‘That would have been my nephew, Bertram Wooster.’
‘Oh, I beg your pardon.’
‘Quite all right.’
‘I may have formed a wrong estimate of his mentality. Our interview was very brief. I just thought it odd that he should be trying to persuade me to vote for my opponent.’
‘It’s the sort of thing that would seem a bright idea to Bertie. He’s like that. Whimsical. Moving in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. But he ought not to have butted in when you were busy with your speech. Is it coming out well?’
‘I am satisfied with it.’
‘Good for you. I suppose you’re looking forward to the debate?’
‘Very keenly. I am greatly in favour of it. It simplifies things so much if the two opponents face one another on the same platform and give the voters a chance to compare their views. Provided, of course that both observe the decencies of debate. But I really must be getting back to my work.’
‘Just a moment.’ No doubt it was the word ‘observe’ that had rung a bell with the ancestor. ‘Do you do the Observer crossword puzzle by any chance?’
‘I solve it at breakfast on Sunday mornings.’
‘Not the whole lot?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Every clue?’
‘I have never failed yet. I find it ridiculously simple.’
‘Then what’s all that song and dance about the measured tread of saints round St. Paul’s?’
‘Oh, I guessed that immediately. The answer, of course, is pedometer. You measure tread with a pedometer. Dome, meaning St. Paul’s, comes in the middle and Peter, for St. Peter, round it. Very simple.’
‘Oh, very. Well, thank you. You have taken a great weight off my mind,’ said Aunt Dahlia, and they parted in complete amity, a thing I wouldn’t have thought possible when Ma McCorkadale was one of the parters.
For perhaps a quarter of a minute after I had rejoined the human herd, as represented by my late father’s sister Dahlia, I wasn’t able to get a word in, the old ancestor being fully occupied with saying what she thought of the compiler of the Observer crossword puzzle, with particular reference to domes and pedometers. And when she had said her say on that subject she embarked on a rueful tribute to the McCorkadale, giving it as her opinion that against a woman with a brain like that Ginger hadn’t the meagre chance of a toupee in a high wind. Though, she added in more hopeful vein, now that the menace of the Ganymede Club book had been squashed there was just a possibility that the eloquence of Spode might get his nose in front.
All this while I had been trying to cut in with my opening remark, which was to the effect that the current situation was a bit above the odds, but it was only when I had repeated this for the third time that I succeeded in obtaining her attention.
‘This is a bit thick, what,’ I said, varyihg my approach slightly.
She seemed surprised as if the idea had not occurred to her.
‘Thick?’
‘Well, isn’t it?
‘ ‘Why? If you were listening, you heard her say that, being a fair fighter, she had scorned the tempter and sent him away with a flea in his ear, which must be a most uncomfortable thing to have. Bingley was baffled.’
‘Only for the nonce.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Not nonsense, nonce, which isn’t at all the same thing. I feel that Bingley, though crushed to earth, will rise again. How about if he sells that book with all its ghastly contents to the Market Snodsbury Argus-Reminder?’
I was alluding to the powerful bi-weekly sheet which falls over itself in its efforts to do down the Conservative cause, omitting no word or act to make anyone with Conservative leanings feel like a piece of cheese. Coming out every Wednesday and Saturday with proofs of Ginger’s past, I did not see how it could fail to give his candidature the sleeve across the windpipe.
I put this to the old blood relation in no uncertain terms. I might have added that that would wipe the silly smile off her face, but there was no necessity. She saw at once that I spoke sooth, and a crisp hunting-field expletive escaped her. She goggled at me with all the open dismay of an aunt who has inadvertently bitten into a bad oyster.