A Postillion Struck by Lightning

by Dirk Bogarde

  It was very nice in the big room with them both back. Even though it was very nice too with Lally and the cat, and going to the Picture Palace, which we had promised not to mention, and making jam and even having to go shopping every day almost. But it was a good comfortable feeling all being together again, and even Minnehaha came in and jumped on to my father’s lap while he was reading his letters. Lally was having a very nice time talking like anything to our mother. She said she didn’t count talking to children much, and missed the real Grown Ups, but all she was talking about was rotten old Miss Maltravers and being so nosy so it really wasn’t different conversation, just the same as with us, but to someone else.

  “She quite spoiled the children’s postcard, you know. Reading it out like that.”

  “I don’t think she meant to be nosy,” said our mother. “After all, anyone can read a postcard if they want to. They aren’t supposed to be private, otherwise you would put them in an envelope, surely?”

  Lally sniffed a bit and wouldn’t give in. “And telling everyone about my catalogue from Debenhams. That’s cheeky, I must say !”

  “But I expect that had the name printed on the outside, didn’t it? So she wasn’t really being nosy. After all, it is a small village, she doesn’t get much fun, I imagine, or excitement for that matter.” Our mother was always very reasonable, and put like that, Miss Maltravers didn’t seem to be so awful, especially if anyone could read anyone’s postcard if they liked. I didn’t know about that bit. But Lally was not best pleased.

  “Well,” she said, gathering up all the wrapping paper from the gifts and making a neat little pile on the table, “if she thinks it’s exciting to read other people’s letters, that’s her business I suppose. But the next time I write off for anything, I’ll tell them to put it in a plain envelope. I don’t want the whole of Sussex to know I have it in mind to get a new coat for the winter, that’s MY business. Come along you two …” she said, “give your parents a bit of a rest and get up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire toot-sweet, it’s well past time.”

  The O.M. glimmered in the shade under the trees. It was beautiful, and we were all very proud of it. Our father most of all. It was his favourite thing, our mother said, next to The Times which is where he worked. She said he liked it better than us all put together, but we knew that wasn’t true. It’s just that she got a bit fed up having her hair blown all over the place when she had just had it “done”, and getting cold in the winter, and wet in the rain. The O.M. was all made of aluminium and was, our father said, an Open Tourer. It went very fast indeed, at least when he was driving it it did, and we got quite cold and wet sometimes when he couldn’t be bothered to stop to put up the hood and the side windows.

  My sister, Lally and I sat in the back together, under a black leather cover thing, with a separate windshield which had three sides and didn’t keep the wind off us at all. We were quite warm under the black cover, but our heads poked out and got very cold, and red, so our father bought us each a leather helmet which covered us almost completely, with ear-muff things and goggles. Lally grumbled a bit about getting her hair in a mess and one day had it all cut off, like a boy’s, to save the trouble.

  Our mother sat in front wrapped up in a moleskin rug, with scarves and things, but she still got terribly blown about and didn’t like the car as much as we did. We all felt very swanky whizzing along in it, all silver with a lovely flying eagle on the bonnet and a very loud horn to frighten the wits out of people who were being slow, or getting in our father’s way.

  Sometimes, as a treat, we used to pack a big wicker hamper, load up with cups and kettles and bottles of water and a stove, travelling rugs and our father’s paint-box, his easel, his stool, and his canvases and Minnehaha, and go off on a picnic somewhere far. Like Arundel, or Ashdown Forest, or Chichester: we used to leave the cottage quite early, after breakfast, and he never said where we were going, just that it was going to be a lovely place; and that was half the fun. But not for our mother. I mean she liked going on a picnic and making the sandwiches and the cold pies and things, but it was the getting there she didn’t much like. Because our father would never stop if he could help it, until he wanted a little refreshment. And that could be hours and hours later. Well, nearly.

  “Ulric! You really will have to stop soon.”

  “Why, dear? We have just started off.”

  “The children are starting to fidget.”

  She could see us in her little side mirror. We couldn’t do much ourselves because of our windscreen, and we couldn’t shout because of the wind and the speed, and so we had to make signs so that she would see, which she nearly always did. If she didn’t, Lally used to hold a big handkerchief up, so that it fluttered in the wind; she called it our Distress Signal. But still our father wouldn’t stop.

  “Ulric dear, please!” she would cry. We couldn’t hear because of the screen, but we could jolly well tell what she was saying. And then we would reach an inn, usually one our father had chosen from a map long before we started out. It was usually the prettiest, with a garden or a lovely view, and where the beer was specially good. And we’d swerve into the courtyard and people would come out to look at the beautiful silver car from Italy, and we would all feel very pleased. Especially Lally who was longing to “go” as much as we were.

  “I do wish,” our mother would say, “I do wish you’d listen to me.”

  Our father would be very smiling and cheerful because he loved driving more than anything it seemed, especially on these picnic days, with the wind and the sun and a big glass of beer beside him.

  “I do listen to you, darling, you know I do.”

  “The children are not camels!”

  “Well … it hasn’t been so long. And now everything’s all right.”

  It usually was. Just. We had a packet of potato chips and American Ice Cream Sodas … and Lally had a shandy and we all sat in the sun and wondered where the next stop would be. Minnehaha had a collar and a lead and sat beside us spitting at any dog that was silly enough to come near.

  Then off we went again, eating Rowntrees Clear Gums which our father always bought for us as a surprise, even though we knew he would do it, and he never forgot; we always pretended it was the first time. And it seemed like that on these days.

  And then we had to find somewhere to stop for lunch, which was always very difficult because once our father got behind his wheel again he wanted to go almost to India before he would stop. We all used to shout and point out lovely places, with trees, and grass, and streams or woods, but he simply wouldn’t listen.

  “I can’t stop here, it’s on a corner,” he would shout over the windscreen. Or else it was on a hill going up, a hill going down, too muddy, or else we didn’t see the place in time and he whizzed right past. Our mother got more and more cross, and sometimes it was nearly afternoon when we bumped on to a dusty bit of track and he found a place which was covered in old tin cans, bits of paper, or the remains of an old firesite. It was always a beastly place he chose, but he didn’t seem to mind, and we all piled out and got the baskets and stove and things, and spread out the travelling rugs and cushions and tied Minnehaha to a tree or a stick or something.

  It didn’t really matter in the end. Especially when we had our slices of cold chicken pie, or meat loaf or whatever it was our mother had made for the day. She was a bit grumpy of course: because the ground was dirty and she usually had on a pretty white frock and had to sit carefully on the travelling rug. But our father was very happy, making a little fire from twigs and bits of log, which we didn’t need because we had the stove, or going off to find somewhere he could sit and do a painting.

  “Why we have to come fifty miles to sit in a rubbish heap to eat, I shall never know,” said our mother, laying out the mugs and packets of things to eat.

  “We passed so many pretty places,” said Lally cheerfully. “You’ll never change him though, not now you won’t. Give him his car and we’re off no matter where
. Anyway, the sun’s out, and what we all need is a bit of something nice in our insides and then we’ll all feel much better, and after lunch we can clear up the old tins and things and stick them in the bushes and everything will look a treat, you see.”

  Going home, after tea which always tasted horrid out of Thermos flasks, in the golden light of the late afternoon we were all very happy because the day, as always, had been happy too. Sometimes we stopped again at an inn for more lemonade and chips, but never more than one glass because of the Not Stopping Bit … but crunching up the chalky lane to the Cottage was really always the very best part. Our father drove the O.M. into a very small chalk quarry where it lived, just at the bottom of the long path up to the garden. And loaded with the baskets and hampers and rugs and the stove, we clambered up under the big elms to the wooden gate and then through the vegetable garden smelling warm in the early dusk.

  Sometimes there were glow-worms glinting greenishly in the long grasses, and slow snails sliding gently across the path in the light of the torch. And the bitter-sweet scent of blackcurrant leaves filled the still summer evening as we brushed past them on the way to the kitchen door.

  After the lamps were lit, the unpacking done and everything put away, and the table laid for supper in the big room, it was pleasant to slip outside and sit under the apple tree and look right down Great Meadow to the lamps sparkling in the dairy at the Court at Piggy Corner and think how nice our house must look from down there, like a ship on a hill, with the windows glowing golden and smoke wisping from the tall chimney stack.

  The dairy of the Court was right on a corner of the road, next door to the pigsties, and when we were coming back from any-where in the O.M. we always knew just how near home we were by the smell, which is why we called it Piggy Corner. It wasn’t a beastly smell, just a Farm Smell, and it always meant that we were going to turn left up the white road to the quarry and the house. And truly, coming home was about the nicest part of ever going out on a picnic.

  Reg Fluke said that there was a pike in the river Ouse at Itford almost a yard long, and very fierce. He said no one had ever caught it although people had been trying and trying for years and years.

  “Too wily … ’e knows a thing or two after all this time, I reckon. Old Hallam up at Selmeston said as ‘ow once he did get ‘im on his line but he fought so hard he broke it and dived away. Hallam reckons he’s got about as many ‘ooks in ‘is jaws as he’s got teeth, and I wouldn’t wonder.”

  It was decided that we would go and have a try ourselves. At least, he would go and try with his friend Percy Brooks, because they both had real fishing rods with reels and floats and all sorts of hooks and things, but they kindly said I could come with them as long as I brought some grub. So in a way I was quite included in the party, and I felt that it was all right to tell my sister and Lally that we were going to try for the Giant Pike in the Ouse. At first Lally was a bit put out and I was worried that she’d say No.

  “Whereabouts in the Ouse, I’d like to know? It’s miles away and you could fall in and then what?”

  “Well it’s over near Beddingham, across the railway, and if I fell in Reg or Percy would get me out and it would be very exciting if we did catch it.”

  I was laying the table for lunch, and she was basting a leg of lamb in the oven, kneeling on the floor with a red face, from the heat, and spooning the juice over the crackling top.

  “And pray how will you get there? Beddingham’s nearly at Lewes! There is no money for bus fares, you know … it’ll take you half a day to walk.”

  “We are going to go over the Downs, up past Red Barn and along the top to the Beacon and then down to the Brooks. We’ll have to start early in the morning, and I’ve got to take the grub.”

  “The what?” She looked up from the oven with raised eye-brows, the spoon in her hand, her apron all bumfley from kneeling.

  “The food, I mean.”

  She slammed the oven door and took the ladle over to the sink. “They’ll spoil your ways those two, you mark my words. Grub indeed! What sort of grub, may I ask, do you envisage?”

  She was being cross, I could feel that, and she was trying to find a way of saying no without really saying no. She never wanted to actually refuse if she could help it, but it was useful if something difficult came along which was putting off a bit. Like food.

  “I’ll make some sandwiches, and perhaps an egg or something. I don’t want much,” I said quickly, and so that she couldn’t interrupt me I went on very fast and said that I would make them myself the night before, if she would let me have the egg to boil, and that I had three pence saved and could use that for some lemonade or something. I could see that she really wasn’t best pleased because she banged the steamer quite hard on top of the copper, and the lid fell off and all the steam went up in the air and she cried out angrily: “Drat the thing! What do you want to come and ask me difficult things for when I’m steaming cauliflower!”

  But in the end it was all right and she said I could go, and gave me some cold lamb for the sandwiches and a new egg to boil and I did them all myself without any trouble, and with no mess. No mess was very important with Lally.

  Next morning, very early, while the sun was making long thin shadows across the gully and the dew was like silver beads everywhere, I went down the brick path to meet Reg and Perce with my satchel full of sandwiches and a bottle of home-made ginger beer.

  The Market Place was very quiet and still at that time in the morning; not even Mitchells Dairy was about. The shops were all closed and there was only a sleepy-looking girl sweeping the steps of the Magpie Inn. By the time we had climbed up to the top of Long Burgh Hill I was pretty well puffed out but I couldn’t say much because the other two had rods and baskets and things, and I only had my satchel with the sandwiches and my bottle of ginger beer. Walking along the grassy track behind Reg and Perce up on the top there, made me feel very good. The air was still, not yet hot, and all about us lay the whole of Sussex. On the right was all the weald fading away into the misty morning in pale blue and green ridges; on the left you looked down to the sea, sparkling and winking in the sun, and Newhaven, like a toy town with red and grey roofs all jumbled together and the church spire sticking up, and beyond that the long quay poking a bent finger into the sea.

  There was no sound at all, just our feet through the dew-silvered grasses and the larks; now and then sheep bleating, because this was all sheep land. And every so often we came to one of the dew ponds which people said were so deep that you got drowned in them if you slid down the sides, but Reg said that was all My Eye and that there was nothing in them except a few efts and water-boatmen, and if they were that deep why did the shepherds let the sheep drink from them, which is what they were for? Which seemed reasonable.

  When we got to Firle Beacon we had a bit of a sit down. It was halfway, and Reg and Perce had an apple and I drank some of my ginger beer, and we lay in the sun listening to the sheep bells and the larks singing and the wind withering about in the gorse. At least I did. They were talking about bait and hooks and just where the exact place to find the pike was. Reg had taken off his Wellingtons and I noticed that he was wearing grey socks with holes in them, but I didn’t say anything and presently we packed up and started on the path again to Beddingham Hill.

  By the time we reached it, and could look down over the valley below to Lewes and the castle sitting on top of the town like a piece of broken pumice stone, and Mount Cabum like a volcano, the sun was getting high and it was already warm. But they seemed very pleased because they could see the Ouse winding up the valley like a tin snake, and Reg said the tide would be in by the time we got down there. As we slithered down the steep slope to Itford Farm, Perce said that whatever I did I wasn’t to come near the edge of the river bank, because the least shadow, or movement, would scare the pike away and they’d clobber me one. But since they had let me go with them, and were older than me anyway, I just held my tongue and followed them bumpily ove
r the mole hills to the road and then across the high railway line to the river.

  The pike wasn’t actually in the river; he lived, they said, in a sort of pond thing which ran off the river and was very deep, which is why he was there at all. Because he had grown so big eating all the other fishes in the pond-bit that he had grown too big to swim out again, so he was trapped until someone hooked him.

  The pond was quite large, and very weedy. The tide was coming in, rippling the clear water up towards Lewes, and the ground all round was very wet and marshy—which is why they were wearing Wellingtons, I realised, because I was sopping wet already; but it didn’t matter because it was so warm. Perce gave me a small jam jar with a paper lid and told me to start hunting for grasshoppers because he was going to try them on the pike.

  “Get the big ‘uns,” he said, starting to put his bamboo rod together. “Don’t go for the little ones, I want them big and jumping. ‘E won’t take ‘em if they’s little and not all wriggling. You can bait the hook if you like.”

  I got quite a few poor old grasshoppers and a couple of beetles as well in case they would come in handy, and then I sat down, not too far away from the bank, and watched.

  Well, there really wasn’t very much to watch in the end. Just Reg and Perce sitting hunched up in the rushes not moving. So I opened my satchel and started to unwrap my sandwiches because I hadn’t had any breakfast and I was getting quite hungry, but Reg shook a fist at me in the air, and Perce turned round and scowled, because the paper was a bit rustly and they looked very cross. So I lay back in the wettish grass and looked up at the sun and the clear shining sky. It was rather boring, I thought, and I was quite pleased when a lady came slowly walking across the field. She was tall and thin, with a long woolly, and fairish hair which looked rather wispy as if she had just washed it. She was carrying a walking stick and a bunch of wild flowers. When she saw us she stopped and shaded her eyes with her hand to see us better against the white light of the river. Reg looked very grumpily at her and went on fishing. Perce just hunched his shoulders up and didn’t move, which was very rude because she was smiling a little and looked quite kind.