Paradise Postponed

by John Mortimer

  Leslie stood on the terrace of Picton House and read out a prepared statement to the news cameras, microphones and notebooks of a group of reporters. The wind fluttered the sheet of paper in his hand and slightly dislodged his hair, exposing his bald patch. ‘No blame of any sort can be attached to the officer whose motor bicycle skidded, and I wish him a speedy recovery. He was doing his duty and playing a vital part in the defence of our democratic way of life. My wife died carrying out duties which she also believed to be important.’ He folded the paper and put it into his jacket pocket. ‘Thank you. That’s all.’ Of course, it wasn’t. Questions were hurled at him, and Leslie, an old hand by now, fielded them expertly.

  ‘Minister. Did you approve of your wife going to Worsfield Heath?’

  ‘Of course, I had the greatest admiration for her social work.’

  ‘Are you saying she took no part in the demonstrations against cruise missiles?’

  ‘My wife wasn’t interested in politics. She was simply dealing with the women’s social problems.’

  ‘Minister. Was your wife a member of C.N.D.?’

  ‘I can categorically assure you that she was never a member of that organization.’

  ‘Minister.’ Someone was holding a microphone up to Leslie’s face. ‘Can you explain why your wife was doing social work after midnight?’

  ‘I’m afraid there isn’t any “knocking off time” for the caring professions,’ he explained with charm. ‘Both of us were accustomed to work all the hours that God gave us.’

  ‘So far as we can discover, your wife wasn’t attached to any of the regular social services.’

  ‘Charlotte wasn’t a great joiner, she was impatient of bureaucracy. Aren’t we all? She was very much her own person.’

  ‘The women at Worsfield Heath don’t seem to have known her.’

  ‘I don’t suppose those women like to talk to you about their personal problems.’ Leslie smiled at them all. ‘I can’t say I enjoy it much myself.’

  ‘Minister. You don’t approve of the Worsfield women?’

  ‘I respect their sincerity,’ he answered carefully. ‘I think they’re terribly misguided. But we’re all after the same thing, aren’t we? Peace in our time. Now, ladies and gentlemen. If that’s all…’ He was about to move back into the house when he was asked: ‘What are your future plans?’

  ‘To go on doing my job as long as the Prime Minister wants me.’ A modest smile. ‘And she hasn’t said she doesn’t.’

  ‘Apart from that?’

  ‘My life’ – he was serious now and it was the last thing he said before he vanished into the house – ‘will be devoted to the care and upbringing of our son.’

  *

  Some time after Charlie died, Simeon did what he didn’t recommend to his parishioners. He went into Rapstone Church alone and knelt for a considerable time in prayer. Meanwhile, Leslie and his son Nicky faced each other from opposite ends of the dining-table at Picton House. Their meal seemed endless and they found little to say to each other. Nicky didn’t want to talk about his school, and his mother’s death was a subject both of them avoided.

  30

  Visiting

  ‘I was expecting you to call,’ Jackson Cantellow said. ‘I’ve left countless messages at your surgery. Where on earth have you been?’

  ‘Trying to find out the truth.’ Fred had called as part of his own investigations. ‘Not the sort of thing you would encourage, I suppose, as a lawyer.’

  ‘We put our case. The truth remains a matter for the trial judge to decide.’

  ‘You must know it though.’ Fred looked at the large, complacent face opposite him and wondered if he did.

  ‘I must?’

  ‘You must know why he made that will.’

  ‘How should I know that, Dr Simcox?’

  ‘You were my father’s solicitor for years.’

  Cantellow got up and went to a filing-cabinet from which he took a tin of throat pastilles. He selected one with care and popped it into his mouth.

  ‘Alas, we know so little of our clients. In any event, the Rector chose a Worsfield firm for his last, his extraordinary last, will.’

  ‘There must have been a reason! You don’t want to find it though, because you’re arguing my brother’s case.’ There was something about the singing solicitor that made Fred understand Dorothy’s rage. ‘That’s what he’s paid you to do.’

  ‘We have to live, don’t we, Dr Simcox? I suppose some might say we both thrive on the sickness of mankind. That, I feel, would be an uncharitable view.’

  ‘My father must have told you something.’

  ‘Very little. I don’t think he had a great deal of respect for lawyers.’ Cantellow was starting to shuffle the papers on his desk. ‘Wyebrow’s statement,’ he muttered and put it away. ‘Ah, yes.’ He found his place in the notes he’d been making. ‘Perhaps you could throw some light on the Tom Nowt incident. We have these rather over-simplified headings.’ He apologized. ‘Your brother has seen photographs of Nowt and the Rector looking entirely friendly, but didn’t your father suddenly forbid you to visit the man’s cottage?’

  ‘Not his cottage, his hut in the woods.’ Fred thought about it.

  ‘Wasn’t that rather extraordinary?’ Cantellow looked up. ‘Your father was supposed to be so liberal, such a democrat, the friend of all the world. Did he object to you visiting any of the other cottages?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘A sudden irrational phobia, you see. That’s the view of the psychiatrist we shall be calling. He turned against people for no reason.’ Cantellow was delighted. ‘I really would like to take a witness statement from you, Frederick. Couldn’t you just help me by remembering all about the Tom Nowt incident?’

  ‘Why should I want to help you?’ Fred, having decided that he was only going to be asked questions and given no answers, got up and started to leave. ‘Who do you want to help? Not Leslie Titmuss, surely?’ Cantellow asked, pained, but Fred was gone.

  After visiting the solicitor Fred had to call at Tom’s old cottage. Mrs Mallard-Greene, in a state of high anxiety and rattling with tranquillizers prescribed by a London doctor, had rung up for a visit, although her trouble, as it turned out, was hardly of a medical nature. The problem was her son, Simon. His car had been stopped after midnight and in the boot the police had found a certain amount of hi-fi equipment, reported missing by a Hartscombe dentist. ‘Thank God you’ve come.’ There was a brandy bottle on the kitchen table, and an ashtray overflowing with stubs. ‘I just couldn’t sit in the queue of National Health patients with everyone looking at me, hearing them whispering about Simon. You know he’s due up before the Magistrates?’

  ‘Mrs Mallard-Greene, I’m a doctor. If you need a lawyer…’

  ‘Receiving stolen property! He was just selling a few bits and pieces he’d bought off some fellow in the Badger.’

  ‘If that’s true, no doubt he’ll be triumphantly acquitted.’

  ‘But if it isn’t true?’ Mrs Mallard-Greene had obviously considered the possibility.

  ‘Well then…’

  ‘You’ve known Simon since he was a schoolboy. He was highly strung as a child and he’s always been extremely nervous.’

  ‘A nervous window-cleaner?’ Fred was doubtful.

  ‘I don’t think Malley ever understood Simon. And there was the sibling rivalry with Sarah, of course. Simon was always trying to prove himself against a powerful father with a job in the B.B.C. All that achievement! I’m sure you could tell the Magistrates that it’s a well-known psychiatric condition.’

  ‘Receiving stolen property?’ It wasn’t a disease that Fred had learned about at St Thomas’s.

  ‘He needs help, Dr Simcox.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’ Fred went to the window and looked out. ‘I’ve told you, I think, that I remember this when it was old Tom Nowt’s cottage.’

  ‘I wish to God it was still Tom Nowt’s cottage!’ The words came from the b
ottom of Mrs Mallard-Greene’s heart. ‘It’s supposed to be so restful in the country, so secure, so peaceful. You know what it’s really like? Extremely dangerous! Simon’s arrested, not for drugs, not for something like everyone seems to do when they’re young, but for being mixed up in stealing! We’d all have been so much better off in Highgate.’

  ‘Would you mind if I took a look at your woods? There used to be an old hut…’

  ‘Oh, that’s gone. I think it went years ago. Malley was clearing up there when he was terribly rustic. You will tell them, won’t you?’

  ‘Tell them?’

  ‘Tell the Magistrates about Simey. It’s no use them trying to blame him really.’

  ‘He’d better come and see me.’

  ‘I knew you’d help us!’ Mrs Mallard-Greene was enormously relieved. ‘Underneath that cold professional manner, I knew you’d understand.’

  At the place where Tom Nowt’s hut once stood Fred picked up part of a deer’s antler, blackened by fire. He looked across to a patch of sunlight at the edge of the wood and heard children’s voices. Still holding the antler, he walked towards them and found Dora Nowt, Tom’s widow, Janet, his daughter, and three of his grandchildren, Janet’s nephew and nieces. The children seemed to be searching in a patch of rough, chalky grass, a meadow isolated between two patches of woodland that had never been ploughed. Dora Nowt, an old woman now, saw Fred first.

  ‘Dr Simcox. You don’t remember me, do you?’

  ‘Of course.’ In fact he had hardly recognized her, and said, ‘Dora Nowt,’ hoping for the best.

  ‘No one used to take much notice of me, nor of the wife. Tom was the one who had all the posh friends, wasn’t he? Now, did you ever call on me when you was a little boy, did you? No, you come straight down to see Tom in his old hut.’

  ‘It’s gone.’ Fred dropped the burnt and broken antler into a patch of brambles.

  ‘Oh yes. They had it burnt down, them townees got our cottage now. Your mother must’ve been upset about that.’

  ‘My mother?’ Fred was surprised, but before he could pursue the matter, a small boy brought the spike of a picked wild flower and gave it to Dora. ‘Is this it?’

  ‘Yes, Tom. But you mustn’t pick it. You mustn’t ever pick those. I bring the children down here for the flowers,’ she told Fred, and took the flower from her grandson to give it to him. ‘There’s the spider orchid. Hope it brings you luck. You don’t see many of the late ones. You know where to find them, of course.’

  ‘No, I never knew.’ Fred had to admit it.

  ‘The late one’s rarer, very rare, Mrs Simcox told us.’ Fred had no idea that Dorothy had played such a large part in the life of the Nowts. ‘She used to visit Tom and me, and the children. She showed us the orchid places. Always very good to Tom and the family, was your mother.’

  Janet had moved away with the children, who were finding snail shells and butterflies. Dora seemed talkative and anxious to make up for having been so much ignored by Tom’s friends in the past. ‘When Tom couldn’t get work anywhere, just after the war when Lady Grace put the police on to him, no one would give him anything, not beating, not wooding, nothing! Well, your mother helped us out when Tom wanted to build his hut in the woods. We’ve always been grateful to her for it.’

  ‘What about my father?’ Fred looked at her and waited for an answer which might have been important to him.

  ‘Tom used to see a lot of the Rector in the old days. He used to take up rabbits to him. After it all happened, well, he never used to see so much of your father, then.’

  ‘After what all happened?’

  ‘After Tom fell foul of her Ladyship. Well, Tom was never a churchgoer, was he? And your father was that busy putting the world to rights.’

  Then the old woman was called by the children about the find of a bird’s skull. Fred remembered that it was Thursday, his mother’s afternoon for doing the flowers in Rapstone Church. He found her in the vestry, surrounded by vases, attacking long grasses and delphiniums and sprays of leaves with her secateurs. He held out his hand on which lay the warm and wilting spider orchid found by young Tom Nowt.

  ‘You know what this is, Mother?’

  ‘You don’t surely?’ Dorothy looked amused by him.

  ‘A late spider orchid. Rather rare. You know where they grow?’

  ‘I think so,’ she admitted.

  ‘By Tom Nowt’s old hut. Why did you never tell us?’

  ‘Tell you what?’ She bashed the end of the long stem of a rose.

  ‘When we were young. Why didn’t you tell us where the wild orchids grew? Isn’t that the sort of knowledge parents usually pass on to their children?’

  ‘I didn’t tell you’ – Dorothy sounded reasonable enough – ‘because you weren’t in the least interested in that sort of thing. Henry was always writing the most unsuitable stories, from all I ever heard of them! And you were stuck up in your room drumming. I didn’t think either of you cared tuppence for wild flowers.’

  ‘I suppose the Nowts did?’ Fred asked her. ‘Brian and Annie and young Janet Nowt and the grandchildren as they came along. You helped them find the orchids in their own wood?’

  ‘We used to go for walks and find flowers. Before Simeon, well, before…’

  ‘Before what, exactly?’

  ‘Before he got so occupied.’

  ‘You helped Tom Nowt’ – Fred tried not to make it sound like an accusation – ‘when he was down on his luck!’

  ‘That was the sort of thing Simeon approved of.’

  ‘But he didn’t approve of Tom.’ Fred was far from understanding. ‘He was angry when I talked about the old hut. What sane reason did he have for that?’

  ‘What sane reason?’ His mother looked at him with mistrust.

  ‘You’ll have to tell me some time. And when I’ve found out I’ll tell Henry he hasn’t got a case.’

  ‘Will you enjoy doing that?’ She looked towards the open vestry door and seemed to welcome the sound of someone moving about in the church.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Mother, help me to do what you want.’

  ‘What I want? What I want is for everyone to stop asking me questions.’ She went to the door and called, ‘Mr Bulstrode!’ Kev the Rev. trotted in, obediently, having been pinning up children’s drawings in the Sunday School area.

  ‘So good of your mother to go on helping with the flowers,’ he told Fred. ‘Of course, my wife should take it over if it ever got too much.’

  ‘It’s not too much, thank you.’ Dorothy suddenly lowered her voice as though repeating a scandal. ‘Do you know Dr Simcox was never confirmed?’

  Fred was surprised that his mother should raise such a subject. The Rev. Kevin Bulstrode looked at him with sympathy.

  ‘Simeon said the boys could wait to be done until they’d made up their minds. Freddie, it seems, never has.’

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘Couldn’t you oblige him with some sort of ceremony for those of riper years? Why don’t you have a nice long talk with Mr Bulstrode, Freddie?’

  ‘I say, I’d love to have a go.’ The new Rector was enthusiastic. ‘I’m not your father, of course, so I haven’t got all the answers. What’s troubling you exactly?’

  ‘A few unanswered questions.’ Fred was looking at his mother.

  ‘Oh, I do know.’ Bulstrode was beginning to enjoy himself. ‘Why the good, the omnipotent God allows wars and concentration camps, and children with leukaemia…’

  ‘And that awful music in the Hartscombe supermarket!’ Dorothy nodded, refilling her vases.

  ‘I’m as much in the dark as you are,’ Bulstrode admitted to Fred, ‘I rather suspect. But if you could spare half an hour in my den, well, your dear old father’s den, in the Rectory, we might sort of feel our way into the darkness together.’

  ‘I’m afraid…’ Fred started to retreat.

  ‘Aren’t we all? But talking does help sometimes. It really does.’

  ‘I’m afraid I�
�ve got a lot more calls. Illness you know. There’s a lot of it about.’ When Fred walked past her out of the vestry, his mother whispered, ‘Coward!’

  So he left the church, passing the marble tablet which commemorated certain dead Fanners whose names were written under the scrolled bas-relief of a lady in Regency costume, weeping over an urn. The latest words to be carved were:

  CHARLOTTE GRACE

  23 MARCH 1940 TO 19 APRIL 1984

  BELOVED WIFE OF THE RT HON. LESLIE TITMUSS, M.P.

  and under the inscription stood a small, newly arranged vase of flowers.

  Rapstone Manor was next on the list of visits; there was a problem, Miss Thorne had said with awe, ‘about her Ladyship’s leg’. Wyebrow led him upstairs and Fred let him know that he had heard that the butler was to be a witness in the coming Probate Action.

  ‘I think that’s a matter we probably shouldn’t discuss, isn’t it, Doctor?’ Wyebrow smirked proudly, knowing that he had it in him to give a devastating account from the witness box of the late Rector on all fours, trumpeting like an elephant. ‘But I’ll be doing my best to help Mr Henry Simcox.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s what my mother wants.’

  ‘I shall be sworn to tell the truth, shan’t I? On my Bible oath.’ Wyebrow gave a pious sniff. ‘I shall tell it all, exactly as I saw it happen.’

  Grace had fallen while dancing. She lay on her bed in her lace nightdress and padded dressing-gown, showing more of her white, matchstick legs than was essential for the examination of a sprained ankle. ‘Not bad, are they?’ She squinted critically downwards. ‘And they used to be absolute stunners!’

  ‘Does that hurt?’

  ‘Absolute agony! But better a little pain than no one ever coming to visit. You won’t believe this, my dear, but during the war years, all through the Blitz, the Allied Forces would have queued up to touch that ankle.’

  Fred started to bandage. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to stop dancing for a while.’

  ‘Dancing alone, ridiculous isn’t it? I do everything alone now. I can’t even have my grandchild to tea. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Nicky,’ she told him, ‘used to come bicycling over from Picton.’ It seemed he enjoyed having tea up in Grace’s bedroom, looking at the old photograph albums, the holiday snaps of St Moritz and Cannes and the Bahamas, and of the fancy dress parties at Rapstone when Simeon came dressed as Rudolph Valentino and