25

The Saturday of the beauty finals was another jolly lovely Whortleton day, with the sun sparkling happily on the silvery sands beside the bright blue sea, the gay little white boats bobbing about, and the pretty little yellow helicopter buzzing above dragging out the people caught by the undertow.

‘And how are the dear little chick-a-biddies today?’ asked Squiffy, returning from queuing up at the cafeteria for his seconds of sausages at breakfast.

‘In rather good form at my morning visit,’ I told him. ‘Quite respectful for once.’

My reception in the isolation hut was usually that of King Herod the Great at the local Mothers’ Union. But that Saturday the little girls were all looking clean and tidy in their white dresses and bobbing curtsies all round.

‘A week in isolation has done them no end of good,’ I suggested. ‘Taken their minds off being teenagers for a bit, I suppose. It must be terrible having to go round all the time remembering what a shocking problem you are.’

‘Well, this is the great day.’ Squiffy helped himself to more tomato sauce. ‘They’re off at two-thirty, and it’ll be a proud moment for me when I’m leading Pagan Flame into the Bingo Bar as the winner. I’ve never seen a woman in better condition. She’s moving well, full of spirit, and taking her food wonderfully. A girl of great talent, Audrey.’ Squiffy reached for the marmalade. ‘Did you know she can sing and do jolly funny imitations of girls performing the belly-dance in the Kasbah?’

‘That should be one way of getting through your long domestic evenings.’

‘Besides, she’s bags of badinage and funny Australian jokes. Though the language is a bit of a snag sometimes. I always thought a wombat was something they played cricket with.’ Squiffy looked at his watch. ‘This Beauchamp perisher is turning up after lunch, I suppose. Though it’ll be nice to see old Lucy again.’

‘Yes, it will be nice to see old Lucy again.’

‘Look here, Grim,’ suggested Squiffy, ‘you’re so down in the mouth these days you need taking out of yourself. Next Saturday, when we’re all back in Town, how about you and I and Lucy and Pagan making up a foursome? We can go on a picnic somewhere with a hamper absolutely stuffed with food, and end up with a bite of dinner at a quiet spot on the River. I can easily play host, of course, on Pagan’s winnings. What do you say?’

‘Next Saturday I’m afraid I’ve got an engagement.’

‘Oh, rotten luck. I just thought it might be fun. I suppose we’ll have to take that Beauchamp bird instead. I’d better nip along and see Pagan,’ Squiffy ended, wiping up the remains of the tomato sauce with his bread and marmalade. ‘She always breakfasts in bed, to conserve her strength. Sure you wouldn’t like to put a bit on her, too? Though I don’t suppose Whitherspoon now would give you better than evens.’

He hurried off, leaving me prodding my scrambled egg. I seemed to be losing my appetite. Like Miles and everyone else in the profession I’m a bit of a hypochondriac, and I wondered if I were cooking up some really nasty complaint. Then they’d have to postpone the wedding, I reflected solemnly. The invitations would be cancelled, the presents put in the attic, the Vicar given the afternoon off, the cake cut up and distributed to the poor. ‘The poor chap,’ everyone would say. ‘Languishing in some beastly hospital when he should be having a jolly time of it getting married.’ There I’d be, behind screens at the end of the ward, all pale with Anemone holding my hand, the nurses passing on tiptoe and the consultant outside scratching his head and saying, ‘Tell George to be sure to get a post mortem.’

I suddenly realized I’d finished my scrambled egg and was feeling rather more cheerful.

‘Grim,’ Squiffy burst through the Dining Hall doors. ‘Grim! Come at once. It’s Pagan. She’s coughing.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Worse than that, she looks all peculiar. She’s lying in bed crying her eyes out and saying she wishes she were back in Australia.’

‘Peculiar? How do you mean, peculiar?’

‘All red and blotchy and hot to the touch.’

‘Oh, she’s got German measles,’ I told him. ‘I’d better go and have a look.’

‘A pink macular rash,’ I was observing in her chalet a few minutes later. ‘On the face and spreading to the trunk. Ah, yes. Do you itch, Miss Flame?’

‘I feel lousy all over.’

‘That’s right. General malaise, coryza, slight conjunctival infection. Temperature’s up, of course. May I feel behind the ears? As I thought. Enlargement of the posterior cervical and suboccipital glands.’ I replaced the stricken beauty’s head on the pillow. ‘Never had German measles before? Rubella it is, then. Lot of it about this summer.’

‘But what are you going to do, Grim?’ demanded Squiffy, jumping about at the bedside.

‘Nothing, old lad. There isn’t any treatment. I’ll tell the Camp Commandant you’ll be in dock for a few days, Miss Flame. Take plenty of fluids and don’t worry. Good morning.’

‘But the beauty contest,’ hissed Squiffy, as soon as we stepped outside.

‘I’ve never heard of a girl winning a beauty contest covered with spots.’

‘But if she’s scratched I’ll lose my cash.’

‘So you will, Squiffy. Too bad.’

‘But damn it, Grim!’ Squiffy held his head with both hands. ‘I’ve laid a thousand quid with Whitherspoon on that woman.’

I stared at the chap. ‘A thousand quid? But you never had anything like that sort of cash hanging about. You haven’t been burgling your own bank, have you?’

‘Not exactly. But I thought I was on such a cert, if I could really collect a packet I’d not only pay off the head beak but snap my fingers at the old man, should by any chance he raise objections to my marrying Audrey. Then I noticed this terribly sporty offer in the personal column of the local paper.’

‘You’re not entering for the cross-Channel race?’

‘No, there are some coves with an office round the back of the Town Hall, who apparently think it a crying shame chaps like me with fathers bursting with cash should go about with hardly enough to keep body and soul on the same spot. So they just let you have the stuff on tick until convenient. A very useful arrangement all round. A wonder a lot of other people haven’t thought of it. They were all for giving me five thousand once they’d established who I was, but I’m a pretty careful bird in many respects, Grim, and kept it down to one. And now – Oh, gosh!’

‘Look here, you idiot. I’m sure this sort of bet isn’t recognized at Tattersall’s. You can get this Whitherspoon to give you your stake back again.’

Squiffy gazed at me. ‘Have you ever known anyone anywhere to get their money back out of a bookie?’

‘You have a point,’ I agreed.

‘Can’t you give her something, Grim?’ he pleaded. ‘Surely you medical coves these days have all sorts of wonder drugs up your sleeves?’

‘German measles isn’t in the wonder drug class.’

‘But damn it! How on earth did she catch it in the first place?’

‘From the kid who was sick in the swimming bath, I suppose. Four days is just about the incubation period.’

‘I’m going to chuck myself off the pier,’ announced Squiffy.

‘Yes, I suppose that’s about the best thing you could do,’ I told him, not only thoroughly fed up with the chump but having worries of my own.

I strode back to the chalet to prepare a nice little speech for next Saturday’s wedding. As I’d already lined up the Ascot outfit from Mr Moss and his invaluable brothers, and as Dame Hilda had bought the ring and sent me the bill from Asprey’s, this was all that remained for me to contribute to the proceedings. I sat down at the bedside table with a sheet of paper. As I remembered from acting as second on these occasions, the happy bridegroom first brought merry chuckles all round by referring to ‘My wife’, then he thanked all the uncles and aunts for the cut glass and silverware, and ended up with a funny story to leave them in tucks over the champers. I went on staring at the paper. For the life of me I couldn’t think of a funny story. Even the one about the bishop and the parrot, which cleaned up a bit might do, seemed to have gone from my mind like last week’s cricket scores. I sat smoking cigarettes and gazing at the happy campers cavorting in the sunshine. But of course, I was happier than any of them. Lucky me was shortly going to marry the nicest, etc.

I was interrupted by the reappearance of Squiffy.

‘Grim,’ he announced. ‘I’m a changed man.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Totally.’ He sat on the bed and twisted his legs. ‘A few minutes ago I was about to end it all, by chucking myself off the top board into the swimming pool.’

‘I thought it was going to be the pier?’

‘Yes, but the pool’s heated,’ Squiffy explained. ‘No point in being uncomfortable about it, is there? As I gazed in the swirling waters beneath I suddenly saw the error of my ways.’

I picked up my pencil. I fancied I’d once heard a funny story about an old lady and a bus-conductor, and wondered if that might do.

‘Here am I,’ Squiffy continued. ‘Born with every advantage a child could want, including a wise father who saw the folly of placing in my youthful hands the agent of dissipation and self-destruction. I refer, of course, to the rhino.’

I lit another cigarette.

‘Instead, my thoughtful pa placed in those hands the very key to the universe – the key of science. I’m quoting from that magazine I confiscated. And what did I do, Grim? I burnt the ruddy lab down, that’s what I did. I’m a fool.’

I agreed.

‘Now I’m going straight back to Mireborough to beg forgiveness, and I’m going to work like stink and get a degree and benefit humanity. I might take up medicine after all, Grim. Are there any beastly medical jobs still going? Leper colonies, and so on?’

I doodled a bit on the paper.

‘I should like now, Grim, to give a little talk to the girls on the subject. I feel they would find it very improving.’

‘I’m sure they would.’

‘I think they, too, might see the errors of their ways, and all go home and sing in the choir.’

‘Possibly.’

‘And so, Grim, if you will kindly let me have your key to the isolation hospital–’

‘There you are,’ I told the chap shortly. ‘Now for heaven’s sake clear off. I’m busy.’

‘Thank you, Grim. Beside their little beds at night, for years to come, they will bless your heart. Just you wait and see.’

Squiffy left. I sat over the paper, smoking more cigarettes and wondering what on earth it was the bishop said to that parrot, and vice versa.