Titmuss Regained

by John Mortimer

  ‘Or shall we say pushing your luck?’ Fred noticed that Leslie Titmuss had come very close to him, so that their faces were almost touching. It was an unnerving way he had, Fred remembered, when he was a perpetually obtrusive small boy.

  ‘Say what you like.’

  ‘Then will you kindly remove my wife’s name from your list of members?’

  ‘Of course,’ Fred told him. ‘If that’s what she wants.’

  Leslie left then, feeling, with some contempt, that his victory had been far too easy. Fred spent the next two hours listening to long stories of vague complaints, wishing he could threaten his patients with Dr Salter’s horrible black bottle, and being sorry for Jenny Titmuss.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was now early autumn, the sunniest time of the year, with the leaves only just on the point of changing, a smell of damp earth in the woods and heavy dew on the bracken fronds or sparkling in spiders’ webs among the ripe blackberries. There were mushrooms and toadstools scattered like lost golf balls on the Rapstone downland as the District Council postponed its decision. Leslie Titmuss got into his car to drive to his Ministry each morning before the day warmed up and he would shiver a little at the hint of frost soon to come. It was in those days, when Kev the Rev. filled his church with giant marrows, ripe apples and bunches of corn, which were duly prayed over by a congregation of stockbrokers and P.R. men kneeling in rustic ritual, that the marriage of Hector and Daphne Jones suffered an irretrievable breakdown.

  Their daughter Joan Baez Jones had grown into a large, awkward thirteen-year-old whose passage through the Nature Area was noisy and destructive. She often disturbed nesting birds, broke hospital cages and, on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, rode her bicycle over a nest of curlew’s eggs. When Hector lost his temper with her daughter, Daphne accused him of preferring the young of animals, who proliferated thoughtlessly and with no idea of schooling or career prospects, to that of their own child. Thinking over what she said, in the quietness of the woods, Hector had to admit that his wife had a point. The fury which he had directed at the thoughtless Joan Baez would have turned into gentle and loving concern if she had only been born a badger cub. It was when he was out watching badgers that it happened. He came home a little before dawn, put his gun in the shed where he always hid it, and was surprised to find the house lit up and unlocked. He went upstairs to find the beds unslept in and the suitcases gone from the top of the wardrobe.

  In the sitting-room he found a note written on a page torn from one of his daughter’s school exercise books.

  Dear Hector [he read with mounting excitement] I have rung Barry and he’s coming up at once to fetch us in his car. It’s obvious you prefer anything that has four legs on it to your wife and daughter. Often I think you haven’t noticed how many legs I’ve got for a long time and I’ve had about enough of it. I don’t think you give a damn about Joannie and her school problems. She complains that all you’ve told her about nature study her teacher disagrees with, particularly when it comes to the intelligence of such things as foxes which everyone knows fully deserve to be treated as vermin. Anyway, Barry has a couple of rooms over his shop which he says we can use till the Council finds us something. I’m going to try and get back into the Social Services. I’ll put nothing in the way of your seeing Joannie, not that I suppose you’ll bother. But if you have her out I’m not letting you take her into the woods. She’s a young woman now, though I don’t suppose you’ve noticed that either.

  Hector read the note over again, and a third time, savouring its news to the full. In such a way do punters read telegrams telling them they’ve won the pools, applicants enjoy the good news of their selection for important jobs or actors relish favourable notices. The silence, the luxury of his new-found, hard-won solitude lapped around him like the water in a warm and comforting bath. He climbed the stairs, undressed as far as his shirt, vest and underpants, a comfortable form of night attire of which his wife disapproved, and fell asleep breathing gratitude on Barry Harvester, the Hartscombe herbalist, who had brought him the peace he had longed for.

  The next morning he rose early and enjoyed his silent breakfast and his walk into the Nature Area. Now all he had to fear was the time when the schoolchildren came filing along the nature trails. They had to be watched for flower picking and wandering from the marked footpaths, just as the senior citizens on their organized rambles had to be prevented from picnicking or sitting on the grass. He wondered, as he often did, what the flowers and the animals had to do with these forked radishes, dressed in bobble hats and anoraks, who did nothing but destroy their peace.

  With his wife and daughter gone, Hector Bolitho Jones hoped that, in time, other human intruders would go also. In his new-found happiness he had forgotten the prospect of a great sea of human faces surrounding the Nature Area with the coming of Fallowfield Country Town. This was the concern of politicians in distant offices, whose days were spent far from the cry of curlews or the late fluttering of fritillary butterflies.

  ‘We have got him,’ Ken Cracken said, ‘on toast.’ He spoke with his mouth half full of the sausage sandwich Joyce had got him from the Ministry canteen. It was their habit to arrive at work with the cleaners and, although their nights had been devoted to love, at dawn their talk was all of politics.

  ‘You’re very sure of yourself.’ Joyce Timberlake spoke in admiration.

  ‘I’m sure of the Worsfield District Council. They’re about to put a new town in Leslie’s back garden. He won’t just have to go green. He’ll have to become a wet. Can’t you see the headlines: TITMUSS TO ACT AGAINST FREE MARKET ECONOMY. And at that moment’ – Ken Cracken refreshed himself from a plastic mug full of strong, sweet, instant coffee – ‘he’s going to lose the Prime Minister’s love. It’ll really be quite heartbreaking.’

  At which moment the telephone rang. Leslie Titmuss had got in earlier than the earliest cleaner and wanted to see his second-in-command without delay. ‘On toast,’ Ken said as he moved triumphantly towards the door, ‘with a nice dollop of sauce on the side.’ The image seemed to fuel his hunger and he returned to his desk and took a final mouthful of sausage sandwich to sustain him on the journey upstairs.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about the Rapstone development.’ Leslie sat very still and spoke quietly. The room was as impersonal as the top of his desk, where a framed photograph of Jenny stood alone and out of place on the bleak stretch of mahogany. Ken Cracken smiled, invited himself to a chair and sat with his legs stretched out, still thoughtfully chewing. ‘I thought you might,’ he said.

  ‘I’m told the District Council’s inclined to say yes.’

  ‘Well, no wonder. After your smashing speech to the builders.’

  ‘As I tried to explain to you, Kenneth. A new town’s going to upset a lot of ordinary voters.’

  ‘Ordinary voters, eh?’ Ken Cracken was relishing the moment. ‘Well, we mustn’t upset them. As I always say, we ought to have abolished local government long ago. It’s always been a pain in the bum. Still, if that’s their thinking …’

  ‘I’m assured it is.’

  ‘And you don’t want the damn thing built …’

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘I mean, if their decision is likely to be contrary to the present high priority the government’s giving to the preservation of wild life, wilderness areas and broad-leafed woodlands …’ Ken spoke with a kind of brutal cynicism which was almost a parody of the way in which his Secretary of State used to mock the ideas of the green welly brigade.

  ‘Advise me, Kenneth. I’d be very grateful.’ Leslie’s voice had become gentle, almost caressing, a dangerous signal which Ken Cracken was unwise to ignore.

  ‘Well, if you really don’t want it to happen, just say the building of a new town is too important a matter to be decided at local level and you’re calling in the papers and ordering a full public inquiry. You could say that, couldn’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Of cours
e’ – Ken Cracken smiled with delighted understanding – ‘now you’ve gone and bought yourself a house in the place, I do see the difficulty.’

  ‘I couldn’t say it. You’ll have to say it.’

  ‘Me? But you’re the boss …’

  ‘Exactly. That’s why I’m telling you what to do.’

  Ken felt a moment of uncertainty as he watched Leslie get up and go to the window.

  ‘You can say that as I’ve bought a house in Rapstone it would be inappropriate for me to make the decision. Go on to say that you have advised me to order a public inquiry as the matter is too important to be settled at local level. Not a brilliant phrase, Ken. Not headline stuff. You’ll never make a first-class speech. But it’ll do. You’ll say that you recommended putting the question to a full public inquiry so all the objectors could have their say. You’ll make it clear that was your advice. You can ring Tim Warboys on the Fortress and start leaking the story now.’ Leslie looked down into the street below. The workers at H.E.A.P., self-important and anxious men in mackintoshes, bright chattering girls, older women loitering to exchange gossip, postponing for as long as possible the start of another day in the typing-pool, were arriving, stepping off buses or emerging from the Underground. They would initial files, stamp orders, copy letters, photostat plans and slowly but surely England would change. Old buildings, streets filled with memories, would tumble to make way for office blocks, desirable apartments or shopping centres. Fields once sensitive to the seasons would freeze into commuter towns, drive-in supermarkets or eight-lane motorways. Often such changes occurred after the flicker of a word processor and initials scrawled by someone who would never see the results of their decision. Leslie looked down as his staff hurried up the big stone steps into the Ministry and, in the silence, Ken Cracken so far forgot himself as to say, ‘You can’t expect me to do that.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Ken, my lad? Are you hoping to embarrass me?’ Leslie looked from the window to his Junior Minister.

  ‘No. Why should I?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps you want to take over my job. You like living dangerously, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Trouble with you, Ken, is that you missed the war. Oh dear, oh dear, what a pity we can’t organize a nice little bit of fighting so you could work off some of your high spirits. I might persuade the Prime Minister to invade the Scilly Isles. You’d appreciate that, wouldn’t you?’ Leslie sat behind his desk now and looked like an indulgent headmaster half-amused by an inadequate pupil’s tiresome habit of letting off stinkbombs in the lavatory. ‘I can imagine you jumping off the landing craft, shrieking with excitement. Until they started chucking live bullets at you, of course.’

  ‘Well, if that’s all for the moment …’ Ken sat forward but didn’t get up as there was more to come.

  ‘You were even too young for National Service, weren’t you?’ Leslie, who had done his time in the Pay Corps, spoke like a veteran of World War Two. ‘What a shame. You might’ve enjoyed the square-bashing. The spit and polish would’ve turned you on. It might, I say it just might, have saved you from making a rare idiot of yourself in other people’s woods at night.’

  ‘Leslie’ – Ken tried a friendly smile which came out a little crooked, hoisting his moustache up on one side only – ‘I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Have you not? War games. That’s what I’m talking about.’

  ‘War … ?’

  ‘Don’t look so bloody innocent. I gather it’s the latest craze among hooray bankers, building tycoons and upwardly mobile politicians. Provided they’re young enough to have missed the real war, of course. It’s taken over from pushing people into rivers.’

  There was another silence. Leslie looked down at the naked wood on top of his desk and seemed to sink into deep thought. Ken, wondering if it were all over now, got up as quietly as possible, but stood still when his superior looked at him again. ‘You leak what I told you to leak, my lad,’ he said. ‘And stand by it, or I might leak the news of the daring commando raid with paint-guns in the Rapstone Nature Area. What are the ordinary voters going to think of that, eh? A so-called responsible Minister playing silly games of soldiers.’

  ‘I’ll give Warboys the story.’ Ken now needed no more time to make up his mind. ‘From a government source. That do?’

  ‘Perfectly. Oh, and you can say I’ll stick by the finding of the public inquiry. Whichever way it goes.’

  ‘Of course.’ Ken was on his way to the door. ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘Only one thing. Don’t eat the canteen sausages for breakfast. They spurt grease all over your tie.’ And here Leslie Titmuss did a parody of Christopher Kempenflatt’s old Etonian accent. ‘Rather lets the Ministry down, that sort of thing. Wouldn’t you agree, old chap?’

  Joyce looked at her scowling Minister of State when he got back to his room and decided that, in one way or another, Titmuss must have slid off the toast.

  ‘There’s going to be an inquiry,’ Ken told her. ‘Leslie must have a lot of faith in it. He’s going to accept the result, whatever it is.’

  ‘So he’ll get away with it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No town in his back garden, and no political fall-out. I always told you. It doesn’t do to underestimate Leslie.’

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see about that, won’t we? Just for now, I’ve been given a job.’

  ‘In Northern Ireland?’ Joyce looked at him with pity.

  ‘Oh, very funny! No. I’ve got to ring Tim Warboys at the Fortress.’ Beneath his moustache, Ken’s lips pursed as though he were about to take some peculiarly nasty medicine. ‘I’m going to square the press for Titmuss.’

  IN MY BACK GARDEN IF YOU LIKE. That was the headline of Tim Warboys’ Whispers from the Gallery column and it went on:

  Leslie Titmuss might have been put in an embarrassing position by the proposal to build a new town next to his lately acquired home, Rapstone Manor. Opposition hopes that Titmuss would block the development for selfish reasons were dashed by the Secretary of State’s decision to leave the question to the high-flying Ken Cracken, Titmuss’s Number Two. Cracken has decided that there should be a full public inquiry and Titmuss has told friends and Cabinet colleagues that he’ll accept its findings. Once again the man who the Prime Minister calls ‘our Leslie’ has shown he is a Minister who accepts democratic decisions and the changing face of England. What a contrast to such out-dated snobs as the Labour Member for Smoketown South who’s burnt his cloth cap and is trying to oil his way into White’s Club in the faint hope of being bought a small dry sherry by a Duke.

  One evening not long after he’d read this paragraph, designed to preserve its author’s position as the government’s favourite journalist, Fred got a telephone call which astonished him and led him to turn down the volume of his Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker record. His caller was Mr Chatterbox of the Fortress.

  ‘We’ve got a story about you, Dr Simcox. Rather an odd one.’ Tim Warboys, calling from his bed which contained an insatiable married lady from the Home Maker section of his paper, sounded exhausted. ‘Do you really think that eating rabbits is the way to avoid heart disease?’

  ‘Absolutely not. I’ve never said that.’

  ‘Apparently it was in some sort of manifesto you signed.’

  ‘Whoever told you that?’

  ‘Come on, Dr Simcox. You know we don’t reveal our sources. But this one couldn’t be more reliable. Was it in this document of yours?’

  ‘Well, yes. But I didn’t sign it –’

  ‘Do you eat a lot of rabbit, Dr Simcox?’

  ‘Not since I was a small boy and my mother made rabbit pie.’

  ‘Delicious, was it?’

  ‘Not very. My mother wasn’t much of a cook.’

  Tim eluded another sticky embrace from his partner to make a note on his bedside pad. Then he said, ‘Well, thank you, Dr Simcox. I think we can
get a paragraph out of that. Oh, by the way, wasn’t your father a pinko vicar? Always marching for peace and stuff like that?’

  ‘Well, yes. But look. I want to make it absolutely clear that I don’t think there’s the slightest connection between heart disease and eating rabbits.’ But the telephone was buzzing nonchalantly and Tim Warboys had turned, in a desultory way, to satisfy his partner once again.

  This strange conversation produced the following paragraph written by Tim Warboys under the headline COUNTRY G.P. BASHES BUNNIES:

  It’s a case of ‘run rabbit run’ in the Rapstone Valley. Hartscombe doctor Fred Simcox says other varieties of meat are responsible for all sorts of ills, including heart attacks. The bunny-bashing doctor lives, it seems, on rabbit pie as his mother made it. ‘Delicious,’ he says, ‘and twice as tasty as chicken.’ Older readers may recall the name Simcox. Fred’s father, the Rev. Simeon Simcox, was always popping up in the Swinging Sixties when he led marches for the C.N.D., the A.N.C. and any other set of letters that took his fancy. Has Fred inherited his father’s quirky love of lost causes? He has admitted he is desperate to help the owners of the local ‘rabbit hacienda’ which is in danger of being swallowed up by a new town. And the Rapstone rabbits are in danger of being swallowed up by the Doctor’s health-conscious patients!

  As a result of this story Fred wrote a number of letters to the Fortress and left messages for Tim Warboys, who never returned his calls. Finally he was rewarded by a short piece in the Healthy Living section of the paper headed IS BUNNY DOCTOR RIGHT? EXPERT SPEAKS OUT. It continued:

  Bernard Wheatkins, Professor of Dietetics and Longevity at the University of Worsfield, has backed rabbit-eating G.P., Fred Simcox. Professor Wheatkins, who first established the connection between arthritis and fried fish, told our medical correspondent, ‘Rabbit meat may help keep many people free of heart failure. Research has shown that poachers in the early years of this century, who fed mainly on rabbit, lived to an extraordinary age.’ The Professor, who has made a close study of the psychology of illness, says, ‘Rabbits are life-loving and active little blighters. Think of how they breed. Who knows if this positive attitude may not derive from the chemical make-up of the food product?’ He foresees a day when bunny may take the place of beef at the British Sunday lunch table.