Notwithstanding: Stories From an English Village

by Louis de Bernières

  It became impossible for Bessie to dissemble her pregnancy any longer. Her mother noticed first. She had in fact suspected for some considerable time, because she had not seen Bessie washing her clouts. Fury was followed by hand-wringing, followed by accusations of bringing disgrace upon the family, followed by the decision that Father would have to be told. Then the same sequence of rage and recrimination had to be endured all over again. Lastly came the sensible consideration of practicalities.

  Bessie endured these terrible scenes with tearful resignation, at first refusing to name the father, but assuring her family over and over again that the culprit had promised to marry her before the child was due. ‘He said that if he didn’t then the Devil may have his soul. He swore it on the Holy Book,’ she told them.

  ‘Now that’s a fearful oath,’ said her father, ‘a fearful oath indeed.’

  Another month went by, and Bessie lost her situation at the manor. At a stroke it became almost impossible to meet up with her beloved, and it even seemed to him that perhaps this was for the best. ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ she thought bitterly, when she had not seen him for a full week.

  Finally, so desperate that she could hardly think, she confided who the father was, and her mother and father immediately felt better about the entire situation. How very advantageous it might be if only Bessie were to marry the son of a manor house. ‘I’ve got a plan, Da,’ said Bessie, and when she had explained it, her father leaned back in his chair, his eyes twinkling. ‘Well, Bessie my dear, I think that might be well worth a try. I’d enjoy doing that.’

  There ensued many days of energetic and creative activity on the part of the entire household. Her brother John was dispatched to the slaughterhouse to fetch back the head of a cow. It was boiled to remove the flesh, which was soon eaten at dinner, and then he set about sawing off the crown. He bound the tips of the horns thickly with sackcloth, and soaked them in pitch. Setting off early one morning, mother and sister went all the way to Godalming on a cart to find bolts of red cloth. Mr Maunderfield rode down to Malthouse Lane on his cob to select a good site, and was fortunate to find an oak stump at the side of the road that was four feet high. At the back of it he cut toeholds with an axe. Bessie herself shredded paper and cloth into a pail, and mixed it all up with glue. She made a former out of clay, allowed it to dry, smeared it with butter, and then carefully coated it to the depth of her little fingernail with the mess from the pail. When it was dry she painted it red and lifted it off the mould. Mr Maunderfield stood in the kitchen and practised his speech, in the deepest voice he could muster. He sang bass in the church choir, and therefore began with a considerable advantage.

  On the designated night, Piers de Mandeville, half asleep, his tongue stinging and bitter from cheap tobacco, stupid with alcohol, and as much drunk with despair as spirits, hacked slowly home on his mare. There was a half-moon, but it was dark beneath the overhanging trees, and the night was cold but quite still. Wisps of black cloud passed slowly across the face of the moon, casting gossamer shadows. Foxes coughed in the woods, and owls screeched or hooted according to their kind. When Piers de Mandeville passed the crossroad at Lane End, where once they used to bury the suicides, Bessie’s brother John, hidden behind the hedge, put his hands together and blew into the cavity they formed. Three long identical hoots were the signal. Quietly he slipped through the hedge, and followed Piers de Mandeville at a small distance. At the spot where in the distant future would stand the half-tiled house inhabited by the naked general and his rhododendrons, Mr Maunderfield opened his tinderbox and repeatedly struck the flint. Once the tinder was smouldering, he handed the box to his wife, and carefully mounted the stump, feeling for the axe notches with his feet. He then released the cord binding up his robes and let the drapes of cloth fall down around the stump. When Piers de Mandeville was barely twenty yards from him he bent down and whispered, ‘Now!’

  With a lit spill caught in the cleft of a long stick, Bessie’s mother ignited the pitch-soaked rags, and Mr Maunderfield stood erect and roared.

  So startled was de Mandeville’s horse, that she leapt sideways and then reared. De Mandeville, too drunk even to have managed to get his feet into the stirrups, slipped backwards off her hindquarters and landed in the muddy road on his rump. The mare bolted ahead, whinnying, and de Mandeville scrambled to his feet.

  He beheld a most terrible apparition. Ten feet tall, robed in red, stood a vast creature. It had a huge and hideous red face, with large blank eyes, and above its head rose curved horns that flared at the tips, the flames casting violent shadows as the figure waved its arms and nodded its head.

  ‘Piers de Mandeville, of Notwithstanding Manor in the county of Surrey, Esquire,’ announced the creature, which had a strong local accent that Piers was too drunk to find peculiar.

  He gazed at it, wordless with horror, clutching his hat in his hand.

  ‘How pleased we are, how very pleased we all are, that you have generously yielded up your soul. How very pleased we are that within such a short time we shall be relishing your company in Outer Darkness, where there is weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth.’

  De Mandeville fell to his knees. ‘I beg you,’ he began, but was unable to continue. He started to whimper with terror, but could not take his eyes off the figure of the Devil.

  ‘You shall be ours on the night the child is born, you shall be ours, you shall be ours on that fatal night. Is that not so, my brothers and sisters?’

  From behind, in the trees, came laughter and shrieking, and whooping, and the dinning of wooden spoons on copper pans.

  The Devil held up his arms for silence, and asked in his booming voice, ‘What do you plead to that, Piers de Mandeville?’

  ‘Spare me,’ said the young man, simply, ‘spare me.’

  ‘That was the bargain. Do you deny it?’

  ‘Only if I do not marry,’ said de Mandeville weakly.

  The Devil hissed, ‘No, no, you must not marry. No, no, marry not.’

  From the trees behind came howls of rage and disappointment. First one flame on the horn extinguished itself, and then the other. To be alone in the dark with a Satan that he could not see was too much for Piers de Mandeville. He crawled a short way, then struggled to his feet and ran, bent double as if to avoid blows, scarcely able to run in a straight line, scarcely able to run at all. Laughter followed him up Malthouse Hill, and a deer ran out across the road in front of him, adding startlement to his fear.

  Three days later in the evening Piers de Mandeville arrived on horseback before the Maunder-fields’ cottage. He dismounted and began to tie his horse to the ring set in the wall. Bessie, by now heavily pregnant, saw him from the window and came out.

  ‘Oh sir, you do look terrible awful,’ she said. He did indeed look very bad. He was pale and wild-eyed, and seemed to have become wasted and thin almost overnight. He did, however, have a mature air of purpose about him.

  ‘Bessie,’ he said, ‘I have come to tell you that we shall do what we should have done a very long time ago. I have been a most shameful coward. We shall be married in St Mary’s as soon as the banns are read. My father is resigned to it, and my mother is saying nothing further against it. They ask only that I marry in your parish rather than theirs, and that they should not be expected at the wedding. We are fortunate indeed that I am not the first son. If I had been my brother, God knows what would have happened.’

  ‘Come in and meet my father, sir,’ said Bessie mischievously. ‘I believe you first have to ask him if he is willing to give me up. I fear you might have to overcome his reluctance.’

  ‘Ah, Bessie, there is plenty of time for that. All I want for now is to take a walk with you on my arm, and confer about what we shall do. I imagine you are sufficiently well to walk?’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s only fine ladies who take to their beds when a tiddler’s on the way. The rest of us just carry on as needs must.’

  They walked slowly through the Hurst, with her ar
m through his for support. Piers raised his hat to those they passed, ignoring their astonished expressions. As they drew near the pond, Bessie said, ‘Shall we go into the woods? We can find our special place.’

  Piers de Mandeville laid his cape on the ground and they sat side by side by the stream, just as they had so many months before. For a little while they were silent, and then Bessie asked slyly, ‘What was it that made up your mind, sir?’

  ‘Well, Bessie, have you heard the story of Saul on the road to Damascus?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I have heard it.’

  ‘It was something very like to that.’

  ‘Indeed, sir? And is Emily Sutton very downcast?’

  ‘I presume to hope that she might be, but not for too long, I trust.’

  ‘And what about your other promise, sir? The other promise you made in this same place?’

  Piers de Mandeville laughed quietly, and looked at her askance. ‘I believe, madam, that you wanted me to call you madam, did you not, madam?’

  ‘I did indeed, sir, but don’t go overdoing it, sir.’

  THE AUSPICIOUS MEETING OF THE THIRD MEMBER OF THE FAMOUS NOTWITHSTANDING WIND QUARTET WITH THE FIRST TWO

  THERE WERE TWO Morris Minor saloons, both grey, parked in the small driveway of Jenny Farhoumand’s house as well as a large Hillman Hunter. The latter belonged to Jenny’s husband, who was an auctioneer with Messenger May Baverstock in Godalming, and the Morris Minors belonged to Jenny herself and to the music teacher at the public school. He had come round on a Saturday afternoon in spring, to rehearse a few duets by Devienne for a little concert in the church, in order to raise money for a new set of steps up from the church to the road. Neither of them were believers, but the churchgoers were always prepared to consider outsiders to be honorary members of the congregation when it came to fund-raising. There was not much of a repertoire for clarinet and oboe, and so they were playing flute duets. Brian, the clarinettist, was manfully transposing on sight, and Jenny was playing her flute parts on the oboe. Sometimes it sounded quite good and sometimes very strange.

  ‘It’s lucky that Devienne is dead,’ said Brian. ‘I can’t imagine what he’d think of us doing this.’

  ‘I think it’s wonderful, how you transpose like that,’ said Jenny. ‘I don’t know how you do it. You must have to split your brain in half.’

  ‘It does your head in after a while,’ he admitted, ‘but you get used to it, and the exercise is probably very good for you. I’m hoping it’ll make me more intelligent.’

  ‘Why don’t you use a C clarinet? Wouldn’t that be the really intelligent option?’

  ‘I haven’t got one. They don’t sound quite as nice as a B flat.’

  ‘Why don’t you get one, though?’

  ‘Maybe I should start saving up my pocket money. That’s not a bad idea, actually.’

  ‘Then you can save up for a basset horn. I’m sure they pay you masses at that posh school.’

  ‘Yes, and pigs fly. I’d love a basset horn, though.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Jenny, ‘can you see the kids anywhere?’

  ‘They’re all in a heap, fighting on the lawn,’ said Brian, looking through the window. ‘Suzie has just bitten Annie, and Andrew is crying, and the dog is digging in the flower bed, and your husband is doing something to the lawnmower. By the way that his lips are moving, I would guess that he’s swearing. I can’t see the cat, but I think the rabbit’s got out. There’s a black one in the vegetable patch.’

  ‘All’s right with the world, then,’ said Jenny. ‘Shall we try something else?’

  They were halfway through a fairly vigorous allegro when Suzie, aged six, blonde, tousled and filthy, came running in. ‘Mummy, Mummy, there’s a strange man outside, and he was listening under the window. I saw him, I saw him!’

  ‘Have you told Daddy?’

  ‘Yes, I did tell Daddy, and Daddy’s got him and he’s going to kill him.’

  ‘Oh dear, really?’

  ‘He’s got a big spanner, Mummy.’

  ‘I suppose we’d better go out,’ said Brian, putting his clarinet carefully on to its stand, and replacing the cap.

  Outside they found a small, bespectacled middle-aged man in a brown jacket and waistcoat cowering between a wall and a rhododendron, while Jenny’s husband, already enraged by the intransigence of the mower, loomed over him with a large wrench and demanded explanations.

  ‘Peter, darling, please, be careful with that thing,’ said Jenny. ‘You might do some damage, and then they’ll take you away in a Black Maria, and tomorrow you’ll miss Sunday lunch, and we’ll have to give your share to the dog.’

  Peter lowered the spanner, and said, ‘All right, but who the hell are you, and what are you doing underneath my window? And don’t you know any better than to walk on other people’s flower beds? It compacts the soil. Don’t you know that?’

  ‘No. I’m not a gardener, I’m afraid. I really am most terribly sorry. It was the music.’

  ‘The music?’ repeated Jenny.

  ‘Yes, the music. I just love that kind of music. I love Devienne. It’s a bit light, I suppose, but I don’t mind. I’ve never heard it done like that before, on oboe and clarinet. I couldn’t resist listening. I really am so sorry … for the damage to the flower bed … and for intruding.’

  ‘You knew it was Devienne?’ said Brian, much impressed. ‘Are you a musician yourself?’

  The little man nodded, and said, ‘Bassoon.’

  ‘Bassoon!’ exclaimed Jenny and Brian together, both struck by the same thought.

  ‘Prove it,’ said Peter, who was still enraged by his mower, and desired a little more confrontation and aggression.

  ‘Prove it? Why, do you have one?’

  ‘Tell us the K number of Mozart’s bassoon concerto in B-flat major,’ said Jenny, mischievously.

  ‘And the opus number of Weber’s bassoon concerto,’ added Brian.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ exclaimed Peter, ‘bloody musicians!’

  ‘It’s 191 and 75, respectively,’ said the man. ‘I’ve played both of them in my time.’

  Jenny and Brian were astounded. ‘You’ve played them both? Entire concertos?’

  ‘I used to be a pro, but then I got married. You can’t support children and a wife, especially not my wife anyway, if you’re just a bassoonist. Now I play with whoever wants me. I keep my hand in. One of these days I’ll be back on the road, God willing. Well, wife willing.’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ asked Jenny.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Peter, waving his spanner, ‘I can just see what’s coming. God save us all.’ He strode away to renew battle with his mower. The children, who all this time had been standing dumbly by with their thumbs in their mouths, returned to their scrum on the lawn.

  ‘So what were you doing round here?’ asked Brian.

  ‘I’m a de Mandeville,’ said the man, as if that amounted to an explanation. ‘Or man-devil, as my wife likes to say.’

  ‘I don’t see …’ began Jenny.

  ‘I’m Piers de Mandeville. Piers is a family name. There’ve been lots of us. You’ve probably noticed the big tomb just outside the door of the church. It’s the one where they hide the key. That’s the Piers de Mandeville I’m descended from. We used to be the lords of the manor, you know, in that house where the musicologist lives. Unfortunately we went down in the world. It was the South Sea Bubble, apparently. The family lost a fortune.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ asked Brian. ‘I don’t even know the names of my great-grandparents.’

  ‘I’m a genealogist. When I’m not a bassoonist, I spend my time finding the ancestors of Americans, mainly. It pays surprisingly well. They’re all convinced that they’re related to the royal family. Or Irish chieftains.’

  ‘It’s like people who believe in reincarnation,’ said Jenny. ‘They all think they were Cleopatra.’

  ‘Do they?’ said Brian. ‘They say I’ve got an ancestor who was hanged f
or being a highwayman.’

  ‘Well, anyway, I like to come here and see where Piers and Bessie are. It’s a sad story.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Jenny, ‘depress us. Do come in and have a cup of tea.’

  Once in the drawing room de Mandeville continued. ‘Well, Bessie was from the poor side of the family, who lived in Chiddingfold. The Maunderfields. They were farmers. Apparently she and Piers fell in love, and they got married rather late in the day, after a lot of opposition from his family. Three months after they married, poor Bessie died. It says “dyed in childbed” on the tomb.’

  ‘Oh, I saw that,’ said Jenny. ‘It always makes me feel sad. And there are three little children in there by a second wife. They are all called John and they died one after the other in the space of three years. It’s awful.’

  ‘After Bessie, he married one of the Rector’s daughters. Emily Sutton. They had eight children, so losing three wasn’t so bad, I suppose, by the standards of the time. I’m descended from Bessie, the first wife. The little baby survived and they sent it to Chiddingfold for the grandmother to look after, and then when Piers remarried the boy was sent back to the manor. They called him Perditus.’

  ‘Perditus?’ said Brian.

  ‘Little Lost One. Since then, some of us have had it as a second name.’

  Jenny suddenly felt tearful. She was a sentimental person, and her feelings came easily to the surface. She dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve.

  ‘He did well, though. When he grew up he started quarrying Bargate stone. All the old buildings around here are made of it. You know the old lime kiln next to the church? I think they probably used it for making mortar, as well as lime for the fields. Anyway, that’s the story. I was visiting Piers and Bessie and Emily and the three little boys, and when I came back down the hill, I heard you two playing. By the way, there were two old ladies in the graveyard, and one of them introduced me to someone who wasn’t there.’