The coffee treatment worked so well that Alice foraged in the kitchen cupboards and the deepfreeze to get something going for supper. Spleen Manor, like all of Moggerhanger’s properties (except Peppercorn Cottage, which was for the lower orders) was well provisioned, perhaps for the day when he had to withstand a siege.
I helped to take plates and cutlery into the dining room. Moggerhanger lifted off his horn-rimmed glasses: “I’m glad to see everybody’s mucking in, and that there aren’t any demarcation disputes.”
Bill, as if not waiting for it to be said that beer was good enough for the other ranks, set out wine glasses for everybody. “Beg to report, sir, the drawing room is in as good a condition as can be expected. You can come and look at it now, but what am I to do about the POWs?”
He got up. “I’d better give them a talking to. I haven’t had a backache like this for a long time.”
“It’s my duty to inform you, sir, that we must respect the Geneva Convention.”
“Get out of my way, you bloody fool,” but his laugh was encouraging, as far as a flake of loving kindness went for his son: “I won’t kill the swine. It would be too good for them.”
“Prisoner, stand up, or you’ll get my boot,” Bill shouted. “Commanding officer present! Stand against the wall. What a bloody shower. Come on, chin in, chest out, stomach in, hands by the seams of your trousers, or your mother won’t know you when you come out of the glasshouse!” He turned to Moggerhanger. “That’s the best I can do with them, sir.”
Dismal tried to push his prisoners back to the floor. “Call that dog off.” Moggerhanger stood before them, not speaking for a while. Poor little Jericho Jim had a hand at his face, waiting for a meaty mauler to start thumping away: “It wasn’t my fault, sir. He made me do it.”
“Shut up, you whining prat,” Malcolm said, looking at Moggerhanger as if he’d never give up wanting to kill him.
“Nobody knows more than me that vengeance is mine,” Moggerhanger told them, “but I hate violence. Violence never did any good, and more often than not it only led to more violence. Now, you two overstepped the mark, and in normal circumstances I would put you where you couldn’t cause any more mischief, but seeing that one of you is my only son — adopted or not — I’m going to let you off with a caution. At the same time I never want to see either of you again. You’ve already got enough bruises from the sergeant-major here, who’s saved me a bit of energy. Get off the premises, before I change my mind and bury you in concrete.”
“I’ve put paid to their transport,” Bill said. “I should have destabilised it in such a way that they’d have had the sort of accident on the motorway from which no man can recover with limbs intact, but at least they’ll have a long walk as far as Ripon.”
Malcolm was testing the waters a bit too bravely on saying: “Can we call a taxi, dad? My shoes aren’t made for walking.”
“So it’s ‘dad’ again, is it?” Moggerhanger, tall and solidly built, looked like a raddled pirate, plasters on both cheeks and the rest of his flesh bruised, waistcoat button less and jacket torn, and as if about to march both of them outside, to walk a specially prepared plank into a sea of acid.
Instead he gave each a weighty smash in the stomach which bent them double: “Out, the pair of you, before I get angry. Straw, see them off the grounds. When you come back use your Desert Rat expertise and peg a tarpaulin over the French windows, in case it rains, which it’s bound to do in this area. Michael, make a cheerful fire in the dining room. There’s central heating, but we’ve got plenty of coal, and it burns well enough, even though it was probably dug out of the earth by children in South America because all our mines are closing down.”
“Just the ticket,” Bill said. “A blaze in the hearth’s good for morale.”
Moggerhanger ignored his remark. “I’m going upstairs to get these rags off my back, and to phone my lovely wife about what happened. I won’t forget to mention all of you in despatches. Alice, put a few bottles of the best champagne in the refrigerator.”
Bill marched his prisoners into a cloud of leaves blowing across the terrace as if scores of butterflies had been let loose. I went back to do my boy scout stuff, chips of the best Chippendales for kindling under coal and logs. By the time Moggerhanger came downstairs, looking a lot more presentable than when he went up, flames were clap-handing so high I hoped the chimney had been recently swept.
Bill sat on a high stool in the kitchen, a whisky in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other, watching Alice at the Aga, while Dismal worried a leg of half-frozen lamb around the floor. Bill picked it up and washed it at the sink to get the saliva off, then put it in a pan for Alice to baste. “I marched them to the road,” he said, “which isn’t very far, but they were limping before they got there. Even a bayonet at the behind wouldn’t have made them go any faster. It’s a shame nobody does National Service anymore. You used to see lots of smart youngsters about, but not these days. Everybody’s as soft as you know what. I can’t think what the country would do in an emergency.”
“People would come up to scratch just as they always have,” Alice said, laying out platters of prawns, anchovies, smoked salmon, and strips of avocado for a first course. “Do you think Lord Moggerhanger will approve of this, and then roast lamb with potatoes, and a green salad? There’ll be tinned fruit and yoghurt for dessert.”
“It’s more than any of us expected,” I said.
“If anybody, with regard to Alice’s magnificent effort, had made such a remark in my platoon,” Bill said, “I would have put them on a charge for defeatism. She’s producing a meal fit for the gods — which is what we deserve.”
Moggerhanger was already at the head of the dining room table when we filed in, gold cufflinks glistening, his solid proprietorial presence weighing us up, a half smile on his complacent juff at having come through the worst experience of his life. He squeezed the top of the champagne bottle, and let the cork smack the ceiling.
Alice, who faced him along the table, wore a navy blue skirt and white blouse, with a frilly bit of muslin at the throat. Her features softened with relief as if only now realising her close-run escape from a serious mishandling by Malcolm. Her unmistakably amorous glance at me led to the hope that I would be able to get into bed with her later.
I sat on Moggerhanger’s left, and Bill placed himself to the right, our suits made as neat as possible after the adventures of the day. Dismal was elongated between me and the fire for warmth, and to be in line for any donated food, though when I slipped him an anchovy he turned his blunt nose up at it.
Moggerhanger, in victory mode, filled our champagne glasses, and my intention of one day getting him packed off to prison, or of distressing him sufficiently to ruin his business, seemed as far away as ever. Not that my heart wasn’t in it, but the festive gathering was too unique to seriously mull on the idea.
He stood to make a toast. “Eating and drinking is the most important thing at the moment, so I’ll be brief, but little did I know on getting here this afternoon that I would have to put up with what I did from such an unexpected quarter. Just think of it. My son, my only son! If I’d been Abraham I would have slit his throat ten times over, no matter what God said. But I didn’t. I let him go. I’m too soft, and in any case what would his mother have said, or the police?”
A few noggins of his special brandy while changing into a lounge suit upstairs had made him maudlin already, and I wondered how long he would go on, because the rest of us were famished.