Paradise Postponed

by John Mortimer

  The faces which turned towards him at this news were variously surprised, uninterested, outraged or amused. The outrage came from Grace, who clutched her champagne glass as though for support and clenched her teeth to stop herself shouting. The group around her consisted of Nicholas, who went on looking benign, Doughty Strove, M.P., who looked his usual sullen self, and a number of tweeded friends, none of whom were as young as they liked to remember. Leslie knew exactly who they were. There stood Bridget Naboth, wife of Lord Naboth of Worsfield, one of the major local contributors to Party funds. With her was a thin, pink-faced man known to them all as the ‘Contessa’, who lived in a small Queen Anne house on the outskirts of Hartscombe with his aged mother and a magnificent collection of snuff-boxes (articles which a Royal aunt, on her occasional visits to Hartscombe, used to carry off as an expected tribute in her handbag after tea with the ‘Contessa’s’ mother). There were two middle-aged sisters, enthusiastic gardeners, who were known as the Erskine girls, Uncle Cecil Fanner and Mrs Fairhazel, who, because she was the spare woman at every dinner party, carried gossip about the neighbourhood like a jungle telegraph.

  ‘You know young Titmuss?’ Nicholas smiled vaguely round the assembled company when no one seemed inclined to ask what had been fixed up with the Rector.

  ‘Aren’t you Elsie’s boy?’ Doughty Strove’s memory went back to the days when Leslie’s mother grew up in the kitchen at Picton House. ‘Never get treacle tart nowadays like Elsie used to give us.’

  ‘Titmuss is very active with the Young Conservatives now, Doughty. He speaks up at meetings.’

  ‘Not for too long, I hope,’ said Doughty, whose political philosophy had always been to avoid speaking up whenever possible. Try as he would Nicholas could think of no more small talk. He bit into a sandwich and steeled himself for his wife’s inevitable question.

  ‘What exactly have you fixed up?’ she forced her teeth apart to inquire.

  ‘Oh, the date of the wedding.’ Leslie was matter of fact. ‘Simeon Simcox has pencilled in the twenty-first of next month.’

  ‘Getting married are you?’ Doughty felt he should show an interest in their old cook’s boy. ‘Who’s the lucky lady?’

  ‘Who?’ Leslie seemed amazed at the man’s ignorance. ‘Charlotte Fanner, of course.’

  Bridget Naboth stood frozen in mid-sandwich. The Erskine girls gaped. Mrs Fairhazel’s eyes shone with eager anticipation of a dozen dinner parties. Nicholas pulled a gold watch out of his waistcoat pocket and wished he had a train to catch. Grace stood motionless and closed her eyes; the thinly veined eyelids could be seen to tremble as Leslie returned to the attack.

  ‘You know she doesn’t want to be kept waiting,’ he said. ‘Very impatient girl, your Charlotte. Well, I can’t be kept waiting either, can I, mother-in-law to be?’

  Grace pulled herself together with an enormous effort. She opened her eyes cautiously and said, ‘I rather think it’s time we got back to the horses.’ She was on the move and her group was preparing to trail obediently after her. Leslie almost had to shout after them.

  ‘Sorry I can’t join you. Got to find my people. My mother’ll have all sorts of preparations to make.’ And he added, for the particular benefit of Doughty Strove, M.P., ‘Treacle tart and so on.’

  ‘What do you imagine they all thought?’

  ‘That we’d agreed to it, I suppose.’

  ‘Of course they did. And furthermore, they must have got the strong impression that we were holding a shot-gun to the repulsive head of the pimply Titmuss. I wish to God we were.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry. It took me completely by surprise.’

  ‘I dare say it did, almost everything takes you completely by surprise, Nicholas. Well, it’s put paid to the chances of Charlie slipping off somewhere under the cover of French lessons.’

  ‘Couldn’t we explain…?’

  ‘Explain to that ghastly old Doughty Strove, and Bridget Naboth, who can’t keep her mouth shut on any occasion, and your Uncle Cecil Fanner, who’ll tell the entire family, and the “Contessa” and the Erskine girls, and that absolutely poisonous Fairhazel woman? Explain that Charlie’s expecting by some village oik, and we have no intention of letting her marry? No. You’ll have to talk to him.’

  They were the words Nicholas dreaded. He was fully dressed, perched on the edge of his wife’s bed, while she sat at the looking-glass, scrubbing at her face with fingerfuls of cottonwool and staring at herself with barely controlled despair. He had absolutely no desire to talk to Leslie Titmuss and no idea what to say to him.

  ‘He’s clearly only in it for the money.’ Grace arched her eyebrows and sucked in her cheeks. Thank God, she thought, momentarily cheering herself up, I’ve still got my bones. Her bones, which in the past had seemed a sort of luxury, were fast becoming the sole comfort of her advancing age. ‘See what he’ll take to tell them it was some kind of ghastly practical joke. He can explain he was squiffy on the Steward’s champagne or something. The little bugger simply has to be paid off even if it means selling woodland.’ She did herself the kindness of switching off the light over her mirror and moved towards her bed. ‘You’ll be sleeping in your dressing-room, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Nicholas, getting the order for release, moved gratefully towards the door. ‘I don’t think you’ll find he’s got them, you know.’

  ‘Got what?’

  ‘Pimples.’

  In fact the boy’s skin, Nicholas thought when inevitably and at last they met, was remarkably pale but clear of all blemish. He had invited Leslie to tea on what he hoped was neutral ground, the lawn of the Hellespont Club, founded by Victorian rowing-men in a house which commands a fine view of the river. At Regatta time, white-haired ex-oarsmen, wearing the bright green socks and schoolboy caps of the Hellespont, together with yellowing flannels and blazers which no longer button across their stomachs, sit on the lawn drinking Pimms and lamenting the decline in rowing. Leslie, in his dark suit, burnished black shoes and remarkable pallor, seemed out of place in this setting. He was also, to Nicholas’s amazement, extremely angry, and went into the attack with his eyes blazing before the waitress, who had brought them scones, was out of earshot.

  ‘It’s pretty hard on me. It really is.’

  ‘Milk and sugar?’ Nicholas was being ‘mother’.

  ‘Just two lumps. I’m just starting out, you see. I was going to make something of myself. I was going to leave the Brewery and go for my accountant’s qualifications. Your daughter’s put paid to all that. Now I’ll have a family to see after.’

  ‘Really, Titmuss!’ Nicholas protested mildly as he handed the cup. ‘What did she do? Ravish you or something?’

  ‘Let’s just say, she was very determined.’

  Determination, Nicholas thought, was a characteristic of the women in his life. His Uncle Cecil had described Grace as a ‘butterfly with a will of iron’. And the butterfly had made a dead set at him, a fact which he had never been able to explain. She didn’t actually ravish him, of course, not as far as he could remember, but Grace’s implacable persistence, when it came to the matter of marriage, made him able to understand Leslie’s concern. He said, ‘You pose us a bit of a problem, Titmuss. What on earth are we going to do about you?’

  ‘What does Lady Fanner suggest?’

  ‘I see you go straight to the heart of a matter. The family would be prepared to do something for you, of course. If we could regard the unfortunate incident as a bit of a joke.’

  ‘What unfortunate incident?’ Leslie was carefully balancing a spoonful of strawberry jam on his buttered scone.

  ‘Your extraordinary behaviour at the Worsfield Show.’

  ‘What would you be prepared to do?’ Leslie bit into a scone and chewed steadily.

  ‘I hardly know. What’re your immediate needs?’

  There was strawberry jam on Leslie’s chin, bright and shiny as a drop of blood. Nicholas longed to lean forward and wipe it off with his paper napkin.

&
nbsp; ‘Somewhere to live.’ Leslie clearly had a list prepared. ‘I can’t stay with the old people for ever. And I’ve been taking the minutes when Kempenflatt’s away, which he is the best half of the time. I’d like you to put in a word for me as Secretary of the Y.C.s with a place on the Local Executive. Oh, and I want to get a qualification and perhaps start my own business.’

  Leslie wiped his own chin and Nicholas felt unreasonably relieved.

  ‘And you’d agree to Charlie going away quietly?’

  ‘Charlotte’s never going to go away quietly.’ Leslie smiled for the first time, and took a gulp of tea. ‘You must know your daughter better than that. She’s going to stay here and scream her head off, and she’ll tell everyone what’s happened. But I’m quite prepared to marry her, if you can see your way clear to helping us. Only thing is, one of you’ll have to talk my old folks round, you know what they’re like.’

  ‘What?’ Nicholas was frowning, feeling that he had lost his tenuous grasp of events.

  ‘Oh.’ Leslie’s smile was wider and really quite charming. ‘They’re dead against me marrying Charlotte.’

  Nicholas had not been looking forward to reporting the result of his interview with Leslie Titmuss to his wife. Accordingly he loitered on his way home, made a couple of calls in Hartscombe, visited the farm office, and when he reached Rapstone Manor at last, made straight for the conservatory. From there, he was surprised to see his wife and the Rector sitting out on the terrace, where Wyebrow was opening a bottle of champagne. It seemed that Simeon had been actively campaigning on behalf of the young couple. A long talk with Charlie had persuaded him that she would never abandon the idea of marrying Leslie. He had repeated his opinion of Leslie’s bright future, based on legitimate ambition and tireless work, but his trump card had been the absence of other suitors for Charlie. Did Grace really want her daughter sharing their house for ever, permanently pining for Leslie Titmuss? For a while Charlie’s mother sat in silence, considering this bleak prospect. Then she cautiously allowed that there might be two sides to every question. By the time her husband finally emerged to announce that he had no success in deflecting the determined Titmuss, she was persuaded to make the best of what might not be such a bad job after all. There would be no further need to explain away the extraordinary scene at Worsfield Show, and she might never have to listen to Charlie screaming again.

  ‘Titmuss very nobly said he’d go through with it and marry Charlie,’ Nicholas reported.

  ‘Yes. That’s what we’ve decided.’

  ‘You’ve decided?’ He felt like a man who has been sent out on a desperate mission to no man’s land, only to return, bloodstained and exhausted, to be told that the peace was declared some time ago.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, have a glass of champagne. You can’t discuss weddings without a glass of champagne. It’s like having an operation without an anaesthetic. Get Wyebrow to bring out another glass.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll regret it,’ Simeon smiled at them both. ‘I’m sure Leslie Titmuss is going to make something of himself.’

  ‘But what exactly?’ Nicholas wondered.

  ‘Something.’ Grace was impatient. ‘Does it really matter what? It’s quite a relief to have it all settled.’

  ‘Well, not quite settled.’ Nicholas was still doubtful. ‘It seems that someone’s got to sell the idea to the Titmusses.’

  Grace Fanner changed her mind frequently and each change was signalled by a burst of frenzied activity. Once she had decided on Charlie’s wedding she wanted no delay and she certainly wanted no opposition. Accordingly she rang the musical chime on the front door of ‘The Spruces’ one morning, and was admitted by a somewhat flustered Elsie Titmuss who, in an overall and rubber gloves, was in the middle of washing up.

  ‘I know exactly what it’s like,’ said Grace, to whom the home life of the Titmuss family was a mercifully closed book. ‘Nothing but chores. All the time. Men do leave such a mess about the place, don’t they? Come on, why don’t we muck in together? You finish washing and I’ll dry.’ She was, to Elsie’s considerable dismay, heading for the kitchen. ‘And I do promise not to break anything.’

  ‘Won’t you take a seat, your Ladyship? I’ll put the kettle on for a cup of tea.’

  ‘Later. When we’ve earned it. Don’t they do such amusing teacloths nowadays?’ Grace had taken up one decorated with pictures of the Tower of London and was dabbing at a cup with it. ‘Now do get on with the washing up, Mrs Titmuss, and we’ll talk.’

  ‘What exactly did you want to talk about?’ Elsie, dazed and obedient, returned to the sink and plunged her rubber gloves into the Fairy Liquid. ‘I do think the war made a tremendous difference to our lives, don’t you?’ Grace answered unexpectedly. Elsie, unaware of any profound change since V.E. day, felt vaguely guilty.

  ‘It was terrible, of course. Absolutely terrible! But people did learn to muck in in the most marvellous way. Count on me, Mrs Titmuss, all hands to the pumps.’

  So Elsie washed up the small number of breakfast dishes and laid them out on the draining-board, and Grace forgot to use the teatowel, releasing a flood of wartime reminiscences.

  ‘Of course, I could’ve been an air-raid warden in Hartscombe, but who’d bother to bomb a few grocers’ shops and the Brewery?’ she remembered. ‘My husband was away fighting for his country and I said, “Give me Worsfield!” Of course they were after the railways there, and they got the Cathedral. Worsfield was the place where you could get your tin hat blown off if you weren’t too careful! I remember, one day in Corporation Street, it was really lovely sunshine, spring weather, and I was trudging along in my old tin hat and my boiler-suit and a truck, an American truck, passed and some doughboy leaned out and whistled at me! You know the way they did, terribly cheeky, of course, but quite appealing? And suddenly there was a terrific blast. It absolutely knocked me back into a shop doorway. Timothy Whites? I think it was Timothy Whites. And when I looked up the road, well, the truck had been hit. Smashed to pieces. Everyone in it dead. They looked so pale! He whistled at me and I was his last view of England. Well, that’s where I learned to dry up. In the A.R.P. And help make sandwiches. I don’t think we should ever forget what we learned in the war.’ The reminiscence over, Grace stood, teatowel in hand, motionless and smiling. After a suitable and respectful pause Elsie asked almost fearfully, ‘Have you come about Leslie and Miss Charlotte?’

  ‘My husband and I have absolutely no doubt about it, Mrs Titmuss.’ Grace woke from her reverie. ‘We should see them married.’

  ‘I don’t know…’ Elsie was still doubtful.

  ‘And the Rector.’

  ‘The Rector?’ Elsie seemed startled at the mention of Simeon’s name.

  ‘Mr Simcox has gone into the whole thing most carefully and he’s all for a wedding.’

  ‘That’s what Mr Simcox wants, is it?’ Elsie asked, a little breathlessly.

  ‘I told you, all for it.’

  ‘Well, I suppose, if that’s what the Rector wants…’ It was as though, in Elsie Titmuss’s opinion, God had spoken and there was no more to be said on the subject.

  Charlie and Leslie went out for a picnic on the river. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, but with a sharp smell of autumn and there were few other boats about. Charlie rowed the craft and Leslie steered expertly, past the Hellespont Club, where the tea tables were now deserted and the swans cruised malignantly, searching in vain for scraps of generously thrown scones or Dundee cake.

  ‘Register office at Worsfield. No family. Couple of witnesses off the street. Then go for fish and chips. Afternoon in the Odeon. Don’t let’s do a single thing she wants.’ Charlie spoke in short bursts, in time to the dipping of her oars. ‘No Uncle Cecil Fanner. No Naboths. No horrible old “Contessa”. No bridesmaids. No tent on the lawn.’

  ‘We’ll stop here,’ Leslie told her, ‘by the island.’ The island was the site of a couple of bungalows, let to summer visitors, but now empty. In a few months the r
iver would rise, flooding their gardens and loosening their kitchen linoleum. From their mooring the couple could see the Swan’s Nest Hotel, the rocking punts and the landing-stage; the scene, as Leslie didn’t fail to remind Charlie, of his great humiliation, a moment which he now appeared to treasure.

  ‘You know what they thought,’ he told her, when he had gone once again through the occasion which ended with him being sent home to his mother like a drowned rat. ‘They thought that’s the end of Elsie Titmuss’s son, the boy who used to cut down nettles and hang around our kitchen.’ Charlie wondered if he had ever cut Magnus Strove’s nettles, but thought it better not to interrupt him. ‘They’re going to have to take that back, Charlie. They’re going to have to take it all back.’

  ‘Why bother about them at all? You shouldn’t, you know.’

  ‘I’m going to bother, I really am.’ He looked at her and, as was rare with him, he was smiling. ‘Let’s make them put up a tent.’

  ‘Perhaps marriage is the greatest test we are put to. That’s what I tell my young couples. It’s a case of facing up to your responsibility for the consequences of a single headstrong moment, when you may be drunk with the smell of orange blossom. How many of us think of the appalling consequences that may flow from a brief conversation in front of the altar?’ Among the many wedding formalities which Leslie had insisted on was the preliminary chat with the Rector. They were gathered together in Simeon’s study and Leslie listened intently as Charlie stared thoughtfully out of the window to where Dorothy was bent like an elegant and elderly croquet hoop in the border, making an early planting of winter pansies.