The Naylors

by J. I. M. Stewart

Vicar: The Revd C. Prowse M.A.

  Telephone: Plumley 2

  The party paused in front of this, and perused the only notice on view:

  On Wed. 13th inst at 7.30p.m.

  a meeting will be held at the

  Vicarage to make arrangements

  for

  THE AUTUMN BAZAAR

  It is hoped that all prepared

  to organise stalls, refreshments etc.

  will be able to attend loyally as before

  New faces welcome

  It was a lonely little notice, having something of the effect of a cri de coeur, but with a certain forlorn liveliness occasioned by its having been laboriously printed out in a variety of coloured chalks. Father Hooker regarded it sombrely, as if wondering what the Church Militant was coming to. Most irrationally, Hilda found herself feeling apologetic, and this expressed itself in a distinctly random remark.

  ‘The church is quite small,’ she said. ‘Almost poky. It wouldn’t have much room for St Michael and all the angels.’

  ‘Ah, but – my dear young lady – remember.’ It was clear that Father Hooker was about to produce a pleasantry. ‘Any number of them has been judged capable of dancing on the point of a needle.’

  The effect of this observation was, for some obscure reason, disheartening. There was a moment of silence and immobility. This went even for the dogs, which had so positioned themselves as to be able to sniff each at the other’s behind, although surely without any expectation of novelty. The morning ramble from Plumley Park might have been felt as having reached its nadir all too rapidly. It was at this juncture that the young man appeared.

  He had issued from the modest porch of the vicarage itself, and he was a wild young man. Hilda was aware of this incongruous fact at once. She was aware, too, of a disposition in herself to like wild young men. It was a quality not exhibited by either of her brothers. Charles and Henry, decent youths in the main, could be uncivilised and churlish, but wildness eluded them. Here, however, the quality was evident in this young man striding rapidly towards them. His dark hair, although in fact hanging in a great lock over his right eye, could be imagined as streaming in a gale behind him. He wasn’t to be called sharp-featured – he was too handsome for that – but his expression suggested a mind with a cutting edge. He was dressed in stylish near-rags, just as a wild young man should be.

  He came up with them as they still stood at the lich-gate. He glanced at the two middle-aged men and uttered a brisk and unpausing good morning. He glanced at Hilda and came to a halt – instantaneously but smoothly, much as if he were a Rolls-Royce.

  ‘Miss Naylor?’ he said. ‘I think I ought to introduce myself. Simon Prowse. Christopher’s nephew.’

  ‘How do you do? This is my uncle, Dr Naylor. And this is Father Hooker, who is paying us a short visit.’ Hilda managed this with commendable composure. There was a shaking of hands.

  ‘I had to guess about you,’ Simon Prowse said to Hilda. ‘I’ve never been here before. You mayn’t have heard of me.’

  ‘No, I never have.’

  ‘Quiet sort of hole to do some reading for Schools next year.’

  Simon Prowse seemed to feel he ought to give this explanation without delay. It placed him, of course, as an Oxford man, and presumably still an undergraduate. So he’s younger than I am, Hilda thought. I’m ageing fast. She wondered whether Simon was at the vicarage in the character of a paying guest. It was very likely.

  ‘Christopher and Edith are very nice,’ Simon said. (‘Nice’ was an odd word for a wild young man to use. Perhaps it had occurred to him that ‘quiet sort of hole’ had scarcely been felicitous as the description of a kinsman’s dwelling.) ‘And here Christopher is. He must have spotted you through the lace curtains and the aspidistra leaves.’

  Hilda was unaware of these objects as ever having been on view in the vicarage. But Simon somehow didn’t sound like a snob. It was as if the disparaging flight of fancy had an ideological rather than a social implication. Moreover – at least provisionally – it would be sensible to like Simon Prowse. One dislikeable companion at a time was quite enough.

  It was true that Christopher Prowse had appeared. He was hurrying down his garden path, making welcoming gestures as he moved. He seemed to take it kindly that the Naylors’ theologically distinguished guest had paused even to take an interest in his autumn bazaar.

  ‘Ah, good morning!’ he said. ‘That was a delightful occasion yesterday evening. I see that you have made the acquaintance of my nephew Simon. Simon is reading with me. Not quite a reading-party in the old-fashioned sense, but a pleasing approximation to it. More accurately, Simon is going to read with me, since we haven’t quite begun as yet. His Latin set texts. Of course I have been brushing up my own Latin. For all I know, Simon is really ahead of me. If that proves to be the case, it will all be part of the game.’

  Simon, Hilda thought, was taking no trouble to look as if he judged it would be his sort of game. Latin set texts were, after all, a poor stamping ground for wild young men. Perhaps he was a conscientious son of Prowses unknown, and was at the vicarage because obediently acquiescing in some family arrangement. But he didn’t suggest himself as one much given to acquiescence or obedience. In fact there was something a little puzzling about Simon. At this moment he was looking at her frankly and openly in an appraising way. But the appraisal wasn’t quite of the sort she might have expected – or so, at least, she felt. He might almost have been trying to decide whether she was – potentially – friend or foe.

  ‘I wonder whether you would care to go into the church?’ It was hesitantly that the vicar asked George this question, so that Hilda wondered whether her uncle’s defection had been hinted to him by her parents. Or it was possible that rumours of George’s former backsliding had reached him from other parishioners since his own coming to Plumley.

  Uncle George agreed at once that they must all look at the church. Even on the exterior, he said, Father Hooker might find matter of interest. The lower courses of the tower were undoubtedly Saxon. The long-and-short work at the corners proved the point.

  So they all moved on through the churchyard, which was full of crosses and headstones and displaced lids on empty receptacles – most of them cocked at tumble-down angles in the manner of a mortuary scene by Stanley Spencer. Then they peered up at the tower. Even Bill and Bess, being accustomed to going along with human vagary, elevated their muzzles in air.

  ‘Have a go with these,’ Simon said to Hilda. Simon, although she hadn’t noticed the fact, had a pair of field-glasses slung from his neck, and these he was now disengaging and handing to her. Although she had known all about the long-and-short work since childhood, she accepted this civility and focused the glasses on the tower before handing them on to Father Hooker. Simon must be a bird-watcher, and had been about to set off on a prowl. When one thought of it, there was a hint of fanaticism about him. Bird-watchers were often like that. In fact bird-watching could be so conducted as to be far from the mildest of hobbies. It might square with wildness readily enough.

  They went into the church, Bill and Bess being still of the party. There was an interesting font. There were marble slabs enumerating the virtues of former owners of Plumley Park. There was a small, a becomingly modest slab commemorating George’s grandfather, the Naylor who had bought the place. On the wall of the chancel some fragments of mediaeval painting continued a ghostly existence too faintly to be very confidently viewed as depicting St Michael chatting with Moses on the Mount. It was George’s father who had commissioned the celebrated Professor Tristram to coax this dubious occasion into demi-semi visibility.

  The church had an equivocal smell, neither quite dusty nor quite musty. That there was some mammalian or avian component in this was immediately suggested by the indecorous comportment of Bill and Bess. Sniffing and faintly yelping, they were suddenly scampering in a mad excitement all over the place. Rat or rabbit; squirrel, bat, or even owl: dead or alive, there must be somethi
ng of the sort around. The vicar, perhaps because of that nostalgic feeling for St Francis and his Assisi, regarded with complacency this bad conduct on the part of Brother Dog. St Francis himself, Hilda thought, would have been extremely cross, the kinetic little brutes being so evidently incapable of pausing to listen to a homily. Hilda also expected Father Hooker to be cross now, since he probably had a high standard of the behaviour required in religious edifices. But Father Hooker had been in good humour ever since his appearance at breakfast, and he continued in this vein on the present occasion.

  ‘Aha!’ he said. ‘Here surely we have the domini canes, my dear Mr Prowse. You will recall the famous pun. And somewhere in Florence, I think, there is a pictorial representation of it popularly termed “The Triumph of the Dominican Order”. You may recall that too.’

  ‘I don’t know that I do,’ the vicar said nervously. ‘My trip to Italy, a cherished memory, was so very many years . . .’

  ‘The Cappellone degli Spagnuoli in Santa Maria Novella,’ the vicar’s nephew interrupted impatiently. ‘A major thing by Andrea da Firenzi. And there the domini canes – or hounds of heaven, if you like – certainly are. A whole piebald pack of them, hunting down the wolves of heresy like mad. Up the Dominicans and down with Arius.’

  Hilda was startled by this unexpected performance. The wild young man was also civilised! When herself so recently in Florence she had failed to sign up Santa Maria Novella, perhaps because her guidebook had discouragingly described it as near the railway station. So – much to her vexation – she couldn’t join in this sudden burst of culture. San Domenico at Siena was no help at all. Uncle George probably knew all about the domini canes, but Uncle George was keeping mum. Perhaps he had some sympathy with Arius. Perhaps – it was a horrid thought – he was mistrusting his ability to stand up to Hooker in their coming disputation. Hilda took it for granted that any such failure would be a disaster. Never having passed through even a brief phase of religious feeling, she couldn’t very well do anything else.

  But now – driving Bill and Bess before them – they were in the open air again. And at once there was a parting. Simon Prowse had glanced at his watch.

  ‘On my way,’ he said, and walked off without further utterance. He must, Hilda supposed, have an appointment with some birds.

  It was one of the days on which Edward Naylor went up to town. From these occasions he was increasingly prone to return in poor spirits, and when this happened – when, in his wife’s phrase, he was to be regarded as ‘jaded’ – it had become the custom for Hilda to see him through a late cup of tea. If Mary Naylor undertook the task, she was apt to do so in a mood of anxiety which her husband didn’t care for, since it was often his own mood too. Hilda could be relied on to be unostentatiously cheerful. The present occasion was like that. Edward had chaired a meeting at which it had to be decided who here or there should be promoted to this or that – a task which in prosperous times would be regarded as not all that important. But with things now as tight as they were, even a single misjudgement might have serious consequences. And there were men on the Board, Edward was convinced, who would back a misjudgement if they possibly could. George Naylor, although he knew of this convention of a tête- à-tête, ventured to join his brother and niece. They were the two members of his family whom he found most congenial. And Edward responded to his appearance cordially enough.

  ‘Hardly had a decent word with you,’ he said. ‘You’re sure that fellow isn’t at the keyhole?’

  ‘No sugar, you remember,’ George said to Hilda. ‘My dear Edward, we mustn’t regard Hooker as a spy.’

  ‘Guardian angel, eh?’

  ‘Not quite that, either – or not from my point of view. We mustn’t forget that the poor fellow’s position is a difficult one.’

  ‘Difficult? I don’t suppose he has any anxieties about his next month’s screw.’

  George was baffled for a moment by this apparent non sequitur. Then he remembered that the financial slant on things must be a constant preoccupation with Edward.

  ‘I mean, in particular, his having been set on me’ – George seemed to enjoy this expression – ‘so briskly. It must make his position with Mary and yourself feel awkward to him.’

  ‘Really, Uncle George!’ Hilda exclaimed. ‘Can’t you see he’s not that sensitive sort of person at all?’

  ‘I’ve very little idea of what sort of person he is. How could I have, after only a day’s acquaintance? So I must give him the benefit of every doubt.’

  Edward Naylor endorsed this with an emphatic nod— presumably as being a proper sentiment on the part of a parson, or even ex-parson. But precisely this annoyed Hilda. Uncle George should take the freedom of his new position, and stop laying on Christian attitudes so freely. He was in danger of being hung up on them.

  ‘Of course, we all have our troubles,’ Edward Naylor said suddenly, and as if his mind had strayed elsewhere. ‘They’re not to be avoided –in business or out of it.’

  ‘Nothing going too badly, I hope?’ George asked. He realised that he had been presented with a cue for some such question as this.

  ‘Unemployment, George. It goes on and on, and up and up. It’s a tragedy.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ George said soberly.

  ‘Reached its optimum donkey’s ages ago.’

  ‘Its optimum?’ George had repeated the word in perplexity. Hilda’s interest sharpened. She was developing a theory that her father owned a dual personality. One personality made all the going while he was being a director of companies in London, and was entirely concerned with material interests and the main chance. The second took over here at home, where he made a very passable country gentleman, acknowledging all the proper responsibilities. With luck, Hilda thought, it might be possible to elaborate an entertaining comparison between this sort of Englishman (who must be fairly common) and those Japanese business men who were said to spend the day wearing bowler hats and carrying brief-cases and furled umbrellas, but then went home and dressed appropriately to a domestic set-up in which no hint of a modern world was permitted. What was particularly worth study in her father was the manner in which the two personalities occasionally played Bo-peep or hide-and-seek. Or at least they did this at Plumley, and with pleasing effects of incongruity as a result. Perhaps this was happening now.

  ‘Yes,’ Hilda said, backing up her uncle. ‘What’s optimum unemployment?’

  ‘The optimum comes just before the numbers reach the point at which government has to cut off the pocket-money element in the hand-out. Particularly to the youngsters. So long as they had time on their hands and a bit of money in their pockets, they were our best customers. And we were always coming up with something, you may be sure. The pin-tables and the fruit-machines and the one-armed bandits: they fell off a little, but along came the arcade video games. We looked like hitting the jackpot there. But they’re no good without that careless little pile of tenpenny bits, or whatever you call them. I’d no more sink big money in that sort of hardware now than I would in suburban cinemas. The discos are holding up best. You pay for the part of the noise you don’t make yourself, but all the fling-around is for free. Thank God we diversified there in time. They even put something in your own pocket, George, old boy.’

  This was a genial reference to that little private income. George didn’t like it, and a hint of this must have shown on his face.

  ‘Not that I wholly approve of the discos,’ Edward Naylor went on rapidly. ‘It isn’t good for morality, all that near-hysteria. No better than bawdy-houses, some of them, I’m told.’

  ‘What nonsense!’ Hilda said. ‘Stick to the hard-nosed stuff, daddy, and cut out the rest.’

  George now looked dismayed, but whether this was on account of what he took to be a failure in filial piety wasn’t clear. And Edward scarcely paused.

  ‘Or demos, now,’ he said. ‘Arid ground, if any ever was. Not a penny in them! I did try for a corner in anti-nuclear banners and badges, but a clever
little oriental chap got ahead of me. And take stadium control. Bigger and better barriers on the terraces, and cut down on your police bills. Sound idea. But no sooner had we started writing the cheques than people stopped going to football matches at all, in case they got a brick or a bottle in the face. Cowardly. No longer any spirit in that whole class of society. I tell you, we’ve a hard row to hoe.’

  ‘Again, it’s a point of view,’ George said. ‘You know, I hate dire poverty. I hate the very idea of it. But it may be maintained that, in measure, it helps some people to discover that a good many of the best things in life come for free. It’s a subversive thought, of course, when the growth of leisure industries is in question.’

  ‘Well, yes. Quite worth thinking about.’ Edward Naylor wasn’t in the least offended by this clever, if almost incomprehensible talk on the part of his eccentric brother. Hilda, on the other hand, was not, on reflection, quite pleased. Uncle George was right to take her father’s innocent spouting not too seriously. But there was something a little facile in that stuff about the best things in life not bringing a bill along with them. It was Sunday Schoolish, in fact. A boy bathing in a stream was happy, but might be the happier for knowing that his new fishing-rod was waiting for him on the bank. If he believed that the possession of a fishing-rod was going to be beyond him for keeps, he mightn’t be happy at all. Hilda recalled how once at Oxford she had skimmed through something called a theodicy, written by an eighteenth-century bishop. Where the bishop might have written the word ‘poverty’ he wrote ‘freedom from riches’, and he had pointed out that if all you could afford was bread and water you weren’t likely to contract gout. Hilda saw that her line of thought here pointed – although a little uncertainly – to the possibility that Uncle George might find it harder to shed certain simple habits of mind and unexamined persuasions than a belief in the Holy Trinity or whatever. Stopping off being a priest was probably a pretty complex affair.