AFTERTHOUGHT

Wooster sauce

JOHN WELLS

Spring had come late to Westminster that year, but now that it had sprung it had sprung with a vengeance. Golden daffodils fluttered and danced by the host on the emerald sward, the tower of Big Ben stood bright and glittering in the unpolluted air, and earth would have been hard put to it to produce anything more picturesque. In the circumstances it might have been ex- pected that the fancy of Edward Richard George ('Teddy') Heath, in company with the fancies of other bronzed, middle-aged men, would be turning light cartwheels to- wards thoughts of love. But Teddy's fancy, to judge by the expression on his homely features as he sat slumped in his office at the House of Commons, was potholing several thousand feet underground, gloomily exploring the nethermost chambers of des- pair.

Nor did his expression brighten when a nasal voice broke in on his reverie.

Fishface!' The suit of the man standing in the doorway might once have belonged to a corpulent giant with a lifelong habit of carrying seed potatoes about in his pockets and sleeping in it. Teddy allowed his eyes to wander over its baggy folds and piles of turnup like a houseproad interior decorator examining the contents of a dust- bin unexpectedly upturned in the middle of his drawing-room carpet. Then, more slowly, he allowed his eyes to climb the egg-stained tie, scale the cheese-pale treble chins, and to gaze at last on the smiling countenance of the Prime Minister, J. H. Wilson. He did not like what he saw. Nor, it seemed, did his eyes. They shrank to glowing pinpoints of loathing, and Teddy began to grind his teeth.

'Get out!'

The Prime Minister's smile remained un- flickering. It had something. Teddy was wont to reflect in happier moments, of the smile of an elderly tomcat, who had thoroughly crunched a canary. and was secretly in two minds as to whether he could swallow it.

I thought you might just care to take a gander at the latest poll results. They're rather interesting.'

`Shuttup!'

'They show your own personal chances of ever occupying a certain desirable resid- ence just up the road on the right to be approximately those of a snowball in hell.'

'Oh, stuff it!'

'My word, somebody did get out of bed on the wrong side this morning, didn't they?'

'You are a cad and a bounder, and I've a good mind to give you a damned good hiding.'

'Temper, temperl' 'Get out! I hate you. I hate you. I hate you!'

'Sorry, old bean, but I thought you'd like to know the score. Everybody else seems to.' And still smiling the Prime Minister tossed the relevant documents onto Teddy's desk and shimmered out, trailing folds of flannel.

Left alone, Teddy abandoned himself to rage. He tore the poll results into lilliputian confetti, and then, carefully laying an un- flattering photograph of the Prime Minister on the floor, he began to hammer it with his heels to the dizzily accelerating rhythm of an improvised flamenco. The thought that he was forced to share the same planet with J. H. Wilson drove him mad. As far as it was possible for one upright Christian gentle- man to dislike the intestines of another Christian gentleman, Teddy Heath disliked those of J. H. Wilson. To those who tried to comfort him by pointing out that there was only one J. H. Wilson, he would reply that one was a great deal too many. He was executing, with his arms in the air, a clatter- ing, machinegun rattle finale on the bland face in the photograph when the door opened again. It was 'Baldy' Barber. His head shone as if it had been burnished with a soft cloth, and a good-natured smile played on his lips.

'Anything the matter, old boy?' he in- quired.

`No' said Teddy, throwing himself into a deep armchair, 'I'm having a sulk.'

A discerning bird, fluttering later that morning among the bursting buds and the burgeoning blossom of St James's Park, might have espied the two men deep in conversation on a sunlit bench. And there, among the scents and sounds of Nature, where male pigeons ruffled and strutted and cooed in pursuit of their feathered com- panions, Baldy explained to Teddy the ways of the bird with the bee, and the joys of awakening a partner from the long sleep of winter.

It was a barely recognisable Teddy who arranged his feet on the dispatch box after lunch. His old smile flashed like a white neon sign at friend and foe and when the._ Prime Minister shuffled smiling into the chamber he leapt to his feet in an instant.

'Cowardy cowardy custard!'

'Shut up!'

For the first time, Teddy detected a note of real emotion in the Prime Minister's voice. Teddy grinned at Baldy, who winked, and returned to the fray.

'Blobberchops!'

'I said shut up, you great grinning booby!' 'You are a booby yourself. Feins and no returns!'

'Meanie!'

'Meanie yourself!'

'Meanie meanie meanie meanie! !

The Prime Minister's smile had given way to a cruel snarl but Teddy's eyes were moist with happiness. Spring was here at last, and Teddy was in love.