A Postillion Struck by Lightning

by Dirk Bogarde

  Our mother gave us a penny each for the collection when it came round during “The Lord is My Shepherd” and it was interesting to see how much was in the plate to send to the African Orphans somewhere. Never very much. Because the hikers were a poor looking lot and no one ever gave more than a sixpence or a threepenny-bit. But Mr Bentley sent it all off to Africa once a month or so, with the collection from his big church in the village.

  “This is the smallest church in England,” said my sister, “and that’s the altar where the murder was.” She was speaking in a rather whispery way, not because of the murder but because you do whisper in church … even if it is very small. Angelica had made the sign of a cross and done her bob in the aisle and then we went and sat in one of the wooden pews. There were lots of little humpty cushions covered in carpet and some rather old hymn books. Angelica picked through one but didn’t seem to take any notice of the word Murder at all. My sister got a bit irritated.

  “About the murder,” she said in the whispery voice, leaning very close to Angelica and putting her hand on the hymn book to stop her looking, “… about the murder. Well… it was ages ago and there was this Vicar, you see, and he had a very pretty wife and she was much younger than he was and didn’t like churches and that sort of thing very much. And they were always having terrible rows and things. And one day he came into the church and found her kissing a man. Here. Right where we are sitting.” She stopped for breath and stared at Angelica. Who didn’t say anything at all. Just looked back. My sister started piling the hymn books on top of each other. “The church was much bigger in those days of course … huge they say.”

  Angelica said, “Who said so?”

  “The people in the village. Mrs Fluke and Miss Maltravers and people. But the vicar took a candlestick from the altar and hit the man who was kissing his wife and killed him. And then he set fire to the church with the candles and they were burned to death. And that’s why the church is so small. Only this bit was left.”

  The pile of hymn books fell down and they scattered all over the floor so we had to grovel about looking for them and putting them back on the pew shelves. It seemed a silly way to spend a Last Day … with the sun outside and Angelica not caring anyway. She was on her hands and knees under a bench and I heard her say she didn’t believe it anyway. Not a word. And she crawled out and brushed down her skirt. My sister was red in the face and rather angry.

  “Oh! Look! How sweet!” she said. “I’ve got a holy picture, it must have come out of the books. It’s so pretty, it’s a lady with some roses and a heart with red spokes pointing out.” She slid it into a book and went off to look at the flowers on the altar which were looking a bit mouldy because we hadn’t changed them since Angelica had come to stay. I wandered out and sat on one of the stones and peeled some moss off the word “resteth” with a bit of twig and Angelica did her cross and bob and came out too and squinted into the sunlight.

  “I don’t think it’s really true, that story,” she said, sitting down beside me. “I expect it is just a legend or something, don’t you?”

  I said I didn’t know but it was true anyway, and we’d heard it lots of times and that when they got the bodies out of the church they were just ashes and they put them into a box together and took them down in a cart to the village, all mixed together like Hundreds and Thousands, and Angelica laughed a barking laugh meaning I was silly. So I shut up. But my sister came out and lay in the grass. “Now what shall we do?” she asked crossly. No one spoke. The day was very still. Not even a little breeze to make the poppies nod. Grasshoppers were clicking away and a pigeon was cooing up in one of the elms. It was the sort of morning for doing nothing on … so we just sat still. I went on picking away at “resteth” and found “in” under a lump of yellow lichen. My sister sat up, put her face to the sun.

  “Lally said the murder was just passion. The vicar was so angry, he just hit the man with the candlestick without even thinking. He was so angry. Like when He …,” nodding her closed eyes towards me, “stuck a knife in my back last Easter.”

  Angelica looked at me with her mouth open, and her eyebrows went up into her fringe.

  “You didn’t!”

  “He jolly well did. Ask him.”

  “You didn’t?”

  I went on scratching at “in” and moved on to “for”.

  “Yes he did. You tell her or I’ll show her the place.”

  “Yes I did,” I said. “I did and I’m glad. It taught her a lesson.”

  “Humph,” said my sister and opened her eyes.

  “But why did you?” said Angelica.

  “Because I was reading his silly old ‘Larks’ before he did.”

  “And it was brand new and no one had looked at it before,” I said.

  “But that wasn’t a terrible thing to do.”

  “It was to him,” said my sister. “He stuck the knife right in, just here,” and she twisted about to show the place on her back.

  “Only I can look at my ‘Larks’ for the first time. I saved it up all the way from Bakers and then when we got home I had to go and get some water and while I was gone she pinched it from the table and started to read it, and she scrunched it all up.” I was shaking with anger at the thought of it and the bit of twig snapped in two.

  My sister snorted with laughter and lay down on her back.

  “He ran away, didn’t you?” she said. “He just ran away and hid all night under the bridge down by the river while I was practically dying.”

  “You were not dying, it was a titchy little scratch. I’ve seen it,” I said.

  Angelica suddenly got up and stood looking at us with her beaky nose. “My mother said that you can’t believe a word you say in your family. You all tell terrible stories because you are too romantic. She says it’s because your mother was an actress and your father is a journalist and you just don’t know what is real and what isn’t.”

  We both looked at her very slowly. My sister sat up. And I said, “Well this part is true, and she has got a scar and you can ask Lally and I got a thrashing with a paint brush from my father, because actually he is an Artist, and the story about the murder is true because everyone knows it is … and so that’s that.”

  My sister got up and pulled her socks out of her sandals where they had got all ruckled. “It’s all true,” she said. “And if you don’t watch out, he might stick a knife into you too. He can do anything! … He once made Betty Engles climb a ladder and lit a bonfire at the bottom of it so she couldn’t get down. And that’s true too.” And she tossed her hair to get the grass out of it and went off down the path to the gate.

  Angelica and I followed her slowly. There wasn’t much to do any more. The day seemed rotten. “I wouldn’t really do anything like that,” I said. “Only you aren’t much like us, and you don’t like the country much do you … I mean honestly?”

  Angelica pushed the iron gate open and squeezed through into the lane. “It’s not the same as Hampstead,” she said. “It’s all right I suppose. But there’s nothing to do.”

  “But you don’t like doing anything!” I said. “You just like to read or sew or read.”

  “Well, I like reading and sewing. But I don’t like murders and witches and rain and all the funny things in the grass. You know …” She meant grasshoppers and burnet-moths and chalk blues and ladybirds and things. I really think she was more frightened of them than witches.

  “Well, anyway,” I said, “I wouldn’t put a knife in you for that. God’s honour.”

  She winced a little bit when I said God’s honour but smiled a thank-you smile, and we just went back to the cottage in silence. People are funny.

  The dew had long ago left the larkspur and the sun was beating down on the fields… all the grasses seemed to be silver and gold … and far away, past High and Over, you could just see a little line of blue which was the sea at Cuckmere Haven, and just as we got to the house Lally came out with a big stone jug of ginger beer and a bowl of
biscuits. “Mademoiselle from Armentiers has been telling me you’ve been up to the Church and shocked the wits out of Angelica,” she said, setting the jug in the grass by the step. “I just hope,” she said to Angelica, “that they told you he got such a thrashing from his father that he couldn’t sit down for a month of Sundays. Sticking knives in people’s backs. I ask you!” she exclaimed to the sky. “He had a very nasty evening under the old bridge, didn’t you? Very nasty indeed with half the village looking for him and his sister almost bleeding to death in the kitchen. What a day. What a family. It’s a wonder I keep sane at all with this lot around me.” And she stumped back into the house singing her John Boles song. Once, on her half-day, she and Mrs Jane, who was staying with us, went to the cinema in Seaford and saw somebody called John Boles singing a song called “The Song Of The Dawn” or something … and that’s about the only song she ever knew. But she only knew about three or four words, and like the hymn she “la laa-ed” the rest. And we listened to her Dawn Song while she banged about in the kitchen; we drank the ginger beer in the sun.

  Presently Angelica said very thoughtfully, “I am sorry if I have been a nuisance to you.”

  “You haven’t at all,” I said, hoping she’d believe it.

  “Well, I expect you’ll be glad when I get on the bus this afternoon. You’ll be glad to see the last of me. Good riddance to bad rubbish you’ll say,” and she started to cry.

  Quickly I put my arm round her shoulders but she shook me off in case I might knife her or something, and stared at me with weepy eyes. “Don’t!” she wailed. “Don’t touch me.” And she fumbled in her knickers for her handkerchief and blew her nose. We were silent for a bit.

  “It’s because I’m older than you two and I’m not much good at the country and things… but I do like you both, really I do. Even if you do set fire to people and knife people and frighten people with witches and murder. I do, honestly I do. I just don’t show it very well.” And she started to cry again. Before I could do anything, Lally came tearing out of the house, cuffed me on the head and pulled Angelica to her.

  “What’s he been up to, then?” she cried. “What have you been doing to Angelica? I can’t turn my back for a minute without something happens.”

  Angelica stopped snivelling and said it wasn’t my fault and that she was sorry and she’d go in and start her packing before the bus left for Seaford. And so Lally took her away chattering to her like anything and I rubbed my head, it was quite a hard cuff, and went off into the garden to think things over. Just as I was going past the raspberries I heard my sister burst with laughter in the house, and Lally called out something about giving me a good wallop because no doubt I needed it—and then someone rattled a window closed upstairs. And I was alone. And in peace. And ate some raspberries and thought what a rum life it was. Down at the bottom of Great Meadow there were twelve cows all standing with their heads together round the gate in the shade swishing their tails because of the flies, and up on the side of High and Over the big White Horse shone in the sunlight. It was lovely and peaceful. I was looking forward very much indeed to the bus for Seaford.

  The canary I-didn’t-really-win-at-the-fair wasn’t very well. Although I had made a proper cage for it out of a Lifebuoy soap box and a real cage front, and had put proper perches and a seed and water pot and things, it just seemed frightened all the time. It just jumped from one perch to another all day long, or fluttered up to the top and banged its head and came fluttering down again to he gasping in the sand tray. Also, its feathers were a bit moulty, and where the yellow ones came out brownish ones came back. It looked a bit piebald after a time. Lally said it was a linnet and not a canary at all.

  “A poor little linnet, that’s what it is,” she said one evening when we were all sitting round the table trimming the lamp wicks. “I reckon Reg Fluke was right; they just trap them with bird lime and dip them in yellow dye and sell ‘em to the fair people.” She was polishing a big brass lamp vigorously and there was a nice smell of metal polish and paraffin. I was very carefully cutting round the wicks with an old razor blade and my sister was washing the chimneys in a bowl of soapy water and rinsing them at the sink. It was our Lamp Evening. A Wednesday. The middle of the week.

  “I should let it go if I were you. How would you like to be cooped up in a little cage like that?” said Lally, giving the lamp an extra, final, wipe round and carrying it over to the others on the top of the copper. “Tell you what,” she said. “If you do, I’ll see if we can’t get a real canary next time we go up to Twickenham to see Mrs Jane. How would that do?” She set the lamp among the others on the copper. There were quite a lot of them altogether. The one from our bedroom, the one from hers, the three from the sitting-room and the big hanging one with honeysuckle and clover on the shade which hung over the dining-room table. While she and my sister were drying the glass chimneys, I was having a good think about the canary. It was no use to agree with Lally immediately, you had to let it simmer along a bit, otherwise if you said “all right”, or even “perhaps” she meant that you had said “Yes”, and things got a bit muddly. So I had a bit of a think and trimmed away for a while without saying anything at all.

  It was a lovely warm evening. The kitchen windows were wide open and there was a soft breeze coming over from the downs smelling of cut hay and earth, and bats flitted about in the light from the last of the sun which was slipping away behind the elms of the gully, shilling red through the branches like the fire in the range at Mrs Jane’s house in Twickenham. When I thought of the range and of Twickenham I had a rather nice quick feeling inside. Next to here, I liked there the best in the world. Her house was very small indeed. There was the scullery first, with the sink and the pump in a corner where we all had to wash in the mornings and last thing at night, then the kitchen which was titchy too, but very cosy, with the range and brass gas lamps and Mr Jane’s little bamboo table where he had his meals alone by the range itself, and the big table where we all ate from different plates and odd patterned cups and saucers. Mrs Jane said children liked variety. Then through the kitchen was the parlour. Which we only ever went into on Sundays after lunch. The parlour was a lovely room. There was a real marble mantelpiece and a little iron fire burning and three armchairs and a settee with only one curvy end, and a big sideboard where the bowls with the eggs were kept. One bowl had “Fresh Eggs” and the other just had “Yesterdays”. In the middle of the sideboard there was a huge glass case with a whole family of stuffed partridges: the mother was looking very worried with her wings partly open and all the little chicks sitting underneath, and the father was standing at the back with his neck out and his beak open giving a warning. It was very pretty with lots of dried grasses and ferns and on the bottom of the case, in gold letters, it said “Wheelers Copse 1886. G. N. Jane”, which was Mr Jane’s name and the place where he had shot them somewhere quite near Richmond. It was my favourite thing, apart from the giant pike in the kitchen which he caught near Teddington, and the two big jars on the mantel which were covered with bobbly blackberries and brown and red leaves.

  Upstairs there were three little bedrooms. One for us, one for Lally, and one for Mr and Mrs Jane. We never went in that one though. Our room had a window over the back garden and the pear trees, two beds and a po cupboard with a candlestick. And there was one picture of a big dog looking out of a kennel with rain pouring down and it was called “No Walkies Today”. We rather liked that

  Outside there was a little front garden with a rockery made from lumps of clinker from the gas works and a pretty little star-shaped bed in the middle full of London Pride; and at the back there was a huge, long garden full of pear and apple trees and a big greenhouse against the wall which had a vine which came from Hampton Court; and outside the back door a big walnut tree which is why the cottage was called “Walnut Cottage”. Or rather Cottages, because there were actually two cottages joined together. Mrs Jane lived in one half and Mr and Mrs Poulter and their daughter Gooze li
ved in the other.

  We didn’t see much of Mr and Mrs Poulter, they were quite old, and just now and then I would see him pottering about in his vegetables next door, or perhaps Mrs Poulter would peg out a bit of washing. Sometimes they’d wave at us. But usually they were very quiet. I don’t think that they ever spoke to Mrs Jane or Lally over the little fence which ran down the middle of the gardens, but Gooze did quite often. Gooze was older than Lally and wore glasses and a slide in her hair which was rather short and had a fringe in front. She wore plimsolls, black and white speckles, just the same as the ones we wore for Gym at school, and a long droopy woolly with a belt. She was very pale and smiled all the time. And she hadn’t got many teeth. But she was very nice, and once she called us over to the fence to show us an Oxo tin with a dead mouse in it. “Found it in the wash-house dead,” she said. “Now I’m going to bury ’im, Mrs Poulter can’t abide mice,” and she went away laughing a lot. We thought she was rather odd. Lally said she was “a bit thin up on top, but no harm in her”, and told us that when she had asked her mother and father where she came from they told her from under a gooseberry bush. And that’s why she was called Gooze.

  Thinking about it all I began to hum a bit and feel happy and looking forward to something. “When would we go to Twickenham?” I asked. Lally was just passing me, carrying the lamps on a tray into the sitting-room and she gave quite a jump. “Goodness, you startled me. I thought you were in one of your sulks,” she said and went on into the room. “We could go when I have my two weeks in September,” she called. “If your mother and father say yes you could come up with me then. September for the Victoria Plums.” I collected the wicks and took the chimneys from my sister, who was busy breathing on them and polishing them up with a yellow duster. I heard Lally climbing the stairs to the bedrooms with our lamps and so I called out to her, “All right. I’ll let the canary go tomorrow morning if we can go to Twickenham in September.” My sister looked very astonished. “Don’t forget to remind her about the other canary, the one she said you could have if you go there,” she hissed. “She might forget.” I went to the stairs and called up into the darkening rooms, “You won’t forget the canary, tho’, will you?”