Blott On The Landscape by Tom Sharpe

Dundridge was serious about the tunnel.
    “He can’t be,” Sir Giles snarled. “It’s an outrageous idea. A gross waste of taxpayers’ money.”
    Blott shook his head. The tunnel sounded a very good idea to him.
    “You try telling him that,” said Hoskins.
    “What about Leakham?” Sir Giles asked. “He’s not going to buy it, is he?”
    “I wouldn’t like to say. Depends what sort of weight this fellow Dundridge carries in London. The Ministry may bring pressure to bear on Leakham.”
    There was a silence while Sir Giles considered this. In the greenhouse Blott wrestled with the intricacies of the English language. Why should Lord Leakham buy the tunnel? How could Dundridge carry weight in London? And in any case why should Sir Giles dislike the idea of a tunnel? It was all very odd.
    “I’ve got another bit of news for you,” Hoskins said finally. “He’s keen on your missus.”
    There was a strangled sound from Sir Giles. “He’s what?” he shouted.
    “He has taken a fancy to Maud,” Hoskins told him. “He said he found her charming and delightful.”
    “Charming and delightful?” said Sir Giles. “Maud?”
    “And comely.”
    “Good God. No wonder she’s looking like the cat that’s swallowed the canary,” said Sir Giles.
    “I just thought you ought to know,” said Hoskins. “It might give us some sort of lever.”
    “Kinky?”
    “Could be,” said Hoskins.
    “Meet me at the Club at nine,” said Sir Giles, suddenly making up his mind. “This needs thinking about.” He rang off.
    In the greenhouse Blott stared lividly into the geraniums. If Sir Giles had been surprised, Blott’s reaction was stronger still. The sudden discovery that he was in love with Lady Maud had coloured his day. The thought of Dundridge sharing his feelings for her infuriated him. Sir Giles he discounted. It was quite clear that Lady Maud despised her husband and from what she had said Blott had gathered that there was another woman in London. Dundridge was another matter. Blott left the greenhouse, tidied up and went home.
    Home for Blott was the Lodge. The architect of the arch had managed to combine monumentality with utility and at one time the Lodge had housed several families of estate workers in rather cramped and insanitary conditions. Blott had the place to himself and found it quite adequate. The arch had its little inconveniences; the windows were extremely small and hidden among the decorations on the exterior; there was only one door so that to get from one side of the arch to the other one had to climb the staircase to the top and then cross over, but Blott had made himself very comfortable in a large room that spanned the arch. Through a circular window on one side he could keep an eye on the Hall and through another he could inspect visitors crossing the bridge. He had converted one small room into a bathroom and another into a kitchen, while he stored apples in some of the others so that the whole place had a pleasant smell to it. And finally there was Blott’s library filled with books that he had picked up on the market stalls in Worford or in the second-hand bookshop in Ferret Lane. There were no novels in Blott’s library, no light reading, only books on English history. In its way it was a scholar’s library born of an intense curiosity about the country of his adoption. If the secret of being an Englishman was to be found anywhere it was to be found, Blott thought, in the past. Through the long winter evenings he would sit in front of his fire absorbed in the romance of England. Certain figures loomed large in his imagination, Henry VIII , Drake, Cromwell, Edward I, and he tended to identify if not himself at least other people with the heroes and villains of history. Lady Maud in spite of her marriage, he saw as the Virgin Queen, while Sir Giles seemed to have the less savoury aspects of Sir Robert Walpole.
    But that was for winter. During the summer he was out and about. Twice a week