Chapter 11 Snakes Alive
Snakes Alive
Arriving at the office on Monday morning, Flynn found everyone gathered in a fascinated circle around Badger’s desk.
Badger himself was absent. “What is it?” Flynn asked the Boy, who was staring in wide-eyed astonishment at a cardboard box that was sitting on the desk.
On the front of the box someone had written in large letters: “POISONOUS SNAKES—HANDLE WITH CARE.”
“A commissionaire has just delivered it,” Maud Ogilvie said.
“Looks like someone might have it in for Mr. Badger,” the Boy said.
“If they do, it seems an unnecessarily complicated way to go about killing him,” Evans said. “Easier to knock him over the head in a dark alley, I would have thought. Or attack him from behind like a thuggee and garotte him with a length of cheese wire.”
“Goodness, Mr. Evans,” Denholm clucked.
“Cheese wire?” the Boy puzzled. “Wire made from cheese?”
“Perhaps it’s a hoax,” Maud Ogilvie said. “Or a practical joke.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Flynn said, turning the box round warily. “There’s a customs label on this side, in French. And a BEA stamp. These snakes have been flown here from France. From Nice, in fact, judging by the sender’s address.”
“French snakes,” the Boy said in awe. “What will they think of next?” (Something that his mother said on a regular basis apparently.) “Aren’t you going to open the box, Mr. Denholm? Check if they’re still alive.”
“Me?”
“You’re the boss,” the Boy said reasonably.
“It’s all right,” Evans said, “I’ll do the honours.”
“Pandora comes to mind,” Maud Ogilvie said. Thick tape sealed the box, and she fetched a knife from her desk (fixed-blade utility, Flynn thought) and said, “Here, I use this in the office for opening things.”
Evans slit through the tape. “Oh, very gung-ho,” Denholm said, taking a step back.
“They’re probably dead,” the Boy said, girding himself for disenchantment.
Evans lifted one of the flaps and gently but quickly closed it again. “No,” he said, “very much alive. Adders, I think.”
Badger breezed in and said, “Oh, good, they’re here.
They’re for the ‘Natural Scene’ in the Country Pavilion.
They wanted adders, but English ones” (“British,” Denholm murmured) “were still hibernating when the request went in. Probably woken up by now, but tant pis, as the French themselves say. I know a chap in the British Embassy and I got him to ask the Mayor of Nice to find us some adders. They have more than enough down there. And here they are.”
“What happens to them now?” Denholm asked.
“Well, they’ll be killed, to put it bluntly, and then—this is the exciting bit—they’re going to be encased in this new-fangled substance called ‘acrylic plastic.’ ” He hefted the box off the desk and said to the Boy, “Come on, you can help me get them to the commissionaires. They can deal with them.”
The snakes would not be alone. The Festival was to be awash with livestock of one kind or another.
As well as the snakes, Badger was trying to source delivery of plankton for the freshwater fish in Wildlife.
Denholm suggested that he enlist “Miss Ogilvie’s Boy Scouts.
” Maud Ogilvie was in charge of overseeing the breeding of thousands of butterflies for Wildlife, which, when they arrived at the Festival, were not to be killed and pinned as the Victorians would have had them; they were to flutter freely in a glass display case so that the many benighted urban-dwelling visitors to the Festival could be given a display of “one of the wonders of pastoral England,” Maud Ogilvie explained.
(“Pastoral Britain,” Denholm amended.) Maud Ogilvie had enrolled several troops of Scouts across the country to scavenge their local heaths and woodland for wildflowers to feed the butterflies and had arranged for weekly deliveries by train.
“I think the Scouts will have enough on their hands,” she said, openly hostile, when Denholm proposed her Scouts for the plankton.
And this was without the challenges provided by the sheep, cows, pigs, horses and any other animal that had the misfortune to be volunteered for the Festival.
They had to be regularly changed out for fresh ones, as it was considered too challenging (and possibly harmful) to expect them to stay on site for the duration.
Trowbridge and his subaltern, Jeanette, were already rehearsing their military-standard logistics to deal with all the comings and goings.
“Seems a shame to kill them after they’ve come all this way,” Maud Ogilvie said after the snakes had been sent on the final leg of their journey.
“You could say that about a lot of things,” Denholm said.
“He took part in the D-Day landings,” Maud Ogilvie murmured quietly to Flynn after Denholm left.
“Denholm?” It seemed more unlikely than a smoke-grinding machine.
—
“I hesitate to spoil your day, Mr. Flynn, but I’m afraid we’re already getting a number of complaints.”
“Complaints? About what?”
“The cake,” Maud Ogilvie said with a sympathetic smile, as if it had been Flynn who was responsible for devising the recipe.
“From?”
“Those undaunted enough to try to bake it.” She waved a sheaf of letters in the air.
“All those? Already?” Flynn frowned.
“These are just a sample few from this morning’s postbag, I’m afraid.
A housewife from Evesham, a ‘married lady’ from the north, and there’s a chef in Fortnum’s who was hoping to sell it in the Food Hall.
He says, and I quote, ‘This cake is inedible.’ They all say that the recipe is too complicated, the ingredients too expensive or unavailable, and the result ‘not worth the vast amount of effort’—that from Mrs. L.
Gill in Rotherham, who has also ‘had enough’ of hearing about the Festival.
‘What is it doing for Rotherham?’ she asks. ”
“Good question,” Evans said.
“And this one is from a Mr. Pertwee in Salisbury who says, ‘You can take your ruddy cake and stuff it up your—’ Well, perhaps I shan’t read the rest of that one out loud.”
Denholm entered quietly in daringly fringed suede moccasins. “I forgot to ask, Mr. Flynn. How was your dinner with the Blinkhorns? Did Mitzi serve you up a feast?”
“Champagne cocktails, seafood platter, roast beef, egg custard.”
“Oh, heavenly!” Denholm said, clutching his hands to his chest. “I see you still have the dove.”
Flynn had not returned the errant bird to the South Bank. Instead it perched on his desk, glaring balefully at anyone entering the office. For a dove of peace, it gave off a surprisingly malevolent air.
“Dangerfield’s threatening to come down from on high,” Denholm said.
“Give us underlings a bit of a pep talk. Marshal the troops, urge us to sacrifice ourselves in order to get the Festival ready on time. St. Crispin’s Day sort of stuff.
Cry ‘God for Harry, England and St. George!’ I played Henry the Fifth—long time ago now, a touring production.
Quite exhausting. Felt as if I really did go into battle every night.
” He sighed at the memory, his face the mask of the tragedian.
“Still, we are a little band of brothers, aren’t we?
And a sister, of course.” He gave a little bow in Maud Ogilvie’s direction.
“Once more unto the breach,” she said.
It was too late for the wandering dove. Its flock had taken wing—suspended spectacularly from the roof of the Lion and the Unicorn Pavilion. Flynn wondered if he was condemned to carry the bird around for all eternity, burdened like Atlas or Sisyphus.
The whole of the South Bank was still a building site, a cacophony of sawing and hammering.
A bevy of workmen surrounded a crane that was delivering a monumental sculpture of two massive figures.
“Barbara fucking Hepworth,” one of the men grunted at Flynn as they struggled to manoeuvre it into position.
The Rooms, too, had at last begun to leave their drawing boards and were now under feverish construction.
Ovens, fridges, washing machines all stood around waiting to be homed.
Flynn came across a girl he knew called Hetty Barker who was staggering beneath the weight of a large box that contained a pressure cooker (“Universal pressure cooker,” L.
G. Hawkins & Co. Ltd, 30–35 Drury Lane, London, WC2).
Flynn relieved her of her burden. “Just put it down anywhere,” she said.
“It’s chaos here. God, Harry, what happened to your face?
” The offending bookcase was trotted out again to reflect on its guilt, while Flynn placed the pressure cooker on top of an electric oven (“Princess,” Revo Electric Co.
, Tipton, Staffs). This knowledge would die with him, he thought. Just as well.
Hetty jumped up and perched on a washing machine that had been parked in the middle of the courtyard (Cotto Products, Enterprise Works, Scunthorpe, Lincs).
He offered her a cigarette. As she leant in to light it, another girl (Margaret?
Marjorie?) appeared and said, “Can I have one of those? Margot,” she reminded him. “What is that? Is it a pigeon?”
“A dove.”
“Can you get me a Silver Cross doll’s pushchair, Harry?”
“No, sorry, it’s not on the Stock List.”
“You can’t know it off by heart.”
“Try me.”
“No thanks. Oh, Gawd, Hetty, don’t look now but the Fowlers are over there. I detest them. Look at the way they peacock around the place.”
“Lord and Lady Muck,” Hetty said.