A Hole in the Ground

by Andrew Garve

  Those things had all been dealt with, but now the man, whose name was Granger, had thought up a new approach. “I am told,” he said in his rather sneering voice, “that the milk yield is falling off in the dale farms. Can the Member say definitely that this is not due to some radio-active cause?”

  Quilter ridiculed the notion. Everybody except a few cranks, he said, knew that no ill-effects came from the plant at all. The place was as safe as Blackpool.

  “Pity it’s not as cheerful,” said Granger, earning his laugh.

  Darkness was falling now, but the crowd still stayed. Julie knew how worn out Laurence would be, and longed for the end. She was sick of argument, sick of the sound of disputing voices. When one of the Communists raised the subject of re-armament and it looked as though an entirely fresh debate was going to start she felt like going in and dragging Laurence away. But even he seemed to be flagging now, and presently he stood down and allowed Joe to close the meeting.

  Quilter’s task was still not quite finished, for a few people were anxious to tackle him about personal problems. One had a pensions query, another a son in Malaya of whom he’d had no news for some time. The leader of a Boys’ Club wondered if the Member could possibly address them in the autumn. Quilter listened and advised and said he’d try, while Julie scribbled down details in her diary by the light of someone’s bicycle lamp.

  At last they were free to go. Johnson, who had made twenty-four new members and was very cheerful, was as usual given a lift home to his semi-detached villa near the sea front.

  “Well, good-bye, Adam,” said Quilter as the agent struggled with his cratch. “A most successful campaign—congratulations!” He slipped the car into gear and then leaned out of the window again. “By the way—no more politics for a couple of months. I’m definitely in purdah till October.”

  Johnson laughed. “All right, Laurence, you’ve earned your holiday. Enjoy yourself. Good-bye, Mrs. Quilter.”

  Julie waved, and leaned thankfully back against the seat as the car moved off.

  Chapter Two

  The cottage where they lived was on rising ground about two miles from the sea and was approached by a narrow lane with many bends. Quilter drove slowly, his eyes straining to pick out the grass verge.

  “God, I’m tired,” he muttered.

  “Would you like me to drive?” Julie asked hesitantly.

  He gave a short laugh. “I wouldn’t find that much of a rest.”

  Julie said nothing. After a while Quilter became impatient at her silence. “Well, how did it go?”

  “Splendid, darling. You were marvellous.”

  His mouth, that had been curving downwards, relaxed. “It would be a pretty bad show if I couldn’t handle an audience after all this time. Still, I was in good form tonight. I can tell at once, you know, how it’s going to be—whether I’m going to hold them or not. To-night I could have done anything with them.” For a time he drove with a contented look on his face, savouring again his little verbal victories. Then he gave an exaggerated sigh. “I wish to God it was going to lead somewhere, though.”

  “It will probably lead back to the House when the election comes, and that’s the main thing, surely.”

  “You think so? It’s not going to be much fun being a back-bencher all my life.”

  “Oh, darling, don’t be absurd—you’re only thirty-nine.”

  Quilter swung the wheel sharply as a small animal shot across the road. “I’m damn nearly forty, and that’s a hell of an age, as you’ll realise in ten years’ time.”

  “Perhaps so, but it’s different for you. A lot of men do their best work between forty and sixty.”

  “A lot of men die between forty and sixty! Anyway, other people get their chance. Clarke got the Dominions Office at thirty-six and Grigson became Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Defence at thirty-two. And it isn’t as though either of them is any bloody good. Clarke’s just a rubber stamp—does exactly what his officials tell him.”

  “At least you haven’t got T.B., as poor Grigson has. I wouldn’t envy him—you said yourself he wouldn’t last.”

  “No, he’ll resign before the new Session. But I won’t get the job, you’ll see. Or any other job. It’s pretty sickening when I think of the work I might be doing.”

  Julie fell silent again. She was accustomed to seeing Laurence with this sort of hangover after a particularly exhilarating meeting and there was nothing to be done except wait until it wore off. Of course, it was very frustrating to have been passed over so often. She often wondered why he hadn’t been given a big job, instead of being palmed off with committee chairmanships and minor missions all these years. No one could doubt his capacity, and he had a fantastic store of nervous energy which could surely have been directed into useful channels. All the same, by political standards he was still young and his chance would probably come. If only he could be a bit more patient!

  She sat gazing out of the window at the splendid park which the Quilter family had owned and cherished for three hundred years. The large round chimneys of Bleathwaite Hall were silhouetted against the rising moon.

  “The ancestral home looks quite something to-night,” said Quilter in a slightly mocking voice. He was often inclined to sentimentality, but never about the Hall. It reminded him only of an unhappy childhood, a dominated adolescence, a pattern of unwanted luxury and social rigidity which he had rejected the moment he could break free.

  “It always looks lovely,” said Julie, but she, too, spoke without regret. It had been a shock to her when Laurence had told her that he had decided to make over the estate to the Trust—had decided without even consulting her—but she had had to admit to herself that she didn’t really mind. Living in one wing of the great house, with all the rest of it closed and untended, had never been very cosy. Besides, Laurence was so much happier without what he called “lackeys” around, and she could manage the cottage on her own. The Hall would make a splendid Youth Hostel.

  Presently Quilter swung the car to the left over the ancient stone bridge that spanned the river Blea and they began to wind their way steeply through a limestone escarpment. The old station wagon made heavy going of the bill and Quilter changed down, noisily.

  “This old tub’s about had it,” he muttered.

  “I don’t wonder,” said Julie, her eye on the illuminated dash. “She’s done close on seventy thousand. Why don’t you use the Riley?”

  “Oh, I can manage for a bit longer,” he said with a long-suffering air.

  They topped the rise and a moment later the cottage was caught in the headlights, nestling snugly in the hillside against a background of magnificent yews. It was an old farmhouse of native granite, roughcast and whitewashed, with grey-green tiles matching the fells and a squat square chimney built to defy the gales. Inside, it had been thoroughly modernised at great expense—too great, perhaps, considering how little time they spent there.

  While Quilter parked the station wagon in the big stone barn, Julie went into the house and put the kettle on. When she took the tea into the living-room a few minutes later he was slumped in an armchair, brooding.

  “What have you decided about to-morrow?” he asked. “Are you going to drive down?”

  She sat down opposite him. “I don’t think so—it’s such a frightfully long way.” She was going to Dorset to stay with friends for a few days. “I’ll take the afternoon train and spend the night at the flat.” He nodded, sipping his tea.

  “You’re quite sure you won’t come?” Julie’s wide brown eyes dwelt hopefully on his face. “The Challoners would be so pleased, and it would be nice for me.”

  “You know I can’t stand those people,” he said almost petulantly. “Challoner talks the right stuff, but that’s about all. If anything makes me sick it’s to hear these comfortably-off blighters prattling their heads off about Socialism with a capital S.”

  “You’re hardly in the workhouse yourself, darling, even if you have shed a little pro
perty.”

  “That’s not the point, it’s the attitude of mind. Challoner’s a sybarite and he’ll jolly well see to it that he always remains one. I don’t give a damn what sort of conditions I live in as long as I’ve got work to do. In fact, I hardly notice.”

  “That’s what you say, but there’s soon trouble if things aren’t just to your taste. I think you’re rather exacting and I certainly wouldn’t call you ascetic. Look at this cottage—look at the flat.”

  “I had the cottage done for you, as you very well know. Personally, I couldn’t care less.”

  “Well, I wish you hadn’t. I resent this idea that you’re some sort of finer spirit with a mission and that I’m an earth-bound mortal who has to be indulged and pampered.”

  “I’m not saying that—but these things do matter to you, Julie, and they don’t to me. Half the time I don’t even notice what’s going on around me, I’m so knotted up with thoughts of the job to be done. Challoner puts his comfort first, and there are too many like him in the Party. I’m constantly meeting men who used to spend their weekends on soap boxes at street corners and are now living off the fat of the land. The Front Bench is crawling with rich men—no, wonder we’re losing support.”

  “You sound just like that awful man Granger,” Julie said.

  “It’s people like Challoner who almost justify the Grangers.”

  Juke sighed. “If you talk like that in the House, I don’t see how you can expect to get a post. It can’t be a very popular attitude.”

  “I don’t give a damn whether it’s popular or not,” Quilter said, scowling. “I’m fed up with keeping my mouth shut and toeing the line. If you want my frank opinion, the Party’s corrupted. The whole idea of socialism is that people should get what they earn, including politicians—not what their fathers left them, or what they manage to fiddle on the strength of their office. When I hear some of these people talking complacently about the Welfare State as though they’ve created the Kingdom of Heaven, it makes me want to vomit. There’s too much blasted charity about it, and pretty grudging charity at that. Even Challoner has begun to jib at necessary taxation, now that he’s feeling the pinch. He’ll probably end by joining the Tories. He’s a political illiterate, anyway, and his wife’s just a parasite …”

  “All right, you needn’t go on,” said Julie. “I’ve got your point. You don’t like my friends and you’ve no intention of trying to like them. You needn’t say any more.” She poured another cup of tea, turning her face away.

  Laurence looked a little ashamed of his violence. “Now, darling, don’t be difficult. I’m sorry if I went off the deep end, but I’m all worked up to-night. Anyway, yon know I can’t come—I’ve got all this stuff to go through before we go away.” He indicated a crate of old. papers and documents that had been sent from the Hall to be sorted.

  “Just as you like,” she said coldly.

  “How about food—is there plenty in the house?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Fine! Not that it matters—I can always eat at the Plough, and anyway when I’ve cleared up this junk I’ll probably do a spot of serious walking. The exercise will tone me up, and I’ll be out of reach of that infernal telephone.”

  Julie nodded. “I expect you’ll like being on your own for a bit. You’ll behave yourself, won’t you?—no solitary rock-climbing?”

  “Oh, lord, aren’t you ever going to forget that? Talk about an elephant …”

  “It’s just that it’s so stupid to do that sort of thing.” It had happened towards the end of the war, and it had been more than stupid. Laurence had brought a couple of colleagues to the Hall for the weekend—“climbing M. P.s” he’d said with a grin as he introduced them—and they’d had a shot at Scawfell Pinnacle. Laurence, an experienced and enthusiastic climber, had led the roped party, and Julie had sat on a grassy ledge below and watched their progress. At first Laurence had climbed with steady confidence—he’d been more than half-way up on a previous occasion and he’d studied the holds carefully. Then, by some piece of carelessness or misfortune, he’d dislodged a piece of rock and it had narrowly missed the head of Number Two on the rope. The incident must have upset him, for soon afterwards he had managed to get himself so precariously situated that he couldn’t move and they’d all got into a frightful mess. For fifteen minutes he’d clung motionless to the precipitous rock, his nerve gone, and one of the others had had to climb past and belay higher up. It had been a humbling experience for Laurence and a terrible ordeal for Julie. But the stupid part had come later. The weekend afterwards, when Julie was in London, Laurence had gone out without telling a soul and climbed to the top of the Pinnacle alone. To get his self-respect back, he’d said.

  He grinned now as he recalled the incident. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “it happens to be one of the few things in my life that I’ve never regretted. A bit of a risk, perhaps—but other men were fighting, don’t forget. Anyway, I’m really too old for climbing now—you needn’t worry.” He got up. “By the way, Julie, when you’re in town you might ring Jane and make sure the tickets for France are in order.” Jane Harper was his private secretary.

  “Of course they will be—Jane doesn’t make mistakes.”

  “Well, there’s no harm in making sure. She’s fixing my passport, too, and all the money business. I hate everything to be left to the last moment.”

  “You’re telling me! You’re an old fusspot.”

  “I know I am, but I can’t help it.” Quilter stretched and yawned. “Well, I’m going to bed. I think I’ll go into the back room, darling—I’ve a feeling I’ll take some time to get off and I don’t want to keep you awake. All right with you?” He bent and nuzzled her cheek.

  “Of course,” she said in a carefully non-committal voice.

  He put his hand under her chin and looked into her eyes. “Not trying to start anything, are you?” he asked with a smile.

  “No.”

  “Well, thank God for that.” He kissed her full on the lips, hugged her, and went off upstairs, his temper quite restored.

  Whenever he bothered to think seriously about her, Quilter had to admit that he didn’t altogether understand Julie. She sometimes had what he called “moods.” For no apparent reason, she would become polite and rather strained and there’d be an atmosphere for several days until some remark of his would unleash a storm of anger and abuse and floods of tears. After that there would be a passionate reconciliation followed by a Julie all sweetness. On the whole, Quilter was inclined to put these emotional storms down to Julie’s touch of southern blood, one eighth French and one eighth Italian, though he couldn’t remember that she had been like that when they had first married. He didn’t at all approve of the development—his idea was that the home background should be serene, so that he could give his undivided mind to the things that really mattered. Still, the outbreaks were well spaced, and he fancied that he was rather good at coping with them by now.

  This time, in any case, there was no squall. The morning found Julie in a happy frame of mind—Quilter knew it as soon as he woke, for she had switched on the portable radio that he’d given her to lighten her domestic duties around the house and she never did that when she was cross with him. He also was in the best of humours it was a superb day, and he always reacted to the weather. He sang in his bath, shaved with sensual care before the open window, told Julie how well she looked in her new housecoat, and praised the coffee. As they sat over a cigarette after breakfast he read out bits from the budget of correspondence his secretary had posted on to him, adding pungent comments of his own, and even seeking her views. For Julie it was a rare pleasure to be able to linger with him at this hour, sharing the news as it came instead of having to drag it from him later when he was tired, or forgo it altogether. His good humour and evident desire to please had quite thawed her.

  It was a heavy mail, for his activities and interests were wide-ranging, but there was nothing of immediate urgency and pres
ently he threw the letters aside. “I’ll deal with them after you’ve gone,” he said. “Anyway, I’ve started my holiday.”

  For a while they sat outside in the warm sunshine, being lazy. The cottage had no garden to speak of, but it had something better—smooth grassy banks all round, sheep-nibbled and never requiring attention. Dry and fragrant, they made a perfect place for lounging. Here no sound could reach them from the valley and a shoulder of hill hid the red bungalows of Blean and the chimneys of the great plant. They might have been miles from civilisation.

  It was Julie who got up at last, shaking out the folds of her housecoat. “This simply won’t do,” she said. “I’ve a load of things to clear up and then I must pack.” She helped Laurence to carry the crate of papers out of doors and left him to them.

  Quilter blew the dust of generations off the first packet and settled down to examine its contents. He had assumed that it would be rather a chore, this sifting of musty old family documents hoarded for no good reason that he could think of, but very soon his interest was caught. In addition to bills and estate plans, old newspaper cuttings and stock price lists, there were letters and diaries, citations and instructions, records of battles, floods and fires which in some cases dated back to the 17th century—an invaluable collection for anyone seeking source material. Most of Quilter’s ancestors had helped in some way to shape the pattern of their country, as soldiers or statesmen, explorers or diplomats, and these old papers read like a roll-call of history. Quilter was fascinated. Several times he called Julie out to share some new discovery—once to read her a curious account of a civil riot outside the west wing of the Hall during which some yokels “breake into the house in the dead tyme of yesternighte with axes, handpeckes and crowes of iron …” There was a document, too, in the handwriting of a Quilter who had happened to be at Whitehaven when John Paul Jones had raided the port in 1778 and set fire to shipping there. It would have been easy to spend a whole morning studying such treasures, but Quilter’s immediate and less exciting task was to pick out the papers which related directly to the Hall and the Estate. The Trust wanted to print a short historical review for the benefit of visitors and he had promised to let them have the relevant documents before he went on holiday.