‘Well,’ McMaster concluded, ‘see you when you’ve gloated over your Sheila.’ He pointed to one of the figures carved on the uprights of the doorway. ‘Talking of sheilas,’ he said, ‘I wish that fellow didn’t remind me of Gloria Mundy.’
‘
‘No,’ said McMaster, ‘I don’t mean the glory of the world. I mean a girl I used to date until I found out what a little tramp she was and ditched her. She used to wear a cap like that one, and a sort of ridged and ruckled sweater to try to hide how thin she was. His chain mail reminds me of it. She also used to knot a long silk scarf thing round her waist to keep her pants up because she really hadn’t any hips to hang them on to, and the ends of the scarf used to hang down in front in just the way that chap’s seem to do.’
‘I suppose she carried a sword over her shoulder, too,’ I said ironically.
‘No,’ he replied seriously, ‘not a sword, but whenever it was sunny she carried a parasol and used to slant it over her shoulder in just that way. She was partly redheaded, you see, so she burnt to an unbecoming brick-red and then began to peel if she allowed Phoebus Apollo to take any liberties with her complexion. Oh, well, never mind Gloria. Come with me for a drink when you’ve finished with the church. I’ll be somewhere around the grounds. I have a proposition to put to you and I’ve got a pub in Hereford which I think you’ll like.’
‘You’ve got a pub? You’re a Mine Host?’
‘No. I’m on the board of directors of a chain of hotels and the one in Hereford belongs to our group. We have a number of places which are meant to attract tourists, particularly foreign tourists. We have others for commercial travellers and to accommodate coach parties and bodies attending conferences and the Rotary people and all that sort of thing, but, so far as you are concerned, I am not including these. What we want is an updating of our brochures for our top-class tourist hotels. It’s a sort of sub-editing job for you, really. A lot of the information — golf courses, stately homes and castles, old churches and cathedrals, areas of unspoilt natural beauty, facilities for fishing, pony-trekking, access to riding-stables, all that — is already printed in our booklets, but the information is several years out of date. You would have to check all the various items, especially the routes, and make any additions and alterations you thought necessary, bearing in mind that the readers will be on holiday and bent on enjoying themselves in various ways which may or may not be your idea of pleasure.’
‘How long is all this supposed to take? I mean, how many hotels are there and where are they situated?’
‘There is nothing further north than Yorkshire. We’ve got a couple there, one in Norfolk, a couple in Worcestershire, one in Suffolk, one in Dorset, two in Devon, two in Cornwall, two in Sussex, one in Kent and this one in Hereford. You can lump some of them together, I should think. Everybody has a car nowadays and a hundred miles means nothing. We can give you until the end of November to send us the stuff so that the printers can get it out for next season. Oh, a photograph for each brochure would be nice. That’s a pretty good camera you’ve got. You will live free at the hotels, get a generous petrol allowance and a certain amount of credit at the hotel bars and, of course, your pay.’ He told me what this would be and added, ‘I had thought of going up to town this afternoon to ask a newspaper editor I know whether he could put me on to anybody for this job, but I would far rather have you.’
We met again twenty minutes later, when I had examined the rest of the church and he, I suppose, had searched for a headstone to add to his collection. The church was small and, in any case, I was able to purchase two descriptions of it, with some excellent drawings and photographs, when I had been inside the building. Hardie expressed appreciation of the churchyard, but had not been able to add to his gallery of epitaphs.
‘Some of these graves are those of children,’ he said, ‘and that depresses me. Did you get any joy out of your sheila-ma-gig?’
‘I couldn’t even identify her,’ I said. He sighed and then laughed.
‘Damned if I’m sure whether I could identify Gloria herself nowadays,’ he said, ‘and I should class her as the queen of the sheila-ma-gigs.’
‘A rather rude lady?’ I asked, quoting my own words.
‘A damned dangerous one, anyway,’ he said. ‘If you’re ready, let’s go.’
The hotel was all that he had claimed for one of his ‘specials’ and gave me some idea of the kind of work he expected me to do. It was outside the town, had its own golf course of nine holes and the gardens went down in three broad terraces to an immense lawn. Beyond this there was a reed-fringed lake with water-fowl and a smaller pond with water-lilies and goldfish.
The public rooms were high-ceilinged and grand and before lunch he was able to show me a suite of rooms upstairs which the manager told him would not be tenanted until the weekend.
‘Kept for visits from royalty or one of the Arab oil-nabobs,’ McMaster said. Then he asked me how much time I would need to consider his offer.
‘I don’t need any time at all,’ I replied. ‘I’d admire to take it on, as our American cousins used to say.’
‘Oh, that’s good, Corin. When can you start?’ he asked. ‘It will take you quite a bit of time, you know, and we must have the stuff by November.’
‘I can start as soon as ever you like. Is it all right if I get a book out of my experiences? They should be rather productive of copy.’
‘So long as you don’t libel us or any of the hotel residents, go ahead, but bear in mind that at these particular hotels we get VIPs and other sensitive plants. Well, what about some lunch? After that, perhaps you’ll spare time while I give you a fuller briefing and get you to sign on the dotted line, and all that sort of rot.’
Over lunch he told me more about the girl he had called Gloria. I began it because I asked him whether he was married.
‘Lord, yes, for three years now,’ he said. ‘One reason I had to ditch Gloria was that I’d met Kate. Mind you, I was warned against Gloria by Wotton. You remember Wotton, of course. Front-row forward and capable of even more dirty work in the scrum than most front-row forwards, but a nicer fellow off the field you’d never meet. He had had a brief spell with Gloria himself. Met her on a Mediterranean cruise, I believe. My word, those shipping companies will have something to answer for in the great hereafter! Of course he came to his senses when all the boat-deck-by-moonlight stuff was over and they were back in England, but Gloria, I fancy, was very difficult to dislodge.’
‘So he off-loaded her on to you?’
