Sixteen
If Howard had correctly interpreted Vanessa’s glance as she looked towards him from her candy-floss stand in ‘Le Casse-Croûte’ he had shown no sign, no sign at all. In a dither of excitement Vanessa had rushed back to the flat at lunchtime, and hurried to change in order not to keep him waiting. When she had opened her wardrobe she had been overcome by indecision about what to wear. The pink cotton was nice but he had seen her in it; the pale yellow with the stiff petticoat was pretty but she knew it made her look younger; what she was looking for was something that would make her look older, more sophisticated, more likely to catch the attention of Howard, who was so much older than she. In the end she kept him waiting nearly twenty minutes while she decided on a straight navy blue cotton skirt with a white shirt which, although she was unaware of it, because of its simplicity made her look younger than ever. She took trouble with her hair which obstinately refused to do what she wanted and put black mascara on her blonde lashes. Howard appeared to notice neither what she was wearing nor that she was late. He was sitting outside the flats in his car, a small grey Hillman, and was reading. When she opened the door and slid into the seat beside him he said: “Did you know that William Pitt the Younger resided there between 1792 and 1806?”
“Where?” Vanessa said, smoothing her skirt beneath her so that it should not get creased.
“Walmer Castle. There have been some most illustrious Lords Warden of the Cinque Ports. The Duke of Wellington, Viscount Palmerston, King George the Fifth, when he was Prince of Wales, the Marquess of Reading, the Marquis of Willingdon; I suppose you know who the present Lord Warden is?” Howard put down his book and started up the engine.
In her mind Vanessa went back to school. Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports? It sounded awfully familiar. She didn’t want to appear dim. Of course!
“Winston Churchill,” she said.
Howard appeared not to have heard. He was about to turn into the main road, and was looking carefully both ways to see if anything was coming.
He drove soberly, carefully, taking no risks, through the country roads between flat fields of stooked corn, maize growing high, and cabbages, through the narrow old streets of Sandwich, past the lifeboat on the shore at Deal and on into Walmer. All the time Howard talked, and Vanessa, lulled by the sound of his voice and busy with her own thoughts because she was actually sitting beside him if only by her own invitation, heard only half of what he said. “Fortifications constructed by Henry VIIIth to counter any attempted landings…work of coastal defence begun in 1583…most extensive work of its kind undertaken in England until the last or even the present century…perfection in the style of its period… Spanish Armada …encroachment of the sea… Civil War in 1642…besieged by the Royalists… Walmer Castle no longer used as a fortress… fabric altered in order to fit it for residence by the Lords Warden.”
They joined a party which was being guided round the Castle by the Curator. Together with a group of serious-faced Brownies, two French girls who commented continuously and volubly in their own language to each other, an American with a camera and two old dears in brown felt hats, they shuffled past cordoned-off rooms, including Queen Victoria’s bedroom, with its high, canopied bed from which she could see the passing ships, and saw in glass cases the Duke of Wellington’s boots and his silk handkerchief, also his camp bed whose simplicity, according to the Curator, he preferred, and his reading chair, unusual in that the book rest was on the back and could be used only by one sitting astride. The Curator assured them that the ascetically minded Duke had preferred this arrangement but the Brownies looked doubtful. When they had finished the tour of the Castle, including the bathrooms, recently added and built into the immense thickness of the walls, and the parapet with its cannons, where the Brownies were warned not to remove any of the cannon balls (they discovered, amidst giggles, that they were unable, even by combined effort, to lift one an inch from the ground), they were released to explore on their own the gardens and the moat. Howard stayed behind the crowd and entered into earnest discussion with the Curator about the removal of the stairs from the central column of the keep. He stood solemnly on the flagged floor in the damp dimness of the entrance hall and muttered, arms folded, about the panelling, which had been added comparatively recently to most rooms, and the work carried out by Earl Granville in the last century. Vanessa, telling him that she would wait for him in the gardens, but not sure whether he had heard, escaped into the sunshine and sat on a wooden seat beneath the yew trees to admire the laid-out lawns. When Howard finally came he did not apologise for keeping her but led her enthusiastically down the steps to the moat, where now dahlias, larkspurs and grape vines grew in their sheltered position among lush grass. When there was nothing more than even Howard could think of to see, Vanessa suggested they should go down to the beach while the sun was still shining, and Howard said: “Interesting. Most interesting,” thinking still of the Castle.
On the beach, which was nothing but a narrowish strip of small stones washed clean by the tide, they sat and watched the sea which lapped invitingly towards them, sparkling in the sun.
Vanessa looked at Howard who, in his stiff collar and dark tie, looked as if he was just passing through.
“Why don’t you take your jacket off?” she said, lying back on the warm stones.
“I’m quite comfortable,” Howard said, although he looked anything but.
“Don’t you ever relax? Think about simple things, the sea and the sun? You are at the seaside.”
“Nothing is simple. The sea has been rolling like this for thousands of years, and the sun shining. And long after we’re dead and forgotten, and our children and our children’s children are dead and forgotten, the sea will still be rolling in exactly the same way, only perhaps a little higher – it has been encroaching upon the Castle for some years now – and the sun will still be shining on a world we shall know nothing of.”
“Why don’t you think of today?” Vanessa said, admiring, as she always did, the back of his neck. “I don’t know why you worry about thousands of years from now when we shan’t even be here to see it.”
“That’s the whole point. It’s so important to find out why we’re here at all like so many grains of sand or pebbles on this beach. Are we any more important?”
“It’s a pity we can’t swim,” Vanessa said, changing the subject. “It looks lovely here.”
“You carry on,” Howard said. “Don’t worry about me.”
“I haven’t brought my swimming things.” How could he be so obtuse? She wanted to shake him, shock him out of his apathy into some awareness of her. “Of course, I could go without. There’s nobody around except us.”
Howard turned round to face her as she lay defiantly on the stones.
She held his gaze, saying to herself, please notice me, Howard; look into my eyes and see how much I love you.
It was a few minutes before he turned away from her. When he did he ignored her remark and said: “What about having dinner tonight at the ‘Landscape’?” He sounded quite different from when he had been talking about Walmer Castle. His voice was softer, less pompous. He spoke like a man to a woman. Vanessa sat up, her back aching from the stones.
“I’d like that very much,” she said.
The car-park of the ‘Landscape’ was full. They found a small space for the Hillman between a bronze Bentley and a racy red sports, and Vanessa, her high-heeled sandals crunching on the gravel, got out and shook out the skirt of her pale blue organza dress into which she had changed. Faint sounds of dance music seeped out of the road-house and floated over the still, dusking air towards the car-park.
“It sounds quite gay,” Vanessa said. “I didn’t know there was dancing.”
“Neither did I.” Howard put a hand beneath her elbow to guide her over the stones.
The head waiter shook his head.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said to Howard. “You see, on Wednesdays and Saturdays we have dancing,
and being August we’re packed out tonight. Every table is booked.”
Howard said: “Can I speak to Mr Westropp? He is the owner, is he not?”
“That’s right, sir. I think he’s busy in the bar just now though.”
Howard took out his wallet and from it removed a small visiting-card. “Will you give him this, please? I’ll wait.”
Mr Westropp of the ginger, handlebar moustache was out of the bar and coming towards them, hands extended, within three minutes.
“My dear chap,” he said to Howard, “I’m honoured, deeply honoured. How did you know this was my place?”
“I was in the bar the other day. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you.”
Howard introduced Vanessa and Mr Westropp, his moustache twitching, said: “Charmed, dear young lady. If it hadn’t been for your…your…er… Pennington-Dalby here I would have been in an extremely nasty spot to er…say the least of it.”
“What made you come down here?” Howard said. “This isn’t exactly your line, is it?”
Westropp glanced round furtively with his pale-blue bloodshot eyes.
“I thought I ought to have a change of scenery,” he said. “A complete break until the hooha died down, see what I mean? ’Smatter of fact this is my last season here. I’ve put the place on the market and I’m going back to town. Strictly on the level, of course. I’ve enjoyed it here, mind you, made lots of friends. Of course, in the winter I only have the bars going. The dinners and dancing are only summer stuff for the visitors, extra bunce, what? Can’t say it hasn’t been peaceful here though. Quiet in the day all winter, and a spot of the old conviviality in the evening with the old log fire in the bar and my regulars. Getting itchy fingers again now though…on the level of course; yearning for the old metropolis. When you’re London bred and born… Mustn’t bore you though; you want to dine and dance, do you?”
“That was the idea,” Howard said.
Mr Westropp beckoned the head waiter from the door of the dining-room. “Anything these good people want, Mr Oliver…a bottle of champagne…and on the house if you please, Mr Oliver.”
Howard started forward to protest but Mr Westropp, advancing until the moustache nearly tickled Howard’s face, said: “If it hadn’t been for you I might only have been able to offer cocoa from a tin mug, what? Never forget, never.”
The table was on the floor near the band, which compensated for its musical ineptitude by the enthusiasm of its members.
“I can hardly wait to hear what Mr Westropp has been up to,” Vanessa said, against the noise of the music, when they had ordered from what seemed to be a very good menu.
“I can’t really divulge that,” Howard said. “It was nothing very interesting anyway.”
“Oh, Howard!” Vanessa said. “Don’t be so stuffy.”
Howard looked surprised. “Am I being stuffy?” he said. “I hadn’t meant to be tonight. That’s what you get from going out with someone more than twice your age. I’m sorry.”
Vanessa was touched. “I didn’t mean it. I just wanted to know about Mr Westropp.”
Howard looked at the eager young face and the clear eyes and the brown, smooth shoulders covered only by a thin, pale blue strap. He smiled and Vanessa, bursting with happiness at his softened face, smiled back.
“I don’t even remember all the details,” Howard said. “He was mixed up on the fringe of some bank robbery. He was a rear gunner in the Air Force during the war, and when he got out he was looking round for a bit more excitement. An ordinary job of work seemed so dull to him, as it did to a lot of these chaps who’d been heroes for so many years. He couldn’t settle to a regular job, five and a half days a week year in year out, so he got involved with a rather unpleasant crowd.”
“Was he guilty?” Vanessa’s eyes were large.
“I believe so. Fortunately for him, the jury didn’t.”
“But you got him off?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you often have to defend people you know are guilty?”
“People I believe to be guilty – yes.”
“It isn’t very honest, is it? I mean Mr Westropp really should be in prison, shouldn’t he?”
“So should a lot of people.”
“That doesn’t make it any better. Don’t you ever think about that when you’re thinking about the sea and the sun and us being like grains of sand and all those things you think so much about?”
“I do. But you see, Vanessa, I have a living to earn. If somebody comes to me, as young Westropp did, and says ‘I’m supposed to have been involved in this bank robbery but in actual fact on the night it took place I was…er…ah…having dinner with some woman in Shepherd’s Bush’ all I can do is to agree to take his case, if I’m not completely stupid, that is, and present the facts, as he has told them to me, to the jury. It is for them to decide if he is telling the truth, not me.”
“But you knew he wasn’t telling the truth.”
“It’s not my job to dispute what he has told me – only to present his case to the court. Had he come to me and said, ‘Look here, I was mixed up in this bank robbery all right, but I want you to say I was having dinner at the time with some woman in Shepherd’s Bush; I can fix it with her,’ then I’d have to tell him that I couldn’t appear for him and he’d have to find somebody else. My job is only to present the facts as he tells them to me, not to conspire with him in putting forward some tale he has told me is cooked up, and not deliberately to divert the course of justice.”
Vanessa sighed. “I can’t see the difference,” she said. “If you know in your own mind that he’s not telling you the truth about this woman in Shepherd’s Bush.”
Howard said gently, “But it isn’t for me to decide that. It simply isn’t my job. It’s the jury’s.”
“Well, I think it’s dishonest,” Vanessa said, and sat back so that the waiter could serve the soup.
During dinner they spoke of ‘Le Casse-Croûte’ and life at Whitecliffs, and discussed the dancers who sped in time to the music, smoothly passing their table. The girl in the mauve dress, Vanessa said, looked like a model; Howard thought she probably sold shelf paper in Woolworth’s. The good-looking man in the smart hacking jacket looked to Vanessa like an actor or a film star; Howard thought he spent his life knocking at doors with insurance policies. There was a middle-aged woman Vanessa admired, dancing so nicely with what must be her son; Howard said most probably she was keeping the young man who was far too attentive to be her son.
“We don’t seem able to agree on anything,” Vanessa said.
“‘Two men looked out through prison bars’,” Howard said.
“Some people can’t even see as far as the mud.” Vanessa looked at him. “You seem to get awfully disillusioned at the Bar. I don’t think it’s good for you.”
“It’s not the Bar,” Howard said. “It’s old age. Would you like to dance?”
To Vanessa’s surprise, he danced well. She imagined him in London spending his evenings in night-clubs dancing with pretty girls, but she didn’t like to ask him if he did. He was comfortably taller than she and, a little whoozy from the champagne, she was wondering whether she dared lay her head on his shoulder, which looked broad and inviting, when he said: “Shall we go? It’s awfully hot and smoky.”
They went through to the bar to say goodbye to Mr Westropp. At the table by the window where Howard had sat with Basil, Doctor Gurney and Arthur Dexter on Sunday morning, Louise was sitting with Harry.
Howard and Vanessa stopped and Louise introduced Harry who said:
“How de do?” without standing up and kept his eyes for a long while on Vanessa. Louise who had flushed, said: “We were just having a drink,” as though it wasn’t obvious, and Howard, taking Vanessa’s arm, said, “Nice to have seen you, Louise; we’re just going.”
In the car Vanessa said: “What a dreadful type she was with. Do you think he picked her up?”
“I’ve no idea.” Howard backed the car.
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“Perhaps she needed rescuing.” Vanessa’s eyes were wide with romance.
Howard smiled at her. “I’m sure she’s old enough to look after herself. I’m afraid we embarrassed her.”
“I thought she sat in with her mother every evening.”
“It isn’t really our business, Vanessa.”
“I thought she was too old for that sort of thing.”
“The trouble with you,” Howard said, “is that you think everyone over twenty-five ought to be in a museum.”
“Only women,” Vanessa said, looking sideways at him.
The roads back to Whitecliffs were dark and they drove through with their headlights on. In the village everything slept; the shops were shuttered, the High Street deserted.
Howard said: “I feel like some fresh air, don’t you?”
Vanessa nodded and he drove on down to the beach.
They parked the car near ‘Le Casse-Croûte’ and Vanessa took off her high-heeled sandals to walk barefoot on the sand. They stood facing the moon at the water’s edge, not talking, just watching the sea which was dark and mirror smooth, slap gently on the beach. Vanessa was surprised to feel Howard’s arm around her shoulders; his hand was warm where it touched her skin. She turned to face him and thought I can’t believe it. He likes me. His lips were very near and she knew that he was going to kiss her. A sound on the quiet beach distracted her attention. Looking over Howard’s shoulder, she saw the lights go on for a moment in ‘Le Casse-Croûte’, then go off again.
“Howard,” Vanessa said. “There’s someone in the café.”
Howard turned round. “There was, you mean. Look!” She glanced towards where he was pointing. Three youths, the moonlight glinting the jet of their hair, had appeared from behind the café and were running up the small slope towards the road. The last one was pulling a blonde girl behind him.
“Hey!” Howard shouted. “Hey you! Stop!” They looked round for a second, then, running faster, disappeared into the bushes. There was the sound of an engine starting up, then driving away fast.
We All Fall Down Page 16
