Blott On The Landscape Read Online Free PDF

Quotations. “It is not enough to protest, we must make our protest known. If the Gorge is to be saved it will not be by words alone but by action.” On the platform beside her Sir Giles nodded his apparent approval, but inwardly he was alarmed. Publicity was all very well, and justice was fine when it applied to other people but he didn’t want public attention focused too closely on his role in the affair. He had expected the motorway to upset Lady Maud; he had not foreseen that she would turn into a human tornado. He certainly hadn’t supposed that his seat would be jeopardized by the uproar she seemed bent on provoking.
    “If you don’t see that the Hall is saved,” Lady Maud told him, “I’ll see to it that you don’t sit for South Worfordshire at the next election.” Sir Giles took the threat seriously and consulted Hoskins at the Planning Authority in Worford.
    “I thought you wanted the thing to go through the Gorge,” Hoskins told him as they sat in the bar of the Handyman Arms.
    Sir Giles nodded unhappily. “I do,” he admitted, “but Maud has gone berserk. She’s threatening … well, never mind.”
    Hoskins was reassuring. “She’ll get over it. They always do. Got to give them time to get used to the idea.”
    “It’s all very well for you to talk,” said Sir Giles, “but I have to live with the beastly woman. She’s up half the night thundering about the bloody house and I’m having to cook for myself. Besides, I don’t like the way she keeps cleaning her father’s shotgun in the kitchen.”
    “You know she took a potshot at one of the surveyors last week,” Hoskins said.
    “Can’t you have her charged?” Sir Giles asked eagerly. “That would take the heat off for a bit. Haul her up before the local beaks.”
    “She is a local magistrate,” Hoskins pointed out, “and anyway there’s no proof. She would just claim she was shooting rabbits.”
    “And that’s another thing. She’s got the house full of bloody great Alsatians. Hired them from some damned security firm. I tell you I can’t go down the passage for a pee in the night without running the risk of being bitten.” He ordered another two whiskies and considered the problem. “There’ll have to be an Enquiry,” he said finally. “Promise them an Enquiry and they’ll calm down a bit. Secondly, offer the Enquiry a totally unacceptable alternative. Like we did with the block of flats in Shrewton.”
    “You mean give planning permission for a sewage farm?”
    “That’s what we did there. Worked like a charm,” Sir Giles said. “Now if we could come up with an alternative route which nobody in his right mind would accept …”
    “There’s always Ottertown,” said Hoskins.
    “What about Ottertown?”
    “It’s ten miles out of the way and you’d have to go through a council estate.”
    Sir Giles smiled. “Right through the middle?”
    “Right through the middle.”
    “It sounds promising,” Sir Giles agreed. “I think I shall be the first to advocate the Ottertown route. You’re quite sure it’s unacceptable?”
    “Quite sure,” said Hoskins. “And, by the way, I’ll take my fee in advance.”
    Sir Giles looked round the bar. “My advice is to buy …” he began.
    “Cash this time,” said Hoskins, “I lost on United Oils.”
    Sir Giles returned to Handyman Hall in a fairly good humour. He disliked parting with money but Hoskins was worth it and the Ottertown idea was the sort of strategy he liked. It would take Maud’s mind off eternal publicity. Tempers would cool and the Enquiry would decide in favour of the Gorge. By then it would be too late to inflame public opinion once again. Enquiries were splendid soporifics. He ran the gauntlet of the guard dogs and spent the evening in his study writing a letter to the Minister of the Environment demanding the setting up of an Enquiry. No one could say that the Member of Parliament for South Worfordshire had not got the interests of his