Summer Season

by Alan Clark

  ‘Heavens,’ I said, ‘I do really feel awful; it’s the light, the glare, you know, with the humidity in here.’ I slid down off the platform, scattering dried leaf-mould. ‘Please excuse me.’

  I staggered across the lawn, clutching my head with both hands, giving what would, I hoped, when viewed from behind, seem a convincing rendering of a sick man in a hurry, and crashed through the study, past Gevaert’s desk with its pretentious ‘In’ and ‘Out’ trays, through the sitting-room—no point now in trying to bluff it out over a drink—and up to my bed, where I lay thinking over, though without much orderly arrangement, the events of the afternoon and their implication.

  ‘Mr. Crane. Mr. Crane.’ It was little Paul’s voice. ‘Are we going to have a lesson now?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I answered; ‘just coming up.’

  7 * Ponsonby

  Little Paul and I remained closeted in his room for some long hours. As tea-time passed and evening came I lost all but purely formal pretence of imparting knowledge and concentrated my energies on keeping him up there, if necessary by force majeure. As time went past, my absolutely pathological aversion to running into Mrs. Roydon again, that day at least, mounted in intensity. Where on earth were the Gevaerts? Mrs. Roydon had spoken of a furniture sale in Hastings, but it was now twenty to seven and any firm of local auctioneers must have been closed for at least an hour. Myopically, I strained to identify each car that rounded the corner by the churchyard with the Gevaerts’ prewar, but well-preserved, Rover. In the meantime Paul kept up an indignant grumble.

  ‘But what’s the time? Surely it’s time? We’ve been here ages. I’m getting so thirsty. I want to retire.’

  ‘No, no, Paul, today we’re going to make a real go of it. Your father is worried, as I am myself, that we may be getting behind with the syllabus. Now let’s get ahead for a change, shall we?’

  ‘But we’ve done tons today, absolutely tons.’

  ‘Think how pleased your parents will be if you get a scholarship,’ I said, for the seventeenth time that day. I was watching one of those rather nice open Packards that were on the market just before the war approaching on the wrong side of the road at less than walking pace, billowing gently over the cobbles on its soft springs. It stopped outside the house and a figure, youthful, it seemed, and evidently attired in some sort of uniform, alighted and rang the bell.

  After he had been there for some time he rang again.

  Evidently Mrs. Roydon too was sulking in her tent.

  ‘Shall we go and let that person in?’ I said. I felt stronger now at the prospect of company and didn’t mind going downstairs if Paul would stick by me.

  Paul, who had got up and gone over to the window, said, ‘Ugh, it’s Uncle Oliver, he’s foul.’

  ‘Oh well,’ I replied, already half across the room, ‘we’d better ask him in and give him a drink.’

  ‘Mummy and Daddy won’t let me go in Uncle Oliver’s car,’ said Paul, as we went down the stairs.

  When I opened the door I saw that from above the newcomer had presented a misleading appearance. He was older than I had thought, in his early fifties at least, and attired in the dress of a scoutmaster—although it was apparent from the close and elegant line of the shorts that these had been tailored rather than issued. Around his neck he had one of those early Jacqmar silk scarfs that carried some flippant inscription in longhand—it turned out subsequently to be ‘Qui m’aime, me suit’—and the ends of this trailed behind him as he strode, with springy step, into the hall.

  ‘Quite like Isadora Duncan, aren’t I?’ he said. ‘Hello, Paulie, not too grumpy today are we?’ and turning to me and beaming most generously: ‘I’m Oliver Ponsonby, Elizabeth’s brother. Is she or Max about at all?’

  ‘They should be back at any moment,’ I answered. ‘I’m Crane, Paul’s tutor. Won’t you come in and let me offer you a drink?’

  ‘Divine.’ He moved ahead of me into the lounge. ‘I suppose it’ll be that dreadful sherry, though. You’d have thought that Max, who is rather a fish out of water, let’s admit, if he was trying to suck up to the county would at least go to the trouble of having decent drink for callers.’

  ‘He gave them sherry at a party the other day,’ I said, ‘and nobody seemed to mind.’

  ‘I suppose they’re getting used to him. Mind you, if Max had his way the living would be ten times better, but Elizabeth has different ideas, and, of course, Max hasn’t a penny of his own, as I expect you realize.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about his private affairs,’ I answered. I had my back to him and was trying to open the small, recessed wall cupboards from which I had seen Gevaert take bottles of drink. They were both locked.

  ‘Oh, quite, but as you can understand I have to keep an eye on things, as Elizabeth’s brother and, indeed, head of the family.’

  ‘I say, I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t seem to be able to get any drink out for you, these cupboards are all locked.’

  ‘There’s usually a bottle of sherry in the lower left-hand cupboard of the sideboard in the dining-room,’ he said.

  I went out to look, and there was. Returning with it, I said, ‘Do you plan to stay long?’

  ‘On and off.’ He sat down and crossed his thin legs, which were dressed in brown full-length cashmere stockings with prominent green garter tabs. Down one side of his shorts was sewn a series of badges depicting, or commemorating, scenes from youth rallies at Champery, Bad-Gastein, Oslo, and other places.

  ‘Elizabeth wrote and told me that you would be occupying the spare room, but I’ve got very comfortable quarters in the Hind’s Head over at Wittersham—the Peewits and Otters, Hastings second troop, are having their annual camp in the grounds there.’

  What should be my answer to this? I couldn’t say ‘What fun’ or ‘How amusing’ or even ‘Very nice’—all carried a faint innuendo which I was anxious to avoid.

  I said, ‘It’s a long time since I did any scouting.’

  ‘Aha, but once, always, as I expect you know. Actually I am going to help with the harvest festival, because, of course, the local troop has a very important role to play, as you can imagine, and they aren’t very enterprisingly handled, if you see what I mean. A fresh mind coming on the scene works wonders, although I have to contend with such a lot of jealousy, not actually being attached to any particular troop myself. Old Riddle-Brede, he’s the titular head of the Scouts round here, always manages to raise some objection to my helping with the boys——’

  ‘Aha, here they are,’ I interrupted him, having noticed the Gevaerts’ car drawing up outside.

  They got out, indicating both by expression and gesture that they had recognized the Packard.

  As she came into the room, Mrs. Gevaert said, ‘Oliver, oh dear, didn’t you get my letter explaining we couldn’t put you up?’

  Gevaert stood akimbo in the doorway, frowning. I had the impression that he disapproved in general; and, in particular, of my knowing where the drinks were kept and offering one to Ponsonby.

  Ponsonby said: ‘My dears, looking so well; and, Max, you do look healthy—quite an apple cheek. It’s the country life, I suppose. Of course, don’t give it a thought about putting me up, I am staying over at Wittersham with Hastings second troop.’

  ‘Oliver, is this really a good moment to come over, with all these annual camps, and the festival coming up so soon and everything?’

  ‘Elizabeth, darling, I really thought we had got all that settled ages ago. I have every intention in helping with the arrangements for the festival, I may say, whether I am wanted or not.’

  ‘Oh dear, is that wise?’

  ‘Apart from anything else I should have thought you would both have appreciated the importance of clearing my name. Think what people would be saying if I stayed away this time, after all those beastly rumours that were being put about last year.’

  I was disappointed that before this line of conversation could be further developed a diversion was caused by th
e entry of Mrs. Roydon; Ponsonby greeted her effusively.

  ‘Fleur, darling, how nice to see you again.’ He moved over and kissed her on both cheeks saying ‘Mmm’ with each coup. ‘Lovelier than ever.’

  ‘It is nice, Oliver,’ said Mrs. Roydon, making an enigmatically desirable face. I surmised that these two had an alliance on an anti-Max basis. ‘I hope that we’re going to see a lot of you.’

  Little Paul, whose presence I had forgotten, said with assertive satisfaction, ‘Uncle Oliver can’t stay because Mr. Crane’s in his usual room.’

  ‘Ah, there’s Paulie. But, Elizabeth, he’s not quite as good looking as last year. That jowl, is it going to become just a little heavy?’ Ponsonby looked quizzically at Gevaert. ‘Of course, heredity is something one can’t get away from, but it would be such a pity—last summer I remember him so much as the shy faun.’

  Paul himself, momentarily discomfited, recovered quickly and showed himself to be an abler and a more unscrupulous tactician than I had supposed. He said to me in a piercing aside:

  ‘When I was coming back from the dentist I saw you and Kitty du Chair having a walk on the Flats.’

  Nothing that had happened so far that day had done anything, it seemed, but intensify Gevaert’s morning mood of sullen hostility and I could sense his ears pricking up, as indeed I could those of every other person in the room.

  ‘No, it wasn’t me,’ I said, quietly, but pretty intensely.

  ‘Oh yes it was; oh yes it was.’ He jumped up and down, excited at the success of his diversion. I thought that he might be on the point of breaking into one of those repetitive chants of which I had had experience during my short moments as a schoolmaster. More than ever I was determined to bluff it out.

  ‘No, no, Paul,’ I said. ‘Ha ha. It must have been some other friend of hers. I was up here correcting your essays.’

  ‘Oh, la belle Katrina,’ said Ponsonby, ‘how intense sex-life is in the provinces.’

  ‘Oliver, please,’ said Mrs. Gevaert, ‘pas devant les enfants.’

  ‘Simply a façon de parler, my dear. But, Max, how is Kitty? I know what an interest you used to take in the cultural side of her education. When she was younger, of course.’

  Gevaert, who hadn’t spoken at all since entering the room, opened his mouth and uttered his wife’s name, ‘Elizabeth——’

  ‘No, but,’ Ponsonby went on, ‘joking apart, Max—and I do know you love a tease—what I think you will really be interested in, and Paulie too, is the special mission on which I am down here.’

  I could see Mrs. Gevaert trying to catch her husband’s eye. She did not look happy.

  Paul said, ‘What is it, Uncle Oliver?’

  ‘I’m helping with a training ship.’

  ‘A training ship?’ Everybody in the room joined in this one. Even I got a squawk out of my sore throat.

  ‘Yes, it’s one of these schemes run by B.G.F.G. (The Boys and Girls Forward Group, in case you didn’t know, Max.) I think the Daily Clarion sponsors it too, or something. Anyway, the idea is that children from less settled backgrounds should mingle with the Scouts. It’s an experiment in rehabilitation.’ He drawled the penultimate syllable.

  Mrs. Gevaert said: ‘Ship? Ship? Where does it come from?’

  ‘It is more a sort of launch, I believe. The children come down by coach for the day and cruise on the canals. They learn the elements of seacraft, and are allowed opportunity to express themselves.’ Ponsonby spoke this last sentence very sanctimoniously, as if reading from a brochure.

  Paul said: ‘It sounds fun. Can I go, Mummy?’

  ‘Not by yourself, darling. Only with Daddy, or Mr. Crane.’

  I could see Gevaert’s ears pricking up at the thought of ‘mixed’ frolics below decks. As the same thought was passing through my own brain I had little difficulty in identifying it in his. He said:

  ‘I trust that there is a proper element of discipline on board.’

  ‘Loose. Loose, my dear Max, without being relaxing. A little jiving as well as work in the scuppers. But I can tell you’—he giggled shrilly—‘that some of them are only too keen to do the hornpipe.’

  In the silence that followed we all heard the front door open and footsteps in the hall. Nothing would have surprised me by now. It was only Mrs. du Chair. Very fey and flustered, she burst in and said without preliminary:

  ‘Where is Kitty? Has anyone seen my little daughter?’

  Without giving time for an answer, she went breathlessly on: ‘She didn’t come in at lunch-time, nor for tea, and now it’s an hour past supper-time. It’s so unlike her, she’s never done this before, what can have happened to my dear little daughter?’

  8 * Cumber

  At the time, of course, everyone had been soothing and placatory.

  Mrs. du Chair had capitalized her dramatic, ‘tragic’ situation to the utmost, nearly breaking down twice and requiring a firm hand and a big brandy (the lower of the recessed wall cupboards had to be unlocked) from Gevaert. But after some time it must have become plain to her that the demonstration was falling flat.

  Ponsonby said, ‘Girls will be girls.’

  Mrs. Gevaert said, ‘Don’t worry, Nora dear, it’s all part of their growing up.’

  Gevaert said, ‘No one could come to any harm in this peaceable district.’

  We had all been anxious to get on with our dinner, and the Gevaerts themselves clearly considered the despatch or neutralization of Ponsonby a problem of greater immediate importance.

  The following morning, however, I was woken at ten to seven by the ringing of the telephone. On and on and on it went, not jarring at that distance, but vibrant and rhythmical. After about four minutes I felt, in a compulsive, twentieth-century sort of way, that it had to be answered, and stumbled out of bed and on to the landing. As I did so the Gevaerts’ door on the landing below also opened, and Max muttering, in a dressing-gown, started down the stairs. The instrument was in the hall and his words came clearly up the well to me.

  ‘Hullo—Nora?—Oh—Oh, that’s bad—Yes—Could she not be staying with friends?—Yes, that is bad—Aha—Anything that I, we, can do …’

  As I listened I realized, with that same sickening contraction of the nervous system with which when at school I would hear the first rumour of some frightful epidemic, that Kitty had not returned at all that night. I do not know, looking back, why I should really have regarded it as quite so sinister, or why I should have felt it as affecting me so seriously. Perhaps I was rendered clairvoyant by having a slight temperature at the time—Pick’s cold was well under way—and having had a bad and confused night. What should I do now? Go back to bed and risk falling asleep and, inevitably, oversleeping breakfast-time? Or rise threequarters of an hour earlier than usual and hang about downstairs in cold, uncleaned rooms, spewing out germs, but ready, in Gevaert’s phrase, to ‘lend a hand’?

  I selected the latter course, and, in preparation, dodged quickly into the bathroom, which contained, I had noticed, a well-stocked medicine cupboard. Here I gargled energetically with a generous measure of T.C.P., afterwards diluting, and drinking, the remainder. Then I broke three Alka-Seltzer tablets into a bakelite tooth-mug of hot water, using this potion to wash down a handful of pills taken from another, important-looking, bottle that had an unintelligible Schweize-Deutsch name and label but appeared from the printed formula to have a quinine base.

  These improvised medications and the fact that I had put on over my pyjamas virtually every article of clothing that I had brought to Westerlea, and the fact that it was, again, going to be a very hot day, induced a powerful and insistent sweat. This, by the time we were sitting at breakfast, had built up to quite embarrassing proportions.

  ‘The tutor’s not looking at all well this morning,’ said Mrs. Roydon, emphasizing the oratio obliqua by rising in the course of her sentence and going over to the sideboard for a second helping of grapenuts. ‘Perhaps he’s worried by the news of our little friend.’

>   As my normal self I would have simpered feebly, said, ‘Oh I’m all right, really’, or something equally untrue and innocuous. But testy on a mixture of quinine and black coffee—I had no appetite—I said:

  ‘Is there any news? I thought the whole point was that there was no news.’

  ‘Of course, she’s his friend just as much as she’s ours, isn’t she, Paulie?’

  Mrs. Gevaert said, ‘Things always happen in threes: first there was Oliver coming like that, then Kitty disappearing, now this evening we’ve got Canon Brooke coming over to fix up the details of the parade, and I don’t know what sort of a state Nora will be in for that.’

  ‘That girl will be back for lunch,’ Mrs. Roydon continued. ‘Mark my words, she’s just spent the night in a field with one of the village boys. They go to public houses, you know, and it’s too much to drink with all that that involves, and then they’re too ashamed to go home until a good rough night in the open has brought them to their senses.’

  ‘Of course, it is always so difficult without a father.’ Mrs. Gevaert leaned over and patted Max’s wrist, contentedly I thought, and he grunted.

  Mrs. Roydon went on: ‘If not, of course, it’s highly likely that she’s dead—no, no, Elizabeth, it’s no good shutting our eyes to this sort of thing. These young girls they deserve half of what they get. They thumb lifts in lorries—very often they’re wearing shorts that hardly cover their thighs—and they lead the men on. What do you expect from simple working boys when their passions are aroused?’

  I felt inclined, since Mrs. Roydon had now come out into open hostility towards me, to indulge in a little cross-examination on the change of position involved in viewing potential or actual rapists no longer as brutes who ought to be hanged but as simple working boys whose passions get the better of them. But before I could frame a sufficiently acid opening question Mrs. Gevaert threw the conversational safety-valve by saying: