press. So far ‘Cultural Obesity: the study and appreciation of the contribution made by the overweight to Western Civilisation since the Fall of the Roman Empire’ appeared to be heavily over-subscribed – so much so that there was an eager queue of idiots anxious to join the waiting list.
On Thursday he got home to find that Lady Clarissa had phoned to say she wasn’t coming down to Ipford this weekend after all and suggesting that Wilt should instead catch the train to Utterborough where she’d send a taxi to pick him up.
‘That’s fine by me. The less time I’m closeted with that woman the better pleased I’ll be,’ he told Eva, and went back to twentieth-century German history. Half an hour later the phone rang again. Wilt left his wife to answer it.
‘That was Lady Clarissa,’ she said. ‘She wants you to catch the 10.20 train on the thirteenth. That’s tomorrow.’
‘Why the change?’
‘She said something about Edward getting on Sir George’s nerves.’
‘And she wants him to get on mine instead, I suppose? Did she say how much she was paying me for half a week?’
‘I didn’t like to ask. She seemed to be in a bit of a state. In fact, I wondered whether she’d been drinking. She started saying something about the cook being an old cow and her uncle being a fat bastard … or perhaps it was the other way round. I really didn’t like to interrupt her.’
‘Bloody hell! What on earth have you let me in for? Oh, well, I suppose I’d better go up and pack.’
‘I’ve done that already,’ Eva told him.
Wilt went upstairs and checked his suitcase to makesure Eva hadn’t put the pink chalk-stripe suit in. She had. He removed it and hid it underneath a jacket in the wardrobe. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and cursed his wife for having got him into this infernal situation. One thing he definitely wasn’t going to do was take a dinner jacket; the Gadsleys probably dressed for dinner but he intended to maintain an independent stance.
The next morning Eva drove him down to the railway station and by twelve o’clock he was in the taxi at Utterborough, on the road to Sandystones Hall.
Built in the nineteenth century, the Hall had a mile-long drive which culminated in an amazing moat. The architect who designed it had been instructed by his client, General Gadsley, that Hunstanton Hall in Norfolk had one and so Sandystones must too. The building itself was such an extraordinary conglomeration of conflicting styles that it was commonly conjectured that General Gadsley – who had been in India at the time – must have changed what there was of his mind every month, removing any last shred of architectural coherence from the original design. More charitable critics would have it that the General’s horrific experiences in the Indian Mutiny had turned him into an opium addict, and this accounted for the series of bizarre instructions he sent back. Whatever the truth of this, the architect was known to have become so confused by them that he became a semi-derangedalcoholic himself. His client died of dengue fever after being bitten by a mosquito and never came back to England to see the indescribable monstrosity which was the result of his many and varied instructions.
Fortunately the discriminating passers-by were spared any accidental glimpse of it by the high wall surrounding the grounds. This was augmented by the unnecessarily long and tortuous drive, and by the half-mile-wide belt of beech woods planted by subsequent generations of Gadsleys, to hide what some of the more sensitive of the General’s descendants considered the family ‘shame’.
As the taxi wove its way up the drive through the encroaching forest, frequently swerving round deliberately sharp and narrow corners to avoid crashing into tree trunks and overhanging branches, Wilt decided to insist that Eva and the quads should be met at the gates and driven down to the Hall by someone more accustomed to this death trap
On Thursday he got home to find that Lady Clarissa had phoned to say she wasn’t coming down to Ipford this weekend after all and suggesting that Wilt should instead catch the train to Utterborough where she’d send a taxi to pick him up.
‘That’s fine by me. The less time I’m closeted with that woman the better pleased I’ll be,’ he told Eva, and went back to twentieth-century German history. Half an hour later the phone rang again. Wilt left his wife to answer it.
‘That was Lady Clarissa,’ she said. ‘She wants you to catch the 10.20 train on the thirteenth. That’s tomorrow.’
‘Why the change?’
‘She said something about Edward getting on Sir George’s nerves.’
‘And she wants him to get on mine instead, I suppose? Did she say how much she was paying me for half a week?’
‘I didn’t like to ask. She seemed to be in a bit of a state. In fact, I wondered whether she’d been drinking. She started saying something about the cook being an old cow and her uncle being a fat bastard … or perhaps it was the other way round. I really didn’t like to interrupt her.’
‘Bloody hell! What on earth have you let me in for? Oh, well, I suppose I’d better go up and pack.’
‘I’ve done that already,’ Eva told him.
Wilt went upstairs and checked his suitcase to makesure Eva hadn’t put the pink chalk-stripe suit in. She had. He removed it and hid it underneath a jacket in the wardrobe. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and cursed his wife for having got him into this infernal situation. One thing he definitely wasn’t going to do was take a dinner jacket; the Gadsleys probably dressed for dinner but he intended to maintain an independent stance.
The next morning Eva drove him down to the railway station and by twelve o’clock he was in the taxi at Utterborough, on the road to Sandystones Hall.
Built in the nineteenth century, the Hall had a mile-long drive which culminated in an amazing moat. The architect who designed it had been instructed by his client, General Gadsley, that Hunstanton Hall in Norfolk had one and so Sandystones must too. The building itself was such an extraordinary conglomeration of conflicting styles that it was commonly conjectured that General Gadsley – who had been in India at the time – must have changed what there was of his mind every month, removing any last shred of architectural coherence from the original design. More charitable critics would have it that the General’s horrific experiences in the Indian Mutiny had turned him into an opium addict, and this accounted for the series of bizarre instructions he sent back. Whatever the truth of this, the architect was known to have become so confused by them that he became a semi-derangedalcoholic himself. His client died of dengue fever after being bitten by a mosquito and never came back to England to see the indescribable monstrosity which was the result of his many and varied instructions.
Fortunately the discriminating passers-by were spared any accidental glimpse of it by the high wall surrounding the grounds. This was augmented by the unnecessarily long and tortuous drive, and by the half-mile-wide belt of beech woods planted by subsequent generations of Gadsleys, to hide what some of the more sensitive of the General’s descendants considered the family ‘shame’.
As the taxi wove its way up the drive through the encroaching forest, frequently swerving round deliberately sharp and narrow corners to avoid crashing into tree trunks and overhanging branches, Wilt decided to insist that Eva and the quads should be met at the gates and driven down to the Hall by someone more accustomed to this death trap
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