Blott On The Landscape Read Free Page B

said finally.
    “Blott?” said Mrs Forthby. “Do I know you?”
    “No,” said Blott.
    “Is there anything I can do for you?”
    “No,” said Blott.
    There was an awkward silence and then Mrs Forthby spoke. “What do you want?”
    Blott tried to think of something he wanted. “I want a ton of pig manure,” he said.
    “You must have the wrong number.”
    “Yes,” said Blott and put the phone down.
    In the greenhouse Lady Maud was delighted with the experiment. “I’ll soon find out who’s beating him now,” she thought and took the headphones off. She went back to the house.
    “We shall take it in turns to monitor all telephone calls my husband makes,” she told Blott. “I want to find out who he’s visiting in London. You must write down the name of anyone he talks to. Do you understand?”
    “Yes,” said Blott and went back to the kitchen garden happily. In the kitchen Lady Maud finished washing up. She’d meant to ask Blott who he had been talking to. Never mind, it wasn’t important.

Chapter 3
    Sir Giles got back from London rather sooner than he had expected. Mrs Forthby’s period had put her in a foul mood and Sir Giles had enough on his plate without having to put up with the side-effects of Mrs Forthby’s menstrual tension. And besides, Mrs Forthby in the flesh was a different kettle of fish to Mrs Forthby in his fantasies. In the latter she had a multitude of perverse inclinations, which corresponded exactly with his own unfortunate requirements, while possessing a discretion that would have done credit to a Trappist nun. In the flesh she was disappointingly different. She seemed to think, and in Sir Giles’ opinion there could be no greater fault in a woman, that he loved her for herself alone. It was a phrase that sent a shudder through him. If he loved her at all, and it was only in her absence that his heart grew even approximately fonder, it was not for Mrs Forthby’s self. It was precisely because as far as he could make out she lacked any self that he was attracted to her in the first place.
    Externally Mrs Forthby had all the attributes of desirable womanhood, rather too many for more fastidious tastes, and all confined within corsets, panties, suspender belts and bras that inflamed Sir Giles’ imagination and reminded him of the advertisements in women’s magazines on which his sexual immaturity had first cut its teeth. Internally Mrs Forthby was a void if her inconsequential conversation was anything to go by and it was this void that Sir Giles, ever hopeful of finding a lover with needs as depraved as his own, sought to fill. And here he had to admit that Mrs Forthby fell far short of his expectations. Broad-minded she might be, though he sometimes doubted that she had a mind, but she still lacked enthusiasm for the intricate contortions and strangleholds that constituted Sir Giles’ notions of foreplay. And besides she had an unfortunate habit of giggling at moments of his grossest concentration and of interjecting reminiscences of her Girl Guide training while tightening the granny knots which so affected him. Worst of all was her absent-mindedness (and here he had no quarrel with the term). She had been known to leave him trussed to the bed and gagged for several hours while she entertained friends to tea in the next room. It was at such moments of enforced contemplation that Sir Giles was most conscious of the discrepancies between his public and his private posture and hoped to hell the two wouldn’t be brought closer together by some damned woman looking for the lavatory. Not that he wouldn’t have welcomed some intervention into his fantasy world if only he could be certain that he wouldn’t be the laughing-stock of Westminster. After one such episode he had threatened to murder Mrs Forthby and had only been restrained by his inability to stand upright even after she had untied him.
    “Where the hell have you been?” he shouted when she returned at one o’clock