by Angus Wilson
Mrs Portway raised her great eyes to him. 'I should like it very much,' she said. 'Meanwhile I shall write down all this and anything else that occurs to me. It will give you some evidence.'
Gerald doubted if such ramblings could be called evidence, but he thanked her and left her sitting with her eyes closed, her wide-brimmed linen hat slumped to one side on her thick coiled hair - an old woman asleep beneath the lilac-bushes.
It was late that night - a little after midnight - when Yves drove into the villa garage in his Lagonda, the only trophy left to him from his affaire with the industrialist's widow. She had finally kicked him out just before Christmas; and he had made little protest, for she had it in her power to send him to jail for quite a long stretch. He had forged her signature on one too many cheques. Since that time he had been forced to stay in Merano. His mother had only enough cash to keep him in current pocket money, and Mrs Portway would produce nothing. He had thought for a few days that he had found an American woman to take him to Venice, but in the end she had gone without him. He had tried to get into the racket of smuggling watches from Switzerland through the mountains, but neither his physique nor his intelligence nor his trustworthiness had commended themselves to the gang-leader. He had just enough cash from Madame Houdet to keep him in a bad temper and periodic bouts of drunkenness. He was drunk this night when he returned and he severely dented the mudguard of his car on the garage door. He entered the house in a rage.
Already the intense heat of the day had once more given place to ominous rolls of thunder. Lilian Portway lay awake in her great walnut bed listening to the thunder and watching the long procession of memories called up by her talk with Gerald. A louder clap suggested that the storm had broken overhead, but a moment later she heard Yves' voice bawling drunkenly in his mother's room. She guessed the thunder-clap to have been in fact his banging of the front door. She was so used to these scenes that she smoothly slipped back into her reverie. They usually ended quite soon, with Yves fumbling his drunken way to his bedroom. Tonight, however, the shouting seemed to go on for longer - first Yves' manly oaths and abuse, then Stephanie's tearful but shrill protests. Lilian had acquired a hatred of the French language from hearing it so often abused.
Madame Houdet, it was clear, had got out of bed, for Lilian could hear the patter of bare feet. Then suddenly there was a sound of a blow and then another, and a third as something or someone fell to the floor.
Lilian got out of bed with difficulty; her legs so quickly became stiff now after a few hours' rest and she was liable to giddy fits on rising. She sat for a moment dangling her long legs over the side of the bed; then, putting on her mauve muslin dressing-gown and her lilac quilted slippers, she made her way across the corridor to Stéphanie's room. Already, in the passage, she could hear Yves shouting, as he loved to do, that the Nazis were bunglers, that they had botched thèir work - what were their famous ovens for but to get rid of such unwanted rubbish as his mother? Lilian was too used to this to be horrified any longer, but she was still repelled by the thought that the son who shouted such things really loved his mother, and in other, more maudlin moods, would fondle and caress her. The door stood open, and huddled on the floor lay Stéphanie, in her nightgown, moaning.
'Go to your bedroom, Yves,' Lilian cried, and she ran to raise his mother from the ground.
A combination of self-interest and fear usually made Yves obedient to Mrs Portway's orders. The situation unfortunately had gone on too long; famiharity breeds contempt. He was, too, very drunk. He raised his fist and had she not stumbled out of his reach he would have hit her in the face.
'Shut up, you old cow,' he shouted; 'they ought to have finished you off too. The Fascists had no more sense than the Nazis.' Suddenly he began to roar with laughter as a joke worked up inside him. 'Say, you old dames must miss your camp exercise,' he laughed. 'You don't want to get out of training.' He leaned down and pulled his mother by the arm. She tottered to her feet. 'Come on, both of you. Get moving. Left, right, left, right,' he shouted. Then he began to bawl oaths and abuse at them in German and Itahan. The two old women shuffled behind one another to the door, Stéphanie pushing at Lilian to avoid her son's blows. As they passed through the door, Yves collapsed on the bed in howls of laughter.
Madame Houdet slumped on to the floor in the passage and began to pray; but Mrs Portway ran past the door of her own room and down the stairs. She had only the thought that she must run, she could not let them keep her in that place again. She must get away before they shut her up once more behind barbed wire. Through the garden she ran with tottering steps and out into the road. Her hair uncoiled and streamed around her shoulders, a slipper fell from her foot, but she still kept on. It was a moonless night, but even had it been twice as light, she would not have known where she was going. She reached a little path that ran down the hillside - a walk made in the eighteen-eighties with rustic wooden railings and planted evergreens, a road to take tourists to view the 'panorama' - on she kept and then stumbled and fell, rolling a few feet on to a grassy bank below. She lay there, cut and bruised. For a while she was stunned, and when she came to her senses her mind was clouded and she could feel no life in her right arm and leg. The thunder and lightning died away in heavy rain and her mind too faded away in vague confusion. She was not found until six that morning, when some workmen were making their way into the town. They knew the strange Englische Witwe by sight and carried her back to the villa.
Gerald had been kept awake by the storm and he almost thought in his tiredness the next morning that he would present his excuses to Mrs Portway and leave Merano. There was nothing to be gained by stirring up the old woman's memories. He would tell Elvira, when he got back to England, that he did not think she should be left with the Houdets; but he did not believe that Elvira was likely to take any action. The whole visit had not only been fruitless, but depressing. However, by half past ten he felt more refreshed and reflected that it would be selfish not to pay the promised call. At sixty, he had a superstitious dislike of disappointing the hopes of old people of seventy.
Madame Houdet opened the door to him. She looked old and exhausted, but her make-up was complete as usual. 'Mrs Portway is very ill,' she said. 'She can see no one. She met with an accident. She has a stroke and pneumonia. No one can help her now but the bon Dieu.'
Gerald attempted to get some details of Lilian's accident from her, but her answers were confused and vague. 'Il faut prier le bon Dieu de lui pardonner,' she said.
As he turned to leave, a priest came up the path and Madame Houdet's full attention was given to welcoming him as Gerald walked slowly away. When he reached the gate, Yves came running after him. 'My God,' he cried, 'this is certainly a big responsibility for me. The only man in the house.' Gerald offered to stay, but Yves would have none of it. 'I guess I must go through with it alone. But thanks a lot.' He did, however, borrow six thousand lire to deal with urgent expenses until he could get down to the bank.
Gerald returned to England immediately, flying from Innsbruck. He was being packed into his car by Larwood at London airport when he saw a woman getting on to the bus for the passengers from Paris. Her walk and the trim neatness of her figure were familiar to him. As the bus moved off, she turned to look out of the window. It was Dollie. She looked, of course, much older, but more than that, her face was white and puffy and her hair was slipping untidily from beneath her hat. She looked, as he expected, a confirmed drunkard. He waved, but she did not recognize him.
John's face contorted in the series of grimaces that he knew by experience appealed to his viewers. He leaned forward in his chair and smiled with peculiar intimacy. 'I've had a great number of letters from you asking me to discuss the results of my investigation of the Ministry's treatment of Mr Harold Cressett. It is certainly very pleasing to see the extraordinary and very sympathetic interest that this affair has aroused. It does after all mean that the defenders of our liberties are on their toes. I wish I could talk to you abo
ut it this evening, but, as you may have read in your daily newspaper, the Minister has now ordered a full inquiry into the conduct of the Government servants concerned. I'm sure you will understand that in these circumstances it would be most improper for us to discuss it.'
Professor Clun turned to his wife. 'Very remarkable chap, you know. Unusual to find a sense of responsibihty with such a gift of the gab,' he said. John Middleton had become the outlet for all the rather naïve enthusiasm in him which the years had buried so deep. He would praise remarks from John's lips or pen that he would have snapped at from anyone else. He settled himself in his chair and smiled at his wife. Mrs Clun felt an unusual sense of well-being. She loved John Middleton's half-hour; it was the only time when her husband smiled upon her passion for television.
John, too, was smiling now - the smile of an indulgent parent who has a pleasant surprise up his sleeve. 'All the same, I don't want to disappoint you just because of a point of legal etiquette.' He grinned at the viewers as though to say that if the trip to Whipsnade was off, they might at least hope for Regent's Park. 'You're interested in Harold Cressett. You have a perfect right to know more about him. Neither Mr Cressett nor his wife sought this publicity. I'm sure they'll be only too glad when the fuss is over and they can get back'to the comfortable days when they could open their daily paper without the embarrassment of seeing their name in print. But, as I've told them, once a man's in the news, well, he's in it. You've found in Harold Cressett a symbol of your daily fight against petty tyranny. However little he may relish the publicity, Mr Cressett is proud of being at the centre of that fight. I think you'll see all that for yourselves when I ask Mr Cressett a few questions this evening. For that's what I'm going to do. The first people in this evening's interviews will be Mr and Mrs Harold Cressett. We shan't, as I've told you, discuss their little trouble with the Ministry, for which I may say they expressed heartfelt thanks; but we shall have a few words about their daily life and especially about what it feels like to be in the news.'
John glanced quickly towards the studio door through which the Cressetts were to appear. After meeting them, he had felt the gravest apprehension about bringing them before the public; he had even felt, beneath all the thick layers of his skin, a certain doubt about the value of the whole Pelican affair. However, there was an increasing stream of letters demanding more of the Cressetts, and John never believed in denying the public what they wanted.
Mr Cressett came in wearing a very tight navy blue suit and a stiff collar; he was greatly embarrassed by the powder that had been put on his face. Mrs Cressett, in ample puce lace, had refused all but the minimum of make-up. She appeared very large, he very small....
'Oh, my God,' said Maureen. 'Poor Dad!'
'Your stepmother looks very imposing,' said her hostess.
Maureen did not answer, but Derek said, 'She's every sort of a cow.' Their hostess looked a little shocked.
'I could kill Johnnie,' Maureen whispered to Derek, 'for getting Dad into this.'
'I'd like to know what that old cow's leading poor old Johnnie into,' he whispered back.
Their hostess frowned and put her finger to her lips for silence. It was all very well the Kershaws having all their friends and relations on T.V., but to pretend that they didn't like it was a simple show- off. ...
'I believe you come from East Anglia, Mrs Cressett?' John was asking now. He gave an encouraging smile, as though she might fear that if she answered the question a lion would swallow her up. But Alice Cressett had no fears. 'That's right,' she said. 'I was born at Lowestoft. We lived twenty-two years at Melpham. That was with Canon and Mrs Portway. She was his sister-in-law, you know, a well-known actress. Then we were at Norwich and then we came to London. I married Harold Cressett late.' It was not very interesting to the viewers and she did not try to make it so. They had asked her to tell them the facts and she did so. However, they had also told her to look cheerful, so she attempted a smile upon her comfortable features.
Many viewers remarked on what a simple, ordinary, pleasant-faced woman she was. Gerald's host at a West End club, peering into a darkened room, whispered, 'That's the television room.'
Gerald, seeing John was on the screen, was about to move on as quickly as possible when Mrs Cressett's name was spoken. He looked at her with great interest. It may have been an unconscious memory of her harsh treatment of his sprained ankle that made him uneasy, but he thought, 'She doesn't look the good, simple soul that Mrs Portway described. I trust I shan't have to interview her about Melpham.'
'Good old soul,' said his host with a laugh, and they went on to the coffee-room....
'Father was a coachman,' Mrs Cressett was saying.
'Well, that certainly takes us back a bit,' John remarked, 'but I believe it was once his lot to take part in an important archaeological excavation. Not the usual duty of a coachman, I must say.'
'Yes,' said Alice, 'Father helped with the digging. They discovered the grave of an old bishop in the grounds of Melpham Hall where we worked.' She had wanted to say 'the tomb of Bishop Eorpwald', but for some reason Mr Middleton seemed to think she ought not to know its proper name.
'Ah, yes,' John smiled, 'the tomb of Eorpwald, Bishop of Sedwich, I believe. He died in 695. Quite a long time ago. I suppose the discovery caused a good deal of talk locally,' he said breezily.
'Oh, yes,' said Mrs Cressett, 'and in London. Scholars came from everywhere. But we didn't make much of it.' She brought out this last sentence with evident reluctance. Once again she had been told to say it, though why it should be supposed that the villagers of Melpham would not have been interested in a local event that got into tbe London newspapers she couldn't imagine. ...
'Trust her to do all the talking,' Derek whispered.
'Anything is better than poor Dad making a fool of himself,' Maureen replied. She spoke too soon. ...
John turned to Mr Cressett. 'I suppose you were very interested when you found that your wife had been associated with an archaeological excavation, whatever she may have thought about it. I believe you're a very keen reader of history and indeed a great reader generally.'
'Yes,' said the little man in a sad, slow voice. 'When I am not gardening I always have my nose in a book' - Mrs Cressett's eyes narrowed with hatred - 'Archaeology in particular,' he went on, 'interests me greatly.' He paused, and John, knowledgeable in such things, feared that he was about to dry up. Indeed, Mr Cressett was overcome with terror and could not remember a word of the script they had rehearsed. Suddenly, however, the article on archaeology in one of his favourite encyclopaedias came back to him and, just as John was about to intervene, he began to recite it.
'Archaeology,' he said, 'is yearly proving itself to be one of the most valuable handmaids of human knowledge. Year after year treasures come to light revealing the past in all its day-to-day detail - treasures unearthed from the very ground on which we take our evening stroll or from which we get our annual harvest. Mesopotamia, the birthplace of civilization, has revealed its mighty temples, its rich carvings, and its strange writing cut in stone known to scholars as cuneiform…'
John shifted uneasily and began to mumble, but Mr Cressett went on: 'Perhaps no single discovery has so excited the imagination of the man in the street as the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen, the Pharaoh of Egypt. ...'
Maureen seized Derek's arm. 'Oh, my God!' she said, 'I can't bear it. I'm sorry,' she turned to their hostess; 'I knew something awful would happen. I can't face it, Derek. We must go.'
Their hostess looked quite annoyed. 'I think your father's marvellous. Fancy being able to reel all that off!' She turned to rebuke Maureen for her unfilial attitude, but her visitors had fled. Into the darkness of the room Mr Cressett's sad, weak face peered from the little screen.
'It was archaeology, too,' he went on, 'that revealed to us that one of the earliest ancestors of man once trod our own familiar island. Piltdown Man ...'
It is doubtful if John's two dearest ones
- Inge and Larrie - would have realized any more than the mass of viewers how near the programme had come to disaster, so instant and powerful were the geniality and charm with which he burst in at the first hesitation in Mr Cressett's recital. In any case, as it happened, they were spared the spectacle of Johnnie's discomfiture and of the wretched market-gardener's sudden attack of automatic memory.
They had fully intended to view the programme together in the drawing-room. Indeed, they had promised John that they would do so as a pledge of their agreement not to quarrel any more. As time had gone by, their quarrels had grown more and more frequent, until their ominous echoes had penetrated even John's egoistic world. It had needed all his charm on his last visit to heal the breach. His visits had come recently at increasingly greater intervals. It was one of the causes of their quarrels. Inge saw less and less charm in a Larrie who did not keep Johnnie at home; Larrie found his new home more and more irksome, unrelieved by Johnnie's presence, while with Johnnie's supplies of cash coming at longer intervals, he was increasingly imprisoned within the four walls of Inge's capricious hospitality. John had been forced to promise that he would make a long stay there in order to reconcile them. The Cressett television programme which they should watch together should be his last engagement for a fortnight. To impress them further he sat down and cancelled his other appointments on the spot. When he was alone with Larrie, he promised the additional reward of a motor tour in Europe in the coming month.
After dinner Inge produced a bottle of Irish whiskey as an earnest of her sincerity in the reconciliation. It was a noble gesture, for a large part of their quarrels had arisen from Larrie's getting drunk. Inge, perhaps, marred the effect a little by underlining her broadminded-ness. 'You see,' she said, 'old Mrs Middleton is not always a spoilsport.'
Larrie put his arm round her waist and dug his fingers into her stiff corseting. 'Sure, and you're a darling, sporty old woman,' he cried. They would have gladly welcomed a return to their former sentimental pictures of one another, for they both loved life to be sweet and happy.
