by David Nobbs
‘Hello, Hillers,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Hello, Henry. Oh it is good to see you. One of the worst things about being a novice nun was not seeing my friends.’
Henry’s heart sank. They were in for an evening of play-acting.
‘And your parents, surely?’ said Olivia.
‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Anna. She flashed a defiant look at Henry and Hilary.
‘I could never understand that,’ said Peter Matheson. ‘I should have thought you could have seen your parents.’
‘You had to renounce the familiar,’ said Anna. ‘It was a test of strength. Unfortunately, I failed.’
‘Well we’re pleased you did,’ said her father.
Henry accepted one of Howard Lewthwaite’s splendidly strong gin and tonics. Hilary chose white wine, Peter Matheson whisky, Olivia sherry, Anna tonic water.
‘I’ve got used to not having artificial stimulants,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure if I could cope with them now.’
‘Well of course I think religion can be an artificial stimulant,’ said Peter Matheson. He laughed at his own remark, which was just as well, if it was intended to be funny, because nobody else did.
Howard Lewthwaite departed to the kitchen.
Olivia Matheson approached Henry, and led him over to the window of the heavily floral lounge. There was still a gleam of light in the western sky.
‘You’re a man of the world,’ she said. ‘And Hilary’s Anna’s best friend. Will you help Anna come to terms with real life?’
Henry had a vision of Anna, on the one and only night when he had taken her out, sitting stark naked in a cheap brown armchair in her flat in Cardington Road, beneath a reproduction of ‘Greylag Geese Rising’, by Peter Scott. Nothing had risen that night, except the greylag geese.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, yes. We’ll … er … try and help her come to terms with real life.’
‘Thank you.’ She patted his arm. ‘My husband really likes you.’
The conversation became general again, and Henry didn’t feel like letting Anna off the hook too easily.
‘I’m shamefully ignorant about nuns,’ he said. ‘Tell us what you had to study, what devotions you had to perform, what disciplines were required of you, how you spent a typical day.’
Anna smiled. ‘I’d like to,’ she said, ‘but we were sworn to secrecy, and although I’ve left, I’d like to respect that.’
Henry had to admire her, albeit reluctantly.
‘I hate that kind of secrecy,’ said Hilary. ‘It sounds like a religious version of the Masons.’
‘Yes, that’s one of the things that disillusioned me,’ said Anna.
Hilary had to admire her, albeit reluctantly.
Sam, in jeans and tee-shirt, put his head round the door and said, ‘Hi. I’m out with some mates tonight. Have a great meal. Bye.’
Howard Lewthwaite, in a ‘Ban the Bomb’ apron, put his head round the door and said, ‘Come and get it.’
Hilary wheeled her mother into the lifeless dining room. Howard Lewthwaite asked Henry to deal with the wine. Everybody had some, even Anna. ‘I suppose I ought to try to get to like the stuff,’ she said.
‘You’ve been to France too, haven’t you?’ said Olivia Matheson to Henry and Hilary, over the beef casserole.
‘Yes, but not near Anna,’ said Henry. ‘We stayed with my Uncle Teddy. It was rather sad. He’d been married to a woman thirty years younger than him, and she’d left the day before we got there.’
‘Please, Henry,’ said Peter Matheson. ‘Anna’s looking embarrassed. She’s rather unworldly about these things.’
‘It’s all right, Daddy,’ said Anna. ‘I’m interested. I need to learn. How did the old man take it?’
‘He’s not exactly an old man,’ said Hilary. ‘He was devastated, of course, but … not bitter. Amazingly enough, he wasn’t bitter.’
‘Good,’ said Anna. ‘I’m glad of that. Bitterness is self-destructive. The nuns were very much against bitterness.’
‘Careful,’ said Henry. ‘You’re giving away secrets.’
‘Oh Lord, yes,’ said Anna. ‘It’s the wine, I expect.’
‘Another glass?’ said Henry.
‘Well perhaps a little one,’ said Anna. ‘It’s not quite as awful as I’d thought.’
Nadežda had a coughing fit over the trifle. Hilary wheeled her out. When she came back, Nadežda said, ‘A bit of almond went down the wrong way’, but her chest had sounded ominously wheezy to Henry.
After the cheese, Howard Lewthwaite stood and said, ‘This meal is a kind of celebration, also a sort of postscript. As you know, we’ve sold Lewthwaite’s to the developers of the Fish Hill Complex. A sad day, but none of us can stand in the way of progress, can we?’ He looked at the ceiling, not wishing to meet Henry’s eye or indeed Peter Matheson’s. Peter Matheson looked at the floor, not wishing to meet Henry’s eye or indeed Howard Lewthwaite’s. Henry closed his eyes, not wishing to look at the ceiling or the floor or to meet Peter Matheson’s eye or Howard Lewthwaite’s eye or Hilary’s eye or Anna’s eye. ‘We’ve bought a house in Spain, near Alicante. Naddy needs a drier climate and nothing else matters.’ Howard Lewthwaite smiled at Nadežda, whose eyes were moist. ‘Sam’s at college, so it’s the right time. We’re going to sell the house, so it’ll be the end of our life in Thurmarsh. I know Henry and Hilary will miss us, as baby-sitters if not as people.’ Henry and Hilary dredged a laugh from the depths of their shock that this moment had suddenly come. ‘You will of course be welcome to visit us, we’ll be very upset if you don’t. So, my family … my friends … cheers.’
The meal ended with forced jokes and slightly hysterical laughter, because otherwise everyone might have felt rather sad.
As they re-entered the floral lounge, Peter Matheson put an arm round Henry’s shoulder. Henry could feel his power. He had to fight to remind himself that the deep affection the man was showing was totally simulated. Peter Matheson knew that Henry had wanted to expose his corruption, and he almost certainly hated Henry as much as Henry hated him.
He led Henry to the curtained window.
‘You’re a man of the world,’ he said. ‘Will you help Anna come to terms with her fear of sex? Because that’s what’s behind all this nun business. Scared stiff of it, poor girl. They’re all the same, nuns. You only have to look at their faces. Pasty. Frightened of sex.’
Henry had to fight the temptation to say, ‘Pull the other one, you corrupt, deluded twit. When I took her out she’d whipped her clothes off before I could say “Mother Superior”. She’s been having it off with my Uncle Teddy in Cap Ferrat, with tall, craggy Jed in Berwick, and probably with every able-bodied man from Berwick to Cap Ferrat between the ages of sixteen and eighty-two.’ He didn’t, of course, but he did feel obliged to make a brief defence of the contemplative life against Peter Matheson’s absurdly simplistic theories. ‘Well I do think there are other, more positive reasons for joining a religious order than fear of sex,’ he said.
‘Not in Anna’s case,’ said Peter Matheson. ‘So will you and Hilary befriend her, introduce her to people, give her a chance to … I don’t know … blossom as a woman?’
‘All right,’ said Henry. ‘We’ll try to help her to blossom as a woman.’
‘Good man!’ He gave Henry a thump of gratitude which almost dislocated his collar bone. ‘My wife’s got a soft spot for you.’
‘Did you or did you not give a market garden outside Cockermouth advice about gherkins?’
The expression on the face of the Director (Operations) was of disappointed regret rather than of anger.
‘Well, yes, I did,’ said Henry. ‘It was a sloppy job. Some young lad was dealing with them. Hopeless. He hadn’t been thinning out the seeds properly, he’d barely been training the laterals along the support canes, they were hanging down all over the place like willies in a snowstorm.’
Timothy Whitehouse raised his eyes to the ceiling, then swivelled round to take refuge in contemplati
ng his reproduction of Constable’s little-known ‘Bringing Home the Cucumbers to Dedham’.
What on earth possessed me to say that, thought Henry, and to his fury he felt himself blushing.
‘Yes, well, no doubt you gave good advice,’ said the Director (Operations), ‘but gherkins aren’t your responsibility, are they?’
‘Well not officially, no.’
‘You’ve trodden on John Barrington’s toes.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So you should be. John’s a good man, but a touch temperamental and very territorial.’
‘So what should I have done? Gone home and got him to go all the way to Cockermouth to deal with it?’
‘You could have tried phoning to clear it with him. He might have agreed. Have you sent him a minute, explaining what happened?’
‘No. I’m sorry. I’ve been very busy.’
‘Well when you have a minute, will you send him a minute? He heard direct from Cockermouth. Naturally he was upset. Don’t be so impulsive, Henry. Don’t let your enthusiasms run away with you.’
‘Right,’ said Henry. ‘Right. But you did tell me to be my own man, stick to my guns, be fearless and always speak the truth. I interpreted that as a recipe for action.’
‘Quite right,’ said the Director (Operations). ‘Quite right. I should have qualified it. Mea culpa. I should have told you to be your own man, stick to your guns, be fearless and always speak the truth, within the confines of your statutory responsibilities. Point taken? Good. No reason any of this need set your career back for any great length of time.’
On November 2nd, 1960, Penguin Books were found not guilty of obscenity in publishing the unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, after a trial in which the prosecuting barrister asked the jury, ‘Would you allow your wives and servants to read this book?’
Hilary spent the following weekend with her editor from Wagstaff and Wagstaff, discussing the revised but unexpurgated version of her first novel.
Her editor sounded very literary and bookish. Henry had visions of a stooping man in his fifties, with receding hair and thick glasses. It was kind of him to give up his weekend, and to invite Hilary to stay in his flat in Highgate, but there would have been no peace for them in Paradise Villa, and who would have looked after the children if she’d gone while Henry was working?
Henry enjoyed his weekend with the children, but it was tiring, and he was a little upset, on Hilary’s return, when she refused to play with Kate because, ‘I really am very tired. I’ve got no energy,’ although he had to smile when Kate said, ‘Well, I’m tired too. I’ve only got one energy.’
1961 saw Major Yuri Gagarin orbit the earth in a spaceship. For Britain, it was a less spectacular year, unless you were an aspiring taxi-driver given to gambling. Licensed betting shops and minicabs were legalised. For Henry, who wasn’t an aspiring taxi-driver given to gambling, it was an even less spectacular year. He forced himself to work hard, to identify with the cucumber, to fight for the cucumber, and in so doing he rekindled his enthusiasm for the cucumber. The results of all this would not be apparent until 1962.
Hilary took so long to finalise the changes to her book that it proved impossible to publish it that year. It was scheduled for the spring of 1962.
It was not the love of their children alone that kept the marriage of Henry and Hilary on the rails in the months after their crisis in Cap Ferrat. Henry deserves some credit too. He fought valiantly against the jealousy that had sprung unbidden into his heart.
On the afternoon of Sunday, June 18th, 1961, Kate and Jack were, most unusually, both asleep at the same time. A stranger looking in at the living room of Paradise Villa, carpeted and curtained now but still sparsely furnished, would have witnessed a scene of apparent male dominance. Husband curled up on the settee, reading. Wife ironing. In fact, however, the husband was reading the finished version of the wife’s novel, and the wife was ironing to ease the almost intolerable tension that she was feeling. She hadn’t let him see the manuscript until it was finally polished, and hadn’t been sure that she wanted him to read it even then, but he had insisted. ‘I must. It’s part of you. I can’t shy away from it,’ he had said.
He put the typescript down, and took off his glasses. He looked at Hilary gravely. Her heart was thumping.
‘I think the character of Hubert is rather shadowy,’ he said. ‘I didn’t quite understand him. I didn’t feel you’d quite understood him.’
‘Oh.’
‘Cousin Hilda.’
‘What?’
‘I’m using Cousin Hilda’s technique.’
‘You don’t mean … you can’t mean…?’
‘I do mean. Everything else is absolutely magnificent. I think it’s as near a masterpiece as dammit.’
‘Oh darling.’
They kissed and hugged and wept. A smell of burning filled the room. Henry would never wear his mauve shirt again and, since she’d never liked it, Hilary’s happiness was complete.
They had Anna to supper occasionally, to keep up for her parents’ benefit the fiction that they were helping her to blossom as a woman. Twice she called their suppers off at the last moment, because she was blossoming as a woman elsewhere, but on one of the occasions when she did come, she said, ‘I hear you’ve got a novel coming out, Hillers. Jolly good.’
‘Yes, it is jolly good,’ said Henry. ‘It’s a real work of the imagination. It’s about a group of men in an old people’s home. It’s spare and elegant and truthful, with an icy wit but also with deep compassion.’
Henry had never seen Hilary blush before. They exchanged loving smiles, and Anna looked very wistful, as if she suddenly realised that Hilary could teach her something about blossoming as a woman.
1962 saw twenty-five people die of smallpox in Britain, the Liberals win a sensational victory in the Orpington by-election, and the arrest of 1, 100 people in Parliament Square during a sit-down demonstration against nuclear weapons.
Henry received a long letter from Uncle Teddy:
Dear Henry,
I’m writing this to you alone and not to you both as it’s family business and I want advice on something Hilary can’t really help me about. Do show it to her if you want. She’s a splendid girl, how you’ve captured anybody as good as that I just don’t know. I hope her novel’s a huge success, I’m sure it will be, she’s so sensible.
Henry, things haven’t worked out well for Doris and me, but I think about the old girl a great deal. When I was in clink, slopping out and resisting the amorous advances of burglars, wife-beaters and child-molesters, I’d never have thought that the Côte d’Azur would be like a prison, but I’m in another kind of prison here and because I’m free to leave and because there’s no time limit to my sentence, and not even any point in behaving well because you don’t get remission, it is in a funny sort of way more mentally disturbing than the other sort of prison.
I’m drinking Pernod as I sit here, trying to pretend I like it, why can’t I drink G and T like all the other Brits? Anyway, what I’m delaying saying because it seems really silly is that I love Doris very much and realise that I always have. I don’t regret Anna, she was great, best sex the old rascal ever had, but she was actually too good for me to want any other Doris substitute. I’m tired, Henry. Too tired to be an old rascal any more.
What I’m getting round to is asking if you think Doris is any happier with Geoffrey now than she was when you did all that go-between business. If she is happy, that’s it, end of story. But if she isn’t … well, could you bear to start all that up again?
Last time she wanted to get together and I didn’t. Now I do and it’d be typical of life if she didn’t.
I once thought Doris was an old bitch and life was lovely. Now I realise it’s the other way round.
Love to Hilary and to you,
Teddy
PS I mean that. I realise now that I do love you. Probably I’d never have been able to be emotional enough to tell you if I
’d not left England. So why do I want to come back so much? PPS All the best to the Sniffer. I realise now that she can’t help being like she is.
PPPS If you do run into Anna, tell her I’m all right.
Henry did show Hilary the letter, and they decided that the obvious thing to do was to go to Troutwick and try to find out just how happy Auntie Doris really was.
It was Hilary’s turn to drive, on a glorious spring morning. The branches of the trees in the sodden gardens were furry with bud. The sun shone on the windscreens of ice-cream vans making their first trip of the year, and on the bald heads of old men as they sauntered along to check if the bowling greens had dried out. In the back of the car, Kate kept saying, ‘Are we nearly there?’ and Jack echoed her, ‘We near there?’
At last the long haul through the mill towns was over and they were in the open country. There were still a few patches of snow to the north of the dry-stone walls. A hundred thousand sheep proclaimed the joy of spring. They were nearly there, and Kate and Jack fell fast asleep.
Henry was aware, throughout the journey, of a great clash between his head and his heart.
Please find that Doris and Geoffrey have discovered true peace at last, said his head, because then there will be nothing more that you need to do.
Oh I hope they aren’t happy, said his heart. I’d love to see Doris and Teddy together again, whatever the difficulties.
Henry gave the casting vote to his heart.
‘Doris’s’ was dancing to the tune of spring. The bar windows were open for the first time that year. Balmy zephyrs stirred the pot plants on the piano top and the loins of young farmers at the bar. Shoppers dumped their carrier bags under the antique tables. Auntie Doris beamed.
They took their drinks into the garden, where Jack and Kate ran around and got very excited. It wasn’t quite warm enough for sitting, but they didn’t mind. Summer was coming to the high country. There was hope in their goose-pimples.
