by Alan Clark
‘They are actually going to have a float, are they?’ I asked, from what I hoped sounded like a position of benevolent neutrality. I hadn’t yet been able to determine what Gevaert’s own position in this squabble was.
‘Well, now, you know one minute it’s on, one minute it’s off, but I think really on the whole that Nora should have her way. I’ve been thinking it over and my view is that in the interests of solidarity we should stand by her.’
I thought it would be tactless to let on that I had evidence that ‘thinking it over’ had in fact been a call from Mrs. du Chair herself, but still I didn’t see why he shouldn’t suffer a little.
‘Perhaps Mrs. Roydon would take to the idea more kindly if she was offered some role to play in the parade herself?’ I suggested.
‘You’d never get those two women on the same stage together. Just as well, eh?’ He drained his glass, chortled, and then unexpectedly added: ‘Of course, she killed her husband, you know, a very fine man. A very fine man he was, I’m given to understand. She broke his heart. He died out there.’
‘Oh, really?’ I said. ‘Out where?’
‘Ceylon. He was superintendent of some mines out there, a very decent fellow, by all accounts. Apparently her behaviour was such as to——’
‘They’re coming,’ I said. Mrs. Gevaert and Mrs. Roydon were walking across the lawn towards us.
‘Isn’t this weather lovely?’ said Mrs. Gevaert. ‘Really, it’s almost hot enough to bathe. Max, shall we go down in the car after lunch?’
Gevaert, however, had evidently decided to charge straight in, using whatever scanty cover my presence afforded. ‘Now, Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘and you too, Fleur, I’ve been talking this whole business of the festival over with young Crane here and he agrees with me, and what I feel is this, I’m sick and tired of all this squabbling about and really and truly if Nora wants to go ahead with her scheme my own view is that she should be allowed to, and that we should stand by her in the interests of solidarity.’
Mrs. Gevaert said, ‘Very well, then, Max, if you’re really prepared to halve the expense with her, then I suppose there’s no more to be said, but I do think that we owe it to ourselves to try and prevent poor Nora making too much of a fool of herself.’ She gave an anxious look at her sister-in-law.
Mrs. Roydon had evidently decided to hold her fire for the time being, although the tensed-up muscles of her neck and the curiously cocked angle of her head showed that she was restraining herself only with difficulty. ‘Well, really,’ she said.
‘You see,’ Gevaert went on woodenly, speaking very much as if from notes, ‘I feel that our presence, our association with the venture, will act as a restraining influence on—er—Nora.’
‘But, Max,’ said Mrs. Gevaert, ‘you don’t mean to say that after all this you are going to put on one of Pick’s dog-collars and go on the float yourself?’
Gevaert burped. Then said, thickly, ‘Pick tells me that there would be nothing profane about such behaviour.’
‘It’s not a question of profanity, it’s simply that the whole thing is too ridiculous. I mean, there you will be, standing about by a sham altar with Nora looking soulful—you can’t smile or wave at the crowd or anything—and Kitty making eyes at everyone and those two little Egman girls as bridesmaids—one of them’s bound to be sick—I mean do try and see, Max, how out of place it’ll all be.’
‘Apparently Canon Brooke—for whom I must say I hold no brief—has indicated that a first prize is in the offing. He is as anxious as Nora to raise the tone of this traditional occurrence.’
Mrs. Gevaert gave a quick, almost nervous, glance at her sister-in-law. ‘You can’t go against the grain, though. I mean, this is 1962 and it is well known that the tableaux in that procession get more and more lewd and common with each year …’
Ho hum, I thought, here we go again. The dispute rumbled on throughout lunch, rendered, if anything, more explosive by the continued, martyred silence of Mrs. Roydon. I got the impression that many of Mrs. Gevaert’s own remarks were designed to provoke some comment from her sister-in-law and thus draw off some of the acid that was accumulating, but if so they had no result.
Gevaert himself got increasingly jumpy and erratic in his defence, opening out in the end against me. In the hope of combining the business of creating a good impression by some officious act, and the pleasure of getting slightly and prematurely tight, I offered to help Mrs. Gevaert prepare for the evening’s ‘party’.
‘You won’t be able to do that, Crane,’ cut in Gevaert brusquely. ‘There is little Paul’s divinity lesson from four-thirty to six on Sundays. He has the choice of that or going to Evensong and for tomorrow he, and I, thought it better that there should be a tutorial.’
5 * The Reverend Pick
‘What, all that?’ said Paul.
‘Oh well, I suppose it is rather a lot,’ I answered. ‘Go as far as page 195, then.’ I opened the door. From the sitting-room several strange voices, and laughs, could be heard. ‘But we’ll have to step up the reading a bit in the future, or we won’t get through the syllabus, you know.’
‘It’s so hot,’ he whined, ‘and it makes my eyes ache. Mummy says the doctor says if my eyes ache I wasn’t to …’
I shut the door on this piece of third-hand subjective medical intelligence and hurried to my own room. I was anxious to get as much of Mrs. Gevaert’s sherry inside me as possible, and in carrying Paul’s scripture lesson on until the scheduled time I had overlooked the rule that in the country guests arrive, and parties start, very much earlier than in London. No time to shave again, I thought, rather uneasily. My face, manifestly the product of a Remington with one head broken, shone back at me from the looking-glass. I did up the top button of my shirt, pulled up my tie, and edged a slightly cleaner segment of my ‘display’ handkerchief into prominence. Thus lightly overhauled, I sauntered down the stairs and into the party.
It hadn’t occurred to me that the first person I should see on entering the room would be Major Riddle-Brede. He was wearing that same bluey-green tweed suit again, so perhaps he had bought the Bentley only second-hand.
‘How do you do,’ I said gravely, giving a small bow, as he caught my eye with a baleful, fishy glare of half recognition. He turned away at once without acknowledging the greeting, and, swerving sharply, I found myself face to face with Mrs. du Chair.
‘Well, young man,’ she said.
She was wearing yesterday’s close-fitting green dress supplemented this time by an elaborate black lace shawl that was draped over her shoulders. This she adjusted with an exaggerated flourish and, taking up the fifth position from Bousquet’s Manuel de la Choreographie (pied gauche en avant, poigne et epaule expose en ligne droit), continued:
‘And how do you like our beloved Westerlea, with all its old-world charm and busy little goings-on?’
‘Very much indeed,’ I answered, though feeling that these two particular attributes of the town suffered from being considered jointly. ‘Very much.’ Over her shoulder I could see the Reverend Pick jollying away at the centre of another group. I was not going to allow the Bentley gang to make me feel hunted, though, and, draining my glass, I took another from a tray proffered by some nameless domestic, drawn, presumably, from the staff of a neighbouring house. All the work at Pyedums seemed to be done by those whom Gevaert archaically, but correctly, described as ‘the womenfolk’.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. du Chair, ‘nobody comes to Westerlea without falling in love with it. Of course, at this time of year the trippers are rather a trial, but even so I always feel that in the evenings the town seems to recover its true character.’
‘Quite; oh, quite.’ I looked furtively round the room to see if her dear little daughter had accompanied her.
‘And I am sure you would agree that all of us do our best to preserve this atmosphere of peace and charm and make sure that it never, never becomes debased.’
‘I certainly do.’ Was it ‘do’? or ‘s
hould’ or ‘am’ or ‘would’? Why was it that these people made me incapable of even properly constructing a sentence, still less an intelligent comment? I must have another sherry.
‘Aha! Mr. Crane, already you are one of us, I can see that. In spirit you are with us. We have a word for that, you know. Of course, really it’s people who have lived in the town for more than twenty-five years, like myself and poor du Chair, although, of course, he’d only been here twenty-two before he passed away. We call them Westerlea-ers. But that’s by the by. No, what I was saying was that you would be surprised to know that those of us who have the true interests of Westerlea at heart encounter opposition from the strangest places. I could even say that in this street there are those——’ She broke off abruptly and I returned my eyes, quickly but guiltily, to her face. With an exaggerated moue she said: ‘Now then, young man, who is it that you wish to meet? No, no, I can see that you’re bored with an old woman, and heavens why shouldn’t you be?’ (If there is one feat that I find almost impossibly difficult it is to assure older women that they are not old, particularly in the wake of remarks such as this.) ‘Now you just come with me and I’ll introduce you to some of the important people in the town.’ She was steering me towards the Reverend Pick’s group.
‘No, please, Mrs. du Chair, honestly. Let’s go on with our chat. You mustn’t think …’ Something of the panic in my voice must have got through, because a look of determination spread over her face and the firm claw-like grip of those pale fingers became more insistent.
‘Now stop talking, everyone,’ she said, ‘because I want to present a young man who is already a true Westerlea-er. Even though he has only been here three days he tells me that he is already in love with our town.’
The men—the group consisted entirely of males—did stop, though with perceptible reluctance, and regarded us, and particularly me, with a glassy absence of interest. This would have amounted to indifference had it not been for the presence of a faint, though tangible, element of hostility.
‘Now, he’s Kenneth Crane. It is Kenneth, isn’t it?—hee—and this is our respected vicar, Claude Pick—cloth before cavalry, Major, or should I say black before red?—and Major Rubbin, and Mr. Clinch, and that’s Lord Grabley.’
Sure enough, it was Grabley, or at any rate it was the pink-faced man, still wearing his Guards tie and blazer, from the back of the Bentley. I avoided his eye, as I did that of the Reverend Pick, and focused on one of the other two nameless blurs, whose identity I had already forgotten.
He said, without looking at me at all: ‘Well, Nora, how’s it going? Busy as ever?’
‘Never a day goes past without something new,’ replied Mrs. du Chair in her sing-song tone, and smiling dazzlingly at the group she turned and made off, leaving me in unprepared positions with both flanks exposed.
‘Do you live here?’ I asked the nameless blur, as between equals, but impelled by a sense of urgency, none the less, in case Grabley or the Reverend Pick should fill the silence with some belligerent reference to yesterday’s fracas in the High Street.
‘Yes.’
He said it with an air of chilly finality. He smelt faintly of whisky, although the guests were being given only sherry. Golf-club breath it was, I suppose (there was a famous golf-course at Westerlea).
As if by some telepathic communication of the concept ‘golf’, the Reverend Pick started up. ‘Oho, rather, as I was saying, I always feel that the fella playing a good round of golf is giving thanks and worship—I mean, every bit as much as the chap who comes to church with a long face. Nothing to beat the blue dome of heaven, you know.’
‘Nothing like it.’
‘Enough of these weeping willies in the Government, eh?’
‘Always said we had a sporting vicar here.’
‘Actually, that’s a very important truth you’ve got there, Reverend, and I only wish that more of your cloth realized it.’
They seemed to be closing ranks. I could see only threequarter, or full, rear views of the speakers, although I could still catch the Reverend Pick’s eye if I dodged round the broad, tweedy back of Major Rubbin. Doing this, I heard, with considerable misgiving, my own voice say:
‘There isn’t much authority for that view in the Scriptures, is there?’
There was no doubt about their hostility now. Five pairs of red-rimmed, watery eyes swivelled, and focused, menacingly upon me.
‘Aha, have we a scholar in our midst?’ somebody said.
The Reverend Pick looked at me incredulously. If ever he had associated me with the driver who had perpetrated yesterday’s outrage this brief offensive burst of mine seemed to have, by its very bravado, put the thought out of his mind. For a few seconds he seemed quite pop-eyed with incredulity, his face went purple and I thought that he was going to explode; in fact, what he was doing was shaping up for a good moist sneeze which he aimed at me, and let go.
‘Bless you,’ said Major Rubbin.
‘“Bless you”, that’s good Harry.’
‘Well, I don’t see why one can’t bless a parson as much as anyone else, eh?’
‘Ha, yes, that’s an interesting point.’
The Reverend Pick, who had been wiping his nose with the back of his hand, sliced thickly through all this nonsense by saying directly, and unpleasantly, to me: ‘Are you trying to teach me my business, young man? I would have you know that I was studying the Scriptures, as you call them, before you were even a twinkle in your father’s eye, ha ha.’ He turned his plump back on me.
Alone, socially speaking, in the centre of the room I took another glass of sherry and drank it rapidly. The hubbub of the party gathered momentum. Looking round, I could identify the majority of the morning’s congregation at early Communion—particularly those, and they were many, who performed various solo exhibitionist turns of bobbing, weaving, curtseying, crossing themselves, and so forth at different tactical points during the service.
Allowing the mind to wander on these lines, and brooding dully on the snub lately administered to me by Pick, I suddenly remembered a particularly monstrous defaulting by him at that service, namely his omission to repeat the Eucharist to each suppliant. Apparently he thought it sufficient merely to pronounce the Blessing once when first calling the congregation to come up and receive the Sacrament. The more I thought about this behaviour, the more absurd and offensive it seemed. Why should his be the only church, in a town of churches, to withold this felicity? I bet it doesn’t happen at that nice Norman church in the square, I thought. I would be doing no more than a service to the congregation, to the town in fact, acting as a true Westerlea-er, if I were to denounce it. The nasty, bumptious little twerp. He required putting in his place, anyway.
‘I say,’ I said.
Nobody seemed to have heard me. There was quite a din going on, and my voice seemed to have become curiously cloyed, or treacly. But of that group Major Rubbin surely must have heard. He had his back to me, it was true, but if I reached out I could grasp his shoulder quite easily.
I did so, admittedly with rather more force than I had intended, raising my voice fairly considerably in order to break through the treacle barrier.
‘I say.’
I had their attention. In some way the room seemed quieter. ‘Why don’t you give the Blessing when you give the Sacrament?’ I looked directly at Pick as I spoke.
Everything stopped for a few seconds, then as people began to pick up the threads of their conversation again Pick said:
‘’Cause I’m as keen to get back to my breakfast, just like everybody else.’
‘Haw, haw,’ chortled one of his group.
‘Well said, jolly good.’
I still had hold, it seemed, of Major Rubbin’s shoulder. He shifted slightly, but I tightened my grip. Actual physical contact with the group seemed to have a tremendous symbolic significance and I was not going to let go until I had received a satisfactory answer.
‘What exactly do you mean by that, Reverend?
’ I asked, putting as much menace into my voice as my position allowed.
He would not stand and give battle, though, and turned his back, moving a few steps away and at the same time mumbling inaudibly to his cronies. Major Rubbin, too, at this stage moved quite brusquely so that, deprived of his support—it was evident that I had been relying on this rather more than I had realized—I staggered several paces. By the time that I had recovered my balance they had reformed their laager so that it was virtually impenetrable.
I was not going to be fobbed off. I felt that I had a good case and the very injustice of the treatment that I was getting was making me thoroughly angry.
‘As a matter of fact, I think it is a great shame that the vicar doesn’t bless us each in turn at Communion.’ These words, in the most soothing tones, came up to me from a little old lady, elbow-high, who had materialized from nowhere.
Somewhat mellowed, I took another drink from a tray that was being carried past. I knew that Westerlea would be behind me in this, and here was my fairy godmother to tell me what to do next. ‘Are you my fairy godmother?’ I asked her. Of course if she was my fairy godmother she would in fact be a beautiful princess in disguise. ‘I do hope so,’ I went on, ‘because if you are you must be a beautiful princess in disguise.’ My smile as I said this was friendly enough, but she didn’t seem to be responding with much warmth. She opened her mouth to say something, but as she did so, indeed as she proceeded with her sentence, the substance of which I cannot remember, my attention was distracted by overhearing fragments of a wholly preposterous slander that was being bandied about by the Pick ménage.
‘I am not too much to drink already,’ I bellowed at them. By God, I’d make sure that any pretence at being unable to hear me this time would seem pretty flimsy. ‘And don’t pretend that you can’t hear me because I overheard you, even though you were whispering, snivelling along …’ As I slowed down I caught sight of Gevaert on the other side of the room, eyebrows raised. Mrs. Gevaert, too, swam into my field of vision, her smile a little strained as she offered a bowl of salted almonds to Lord Crabley.
