‘That’s quite funny.’
‘Well, not for me, it isn’t! For me it’s like going to bed with an amateur Joan of Arc.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Where’s the whisky?’ Henry returned to the cupboard.
‘I’m sorry it’s like that for you.’ Agnes was serious.
‘Somebody’s drunk all the bloody whisky!’ He held up the empty bottle as though it were part of the conspiracy against him.
‘I think you gave it to that film crew. You were being very generous.’
‘All right. I’m going to the pub.’ He moved away from her. ‘I’ll be back later, for a night of penance. Why don’t you start ironing the hair-shirt?’
Henry went to a number of pubs that evening. He rang Lonnie, whose telephone number he had secured when he signed his book for her, from the Cross Keys. He bought a bottle of whisky and took it round to her bedsit near the World’s End and there they went to bed together for the first time. It was an act which Lonnie took as a compliment and Henry felt no sort of judgement was being passed on him. She was particularly understanding when he told her he had to get home and helped find one of his socks under her bed. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course, you must get back.’
‘To all that disapproval.’
‘I don’t know what Agnes wants.’ Lonnie gave him a puzzled smile. ‘She must have everything anyone could wish for, you and Francesca.’
‘Even the child looks as though it’s condemning me for something. I think she teaches it.’ Henry was sitting on the edge of the narrow bed, putting on his sock. ‘Agnes thinks I should do more demonstrating.’
‘That’s silly. Your work’s your demonstration, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose it is.’ He stood up and kissed her, it was so much what he wanted to hear. ‘I’m glad you were in when I called.’
‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ll always be in.’
That was the great thing to be said for Lonnie, she always was.
21
The Candidate
One evening that summer, Leslie Titmuss, neat in his dark blue suit, sat with Doughty Strove in the study at Picton House, discussing some business of mutual interest to Hartscombe Enterprises and the Strove estate. Lifting his eyes from the drink his host had poured him, Leslie saw a girl with pale hair loom out of the dusk and, waving her arms and legs rhythmically, appear to swim past the window. From where he sat he couldn’t be sure if she were dressed in some light-fitting garment or if the colours in whirls and scrolls, flower and heart shapes, were painted on her body. He looked down into his glass and when he looked up again she was gone. Outside the still uncurtained windows, from the lakeside and the park, there was a sound like a distant storm and the flashing of lights. The other guests had gone out to join in the festivities and the two men, young and old, sat huddled together in the study as though for safety, discussing business. Doughty rose and drew the curtains, feeling that what they couldn’t see wouldn’t harm them.
‘Magnus tells me I’m going to make money out of this.’
‘I’m sure he’s right.’
‘Is he? I wish to God it were all over.’
So did Terry Fawcett. He stood under the trees with Glenys, far away by the side of the lake, where the group of the moment pranced and strutted like marionettes on the small, lit stage. The music came to them doubled and redoubled, crackling and echoing from amplifiers in the trees. Terry looked at the crowd, strangers from London, perhaps some from Worsfield. Like the music they were alien to him, and seemed to come from another age.
If the crowd in Grosvenor Square had been a pale imitation of an army at war, the mass of young people at the Picton House Pop Festival seemed to parody the idea of peace. The badges they wore like campaign medals not only said ‘Make Love Not War’ but ‘If It Moves, Fondle It’, ‘Down with Pants’ and ‘Position Wanted’. The boys’ hair was not yet shoulder-length – many of them looked like chunky young van drivers, storemen or road-workers wearing cowbells, beads and an occasional flower behind the ear. The girls had long, straight hair and short dresses. They sat or lay in the grass, speechless beneath the blare of the music. Most of them stared or frowned at more ornate figures, wealthier students in embroidered Nehru jackets, who strutted among them like officers walking aloof through a dispirited encampment. The strong smell of pot which came to Terry on the summer breeze produced isolated giggles but little laughter. Now and again, a girl stood up to dance and some, closer to the lake, threw off their shirts or peeled off their jeans and attracted little attention. Now and again fights broke out under the trees.
‘It’s not music,’ Terry told his wife. ‘Not in any understood sense of the term.’
‘You mean it’s not the Riverside Stompers.’
‘We shouldn’t have put your mother to the trouble of babysitting, not to have our eardrums blasted off.’
‘Terry!’ He looked round and at first didn’t recognize Charlie. She had added to the short, cotton, Indian-patterned dress she had worn at dinner with Doughty Strove, and had put on more beads, bells and a button which said ‘I’m a Hippie’. A flower was painted on her forehead, her legs and feet were bare, and she looked lonely and pleased to see him. ‘Look, Terry,’ she said, in an accent which she had carefully flattened and sent down-market since her husband had begun to imitate the clenched-teeth delivery of Magnus Strove. ‘Bloody awful about Tom’s old cottage. And ours.’ She apologized. ‘I did try, really.’
‘We’re quite comfortable, thank you.’ Glenys sounded brisk. ‘The Council fixed us up with one of the new flats in Worsfield. There wasn’t no need for all them drinks you took Terry for, round the Citizens’ Advice.’
‘It’s a great evening.’ Charlie looked towards the crowd. ‘Don’t you think it’s great? Everyone’s so relaxed.’
‘Terry isn’t relaxed, he’s going to request, “Ain’t Misbehavin’”. Come along, Terry, we might as well go and look at them dancing.’ As Glenys removed her husband, Charlie said, ‘Enjoy!’ and raised her hand in a gesture of peace which looked dispirited. She stood alone for some while before taking a deep breath and walking down to the crowd by the lake, like a nervous bather steeling herself to plunge into a cold and possibly dangerous sea.
Leslie looked at his watch and decided that it was time to take his wife home. He left Doughty and set out for the terrace, where he saw three hippies passing round a joint which hovered between their fingers like a glow-worm. They were Magnus Strove, wearing a long, silk, high-necked jacket and a headband with a feather in it, Jennifer Battley with carnations and tinsel in her hair, and Christopher Kempenflatt complete with an embroidered Afghan waistcoat and ornate boots.
‘Charlie’s gone to the ball,’ Magnus told him. ‘She’s already lost both of her slippers.’
‘At midnight she’ll probably turn into a hash cookie,’ Jennifer thought.
‘Or Mrs Leslie Titmuss.’ Kempenflatt made it sound a grimmer fate. ‘Come and sit down, old boy. Join the party. Now we really have got something to celebrate.’ Buyers had been found for the Tasker Street offices, and both the bank and Kempenflatt’s family construction firm had breathed huge sighs of relief. Leslie accepted the invitation, and sat for a while on the terrace wall beside them. When Jennifer held the rather sodden joint towards him he shook his head.
‘You’re a puritan!’ Kempenflatt took it instead.
‘I suppose I am.’
‘Not a bad thing having a puritan in charge of the accounts.’
‘Not so much of a puritan, our Leslie,’ Magnus told Jennifer. ‘He’s not above a bit of mini-skirt accounting.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Shows off all the figures except the vital parts!’ They laughed loudly above the sound of distant music. Then Kempenflatt announced that, as their trickiest bit of business was settled, and now Doughty was no longer in the contest, he was going to do what he had always wanted and become the parliamentary candidate for Hartscombe and Worsfield Sou
th. ‘I can count on your support, Leslie,’ he supposed, ‘in the constituency Party?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Leslie spoke quietly out of the darkness. ‘Can’t be done.’
‘Why?’
‘I mean to be adopted for Hartscombe.’
‘A Titmuss, representing Hartscombe?’ Kempenflatt was incredulous.
‘You find that more outlandish than a Kempenflatt?’
‘Well, there is a slight difference, isn’t there?’ There was light from the windows in the house and Kempenflatt could be seen smiling.
‘Oh, I agree.’
‘It really comes down to a background, doesn’t it?’ Christopher Kempenflatt was at his most kindly. ‘No one can say it’s the least little bit your fault. No doubt it’s due to circumstances entirely beyond your control. And I must say the way you’ve pulled yourself up by your boot-straps does you enormous credit.’
‘Pulled himself up by what?’ Jennifer was puzzled.
‘His boot-straps, apparently,’ Magnus told her.
‘But able as you may be, Leslie, confoundedly able, as a matter of fact, where’s your background, eh?’ Kempenflatt demanded. ‘Tell me that now.’
Leslie got off the wall then and moved into the light. ‘No. I think I’ll save that to tell the Selection Committee.’ And then he started down to the lake to fetch his wife.
*
Charlie had been dancing around a young man with bare feet and no shirt. The flowers, leaves, lips and crosses painted on his chest and arms, scrawled across his cheeks and nose, looked like wounds. He had large hands with a cigarette between his stubby fingers, short hair crowned with a plaited hairband and he danced on flat feet with heavy, unsmiling concentration. For a long while he seemed not to notice her but then he changed direction, plodded towards Charlie in time to the music and they were dancing nearer to each other, she smiling and clapping, he stamping as he stared at her. Then Leslie grabbed his wife’s arm and pulled her out of the crowd. She resisted only a little but laughed at him. ‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘Can’t you relax ever? Just for once couldn’t you climb out of that tired old business suit?’
‘We’re going home now. When we get to the car I’ll have something to say to you and you’d better listen!’
‘Something to say? That’ll be a turn up for the book.’
When he got her into the car, he didn’t speak immediately. He drove out of the Picton gates, through Skurfield and stopped on a quiet stretch of the road to Rapstone. Then the words poured out of him. ‘I’ve put up with you,’ he started. ‘I’ve put up with you without complaint. That’s because I promised someone I respect that I’d look after you, no matter how difficult it was. No matter how you resented it. Well, I’ve done it!’
She sat silent, whether or not she was listening to him. He had twisted himself towards her and she thought how pale he looked in the reflected light of the dipped headlamps.
‘I’ve put up with you taking courses in social services, where you learn nothing because you’re always on strike. I’ve put up with your “caring” activities which are designed to make you feel good and help no one else at all. I’ve accepted the fact that you find any gormless slob in a t-shirt morally superior to me in my tired old business suit, as you call it. You owe me for all that, Charlotte. And now I’m calling in the debt.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ She was listening to him now.
‘I’m sorry. I should have remembered, the subject of money is something far beneath you, isn’t it?’ He moved closer to her; she could smell his breath faintly tinged with Doughty Strove’s whisky. ‘Let me put it in terms even you can understand. I can win the Hartscombe seat. That’s not the problem. The problem is, I’ve got to be selected and nowadays they look at wives. God knows why but they do. And if they took one look at you at the moment I’d be out on my ear. Scrubbed! Ruled out! Not chosen! Understand what I mean? Do you?’ He grabbed her wrist, pulling her up sharply when she tried to lean back and away from him. ‘So listen to me, Charlotte. Scrub that bloody chrysanthemum off your forehead. Get yourself a dress you can’t see through. Get your hair done at Chez Giorgio in Hartscombe. Get yourself a hat. And stop fawning on all those drug-headed, overpaid, screaming teenagers who think you’re a joke anyway. Just till I’m elected you’ll bloody well practise your caring skills on your husband. You get behind me, you see – what do they teach you to say – in a supportive situation?’
He let her go. She looked down at the red mark on her wrist and gave a small smile. She remembered then why she had liked him in the first place. He was rough trade.
Nicholas was in the garden, seated on a low stool and cutting dead heads off the begonias, when Christopher Kempenflatt, uninvited, approached him across the lawn. ‘I’m down here with my people for the weekend. I thought I might drop in for a word.’
‘What word is that?’ Although what he was doing wasn’t in the least interesting, Nicholas didn’t like being interrupted.
‘Of course you’ll be chairing the Selection Committee for the new candidate, when the time comes. There is something. I couldn’t really say it on the day, as it were, more of a word of warning in your shell-like, about Titmuss.’
‘About my son-in-law? You don’t think he’d make a suitable member?’
‘So far as I can see he’s hard-working, clever and extremely ambitious.’
‘Not the sort of fellow we’re used to in the Conservative Party?’ Nicholas smiled faintly in the direction of the flowerbed.
‘Not that. Actually, the word of warning is about his wife, your daughter.’
‘About Charlie?’
‘I don’t suppose you know this, but she’s been getting into some rather unusual company.’ Nicholas didn’t react so Kempenflatt tried to explain tactfully. ‘You know what comes of helping lame dogs over stiles…’
‘Can’t say I do, Kempenflatt. It just doesn’t seem to have arisen. I mean, I’ve never seen a lame dog that wanted to get over a stile.’
‘No doubt she gets friendly with that sort of person from the best of motives.’ If there had been a joke, Kempenflatt ignored it. ‘But you can get a little too close to them, if you know what I mean. People are bound to talk. Not the sort of talk that’s particularly healthy, when it’s about a candidate’s lady.’
There was a silence then, and Nicholas looked to the begonias for help. ‘Such a lot of them to water. Hideous plants, aren’t they? And they get uncommonly thirsty.’
‘Just thought it was worth mentioning.’
‘And they have a tremendous appetite for bone meal. Your people will be expecting you, won’t they? Do get Wyebrow to show you out.’ Nicholas was suddenly very angry so he spoke with unusual gentleness.
The Selection Committee was due to meet in November. In October, Dorothy, arranging flowers in Rapstone Church, saw Leslie kneeling in solitary and silent prayer, a proceeding which Simeon of course permitted, but never did much to encourage. She knew enough of the local gossip to be quite sure what he was praying for. It must be the first time, she thought to herself, that God had been asked to select the Conservative candidate for Hartscombe and South Worsfield.
‘I think they want to see you now.’ Christopher Kempenflatt emerged from the Committee Meeting and called in on the little room where Leslie Titmuss was still waiting. His rival’s pallor had that day, he noticed with some pleasure, taken on a positively greenish tinge. He thought he had done pretty well. He had assured the selectors that his wife, Honor, was behind him every inch of the way. He had gently reminded them of the Kempenflatt background and the Kempenflatt family money, ever a productive source of Party funds. He had assured them of his soundness on the question of the death penalty and his intention to live permanently in the constituency. There had been perhaps a slight coolness in the Chairman’s manner but he put this down to Nicholas’s determination not to show his preference too openly.
‘Off you go then, Leslie. May the best man win.’
�
�Oh yes.’ Leslie got slowly, almost reluctantly, to his feet. ‘I think he probably will.’
Once faced with the Selectors, sitting on an upright chair in front of a long table, stared at by men and women, most of whom were as old as his parents, and none of whom were his age, Leslie embarked on his carefully prepared speech in answer to the inevitable question ‘Why do you think you’re particularly suitable to represent this constituency?’ which Nicholas was deputed to ask him.
‘Background!’ he started. ‘I expect you’ve been hearing something about background. Let me tell you mine. My father was a clerk all his life in the Brewery. My mother worked in the kitchen for Doughty Strove. What you call your “living-room”, they call the “lounge”. What you call “dinner”, they call “tea”. Perhaps you think they talk a different language from you?’
Leslie had begun by speaking very quietly, so that his hearers had to strain their ears and pay attention. He also looked ill and so gained some puzzled and embarrassed sympathy. As he got into his stride, his voice became louder and a hint of colour returned to his cheeks.
‘I went to the village school,’ he told them. ‘Then I got a scholarship to Hartscombe Grammar. Weekends I used to go out on my bike and help people with their gardens. I grew up to understand the value of money because it took my father five years to save up for our first second-hand Ford Prefect. Every night he finishes his tea and says to my mother, “Very tasty, dear. That was very tasty.” He always says the same thing. He falls asleep in front of the fire at exactly half past nine and at ten-thirty he wakes up with a start and says, “I’ll lock up, dear. Time for Bedfordshire!” Always the same. Every night. Just as he got to work at exactly the same time every morning for forty years. He’s loyal to his job and my mother was loyal to the Stroves. You know what my parents are? They’re the true Conservatives! And I can tell you this. They’re tired of being represented by people from the City or folks from up at the Manor. They want one of themselves! You can forget the county families and the city gents and the riverside commuters. They’ll vote for you anyway. What you need to win is my people. The people who know the value of money because they’ve never had it. The people who say the same thing every night because it makes them feel safe. The people who’ve worked hard and don’t want to see scroungers rewarded or laziness paying off. Put it this way, ladies and gentlemen. You need the voters I can bring you! They are the backbone of our country. They aren’t Conservative because of privilege or money, but because of their simple faith in the way we’ve always managed things in England!’
Paradise Postponed Page 26