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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Also by Michael Palin
Copyright
For Helen
‘Neither snow, nor rain, nor
heat nor gloom of night, stays these couriers
from the swift completion of their
appointed round.’
On the façade of the General Post
Office, New York City
One
Marsh Cottage stood a little way back from a road that led to a cliff top and then stopped. It had once run out to a headland where there had been a small village, but the sea had clawed away the soft sandy cliff and the houses had long since disappeared. Now, apart from Marsh Cottage itself, the road served only a pair of holiday chalets. It was neglected and full of potholes.
On either side of the cottage lay flat countryside, tufty grassland on the landward side and on the other grazing marsh running a half-mile down to the sea. The house had been flooded several times since it was built in the early 1930s but more recently the local council had raised the sea defences in an attempt to create an extra beach or two, and since then it had been safe from the spring tides.
Marsh Cottage looked what it was. The unsuccessful prototype for an abandoned housing estate. Redbrick walls two storeys high ran up to a pitched slate roof. A suburban bay window faced on to the road with the front door to one side. Beside the house was a detached garage alongside which a passage led round to the back. In the seventies a white-painted wood and glass extension had been added to the rear of the house and framed the old back door.
On this Thursday morning in early September Marsh Cottage looked particularly vulnerable as it took a westerly wind full in the face. An unhealthy yellow sky offered worse to come as a bobble-hatted figure emerged from the garage, wheeling a bicycle. He secured the door of the garage behind him, patted the pockets of a sky-blue anorak, checked the fastenings on a pannier basket and, mounting the bicycle with care, negotiated the short, bumpy driveway and turned southwards in the direction of the town of Theston, two miles away. Martin Sproale had made this journey, on various bicycles, for most of his adult life. He was now thirty-six, a little over six feet tall, with a round, soft face and light reddish hair. His skin was pale and prone to rashes, and his hands were long and fine.
* * *
Elaine Rudge, who worked at the post office alongside Martin, was still at home. She lived in the centre of town and could walk to work, and in any case she didn’t have the responsibility of opening up, which brought Martin in on the dot of half past eight. Hair-grip between clenched teeth, she was standing before the kitchen mirror, concentrating on herself and a vital quiz question on the Dick Arthur Breakfast Show.
‘The capital of Indonesia is Jakarta, Mombasa or Rio de Janeiro? The capital of Indonesia…’
As the voice from the radio came again, Joan Rudge, a trim, energetic woman in a padded nylon housecoat, gave a short dismissive laugh. ‘Well, it’s not going to be Rio de Janeiro, is it. That’s in Brazil.’
Elaine took the grip from her teeth and thrust it into the back of her head. ‘Mum, I’m trying to listen.’
‘Soft, these questions.’
‘You’ve still got to work out if it’s Mombasa or – what was the other one?’ Elaine said, reaching for a piece of paper.
‘Jakarta, Mombasa or Rio de Janeiro?’ repeated Dick Arthur obligingly.
‘Must be Jakarta.’
‘Well it’ll not be Rio de Janeiro,’ her mother said again. ‘That’s definitely in Brazil. That’s where Uncle Howard ended up.’
Elaine bit her lower lip for some time and then wrote down ‘Mombasa’.
She returned to the mirror and stood a little back from it. She’d chosen her clothes with more care than usual this morning, as it was a Thursday and she and Martin always had a drink at the Pheasant on Thursdays. The pink cotton blouse was simple but sophisticated, not figure-hugging but very feminine. She looked in the mirror and flicked the collar up. Then she flicked it down. She wasn’t pretty, she knew that. She was a hefty, well-proportioned young woman, but on some days she could look oddly beautiful, the way Ingrid Bergman did when they photographed her nose right. Her thick head of copper-brown hair needed work but repaid the effort. She’d woken up with an ominous tenderness on her lower lip and was relieved to find on closer examination that it was nothing more than the tiniest of pimples which she would have no trouble in disguising. Unless of course Martin was in one of his touching moods. The other evening they’d been together down by the beach huts and he’d run his fingers very gently over her face, paying special attention to her lips. Elaine was curious to know where he’d learnt this, but didn’t like to ask. She had concluded that it must have been from a magazine, or one of his books. She hadn’t liked it much, as the tips of his fingers smelt of postal adhesive.
The next question on the Dick Arthur Breakfast Show concerned nocturnal animals. ‘That’s animals that only come out at night,’ Dick Arthur added helpfully, though most of the question had been obscured by the noise of Frank Rudge’s Dormobile pulling into the yard. Through the window Elaine could see him wince with discomfort as he slid the door open and extracted himself gingerly from the driving seat. Thursday was market day at Norwich and he’d been out on the road before dawn. Paul, his latest acquisition from the Youth Training Scheme, checked his spiky blond hair in the wing mirror and by the time he’d got down, Elaine’s father already had the back open and was reaching for the first of the long, flat boxes of Spanish lettuce.
* * *
Theston post office was part of an uncompleted 1930s development in the centre of the town. It was the work of Cedric Meadows, the Borough Architect, who had left for Malaya a year later, leaving undisclosed debts. On a good day, when Martin cycled into North Square he saw the redbrick walls, the asymmetric stone-dressed tower, the steeply gabled roof and portentous curved steps up to the bulky oak front door as a rather splendid mess. On a bad day he barely saw the post office at all, his eye being drawn unwillingly to the neon-bordered, poster-plastered window of the video store on its left and the jumble-sale
jolliness of the Save the Children shop on its right.
As he had done every morning, forty-eight weeks a year for the last sixteen years, Martin cycled around two sides of the square and turned into Echo Passage. If there were no unwelcomely parked cars he would slowly raise his right leg, transfer his weight to the left-hand pedal and, braking as he did so, glide balletically into Phipps’ Yard, coming to rest, precisely, alongside the back steps of the post office. Ernie Padgett, the current Postmaster, a title he had privately refused to relinquish when postmasters had been officially renamed managers four years earlier, lived on the premises. He would normally have opened up and had some tea on, but recently he had been unwell and with retirement imminent had seemed to be losing interest in the job. Highly irregularly, he had entrusted his assistant, Martin, with a set of keys and these Martin had to use today.
* * *
As Elaine arrived there was already a brace of regulars waiting outside the main door. At their head was Harold Meredith, a small, sturdy man with a walking stick and a head of closely trimmed white hair, more often than not concealed beneath a tweed cap. He took care over his appearance and wouldn’t dream of leaving the house in anything less correct than a hound’s-tooth jacket and an Army Pay Corps tie. His pale, smooth-skinned complexion showed little sign of age, though he was known to be over eighty. Since his wife’s death five years earlier, the post office had become his adopted home.
‘You’re up with the lark, Mr Meredith,’ Elaine called jauntily, because that was the way he liked it.
‘I’m up for a lark any day,’ came the ritual reply.
‘I’m too old for you, Mr Meredith,’ Elaine protested and fluttered her eyelashes as she reached the top of the steps and pressed the doorbell for Martin to let her in.
Elaine and Martin refrained from any physical contact whilst they were on post office premises. Even when there were just the two of them in the back kitchen they only ever touched accidentally. Elaine had begun to entertain increasingly elaborate fantasies of coffee-break passion but Martin remained the complete professional and, once he was inside the building, his sole relationship was with the public. No enquiry, however fatuous or ill informed, failed to receive his full attention, nor was any irrelevant personal information treated as less than engrossing. Even Mrs Harvey-Wardrell, whom Elaine thought the most vile creature imaginable, could not dislodge his mask of professional affability.
Pamela Harvey-Wardrell was the self-appointed queen of Theston society. She was a snob’s snob, a woman of such epic and ineffable unselfconsciousness that, if born poor and unwelcome, she might well have been certified mad. She was another early riser. A keen ornithologist, she could often be seen on the marshes at dawn, glasses raised, scouring the reed-beds. She was over six feet tall and from a distance, in her deer-stalker, Barbour jacket and matching thigh-length waders, she could easily be taken for a small tree.
Though she could wait for hours on a jacksnipe or a water rail she had no patience for humans and this particular morning her restlessness was almost tangible as Martin explained slowly and laboriously to Harold Meredith the intricacies of the Pension Income Bonds, something which he had to do on more or less a weekly basis. Mr Meredith nodded earnestly as he listened.
‘So would you like a leaflet?’ Martin asked him.
‘Oh, yes please,’ he returned, eyes lighting up.
Martin leant down to the cupboard and, flicking it open with his right foot, withdrew a small pile of them. He detached one and handed it to Mr Meredith. ‘Here you are. Pensioners’ Income Bond Booklet, Series 2.’
‘D’you want it back?’
‘No, you hang on to it, Mr Meredith.’
‘How much is it?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake…’ came quite audibly from behind him.
‘Morning, Mrs Harvey-Wardrell.’ Martin offered a placatory smile.
She didn’t seem placated.
‘I’m in a dreadful hurry.’
‘Yes, I’ll be with you right away. That should answer all your questions, Mr Meredith.’
‘How much is it, Martin?’
‘Completely free. Compliments of the Post Office.’
Mr Meredith’s eyes swam with emotion. ‘I can remember when you could send a letter to Hong Kong for a penny halfpenny,’ he said somewhat at random.
Mrs Harvey-Wardrell exhaled threateningly. In paisley silk headscarf, thick-ribbed turtleneck sweater, body-warmer, tweed skirt, lisle stockings and lace-up brogues, she was looking about as feminine as Martin had ever seen her.
‘I could have walked to Hong Kong by now,’ she snapped and, using her substantial weight advantage, began to edge Mr Meredith along the counter. Harold Meredith knew this tactic and had his own way of dealing with it.
‘Thank you, Martin,’ he said, deliberately slowly. He gathered up his various documents, picked up his tweed cap, unhooked his walking stick from the edge of the counter and moved unhurriedly across the post office to the public writing desk. Here he set out his papers, then tried to engage Jane Cardwell, the doctor’s wife, in conversation. Having failed to do so, he reread the latest brochures on Parcel Force rates, live animal export regulations and forwarding mail to a private address.
Mrs Harvey-Wardrell began briskly. ‘What I need,’ she announced in ringing tones, as if addressing an open-air rally, ‘is two postal orders. One for Sebastian who’s just got into Eton with one of the highest Common Entrance marks they’ve ever had at Waterdene and the other for dear Charlie who’s nowhere near as bright but I can’t leave him out. Have you anything appropriate, Martin?’
‘Postal orders are all the same.’
‘No. I don’t mean postal orders, I mean those sort of gift voucher things.’
‘Well, we’ve got these.’ He withdrew two cards, swiftly and expertly, from his sliding drawer.
‘Those are ghastly,’ said Mrs Harvey-Wardrell.
‘Well, that’s all we have at the moment.’
‘They had dozens of them in Cambridge. All sorts of designs.’ She looked down disparagingly at the two examples Martin had laid out on the counter. ‘I can’t send a boy wrestling with the problems of adolescence a bunch of pansies.’
‘Geraniums, I think,’ volunteered Martin.
‘And what’s this one?’
Martin examined the card. He wasn’t too sure himself.
‘I think it’s a ship in trouble.’
‘Artist in trouble, I should say. Who chooses these things?’
‘Well, Mr Padgett does the ordering.’
Mrs Harvey-Wardrell lowered her voice to a whisper, which rang around the post office. ‘How is he today?’
‘Much the same.’
She leant across the counter. There was something damp and musty on her breath, like the smell of an abandoned house.
‘The sooner there’s some young blood in here the better, Martin. I’ll take two ships in trouble.’
* * *
Everyone was waiting for Ernie Padgett’s retirement. He had been Postmaster of Theston for twenty-three years and Assistant Postmaster for twenty years before that. ‘Padge’, as he was universally known, had long been at the centre of Theston life, twice Mayor and, like his friend Frank Rudge, on and off the council for as long as anyone could remember. Half a dozen years ago, Padge and Frank had laid plans for a property business, a two-man Mafia to revitalise Theston’s fortunes after the collapse of the local fishing industry. Investment was promised but all that was raised was expectation and, amidst recriminations, Frank Rudge became a greengrocer and Padge remained a postmaster.
From then on expert Padge-watchers – and there were many, for the relationship between post office and community is close and pervasive – detected the start of a decline. He seemed to withdraw into himself, indeed on occasions to be downright surly. He developed a constant bronchial cough. He found the new, computerised systems no match for his voluminous memory, which he once boasted could retain the serial number of every new pen
sion book issued over a six-month period. He relied more and more on Martin to get him through the last few years until he could retire and claim a pension for himself. But he was too proud a man ever to admit this and Martin remained in word, if not in deed, only assistant manager.
* * *
‘They’re sending three of them,’ announced Padge in the lunch-hour.
‘Three what?’ asked Elaine, glancing up from her crossword, grateful for a respite from 14 across, ‘Hebrew prophet (5)’.
‘Three from area headquarters.’
‘What for?’
Padge tapped the letter he was holding, impatiently.
‘For the – you know – for the farewell dinner.’
‘Dinner now is it, Padge?’ asked Martin between mouthfuls of bread and cold chicken. ‘I’d heard it was cheese and pickles … you know, something lean and mean and ready for privatisation.’
Martin knew there was a dinner. He was the one who’d suggested it in the first place. Head Office had only offered sherry and a presentation, and now here they were muscling in on an occasion which was supposed to have been a surprise anyway. Padge took another look at the letter.
‘Still, three of them,’ he said, with a touch of pride. ‘Shows they must consider it an occasion of importance.’
* * *
‘Penny?’
‘What?’
‘For your thoughts? What’s occupying that big brain of yours?’
Elaine and Martin were sitting together in the beer garden of the Pheasant Inn, at Braddenham, a modest village fifteen minutes’ drive inland from Theston. Its thatched roof and quaintly angled half-timbered façade dated back to the late 1970s when it was rebuilt after a fire. The beer garden was little more than an outside space, a lumpy slab of lawn confined by a quick-growing cypress hedge. Half a dozen metal tables hugged the wall of the pub for protection. They looked out towards swings and a climbing frame which were to Ron Oakes, the publican, a Kiddies’ Grotto, and to most of his regulars another way of recycling old tractor tyres.
But now autumn was approaching and families with young children came only at weekends. Soon the swing would be chained and padlocked and the wind and rain would see to the paint on the climbing frame.
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