15

‘The train standing at number fifteen platform,’ announced the loudspeaker, ‘is the two-thirty-five to Whortleton-on-Sea. Please form an orderly queue and do not rush the ticket barrier.’

‘That’s us,’ I said to Miles.

‘Eh? What?’

‘Our train. We join the end of the queue behind the kid with the bucket being sick over the policeman.’

‘This is incredible,’ muttered Miles.

‘For heaven’s sake, man, cheer up! You’re supposed to be ruddy Casanova, not Marley’s ghost.’

‘It’s only that I imagined the business wouldn’t be quite so public as this,’ Miles added miserably. ‘It always seems much simpler in the newspapers.’

My cousin was standing beside me under the clock, in his holiday tweeds and dark glasses, clutching his briefcase. All round us surged the normal activity of Victoria Station on a hot Saturday afternoon in July.

There’s nowhere on earth more wonderful than England in summertime – if the sun happens to shine – with the long evenings, the strawberries and cream, the sweet peas, the lazy rivers, the smell of new-mown grass, and the dozy afternoons ticking softly away with the click of bat on ball. For all the isles of Bermuda, Honolulu, or Tahiti I’ll settle for this sceptred one, even though it is largely uninhabitable between Guy Fawkes Night and the Boat Race. And admittedly when the season does arrive to enjoy the silver sea this precious stone is set in, there’s an awful lot of the happy breed of men to share it with.

‘Sure you still want to go?’ I asked Miles, as somebody walked over his foot.

He gave a determined nod. ‘Decidedly. Besides, I have already bought the tickets.’

We started to push our way across the sea-going current towards platform fifteen.

‘I suppose she’s going to turn up at the hotel?’ muttered Miles. ‘Thank heavens I decided against our making the journey together.’

‘Absolutely guaranteed it. Seems a reliable type, too. Fully experienced.’

‘I should hate to think all this effort completely wasted.’

‘So should I,’ I agreed warmly. ‘Watch out for that porter practising tank tactics with his luggage truck.’

Miles licked his lips. ‘You know, Gaston, it’s – it’s very decent of you to go to all this trouble.’

‘Always ready to help one of the family.’

‘I know we have perhaps had our little differences in the past,’ he conceded, as somebody caught him in the middle with a cricket bat.

‘Clash of cousinly temperaments. Very common. Gave Shakespeare half his plots.’

‘But I’d like to say how much I appreciate your doing all this for me.’

‘No trouble at all,’ I told him. ‘Mind that kid with the yacht. I diagnose him as a case of incipient vomiting, too.’

I hadn’t done all that for Miles, of course. I’d done it for Connie.

‘I’ve brought round Miles’ woolly slippers,’ she had said, when I found her on the mat after that episode of Ambulance Entrance had been safely tele-recorded. ‘He seemed to have forgotten them. And his poor feet do get so cold at night.’

‘I hope you haven’t been waiting long?’ I asked, letting her into the empty flat. ‘I also hope,’ I added, ‘you know Miles is planning to go ahead and help himself to a divorce?’

‘Yes.’ Connie felt for her handkerchief. ‘He sent me a letter. Twenty pages, some of it very, very lovely indeed. Quite poetic.’

‘But dash it, Connie! Surely you’re not going to let this fooling go any further?’

‘I shall not stand in his way, Gaston.’ Connie took on the air of a steadfast martyr offered pen and ink at the stake. ‘I know my duty. Miles has a great future, and young Bartholomew and I are mere encumbrances. How proud I shall be, as I hold up my child in my arms, to catch a glimpse of him riding past in his robes to take his seat as a life peer in the House of Lords.’

I fancied Connie had an enthusiastic view of the procedure, but merely suggested it would be nice for Miles to have her at home to polish his coronet in the evenings.

‘Do you think I should tell young Bartholomew all?’ asked Connie.

‘I fancy that would only confuse the issue,’ I laughed.

But I don’t think she was in the mood to see it.

‘Young Bartholomew and I shall start a new life.’ Connie dabbed her eyes. ‘We shall manage somehow. It will be best for Miles if we spend the rest of our days in exile. In St Moritz or Cannes, or somewhere.’

‘You know Miles has actually asked me to tee up the divorce for him? Not, of course, that I want to be his ruddy caddy in your twosome.’

‘I only ask, Gaston, that you do all in your power to smooth the way for us.’

‘Look – why don’t you nip down to Lincoln’s Inn and see one of those slick lawyer chaps? They extract divorces from the courts like dentists extracting teeth. All perfectly painless, and no complications once the numb feeling has worn off.’

‘I’d much rather you did as Miles wanted, Gaston.’ She laid her head on my shoulder. ‘Please…for my sake.’

‘Oh, all right,’ I said.

I rather absent-mindedly patted her hand.

‘Besides,’ she added, nestling up a bit, ‘Miles was absolutely horrid to a very nice friend of mine in that nightclub. Do you think St Moritz would really be the right place for my exile? Or should I try somewhere like Jamaica or Rio instead?’

Connie had hardly left before Miles appeared, announcing he’d saved up a whole twelve hundred calories for his dinner.

‘Your missus must have dropped your woolly slippers on the mat,’ I told him, putting on my little apron to grill his steak. ‘And you’ll be glad to know I’ve got someone lined up for you to do your compromising with.’

‘Excellent!’ Miles rubbed his hands. ‘I’ve had hardly a moment to give thought to the matter today, dashing round the docks looking for Mr Odysseus. He seems a most elusive gentleman. I suppose I shall have to pay this compromising woman handsomely? How much will be adequate? Three hundred pounds? Four hundred? Five?’

If I’d known that Miles had five hundred quid lying about I’d have already suggested a bit down for board and lodging. But I merely said I would give her a ring and ask the fees in her private practice.

‘It’ll cost you quite a bit, darling,’ said Dolores, when I called to see her. ‘Plus expenses, of course,’ she added, shifting a pair of Sealyhams which were growling at some Scotties.

‘Naturally.’ I moved uneasily away from a parrot who was eyeing me suspiciously. ‘You will find the gentleman for whom I am acting perfectly reasonable about terms. To the point of generosity.’

‘Of course, I wouldn’t do it for anyone except a friend of Basil Beauchamp’s.’ We edged discreetly among the hamsters. ‘Are you really a friend of Basil’s? No funny business, mind you.’

‘Of course I am,’ I pointed out. ‘I could hardly have found you here otherwise, could I?’

Dolores, who turned out to be a dark, emaciated-looking girl in a mauve overall, worked in the Pet Boutique in Bond Street, ‘Not that I’ve seen Basil for simply ages.’ She sorted out a pile of puppies. ‘Isn’t he a darling man? I met him when I was an extra in the studio, during St George and the Dragon. He looked absolutely divine in a visor.’

‘Quite. Now - er, how about the lolly?’

She sprinkled ants’ eggs into a bowl of goldfish. ‘It depends what you want, dear.’

‘Just - well, a decent compromise, that’s all,’ I returned, beginning to feel rather lost.

‘I mean, does your gentleman want me in bed or out? It’s extra in bed of course.’

‘Naturally. I think he’d be glad enough to have you up and about.’

‘I could do it for fifty keeping all my things on. It’s a hundred in my slip, a hundred and twenty-five showing my legs, a hundred and fifty showing my–’

‘We’ll have the hundred quid one,’ I interrupted, feeling this the best value in the tariff.

‘Of course, dear, if your gentleman really wanted to go the limit–’

‘Exactly. When can we fix a date for the operation?’ I asked quickly.

‘Not till next month, darling.’

‘Next month?’ I remembered Miles’ holiday would be up. ‘Couldn’t you manage to squeeze in a day, or rather a night, before then?’

‘But darling, I don’t see how I possibly can. Not till I start my own holidays. We’re utterly overwhelmed this time of the year, and I always help out Miss Treadburn – she’s the boss, a complete darling – with the summer kennelling. Absolutely everyone is going out of Town just now and leaving their pets. You’d never believe what I’ve had in my flat – a pair of alsatians, six budgies, and a monkey, not to mention the fish. And then there’s the poodle-clipping. “Dolores,” Miss Treadburn said to me only yesterday, “for poodle-clipping there’s no one to touch you in London.” So I said–’

‘I expect we can fix up some time convenient for you and the animals,’ I hazarded, though feeling rather doubtful,

‘I expect we can, darling. Give me another ring. Oh, and don’t make it Brighton, will you, darling? A girl can always do with a change.’

‘Fixing up your co-respondent was pretty easy,’ I reflected to Miles some time later, when he was already coming up for his second turn on the divan. ‘It’s the theatre of operations which presents the difficulty. Why the devil do you want to get a divorce in July, particularly when it looks as though we’re in for a heatwave? It’s absolutely ruddy impossible to book a double room at the seaside anywhere. At least, in a hotel where they have waiters to bring up the breakfast.’

‘We shall need a single room as well, of course.’

‘What on earth for?’ I was becoming rather testy with the chap. ‘You’re not asking our old grandma along for sea-water treatment of the back or anything, are you?’

‘You will be accompanying me, naturally,’ announced Miles calmly. ‘You don’t imagine I intend to suffer this extremely unusual and somewhat alarming experience by myself do you?’

‘Me? I am most definitely not going to play gooseberry.’

‘I have the final execution of the plan carefully worked out,’ Miles continued, taking no notice. ‘The co-respondent will sleep in the single room, while you and I share the double. In the morning, the kippers already being ordered, you and she will rapidly change places. As soon as the waiter has left, you may return and enjoy your breakfast.’ He gave one of his smiles. ‘You see, Gaston, I am not devoid of guile when necessary. It is simply that I usually manage to conceal it beneath my engagingly frank exterior. You will now continue to ring round all the seaside hotels in the Automobile Association handbook. Only the four-star ones, of course.’

That was typical of my cousin, imagining he could cast off the bonds of matrimony like a dirty shirt and then leaving all the work to me. But the trouble with modern Britain, whether it’s hotels or hospitals, is too many people chasing too few beds. The hotels kept regretting they were booked to the eaves. I started to feel that Miles, Dolores, and myself would end up with a jolly night of it on the rocks at Land’s End.

Then I had a terrific stroke of luck.