The Day the Call Came

by Thomas Hinde

  In the garden it was the other way. I was always am­azed by how much she made grow with how little effort. She would poke plants into banks and they would flower and spread. By occasionally bending and pulling she kept her beds free of weeds. I hardly ever remember her setting out to garden – in gardening coat or gardening gloves. More often she seemed to be watching, admiring, encouraging.

  That week, perhaps because I was noticing things which over the years I’d ceased to notice, I was surprised that this life made her happy. If it was because of her hope for my ultimate success, I should have felt burdened by it. I hadn’t felt burdened. And over the years the chance of my succeeding had receded, become something we had agreed to believe on a special level of its own. What else could explain her contentment? That she was a dull, easily contented person? Easily contented perhaps, but not dull. She was intelligent in an intuitive way, clever at bringing arguments to support her beliefs though not at forming beliefs from her arguments. I got no further with it.

  Once or twice that week it occurred to me that Molly might wonder what made me contented – but then, I had my work.

  And occasionally I was saddened by what was going to happen. Though I wasn’t yet certain what this would be, I already realized that afterwards nothing would be the same. I’d come to like this quiet life more than I’d intended.

  I’d liked my family. I’d liked my house with its views over half the heather-topped hills in the county. Especi­ally I’d liked it on early mornings in summer when they were still asleep.

  Sometimes I’d left my attic to go down to the orchards, particularly in budding time to keep off the bullfinches. That was a good enough reason. I’d taken my old four-ten, but I’d only once shot one. That may sound odd, but it’s true. Why? To start with they’re one of the prettiest birds I know. And then the businesslike way a pair of them work – in half a day they can strip a tree – busy but somehow quiet so that unless you look carefully you see nothing except occasional bits and pieces dropping to the ground. And then there won’t be any bullfinches soon. But I doubt if these were the real reason. I think it was the sight of that one I’d once shot. By chance a couple of pellets had carried off the lower half of its beak. There was just a bloody stump. I didn’t like that. I suppose it made me wonder how I should feel if it happened to me. If in a war or after some explosion I put up my hand and instead of a lower jaw there was a soft wet space, so that I knew no doctor or hospital could ever give it me again.

  I went down there on several perfect early mornings that week. As the days passed there was less mist and they dawned sunny from the first. I went there on pur­pose because I wanted to know about what I might lose. If there was a choice I wanted to understand it and know that I had chosen right. I don’t think there was a choice.

  On the seventh day we went to supper with the Brightworths. We knew several of our neighbours well enough to ask each other to meals every month or so and even to call unasked and be given drinks. I’d made it my business, for reasons you can guess, to know what happened around us, but it had been pleasant too. Of all our near-by friends I liked Jim Brightworth and his wife Janie best.

  Janie was French so I don’t think her real name can have been Janie. She’d probably adopted that at the same time as Jim.

  ‘Oh, come in there.’ She was short and dark and pretty for thirty-seven and denied that she spoke English with an American accent. ‘How can I? I never met any of those guys.’

  I don’t mean you could see she’d been pretty ten years ago. She was still pretty, in a full-faced girlish way. I knew she was thirty-seven from things she’d said which I’d added up, in particular from Hubert. Hubert was twenty and she’d had him before she was eighteen.

  ‘How are you then? Have a drink. Where’s that bugger Jim?’ To us Janie was always warm and friendly. She at once drew us into a conspiracy. Together we were laughing or angry or in despair about all the other tire­some people around. I’d sometimes been surprised to overhear Janie drawing other people into conspiracy with her.

  ‘Is he home yet?’

  ‘He’s home all right.’ She opened the drinks cup­board which at the same time as opening downwards in front thrust itself up at you from inside. The first time I’d seen this whole shelf rising towards me I’d stepped back quickly, thinking it was going to tip a dozen bottles on to my feet. It held at least twice that number.

  You could ask for any drink and Jim would provide it. Once when I’d said Carpano and he hadn’t had it I’d seen him a minute later writing something on an envelope; and when he’d seen that I’d seen him he’d laughed and said, ‘Not going to let that happen again.’ It was funny, but not too funny.

  ‘Well, take a look at that!’ Janie said, as if seeing what she’d revealed with fresh-eyed wonder. She left it open – I had to pour the drinks myself a moment later – and came and sat on the wall-bench. ‘Gee, I’m glad you came first.’ I think she really was.

  The wall-benches were foam rubber, tartan covered and set along two walls which met at an angle of thirty-five degrees. Between them was a triangular table, also with one angle of thirty-five degrees, with ebony black top, splayed legs of quarter-inch brass tubing and ball feet as big as polo balls which looked like iron. Janie had a way of sitting on her wall-benches, with her feet forward, her shoulders against the wall and a large gap behind the small of her back, as if making them look as uncomfortable as possible.

  The first time I went to the Brightworths’ house it was still new and she’d asked me how I liked it. I already knew that she and Jim had planned it together and Jim had taken six months off from his business to build it. Look­ing round its sitting-room, with no wall or window the same size and a sloping ceiling, I’d said I liked it a lot. I do like contemporary design.

  ‘It stinks,’ she’d said sadly. And then, pointing angrily at a single lemon yellow tile set at stomach level in a jet black wall, ‘What’s that, for Godsake? I mean what is it?’

  Presently Jim came. He was over six feet, with a big sharp nose. He had earth on his shoes and something grey like cement dust in his hair. I remembered that Jim was building a swimming pool.

  Of course labourers were doing it for him. They dug, transplanted hedges and wheeled barrows of concrete while he supervised. But I felt that when Jim was down there he was one of them, totally involved in the work. Down there, making his pool, he was like a burrowing mole.

  When he was with you he’d agree to come up and look around at the change he was making in the landscape. He’d even taken me through the trees to visit it. And he’d made modest, deprecating noises, which were perhaps half genuine because he may have had doubts. But I’d known these were needing his imagination and he could only with an effort understand what it must seem like to me. He was a believer talking to a heathen.

  Every week-end and every evening when he came back from his business he laboured at it, but I think he half realized that he didn’t want to finish it, let alone guess what it would be like. What he wanted was to be down there, burrowing. When it was finished he’d have to find a new burrow.

  ‘Hallo, all,’ Jim shouted. I could see he wanted to give me a playful blow on the shoulder, but was stopped by the clay on his hands. ‘Helping yourselves! That’s right. We like go-ahead friends. Pushing, that’s what you’ve got to be.’

  He stood watching us, grinning, using the back of one hand to rub an itch at the point of that sharp, but at the same time solid, triangular nose.

  Other people began to come; supper was to be a buffet barbecue. As I’ve said, I’d taken an interest in our neighbours, and knew enough about most of them to surprise them. You can imagine that I was particularly watchful that night.

  First there was old Percy Goyle, who collected butter­flies. He wasn’t a professional. He just liked them. I wonder why I say old, because he was only twelve years older than me, forty seven or eight, I’d forgotten which. He felt old.

  Of course he’d occasionally written
letters to lepidopteric or natural history journals, but not to attack or propose general principles. He’d written – I knew be­cause I’d traced some – to offer specific facts about butterflies and moths he’d seen in his own garden. (There had been several in a correspondence about which species chose to settle in direct sunlight.) I might have guessed this from the way he’d talked about them when he’d first shown me his collection.

  At some party soon after I’d met him I’d asked, in a spontaneously interested way, if he’d let me see it, and he’d agreed – with a slight hesitation which I’d thought was modesty. So next day I’d gone and quite soon I’d made some remark, borrowed from a recent broadcast, about the myth that butterflies lived for one day, and how it had arisen when it seemed to us obvious, not only because of their migrations, etc., etc. I think he knew the answer but he didn’t say. He’d had an idea that I might be interested in butterflies in the way he was interested in them, in watching them in his garden with wonder or delight, or something else – I still wasn’t sure. He real­ized that he was going to be disappointed. He wasn’t snubbing and soon we were talking on an easy super­ficially scientific level, but the way he’d listened and not answered had told me what he felt.

  It had even occurred to me that he might wish we still believed butter­flies only lived for one day.

  Though I’m no expert, I’d guessed that his collection was remarkable for one made entirely within ten miles, and without night lamps.

  ‘You actually caught all these?’

  He nodded.

  I imagined him, knee deep in summer grass, net raised, wondering how it had escaped. ‘And set them yourself?’

  ‘I used to.’

  He’d left me with them and stood at a window, looking out across his lawn. His house was only one away from mine, though the trees hid them from each other, and must have been built about the same time, but it had a different feeling. Mine was open and light, so that from one side I was often able to see through its various win­dows to someone who was doing something, but hadn’t noticed me, on the other. It felt frail, as if its brick walls were thin. Percy Goyle’s house felt thick and heavy with a genuine Tudor gloom inside to suit its mock Tudor outside. The windows were small and around these bright points of light you couldn’t see what was piled on the floor or hung on the walls. It’s hard to remember whether his ceilings were artificially beamed or merely felt as if they were. When he stood that day in front of his window he cut off most of the light from the cases I was looking at. When I glanced at him he was in black silhouette against the bright daylight, but because the window was small this silhouette began at his waist and ended at his neck so that I couldn’t see his legs or head.

  By the year I’m writing about, insecticides and seed dressings had killed most native English butterflies. There would be summer days in succession when I didn’t see one.

  Money was Percy Goyle’s problem, too much money. It came from Mildrew and Goyle, manufacturers of marine engines, and I didn’t doubt there was a tyrannical northern industrial father to do other damage.

  When I’d first seen Jim Brightworth with Percy Goyle I’d been surprised. I couldn’t understand how they could have anything to say to each other, let alone any mutual sympathy, and I had often felt that I should excuse and explain each to the other. Now I felt there was no need. They seemed to like each other and as they were both my friends this pleased me.

  Percy had a way of sidling into a room and standing quietly by the door, as if wanting to prolong the mo­ments before he was seen. If he was seen at once he seemed to suffer a physical shock. He was seen at once that night.

  ‘Come in there, Mr. Goyle,’ Janie called. I was sure I saw him start. ‘I don’t have to introduce you to our good friends. Eh?’

  He smiled at Janie and smiled at us and mumbled.

  After Percy came his peke, trotting with busy effici­ency, stopping and standing as if to say, ‘All right, ex­plain if you can.’ It gave several sniffs and snorts, as if to imply, ‘Make it relevant because I have a cold.’

  Percy’s peke was as assertive as Percy was quiet. Percy minded, that was the surprising thing. He was al­ways watching it anxiously, wondering what it would do next. And when it did, I’d seen him clasping and un­clasping his hands and going up and down on his toes. It was as if he’d chosen the most small-minded, hopeful, fearful, illogically passionate creature possible as an exercise in patience.

  After Percy came Mrs. Willis, who admitted to fifty-nine and had a blue rinse. She was the centre of a bridge circle. Molly knew from her two art-student lodgers that she got up at tea-time and went to bed when her bridge parties ended at three or later in the morning. And in­stead of empty milk bottles she put out empty gin bottles. She’d always been perfectly sober when I’d seen her, but as it was her mid-morning, perhaps that wasn’t surprising. I’d failed to trace a Mr. Willis.

  After Mrs. Willis came the Quorums, a retired civil servant of Irish background and his wife Queenie – I’ll tell you about them later; and some others who didn’t seem so important at the time. Presently Hubert appeared.

  Why Jim and Janie picked that name for their son I never discovered. Perhaps it was another example of Janie’s insensitiveness to the flavour of English words, though I sometimes thought she took advantage of being French and having such a good excuse for mis­using them. When she shocked people she made embarrassed apologies – but she was perfectly in control. It was the others who suffered. Hubert suffered.

  When I saw how Hubert curled up at the things his mother and father said, I recognized the feelings I had had at his age. It was odd to understand how he felt, and yet to like Jim and Janie.

  Hubert was at a provincial university. The last time I’d met him he’d told me, after a lot of sympathetic silence, that apart from the subject he was reading he was studying the human brain – old hat, of course, but by a totally original approach. He was doing it from God’s point of view. If he were God, what sort of a brain would he have given man. Summarized, it sounds bad, but I hadn’t thought it bad at the time.

  Hubert was tall and black haired and usually looked at his feet. It was a compliment when he looked at you through his black-framed glasses. These had thick lenses which reminded me of the circular faults in diamond-paned windows and made his eyes sometimes grow large and sometimes swim.

  Finally, and typically late, came the Draycotts. They’d had trouble putting their children to bed. They brought their huge golden retriever called Boodles. They had to do that, they explained, because their baby-sitter didn’t dare to be left alone in the house with him.

  I happened to be looking out of the window across the drive when they arrived. I saw Wilfred Draycott open both back doors of his red mini-car and stand at one and clap his hands and call ‘shoo’. I saw Boodles, who was on the back seat, raise his head but that was all. To make him move, Wilfred had to duck into the car and use both hands to push.

  With a lumbering movement more like a cow getting to its feet than a dog, he came out and stood in the drive, all eighty pounds of him, quite still, a plaintive look in his eyes, as if to say, ‘For God’s sake show me somewhere to lie down’.

  After that I could hear Rene Draycott – pronounced Reeny, and short for Irene – in the hall. She was ex­plaining to Jim how they couldn’t leave Boodles in the car because he was liable to go wild and tear everything apart so could they possibly shut him in a lobby. I heard Jim make some suggestion and Wilfred say, ‘Be it on your own head’. The door opened and Boodles waddled three-quarters in, stopped and turned to look back. When he did this he raised several inch-deep rolls of golden flesh on his shoulders.

  The next moments were chaotic. Like a hairy arrow, Percy Goyle’s peke came from below the sofa and every­body was shouting and apologizing and cursing as they were snapped at. Even Boodles was surprised into laying back his head and giving one long howl.

  As too many people were involved I kept clear and watched. I saw J
im with both legs astride the peke, using both huge hands to try to pin him to the floor. And Rene and Wilfred each using their outside hands to reach for Boodles’ collar while with their inside hands they tried to push each other back. And Hubert, who seemed to have got into the centre by accident, trying to step clear. And Janie standing over them shouting, ‘Why won’t one of you fetch a bucket for Godsake?’ More involved than any of these I saw Percy, also watching. I saw his expression of pain. I saw him start forward, then half turn his face away. He was feeling the fears and angers and heroics of each person. He was feeling for Boodles and his peke. How could he interfere?

  So Wilfred took Boodles home and returned an hour later, because of a confusion about keys. It was the sort of thing that happened to Wilfred.

  Wilfred worked for an advertising agency which he’d joined on the understanding that he would do market research for which he had a passion (he mentioned it with embarrassment, as if admitting to some sexual deviation), but by accident he’d been put into the display and design unit. The agency belonged to an uncle and that made it more surprising but also more typical. Wilfred had bought Boodles to be his gun dog in a local shoot which he was to be asked to join, but he hadn’t been asked.

  In a tiny, apologetic way Rene nagged him, ‘Wilf, you did promise . . .’, and occasionally he would complain back, ‘Darling, if you say so, of course, but I honestly don’t remember . . .’ They were like the two least hormoned hens in the flock who have been put in a coop together. They weren’t good at being beastly. Perhaps that was why they were liked.