Free Blott On The Landscape by Tom Sharpe Page B

trifled with.
    “I’ll have to ask Matron,” said the nurse. Dundridge went outside into the sunshine to wait. He didn’t like hospitals. They were not, he felt, his forte, particularly hospitals which overlooked graveyards, stank of disinfectant and had the gall to call themselves Cottage Hospitals when they were situated in the middle of towns. He was just considering the awful prospect of being treated for a serious complaint in such a dead-and-alive hole when the Matron appeared. She was gaunt, grey-haired and grim.
    “I understand you want to see Lord Leakham,” she said.
    “On Government business,” said Dundridge pompously.
    “You can have five minutes,” said the Matron and led the way down the passage to a private room. “He’s still suffering from concussion and shock.” She opened the door and Dundridge went inside. “Now nothing controversial,” said the Matron. “We don’t want to have a relapse, do we?”
    On the bed, ashen-faced and with his head swathed in bandages, Lord Leakham regarded her venomously. “There’s nothing the matter with me apart from food poisoning,” he said. Dundridge sat down beside the bed.
    “My name is Dundridge,” he said. “The Minister of the Environment has asked me to come up to see if I can do something to … er … well to negotiate some sort of settlement in regard to the motorway.”
    Lord Leakham looked at him vindictively over the top of his glasses. “Has he indeed? Well let me tell you what I intend to do about the motorway first and then you can inform him,” he said. He raised himself on his pillows and leant towards Dundridge. “I was appointed to head the Enquiry into the motorway and I do not intend to relinquish my responsibility.”
    “Oh quite,” said Dundridge.
    “Furthermore,” said the Judge, “I have no intention whatsoever of allowing myself to be influenced by hooliganism and riot from doing my duty as I see it.”
    “Oh definitely,” said Dundridge.
    “As soon as these damnfool doctors get it into their thick heads that there is nothing wrong with me except a peptic ulcer, I shall re-open the Enquiry and announce my decision.” Dundridge nodded.
    “Quite right too,” he said. “And what will your decision be? Or is it too early to ask that?”
    “It most certainly isn’t,” shouted Lord Leakham. “I intend to recommend that the motorway goes through the Cleene Gorge, plumb through it, you understand. I intend to see that that damned woman’s home is levelled to the ground, brick by brick. I intend …” He sank back on to the bed exhausted by his outburst.
    “I see,” said Dundridge, wondering what possible use there was in trying to negotiate a compromise between an irresistible force and an immovable object.
    “Oh no you don’t,” said Lord Leakham. “That woman deliberately sent her husband to poison me. She interrupted the proceedings. She insulted me in my own court. She incited to riot. She made a mockery of the legal process and she shall rue the day. The law shall not be mocked, sir.”
    “Oh quite,” said Dundridge.
    “So you go and negotiate all you want but just remember the decision to go through the Gorge is mine and I do not for one moment intend to forgo the pleasure of making it.”
    Dundridge went out into the passage and conferred with the Matron.
    “He seems to think someone tried to poison him,” he said carefully skirting the law of libel. The Matron smiled gently.
    “That’s the concussion,” she said. “He’ll get over that in a day or two.”
    Dundridge went out into the Abbey Close past the geriatric patients and wandered disconsolately down the steps and out into Market Street. It didn’t seem likely to him that Lord Leakham would get over his conviction that Lady Maud had tried to poison him and he had a shrewd suspicion that the Judge had in some perverse way enjoyed the contretemps in court and was looking forward to pursuing his vendetta as soon as he was up and about.