Notwithstanding: Stories From an English Village

by Louis de Bernières

  Joan was an implacable Utopian, envisaging a world where individuals were responsible, rather than the state, and it was she and her husband, the Major, who would one day start a revolution whose aim was independence from Waverley Borough Council.

  Mrs Mac and Mrs Mac’s sister considered Joan’s offer; they had many old friends and relations to visit in the graveyard. ‘I’ll just go in and ask Mac,’ said Mrs Mac, and in she went, to see what her husband thought. ‘Mac, dear,’ she asked him, ‘Joan’s offered to take us up to the churchyard. Would you like to come?’

  It was often hard for Mrs Mac to get Mac to pay attention; he seemed to exist for much of the time in a state of profound contemplation, his head bowed, and his hands folded in his lap; extreme age had reduced him to the semblance of a philosopher. Mrs Mac repeated her question more loudly, and Mac raised his hoary head slowly. Their eyes met, and Mac’s mouth twitched at the corners into the slightest of smiles. He nodded. Mrs Mac went back outside and told Joan, ‘Mac says that he’d like to come. I do hope that that’s all right. Of course, if it’s any trouble …’

  Joan had been prepared for this; Mrs Mac was notorious for consulting Mac about every single thing, always running back and forth from the garden gate to the house, and more often than not she took him with her, talking to him continuously and very loudly in public, so that people who did not know her looked at her askance, and giggled to each other. Mrs Mac was growing deaf, and did not realise just how public her monologue was.

  Mrs Mac went back indoors to fetch Mac and re-emerged with one arm akimbo, so that Mac could thread his own arm through, for support. ‘Good morning, Mac,’ said Joan, who was used to their ways, and Mrs Mac said, ‘Mac says “Good morning”, don’t you, Mac?’ She turned to her sister and said, ‘Let’s put Mac in the middle. Then we can share him. Doesn’t know his luck, does he?’

  Mrs Mac had to cope with Mac’s usual disorientation, and spent some time coaxing him into the back of Joan’s Rover. Joan patted the gatepost cat on the head, being rewarded with the usual impartial hiss, and then she picked holly from the hedge by the bank, so that she could give it to Mrs Mac and her sister, for their loved ones’ graves. She already had variegated holly and ivy from her own garden in the boot of the car, but was determined that they should go in a vase beneath the window to St Peter, whose church it was. She had the reputation of a flower arranger sans pareil, and her husband, the Major, had often remarked that if she had chosen an art form less ephemeral, she might easily have become quite as famous as Picasso, but with considerably more justice. Joan was immodestly proud of her facility with sprigs and flowers, and rightly so.

  Joan drove carefully past the convent at the apex of the hill, because the nuns had a habit of emerging from their driveway at full tilt, without looking to right or left, and then she drove just as carefully through the central cluster of the village. Here the road was only a few feet wide, very sinuous, and just as likely to be carrying upon it a carload of jeopardous brides of Christ. Equally one might be run upon by Miss Agatha Feakes in her antique car, often with a piebald goat on the back seat, her white hair flying as she pumped the horn in lieu of using her brakes. They passed the hedging and ditching man, who, amid the steam of his own breath, was contemplating the skull of a fox that he had just found in the ditch. ‘Alas, poor Foxick,’ jested Joan, aware that her pleasantry would probably be lost on the Macs. She drove through the arches of oak trees that spanned the lane. In summer they gave drivers the sensation of entering a tunnel in Arcadia, but now only a few tenacious brown leaves rustled on those great boughs that seemed to be upheld in beseechment to a white, implacable sky. Finally Joan turned right, up the very steep hill to St Peter’s Church. Since the church was Anglican, this road customarily had no nuns upon it, and so Joan speeded up a little in order to gain some momentum for the ascent, sounding her horn at the two most dangerous corners. ‘Nearly there,’ said Mrs Mac to her husband, and Mrs Mac’s sister echoed, ‘Yes, nearly there.’

  St Peter’s Church was truly very small, having been founded in Saxon times, and rebuilt several times without ever having been expanded. A rough path in Bargate sandstone led to its door, and two enormous yew trees overshadowed much of its graveyard, whose level had risen greatly over the thousand years in which its soil had been turned up for the new dead. The oldest headstones dated only to the seventeenth century, but the oldest bones were already browned and crumbled when Geoffrey de Mandeville took these lands in fief from the Conqueror, and divided them up in turn among his captains.

  Joan stopped the car outside, and pushed the gear lever into first, just in case the handbrake was as unreliable as she suspected. She clambered out, opened the rear doors for the Macs, and then went to open the boot in order to fetch out her cuttings and her secateurs. Mrs Mac’s sister emerged first, and then Mrs Mac, who turned to assist her husband, holding out an arm for him, even though she herself was so bent that she could scarcely see a dog’s length in front of her.

  ‘I’m going into the church,’ said Mrs Mac’s sister, who was a woman of simple pleasures, and liked nothing more than to sit in a pew, gazing around at the stained glass and the tablets on the walls, soaking up the atmosphere of the timelessness and perversity of God. She also thought, as always, but falsely, that it might be warmer inside than out.

  Joan fetched the substantial old key from its usual hiding place in a crevice in the brickwork of Piers de Mandeville’s tomb, and unlocked the black oak door of the church. Until recently it had never been locked at all, but lately there had been a rash of theft from rural churches as the larcenous classes had finally lost their sense of sacrilege. ‘I’m going to do the arrangements,’ she told the others, somewhat superfluously. ‘Shouldn’t be more than half an hour.’

  ‘Mac and I will do the graves, then,’ said Mrs Mac, and the old couple moved slowly away, bearing each other’s weight, to visit the graves of those they had loved, as well as those for whom they had felt particular sorrow. Mac’s mother and father were in there, and two of his sisters; there were three members of their defunct group of spiritualists; there was poor Mrs Rendall, who had been so blonde and pretty and vivacious, carried away by cancer before she was forty; there was Pamela Diss, who had committed suicide inexplicably at the age of twenty-three, when she had a family that adored her, and her whole life to look forward to. Mac and Mrs Mac paused before each headstone, reading the inscriptions and epitaphs that they already knew so well, and Mrs Mac, as always, could not help the tears of sentiment that inevitably welled up in the corners of her eyes. ‘All gone before, all gone before,’ she said to Mac, wiping her eyes with a tiny crumpled handkerchief, and then blowing her nose. ‘Last one,’ she said, and they moved slowly towards the grave under the western wall that was habitually the final one on their rounds.

  Mrs Mac was always mildly dismayed by the state of it, frustrated by the manner in which time confounded her efforts. Sometimes she brought a scrubbing brush with her to remove the yellow lichen, and sometimes she brought a small bottle of systemic weedkiller which she had prepared at home, to defeat the brambles, the ground elder and the dog’s mercury. Today she tutted to herself, and peeled away a long tendril of darkest-green ivy that had begun to obscure the writing on the stone. ‘That’s better,’ she said, and straightened herself painfully. For the thousandth time she read:

  Joseph MacMahon

  Dearly beloved husband of Agnes

  5 December 1896 – 15 July 1968

  Underneath was inscribed ‘Behold, I am with you always’, a quotation that Mrs Mac particularly loved and understood, and underneath was carved, in bold capital letters, the single word ‘MAC’.

  COLONEL BARKWELL, TROODOS AND THE FISH

  THE VILLAGERS OF Notwithstanding considered that of all the retired officers in the parish, Colonel Pericles ‘Perry’ Barkwell was the most peremptory. He spoke with virtuosic economy, mercilessly pruning unnecessary words from his sentences, and his voice was a rich and
resounding baritone that might have excited envy in an actor. When he sang in church on Sunday his voice was so much the most powerful that, over a period of years, the idiosyncratic embellishments to the standard hymn tunes that had been one of the quirkier customs of his former public school had perforce become the generally accepted ones in Notwithstanding. Even Sir Edward Rawcutt, a stickler for the ways of singing hymns and psalms learned at his own public school, had become used to Colonel Barkwell’s versions. On one occasion the Rector had attempted to introduce a new melody to an old hymn, and the Colonel, perennially disgusted by new-fangledness in general, had resolutely sung the old tune over the top of the congregation until the organist had given up and reverted to it. In the responses, when the Colonel replied to the Rector’s ‘God be with you’, his stentorian ‘and with thy spirit’ perturbed the bats in the bell tower, and caused the bronze of the bells to vibrate in sympathy. The congregation felt assured that their communal prayers would be answered, because not even God would have dared to decline a demand from the Colonel. Therefore his presence in the community was conducive to the maintenance of its spiritual calm, despite the disconcerting volume of his crisp sentences, and the abject terror aroused in the breast of anyone who crossed him.

  The Colonel, an old Coldstream Guardsman of heroic height and bearing, had served in several campaigns, some of which had apparently taken place without the knowledge of the British public, and had received both the DSO and the Military Cross. In the village itself his lionheartedness had been a legend ever since he had brained a burglar with a number seven iron, and the jury in Guildford had, despite the clear direction of the judge, resolutely declined to convict him for the use of unnecessary force. Without the knowledge of the judge they had instead had a whip-round for the sum of ten pounds towards the purchase of a new golf club.

  Mrs Barkwell, on the other hand, was an elegant and slender lady with a penchant for blue cocktail dresses, who played bridge regularly with a circle of friends, with whom she liked to sip cold German wine and talk about the latest comedy at the Yvonne Arnaud theatre, and the latest modern drama at the Redgrave in Farnham. She contributed thoughtful verse to women’s magazines, and was an indefatigable collector of money for charitable causes. Some people thought her excessively distant, but those who knew her well found her warm and humorous, seldom calling her by her real name, which was Helen. Instead they referred to her as ‘Leafy’. Almost no one, it has to be said, was known by their real name, and, more often than not, no one knew wherefore any given person possessed the nickname that they did. Leafy Barkwell was, without even understanding it herself, utterly devoted to the Colonel – he had only to enter the room and she would glow with visible warmth – and sometimes she counted up the years of their marriage on her fingers, as if such perdurable happiness were something intrinsically incredible.

  Their sons and daughters had left home, and there remained only a maid and a cat. The maid had originally come to them as a nanny, provided gratis by the army when they were stationed in Germany, but now, even so many years after the children had grown and flown, Anna stayed on. As soon as their youngest child had reached the age of five, Perry and Leafy Barkwell had tried to encourage her to find more suitable and remunerative employment, but she had tearfully refused, accusing them in German of wishing to be rid of her, and demanding to know what she had done wrong. ‘Damned awkward,’ the Colonel had said to his wife. ‘What on earth can we do?’ she had asked. ‘Nobody has a servant these days.’

  The Colonel, fearless in the face of terrorists, bullets, burglars and high-explosive shells, was readily defeated by a woman’s tears, and so Anna stayed on, romantically and absent-mindedly caressing the ornaments with a duster, her gestures curtailed and curiously melodramatic. She was a relentless furnisher of cups of tea, made in the British Army style with condensed milk and heaps of white sugar, and she seldom spoke except to exclaim ‘Gott im Himmel’ or ‘Ach, du meine Güte’.

  Naturally she understood English perfectly, but what few words emerged were cloaked in an accent thick with years of linguistic apathy. She lived in the attic, which had been converted into an upper room, and there she played with her hair in front of a mirror and hugged her breasts to herself while singing snatches of nursery songs whose words she had muddled up over the passage of the years. The Colonel had a theory that she had been interfered with by the advancing Mongolian hordes in Berlin in 1945, and that this explained her tenuous grip on reality and the skewed angles of her psyche.

  Anna never went out, and never spent her exiguous wages. Under her bed she kept rows of jam jars full of the obsolete pre-decimal coinage of her first years with the family and in others she kept all the notes that she had ever earned, with the intention that when she died all the money they had ever paid her would revert to them. Anna, because she had been a nanny, was, of course, known to the entire family as ‘Nanna’, and she had never once expressed a wish to return to Germany, even out of curiosity.

  The cat, the final member of the household, was named Troodos because Mrs Leafy Barkwell had so much enjoyed being stationed in Cyprus, until Makarios and Grivas between them had turned their pleasant existence into a nightmare. Troodos was a genial tabby of about six years, with green eyes and an unappeasable appetite for voles. Most cats disdain them for their bitter taste, but Troodos would sit for hours in the long grass, waiting for a blade to stir. He could leap twelve feet or more, and land on the rustling object with perfect precision. He would swallow them head first, much as a snake does, bolting them down in great gulps. If he caught too many to eat he would bring them in and lay them down in rows on the carpet, much as the moleman’s cat, Sergeant Corker, did with his moles.

  It happened that one day Colonel and Mrs Barkwell were preparing a dinner party for a few friends, while Nanna polished the banister ball. She liked it to be shiny because it reminded her of the round head and glistening brown hair of the Barkwells’ youngest daughter.

  Mrs Barkwell had bought a large salmon which she was intending to poach in a steel fish kettle, and was looking over the Colonel’s shoulder as he gutted and cleaned it. ‘Whopper,’ he commented. ‘Tough one to land.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ worried Mrs Barkwell. ‘Do you think it’s all right?’

  ‘Tickety-boo,’ said the Colonel.

  ‘You know, I do think it might be a bit off. Oh Lord. What do you think, Perry?’

  The Colonel lowered a reconnoitring proboscis, and sniffed. ‘Smells of fish,’ he declared. ‘What d’you expect?’

  Mrs Barkwell was still worried. ‘You don’t think it’s a bit ripe? I mean, wouldn’t it be awful if we made everyone ill?’

  ‘Folderol,’ said the Colonel. ‘Perfectly good fish.’

  ‘Nanna,’ called Mrs Barkwell, ‘do come and smell this fish; I think it might be off.’

  Nanna came into the kitchen and poked the flank of the salmon. Then she sniffed her finger, first with one nostril, and then the other. She wiped it on her apron, and said, with a connoisseur’s air of finality, ‘Weiss nicht. Entschuldigung’.

  ‘I’ve eaten pheasant so high, maggots in it,’ declared the Colonel. ‘No harm done.’

  ‘Pheasant’s different, Perry dear, fish has to be fresh,’ said his wife.

  ‘Portugal,’ said the Colonel, ‘bacalao. Months old. India, Bombay duck, years old. Prehistoric.’

  ‘Years old, and dried and salted,’ rejoined Mrs Barkwell. ‘This is supposed to be fresh from the lochs.’

  ‘Cat,’ suggested the Colonel.

  Mrs Barkwell raised a finger and touched him on the tip of his nose. ‘Clever boy,’ she said.

  Troodos was accordingly summoned from the orchard by the vigorous rattling of his biscuit box. There had not been much action on the vole front, and he was certainly ready to try the fish. He was so fussy about his food that in the evening he would not even eat from a tin that had been opened that morning, and Perry and Leafy Barkwell placed great faith in his gastronomic experti
se.

  Nanna, the Colonel and Mrs Barkwell bent over and watched Troodos contentedly polishing off a lump that Leafy had cut out of the side that was to be downward on the serving dish. ‘Er schnurrt,’ observed Nanna, and the other two listened with satisfaction as Troodos accomplished the daily miracle of purring and eating at the same time.

  ‘Well, pussy likes it,’ said Mrs Barkwell, and the Colonel patted Troodos somewhat brusquely on the head, saying, ‘Good soldier, what? First class, first class.’

  The salmon was duly poached. All the same Mrs Barkwell could not help but wonder whether or not the fish really was all right. She had sown a doubt in her own mind that was very hard to uproot, and this doubt also began to infect the Colonel, despite his implicit trust in the cat’s considered judgement. ‘Crossed fingers, what?’ he said to his wife.

  Sir Edward and Lady Rawcutt had cried off, but the Rector, Polly Wantage and her artist friend, and Joan and the Major turned up at eight as planned. ‘Slight worry about the fish,’ the Colonel informed them as they sat down. ‘Hope it’s all right. Should be. In fact, damned sure it is. Tried it on the cat. Can’t fool the cat.’

  ‘Please leave it if you have any doubts,’ said Mrs Barkwell. ‘There’s plenty of everything else. I won’t be at all offended.’

  ‘All the more for puss, eh?’ said the Colonel.

  ‘One has to be so careful of salmonella, these days,’ said Polly Wantage’s artistic friend, oblivious to the pun. ‘And wisteria.’

  The Colonel regarded her incredulously; he had always thought her a little ill-connected in the brain department, a typical airy-fairy artist type, in fact. ‘Wisteria is a card game,’ he told her, ‘listeria’s the one.’