The Moon At Midnight

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I’ll call round later, if I may, Lionel. Got to go to the Three Tuns first.’

  ‘Ah, good man. Getting a few under your belt before you come round, eh?’ Lionel’s voice was clearer now, a firmer tone to it.

  ‘Yes, sir. That and having to consult the oracle of Bexham, otherwise known as Richards, about a certain little matter.’

  ‘Tell me all, concealing nothing, when you get here.’

  ‘I certainly will, Lionel.’

  So it was that Waldo, still feeling a little uneasy about his old friend, but intent on the business of the day, drove into the car park of the Three Tuns and, having parked the Aston Martin with due care and attention, strolled up to the old inn doors, determined on finding out the truth behind the rumours.

  ‘I’m afraid there is a great deal of truth in the rumours, sir. A great deal,’ Richards told him in his saddest, on-the-eve-of-war voice. ‘In fact there is all too much truth. Dreaded vested interest at work, not to mention dirty work at the crossroads, and all stations south.’

  Waldo, who had grown used to the English way of putting things, kept an admirably straight face, gathering from what Richards had just said, as he pulled Waldo a pint of his best, that everything he had recently heard about the designs on the village by a certain person were actually true.

  ‘But, Richards, come on – the Yacht Club. How can that be? Surely there must be some sort of safeguard on a place like that, some embargo that will prevent any kind of building or expansion, surely?’

  Richards moved out from behind the bar, and sat himself down beside Waldo on a bar stool, climbing up, despite his age, with surprising dexterity.

  ‘They would have to get the consent of the membership, but don’t forget that takes very little in these parlous times.’ Richards sighed. ‘A little extra lining to the pocket here, a little there, and alas, in a trice, the Yacht Club will have gone and we will be contemplating a hideous line of buildings overlooking the harbour. Don’t forget it is a prime site, Mr A. – a prime site.’ Richards shook his head mournfully.

  ‘But the shares that are held,’ Waldo remembered suddenly. ‘The shares that are held are not held by the members, they’re held by the board, so it won’t be as easy as that, surely?’

  ‘It will be quite as easy, sir, if you don’t mind my correcting you, if you remember what boards get up to, even in England. They believe in what’s best for them, particularly if they don’t happen to live on or near the harbour. In my opinion it will be the end of Bexham.’ Richards raised his eyes to heaven, and then dropped them to stare sadly at Waldo over the top of his half-moon glasses.

  ‘Well, let’s see now, Richards.’ Waldo paused, marking off each board member on his long, elegant fingers. ‘They’d have to get rid of Lord Rule, first, the Chairman. And he’s also their patron. Then there is Hugh Tate, and Jeremy Lonsdale. My, I could name a dozen others who would be very unlikely to roll over, really they would. So, don’t let’s be too pessimistic, shall we?’

  ‘We shall see,’ Richards said evenly. ‘The strangest things happen when there is vested interest at the heart of it.’

  ‘I can’t see Bexham letting it happen. Bexham would simply not be Bexham without its Yacht Club. They won’t sell, I’m sure.’

  ‘There are rumours about old Todd’s boatyard too.’ Richards climbed carefully down off the stool, and went behind the bar once more, this time to fill a glass from the whisky optic and place it in front of Waldo. ‘You’ve possibly heard, have you?’

  ‘What next? I must have my ears so close to the ground that I can’t hear anything for listening. Either that or I’ve been too busy minding my own business.’

  ‘That they’ve retired is old news indeed.’ Richards picked off the proper money for Waldo’s drinks from a pile of silver that Waldo was in the habit of placing in front of him when drinking at the bar. ‘But we were all under the impression that it was at least going to stay a boatyard. I say “we were”, but no longer.’

  ‘Oh, my, my.’

  ‘Indeed, you may well say “my, my”, because we all imagined that boats would be going to go on being made at the boatyard, not that the new owners would have quite different plans. Not for building boats do they want the boatyard, no, not for supplying boats for the Yacht Club, which in our simplicity we might have thought was going to be the case, oh no. No, the boatyard is going to become a bistro.’

  The word bistro spun across the wooden surface of the bar, passing Waldo’s whisky glass, passing other customers, until, gathering momentum, it seemed to roll round the room causing those that had overheard a satisfactorily shocking moment.

  ‘A bistro? Opposite here? A bistro?’

  ‘It’s going to be lovely for us, isn’t it? Competition of the worst kind right beside us.’

  ‘By us, you mean – you?’

  ‘Naturally.’ Richards leaned across the bar again. ‘You know what’s going to happen?’ he asked, his voice lowered now. ‘They’re going to be serving not decent English food, but imported foreign food. There’s going to be candles stuck in bottles, and checked tablecloths, and fishermen’s nets not trailing in the water but hung overhead, and, to sum up, I shall be ruined.’

  He moved away to serve some other customers, leaving Waldo to the contemplation of a ruined Bexham, of a village without boats or club, with only a hideous bistro and very little else to recommend it, excepting the church and the old houses. Doubtless, if things went on as they were, even the church would be turned to some other use, possibly into a nightclub, or a private house.

  He moved over to his favourite seat in the window of the old inn, intent on thinking over the latest news, and equally intent on doing something about it. He could not stand idly by and watch his darling Meggie’s beloved Bexham being ruined. What the Nazis had failed to do it now seemed the members of the Yacht Club, or rather its board, and certain individuals, were quite prepared to do instead.

  Everything about Bexham was pretty. The church, the main street, the old houses, some of them dating from as early as the seventeenth century. The harbour was a hub for boating activity, the focus of old customs, themselves dating back into a past which everyone had quite forgotten. People had been setting sail from Bexham from the earliest times, since before the Roman invasion of Britain, since the days when the Irish were setting out in coracles to find the other side of the world that they devoutly believed to be flat. Places as perfect as Bexham should be immune from change.

  Waldo thought of Meggie, and her childhood friends, all of them setting off from Bexham to rescue the British army from the French beaches. He thought of how Meggie had sacrificed, if not her life, certainly her health, by living as a British agent in Germany. When he had remembered everything there was to remember, his determination hardened. He would stop whoever was planning to ruin their little corner of heaven. It might be only a small Sussex village, but it was everything to him at that moment, and if he had to stand alone, well and good; but as he looked round the bar and heard the same conversation he’d been having with Richards, it seemed to Waldo that he would certainly not be alone in going to defend Bexham.

  ‘What do you think of these Beatle chaps?’ Lionel asked Waldo when he called round a little later that day. ‘They’re enjoying a huge success, but I can’t see it myself. I mean, is it music, do you think?’

  ‘I think so, most definitely. There’s originality, certainly. Yes, I would say they’re definitely a talented bunch of mopheads.’

  ‘You surely don’t think so?’

  ‘I surely do. What’s more, whoever’s backing them is going to end up one helluva rich guy, mark my words, as you would say, Lionel old chap.’

  ‘I can’t see it myself.’

  Lionel shook his head, and helped himself to another spoonful of sugar. He never could get over being able to have as much sugar as he wished, not after all the deprivations of the war. He still had a cellar full of sugar, and marmalade. Maude, his late wife, long before war
had been declared, and much against his wishes, had started to hoard marmalade and sugar, and now it was his turn. Strange how the very things that irritated you about someone you loved turned out to be the same things that you now treasured. Maude. His late and lovely Maude who so loved to dance. Maude whom he’d never really treasured, until she’d gone.

  ‘These Bobbysoxers, they’re a bit of a nuisance, aren’t they?’ he began again, looking across at Waldo.

  Waldo laughed. ‘Not Bobbysoxers any more, Lionel, old thing. By no means. No, now it’s fans, or groupies. Bobbysoxers went out with the New Look!’

  ‘Groupies, did you say? What an awful word.’ Lionel shook his head. ‘Dreadful, dreadful word. No, but Waldo, must tell you, tell you who I’ve thought better of, and that’s that chap Kennedy. I never did like him – his father, you know, no friend to Britain before the war, and not much of one after, but now – well, I’ve taken to the chap, really I have.’

  ‘Good man. Ever since he stood up to Khrushchev, eh?’

  They’d had this conversation many times before, but they both still enjoyed it. It seemed to Waldo that it was like taking a much-loved drive in your motor car. You knew where all the good turns in the road were coming, all the splendid views, all the places to stop, and its very familiarity only made it the more pleasurable.

  ‘Now, have you heard about the possible sale of the Yacht Club?’

  Lionel replaced his teaspoon on his saucer and, putting down his cup in the same place, stared at Waldo. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘There’s a rumour that the Yacht Club is coming up for sale, and that it’s going to be bought by a property developer, and that the children of the people to whom old Todd sold his boatyard don’t want to run a boatyard any more, they want to turn it into a bistro. Richards is hopping mad, and so is most of his clientele.’

  Lionel stood up. He hadn’t been so shocked by anything since war was declared, or poor darling Maude was killed. If Waldo was right this would mean the end of Bexham. The end of everything that they’d fought for, their life the way they thought it should be lived.

  ‘But Bexham is the Club, Waldo, you know that, I know that. The Yacht Club – the Club is Bexham. There must be rules governing it. Things like that can’t just happen. Although saying that, since 1945 all too many things like that have happened. Look at East Weathering, ruined completely by insensitive building, becoming uglier by the minute, nothing but fish and chip shops and Kiss Me Quick hats.’

  Lionel was pacing up and down looking more than agitated, he was looking both pale and flushed at the same time, as if he had lost colour at the news, and then it had heightened at the realisation of what such a change could do to the village in which he had grown up and lived all his life.

  ‘We’ll fight it, Lionel, you’ll see,’ Waldo tried to say, but his murmurings were brushed impatiently aside.

  ‘You can’t fight a voting board, Waldo. I know, my father was in the city, I know, believe me. Any more than you can fight an army board, or any other kind of board. The truth is that the entire world can’t fight a board, not even the monarch. A board is a board is a board, and that, Mr Astley, is the truth.’

  ‘Put it this way, then. I give you my word as a southern gentleman, sir, that I will, hand on heart, personally take on the powers-that-be to fight this on behalf of old Bexham, new Bexham, but most of all Meggie.’

  Lionel stopped his pacing and stared at Waldo for a few seconds. Waldo never would get over his loss. Lionel knew it, Waldo knew it, possibly the whole world knew it.

  ‘Meggie loved this place. She came here, sick and ill, and it put her to rights. She grew up with her childhood sweetheart Davey Kinnersley, and it was from here that he sailed to Dunkirk – eventually to pay the ultimate sacrifice – what greater reasons do I need to fight this asinine idea of selling off the Yacht Club. There Lionel, old friend? What greater reason?’

  Lionel nodded. It had never occurred to him before that moment that Waldo and he had so much in common, not just their love of bridge, but their deep and lasting regrets, their feelings of loss for their wives, gathered too soon, leaving them to mourn them every day that passed. He decided to change the subject.

  ‘I say, old chap, I was remembering this morning that game we had with the Egyptian fellow. Do you remember? That was something, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You set him up – you were brilliant. As a matter of fact he was brilliant, but you won, and that was what was important.’

  Lionel chuckled, remembering.

  ‘I set the whole hand up again for John and Mattie the other night, and it still made the hair on my head, what’s left of it, stand up on end! How much was it that we won that night? Four thousand quid?’

  ‘It sure was, young sir, four thousand lovely pounds. And that was in 1947 when four thousand pounds was worth more than today, say what you will.’

  Lionel shook his head, still smiling, still unable to quite believe what had happened all that time ago, the fun they’d had, the money they’d won.

  ‘That was quite a night.’ He picked up his newspaper and waved it at Waldo, still intent on distracting him. ‘What do you think about all this then?’ He pointed to the headlines.

  ‘Not too much.’ Waldo sighed. ‘I’m never too sure of foreign policy, anyone’s foreign policies, not just ours, not just America’s, anyone’s. I gather at this moment hardly anyone in the States knows quite where Vietnam actually is, not even the Senate!’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t.’

  Lionel put the newspaper down again.

  ‘I think I need a cup of tea, old thing,’ he murmured, suddenly sitting down and staring into the fire. ‘Do you mind getting me one? I feel a bit sleepy, I think that’s what it is. Sleepy is what I feel.’

  Waldo stared at him for a second, not wanting to tell him that he’d just had tea, and merely nodded.

  ‘Yes, of course, I’ll get you one, old chap.’

  He went into the kitchen to make a fresh pot, hoping against hope that Lionel wouldn’t have noticed him exiting with the tea tray.

  Once in the kitchen he stared round in some surprise. Everything in Lionel’s bachelor kitchen was immaculate. Everything labelled, everything cleaned and polished. It was more like a kitchen belonging to some exclusive gentlemen’s club. Waldo knew that his old friend had long ago done away with hiring anyone to help him, insisting instead that he found it more interesting to look after himself and his dog, rather than have someone come in and pretend to do it. More than that, Waldo knew that Lionel had, for a short few years, conducted a discreet affair with a wealthy South African bridge-playing lady, and in order to keep it just that way, namely discreet, it had been necessary not to have anyone else around – Bexham being Bexham.

  Waldo was in no hurry to leave, but when on taking the fresh pot of tea back into the sitting room he found Lionel asleep with his dog at his feet he retreated once more to the kitchen with the tray, and quietly let himself out of the house.

  He walked along the side of the green from Lionel’s house with his hat pulled down, not really wanting to meet anyone, not really wanting to talk to anyone. The autumn afternoon, although still bright and sunny, already had an early sense of darkness about it, so that as he passed the gardens and homes set about the green a sudden gust of rising wind startled the trees, swishing more dying leaves off their great branches to curl and spin down to lawns which were themselves already losing their vitality and growth. A thrush hopped out of a shrub to stand in hope above a series of worm casts, while smoke from an early bonfire drifted past the windows of the houses and cottages, obscuring the now tidied gardens. But other than the slight sigh of the wind it seemed to Waldo there was nothing but silence, as if summer had all at once stolen away to hide somewhere on the other side of the world, until once again it was time for the earth to shift its axis and for the sun to warm the buds of a new spring into life. At least, that was the hope, and despite everything that the politicians could throw at th
e world that would remain the hope.

  They were odd days, not just the week that passed after Waldo’s revelation to Lionel about the Yacht Club, but every day that passed something seemed to be changing, as if the loveliness of autumn was doomed to be only a challenge to the unsightly doings of man. Scandals in government followed upon each other with such speed that even the locals at the Three Tuns were left stunned as day succeeded day and still the revelations, the political scandals, continued.

  ‘It was that Labour bloke Wilson who got ’im,’ Charley, one of the older fishermen in the bar volunteered to Richards.

  ‘What got ’im,’ Richards murmured.

  ‘If you say so,’ Charley acquiesced, shaking out his Daily Mirror, and drawing on his old pipe. ‘Prostitutes, lies in parliament, so what’s new my wife wants to know! But still, I say it’s that Wilson what got ’im. Wouldn’t leave ole Macmillan alone, he wouldn’t, snap, snap, snap at his heels like my Jack Russell here. No, he got ’im all right.’

  Richards lifted a glass he was busy polishing to the light, as was his custom, and put it down before taking up the challenge.

  ‘You’re right, of course, Charley, it was Wilson what got ’im. Charging him with indolent nonchalance. Although I’m afraid I rather care for that. I think I shall use it about some of my staff – if some of us are not very careful.’

  Richards cast a telling glance at one of his potboys who was leaning on the bar smoking and reading yet another copy of the Daily Mirror.

  ‘He said that the Tories are entirely unfit to govern, and you know, as an adopted Englishman, I rather agree.’ Waldo lowered his copy of The Times, and gazed back into the bar room from his window seat.

  ‘Well, never mind, eh?’ Charley continued, looking round for agreement. ‘Wilson’s broken his spirit entirely.’

  ‘The Prime Minister’s not been exactly helpful to himself,’ Waldo remarked drily, joining in at last. ‘Surely he could have come to some sort of conclusion that an impropriety was in the offing when the letter from Profumo to Christine Keeler beginning Darling was produced. I mean to say, not exactly the kind of endearment an Englishman would use to someone he hardly knew, is it?’