Paradise Postponed

by John Mortimer

‘Related?’ She had turned away from him, filling her sack. All he saw was the stooped back and the old, flapping mackintosh. ‘Perhaps.’

  For a moment Fred thought his mother was going to explain everything in a way that even Henry would have to accept but, when she straightened up and turned towards him, she was laughing. ‘Perhaps in the Middle Ages, there was some romance between an old Lady Simcox and a medieval Titmuss! What a perfectly killing idea. I can’t really imagine a medieval Titmuss, can you? A Titmuss in shining armour!’

  ‘You know, if we can’t explain it, they’re going to say father was a lunatic.’ Fred tried to persuade his mother of the seriousness of the situation but she was unimpressed. ‘It won’t be the first time,’ she told him.

  ‘No?’

  ‘When he was a young curate in Worsfield I’m sure the Bishop called him a lunatic. Simeon got his revenge, of course. He never stopped writing the poor fellow letters.’

  ‘But about Leslie Titmuss?’

  ‘There.’ Dorothy tugged her sack to his feet and left it there. ‘I think that’s about filled up now. As you don’t seem to have anything better to do, Fred, could you put it into my motor? Try and be careful not to drop any out.’ And after that she was answering no more questions.

  The sitting-room at ‘The Spruces’ had seen a few changes since Leslie made his fortune: wall-to-wall carpeting, a giant colour telly, a velvet-covered three-piece suite and central heating were some of the new amenities. ‘He wanted us to move into the big house, you know,’ Elsie explained to Fred when he came to call. ‘But George didn’t think it right, me going back to live where I used to be in service. George gets funny ideas sometimes. He sits out there all weathers now, by that old bit of pond he put in when he retired.’ Mr Titmuss the elder was visible, through the sitting-room window, with a rug over his knee like a traveller on a transatlantic liner. He seemed to be asleep. ‘Of course, his memory’s not what it was. He forgets they’ve retired him sometimes and worries about getting along to the Brewery. As though the accounts department couldn’t do without him! What’ve you called in for, Doctor? We’re not ill, surely?’

  ‘No of course you’re not.’

  ‘Anyway, we usually have Dr Hardison.’ Elsie looked at him with suspicion. ‘Are you collecting for something?’

  ‘I suppose you might say so. I’m trying to get hold of a few facts.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Elsie had suddenly lost interest in the Doctor’s visit.

  ‘You know about my father’s will?’

  ‘The Rector was always so kind to our boy.’ Elsie smiled. ‘Isn’t there going to be a court case? Between you and Leslie?’

  ‘Between my brother and Leslie,’ he corrected her. ‘I don’t want any court case. I just want to explain the will. Look, you knew my father when you were young.’

  ‘Of course, everyone knew the Rector.’ Elsie was non-committal.

  ‘You probably got on well with him?’

  ‘George had a quarrel with him once. It was about a statuette. Leslie gave the Rector one of our ornaments, and his father was quite angry about it. He thought the Rector shouldn’t have held on to it, you see.’

  ‘Was that the only time?’ Fred asked the question gently as though he were trying to diagnose a disease. ‘That George was angry about my father?’

  Elsie moved to the mantelpiece and touched the plaster figure of the lady from Cleethorpes. From this contact she seemed to derive the strength to conclude the interview.

  ‘I shouldn’t be answering your questions.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you?’

  ‘Not with the court case coming on. You shouldn’t be asking them either. Anyway, if Leslie’s had a bit of good luck over the will, he deserves it, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘After all he’s gone through. After all she put him through, more likely. I must ask you to go now, Doctor. I’ve got George to see to.’ She went out then to straighten the old man’s rug. Fred left ‘The Spruces’ with none of his questions answered.

  29

  Worsfield Heath

  One autumn evening, after the glory of Goose Green had been almost forgotten, and as the women of Worsfield Heath bedded down in their sleeping-bags, Charlie went to meet Gary Kitson in the Badger at Skurfield. She waited a long time in the almost empty bar, sitting on a stool, drinking whisky and refusing to notice the stares of the two boys in the corner. They had Youth Opportunity Programme jobs, short-term employment, sweeping floors in a Worsfield biscuit factory and had come to Skurfield where the only entertainment they found was in watching Charlie and whispering about her. At last, at very long last, the door was pushed open to admit Gary Kitson, his wife, Tina, and their friend Simon Mallard-Greene. This trio advanced to the bar, apparently for the sole purpose of buying cigarettes and announcing that the place was dead, had no one in it, and that they would try the bar of the Station Hotel, Hartscombe, in search of a bit of life. As Simon paid for the Rothmans King Size, and Tina just popped into the toilet, Gary apologized to Charlie. ‘Sorry about tonight. Tina insisted on coming with. Know what I mean?’ Yes, Charlie knew what he meant. Gary left with Tina and Simon in a bad mood. He was angry with his wife for coming out with them and angrier at her for having foolishly set out wearing a garnet brooch in the shape of a Maltese Cross, a glowing piece of sentimental value only. Gary had made Tina take it off before they got into the Badger.

  When she was left alone again, Charlie went over to the YOPs and, in order to wipe the silly grins off their faces, bought them both a drink.

  She was late getting back to Picton. She and the YOPs had gone to a pub up on the ridge without a bar, where Simcox bitter was poured out of barrels in a front room with a stained carpet, and a sofa leaking stuffing, a place where the licensing laws, if ever known, had been long forgotten. It was past midnight when she arrived home, her lipstick smeared and her step unsteady. She had some difficulty unlocking the front door. When she did so she was surprised to see a light on in Leslie’s study and its door open. She couldn’t get to the staircase without being seen by him as he sat at his desk, a red dispatch box open in front of him. He called out to her, and, as she couldn’t escape him, she went into the room.

  ‘I thought you were in London.’

  ‘I’m sure you did.’

  ‘What happened, no war this week?’

  Leslie kept some decanters on a side table for visitors who came on constituency business, and she poured herself a drink. ‘I had dinner alone,’ he told her. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘That’s obvious.’

  ‘I needed some air. I was driving. I walked a little.’

  ‘Where did you have dinner?’

  ‘Nowhere. I had dinner nowhere.’

  ‘You do lie awfully badly, Charlotte.’ He smiled at her in a way calculated, she thought, to unhinge her. She gripped her glass tightly. ‘Of course, you’re speaking as an expert,’ she told him. ‘Have you heard yourself on telly?’

  ‘Your dinner consisted of too many whiskies and a packet of onion-flavoured crisps in some pub or other.’ He was still smiling. ‘With a lot of undesirables.’

  ‘Who’s undesirable?’ She was angry and the words came flooding out of her. ‘You mean with one or two desirables? Anyway, what’s wrong with onion-flavoured crisps? I thought you got where you are on onion-flavoured crisps. And bottles of sauce. And meat teas. And money in the Prudential. Aren’t you the good old working-class lad with his pint of Simcox Best and his heartfelt ambition to buy his own council house? That’s who you taught me to admire. What did you call yourself? The backbone of England!’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about a handful of spivs.’

  ‘Spivs? What a charming old-fashioned word! They wouldn’t know what it meant.’

  ‘They’d know what it is, though. Scrounging on the welfare. Everything on the never-never. Or dropped off the back of a lorry, more likely. Taking advantage of the rest of us. Taking advantage of
you.’

  ‘You’ve never been taken advantage of, have you, Leslie? You should try it some time. It’s really quite enjoyable.’

  ‘You’re letting me down, Charlotte.’ He got to his feet and stood over her. ‘You’re letting yourself down and Nicky.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about Nicky!’ She stared up at him. It was a look of contempt such as her mother might manage.

  ‘I don’t expect you to stay here, all by yourself. I know it’s lonely.’ He had put on the reasonable and disarming voice he employed at Question Time in the House of Commons.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Of course it is. But couldn’t you get some sort of decent interests?’

  ‘What a good idea! You mean the Women’s Institute? Fruit-bottling? Flower-arranging? Evening classes in basket-weaving?’

  ‘Something more serious,’ he suggested. ‘History, perhaps. Or politics.’

  ‘Politics?’ She looked at him, took a gulp from her glass and managed a slow smile. ‘Is that what you’d really like me to do?’

  On Worsfield Heath, once the site of the Annual Show, where stockmen paraded heifers and children in jodhpurs gritted their teeth and kicked their ponies towards the jumps, it was rumoured that the cruise missiles would come out at night to take exercise. The women hung their washing, their scarves and brightly coloured anoraks, even their plastic buckets and frying-pans, on the tall, wire fence, guarded the gates and waited in the hope of seeing and deriding these expeditions. They slept in tents until such shelters were removed by the police. Then they hung plastic sheets across the branches of trees and slept under their flapping cover.

  They moved seriously, importantly, about their tasks, although occasionally cheerfulness or anger would break out and they would shout at the police on the other side of the wire; young men who would react with embarrassed silence or occasional obscene suggestions. Some of the younger guards said they would come out from behind the wire and ravish the women, converting them, by the joy of sex with an energetic military policeman, to a true appreciation of the value of nuclear missiles. It was a plan they had no intention whatsoever of putting into practice. The women asked the military police if they were on the side of death or life, a question the young men seemed to find difficult to answer.

  Debates about the missiles, arguments destined to have no influence whatever on the course of events, continued. Leslie gamely agreed to attend one such discussion at Worsfield University. His ministerial Rover forced a slow passage through a crowd of angry students outside the Convocation Hall, and policemen reclined backwards on struggling bodies. He was met with a hailstorm of eggs, ink bombs and abuse through which he smiled as though with real enjoyment, perhaps feeling that being thrown into the river by Young Conservatives marked an important stage in his political development.

  After he had been hustled into the hall, where his speech was to be made inaudible by boos and cat-calls, the demonstrating crowd drifted away, leaving one older than the rest, Charlie, who had come to join in the chorus of abuse. She stood quietly for a moment, pleased to have taken part in the event. Then she went back to Rapstone to call on her mother, whom she found in the conservatory, watering pots of begonias.

  ‘You’re keeping them on?’

  ‘Well, they’re here so I might as well water them. Is Leslie with you?’

  ‘Leslie’s never with me nowadays. That’s the difference.’

  ‘What do you mean, the “difference”?’

  ‘Father was always here, always in Rapstone. You saw him all the time.’

  ‘He was away in the war.’

  ‘Yes. In the war. Of course he was.’

  ‘Doing what he felt to be his duty. I expect Leslie’s doing the same, isn’t he?’

  ‘Oh yes. Leslie and his friends who arranged to put a lot of wonderful new things for blowing up the world on Worsfield Heath. They’re meant to make us feel safer.’

  ‘Leslie understands, Charlie.’ Grace watered on like a woman who had never felt any particular hostility to bombs. ‘He’s got all the information.’

  ‘Oh yes. Leslie understands. It seems these things have to be exercised like dogs. They have to go out walkies.’

  ‘Are you quite well?’ Her mother put down her watering-can and looked closely at Charlie, as though she suspected her of being about to get some tedious childhood complaint like measles. ‘What’ve you come here for? You never come here.’

  ‘I just thought I ought to warn you, Mother, if you ever meet one on your way home from Bridge at the Hellespont Club. Don’t try and pat it, that’s all.’

  ‘Do stop talking nonsense, Charlie! Leslie knows these things are necessary. For our protection.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Leslie always knows best.’ And, after a silence, she said, ‘I’m sorry for you, Mother.’

  ‘Sorry for me! Whatever for?’ Charlie, quite unexpectedly, put out a hand and touched her mother’s arm. ‘Having to have a child you couldn’t love.’ She moved to the door, on her way out. ‘Oh. By the way. That burglary you had, did you ever hear any more about it?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Grace was outraged. ‘I asked your husband to mention it to the Prime Minister.’

  ‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ – Charlie was going – ‘how many old crimes go undetected.’

  *

  On Worsfield Heath, a small boy, about three years old, wandered away from his mother, who was washing up plates in a plastic bucket, and ran across a patch of ground, a small, bright figure in scarlet gumboots and a mac. Charlie, standing alone and lost, saw him trip and fall. She picked him up to comfort him. The child stiffened and cried in her arms and wouldn’t be consoled. In a little while the mother came to claim him, looking at Charlie with what she felt was hostility.

  Although she knew no one there and felt lonely and ridiculous, Charlie stood about near the fence, shouted when the others shouted, and later simply sat on the grass until daylight ended. Then the fires were lit, kettles started to boil, and Charlie finally found a group who appeared not to resent her. She offered round her cigarettes, and sat warming her hands on a mug of tea they gave her. Later on, a fat, grey-haired grandmother, bundled into layers of clothing, began to sing, and the others joined her.

  Early one morning before the bombs were falling

  I heard a woman singing in the valley below

  Politicians hate us

  They’d obliterate us

  Don’t let them treat a poor world so.

  I will be gone and gone will be my true love

  Gone will be the trees in the valley below

  If we don’t stop them

  Now let them drop them

  Don’t let them treat a poor world so.

  The small children joined in enthusiastically, as though it were a nursery rhyme, and Charlie sang, also, with gratitude. She clapped in time to the music, and when a tall, thin-haired woman sat beside her and began to talk about her social security, Charlie was able to give her a few tips she remembered from her days in the Welfare. Then others began to talk to her, about the things they had shouted over the wire, and about the way they had run round the Heath keeping their tents out of the way of the police. They seemed excited and cheerful, as though they had got away from unwanted husbands to go on some illicit holiday. Only occasionally did they sit silent and brooding, staring into the ashes of the fire until someone threw on another branch and then they started to sing again. None of them seemed to have the slightest doubt of the usefulness of their mission.

  It was almost midnight before they saw the police cars coming. The blue lights revolved and flashed and delivered reinforcements to line the road that led from the gates of the encampment. The women started to run away from the fires and out of the shadows. Some clung to the wire and tried to climb it, until they were pulled down. Others formed up on a length of road the police had left unoccupied. Charlie ran with them, not sure of what was going on, unaware of the rain which had begun as a few heavy drops sizzled in the ca
mp fire and now ran down her cheeks and flattened her hair. The women she was with burst through a clump of bushes and came out on a tree-lined stretch of road. There they linked arms and formed a close, warm, wet barricade. They waited a long time, but remained in possession of the road. The police guard was still between them and the gates of the Air Force station.

  At last they saw a high and distant light moving through the tops of the trees, illuminating the driving rain. It came on to shouts of derision from the unseen women and the hum of an engine. Her arms held on each side of her, Charlie peered into the darkness. Then there were two other points of light far down the road.

  And if one cruise missile

  Should accidentally fall…

  There’d be you and I my darling

  Left hanging on the wall…

  The women were still singing and she heard shouts of ‘Walking the dog, darling?’ and ‘Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow-wow!’

  Then the lights got bigger and seemed to rush towards them, becoming clear as the headlamps of police outriders. Charlie felt released by the women on either side of her as they scampered to the side of the road. She was alone on the wet, black surface, under the dripping trees, and, as the lights came towards her, she started to scream. It wasn’t desperate or unconsolable, nor the sort of cry that needed a chapter of Biggles to calm it. It was louder, stronger, more like a battle call or a yell of triumph.

  The policeman on the first bike, helmeted and oil-skinned, saw Charlie and swerved to avoid her. His heavy machine skidded on the wet surface, slithered helplessly out of control and crashed into her sideways, silencing her and blacking out her world which had become strangely and unaccountably happy.

  ‘My wife was always interested in social work and the caring professions. One of her projects was to visit the women of Worsfield Heath. Many of them were experiencing marriage problems, and the strains and stresses of bringing up children in one-parent families. My wife’s death occurred during one of such visits and was purely accidental.’