From where I sat my range of vision was necessarily a bit restricted, but I was able to see a pair of Empire-building brogue shoes, so I assumed that when the door had opened it was Butterfield showing him in, and this surmise was confirmed a moment later when he spoke. His was a voice which, once heard, lingers in the memory.
‘Afternoon,’ he said.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Stinker.
‘Warm day.’
‘Very warm.’
‘What’s been going on here? What are all those tents and swings and things in the park?’
Stinker explained that the annual school treat had only just concluded, and Plank expressed his gratification at having missed it. School treats, he said, were dashed dangerous things, always to be avoided by the shrewd, as they were only too apt to include competitions for bonny babies.
‘Did you have a competition for bonny babies?’
‘Yes, we did, as a matter of fact. The mothers always insist on it.’
‘The mothers are the ones you want to watch out for,’ said Plank. ‘I’m not saying the little beasts aren’t bad enough themselves, dribbling out of the side of their mouths at you and all that sort of thing, but it’s the mothers who constitute the really grave peril. Look,’ he said, and I think he must at this point have pulled up a trouser leg. ‘See that scar on my calf? That’s what I got in Peru once for being fool enough to let myself be talked into judging a competition for bonny babies. The mother of one of the Honourably Mentioneds spiked me in the leg with a native dagger as I was stepping down from the judge’s stand after making my speech. Hurt like sin, I can assure you, and still gives me a twinge when the weather’s wet. Fellow I know is fond of saying that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Whether this is so or not I couldn’t tell you, but it certainly knows how to handle a Peruvian dagger.’
I found myself revising to some extent the rather austere opinion I had formed of the slackness and lack of ginger of the modern native. The males might have lost their grip in recent years, but the female element, it seemed, still had the right stuff in them, though of course where somebody like Plank is concerned, a stab in the fleshy part of the leg is only a step in the right direction, merely scratching the surface as you might say.
Plank continued chatty. ‘You live in these parts?’ he said.
‘Yes, I live in the village.’
‘Totleigh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t run a Rugger club in Totleigh, do you?’
Stinker replied in the negative. The Totleigh-in-thc-Wold athletes, he said, preferred the Association code, and Plank, probably shuddering, said ‘Good God!’
‘You ever played Rugger?’
‘A little.’
‘You should take it up seriously. No finer sport. I’m trying to make the Hockley-cum-Meston team the talk of Gloucestershire. I coach the boys daily, and they’re coming along very nicely, very nicely indeed. What I need is a good prop forward.’
What he got was Pop Bassett, who came bustling in at this moment. He Good-afternoon-Plank-ed, and Plank responded in suitable terms. ‘Very nice of you to look me up, Plank,’ said Pop. ‘Will you have something to drink?’
‘Ah,’ said Plank, and you could see that he meant it. ‘I would ask you to stay to dinner, but unfortunately one of my guests has eloped with the cook.’
‘Dashed sensible of him, if he was going to elope with anyone. Very hard to find these days, cooks.’
‘It has of course completely disorganized our domestic arrangements. Neither my daughter nor my niece is capable of preparing even the simplest meal.’
‘You’ll have to go to the pub.’
‘It seems the only solution.’
‘If you were in West Africa, you could drop in and take pot luck with a native chief.’
‘I am not in West Africa,’ said Pop Bassett, speaking, I thought, a little testily, and I could understand him feeling a bit miffed. It’s always annoying when you’re up against it and people tell you what a jolly time you could be having if you weren’t and how topping everything would be if you were somewhere where you aren’t.