Mr. Chartwell

by Rebecca Hunt

  Beth’s eyes nipped to monitor the couple. “I’m sorry. It’s just that …” She willed the clerks away. “… It’s just that it was such a long time ago. Michael was such a long time ago. I suppose I …” She reached over and moved Esther’s bangs to one side, styling them. Esther had a grace which made her striking, with a face whose beauty came in subtle ways. “You’re a pretty girl, Es. We only want you to be happy.”

  Beth was impossible to ignore. “We love you, you know. I do, me and Big Oliver love you.” Big Oliver was Beth’s husband, a kind and solid man.

  Esther looked at her. For countless hours, an arm round her shoulders, Beth had listened. And remembering this, Esther’s heart burst like an egg yolk. Her hands opened in surrender: Trust me, Beth, I annoy myself.

  Seeing she was forgiven, Beth immediately pushed Esther’s nose up with a finger. “Darling Es, we just want you to meet another nice man and fall in love and have lots of little piglets.”

  Esther pushed Beth’s finger away. “I’m not ready yet. Maybe in a little while I’ll be able to—”

  But being forgiven, Beth cut her off, catching her with an elbow. “In a little while? Tchk. I’ve heard that one before.”

  She fetched a lipstick from a pocket and applied it flawlessly. Snatching Esther’s notebook, she carefully blotted her lips on the page and presented it to her.

  “Beth!” Esther looked at the red mouth across her notes.

  Over at the window the library clerk was pointing out Lambeth Palace to the man. He asked some questions to the back of her blouse and she rotated to indicate with air-hostess arms a row of shelves. A friendly grin abandoned him at the window. He stared after her with restrained apprehension. He consulted the thick orienteering booklet given to new members of staff. The sound of ransacked paper became faster and ended as he flipped to read the index.

  Esther was still staring at Beth’s paper kiss.

  “Bup, bup, bup!” said Beth as Esther began to complain, a finger in the air. “Now, there’s your—”

  She was interrupted, the man appearing next to them. “Ah, hello.” He touched the knot of his tie. “Hello, I wonder if you could help me.”

  “This your first day here?” asked Beth. It was and she whistled. “Good luck, you’ll need it.” Outrageous, as it was only a library. “And let me guess, you want to find the loos.”

  He knocked his eyes to the side. “Um … yes.”

  Beth told him, drawing a map in the air with helpful landmarks.

  “Right,” said the man. “Right, thanks.”

  “I could show you, if that’s easier,” said Esther.

  He smiled at her, liking her soft, sleepy-toned voice. “No, I’ll probably manage. Thank you, though.”

  He started to leave, then turned at the doorway. “My name’s Mark Corkbowl, by the way.” He added as a useless explanation, “Just, ah … just so you know my name.”

  “Good to meet you, Corkbowl,” answered Beth.

  “You can call me Mark if you …”

  Beth didn’t hear him. “Come and find me if you need anything, Corkbowl.”

  “Or call me Corkbowl,” he said quietly. “Corkbowl is fine.” He gave them a wave, trying to be the casual man. He walked off, magnificently anti-casual.

  Beth grinned at his retreating figure before reaching over to give the notebook a few rapping taps. “There’s your first kiss for free, Es. Now you have to start collecting others, otherwise your membership will expire.”

  “Will do, Beth.” Esther tore off the page, putting it to one side. “I just need to meet someone who makes me want to be a member.”

  Beth slipped from the desk, giving Esther a chipper wink as she left. “Michael would want you to find someone and kiss them. If he was here he would order you to immediately.”

  If he was here, thought Esther as she balled Beth’s kiss and threw it in the bin, if he was bloody here then I wouldn’t need to.

  CHAPTER 6

  2.30 p.m.

  “Before we start, thank you all for coming today,” said the prime minister. “It’s a busy Wednesday afternoon and I don’t want to keep you long.”

  A chorus of agreement was followed by the sound of everyone around the large U-shaped table sipping coffee simultaneously. They were gathered in one of the committee rooms that ran off Committee Corridor, situated roughly above the Commons library and sharing a view of the Thames. With wood panelling and Pugin wallpaper, the room was elaborate and stately.

  After a suitable pause, Douglas-Home said, “As you know, we are here to discuss briefly the resignation from Parliament of our much-tried and never-bettered colleague, member for Woodford, and Father of the House, Sir Winston Churchill.”

  All eyes turned to Churchill, who sat at one end of the table wearing a single-breasted grey wool suit. He removed his cigar in a salute. It was a Romeo y Julieta, the favourite brand regularly found clamped between his teeth, lit or not. This one was lit, grey vines of smoke climbing to the ceiling.

  Douglas-Home continued. “Sir Winston will be leaving the House of Commons for the final time on the twenty-seventh of July, after a political career which has spanned sixty years.”

  “Sixty-four years,” said Churchill.

  Douglas-Home nodded at this correction. “And the following day I will be heading a deputation of parliamentary members, including Harold Wilson and Jo Grimond, to present Sir Winston with a resolution to mark his forthcoming retirement and express our gratitude for his outstanding services. The press have been informed and will be covering this event. And naturally, on the twenty-seventh we expect a very large public gathering to see the great man off.…”

  Receiving a stinging glare from Churchill, he amended his tone. “It will be a sad day for Britain when you go, Winston; a sad day and a historic day, ending a truly historic era in our government, one which we shall always remember.” He added, “I am privileged to have some personal memories of this era myself, as our paths have been somewhat entwined. I particularly value my time during your second term as prime minister, when I served as minister of state at the Scottish office.”

  “Ah yes”—the chewed cigar came out—“back when I was still a spring chicken on the cusp of seventy-seven.”

  “You may have been seventy-seven in age, but never,” Douglas-Home said with a smile, “as I recall, much in manner. I have to admit I do sometimes wonder where you found your vitality.” He joked, “And I say this as both a sprightly sixty-one-year-old and, as I always like to remind everyone, the only prime minister to have played first-class cricket.” Douglas-Home was a genial man, with fine features and an easy humour.

  “Thank you, Alec,” Churchill answered. “Yes, that’s praise indeed, especially coming from such an accomplished young sportsman.”

  Douglas-Home laughed at this, then said with warm respect, “What you have achieved in your life is truly remarkable, Winston. As you yourself have said, you felt as though you were walking with destiny. And there is no doubt you fulfilled your destiny. Yours has been a role of crucial importance, one I doubt any other man could have faced with the same resolution and tenacity.”

  With this rousing speech, a feeling of high emotion coursed beneath the dark suits of the politicians. They hid it for the most part, but couldn’t refrain from studying the robust figure in front of them. Their eyes sought to remember each detail and store it.

  Churchill’s Turnbull & Asser bow tie, a distinctive spotted model as always, was bothering him as he acknowledged the men. He repressed the urge to tear it from his neck and hurl it across the room. He was not enjoying being there; while leaving Parliament was a difficult thing to think about, the prospect of retirement could not yet be fully contemplated, being too full of awful passion. It churned the heart with thistles. Another bad night’s sleep hadn’t helped, exacerbated by the episode at the lake, and it left him feeling immobile and annoyed. He longed to go back to his home, to Chartwell, and relax in the hospital of his bed with a brandy
.

  There was a shuffling of papers as the meeting drew to an end.

  “So,” said Douglas-Home, “now we are all clear on the subject, I propose that we get back to business. Thank you, gentlemen.”

  Churchill rose stiffly from his chair, the cigar dead in his mouth. Putting on his black Bowker hat and throwing his coat over one arm, he stumped through the Victorian Gothic labyrinth of Westminster Palace, heels ringing on the ornate Minton tiles of the corridors, to the car waiting outside. The cigar was fired up again in the backseat, the carriage filling with pale, curling waves. Churchill stared solemnly through the window as the driver pulled away from the kerb. “K.B.O., K.B.O.,” he said to no one.

  “Sorry, what was that, sir?” asked the driver.

  Churchill smiled. “Nothing, old chap, nothing. Just a phrase I use as sustenance in problematical times.”

  “K.B.O.?” The driver cast a look at him in the rearview mirror. “Is that a political acronym?”

  “Ha, no. Nothing like that. It stands for keep buggering on.”

  The driver’s eyes returned to the road as they swept round a corner. “Seems like very sound advice to me, sir.”

  Churchill said, “It’s certainly a doctrine I subscribe to, my man. Yes, keep buggering on.”

  CHAPTER 7

  6.00 p.m.

  The pavements and buildings of Westminster radiated heat, throwing out the sun absorbed over hours of intensive baking. The grass, dried to its yellow roots, crunched underfoot. A sandstone path took Esther to the iron gate of Black Rod’s entrance. It clanged back on its hinges. Walking from the cool of the library on to the streets made the eyes spark with dots. Esther took it slowly as she went to her car. She drank from a glass bottle of hot Fanta and was sickened by it.

  Mr. Chartwell’s imminent appointment loomed like the promise of an accident and was terrible. But extraordinarily, the idea that he wouldn’t come, disappearing forever, was also terrible. These two terrors battled for supremacy. Then, thrashed into submission, one fell beneath the other. Starting the car ignition, Esther was fascinated to discover she secretly wanted Mr. Chartwell to come to the house. It made her turn off the engine, needing to sit for a minute and check the facts.

  For a long time the weeks of her life had drifted past as ghosts. There was the rare bump of pleasure, perhaps from a meal out or a visit to the cinema, but it was brittle and shattered under the lonely monotony of the ghost days. But now the singular Mr. Chartwell was here, ransacking her forlorn routine. It was a tonic of acid vibrancy and nerves.

  At home she moved about like an animal running around the walls of its compound, useless with anxiety. It was a relief when there was a knock at the front door which told her the familiar mattress shape would be blocking the light in her hallway.

  “Hello, Mrs. Hammerhans,” said Mr. Chartwell. He was holding a bunch of exhausted carnations, which he handed to her, then stood panting loudly. When Esther offered him a glass of water he reached behind a hind leg, producing a bottle of Mateus Rosé hidden on the doorstep. “I thought you might like some wine.”

  “Oh,” Esther said in surprise, wondering where he’d bought it, “that sounds nice.” She added as an afterthought, “Call me Esther. You don’t need to call me Mrs. Hammerhans.”

  In the kitchen he stood clumsy and self-conscious, leaning a paw on the orange tiles over the counter as Esther fetched the glasses. She said, “What do you think about having a drink in the garden? It’s a lovely evening.”

  Mr. Chartwell murmured his consent and padded tamely behind her, Esther fighting the impulse to squirm off on the legs of an octopus at his closeness.

  The garden, a modest strip of land preserved as Michael had left it, had been lovingly bullied into opulence. Swollen in the summer sun and bulging with flowers, it looked like a burst suitcase. Birch trees grew near a pond, big red goldfish breaking the water as they lipped the surface for insects. Mr. Chartwell watched them avidly, ears tuned to their activities.

  Esther sat down on the bench. She leant back, dust from the kitchen windowsill coating her hair, and drank some wine. It was warm and offensively sweet, a foul syrup, but Esther welcomed it. She topped up her glass.

  Mr. Chartwell was finished with the fish and went to look at the greenhouse. Hidden in a passageway along one side of the house, it was ripe with tomato plants and courgettes, leaves crowding the glass.

  “Nice tomatoes,” said Mr. Chartwell.

  “Thanks, I grew them myself,” Esther said, as though it would surprise anyone.

  “What are you going to do with them?” Mr. Chartwell asked.

  “I don’t know, eat them I suppose,” Esther said.

  “Right,” said Mr. Chartwell, as if this was big news. “I’ve got a great chutney recipe. Perhaps you’d like it?”

  Esther didn’t like it. She didn’t want any recipe recommended by a dog. Terrified of causing offence, she smiled weakly. “Thank you. That would be good.”

  “I’ve got a fantastic jam recipe, too,” said Mr. Chartwell, spotting some strawberry plants and smirking at the joke he was about to make. “In fact my jam is the last word in fine preserves. I should give you a jar so you can spread the word.…” Turned away from her his shoulders shook.

  Then he came towards the bench.

  Esther stiffened. He was going to sit next to her? The idea was horrifying. She bit into her inner cheek, hurting it, and wanted to leap away. She fumbled through a list of excuses, all unusable, and shocked herself by being on the verge of tears.

  She needn’t have worried. Mr. Chartwell put his glass of wine down and dropped onto all fours. In front of the bench a long bald patch was worn through the grass, the soil beneath dried into sand. He made a few turns on this spot, clawing the area, and capsized onto his side, legs stretched out. The grassless trench was perfectly sized.

  “Ah, relaxing here on the lawn,” he said with great satisfaction, wagging his tail. It made the sound of a hockey stick thumping the ground. He picked up his wineglass. The fingerless paw had no difficulty gripping the stem, but his coffin mouth and immobile lips made drinking from it awkward. The wine wanted to pour across the sides of his face in streams. After each sip he fought the wine, working his jaws, which produced an indecent smacking sound. Droplets sprayed into the air, some landing on Esther’s feet.

  They listened to the squabbling of birds.

  “Have you given any more thought to what we talked about this morning?” asked Mr. Chartwell.

  Esther said, “I’ve thought about it a lot, actually.”

  “Have you made your mind up?”

  Esther took a slow, hesitant sip of wine. “I haven’t, no.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Chartwell, in a way which implied that this was a powerfully boring answer. “Because I do really need to confirm where I’ll be staying as quickly as possible.”

  “Have you looked anywhere else? At any other houses?” Esther asked.

  “A few places, none as convenient as this one.”

  Mr. Chartwell rolled a paw as he explained. “The location here is hard to beat in terms of convenience for work. Door to door, I’m looking at a fifty-minute journey.” He laid his head on the ground, half his face hidden. The one visible eye swivelled to look at Esther.

  She made a thoughtful hum. “And you say it will only be for a few days? After that you’re leaving?”

  “Probably.” Mr. Chartwell yawned, a high-pitched animal noise leaving his throat.

  “Right,” said Esther. A fish caught a beetle with a splash.

  She tried to draw more from Mr. Chartwell. “So how many days, do you think?”

  “Don’t know,” Mr. Chartwell said.

  “And this is for your work?”

  “Yup,” he said.

  “And you’ll pay me one thousand pounds?”

  “Yup.”

  “Regardless of the time you stay, you’ll pay me one thousand pounds?”

  “Correct.”

  “That
certainly is a lot of money.…”

  “Certainly is.” He gave something on the grass an investigatory lick.

  Esther said as an invitation, “Your job must pay you an awful lot.…”

  Mr. Chartwell was still busy licking.

  Esther waited for him to finish. When he didn’t she felt a rising fury at his evasiveness. He was doing it on purpose, refusing to answer her! Well, try and evade this! She leaned forward on her knees. “Mr. Chartwell, listen, with all respect, I don’t know anything about you. Don’t you think I should know more about you if you want to move in?”

  “Oh, you want to know more about me?” Mr. Chartwell said, tongue out. “Okay, I don’t like beetroot.”

  “Right,” Esther answered with slight bite. “And what about the rest? What about absolutely everything else? … You haven’t told me what you do for a living, what your first name is, what you’re doing here, or anything. I don’t even know what you are. I think you owe me some sort of an explanation.”

  Mr. Chartwell arranged his face to display the highest level of scorn. “You think your position of landlady necessitates that I tell you everything about my circumstances?”

  Made nervous by his attack, Esther said, “I don’t think it’s so awful to ask you. I think anyone would be—”

  “Well, can I expect you to tell me about yourself in return?” Mr. Chartwell interrupted.

  “Why?”

  He watched her face.

  Esther shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “… You’ll talk honestly about your life?”

  “It’s no secret,” she said, although it was.

  While Mr. Chartwell considered this, his whiskery eyebrows moved. They weren’t eyebrows so much as thumbprint-sized buds above his eyes, but they were expressive in the same way. A ladybird landed on his thigh and the leg kicked out in an impulsive move.

  “Fine,” he said eventually. “I don’t usually do this, but I can make a concession on this occasion, under the strict understanding that this information is absolutely confidential.”