The Northern Clemency

by Philip Hensher

  “I remember you,” Sonia said slowly. “But I can’t remember how you fit in. You live in Yorkshire, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Nick said. “I’ve got a shop in Sheffield.” He didn’t know what Sonia might know about her father’s business. “Jimmy, your dad, he helped me when I was setting up. We’ve been chums for years. He’s got a sort of stake in the shop.”

  “Look at that,” Sonia said. It was a flight of swallows, circling above their heads. “They always do that around this time of day, I don’t know why.”

  “Actually,” Nick said, “I’ve come down about the shop—I want to ask your dad if I can buy him out.”

  “Have you asked him?” Sonia said. She seemed bored. “It sounds like a big deal.”

  “No,” Nick said. “I don’t know what he’ll say. He might think it’s his shop as well, I suppose.”

  “Leave it with me,” Sonia said. “I’ll raise the subject.”

  “Really?” Nick said.

  “I don’t see why not,” Sonia said. “Come on, I’ll show you something interesting.”

  She turned and, with Nick briskly in tow, went back up the hill towards the house. A tattered path started, then a sequence of Roman vases, one every ten yards or so. They came to the house at the far end from the library, and walked through what must once have been the stableyard, the doors shabby and hanging ajar. Sonia pushed one open, and they found themselves in the servants’ quarters, flagstoned and scrubbed; there seemed to be no one about.

  “These are the back stairs,” Sonia said, trotting up. “I could show you the whole house, but this is the interesting bit. No one comes up here apart from me, as far as I know.”

  They went on up, past a big door covered with baize, and on to the second floor; a grim workhouse-like corridor of narrow doors opened up—“The servants’ bedrooms, if we had any,” Sonia said—and on upwards. Beyond, there was space for storage, cluttered up with detritus, a broken sofa with its springs out, boxes, an antique pram. “We go through here,” Sonia said, weaving through the rubbish. It was hot and stifling, smelling like the underneath of an old horse blanket. Nick trod on something; he bent and picked it up. It was a lead soldier, painted red like a Grenadier, the relic of some long grown-up, long-dead child’s nursery pleasures. He showed it to Sonia. “Oh, you’ll find everything here if you look hard enough,” she said. “They didn’t take much away when they went. It’s like the Victoria and Albert Museum.” She took the little figure from his hand, seeing that he didn’t know what to do with it—it came so close, the touch of her hand, and he almost closed his about it—and, with a casual gesture, flung it over the detritus.

  “Come on,” Sonia said, and she was halfway up a fixed ladder; there was a trapdoor at the top. “No one knows you can do this, get up on the roof. I suppose you could crawl out through one of the top-floor windows, but this is the easiest way. I’m the only one who’s discovered it.”

  She pushed with her shoulders, letting out a little grunting shriek, and the trapdoor gave way. There was an immediate breath of air in the stuffy room. She pushed herself out, hands on either side of the opening, lifting herself through the narrow square, her hips, her knees, then finally her ankles disappearing. Her foot caught on the edge as she went, and her sandal fell into the room. “Bugger,” she called, and her head appeared in a lovely frame in the ceiling, framed against the perfect blue of the afternoon sky. “You couldn’t be a sweetheart and fetch it up, could you?”

  “Of course,” Nick said, and picked it up from where it fell, between two piles of green-bound books. He looked up cautiously; her head had disappeared again. He took the golden leather of her sandal, worn just a little at the sides—but he would not have had it new, not for the world—and with an urge that could not be resisted he brought it to his face, and snuffled deeply in its complicated smell. It was disgusting, what he was doing, he knew that, and the smell was not truly hers, not Sonia’s, but just the smell of worn leather and anyone’s feet. And yet it was hers, and for a quick surreptitious moment he breathed it in and found it wonderful. What must you look like, he said to himself, and, shoe carefully in one hand, he climbed the ladder steadily, assembling his features.

  “You need shoes, you see,” Sonia said, standing on one leg like a flamingo, gesturing downwards at the verdigris’d copper roofing. “It’s agony to stand on in this heat.”

  He had seen one of the statues down below, on the ground, but wasn’t prepared for the slight comedy of them up here. With his toga’d back to them, each looked out idiotically at the landscape. The roof was ribbed like corduroy, sloping gently into runnels; and about them the countryside.

  “This is really the best of it,” Sonia said. “And the best of it is that you don’t have to look at this hideous house. So everything is beautiful.”

  “Yes, it is,” Nick said. “It is.”

  “These fucking things, though,” Sonia said, walking casually up to the edge of the battlements. Nick had a terrible flash of fear; he had to stop himself leaping forward to throw his arms round her in rescue. She pushed at one of the statues. “You see, they’re quite loose.” It rocked a little on its base. Sonia turned and smiled.

  “Don’t,” Nick said, but smiling too.

  “Why ever not?” Sonia said.

  “Well,” Nick said, “you’ve already pushed one off today.”

  Sonia laughed. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “But it’s fun. I’d rather like to. My dad thinks they’re falling off of their own accord. But it’s well worth it.”

  “Until it falls on someone’s head and kills them, of course,” Nick said.

  “That might be worth it, too,” Sonia said. “Depending on who it was.”

  All the rest of that day and evening, Nick could not concentrate on anything. In his bath before they went out, his mind went round in circles and, changed into a shirt and long trousers, he waited in the hall with Laura only for Sonia to come down, trying not to watch the staircase like a spaniel. “I hope you saw the house properly,” Laura said admonishingly—she had changed and wore now what could only be described as a little black dress, unremarkable but clearly expensive, her legs bare and brown and glistening. “Sonia always starts with enthusiasm, but then her attention tends to wander and nothing ever gets finished.”

  “Oh, Sonia and I are old friends,” Nick said calmly; it made no sense as a response, but seemed to satisfy Laura, as if he had agreed with her. And then, after Jimmy’s appearance, when Sonia came downstairs, a sight filed away for the future, that was all the evening seemed to need.

  In the pub, a very ordinary place where they did their best to find dinners out of the usual chillis and chicken pies and ploughman’s, no-one seemed to know or acknowledge Jimmy. Nick couldn’t tell whether it was through deliberate intent, a wish to put the rich interloper in his place, or because they didn’t know who he was. He joined in with Jimmy’s reminiscences, hardly paying attention to what he said, he had gone through it so many times before. Only occasionally did he remember that he was supposed to raise the subject of the shop, and fell silent.

  In the end, it was Jimmy who brought it up, the next morning. The same fat-faced maid had brought his breakfast in bed—a shambolic affair on a stained tray and someone had made a heartrending attempt to fold a napkin in an elaborate way to the side. It seemed as if, in the meantime, Sonia had mentioned Nick’s shop. When Nick came downstairs, Jimmy was pacing about in the hall. He made a gesture towards the door, a not exactly unfriendly gesture, and soon they were taking the same route out into the parkland that Nick had taken the day before.

  “I don’t blame you,” Jimmy said, when he’d allowed Nick to stumble through his proposal. “I don’t see why not.”

  “Really?” Nick said.

  “Course not,” Jimmy said. “It’s not the end of the world from my point of view. It’s not the first time someone’s decided to cut the apron strings, you know.”

  Nick wondered again about the
extent of Jimmy’s concerns; it was something he would never know, he supposed.

  “Tell you the truth,” Jimmy said, “I’d be pleased to see you making a go of things. You like it, then, the old flower business?”

  “I do,” Nick said. “I couldn’t tell you why.”

  “Your timing might be quite good,” Jimmy said.

  “What do you mean?” Nick said.

  Jimmy took out a cigar and, from the inside pocket of his linen jacket, a cutter. He made a swift incision in the end, then, replacing the cigar-cutter in his pocket, fetching out a box of matches, he lit it, puffing in a leisurely way until it caught. It seemed early to Nick, but he stood patiently.

  “I’m not that easy about the future,” Jimmy said. “One of the boys, in Birmingham as it happens, he’s got the impression that people are sniffing around, asking some strange questions. Things aren’t as easy as they were.”

  “I see,” Nick said. “I haven’t had anything like that. I’d have told you.”

  “Course you would,” Jimmy said. “I start to think I’d get out myself if there was anything to get out to. You, you’re all right. You’ve got a nice little flower shop, doing all right—it’s doing all right, isn’t it?—and no one’s ever going to ask where the money came from in the first place, or why the takings used to be so good. No reason at all.”

  “I hope so,” Nick said.

  “You know,” Jimmy said, “I’ve sometimes been round houses like this one, in the country, great big jobs, as a tourist, like. And they tell you who made what and who this painting’s by and who that woman’s supposed to be and what the ninth duke did until you’re wondering how much longer it’s going to go on. And at the end of it, I always wanted to ask the same question, but it’s a question you’re never allowed to ask—they’d stare at you if you did.”

  “What’s that, then, Jimmy?”

  “I always want to ask, ‘Where did the money come from to build this in the first place? I mean, they must have made a pile. Was it coal, or were they importing stuff, or was it land, or what was it?’ They never tell you that. Course, you know where the money comes from to run it now. It comes from you buying a ticket and a guidebook. But how did they make the money to build the place in the first instance? They never tell you that.”

  “No, they don’t,” Nick said.

  “I like to think of that,” Jimmy said. “I like to think of people on the train, down there, looking up and saying, ‘I wonder who lives there, and I wonder how he got the money to buy a place like that.’”

  “They wouldn’t like to know,” Nick said.

  Jimmy stood and puffed contemplatively. “I tell you what,” he said. “Have it.”

  “Have it?”

  “It’s yours,” Jimmy said. “The shop. Forget about it, the capital. I don’t want it back.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” Nick said.

  “You’re going to have to,” Jimmy said. “Look, if you’re getting out, you don’t want anything to connect you with me, do you? Like, you know, regular monthly payments of a thousand pounds for I don’t know how long. That’s a risk you don’t want to be taking. No, I tell you how it’s going to be. In a couple of hours, we’re going to go back inside, and we’ll have lunch together, you and me and Laura and Sonia, and we’ll have a nice time, talking about old times. And afterwards you get in your little van, and you drive home nice and safely, but that’s it. It’s best you don’t keep in touch, and I won’t get in touch with you. There’s nothing to connect you with me—I tell you, you try to sort out all those bank accounts, because I’m fucked if I can—and from now on, you’re running a nice little flower shop and that’s it.”

  “Come on, Jimmy,” Nick said. “We don’t have to go that far.”

  “Trust me on this one,” Jimmy said. “Not even Christmas cards. So, say goodbye nicely to Laura and Sonia when you go. And be thankful I’m writing off the, whatever, eighty grand was it, and not asking my Glasgow friend who opened the door to you to come out here and break your legs. Some people might.”

  Nick thought; his thoughts were all on Sonia. “Is he from Glasgow?” he said eventually.

  Jimmy turned round and stared at him. “You stupid, fucking, cunt,” he said. But something behind him caught his attention, and his arms fell; his lit cigar dropped on to the dried-out grass.

  “Careful,” Nick said. “That’ll catch—”

  “Sonia!” Jimmy was yelling. “What the fucking—”

  And, of course, on top of the house, there was Sonia, purposefully rocking another of the statues to and fro. It was incredibly dangerous, her position; she might easily go over with it. It seemed to stick, but she gave it a fierce pull, and it came back towards her; a firm grip, a big push forward, and the statue perched forward, hanging for a second at the utmost limit of its safety before something snapped and the weatherworn philosopher toppled. There was a crack like a rifle shot; Sonia raised both arms above her head like a champion. She had seen them, it was clear; she was doing it for Nick. But she couldn’t know it was his farewell present.

  Lunch was brief, and Sonia sat opposite Nick, eating silently, half smiling while Jimmy and Laura took turns at berating her. Nick said little; from time to time Sonia gave him an ironic smile, acknowledging that he hadn’t split on her and she wouldn’t give him away. By two, the three of them were standing outside, saying their goodbyes. Behind them, in the doorway, the dark Glasgow butler stood; watching him go, but not saying goodbye.

  “Come again soon,” Laura said brightly.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Jimmy said, with a raised eyebrow.

  Sonia said nothing.

  “Thanks for everything,” Nick said. It didn’t mean anything, and no one took it to mean anything. In a moment, he got into his little van, the purple one, with “Reynolds” written on the side in classy letters, and set off, waving as he went. He concentrated on the road for two or three miles. A pub car park presented itself. He pulled in, unable to help himself any more, and then, in the heat of the afternoon, his van slewed across the marked parking spaces, as Sunday pub diners came out and looked curiously at him, he sat in the driving seat and wept without restraint. He had nothing of hers; he had been with her for only twenty-four hours; she would never remember him, never know what she had driven him to.

  The windows had been replaced, the walls removed, and the floors stripped and recovered, the rooms gutted and opened up, the furniture carried off, and everything new and reflective and transparent. It had been going on most of the spring and summer. The Huddersfield and Harrogate had been unchanged in outward appearance for decades, as long as Malcolm had worked there, which was twenty-five years. Longer than a marriage. It had squatted in one of the stone terraced houses in the stone-flagged pedestrian street that ran alongside the Roman Catholic cathedral, august and dour. For decades, the Huddersfield and Harrogate had held itself back, its front as little like a shop as possible, announcing itself with bottom-of-the-range sign-writers’ lettering and the logo of an umbrella that anyone might have thought up. The ugliness might have been deliberate: they weren’t about to splash anyone’s money about on pot-plants.

  As long as Malcolm could remember, any changes in the building had been mere tinkering. Every few years, someone would remark that the upstairs offices were looking a bit dingy; some debate would discover who it was, exactly, among the senior staff was responsible for the building’s upkeep; and, to everyone’s astonishment, it would prove to be almost fifteen years since those rooms had been painted. The walls would be refreshed, the curtains and the carpet from time to time replaced, not preceded by any discussion about possible changes, just replaced much as they were. The walls stayed off-white; on the floor hard-wearing carpet tiles, and the hunting prints and eighteenth-century views of Derbyshire on the walls stayed the same as they had always been. Occasionally—often after people had discovered who it was, exactly, in charge of this sort of thing—the managers succeeded in getting rid of t
heir old chairs, and replacing them with a new, swivel-type job, getting another from lower in the same range for their secretaries. But that had always been about the extent of it. The building society’s customers appreciated the lack of splash in the branch and the offices. If the question had ever arisen, Malcolm, or anyone, would have said that the customers liked knowing where their money wasn’t going.

  It was odd how all that changed, quite suddenly. Somewhere in the previous three years, everyone who had agreed on one thing without ever bringing it up suddenly seemed to agree on another, also without bringing it up. It might have been allotted a date in a memo—say, 15 June 1982. The building society was all at once awash with money, awash with other people’s debt, and a memo might have gone round, instructing that on 15 June 1982 the staff would look at their immediate surroundings and agree that a general overhaul was long overdue. An architect was called in—it was astonishing that there was such a creature in Sheffield. But here was a real one, talking to everyone and telling them to call him Harry.

  By the end of the summer, the warren of rooms was gone. Most of it had been temporary partitions, anyway. There was nothing—Malcolm found this weirdly, ironically inappropriate—load-bearing. The offices were opened up, and the top brass, the only ones to have their own secluded space, sat in plate-glass boxes. Everything was planned to match, from top to bottom; the desks all pale ash, black leather chairs, and a range of splashy abstracts. “I like them,” Margaret said defiantly. “I think they’re up-to-date.” But actually everyone else liked them, too, and Margaret’s up-to-dateness went unnoticed. The old windows in practical white plastic, installed only twelve years before, were ripped out and replaced with hand-made sash windows, quite in the style of the original building. They were solid, though, with a steel core and reinforced glass. There were blinds instead of curtains. On the floor, throughout the building a single pale beige carpet ran. “It’ll look terrible in two years,” someone said, but the designer assured them that it was practical, stain-resistant, and it looked, you had to admit, amazingly expensive. And, for the first time, smoking in the building was forbidden. Downstairs, the girls sat behind gleaming steel windows, secure in their new Huddersfield and Harrogate smart blazers, with smart yellow-and-blue scarves round their necks and little name badges. There were ties in the same colour for the men at the counter too, though naturally they were allowed to wear suits of their own choosing, so long as they were dark blue. There was some discussion, even, about the senior management, the third-and fourth-floor people wearing the new yellow-and-blue tie, to identify them. But word got up to the fifth floor, where Mr. Regan OBE liked to wear his regimental tie, and no more was heard of that. All in all, it was a great success.