Late Call

by Angus Wilson

  Terry Knowles was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  “They almost played it without me this time.” Priscilla White commented, “We’d better get going, Terry, if we want to be there for the spot prize.”

  Mr. Corney bent over Ray and whispered, but when Ray backed away, he said sharply, “I only thought you’d like to know Pete was here.”

  “Are you ready, Ray?”

  “I don’t think I’ll come after all, Pris. I need an early night.”

  “Oh, well, you asked yourself. You changing your mind too, Mark?”

  But Mark wasn’t. He joined the party.

  “Why don’t you go with them, Judy?” Sylvia asked.

  “Because they haven’t asked me, Gran,” she whispered.

  She looked as though she could have killed Sylvia. A moment later when the dancers left Harold came over.

  “Everybody ready for home?”

  “Be nice to Judy,” Sylvia said to Harold on one side, “they’ve all gone off to a dance without her. Except Ray, that is. He’s tired.”

  When she looked round Ray was leaving the bar with Wilf Corney. To Sylvia’s pleased surprise Harold took his daughter’s arm. “Would you hate a post-mortem, Judy? Or would you like to tell me about your papers? The schoolmaster in me longs to hear.”

  Arthur, as he left Mr. Bolton, was in less easy mood. “You’ll fix that for me tomorrow morning then.”

  “I don’t know, Arthur, I can’t say. Don’t count on it.”

  “There’s another bastard,” Arthur said as they went to the car.

  Sylvia tried to revive their joking mood as they sat in the back. Her contentment was reinforced by the sight of Harold and Judy chattering so easily in front. But Arthur didn’t respond.

  “You seem bloody pleased about everything.”

  It riled Sylvia. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

  Arthur went straight upstairs to their room. To avoid facing him immediately, Sylvia laid the breakfast table and smoked a cigarette. As she came out of the dining room, Harold’s head appeared round his study door.

  “I wonder if I could have a word with you Mother. It’s about Dad.”

  Oh Lord, here it comes, she thought, before I’d settled it all. The Bartleys or the Cranstons must have spoken.

  “He seems to have quarelled with the Bartleys now as well as the Cranstons. But that’s his affair. What I am concerned with is what he’s doing with his time. . . .”

  “I’m afraid he just mooches, Harold. You know what Dad’s like. He has his ups and downs.”

  “Very expensive mooching. Only the other day he came to me and said he was short. . .”

  “Oh, Harold, it’s too bad. After all you’re doing for us. . . .”

  “Oh, I don’t say it was a lot. But quite enough considering he has nothing to do.”

  “How much did he borrow, Harold?”

  “I didn’t mean to tell you of it. But he had ten pounds from me.”

  “Ten pounds!”

  “Yes. I can’t think what he does with it.”

  “Can’t you? If you’ve nothing more to say to me, Harold, I think I’ll go up to bed.”

  “I only want to know what we should do, Mother.”

  “Do? After all these years, dear, I don’t think there’s much to do about it.”

  She left him before he could say any more.

  Arthur was in bed. Only a pale light from the waning moon outlined the objects in their overcrowded room. Sylvia decided that it would be better to speak in this half-light.

  “Arthur dear, I’m sorry about the way those Bartleys talked. But there’s nothing we can’t put right, I’m sure.”

  He began to snore loudly.

  “Arthur! You’re not asleep, I know. I’m only trying to help you. But I can’t help you if you won’t help me.”

  The snoring grew louder. She wanted to laugh at his childishness, but she feared to offend him and then they would get nowhere.

  “How much do you owe? To the Bartleys and the Cranstons, I mean. And to anybody else in Carshall. Let me know it all. I don’t want to have to go to them and ask. And we certainly don’t want them going to Harold. I’ve got something put away in the Post Office. You had all the gratuity the hotel gave me for the debts at Eastsea, but there’s what I’ve saved . . .”

  He sat up. “That’s right. Throw what you’ve bloody well done for me in my face.”

  “I didn’t mean to bring it up, Arthur. It slipped out. But do let me settle this. We’ve not got so many years left, dear, that we can afford to be miserable. Oh, I know I’ve been like a wet blanket since we got here, but we could start again.”

  In the end he told her. It was more than one hundred and fifty pounds, and, God, knew, if it was all he owed, this would be the first time he’d come clean. It would make a tidy hole in her savings, but it would have to be faced sooner or later.

  “I’ll pay them all as soon as I can draw the money out.”

  “What do you mean, you’ll pay them? Very nice that’d look, Mrs. Calvert graciously pays her husband’s debts.”

  “Nobody will look at it like that, Arthur. Anyhow, I’m afraid that’s how it’s got to be.”

  “So you don’t bloody well trust me even with a few quid.”

  “Oh, Arthur! I don’t know how you can say the same things again and again after so many years.”

  He grumbled and even shouted at her, but she did not give way. It was lucky she felt so on top of things, otherwise she wouldn’t have had the energy to hold out.

  “And I suppose you’ll tell young master Harold of your wonderful generosity. You and he are a fine pair.”

  “I promise you, Arthur, that Harold shan’t know anything about it.”

  “That’s one thing I’m not standing for. That bastard looking down his nose at me. Can’t even part with a tenner without a bloody Sunday school lecture.”

  Sylvia laughed, “I know he’s a proper skinflint in some ways. But he’s generous in others, dear. Try not to mind it here too much, Arthur. I know things haven’t gone well for you this last month. It’s a shame after you’ve tried so hard to fit in. But we just haven’t got the money for cards and horses and that.”

  “If I had a bit of capital, Sylvie, this last month I could have covered my losses and come out with a small fortune in the end.”

  “I’m sure you could have done. But there it is, we haven’t got any capital. But things needn’t be too bad, you know.”

  He rolled over in the bed. “I’ll tell you this, Sylvie, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t care a damn if I went tomorrow.”

  A moment later he was snoring. This time she knew it was genuine.

  As she got into bed she stubbed her toe on the bed leg. She should have put on the light. As it was, everything had slipped away once more in Arthur’s meaningless sentimentality. Anyhow she felt happy enough these days to give more time to Arthur!— if her time had only been what he wanted, which it wasn’t.

  It turned out that they were not to be just the Egan family for the picnic, because Mandy had invited Marcus Campkin to join them. He was a plump little boy with huge round dark eyes. To the grownups he said nothing but a scarcely audible, “Thank you very much, Mrs. Egan,” or “If you please, Mrs. Calvert”; but as he and Mandy played on the river bank or among the stumps of a recently cut larch wood nearby he seemed never to cease chattering; the further from the three adults the louder his voice sounded in injunctions and commands. Mandy in his presence became obstinately off-hand with her mother and Sylvia, but she sought again and again to show off her father in all his splendour.

  “Well, what do you know? So she finally chose Marcus Campkin. None other. I guess smell still counts for a lot at that age. Not that I can smell anything.”

  “Shirl! For God’s sake, darling.”

  “I said I couldn’t smell anything, Timbo. That’s not rude. Anyhow, good for Miss Hurry. I take back a lot of what I said about that school. I guess I believe too
much what I read. I was sure Mandy was going to get taken up by some awful gym mistress or whatever they call them.”

  “Shirl! Darling!”

  “Well, that’s what they do at these public schools for girls, isn’t it? But to come back with a boy friend at seven. That’s quite something. I know he seems a kind of a dope. But you can’t tell with British men. You don’t know what Timbo was like, Mrs. C., when I first met him. ‘Ackcherlah I was hoping to work in timbah when I came to Canadah.’ You should have seen Dad’s face. That’s when we first called him Timbo.”

  “And what about you? ‘Shirley’s a kind of lovely field poppy, Mr. Egan.’ “ Sylvia had to laugh at Tim’s American lady’s accent.

  “Oh! For Heaven’s sake! That was aunt Pearl. She’s nuts.”

  They had brought a chair of red striped canvas and steel for Sylvia so that she sat a little above them as they lay on the rug— Tim stretched out flat, Shirley propped with cushions. As they talked Shirley’s hand found Tim’s forearm and paddled in it with her fingers; later Tim stroked her neck with the back of his hand. Sylvia felt happy that they accepted her so completely, or rather that they had no care for whether she was there or not. After a quarter of an hour Tim fell asleep in the hot sunshine.

  Shirley whispered, “Are you all right, Mrs. C? Would you like the Sunday paper? I’ve got to read this book. Mother sent it weeks ago. She’s mad about it. I can’t keep writing her that I haven’t got around to reading it yet.”

  Then she concentrated with frowning solemnity on the large book she had propped against her knees.

  Sylvia looked at the papers, but the sense of what she read ran through her head without leaving a trace in her memory. She breathed in the smell of wild mint that came from the bank where the children in their play had smashed and bruised the leaves. She tucked some pages of the newspaper round her legs, for there were midges about. She watched for a while a team of red ants jerkily carrying the sun-dried corpse of some larger insect—it looked like a grasshopper—across the bumpy ground. She wondered if one afternoon she and Arthur should go to the tea-garden at Herley Ford. She remembered suddenly another tea-garden near Eastbourne where they kept monkeys in cages. But all that sort of thing, bringing things to the countryside from foreign places, and gardens too really, and clock golf and so on—they only spoilt the peace of things. She fell asleep.

  When she awoke Tim was unpacking the picnic basket— chicken and champagne and fresh peaches. They really were spoiling her. And so they seemed determined to do, for all of them came out of their separateness and embraced her with talk and good wishes and healths and demands for reminiscence of her birthdays. True, when the food had been eaten and the champagne drunk, Shirley returned to her book. But Tim was not accepting this.

  “Come out of that. You don’t understand a word of it anyway.”

  “I do too. It’s a kind of new way of life based on Eastern thought and, oh well, it’s lots of things. I guess you’d call it eclectic.”

  However, after she’d read a couple more pages she shut the book.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think it’s the way of life for me.”

  After that each produced a present for Sylvia—Tim gave her a silver cigarette case, Shirley a huge bottle of Chanel No. 5, and Mandy a leather needle case that she’d saved up for and chosen herself. Marcus Campkin, fired by their example, found a small bag of lozenges in his pocket and presented them to her very formally. Tim put his arm round the back of Mandy’s legs and drew her to him.

  “You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Mrs. C.”

  Shirley added, “That’s right and no one’s going to forget it.”

  These were surely speeches to round off the occasion, although, in fact, they ended the afternoon in playing snap and beggar-my-neighbour.

  August brought intermittent rain that year. Sylvia could not but think of the families at the seaside stuck indoors in their hotels and lodgings. She pitied the landladies and manageresses. She counted herself well out of it. Of course, that was exactly why so many people went abroad nowadays. Ray came back from Cannes nicely bronzed. Mark was said to be in Yugoslavia. Judy wrote that the Chateau la Miraillière was all she had dreamed of, and the De Clamouarts all she had hoped for. Harold clearly found that the school holidays weighed heavily upon him. He told Sylvia twice that this would be the first year in which he had not gone away with Beth—there had always been some conference, or there had always been Shakespeare at Stratford. He couldn’t consider leaving Carshall this year, however, with the Ministry decision expected from day to day, indeed already characteristically overdue. Sylvia tried to talk with him, and she prepared all sorts of surprise dishes for his meals, but she knew that she could not do much.

  With Arthur she could do little more. First she had freed him of the anxiety of his local debts. Muriel Bartley and Renee Cranston had taken her repayment of what was owed to them very differently. Muriel said, “Of course we would never have lent money after we’d promised Harold. You know that. But we did think he’d pay his card debts. You’re the one I’m sorry for. Mind you, there can be no question of starting up the poker game again. Well, you heard what Geoff said. I mean if only for the old boy’s sake. I’d never have started if I’d realised what a curse cards are to him.” She offered a drink, but Sylvia didn’t have time to stay and hear any more.

  Renee said, “I hoped you’d never know, but Jack said you had guessed. I suppose we shouldn’t have lent it really, but the old boy’s got such a way with him, although he does rile Jack at times. Oh, I’m so glad we can forget it. I hate unpleasantness. I’ll write straight away and ask him to bridge.” But though the bridge games were resumed, it was clearly never the same. They played at the most twice a week. On some other evenings Sylvia took Arthur off to the cinema at Old Carshall by taxi and they ate afterwards at the Trust House. It seemed worth the expense. Each time Arthur cheered up a little over dinner, but the outings fell rather flat. Most of the time now he mooched about Town Centre, and often for days at a time he stayed in bed.

  She still spent some afternoons up at Murrel Farm, but far less often because of the weather. In any case she had so much to do at home. She had decided to turn out all the rooms at “The Sycamores” in turn, while that tiresome roster was suspended— it was a fallacy to suppose that modern houses didn’t collect dust. She had her reading to catch up with and she still liked to watch tele of an evening if there was anything specially good showing. Once or twice on rare fine afternoons she took a walk by herself, but not too long a walk, because she had been to see the local G.P., Dr. Piggott, and he had told her that she must take the slight stroke as a warning not to overdo it. However, she found that even a stroll round the buildings always provided something to watch—children on swings or chutes, young people playing tennis. She got talking to a number of people who turned out to be near neighbours. Renee Cranston drove her out for a whole afternoon to look at some old houses that were up for sale. She remembered and tried out an old recipe of her mother’s for damson cheese, and very nasty it turned out to be. Time seemed to pass so quickly.

  Into this pleasant hurrying calm there fell suddenly the bombshell that everyone had so long awaited: the Minister advised the Development Board to refuse Tim Egan’s offer of alternative building land. Goodchild’s Meadow would now be developed as a medium-priced housing estate as soon as Tim’s lease fell in at the end of the year. Harold made only one comment when he heard the decision.

  “I’m glad that Beth isn’t alive for this. It would have killed her.”

  Sylvia thought that she would have killed anyone who laughed at that moment. He rallied from the blow by devoting all his energies to persuading the Committee that a grand protest meeting might save the day.

  At first Sylvia was prominent in his plan of campaign; it was to be her function to rally the Egans to another attack on entrenched bureaucracy. But Tim showed a steadfast determination not to go over the top.

  “Sorry,
Mrs. C., I’d do a lot for you, but I told Mr. Calvert what I was prepared to do about the Meadow. I’ve fought Aunt Lilian’s battle. We’ve lost and quite frankly I’m only too glad. I’m not Aladdin to wish to exchange good land for bad if I can help it.”

  She tried to explain how seriously Harold took the whole thing. He listened very politely, but repeated that he could do no more. In the end Shirley had to weigh in.

  “Look, if Timbo says he won’t do it, he won’t do it. He may be right or he may be wrong, but he won’t do it. I know my Timbo.”

  When Harold rang Murrel Farm himself, he must have been rather roughly choked off, for he was in a bad temper with Sylvia for the rest of the week.

  Taking some shirts that she had washed for Ray into his room, she tried to rouse him to share her anxiety over Harold’s state of mind.

  “Dad’s a fighter. No, sorry, lovey, that’s balls. I got so used to hearing Mum say it that I almost believed it when I was a kid. No, Dad hasn’t the sense to come in out of the wet. But let him have his protest meeting and be refused again and he’ll come round. It’ll take a little time. We’ll suffer a bit here and the kids at school next term’ll have hell. But even headmasters have to recognise some musts.”

  “But, Ray, he gets so excited about it. I’m afraid he’ll have one of those breakdowns that seem so common now.”

  “Look, lovey, I’m a simple textile designer not a psychiatrist. Now, don’t look so worried. As far as I can I’ll hold his hand at the Monster Rally. There! Does that satisfy you?”

  It had to. But she wasn’t alone in her fears. One evening Muriel Bartley arrived. She refused a drink.

  “All right, Harold, you win. I’ve persuaded Herbert Raven to agree to the protest meeting. We’ve got Carshall Community Centre. So we can get seven hundred in.”

  Harold, beaming, kissed her on the cheek.

  “Yes, that’s all right, Harold. Though you oughn’t to have your own way like this. And I don’t believe it’ll make a damned bit of difference. But we’ll see. I shall take the chair. And Raven will kick off for our side. Now, here’s what you won’t like. You won’t speak.”