Summer Season

by Alan Clark

  ‘I don’t think there’s any need for that. You don’t want your people to know that you’re in trouble, do you?’

  ‘Trouble?’ I said weakly. ‘I’m not in trouble, surely, Inspector.’

  After a bit he sensed my decision not to confess and lost interest.

  ‘Well, I’ll have to leave you to the tender mercies of our Sergeant Chambers,’ he said, and rose to his feet.

  That couldn’t mean the third degree, could it? No, surely not. ‘Could I please have a glass of water?’ I called after him as he went out of the door. He didn’t answer.

  Then finally Chambers reappeared. He did no more than stick his head round the door and say:

  ‘You can go now. But don’t think we’ve finished with you, my lad, because we haven’t.’

  As I went out I saw by the station clock that it was now twenty past three. The pubs would be absolutely and totally shut. In a parched, trembling condition I started up the hill towards Old Westerlea and Scattercrumb Street.

  When I opened the door of Pyedums and saw Gevaert in a dog-collar I thought, momentarily, that my experience at the police station really had unhinged my mind. Then I remembered his role in the ‘marriage’ tableau.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, as we collided in the porch, ‘I thought you were the taxi.’

  ‘It’s too awful, Max,’ said Mrs. Gevaert. ‘I said quarter to four, but I suppose they may have thought I said quarter past.’

  ‘Never mind,’ hysterically called out Mrs. Roydon, ‘we’ve got masses of time.’

  To my alarm I saw that she was wearing what purported to be some sort of wedding dress. I had forgotten that among the decisive measures taken after Canon Brookes’s visit had been the substitution of Mrs. Roydon for the grief-stricken Mrs. du Chair. There were also two strange girls, about ten years old, dressed rather prettily as bridesmaids and holding bunches of flowers, and little Paul, looking odious in black velveteen shorts and a white satin blouse.

  ‘I do hope everything was all right,’ said Mrs. Gevaert to me in a stage whisper. ‘You’ve been away such ages.’

  ‘Oh yes, thanks,’ I said, then lied: ‘They made a mistake. The only thing is I’m terribly thirsty.’

  ‘Yes, of course, you must be. Go and get a good drink of orangeade or something from the dining-room cupboard.’

  Once in the dining-room I selected not orangeade but ‘something’. Namely, dry sherry and soda-water; and a very good sparkling, tangy, refreshing beverage it made, to start the day on. As I took a second helping I justified my action by the reflection that no liquid or, indeed, solid had passed my lips since the last of the Plymouth gins taken at the Hind’s Head the previous evening.

  At that moment Gevaert came into the dining-room. He came straight up to me and I formed the opinion, from his heavy and odorous breathing, that he had already had ‘a couple’. ‘Well, Crane, you’ve been a long time with Sergeant Chambers.’

  ‘Yes. There was a good deal that they wanted to ask me about, but I think I’ve given them most of the answers now.’ If he thought he was going to gloat he was in for a nasty shock.

  ‘Oh, really. Did they ask about me, mention me at all?’

  ‘Indeed they did. They wanted to know if I had ever been down to some beach cabin that you apparently own at Cumber, and in particular if I had seen you there on the Wednesday afternoon.’

  ‘My God! My God, Crane, they didn’t! Is it not incredible the lengths to which people will go in prying?’ Mumblingly, he moved over to the locked section of the sideboard which he opened and took out a bottle of Black and White whisky. ‘Of course I have this small cabin, I expect you knew, didn’t I tell you? No? Well, anyway, for a man like myself who requires creative outlets it is essential that there should be some little den’—he leaned over me and splashed a token quantity of soda-water into his glass—‘some place where he can get away from it all. But I can tell you the hostility and suspicions that abound in this place …’

  ‘They seem to think that you may have something hidden away there,’ I said, beginning to enjoy myself.

  ‘Fantastic,’ said Gevaert, and then, in straight German, ‘fantastische.’ In the middle of a wide-armed gesture of dismissal he seemed to have been suddenly reminded of the clothes that he was wearing. Plucking at the cloth, he said to me, ‘How can I go through with this absurd pageant under these conditions?’

  ‘Max, Max!’ came his wife’s voice, ‘there’s someone at the door, it must be the taxi at last, do go and let them in.’

  But it wasn’t the taxi. It was Mrs. du Chair, bravely holding back her tears and dressed in the fine old white lace veil or whatever it was that she had worn at her wedding and that her mother had worn at her wedding. ‘Hallo-oo, everyone,’ she called in a high, thin voice.

  ‘Nora!’ said Mrs. Gevaert, unable to keep the panic out of her voice.

  ‘Come, now, what is this,’ said Gevaert huskily. ‘Surely we had agreed that Fleur was to play the part——’

  ‘Nora,’ said Mrs. Roydon sharply—I think it was the first time that I had seen her address Mrs. du Chair directly—‘you’re not in a fit state to take this on.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ replied Mrs. du Chair in a brittle wail, ‘I just felt I couldn’t let everyone down.’

  ‘It’s far too late now,’ said Mrs. Roydon. ‘Look, we’re all dressed and waiting.’

  ‘What about me? I’m dressed too,’ said Mrs. du Chair, great tears welling up around those large pale eyes.

  ‘I like Kitty’s mother’s dress best,’ piped up one of the little girls.

  ‘This is the end,’ said Mrs. Roydon. ‘Max, have you no authority whatsoever? Can’t you see that this woman’s practically hysterical? Will you please try and get some sense into her?’

  ‘Don’t call me “this woman”. You cold, cold harpy.’

  At that moment the door-bell rang loudly.

  ‘Taxi. Taxi. Taxi.’ Little Paul began jumping up and down.

  In the ordinary way a scene such as this would have had me prostrate and gasping by now, but coming on top of my ordeal at the police station it seemed quite negligible.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said to Mrs. Gevaert, ‘I’ll go and let them in.’

  Outside the house was parked one of those old, long-wheelbase, Austin hire cars that have strapontin seats. A small red-nosed man in a mackintosh said, or rather whined, to me: ‘Gevurt? To take six to Chandler’s Yard and set down?’

  ‘That’s right, they won’t be a minute.’

  ‘Didn’t say nothink about waiting,’ he grumbled.

  When I got back to the lounge Gevaert was standing, like Solomon, between the two middle-aged ‘brides’. ‘You shall both go,’ he was saying. ‘You shall both go and we will speak with Pick, and if necessary with Canon Brooke, and some equitable solution will be arrived at.’

  17 * I Raise a Fire

  I watched them pile in and go grating off in the direction of Church Square, the old taxi creaking and lurching on the cobbles, then I went back into the house. I was irritated to find, when making a short detour through the dining-room, that Gevaert had managed by some sleight of hand to lock both drink cupboards before leaving. This discovery intensified the almost pleasurable feeling of persecution, of martyrdom, that enveloped me. It was a sort of maudlin, sentimental fatalism, with a tinge of heroics thrown in—let ’em all come, I was innocent after all. In this detached, philosophical frame of mind I felt that the moment was ripe for entering some short, moving, prose passage in my slim black notebook and I made my way up the stairs and installed myself, book on lap and pencil poised, in the window of little Paul’s room.

  Through the open window came the sounds of distant activity and preparation, carried on the breeze from Chandler’s Yard where the parade was assembling. At intervals groups of young, lower-classish people would come wandering down the street making giggling, whooping sounds. I reflected that they seemed indistinguishable from ‘the children from less settled backgrounds’
who had romped in the Warwick. The atmosphere was highly charged with fiesta. Later, I thought, I might go out myself and take some notes on the whole thing.

  When I awoke from the sleep which had crept up on me I found that it was twenty past six. In little more than half an hour the first of the floats would be grinding out of Chandler’s Yard at the start of its tortuous journey up the High Street, round and down by the ring road, and on to the Flats where the judges’ stand was placed. I didn’t want to miss the beginning of the parade, feeling that I might, if given sufficient encouragement, go so far as to shy a tomato or other missile at Gevaert when he went rumbling past. Also, I was suffering from a return, in aggravated form, of my original raging-thirst condition and I wanted to put this right before the festivities got under way.

  It was in a state, therefore, of guarded optimism that I made my way down Westerlea Hill. But by the time that I had reached a vantage point in one of the streets through which the parade was due to pass this mood had largely vanished owing to the disagreeable jostling to which I was being subjected from the crowd. It seemed to consist, in the district that I had selected for my own vigil, of beery louts dressed in purple-and-green sweaters, or zip-up leather motor-cycling jackets, who seemed well known to one another and highly appreciative of their own jokes. Was that the big Scout’s laugh I could hear? I soon began to feel rather out of place as I stood there, still wearing my blue suit and clutching my notebook. After a few minutes I started to make my way across towards the Hind’s Head, hoping that the landlord wouldn’t recognize me from the evening before and that there hadn’t been any ‘inquiries’ by Chambers. I chose the public bar this time, so as to avoid any associative jogging of his memory. It was very crowded, I was glad to note, and I ordered a pint which I drank fluently, afterwards wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

  The crowd in the bar began to thin out as I ordered my third pint. It seemed that the parade was really getting under way at last and the landlord himself began to get a bit restive. He came round from behind the bar and went over to the window from which little, save the jostling backs of spectators on the pavement, could be seen. Feeling pretty strange with all this bitter ale mixing fluidly with the sherry and soda, I joined him.

  The noisy, uninhibited behaviour of the crowd reminded me of something that had happened in Chandler’s Yard the day before. To make conversation I asked him:

  ‘Wasn’t there some incident connected with the “Cider-making” tableau last year?’

  ‘Nur,’ he said, hanging on the syllable in a long undulating jeer of dismissal. ‘Nothing to speak of.’

  ‘Major Riddle-Brede doesn’t seem to treasure very fond memories of it.’

  ‘Nur, it was just that some of the lads on the float they was a bit merry, see. Then young Len Barratt ’e was took ill all of a sudden like and threw up just as they was goin’ past the stand.’

  ‘Aha!’ I said. The excitement of the crowd was infectious and I felt a desire to go back into the street and mingle with them. I finished the pint very quickly and, putting the mug down on an adjacent table with only a very slight error of judgment, I said, ‘Well, see you later.’ At the door I added, ‘Pub-propraytor.’ I don’t know why I did this; at the time it seemed witty, and friendly.

  When I had got back to a position from which it was possible to observe the procession itself several of the floats had already gone past. It was plain that the more respectable tableaux were being sent in first so as to preserve some show of propriety for as long as possible. At that moment ‘Merrie England’ was passing by; three men dressed as beefeaters—any one of whom could have been ‘George’, I looked at them benevolently—were in the company of another dressed in the popular conception of an executioner in a black eye-mask, shirt-sleeves, and breeches. He stood by a block with an axe in his hand. There were also three girls of angular, upper-class mould who were dressed for Morris dancing.

  Hard on their heels, with its tractor grinding deafeningly in bottom gear, came ‘The Marriage Party’. To my amusement I saw that Mrs. Roydon and Mrs. du Chair had both made it, so any intercession by Pick or Canon Brooke must have been on strictly compromise lines. They stood there as if in a tumbril, wreathed in martyred gloom, while Gevaert, convincingly attired as a curate, shifted a small black volume—Bible? Prayer-book?—from hand to hand, moving his lips occasionally. Behind them little Paul and the girls, looking spoilt and cross, sucked their thumbs, while still farther back, behind a makeshift screen, a crazy-looking labourer cranked energetically at a barrel-organ that emitted, again and again, the strains of ‘Here Comes the Bride’.

  This spectacle elicited a good deal of comment, the majority of it indecent, from the crowd.

  ‘The Marriage Party’ was the last of the respectable tableaux. The transition to those of a more ‘popular’ flavour was marked, not inappropriately, by the passage of the next float. This was, as far as could be judged, a derelict fishing-boat that had been hoisted on to a trailer and filled with blazing pitch. In the prow several participants stood and at intervals fed the flames from buckets. Other, lesser, acolytes accompanied the tableaux on foot carrying blazing torches. The whole spectacle was most impressive and, indeed, alarming as at intervals the flames, several feet high, would lick upwards and outwards in menacing fashion and the crowed would recoil and cry excitedly with horror and excitement.

  The smoke was too thick and the confusion too great for me to catch the title, but I assumed that it was some sort of symbolic witch-burning or other warning to heretics of the immediate post-Reformation period. It was followed, though not closely, by ‘A Day on the Beach’. I looked keenly for signs of lewdness, but could detect none, although the spectators seemed to enjoy it none the less and addressed a variety of remarks to the participants, particularly to the rather pretty shop-assistant whom I had noticed working in Flowers’ on the day of the crash and who was now looking pale and cold in a red bikini.

  The next one up was ‘Cider-making’. It passed by in relative silence and it was hard to tell exactly what the players were meant to be doing. One thing plain, though, was their indulgence in the sensation—comparatively rare in Western males—of giggling. The float seemed to rock, or undulate, more than others, and I wondered about the chances of a repetition, at some later stage, of last year’s strictly medical episode.

  The next tableau carried the title ‘What the Butler Saw’. A youth, whom I recognized from the length of his sidewhiskers as Kitty’s friend who used to hang about outside Woolworth’s, was wearing the clothes of a waiter from the local Trust House (they were too small for him) and bent at the keyhole of a door on the other side of which a scene of conventional lechery enjoyed sporadic bouts of animation.

  A man with over-red face, wearing a monocle, a deer-stalker hat, and, I was not displeased to see, a badly cut suit of a bluey-green colour, made periodic lunges at, and half-hearted pursuits of, a young girl who retreated first round one then another side of a large bed. ‘By Gad’ and ‘I say there’ shouted the lecher, in an exaggerated parody of a county accent. The girl herself wore long black nylons fastened by pink garters, a black tu-tu skirt about seven inches long, and the blouse, bib, and frilly hat of a nineteenth-century domestic servant. She had very pretty legs, I had to admit, and a shapely figure. Wasn’t there, furthermore, something familiar about the way she moved? Wasn’t it …? Yes, it was.

  ‘Kitty!’ I yelled. ‘Hey, Kitty!’ I struggled through the crowd and ran along beside the float.

  ‘For God’s sake what are you doing? Everybody thinks I’ve murdered you.’

  ‘Thinks what?’ she shouted.

  I took a running jump and clambered up on to the trailer, ‘I’m practically under open arrest for kidnapping you,’ I said.

  ‘Mmm, how exciting. Actually Ma’s the one who’s going to murder me when I get back, brr.’

  ‘Feeling cold?’ I asked, and put an arm round her waist.

  This infuriated the crowd and their pr
otests grew louder and more direct. ‘’Ere, get orf it.’

  ‘Wot’s ’e doing?’

  ‘Nark it, mate.’

  ‘’Ave a go, chum,’ and so on.

  ‘You must get down, actually,’ said Kitty. ‘You’re spoiling the show and making everyone livid.’

  ‘But where have you been? What have you been doing?’ I almost screamed.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t going to go in that smelly old wedding thing with Ma and Max and people, and anyway Ron’—she indicated the ‘Butler’—‘and me had the idea of doing this one evening when we were out at the White Rock Pavilion and then I thought why not stay away until it’s all over and anyway after one night I was too afraid to go back.’

  ‘Well, it’s wonderful to see you back and alive,’ I said lamely.

  Already I was being jostled by the stage lecher, who kept saying—still in his ridiculous parody of a county accent—‘What’s going on there?’ ‘I say let’s have a bit of peace, shall we?’ and also, unaccountably, ‘Mind your backs, please,’ and plucking at me.

  ‘Go on, Ken,’ said Kitty, ‘do get off. We want to get on with the act.’

  Reluctantly I allowed myself to be pushed off the float and missing my footing I fell in the road, to the accompaniment of a loud cheer from the spectators. Picking up my small, black notebook and breathless with excitement and heartburn from the beer, sherry, and soda-water, I panted after them.

  Soon, however, my footsteps flagged and I was overtaken by a strange float, then shortly afterwards by another. After about a quarter of an hour I realized that I was bringing up the rear of the procession and that the crowd was closing in behind me, jeering and laughing. Inside my head people were beating drums.

  When finally we arrived at the Flats the tableaux were all lined up in front of the judges’ dais. From this erection, a scaffolding framework covered in green canvas, the arbiters of taste and quality gazed down with pursed mouths upon the jacquerie that milled about at their feet. They were illumined, luridly, by the flames of the blazing pitch that was parked very close to them. There was Pick, Canon Brooke, Riddle-Brede, three strange women of whom one must, I thought, be the high-voiced sadist that I had overheard with Pick while I was in the committee lavatory, and Ponsonby—how on earth had he got up there?—and—yes, it was, the police inspector, now in mufti, who had called me Kenneth at intervals during the third-degree session that morning.