he'd have foreseen that our bloody holiday would be a downright catastrophe.'
'Yes, but where's Peregrine?' asked Mrs Clyde-Browne before her husband could launch too thoroughly into an impassioned rehearsal of his claim against the firm.
'Peregrine? What do you mean, where is he? He's bound to be at the school. You don't imagine they'd be mad enough to let him try and find his own way home?'
But Mrs Clyde-Browne had already gone into the study and was dialling the school's number. 'I want to speak to my son, Peregrine Clyde-Browne,' she told the School Secretary, only to be told in turn that Peregrine wasn't there.
'He's not there? Then where is he?'
'I'm afraid I've no idea. If you'll just hold the line I'll try and find out.'
Mrs Clyde-Browne held the line and beckoned to her husband who was examining a gas bill suspiciously. 'They don't know where he is.'
'Probably lurking in the school bogs.'
'He isn't at Groxbourne. He's somewhere else.'
