Paradise Postponed

by John Mortimer

  ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out,’ said the Reverend Kevin Bulstrode, Vicar of Skurfield, conducting the service in the unavoidable absence of the Rector of Rapstone.

  ‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither,’ a furious and gravelly whisper came from the congregation. The Vicar of Skurfield, who would shortly take over Rapstone also when the parishes were amalgamated under a new scheme of ‘rationalization’, did his best to ignore the interruption. ‘The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord,’ he continued bravely.

  For a moment the interrupter was quiet. He was a tall, thickening fifty-year-old, whose red hair was now flecked with grey but to whom watery blue eyes and a look of perpetual discontent gave the appearance of an irate, retired sea captain. He wore a thick tweed suit in spite of the late summer weather, with a heavy gold watch-chain, and a bright silk handkerchief lolled from his breast-pocket. When Henry Simcox, the late Rector’s eldest son, published his first novel his name had been connected with a group of angry young men; now he was a grumpy, late-middle-aged man. Once his political ideas had been thought as red as his hair; now he gave many warnings on the menace of the Left and wrote articles for the Sunday papers on the moral disintegration of life in Britain today. In these contributions he never failed to denounce the abandonment, by the Church of England, of the King James Bible and the older forms of prayer, although his knowledge of these matters was sometimes unreliable.

  ‘Shush, Henry,’ his wife Lonnie, sitting beside him, had whispered nervously when he interrupted the Vicar, but Henry grumbled to himself, ‘Why should the Rev. Trendy Kev get away with castrating the prayer-book?’

  Lorna (Lonnie) Simcox was not only concerned on account of her husband’s liturgical complaints. She looked behind her from time to time during the prayers. She was conscious that she was, as she would say, Mrs Henry Simcox Mark Two, the Numero Due, and the Numero Uno was seated a couple of rows behind her gazing at her, as she imagined it, with studied contempt.

  In fact Agnes Simcox, Henry’s first wife, née Salter and the only daughter of that late Dr Salter whom the Rector had, in one of his last dreams, so strangely confused with the Almighty, was not seeing anything but a blur, as she had left her glasses in the car. Short-sightedness added to her habitual expression of ironic contempt, so that she looked as though she were watching a theatrical performance which she had decided not to enjoy. She was huddled into a raincoat with a fur collar, dressed for the damp and draughty inside of the church rather than for the bright sunshine of the day outside. She was in her late forties, but when a shaft of light from a clear window struck her face it was only a moderately unkind blow; her beauty was, on the whole, less ravaged by the passage of time than she had the right to expect. Agnes was thinking a little of her past, her long knowledge of the Simcox family and the days of her childhood, but mainly she was longing for a cigarette. She heard the Vicar say, ‘I’m sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels…’ and ‘I am persuaded that neither death…’ she heard Henry Simcox, her ex-husband, correct him gloomily.

  So the Reverend Simeon Simcox lay enclosed in a long box, surrounded by these people and other local inhabitants. There sat Lady Fanner, with a face dead-white and powdered, a head apparently held up by a choker of pearls and a mouth like a small wound. The Simcox family solicitor, Jackson Cantellow, joined in the prayers which he knew as well as his forms of conveyancing, and the Rural Dean was there to represent the Bishop. Also in the congregation were some of the wives of Rapstone Fanner, comparatively new arrivals whose husbands were busy in London offices, large, healthy women who called their children ‘The Young’ and drank brandy at coffee mornings because they were bored with being left alone in the country. There were a few, only a few, men and women from those cottages which hadn’t yet been turned into commuter houses; among them old Percy Bigwell, known as ‘Peasticks’ because of his splayed legs and two walking-sticks which had brought him, in a slow crablike motion, across the village green to pay his last tribute to the Rector. Among these people sat strangers to the village with familiar faces, some ageing Labour politicians, journalists, broadcasters and representatives of the various groups and movements connected with peace, political prisoners and racial equality for which Simeon Simcox had been known for many years as a constant campaigner.

  Shortly after the service began a large, official Rover, with a lady chauffeur at the wheel, passed the signpost at the head of the valley and descended quickly on Rapstone. Sitting alone in the back was a man of obvious importance, wearing a dark suit and a black tie. In contrast to the ‘progressive’ politicians already assembled round the late Rector’s coffin, the Rt Hon. Leslie Titmuss, M.P., was a power in the Conservative administration. He was a pale man with inquisitive, almost colourless eyes who, in spite of his receding hairline and gaunt features, had preserved, since his childhood in the Rapstone Valley, an expression of simple, boyish cunning. He sat forward on his seat as though late for an appointment and, as the car stopped outside the church, he opened the door and hopped out in the eager way of a man ever anxious to appear energetic to photographers. On his way to the lychgate he was waylaid by a loitering reporter and he switched on an instant smile.

  ‘Minister!’ The reporter fluttered a notebook. ‘We hardly expected to see you at the funeral of a left-wing cleric.’

  ‘Certain things transcend political differences. Simeon Simcox was a great man. He was an old family friend and a tremendous influence on my life. Thank you, gentlemen.’ Having given his quote Leslie Titmuss turned off his smile and hurried into the church.

  Fred Simcox and his mother were whispering together as the Reverend Kevin Bulstrode climbed into the pulpit. Dorothy Simcox looked pained. Her hair, which like her elder son’s had been copper but had become grey, was gently out of control. The silk scarf she wore round her neck seemed to float away and she was staring with fierce concentration at a particular floral tribute which lay on her husband’s coffin. It was a huge and expensive affair, a great circle of dark twisted leaves pierced by the white military trumpets of lilies and spears of gladioli; the sort of thing which some ostentatious Head of State might lay on the tomb of his unknown soldier.

  ‘It’s appalling!’ Dorothy Simcox complained.

  ‘It’s only a wreath, Mother.’

  ‘Your father would have hated it.’

  ‘Perhaps he wouldn’t have minded.’

  ‘Where could it possibly have come from?’

  Fred didn’t answer his mother. His head had turned at the sound of the church door opening and footsteps on the flagstones. The Rt Hon. Leslie Titmuss had joined the congregation.

  ‘For Simeon Simcox,’ Bulstrode was saying, ‘the Church of England wasn’t the Establishment at prayer, it was the force of progress on the march. One of the many obituaries in the national press suggests he may have been a bit of a saint. If so, he was a saint smoking a pipe, dressed in that old tweed jacket with leather patches we came to love and know so well, a very caring sort of saint, be it at the Worsfield Missile Base or leading us in prayer outside the South African High Commission.’

  Dorothy was still gazing in incredulous horror at the wreath, hardly hearing the well-meant words from the pulpit above her. ‘One of his parishioners, our old friend “Peasticks” Bigwell, must have the last word. “He were a smasher, our old Rector, weren’t he?” Peasticks said to me. Well, perhaps it wasn’t the description we’d all use.’

  ‘Hardly,’ Henry whispered to Lonnie, ‘for a dedicated pacifist.’

  ‘But, you know, I think Simeon would have understood. Today we are gathered together to say goodbye to a “smasher”.’

  After the funeral service many of the congregation, some starting to chatter, others lighting cigarettes, all relieved that the worst was over, crowded into the Rectory to be met by Dorothy with a look of considerable dismay. Henry Simcox, turning away from the crowd
for which his mother had clearly made no sort of preparation, went to the cupboard in a corner by the french windows and found it almost bare. ‘It’d need a miracle,’ he told Lonnie, ‘to divide one bottle of strictly non-South African, anti-apartheid sherry among all those thirsty mourners. I don’t suppose he’d’ve managed it. My father wasn’t much of a man for miracles.’ Then he saw another dusty bottle behind a row of glasses, took it and held it up to the light. ‘There’s a drop of brandy, left over from the Christmas pudding.’

  ‘Agnes shouldn’t’ve come!’ Lonnie was looking across the room at the Numero Uno. ‘Not after all that’s happened.’

  ‘Agnes enjoys anything at all tragic.’ Henry poured himself a brandy. ‘It was summer holidays she found so terribly harrowing.’

  ‘It’s embarrassing for you!’ Lonnie was always more concerned for her husband than he was for himself.

  ‘Don’t exaggerate, Lonnie.’

  ‘And for your mother.’

  ‘The Simcoxes don’t embarrass as easily as that.’

  As Henry raised his glass he looked out of the french windows and did not drink. He could see, across the unweeded garden, his younger brother Fred standing, alone and in silence, by his father’s grave. The sight seemed to cause Henry Simcox some displeasure.

  ‘I’d say Kevin Bulstrode did us a very fair service.’ Jackson Cantellow, the family solicitor, was talking to Agnes. She inhaled a Silk Cut greedily, pushed one clenched fist into her jacket pocket and coughed with deep satisfaction. ‘I’m not really an expert on funerals.’

  ‘Have to be in our job,’ Cantellow told her. ‘A family solicitor has to be. Has its compensations, of course. I think I gained my taste for sacred music at clients’ funerals. We don’t always get a legacy but we do occasionally get the Parry. They used to do an absolutely super Stanford in G when old Bagstead was at Hartscombe. Now of course it’s all this taped stuff. Not the same thing at all, I’m afraid. We had “Going My Way” from a cassette at Bill Backstay’s cremation in Worsfield.’

  ‘So long as it wasn’t “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”.’ Agnes looked round the room, feeling trapped and wondering how long it would be before Henry produced the sherry.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing. I said absolutely nothing.’ She was relieved to see Dorothy moving towards her.

  ‘No sort of will surfaced yet.’ Cantellow tried to get down to business with the widow. ‘I was always pestering Simeon to make one. Well, once we’ve got over this we’ll make our searches.’

  ‘Agnes, I’m glad you came.’ Dorothy ignored her lawyer. ‘Simeon would have been so glad.’

  ‘Would he?’

  ‘He liked you. You know, he always regarded you as a challenge.’

  ‘I think I’m rather tired of being regarded as a challenge.’

  ‘I know you don’t like discussing business’ – Cantellow was insistent – ‘but some time, Mrs Simcox. Some time soon.’

  ‘Not now,’ Dorothy said. Dismissed, Cantellow gave a little bow of resignation and moved away. Dorothy looked round the room and hoped that the crowd assembled wouldn’t expect to eat anything. As though in answer to her unspoken thoughts, Lonnie came bustling by on her way to the kitchen.

  ‘I thought I’d just put out some biscuits,’ she told them.

  ‘Oh, Lonnie! What a wonderful little brick you are.’ Agnes gave one of her weariest smiles and Numero Due almost hissed back at her, ‘I do think it’s embarrassing of you to come. I know Henry’s embarrassed.’

  ‘Why on earth should he be?’ Agnes spoke quite loudly. ‘It’s not his funeral, is it?’

  ‘I’ll go and put out those biscuits.’ Lonnie went on her way with her face set and Dorothy looked as though she hadn’t been listening.

  The Rural Dean was doing his best, on the minute glass of sherry provided, to make the party go. He said how impressive it was to have the Cabinet represented in the shape of Mr Leslie Titmuss. He recalled how very famous Simeon Simcox had been. ‘Not a conventional clergyman, of course. The Bishop had to haul him over the coals when he was getting too deeply into politics. Saints are never the easiest people to get along with. You put that across jolly well, Kevin.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Bulstrode was gratified. ‘I think we managed to strike just the right note of reverent informality.’ Unfortunately he was within earshot of Henry, who came delightedly in on the cue.

  ‘I think you struck a perfectly ghastly note. That castrated edition of the prayer-book may be perfectly suitable to bless the union of a couple of crimpers in a unisex hairdo establishment. It’s got no place in the Christian burial of a priest of the Church of England.’

  ‘May I suggest’ – Bulstrode was tentative – ‘that we’ve got to make things clear to the common man?’

  ‘However common the man he could understand the old prayer-book perfectly well. Ask the Right Honourable Leslie Titmuss.’ But then Henry saw his younger brother coming in through the french windows and moved away.

  ‘Powerful turn of phrase!’ Bulstrode told the Dean admiringly. ‘No wonder he’s always off to America.’

  ‘What were you doing?’ Henry asked when he met Fred by the corner cupboard.

  ‘Saying goodbye.’

  ‘With a certain amount of quiet ostentation?’

  ‘I’m sorry you thought that.’ Fred had discovered that the Christmas brandy bottle was empty. He took the sherry from Henry and poured himself the last half glass.

  ‘I was away,’ Henry said, ‘when it happened.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I had to go to the Coast.’

  ‘The coast of what?’ Fred asked, although he knew perfectly well.

  ‘You know. Hollywood. The suburbia of the soul.’ Henry made a habit of abusing what was still a considerable source of his income. ‘You were with him, though. At the end?’

  ‘Yes, I was with him.’

  ‘Did he say anything in particular?’ Henry asked the question as though it had no great importance and Fred finished his sherry.

  ‘Not… so far as I remember.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he would.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Say anything in particular to you.’

  ‘He seemed to be frightened.’ Fred moved away, wondering why, on this of all days, meeting his brother was like another round in a contest which had been going on as long as either of them could remember.

  There was a pervasive smell of face-powder and Chanel Number Five and Fred found himself looking down into the ravaged face of Lady Fanner, who had once been beautiful. ‘So many funerals! We’ve had Elspeth Fairhazel and the “Contessa” and old Uncle Cecil. I’m quite exhausted.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Grace. My father should have consulted your engagements.’

  ‘Now that’s naughty of you, Fred. I was devoted to your father, even though he sometimes looked at me as though he disapproved of my not being black. Well, I get discriminated against too. I told him that so often. That horrible little man in the fish shop in Hartscombe absolutely declines to serve me.’

  ‘My mother’s been cornered by Leslie Titmuss.’ Fred looked across the room.

  ‘Poor woman. Well, do go and rescue her then.’

  When Fred arrived at his mother’s side she was telling the Cabinet Minister how strange it was to be at a service in Rapstone Church and not to hear Simeon’s voice and he, in turn, was apologizing for having arrived late at the ceremony. ‘When the P.M. calls a breakfast meeting you really can’t say “no”. But nothing would have made me miss the old man’s funeral.’

  ‘Why ever not, Leslie?’ Dorothy seemed not to understand his having felt the burying of her husband to be such an important occasion.

  ‘I remember how good he was to me, when I was a young lad. How good you all were.’

  ‘Is that what you remember?’ Dorothy was still puzzled.

  ‘Sad occasion, of course. But beautifully done.’

  ‘Except for that wreath!’ Dorothy
told him and went on regardless of Fred, who muttered a warning ‘Mother!’ ‘Whoever could have sent that perfectly appalling object?’ She gave out a small, mirthless laugh. ‘They must have pinched it off the Cenotaph!’

  ‘Please, Mother!’

  ‘My secretary ordered it actually,’ Leslie admitted. ‘He’s got an uncle in the business.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ But Dorothy’s disarray was only momentary. After Fred had praised the kindness of the thought, she went on firmly, ‘You shouldn’t’ve done it, Leslie! It’s the way you used to carry on when you were a little boy. You really mustn’t spend your money on such foolish objects.’

  It was with relief that the Minister then caught sight of his uniformed lady chauffeur, standing in the garden, waving silently. ‘I think I can see my driver making a signal. Respects to all the family. Sorry I’ve got to rush. Working lunch with the C.B.I.’ And then he assured them both, ‘I’ll always be grateful.’

  When Leslie Titmuss was on his way out through the french windows, Henry joined his mother and brother and they all three looked at the retreating dark-suited figure of the man who was now one of their rulers.

  ‘I wonder what he’ll always be grateful for, exactly?’ Dorothy appeared to find the question amusing. ‘I remember he used to bring us presents. So embarrassing! Things he’d saved up for.’

  ‘Or things he’d nicked from Woolworths.’ Then Henry turned to his brother. ‘You said just now that our father was frightened. Of what exactly?’

  Fred thought for a moment before he answered, ‘Heaven.’