“Well, and there’s our Lily now. You know how she would go in for being a manicurist. Her father didn’t like it, and for a long time he wouldn’t have it at all. He said it was just an excuse for holding hands, but, anyway, I said, ‘If that’s what the girl wants to do, and if she can make good money doing it, I think you ought to be able to trust your own daughter better than to stand in her way.’ I’m a modern, you see. ‘We’re not living in the Victorian Age,’ I told him. Well, she’s in a very nice job. Bond Street—and they treat her very fair, and we’ve no complaints on that score, but now there’s this man she’s met there—he’s old enough to be her father—well, middle-aged anyway—but very smart, you know, neat little grey moustache, absolute gentleman, with a Morris Oxford saloon. And he comes and takes her out for drives Sundays, and sometimes he fetches her after work and takes her to the pictures, and always most polite and well spoken to me and my husband, just as you’d expect, seeing the sort of man he is, and he sent us all tickets for the theatre the other night. Very affable, calls me ‘Ma,’ if you please … and, anyway, I hope there’s no harm in it …”
“Now our Bob …”
They got out at Berkhamsted, and a man got in who wore a bright brown suit and spent his time doing sums, which never seemed to come right, in a little notebook with a stylographic pen. “Has he given all to his daughters?” thought Adam.
He drove out to Doubting by a bus which took him as far as the village of petrol pumps. From there he walked down the lane to the park gates. To his surprise these stood open, and as he approached he narrowly missed being run down by a large and ramshackle car which swept in at a high speed; he caught a glimpse of two malignant female eyes which glared contemptuously at him from the small window at the back. Still more surprising was a large notice which hung on the central pier of the gates and said: “No Admittance Except on Business.” As Adam walked up the drive two lorries thundered past him. Then a man appeared with a red flag.
“Hi! You can’t go that way. They’re shooting in front. Go round by the stables, whoever you are.”
Wondering vaguely what kind of sport this could be, Adam followed the side path indicated. He listened for sounds of firing, but hearing nothing except distant shouting and what seemed to be a string band, he concluded that the Colonel was having a poor day. It seemed odd, anyway, to go shooting in front of one’s house with a string band, and automatically Adam began making up a paragraph about it:
“Colonel Blount, father of the lovely Miss Nina Blount referred to above, rarely comes to London nowadays. He devotes himself instead to shooting on his estate in Buckinghamshire. The coverts, which are among the most richly stocked in the county, lie immediately in front of the house, and many amusing stories are related of visitors who have inadvertently found themselves in the line of fire. … Colonel Blount has the curious eccentricity of being unable to shoot his best except to the accompaniment of violin and cello.
(Mr. ‘Ginger’ Littlejohn has the similar foible that he can only fish to the sound of the flageolet …)
”
He had not gone very far in his detour before he was again stopped, this time by a man dressed in a surplice, episcopal lawn sleeves and scarlet hood and gown; he was smoking a cigar.
“Here, what in hell do you want?” said the Bishop.
“I came to see Colonel Blount.”
“Well, you can’t, son. They’re just shooting him now.”
“Good heavens. What for?”
“Oh, nothing important. He’s just one of the Wesleyans, you know—we’re trying to polish off the whole crowd this afternoon while the weather’s good.”
Adam found himself speechless before this cold-blooded bigotry.
“What d’you want to see the old geezer about, anyway?”
“Well, it hardly seems any good now. I came to tell him that I’d got a job on the Excess.”
“The devil you have. Why didn’t you say so before? Always pleased to see gentlemen of the Press. Have a weed?” A large cigar-case appeared from the recesses of the episcopal bosom. “I’m Bishop Philpotts, you know,” he said, slipping a voluminously clothed arm through Adam’s. “I dare say you’d like to come round to the front and see the fun. I should think they’d be just singing their last hymn now. It’s been uphill work,” he confided as they walked round the side of the house, “and there’s been some damned bad management. Why, yesterday, they kept Miss La Touche waiting the whole afternoon, and then the light was so bad when they did shoot her that they made a complete mess of her—we had the machine out and ran over all the bits carefully last night after dinner—you never saw such rotten little scraps—quite unrecognizable half of them. We didn’t dare show them to her husband—he’d
