‘Quelle horrible surprise!’ said Northey, not at all displeased at this diversion from her own indiscretions, past and future.
Basil looked from one to the other. When he realized that we were both delighted to see him, the scowl which he had arranged on his face gave way to a particularly winning smile.
‘Well, Ma,’ he said, ‘here I am. Hullo, Northey!’
‘This is very exciting. I thought I’d lost you for ever.’
‘Yes, I expect you did. What about breakfast – I could press down some bacon and eggs – in short I am starving. I say, this is all very posh, isn’t it! Cagey lot of servants here, Ma – I had to show them my passport before they would let me in.’
‘Have you caught sight of yourself in a glass lately?’ said Northey, taking the telephone to order his breakfast.
‘They must have seen a Ted before – how about les blousons noirs?’
‘Not in embassies, darling, it’s another world.’
‘And what’s this?’ said Northey, fingering an armband he wore inscribed with the words: ‘Grandad’s Tours’.
‘That’s magic. Open sesame to the whole world of travel.’
‘Where have you come from, Baz?’
‘This minute, from the Gare d’Austerlitz. Actually from the Costa Brava.’
‘Begin at the beginning, miserable boy. Do remember I’ve seen and heard nothing of you for three whole months.’
‘Why, that’s right, nor you have.’
‘Not since you cut our luncheon that day.’
‘But I wrote and put you off.’
‘Six weeks later.’
‘I wrote at once – I’m afraid there was posting trouble. Well, it’s like this. You know old Grandad? Yes, Ma, of course you do, Granny Bolter’s new old man.’
‘I’ve never seen him.’
‘Still, you know he exists. Actually, Granny met him with me – old Grandad and me have been matey for an age – he was the brains of our gang. I can tell you, Granny’s got a good husband this time, just what she deserves. You can’t think how well they get on.’
I had always noticed that, while my children regarded everybody over the age of thirty as old sordids, old weirdies, ruins, hardly human at all, the Bolter, at sixty-five, was accepted as a contemporary. She had an astonishing gift of youth due, perhaps, to a combination of silliness with infinite good nature and capacity for enjoyment. Physically she was amazing for her age; it was easy to see that her heart had never been involved in any of her countless love affairs.
Basil went on in his curious idiom, which consisted in superimposing, whenever he remembered to do so, cockney or American slang on the ordinary speech of an educated person. ‘Old Grandad found that Granny’s money is earning a paltry four or five per cent on which she pays taxes into the bargain. Now that’s not good enough for him, so ’e scouts round, see, and finds out about this travel racket – oh boy, and is racket the word? ’E lays down a bit of Granny’s lolly for premises and propaganda and now he’s all set for the upper-income group – tax free of course – and I’m on the band-wagon with him and soon I’ll be about to give you and Father the whizz of an old age. Grandad’s the brainy boss and I’m the brawny executive; the perfect combination. So you see now why I couldn’t lunch that day – I had just embarked on my career.’
‘Which is?’
‘I’m the boy wot packs in the meat.’
‘Here’s your breakfast.’
‘Thanks very much. It’s many a day since proper food crossed my palate. Ever been to Spain? Don’t! Well, to go on with my exposey – Grandad assembles the cattle and I herd it to and fro. In plain English, Grandad, with many a specious promise and hopeful slogan – “No hurry, no worry if you travel the Grandad way” and so on – gets together parties of tourists, takes their cash off them and leaves me to conduct them to their doom. Ghastly it is – fifteen to a carriage across France and worse when we change for the peninsula. Then, when they finally disembark, more dead than alive after days without food or sleep, they have to face up to the accommodation. “Let Grandad rent you a fisherman’s cottage” says the prospectus. So he does. The beds are still hot from the honest fisher folk prized out of them by yours truly! That’s when the ruminants begin collapsing – disappointment finishes them off. Anyhow the old cows drop like flies when the temperature is over a hundred – Britons always think they are going to love the heat but in fact it kills them – we usually plant one or two in the bone-orchard before we start for home. I keep a top hat over there now, for the funerals, it looks better. Lucky I’m tough, you need to be for this work, I can tell you!’
‘I wonder they don’t complain?’
‘Complain! But what’s the good, they’ve got to go through with it once they are caught up in the machine. There’s no escape.’
‘How I should hate you!’ said Northey.
‘They hate all right – the point is they utterly depend. They can’t speak any language bar a little basic British and they’ve got no money because Grandad bags whatever they can afford for the trip before they leave. So they are at my mercy. You should see the letters they write when they get home about “your tall, dark courier”, threatening my life and everything. Bit too late then of course, I’m far away, packing in the next lot.’
‘Whatever induces them to go in the first place, without making a few inquiries? It seems perfectly mad!’
‘Ah! There you have the extraordinary genius of me Grandad. He literally mesmerizes them with his propaganda. All built up on smoothing the path of sex. “Let Grandad take you to the Land of Romance, Leisure and Pleasure.” “Will you hear a Spanish lady, how she wooed an Englishman?” See the sort
