Jonah and Co Part 37

"As at present arranged," said Jonah, "we start the day after to-morrow, spend one night at Pampeluna, two at San Sebastian, and get back on Sat.u.r.day."

"One clear day," murmured Daphne. "I suppose that'll give us time."

"What's there to do," said Adele, "besides packing?"

"Not much," said Jonah. "The pa.s.sports have been visa-ed, and that's the main thing. We must get some money at the bank--Spanish money, I mean--book rooms, run over the cars... I can't think of anything else."

"We'd better take some insecticide," said Berry. "Spain's very conservative."

"Nonsense," said Daphne.

"All right," said her husband. "Only, on the command 'Ter-rot,' don't wake me to inspect the bodyguard. Have we any castanets? And what about some sombreros? I mean, I want to do the thing properly."

"Thanks," said his wife. "But if you're going in fancy dress, I'd rather remain at Pau. I haven't forgotten our second Sunday here."

"I shall always maintain," was the reply, "that I was suitably dressed.

On the previous Sunday I had carefully studied the fashions upon the Boulevard, and I flatter myself that, had I been permitted to appear in public, my attire would have found immediate favour."

"If," said I, "I remember aright, it consisted of a white bowler, a morning-coat, golf-breeches, blue silk stockings and cloth-topped boots."

"That's right," said Berry. "And an alpenstock. I ought really to have had my cuffs trimmed with skunk," he added wistfully, "but I thought of it too late."

"I tell you what," said Adele. "We must take some films."

"That's right," said Jill. "I promised Piers we'd send him some snapshots."

Jonah groaned.

"Surely," he said, "our pa.s.sport photographs are bad enough."

"The camera," said Berry, "can never lie. Besides, I'm very fond of your pa.s.sport portrait. I admit I hadn't previously noticed that your right ear was so much the larger of the two, but the cast in your left eye is very beautifully insisted upon. Mine, I must confess, is less successful. Had I been told that it was a study of the Honorary Treasurer of the Splodgeworth Goose Club on bail, I should have held it an excellent likeness. Daphne's is very good. She's wearing that particularly sweet expression of hers. You can almost hear her saying, 'Mine's a large port.' Apart, they're bad enough, but with both of them on the same doc.u.ment--well, why we weren't turned back at Boulogne I shall never know. Boy's, again, is lifelike."

"Shame," said Adele. "He looks all bloated."

"I know he does, sweetheart. But that's his own fault. What's put in the mouth comes out in the flesh. The camera can never lie. And now don't choke. It's unmaidenly. And I cannot think of you as a matron.

Let's see. Oh, yes. Films. Anything else?"

"Soap," said Daphne.

"Fountain-pen," said Jill.

"Cards," said Adele.

"Tea," said Daphne.

"Beer-opener," said I.

"Plate and linen," said Berry. "That's nine. Let's go by train."

"Anybody," said Jonah, "would think that we were going into the bush.

If you must have a camera--well, take one. But as for soap and tea and beer-openers and fountain-pens--oh, you make me tired."

"And me," said Berry unctuously. "A plain man of few words, all this vulgar mouth-wash about creature comforts----"

It was hardly to be expected that he would get any further....

It was when the storm of indignation was at its height that the electric light failed.

Four of us breathed the same expletive simultaneously.

Then--

"Lost," said Berry's voice. "Two cheese-straws and a blob of French mustard. Finder will be----" The crash of gla.s.s interrupted him.

"Don't move, Falcon, or you'll wreck the room. Besides, it'll soon be dawn. The nights are getting shorter every day."

"Very good, sir," replied the butler.

"They'll bring some candles in a minute," said Daphne.

"What we really want," said my brother-in-law, "is a prismatic compa.s.s."

"What for?" said Jill.

"To take a bearing with. Then we should know where the port was, and I could peel you a banana. Or would you rather suck it?"

"Brute!" said Jill, shuddering. "Oh, why is the dark so horrid?"

"The situation," said I, "calls for philosophy."

"True," said Berry. "Now, similarly placed, what would Epicurus have done?"

"I think," said Adele, "he'd have continued his discourse, as if nothing had happened."

"Good girl," said Jonah. "Any more queries about Pampeluna?"

"Yes," said my sister. "How exactly do we go?"

"We go," said I, "to St. Jean-Pied-de-Port. There we get a permit to take the cars into Spain. Then we go over the mountains by Roncevaux.

It's a wonderful drive, they say, but the very deuce of a climb.

Pampeluna's about fifty kilometres from the top of the pa.s.s. If we get off well, we ought to be there in time for tea."

"Easily," said Jonah. "It's only a hundred and twenty miles."

I shrugged my shoulders and resumed a surrept.i.tious search for the chocolates.

"I expect we shall strike some snow," I said.

"Snow?" cried Jill.