tied.
On the day of the play every mistress in the school is in some kind of tizzy. Miss Grimshaw is being walked round and round the grounds in an attempt to perk her up after a prolonged bout of over-tiredness. Miss Murdstone is flapping because she thinks that something may go wrong with her precious production. Most of the other staff are involved in the play, and Penny and I are thinking about our appointment with Robin and his lady.
“You don’t think I’ve overdone the eye make-up, do you?” says Penny.
“Not if you can remember the words of Way down upon the Swanee River” I say cattily.
“That’s a lovely jumper,” says Penny. “Which of the fourth form lent it to you?”
“Are you trying to suggest that I’m flaunting my figure?” I say coldly.
“No. I just think it’s a pity that you can’t find some clothes that aren’t three sizes too small for you. I expect Robin has seen breasts before.” Relations between Penny and I become rather chilly after that exchange and the journey to Fudgely is made in silence as well as Penny’s battered sports car.
“I think we should have hired something,” I say. “This crate is not only tiny but it’s nearly clapped out.”
“You can always walk behind it with a red flag,” hisses Penny.
“Don’t you mean walk in front of it?” I correct her.
“I wouldn’t trust myself if you were walking in front of it.”
“Charming!”
It just shows how much friendship means when there is an attractive man at stake, doesn’t it? Penny parks the car between two sets of double yellow lines and we go onto the platform. There are still fifteen minutes to kill before the train is due to arrive so we go into the buffet and watch the bluebottles chasing each other round the curling sandwiches.
“Some of them have been here for months,” says Penny.
“You mean, the bluebottles?” I ask.
“No! The sandwiches. They change the bluebottles every week. They get complaints if they don’t.”
“From the passengers?”
“No. From the bluebottles.”
Half an hour later the train has still not arrived and I am getting nervous. It reminds me of the time the St Rodence Supporters Club Special came back from Guildford. It was nine hours late and only three of the carriages still had their doors on—only four of the girls still had their drawer on, but that is another story.
“It’s not another go slow, is it?” Penny asks the kindly station master, Mr Ahkmed.
“Indeed to goodness, no. If it was a go slow we would be pushing the trains back up the line. I believe that it is merely a natural disaster, look you.” Mr Ahkmed went to Wales for his holidays and found himself much in sympathy with the speech patterns of the locals. Since then he has taken to sticking a leek in his turban and singing “Land Of Our Fathers” as the commuters special pulls in every evening—or every other evening if relations with the Railways Board are strained.
“It is coming. Allah and Carwyn James be praised.”
We look up the line and my heart thumps inside my body like a mechanical gong. This is it! The moment I have been waiting for. I hope he has not missed the train. I think I would leave the platform with me under it if he had. I crane my head forward as the doors begin to swing open and a collection of men carrying umbrellas and briefcases start to push each other out of the way, saying “Do you mind!?” in indignant voices. It seems a silly thing to say because they obviously do mind.
“There he is!” Penny sees him first. A mane of shaggy black hair encircled by a yoke of astrakhan, pokes out of one of the windows and then withdraws. He must be getting his case. A minute passes and the guard blows his whistle.
“What’s the matter with him?”
Penny and I charge up the platform and come level with the appropriate compartment as the train starts to move. Inside, Robin Brentford is sitting calmly, reading a copy of Variety. Beside him sits a blonde youth wearing a green velvet suit and reading a copy of Gay News.
“Mr. Brentford! Mr Brentford!”
Super Star switches on a thousand watt smile and waves a hand indulgently. “Sorry, girls. I never sign autographs while the train is in motion. I might jar my wrist.”
“This is it!” I screech. “We’re from St Rodence. You get off here!” Robin Brentford pales and then springs into action. A few seconds later, he and his friend have arrived in an untidy heap on the platform.
“Oh my God!” says the blonde youth clutching the lapels of his suit. “My nerves have all gone to pieces.”
“Calm yourself, Jeremy,” says Robin. “Worse things happen at sea, as my old wardrobe mistress used to say.”
“She never had to put up with this!” sniffs Jeremy. “If I’d known what I was letting myself in for I’d have stayed at home and tilled the window box. It’s looking like a wasteland!”
“‘Let us go then, when the evening is spread out against the sky.’” Robin takes our hands in both of his and looks up and down the platform. “Where are the crowds?”
I am still wondering about the evening but Penny is swift to answer.
“We thought you’d prefer to travel incognito so we didn’t tell anybody,’ she says.
“Oh.” Robin looks disappointed. “That’s why I nearly went past the station, you know. When I saw that there was no one here, I thought ‘this can’t be the place.’ Are you all right?” His remark is addressed to me. With his long curling moustache and dark mournful eyes he is exactly like his photographs and I am finding it difficult to keep control of myself. I have never been so close to a famous person before.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m sorry Syllabub isn’t here to meet you but she was doing the pools.”
“The football pools?” asks Jeremy.
“No. She was spraying the swimming pools against tsetse fly.”
“Syllabub? Syllabub?” Robin looks puzzled.
“Your daughter.”
“Do I have a daughter called Syllabub? That’s amazing. You don’t know who her mother was, do you? It doesn’t matter. I expect I’ll recognise her when I see her. Come, Jeremy.” He turns to me. “If you can drop us off at the hotel. We’ll only take a few minutes to freshen up.”
“We haven’t booked a hotel,” I say, feeling awful. “We didn’t know you were going to stay the night.”
Robin looks horrified. “One couldn’t possibly bury oneself in the wilds of the country and disinter oneself, all in one day. Provision must be made, my dear.”
“I suppose we could find something at The Lamb
