'Well, who's this guy Ambrose Tennyson?’
'Just Reggie's brother.'
'Is that all?’
'Yes, that about lets him out’ 'Isn't he an author?' 'Of a sort.' 'Not a smacko?’ 'No, not a smacko.'
Mr Llewellyn bounded at the bell and placed a thumb on it 'Sir?' said Albert Peasemarch. 'Fetch Mr Tennyson.'
'Mr Tennyson is already present, sir,’ said Albert Peasemarch, with an indulgent smile. 'Mr Ambrose Tennyson.'
'Oh, Mr Ambrose Tennyson? Oh, yes, sir. Pardon me, sir. Yes, sir. Very good, sir,' said Albert Peasemarch. The Ambrose Tennyson who entered the state-room some few minutes later was a very different person from the morose misogynist whose manner and deportment had so depressed the passengers of R.M.S. Atlantic during the last two days. A fervent reconciliation with Lotus Blossom on the boat deck just before lunch on the previous afternoon had completely restored him to his customary buoyancy and good humour. He came in now like a one-man procession of revellers in an old-fashioned comic opera, radiating cheeriness and goodwill.
There is no actual rule about it, of course, and the programme is subject to change without notice, but Nature, in supplying the world with young English novelists, seems to prefer that they shall fall into one of two definite classes - the cocktails-and-cynicism or the heartiness-and-beer. It was to the latter division that Reggie's brother Ambrose belonged. He was large and muscular, with keen eyes, a jutting chin, a high colour and hands like hams, and was apt, when on holiday, to dash off and go climbing the Pyrenees - and, what is more, to sing while he did it.
He was looking as if with the smallest encouragement he would burst into song now, and Mabel Spence, seeing him, was pierced by a pang of remorse. She regretted the impulsive candour which had led her to open her brother-in-law's eyes to the inside facts on the Tennyson situation.
Reggie, also, was disturbed. He had listened to the recent exchanges in silence, dazed by the rapidity with which events had developed. This effervescent bird before him was, he knew, walking into a spot, and he eyed him pityingly, feeling that somebody - himself, if he could only think what to say - ought to prepare the poor blighter for what lay before him.
There was, however, little opportunity for anyone to do much in the way of preparing Ambrose Tennyson's mind. Mr Llewellyn had begun to speak almost before he was inside the room.
'Hey, you! ‘ he barked.
The kindliest critic could not have pretended that his manner was anything but abrupt, and Ambrose was a good deal taken aback. Indeed, he looked for an instant like a man who has run into a lamp-post. But he was in a mood of sunny benevolence towards all men and decided to overlook the brusquerie.
'Good morning, Mr Llewellyn,' he said cheerily. 'I hear you want to see me. About Bodkin again, I suppose? Mr Llewellyn,’ he explained to Reggie, beaming upon his worried junior, 'has got it into his head for some reason that Monty Bodkin would make a good picture actor.'
This amazing statement succeeded in diverting Reggie's mind from its fraternal solicitude.
'What!' he cried. 'Monty?'
'Yes,' said Ambrose, laughing heartily. 'Can you imagine? He wants to make poor old Monty a star.' ‘Well, I'm dashed.'
'I shouldn't think Monty has ever acted in his life, has he?' ·Not that I know of.'
'Oh, yes, now I come to remember, he told me he had once - at his first kindergarten.' 'Ill bet he was a flop.’ 'I expect so. Extraordinary, isn't it?’ 'It's inexplicable.’
Mr Llewellyn broke in on this brotherly duologue. He would have done so earlier, but had had a little difficulty with his vocal cords. Ambrose's ebullient gaiety was affecting him like some sort of skin complaint, causing him to tingle all over.
'Stop that babbling!' he shouted. 'It's got nothing to do with Bodkin. Listen, you! Keep that trap of yours shut for half a minute, if you know how, and attend to me.’
Ambrose stared at him, astonished. It was not thus that the other had been wont to address him in previous interviews. Hitherto, he had found the president of the Superba-Llewellyn quiet and respectful.
'I hear you're not the right Tennyson.'
Ambrose's bewilderment increased. He looked at Reggie, as if wondering if anyone could suppose him to occupy that position.
'I'm afraid I don't quite understand.’ 'I'm talking English, ain't I?'
Ambrose's manner lost something of its bonhomie. His tone became a little acid.
'You are - of a kind. But I still don't understand you.'
'Why have you been keeping it under your hat all this time that you aren't the right Tennyson?'
'You keep using that peculiar expression. If you will kindly explain what you mean by "the right Tennyson", I may be able to answer you.'
‘You know what I mean. The Tennyson who wrote books.'
Ambrose eyed Mr Llewellyn frostily. He was now definitely stiff. He might have been back at the Admiralty, rebuking a subordinate for allowing the veiled adventuress to steal the naval plans.
‘I was under the impression,' he said, an Oxford chill creeping into his voice, 'that I was the Tennyson who wrote books. I know of nobody else of my name who does literary work. Of course, there was a not uncelebrated poet called Tennyson, but I presume you did not suppose -'
The time had come, Reggie felt, to break the news.
'Yes, he did, old boy. That's precisely what he did suppose. Misled by his brother-in-law George, who appears to be a little ball of fun and the life and soul of Hollywood, he got the wires crossed. He took you for the genuine half-a-league, half-a-league, half-a-league onward bloke.'
'You don't mean that? ‘
‘I do.'
'Not really?' 'Positively.'
Ambrose's good humour was completely restored. Any passing annoyance that he may have felt at the oddness of Ivor Llewellyn's manner, disappeared. He threw his head back and laughed a loud, jolly laugh that went rumbling about the stateroom like thunder.
Its effect was to remove the last traces of Mr Llewellyn's reserve. The face above the pink pyjamas turned purple. Mr Llewellyn's eyes did not actually start out of his head, but it was rather a near thing. He spoke in a thick, strangled voice.
'You think it funny, do you?'
Ambrose was trying to restrain his chuckles. It was unkind, he felt, to laugh.
'You must admit,' he gurgled apologetically, 'that it is a little.'
'Okay,' said Mr Llewellyn. 'Well, snicker at this one. You're fired. As soon as we hit New York, you can take the next boat back to England or jump off the dock and drown yourself or do anything you darn please. What you aren't going to do is come to Llewellyn City and have a good time on my money.'
Ambrose had ceased to chuckle. Reggie, watching the smile fade from his face, wished there was something he could do by way of showing brotherly sympathy, but could think of nothing. Sorrowfully, he helped himself to another of Mr Llewellyn's cigarettes.
'What!'
That's what.'
'But - but you engaged me.’
‘When?'
'Our contract -’
'When did I ever sign any contract?’
‘But, damn it -'
‘All right, all right.'
'You can't let me down like this.’
'Watch me.'
'I'll bring an action.'
'Sure,' said Mr Llewellyn. 'Come up and sue me some time.'
Ambrose's fresh complexion had lost its colour. He was staring, wide-eyed. Reggie, too, was much disturbed. 'Crikey, Ikey,' he said with emotion. 'This is pretty raw.’ Mr Llewellyn turned like a bull on a picador. 'Who asked you to butt in?'
'It is not a question,' said Reggie with quiet dignity, 'of who asked me to butt in. The point does not arise. One is scarcely called upon to feel that one requires a formal invitation to induce one to give it as one's opinion that one ... now I've forgotten what I was going to say.'
'Good,' said Mr Llewellyn.
Ambrose choked.
'But you don't understand, Mr L
lewellyn.’ ‘Eh?'
‘On the strength of your promise to employ me to write scenarios I gave up my position. I resigned from the Admiralty.'
'Well, go back to the Admiralty.’
‘But... I can't.’
It was precisely this fact that had caused Reggie to feel so disturbed. Right from the start he had spotted this snag and recognized it for the Class A snag it was.
Reggie's views on jobs were peculiar, but definite. There were some men - he himself was one of them - who, he considered, had no need for a job. A fair knowledge of racing form, a natural gift for bridge and poker, an ability to borrow money with an easy charm which made the operation a positive pleasure to the victim - these endowments, he held, were all that a chap like himself required, and it was with a deep sense of injury that he had allowed his loved ones to jockey him into the loathsome commercial enterprise to which he was now on his way. A little patience on their part, a little of the purse-strings to help him over a bad patch, and he could have carried on in such perfect comfort. For Reggie Tennyson was one of those young men whom the ravens feed.
But - and this was the point - the ravens do not feed the Ambroses of this world. The Ambroses need their steady job. And if they lose it they find it dashed hard to get another.
'Reflect, Llewellyn!' said Reggie. 'Consider! You cannot do this thing.'
Mabel Spence stepped into the arena. She was aghast now that those careless words of hers, spoken merely with a sister-in-law's natural desire to lower a brother-in-law's self-esteem, should have precipitated this appalling disaster. Ambrose Tennyson's haggard face was a silent reproach. She was rather vague as to what the Admiralty was, but she gathered that it was the source from which Ambrose drew his means of livelihood, and those means of livelihood, it was clear, she had caused him to lose.
'Reggie's quite right, Ikey.'
'Now, don't you begin,' urged Mr Llewellyn.
‘You can't do this.'
‘Is that so?'
‘You know perfectly well that, even if you hadn't signed the contract, there was a verbal agreement' 'To hell with verbal agreements.'
‘And why do you want to do it? Where's the sense in ditching Mr Tennyson like this? He may not be Shakespeare, but I'll bet he writes well enough for the Superba-Llewellyn.'
'Shrewdly spoken, girl,' said Reggie approvingly. 'Ambrose will do the Superba-Llewellyn proud.'
'Not the Superba-Llewellyn, he won't,' corrected the president of that organization. ‘I want no piece of him.'
'But what is he going to do?'
'Don't ask me. I'm not interested.'
'Why not at least give him a trial?'
‘I won't give him a trial.’
'He might be just the man you want.’
'He isn't.'
Reggie crushed out his cigarette and took another. His face was cold and stern.
'Llewellyn,' he said, 'your behaviour is inexplicable.' 'Will you stop horning in!'
'No, Llewellyn, I will not stop horning in. Your behaviour, I say, is inexplicable. You don't seem to know the first thing about running your business.'
'Is that so?'
'Don't interrupt, Llewellyn. You do not, I repeat, appear to know the first thing about running your business. You tumble over yourself trying to secure the services of a chap like Monty Bodkin who - excellent egg though he is in other respects - has never acted in his life and couldn't play the pin in Pinafore, and in the same breath, as it were, you decline those of an Ambrose Tennyson, who is a recognized comer in the writing world. About myself I will say nothing, beyond observing that when you were offered the chance of getting hold of a really knowledgeable bird to put you straight on your English sequences you failed to catch the bus - thereby placing yourself in a position where you will no doubt find yourself flooding the world with screen dramas in which Ascot occurs in mid-winter and the Derby is portrayed as a greyhound race taking place on Plumstead Marshes towards the end of October. That's the position you've gone and placed yourself in, Llewellyn,' said Reggie. 'Silly idiot,' he added, summing it all up.
'Yes,' resumed Mabel. 'Listen to me, Ikey -'
The greatest generals are those who know when to make, and are not ashamed to make, a strategic retreat. Reggie by himself Mr Llewellyn might have endured. Mabel by herself he might have faced undaunted. But Reggie supplemented by Mabel broke his spirit There was a sort of earthquake among the bedclothes, the leap and rush of a flying pink-pyjamaed form, and the next moment he was in the bathroom, with the door locked. The sound of a gushing tap told that he was protecting his ears from further assaults.
Mabel did her best. Reggie did his best.
'Ikey!' cried Mabel, pounding on the bathroom door8
‘Ikey!' cried Reggie, doing the same.
As suddenly as they had begun, they ceased. It was only too plain that the man was entrenched beyond their reach. Reggie turned to commiserate with his stricken brother.
'Ambrose, old boy -’
He stopped. Ambrose Tennyson was no longer among those present.
Chapter 15
That neither Reggie Tennyson nor Mabel Spence should have observed Ambrose's departure affords striking proof of the whole-heartedness with which they had addressed themselves to the task of trying to secure Mr Llewellyn's attention. For it had been the reverse of noiseless.
At the moment when the novelist decided to remove himself from the state-room, Albert Peasemarch had been resting easily against the door with one large red ear in close juxtaposition to the woodwork, absorbed in the drama within. Doors on ocean liners open inward, and the sudden opening of that of State-room C31 caught him unprepared. Abruptly deprived of support, he fell into the room rather in the manner of a dead body tumbling out of a cupboard in a mystery play and, colliding with Ambrose, clasped him in a close embrace, so that for an instant the thing resembled the meeting after long separation of a couple of Parisian boulevardiers of the old school’
Then Ambrose, with a muttered 'Grrrh!', hurled Albert Peasemarch from him, and Albert, with a muttered 'Cool’, reeled across the passage and gave himself a nasty bump. Ambrose hurried off with long, agitated strides, and Albert was left rubbing that sensitive part of his person which came immediately at the conclusion of his short white jacket
Presently, as he stood there adjusting his faculties, Reggie and Mabel came out and, like Ambrose, disappeared down the corridor, and he gathered that the curtain had been run down and the entertainment was over.
With the gradual lessening of the pain, his equanimity returned. He realized that he had been privileged to listen in on a performance of outstanding human interest, and there came upon him an insistent desire to find a confidant to whom he could relate the history of these remarkable happenings.
Nobby Clark, the steward who shared his labours on this section of the C deck, was the obvious choice, but at the moment he was unfortunately not on cordial terms with Mr Clark. The latter had taken exception to him jogging his elbow when he was shaving that morning in the Glory Hole and further exception to his attempt to shift the onus on to an inscrutable Fate, and had expressed himself in a manner which had wounded Albert Peasemarch's sensitive nature very deeply and which could not readily be overlooked.
Casting about in his mind for a substitute, Albert remembered that he had not yet removed the breakfast-tray from Miss Lotus Blossom's state-room.
'Quite an argle-bargle in Shed 31 just now, miss,' he said genially, walking in a few moments later. 'Surprised me, I must confess. Heated remarks. Raised voices. And how I came to happen to be, as it were, present was like this. I was going about my duties, when the bell rang -
Lottie Blossom, her costume completed, was sitting before the mirror putting those last touches to her face which make all the difference. She wanted to look her best, for she was about to go on deck and meet Ambrose. She interrupted Albert Peasemarch.
This isn't one of your longer stories, is it?' she asked courteously, but with a certain res
tiveness.
'Oh, no, miss. And in any case I'm sure you will be highly interested, it having to do with Mr Ambrose Tennyson and you being betrothed to him.'
'Who told you that?'
‘Bless your heart, miss,’ said Albert Peasemarch paternally, 'it's all over the ship. As to who actually was my specific informant, there you rather have me. I fancy it was my coworker, a man of the name of Clark, and he had it from someone who had met someone who had happened to be passing while you and Mr Tennyson were in conversation on the boat deck.'
'Nosey devils, you stewards.’
‘We generally manage to apprize ourselves of what's going on,' said Albert, acknowledging the compliment with a slight bow. 'I always say it's like the serfs and scullions in a medeevial castle taking an interest in the doings of the haughty nobles, because, as I believe I have observed to you, or if it wasn't you it was someone else, a steward during a voyage gets to look upon himself as a feudal retainer. I think it was Clark who gave me the information, but I am unable to veridify the supposition by actual personal inquiry, because after the manner in which he addressed me in the Glory Hole this morning I am not speaking to Nobby Clark."
A pang of envy for this favoured child of Fortune shot through Miss Blossom.
'The lucky stiff!' she said. 'Well, get on with it. And keep it crisp, because I'm raring to go. What about Mr Tennyson?'
'He was the cause of the imbrolligo.’
The what?'
'A technical term,’ explained Albert Peasemarch indulgently, ‘meaning argle-bargle. Mr Tennyson was the cause of this dust-up in Mr Llewellyn's shed.’
'Oh, Mr Llewellyn was mixed up in it, was he?'
'He certainly was, miss.'
'What happened? Did Mr Tennyson start trouble with Mr Llewellyn?'
'To put it that way would be giving a wrong idea of the facts, miss. It wasn't so much a case of Mr Tennyson starting trouble with Mr Llewellyn as Mr Llewellyn starting trouble with Mr Tennyson. It appears that Mr Llewellyn took umbrage because Mr Tennyson wasn't the right Mr Tennyson, and told him off proper. And then Mr Tennyson junior and Miss Spence, who were also present, joined in -’
Luck of the Bodkins Page 15
