Mr. Campion's Abdication

by Mike Ripley

  Perdita and Lavinia busied themselves in the kitchen where they were joined by Lugg, who proved more a hindrance than a help, while Campion and Rupert settled in mismatched armchairs near the fire in the front room and Oliver Bell rattled glasses and blew the dust off a bottle of dry sherry.

  Campion asked if Precious was around as he wished to reassure her that he had returned her van intact from his expedition into darkest Essex.

  ‘I’ve asked her to join us for dinner,’ Oliver said, pouring sherry. ‘She’s using the telephone at the moment. Which reminds me: Lavinia took a message for you from an Inspector Chamley this afternoon about Sam Salt, the journalist who covered the original dig. It seems he simply disappeared the day after the visit of Edward and Mrs Simpson and nobody’s seen him since.’

  Mr Campion replied with a non-committal, ‘Interesting,’ and then turned to his son. ‘But how are things with our thespian versions of the famous lovers?’

  ‘We spent an afternoon being cold, bored and forgotten. Our beloved director disappeared with the cameraman and we came back here when the diggers packed in,’ Rupert said grumpily. ‘God knows when we’ll do any actual filming.’

  ‘I’m told it can be a long and boring process,’ said Mr Campion, taking off his spectacles and massaging the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb, ‘but that doesn’t sound like any way to treat their stars.’

  ‘We’re hardly stars, Pop; we don’t even have any lines. According to Oliver, we just stand on the lip of the trench looking regal and pretending to chat with the diggers. We’re set dressing, that’s all we are.’

  ‘Some of us have always felt like that,’ muttered Lugg, ‘or even salad dressing, come to think of it.’

  Oliver laughed politely but Campion said, ‘Don’t encourage him.’

  ‘Did your trip to Frinton bear fruit?’ Rupert asked and Lugg could not resist.

  ‘Found a real old fruit. Overripe, yer might say.’

  ‘Ignore him,’ said Campion. ‘Those aren’t really words; they’re the sound of his stomach rumbling.’

  ‘I’ll see if dinner is ready,’ Oliver offered. ‘It’s pot luck, I’m afraid, but the pot is of very high quality and thanks to your generosity, Mr C., we have wine as well.’

  ‘Please don’t open a bottle on our account,’ Campion demurred. ‘Lugg and I are going out later on a bit of a pub crawl.’

  Lugg’s face contorted briefly. ‘We are? Fair enough.’

  ‘Not without me, you ain’t.’ The voice was young, female, fearless and undoubtedly American. ‘That was the deal, remember? You had the use of my van on condition you took me to one of your Great British pubs.’

  Campion levered himself out of his chair and handed his sherry glass to Rupert, then turned to address the girl who had just entered.

  ‘A deal is a deal, Precious, and I will be abstemious and refrain from alcohol in order to act as your chauffeur while my elderly friend here, who has far more experience in these matters than I, will be your guide and mentor on how to behave in an English public house.’

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure to show you the ropes, m’dear,’ said Lugg, smacking his lips, ‘just as soon as we’ve had a spot of grub to take the edge off.’ Then turned on Campion with his best indignant scowl. ‘And less of the “elderly”, thank you very much.’

  ‘Do you have anywhere exciting in mind?’ asked Rupert.

  ‘Only the King’s Head in Sweethearting,’ replied his father, ‘but at least you’ll get a lift home.’

  ‘Before we go anywhere,’ Precious announced, ‘you’d better get to the phone, Mr C. There’s a call for you and it’s your wife. Don’t worry, I haven’t told Lady Amanda you’re taking us out drinking.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that. I wonder what she wants? Hey-ho, better not keep the boss lady waiting. Do excuse me.’

  Thirty seconds after Campion had left the room, Lugg caught Rupert’s eye.

  ‘I didn’t hear the phone ring. Did you?’

  If Precious Aird had a pre-conceived notion of what comprised a typical night in an English country pub – a sing-song around an upright piano, the odd Morris Dancer flitting across the bar waving a pig’s bladder, perhaps a guest appearance by a pair of Pearly Queens – she was to be sadly disappointed. The arrival of the party of five from Heronhoe Hall at around nine o’clock that evening more than doubled the population of the saloon bar.

  Warming to his task as Precious Aird’s appointed guide, bodyguard and mentor, Lugg had patiently explained that ‘saloon’ in the instance of a British pub meant the more comfortable and slightly more expensive of the two bars usually on offer, the word deriving from the French salon rather than anything to do with a hostelry found in Dodge City or other parts of the Wild West. Normally, of course, he and the senior Campion would be found slumming it in the ‘public’ bar, especially in a city like London, as that was where the gossip was at both its freshest and ripest, but with ladies in tow and out here in the sticks, it was probably safest to stick to the saloon.

  If his pupil insisted on drinking beer, then Lugg’s advice was the same, he claimed, as he would give a visitor to Scotland asking for recommendations on which Scotch to drink: follow the example of the locals, who would know what was the best quality and value on offer. When it came to beer, Precious must not expect anything like ‘that fizzy Yankee stuff’ which was ice cold and weak as water (on which point he was only half right). In the King’s Head she should expect the Suffolk regulars to drink mild ale or, if they were feeling adventurous, a brown-and-mild combination, at least during the winter months. After the spring equinox, this heady cocktail would be replaced by light-and-bitter, which was, said the cynics, the only way Suffolk folk knew the seasons had changed.

  He had added one last piece of superfluous advice. ‘And if the yokels speak in a funny way in an accent which yer might find h’unintelligible, don’t worry. Your young ears’ll soon pick up their foreign lingo and you’ll be able to translate for me.’

  Precious Aird’s first observation on entering the saloon bar was that there was no dart board – that stalwart component of the English pub as seen in every Hollywood incarnation. Lugg explained that dart boards were usually confined to the public bar but that, as a novice to pub etiquette, it would be best to get the lie of the land before engaging in a combat sport.

  The licensee himself, the skeletal Joshua Yallop, was on duty behind the bar, though if he was pleased to see five additional customers to boost his evening trade he hid it well. The image which sprang into Mr Campion’s mind was that of a curate with indigestion and he decided that a considerable portion of false jollity was called for if the evening was not to be a complete damp squib.

  ‘Good evening, mine host, five pints of your finest draught beer, please. No, wait, make that four as I’m driving.’

  ‘And I’d prefer a whisky,’ Perdita whispered in his ear.

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Rupert with the certainty of someone who already knew the quality of the pub’s draught ale.

  ‘Very well, then. Two pints of mild, two whiskies and a tonic water please, and don’t spare the sliced lemon. What a charming establishment; have you been here long?’

  Joshua Yallop strained a sinewy arm and bent one of the plain dark wood beer pumps towards him, producing a gurgling sound of liquid gushing into a glass somewhere out of sight.

  ‘Ten years this year,’ said the landlord without emotion. ‘Edna and me took the licence in 1960 when we’d had enough of life in the big city.’

  ‘Ah, Londoners, are you?’

  ‘No, Norwich. The city was getting too big and too busy. They were even talking of building one of them new universities on the golf course, of all places.’

  ‘I believe they have,’ said Mr Campion smoothly, ‘and it is attracting some bright young talents from what I hear. My name’s Campion, by the way. I’m the one who booked the room for my son and his wife. We’re all down here to do some filmin
g, recreating the Sweethearting Barrow dig.’

  ‘We never get to the pictures,’ said Mr Yallop, ‘so we won’t see it.’

  ‘It’s actually for a television programme,’ said Campion, and then quickly added, ‘an Italian television programme, so I probably won’t see it either, but it’s a good thing to do, I think, to commemorate the dig. You wouldn’t have been here back then, in 1935?’

  Joshua Yallop pushed two pint jugs filled with flat liquid the colour of treacle toffee towards Campion and turned to the whisky optic to dispense the legal nugatory measures.

  ‘Long before our time. The pub would have been run by Arthur Aldous back then. Did you want an ice cube in the tonic?’

  ‘Only if it’s not too much trouble,’ said Campion, reaching for his wallet.

  ‘I’ll have to get some from the kitchen,’ sighed Mr Yallop.

  ‘Now that sounds like far too much trouble. It’s too cold for ice anyway.’

  At his side, Perdita whispered, ‘You should try the bedroom.’

  Campion proffered two pound notes across the bar, and even though Yallop acknowledged Campion’s instruction that he should ‘have one yourself’ with good grace, producing the correct amount of change still seemed to be something of an imposition.

  As they settled around a solid wood table kept level by a folded beer mat under one leg, four pairs of eyes swung on Precious Aird, whose face was masked by the pint pot of mild ale she was attempting to consume in one single gulp. About sixty per cent of the way through, she put her glass down.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How are you enjoying our quaint English pub?’ asked Rupert as he and Perdita clinked glasses.

  ‘It’s kinda quiet. Don’t they have a jukebox?’

  ‘That would be in the public bar,’ said Lugg, ‘if they ’ave one an’ if they do it’ll be bound to ’ave the very latest Henry Hall or Victor Sylvester.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘They are Lugg’s favourite pop stars,’ said Mr Campion. ‘He’s not as with it as the rest of us.’

  Mr Lugg made a noise with his fleshy lips which would have reminded a country sportsman of the sound a partridge makes taking off.

  Rupert attempted to cheer him up. ‘Have you seen the pub’s collection of bottled beers? Some of them are ancient and may be worth something. You should cast your expert eye over them and educate your American pupil in the wonders of the brewhouse.’

  ‘There’s no peace for the wicked,’ grumbled Lugg, good-heartedly straining his bulk into the upright position. ‘Come on, Yank, let’s get you educated. Have you noticed how good the young master is getting at giving orders? The apple don’t fall far from the tree.’

  Precious emptied her glass at one gulp and had jumped to her feet before Lugg was anywhere near vertical.

  ‘Let’s go, Teacher. We can get more beers on the way back.’

  Mr Campion allowed himself a beatific smile as he watched the odd couple – the fat, bald old man with the young, slim girl – drift across the bar arm in arm. Once they were out of range, Rupert leaned across the table towards his father.

  ‘What did Mother want when she rang just before dinner?’

  Mr Campion sipped at his tonic water. ‘Oh, this and that, wanting to know how you were getting on being film stars,’ Rupert sniffed loudly at the thought, ‘and bits of general housekeeping, that’s all. Sends her love, naturally, and she’s promised to bring my car back in one piece.’

  ‘That all?’

  ‘Yes, that was all,’ said Mr Campion, his face inscrutable.

  He hated telling even the whitest of lies to Rupert but he saw no point in worrying his son with Amanda’s forceful instruction down the telephone line: ‘Albert, you be very, very careful, and just remember – it was not your fault.’

  ‘Now that, top left, is a bottle of Maxim Stout. Comes from a brewery up north and is named after the Maxim machine gun,’ said Lugg, gesturing rather grandly over the bar to the bottle display. ‘The chap who owned the brewery did his bit for queen and country by paying for a machine-gun regiment to serve in the Boer War in South Africa. That’s where my name comes from,’ he ended proudly.

  ‘You fought in the Boer War?’

  ‘Hardly,’ said the fat man indignantly. ‘I was named after the battle.’

  ‘There was a battle of Lugg?’ Precious tried but failed to keep her face straight.

  ‘The battle of Magersfontein, if you must know, and I think you do know.’

  Precious giggled. ‘Mr Campion warned me. I think I shall call you Maggs.’

  ‘Don’t. Next to it is a local speciality; well, near enough. That’s the famous Colchester Oyster Stout which they used to drink at the Oyster Festival there. It had real oyster juice in the brew, though it went a bit wrong just before the war when they used tinned oysters from New Zealand and they must have been off. But that there’ – Lugg pointed a sausage of a finger towards a large, black, broad-shouldered bottle with a faded reddish label – ‘is a real collector’s item. That’s a King’s Ale, from 1902, when the king – that would be Bertie, Edward VII – went to the Bass brewery and started the mash for that particular brew. Special bottles which were embossed with the words King’s Ale and sealed with a cork and wax. Still drinkable after all these years, so they tell me.’

  ‘You ever tried it?’

  ‘Not officially. That one next to it is even rarer now and, funnily enough, very relevant to our business here in Sweethearting; that’s Prince’s Ale, a brew mashed – that means started – on July 23, 1929 by the Prince of Wales at the same brewery.’ Precious peered at the shelves and identified a large quart bottle with a yellowish label sporting the fleur-de-lis feathers. ‘That was the Prince of Wales who the lad Rupert plays in this film. O’course, it wasn’t a popular beer once he’d abdicated but it wasn’t a bad drop. Drank some meself during the war; mind you, we were grateful for anything we could get then.’

  ‘Would that be the Boer War?’ grinned Precious.

  ‘You cheeky so-and-so. Just for that, it’s your round. Come on, if you’re old enough to be in here you’re old enough to stand your round.’

  From their table, the Campions observed the mismatched pair propping up the bar with benign astonishment.

  ‘Those two are really hitting it off,’ said Perdita. ‘Who would have thought it?’

  ‘Not me,’ said Rupert. ‘I would have thought she would have him down as a dinosaur within the first two minutes.’

  ‘A jovial, not-very-fierce, rather rotund dinosaur, perhaps,’ said Mr Campion. ‘I’m sure there must have been one like that, and Lugg was always good with children.’ He looked at Rupert. ‘He didn’t drop you on your head more than twice.’

  His son laughed. ‘And it never did me any harm.’

  ‘The jury’s still out on that one,’ observed his wife, patting her husband’s hand affectionately.

  Mr Campion had always considered himself fortunate in his son’s provision of daughter-in-law but his self-satisfied reverie at that particular moment was interrupted by a blast of cold air to the back of his neck as the pub door opened. His ears pricked when Joshua Yallop hailed the pub door opening with the words ‘’Evening, farmer Thomas,’ and he turned his head to greet the incomer.

  ‘Mr Spark, how nice to see you again; may I buy you a drink?’

  Thomas Spark closed the pub door behind him but kept hold of the door handle and surveyed the room, nodding to the few villagers there sitting in silence in front of their drinks before accepting.

  ‘I don’t see any reason why not,’ he said, unbuttoning his overcoat, ‘unless I’m interrupting something.’

  ‘Just a family gathering,’ Campion said, rising to his feet. ‘This is my son, Rupert, and his wife, Perdita. Over there, appraising the publican’s bottle collection is an old family friend – that would be the portly, less attractive one – and a new acquaintance, the young, attractive and far more intelligent one, who happens to be American. She’s als
o in charge of the archaeology at the Barrow so you really should meet her as, technically, she’s digging up your land. Now, what can I get you?’

  ‘I don’t drink beer, wine or spirits,’ said the farmer.

  ‘I remember you saying …’

  ‘But I’ll take a glass of cider from you.’

  ‘Cider?’ Campion was momentarily confused.

  ‘They do small bottles,’ said Spark as if explaining to a child, ‘and there’s not much alcohol in cider, is there?’

  Noticing that Joshua Yallop had already placed a bottle and a glass on the bar, Campion declined to argue the point.

  ‘I defer completely to your agricultural expertise, Mr Spark. Please, take a pew.’

  Perdita volunteered to assist with the drinks and Lugg, who had run out of things to say on the history of beer and decided that consumption was the better part of education, joined them. Campion formally introduced Thomas Spark as the owner of Windy Ridge Farm and, by default, the Sweethearting Barrow and also someone who had a close family connection with the events Rupert and Perdita were recreating.

  ‘You were there?’ blurted Precious, somewhat to the embarrassment of everyone else around the table apart from Thomas Spark himself.

  ‘Not me; I was just a kid but my father was a volunteer digger, one of the Sweethearting lot, not one of them the vicar of Heronhoe brought in.’

  ‘I take it there was considerable rivalry in the two camps,’ Campion observed.

  ‘There’s not much love lost betwixt the parishes,’ conceded Spark, ‘and Sweethearting always had the edge in the bragging rights when it came to visits from the royals.’

  ‘You rather gave me the impression that your father had seen the Prince of Wales in Sweethearting more than once.’

  ‘That he had; leastwise, that’s what he used to tell us, especially when he’d come staggering back from an evening in this place. Used to be proud to drink in a pub where royalty drank, a place where they knew how to look after a prince of the realm, if you know what I mean.’