Free Ancestral Vices by Tom Sharpe Page A

resuscitation team, urged on by her insistence that she didn’t want to have visitors seeing a peer of the realm in such a disgusting condition, carried Lord Petrefact up the staircase and into a bedroom.
*
    And so until Lord Petrefact awoke to find himself clean, clothed and bedded down in a room that looked down over the lawns to the lake, Croxley busied himself with breakfast, the Sunday papers and what the hell to do about Yapp. He had no qualms about keeping him locked in the nursery and in any case the swine had his uses. If Mrs Billington-Wall could take the can back for ordering Lord Petrefact to be put to bed on the first floor with no recourse to the communications system implanted in the arm of the wheelchair, then Yapp would be a suitable scapegoat for the rest of the catastrophe. And catastrophe it certainly was. Croxley’s brief inventory of the damage done by the Synchronized Ablution Bath and the wheelchair added up to something in the region of a quarter of a million pounds and possibly more. The jade pieces, and the term applied more accurately now than it had done before the wheelchair had shattered them, had been beyond price. Now they were beyond restoration. So were several extremely valuable Oriental rugs. The bath was responsible for their destruction – the bath and thesteam which had filtered down through the hole left by the chandelier. In fact Petrefact’s makeshift bedroom looked as though a rather hot flashflood had been through it. Yes, Yapp could be held responsible and Croxley thanked God that he hadn’t been the one to suggest lodging the brute in the King Albert suite.
    He was just congratulating himself on this piece of luck when one of the doctors came downstairs with a message that Lord Petrefact had regained consciousness and wanted to see him. From the look on the man’s face Croxley gained the impression that Lord Petrefact’s health had improved dramatically and with it had come a marked deterioration in his temper.
    ‘I should watch your step,’ said the doctor. ‘He’s not what you might call himself yet.’
    Croxley went upstairs wondering what this cryptic comment might mean. Much to his astonishment he found Lord Petrefact in a comparatively mild state of fury. Mrs Billington-Wall was laying down the law.
    ‘You’re to stay here until you’re better,’ she told the nastier side of Lord Petrefact’s face with a courage that suggested she had indeed been a FANY in the war and might well have seen action on a great many fronts. ‘I won’t allow you to be moved until I’m satisfied you’ve fully recovered from this dreadful assault.’
    Lord Petrefact glared at her but said nothing. He evidently knew when he had met his match.
    ‘And I don’t want you to excite him,’ she told Croxley. ‘Ten minutes at the most and then down you go.’
    Croxley nodded gratefully. Ten minutes in Lord Petrefact’s company was ample. Under present conditions it was too long but it was better than forty.
    ‘Who the hell was that?’ asked Lord Petrefact weakly when she had left.
    ‘Mrs Billington-Wall,’ said Croxley, deciding that obtusely literal answers were the best defence. ‘The widow of the late Brigadier-General Billington-Wall, DSO, M—’
    ‘I don’t want the bitch’s family tree. I want to know what she’s doing here.’
    ‘Taking care of you, as far as I can tell. She’s usually showing visitors round the house but she’s taken time off today—’
    ‘Shut up,’ yelled Lord Petrefact, momentarily forgetting his head. He sank back wincingly on the pillow. Croxley shut up and sat gazing with deferential dislike at the old man.
    ‘Well, say something,’ moaned Lord Petrefact.
    ‘If you insist. First you tell me to shut up and then when I do you complain that I’m not saying anything.’
    Lord Petrefact eyed his secretary with undivided loathing. ‘Croxley,’ he said finally, ‘there have been moments in our long association when I have seriously