The Itinerant Lodger

by David Nobbs

  What could Mr Jennings have been like? Mr Jennings and Mr Grant and Mr McGregor and Mr Phelp and Veal? Veal especially. There were times when the thought of that silent presence preyed on his mind.

  Sensing his feelings, Mrs Pollard said awkwardly: “And now I have you.” She got to her feet.

  “Sit down,” said Baker imperiously, much to his amazement, and Mrs Pollard, who had never heard him speak in that tone before, could not have sat down faster if she had been the Archbishop of Canterbury.

  The stern command of his gesture made it doubly difficult for Baker to follow it up, and there were several moments of confusion before he said: “What did you get up for?”

  “To make some tea.”

  “We don’t want any tea.” He was upset by the failure of his gesture.

  “Mr Jennings always had a cup of tea about this time.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more about your Mr Jennings.” He stood up, a thing he never did in company, unless it was to offer his seat to a lady. “It’s been Mr Jennings this, Mr Jennings that all the time lately. If you’re coming in on this thing with me we’ll have enough on our hands without Mr Jennings.”

  He sank back into his seat, but the tension in the room had been increased as a result of this utterly inaccurate outburst, and the longer they sat in silence the greater it grew.

  Eventually, when it was still a little before bed-time, Mrs Pollard stood up—a brave action, under the circumstances. Nor did she let things rest there. She stood with her back to the range gazing down at Baker, as if she had just come in after a hard day with the guns and he was a hearth-rug she had killed in Nepal. He felt sickeningly hollow.

  “Before we go to bed,” she said, “would you like to have a look at Mr Veal?”

  He was astounded. Why now, after all this time? The way in which she had spoken suggested that he was being admitted to some inner sanctum and asked to share something that had previously been hers alone. He didn’t like the idea of that, but on the other hand he did want to see Veal.

  “I—yes, I—I don’t want to intrude.”

  “I don’t think you could intrude, not where Mr Veal’s concerned.”

  “I’ve been wanting to meet him.”

  Mrs Pollard led the way up the narrow, creaking stairs. It was very dark. She was panting and having great difficulty in breathing, and before they went into Veal’s room she waited for it to die down. “I always wait for it to die down,” she said. “It’s like taking your shoes off if you’re Japanese.”

  Then she opened the door, and they entered the room. It was very small. Veal lay in bed from head to foot, entirely motionless. All that were visible above the blankets were his face and the head that surrounded it, and had once given it what depth it had. But it had no depth now. Veal was a skeleton now.

  Mrs Pollard watched Baker’s face anxiously, as if he was the art master and Veal was one of her paintings. He stood with his lips parted, gazing at the whitened bones on the pillow.

  “Of course, you’re not seeing him at his best. You should have come when he was younger.”

  Baker did not move.

  “He’s lost a lot of colour.”

  Baker did not show that he had heard.

  “I wish I could get him to take something.”

  Baker did not show that he had moved.

  “You can see how handsome he was.”

  In a low, cathedral voice Baker said: “And you loved him very much?”

  “When he was younger.”

  “And you love him still?”

  “No.” Mrs Pollard slipped her hand lightly into his, and there was nothing he could do about it except shiver. “No.”

  “What did your husband think?”

  “Pollard?”

  “Yes.”

  “He never knew.”

  “Never knew?” Baker’s eyes turned from Veal for the first time, and he glanced at Mrs Pollard.

  “Nobody knew. Mr Veal least of all.”

  “But didn’t he love you?”

  “You’ve never really known him, have you?”

  Baker took a quick glance at Veal before he said: “No.”

  “He’s never exactly overflowed with love. Or hate. He’s never been a man for overflowing. But now, lately, he’s seemed to have less love than ever. And hate. Poor lamb.”

  Baker continued to stare intently at Veal. He wanted to look away, but he felt drawn towards the bed. He walked slowly forward, with his eyes fixed on the old man’s face. He felt that he would bend down and kiss him. Just as, sometimes, in a train that was travelling particularly fast, his hand had been poised on the door of the compartment, and he had been on the point of opening it and jumping out for no reason at all, so now his face was poised over Veal’s, and his body felt a thrill of horror that surged right through him. Then, just as in the train his hand would always fall limp, so the tension drained from his face and he wanted only to be sick. He went to the window, opened it with difficulty, and leant out. The cold air was refreshing, and soon he felt all right again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, closing the window behind him. “I felt funny.”

  “It’s with climbing the stairs,” said Mrs Pollard. “You’re not used to it. You ought to sit down.” Baker sat down on a wooden chair which stood near the window.

  “I’ve bad news for you,” he said.

  “Bad news?” Did she half suspect it already, he wondered.

  “It’s Veal. He’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “I’m afraid so.” He led her gently over to the bed and pulled back the blankets. He laid her hand lightly where his heart had been. “There’s no life in him.” He was shivering.

  “So he’s dead,” said Mrs Pollard, sinking into the hard chair. Baker rearranged the bedclothes as carefully as he could.

  After the first blank moments Mrs Pollard began to feel a sense of loss, vague and unrealised as yet. “He was a good man,” she said. “A good man.”

  Baker stood over her and patted her hand.

  “So he’s dead,” she said again, as if to herself. “We must arrange the bed. Do it for me.”

  “How?”

  “Just neatly. That’s all. Well, well, it’s been a long life. He’s been a good lodger to me. That’s right. Nice and neat.”

  Baker finished making the bed with great care, but, hard though he tried, there were creases and ruffles in it.

  “I’ll straighten it,” said Mrs Pollard. “I’ve tended him long enough.” With a few deft touches she smoothed the sheets and tidied the edge of the blankets. “Now we must cover him. There’s a quilt in the next room.”

  Baker fetched the quilt and they laid it over the stiff body of the dead man. Then they lifted it back so that the head was revealed to them for the last time.

  “He’s sinking fast,” said Mrs Pollard. She covered his face up again and they walked to the door. They paused before leaving the room to have a last look at the body where it lay under the quilt, and then they closed the door very swiftly with an immense feeling of relief, and tip-toed rapidly down the stairs. They sat for a few moments by the hearth, with the dying embers lighting their pale faces in the darkness of the room.

  “We must get a doctor to certify death,” said Baker.

  “No.”

  “But he’s dead.”

  Dead, yes, he was dead, but why certify it? Give him a chance, and you never knew. He might come back to life.

  “Well, if we have to, fetch Dr Holdsworth.”

  Baker fetched Dr Holdsworth from his house in the next street. He soon finished his examination and met them in the hall with a long face.

  “He’s dead all right,” he said. “It’s not easy to estimate how long. Quite a long while, though. About June, 1948, I should think. I’ll issue a certificate.”

  “Must you?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Dr Holdsworth left them, and after a few moments Mrs Pollard asked: “Would you like a little s
omething?”

  “Ought we to?”

  “I think he’d like us to.” She shivered. “I suppose we must be missing him. You never miss people until they’re gone, and then it’s too late. I think we ought to have something.”

  “All right then.”

  “What will you have?”

  “What is there?”

  “Bovril.”

  “I’ll have that.”

  Mrs Pollard made the bovril, and while the water was boiling and while they were drinking it she told him about Veal. She told him how it was in 1936 that he had appeared on her doorstep, impeccably moustachioed, in response to her advertisement.

  Anxious to improve her furniture, she had persuaded Pollard to take in someone as a paying guest. Pollard had been forced to agree and Veal had been regarded as eminently suitable. He was so quiet. Of his past they had never known anything, and there were moments when he hardly seemed to have a future. It was his present that had endeared him to Mrs Pollard and made him grudgingly acceptable to her husband.

  Veal had been a good tenant. For long periods he had just sat at home, working things out, as he called it. At first these spells of intense reflection had been interspersed with periods of violent activity. He would announce, one morning: “No bacon, egg or kidney, thank you. Just the juice of a fruit and a modicum of lightly-browned toast. I’m in strict training.” Then, after breakfast, she would hear him limbering up. Pieces of masonry would fall around her ears as he did his bicycle exercises, and sometimes the whole street would be a chaos of falling stones as he ran, discus in hand, round and round the imperfect triangle formed by Trebisall Avenue, Corporation Street and Bolsover Road. It had been an awful job, patching up the damage and concealing it from Pollard when he returned from work, but somehow she had managed it, and then Pollard had gone to war, and had not come back. But by that time the training sessions had become less and less frequent, the exercises less and less severe, until eventually he took nothing more strenuous than a short walk every three months, then every six months, then never.

  It was seventeen years ago, now, the June day on which he had last taken the air. The sky was blue, with an insistent threat of cricket, and already, at nine o’clock, it was hot. Suddenly Veal had set out on his last and shortest walk. Mrs Pollard had watched spellbound from the kitchen window. Every five minutes a leg was slowly raised, slowly urged forward, slowly lowered. He had not even reached the garden gate. Exhausted, he described a wide circle—to turn sharply was no longer within his capacity—which took him through the pitiful remains of what had once been, in Pollard’s day, a bed of prize lupins and loganberry bushes. All the time he was staring up at the sky and as he returned to the house Mrs Pollard noticed that his brow was tight with concentration and furrowed with effort. Finally, after six and three quarter trying hours and eighty-one steps, he arrived back at the front door, having completed a walk of nine feet two inches straight in each direction, plus a circle of which the diameter was six. Once inside the house he seemed to have no difficulty in climbing the stairs and when she went up to his room to enquire about his bodily needs he had been in bed, in his pyjamas. He had remained there ever since.

  At first there was a stream of callers, but after a few months it dwindled into a mere trickle of occasional visits from his brother and two friends from his flying days, R.A.F. Swabfleet and R.A.F. Pangoose. Then his brother had stopped coming, then R.A.F. Pangoose, and then, finally, R.A.F. Swabfleet. No more rent was forthcoming. For Mrs Pollard it had become a labour of love.

  “I hope you enjoyed the bovril,” she said.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “We’ll have the funeral next Tuesday.”

  Earlier. Please, he thought, please get him out of here earlier.

  “Yes.”

  “I hope they’ll all be able to come. His brother and friends.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ready?”

  “I—yes.”

  “We’ll leave the washing up. There’s no-one to see. We’re all alone in the house.”

  “He’s still here.”

  “In a sense. Are you coming?”

  “Tonight?”

  “You aren’t going to leave me alone, after that?”

  No, he thought, I can’t leave her alone, after that. And he didn’t want to be alone himself, shivering and afraid, after that. And yet, not this. Not yet. Not tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps, but not tonight. He couldn’t leave the shade of his own shadow now. The time was not yet ripe. Tomorrow…tomorrow…tomorrow…but Mrs Pollard was gazing at him, and waiting for him, and the will that impelled him was no longer his own.

  Chapter 20

  WHAT COULD HAVE GONE WRONG? THEY HAD MADE love, and yet he felt no joy. He lay back with his head on the hard bolster, watching the leaves of morning sunlight kissing the chalky old ceiling, and yet he felt no joy.

  It had not been as embarrassing as he had imagined during rehearsals. Mrs Pollard’s age, his age, the darkness, the days and weeks that had led up to it, all these had helped to make it easier. It had happened, and under the circumstances it was deeply to be regretted that he had not experienced through his whole body sensations of joy and well-being so complete that he had woken up without even being aware that he had fallen asleep.

  And then he remembered that a happy union is a thing that can come only slowly to fruition. Many people ignorantly believe that it will be roses and cream all the way. They are entirely unaware of the little strains and stresses, the problems of emotional and bodily adjustment, the personal difficulties and worries, the irrational fears, deep-seated prejudices, unhealthy complexes and crippling neuroses that will have to be overcome before they can experience that entirely new level of joy, creation, giving and understanding which can hardly even be imagined by those who have never experienced full union. It was not something that should be entered upon without a great deal of care, checking on one’s hereditary diseases, balancing one’s diet, and choosing for one’s bedroom a wallpaper that would serve to alleviate the fears and sudden shynesses that spring up naturally in the early months of an intimate relationship. It would be difficult. It was bound to be. What was not difficult was not worth attaining. A heedless action might cause deep revulsion, which might take many months to overcome. A thoughtless word, practically de rigueur in the changing room at Twickenham, could cause a sensitive bride great pain. If they had only received an adequate sex instruction, and had not gone through life in such ignorance, it would be easier. Mrs Pollard, it was true, had a previous history of sex experience, but Baker was not so naïve as to imagine that in twentieth-century England those who were married, and even those who had produced perfectly satisfactory children, had necessarily experienced to the full the entirely new level of joy, creation, giving and understanding which can hardly even be imagined by those who have never experienced full union. Love comes only with perfect understanding, perfect sympathy, and in time they would attain to love. If, after several years, one party was still not taking part in the unions, they should see a doctor. Doctors are experienced in dealing with such matters. For the moment, however, they must be patient. They must not regard each other as faultless. There would be disagreements. Wouldn’t life be rather dreary if people agreed about everything? No marriage is really healthy without its little tiffs, rows, quarrels, fights, separations and divorces. These things do not mean that it is a failure. On the contrary, they have an essential part to play in its eventual success. If they bore all this in mind, and remembered each other’s anniversaries, and showed their consideration in a thousand little ways, they would come to know each other more intimately, sympathise with each other more perfectly, harmonise more completely, love each other more deeply, and attain to the universal panacea for all mankind more easily.

  He smiled. Beside him Mrs Pollard slept, not yet the deep sleep of she who has been truly satisfied spiritually, physically and emotionally, but the sound sleep of one who is dog-tired. He smiled again. And
even as he smiled he remembered. Veal was dead.

  They were on the verge of great discoveries. For the moment, however, these would have to be postponed. There were the arrangements for the funeral to be made.

  Chapter 21

  LOCAL AIRMAN—ATHLETE MOURNED

  “No ordinary pilot”—VICAR

  Friends from the worlds of aeroplanes and athletics this week mourned the death at his Trebisall Avenue home of the former test pilot and hurdler, Mr Philip Veal.

  Born in 1899, the son of a prosperous Crewkerne butcher, Philip Veal was educated at Wellington and Oxford. His association with this area began when he was posted to R.A.F. Droppingwell in 1925. In 1929 he left the R.A.F. to become a civilian test pilot, and in 1936 he retired and went to live in Trebisall Avenue. He was unmarried and left no children. He had not been well since 1899.

  Veal, who was elected Mr Ejector Seat in 1927, made his most vital contribution to aeronautical thought, ironically enough, in testing the ill-fated Harper-Doldrum Fretwork Amphiballoon, a portion of which can still be seen in Lowestoft Museum.

  OSCAR

  Second only to his achievements in the air were Veal’s performances on the running track. Local enthusiasts will recall that he hurdled his way to victory in the Barnsley Invitation Handicap in 1933, when he was already a veteran of 34. He won the A.A.A. Championships 100 yards five times and added the 220 yards title on two occasions. He also won many victories on the continent of Europe.

  His greatest recognition came in 1928 when he was awarded the “Athlete’s Foot”, a bronze replica of a foot presented each year by the Belgian Sports Writers’ Association to outstanding European athletes.

  CLEANER

  Among the many dead present at his funeral service held in St Paul’s Church, Purdle Dip Bottom, on Tuesday were: Mr Terence Veal, brother; Mrs Madge Pollard, landlady; Messrs R.A.F. Swabfleet and R.A.F. Pangoose, colleagues; Baker; Air Vice Marshal Sir Godwin Colander, Air Vice Marshal; Mr Tod “Biceps” Wallis, trainer and raconteur; Mr Eustace Begg, friend; Mrs Sally Turnover, cleaner; the Rev. E. A. Greensward, vicar; and Mr Alastair Bardwell, of the Amateur Athletic Association.