Paradise Postponed

by John Mortimer

Terry was tootling, apparently happily. Fred was behind the drums, contented with the music if not the venue. Joe Sneeping lowered his trumpet to sing a verse of ‘St James Infirmary’:

  When I die I want you to dress me in straight lace shoes,

  Box back coat and a stetson hat,

  Put a twenty dollar gold piece on my watch chain,

  So the boys’ll know that I died standing pat.

  And then, young Simon Mallard-Greene shouted from the bar, ‘Cheer up, sounds like you’re going to a funeral!’ Joe stopped singing and looked pained as the barracking came at them like rifle fire from Simon, Gary, Tina and their friends. ‘Don’t you know no groovy sounds?’ ‘Nothing we can dance to!’ ‘How about “Honky Tonk Woman”?’ ‘ “A Boy Named Sue”.’ ‘Listen, Grandad, we’ve got a request here. “Honky Tonk Woman”.’ ‘He can’t hear you, Simon!’ ‘Get your hearing aid in!’ ‘Wash your ears out!’ And then an empty Coke tin came tumbling through the air and thudded against the front of the drum. The band was silent and Joe stooped to pick it up.

  ‘Who chucked that?’

  ‘My sodding little brother,’ Den Kitson, with his banjo on his knee, called out. ‘Isn’t it past your bedtime, Gary?’

  ‘We came here for a bit of entertainment,’ Gary shouted. ‘Not to hear you moaning away up there.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Joe asked the Stompers in a kind of desperation.

  Fred looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to midnight but he had no doubt of the solution. ‘Play “Auld Lang Syne”. Bloody loudly!’ They did, and, in an instant, the crowd in the Badger was linking arms, singing, kissing, hugging and making breakable resolutions. So the year 1969 slid into history, was forgotten or only occasionally brought to mind.

  24

  The Myth of Happiness

  A few days before he died, Dr Salter, lying in his own bed, with a full-time nurse now in attendance, spoke to Fred, who sat by him whenever he could get away from the practice.

  ‘Never jump your fences too soon. I jumped mine years too soon. Bloody silly thing to do. Look after her, won’t you?’

  ‘Agnes?’

  ‘Your mother.’ Dr Salter’s voice was fading with his life. ‘She may suffer from his sense of justice. Nothing more unfair, you know, than a sense of justice.’ After a silence he said, ‘What’s happening in the world outside?’

  ‘Nothing very much. There’s a new Conservative Government. Leslie Titmuss won Hartscombe.’

  ‘Leslie Titmuss? Sounds a good time to go. Look after her, won’t you?’ He put an almost weightless hand on Fred’s arm. ‘I should’ve liked to have stayed on till Friday. Mrs Beasley does fish pie on Friday.’

  Fred, Henry and Agnes had Mrs Beasley’s fish pie on Friday after the funeral. Henry wanted to know if it was really what Dr Salter wanted – Worsfield Crematorium, in all its ugliness, no music, no flowers, no prayers, nothing. Agnes asked, ‘Why? Do you think your father feels done out of a funeral?’ and Fred told him, ‘Nothing. That’s what he wanted.’

  There was little left to arrange. Everything belonged to Agnes, but Fred was going to buy the house from her. He and the remaining partners would take out a mortgage, so that the practice could continue there. She wanted him to have the gramophone records and some of her father’s pictures. Henry thought that final details should be left to the lawyers. So Dr Salter was divided up, passed on and his ashes scattered. When Agnes and Henry had gone Fred went back to work. He could think of nothing else to do.

  Later Henry felt excluded by his wife’s grief as he had felt obscurely jealous of Francesca when she claimed so much of Agnes’s attention. Some weeks had gone by when he said with a hint of impatience in his seriously sympathetic voice, ‘It was bound to happen some time.’

  ‘Some time. Yes.’

  ‘He was an extraordinary man.’

  ‘He told the truth.’

  Henry, wrongly, took that as a reference to himself. He didn’t answer it, however, but went to his desk and picked one off a pile of newspaper-cuttings. ‘We’ve got away with it. My new book, remember? Bloody great piece in The New York Review of Books. Socking great caricature of the author.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Do you want to read it?’ He held the cutting out to her. She shook her head. ‘I said I was very glad.’

  Henry had changed since the retreat from Grosvenor Square. His new enthusiasms were for tweed suits, the Church of England, English watercolours and Victorian animal paintings. His latest book, The Myth of Happiness, was a collection of essays in praise of these articles and denouncing the modern fallacy that the human race is born with some sort of divine right to work, financial security and personal satisfaction. Its publication coincided with the defeat of Harold Wilson’s Government, but Henry claimed no credit for this. Indeed he found Mr Heath’s Conservatives just as crassly materialistic and blind to the virtues of human suffering as their Labour alternative. He restored the press-cutting to its pile. ‘I’m glad that the new book’s got away with it. Just as well. I don’t think Benny’s having much joy raising the money for Pilgrims.’ He poured them both a drink; Agnes took hers without speaking. ‘You’re still thinking about your father?’

  ‘His illness came between us like another woman. He was ashamed of it so he didn’t want to see me. When I was young,’ she remembered, ‘when I was living with him over the surgery, I felt so safe. I could really enjoy anything awful.’ She gave him a small, regretful smile. ‘Nowadays I’m so grateful for anything a bit pleasant. It’s pathetic!’

  ‘For God’s sake! I’ve tried to make you happy. I have.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ve given up…’ He claimed the credit. ‘Given up having anything to do with anyone else.’

  ‘I never thought I’d develop into a person someone had to give things up for.’ She took a gulp of her drink and looked at him with regret.

  Fred and Mrs Wickstead never talked much about the eruption of Father Christmas into the pink bedroom. When his father had withdrawn Fred had gone back to his own room, and when he drove her to the station she seemed to have forgotten the incident. Afterwards they continued to meet, only a little less often than before, and such meetings were rare oases of pleasure in the dry months of his practice. He talked to her about all sorts of things but never about Christmas. Strangely enough the absurd incident made him feel fonder of Simeon; the old man hadn’t preached him a sermon, nor did he seem anxious that his son should feel ashamed. So Fred began to see more of his father and, on his afternoons off, they would go for walks together, exploring the countryside in a way which took the place of his rides with Dr Salter.

  Maggie Fawcett came out of Worsfield General after a long spell and discovered that her daughter had become the tenant of her cottage. She spent most of her time upstairs in her room, avoiding the company of Tina and Gary. ‘I can’t sit down there, Doctor,’ she said when Fred called to see her. ‘Not with them fish goggling at me. “However much does it cost,” I said, “to keep them awful little animals in tropical waters?” “Don’t you worry your head,” he says. “We can afford it.” So they can afford the electric organ and all the other stuff they got. He’s given up the building, you know, and gone into cleaning windows. Perhaps he has got a good business.’

  ‘You say you signed something in hospital?’

  ‘Letter they brought round from Sir Nicholas. Said it made sure the family kept the cottage. If I was away a long time, like. It meant they kept it.’ The sound of Pink Floyd percolated up through the floorboards. ‘It’s the record-player too, all hours of the day and night. It was always so peaceful in the General.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with them.’

  ‘Don’t upset them, Dr Fred. My Tina can be ever so spiteful when she’s upset.’

  Downstairs, Fred found that Gary had come home for lunch and was sharing a cardboard box of chicken and chips with Tina. They were sitting on the plastic leather sofa, their feet on the mock leopardsk
in rug, backed by the knotty pine wallpaper. Round the room the huge telly, the record-player and the small electric organ gleamed metallically. In a large bubbling tank mournful but brightly coloured fish threaded their way through imitation mother-of-pearl obstacles such as underwater pagodas. ‘Your mother’s not been well.’

  ‘ ’Course not. Been in hospital, ain’t she? Better now though.’

  ‘I want you to keep her comfortable.’

  ‘She’s comfortable all right.’ Gary was sure. ‘In her bedroom all the time. Can’t trouble herself to come down here and be a bit sociable.’

  ‘I don’t think she likes the fish.’ Fred looked at the tank and decided he didn’t like them either.

  ‘What’s she got against Gary’s Oriental Hot Lips?’

  ‘And she says the music keeps her awake.’

  ‘Did you put her up to that? I could tell you had no love for music, Doctor’ – Gary smiled at him over a grey and hairy chicken drumstick – ‘that night down the Badger.’

  On Christmas Day, after having been surprised at the telephone, Henry promised that he would never see Lonnie again. After the death of Agnes’s father he seemed almost anxious that she should discover evidence of his broken undertaking. He left stubs of air tickets to Manchester on his desk on which Lonnie’s name was still legible. He often put the phone down when Agnes came into the room, or got up early to collect the post, sometimes leaving an envelope with what she suspected was Lonnie’s handwriting, postmarked SW10, crumpled in the kitchen tidy-bin. In a way, Agnes started to feel sorry for Lonnie. Other girls got trips to the South of France or Venice from their married lovers, poor old Lonnie got a literary lunch in a room full of ladies in hats in Manchester. All that would be on offer, Agnes knew, would be grapefruit segments, chicken and frozen peas, and Henry making a speech about himself. And then Lonnie had to man her phone twenty-four hours a day. It was no doubt a tough assignment, being the other woman in Henry’s life.

  Jack Polefax of Galaxy International had, so Mr Bugloss explained, ‘gone cold’ on Pilgrims, so the movie was once more postponed. Henry was working on a new novel and taking part in a series of television documentaries called Writers’ England, in which various authors could reveal the parts of the country which had most inspired them. For his number Henry was ‘going back to his roots’ in the Rapstone Valley. One day he said to Agnes, ‘Look, I want you to be very sensible about this.’

  ‘What’ve I got to be sensible about?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘Lonnie Hope’ll be working on the project.’

  ‘Lonnie Hope’s been working on the project for some time, hasn’t she?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know what you mean. She’ll just be doing her job. You won’t object to that, will you?’ He was clearly not prepared to believe that any woman could be so unreasonable.

  Agnes thought about it and finally said, ‘No, I suppose I wouldn’t object to that.’

  ‘I’m glad’ – Henry looked relieved – ‘we understand each other.’

  When Henry had first told her that he was making a film about his roots, Agnes said that it sounded like Gardeners’ Question Time and he hadn’t laughed. Lonnie at least took him seriously as he stood in front of the camera with the Rectory behind him and said things like: ‘I could see the whole of village life from that window. The children brought for christening and the old people brought for burial. Perhaps that’s why I was never entirely convinced by facile optimism and all the claptrap about the right to health and wealth in the pursuit of happiness. The only undisputed right anyone had was to six foot of earth under the cedar trees in that churchyard.’

  One night he arrived back at the flat with Lonnie who was carrying a briefcase and a long-legged doll dressed as a clown. ‘I brought Lonnie back for a drink,’ Henry explained. ‘She’s just going to type out a bit of script for tomorrow.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me turning your front room into an office? We met the last time we filmed with Henry. I’m Lonnie Hope.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘Campari and soda, Lonnie?’ Henry was pouring drinks.

  ‘Henry knows what I like.’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘And how’s little Francesca?’ Lonnie asked as she sipped her drink. ‘I brought her a present.’

  ‘Lonnie brought that marvellous clown for Francesca.’

  ‘Really? How amusing. Perhaps I’ll give it to her in the morning.’

  ‘Oh, I say. I do like the way you’ve done your front room.’ Lonnie walked round it admiringly. ‘What gorgeous cushion covers! Are they antiques?’

  ‘Henry’s mother gave them to us. They come from the Rectory.’

  ‘Oh, we’re filming there. Henry’s promised to introduce me to his father. The old Rector sounds an absolute sweetie! Your father was a doctor, wasn’t he? Henry told me that your two fathers were always arguing – in the nicest possible way, of course.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’d describe my father as “nice”.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he was if you’re anything to go by.’

  ‘You think I’m nice, do you?’ Agnes spoke in a voice of doom, apparently unnoticed by Lonnie. Henry thought they had better get on with typing the scene.

  ‘Your husband’s so marvellous on screen, you know,’ Lonnie said, as she settled down to work. ‘He does it so naturally.’

  ‘Well, it’s something he’s used to, isn’t it?’ Agnes was leaving for the kitchen. ‘Talking about himself.’

  Shortly after that evening, Agnes looked for a flat in Fulham. When she had found one she left, taking Francesca and all their possessions except the clown doll. As she told Henry, she couldn’t really enjoy anything awful any more.

  25

  The Party

  After only two years on the back benches, Leslie Titmuss got a job in the Government and became a parliamentary private secretary at Advanced Technology. This news was welcomed particularly by Christopher Kempenflatt and Magnus Strove, who saw that Leslie would have to resign his directorship and leave them in control of the now extremely profitable Hartscombe Enterprises. ‘Do you think we could bear life without Titmuss?’ Magnus asked, and Kempenflatt thought that they might be very brave about it. When Leslie was approached he surprised them by saying that he wouldn’t only resign his directorship, but sell all his shares. He expected to get a pretty good price for them.

  ‘Don’t worry, old man,’ Kempenflatt said. ‘We’re prepared to buy you out at a substantial profit. More than you ever dreamed of getting your hot little hands on when you were working at the Brewery.’

  ‘Of course it would have to be deferred.’ Magnus took it for granted. ‘Well, you wouldn’t expect readies, would you?’

  ‘Haven’t you got a future interest you could raise a bit on, if you’re short of cash, Magnus? I mean the Strove estate? By the way how is old Doughty?’

  ‘Daddy doesn’t get out much nowadays. Fred Simcox says it’s depression. He’s given him a handful of pills for it.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry to hear that.’ Leslie looked concerned. ‘You will give him my best wishes, won’t you? After all he kept the seat warm for me, all those years.’

  In fact Doughty Strove had fallen into strange habits. The staff at Picton House were dismayed to find him wandering, tieless and unshaven, about the upstairs corridors, muttering, ‘Strove, Doughty Picton Percival, Lord Strove of Skurfield in the County of… First Baron. Doughty Picton Percival Strove, first Baron of Skurfield in the Peerage of England…’ So Doughty was in no condition to join the drinks party that Nicholas and Grace felt they should give to celebrate their son-in-law’s promotion.

  Grace said that, in the old days, they didn’t have to wait for someone to become Secretary to the Water Works or whatever it was before they had an excuse for a party. However she climbed into a cocktail dress, took a few pieces of jewellery out of the bank and the hall at Rapstone Manor was filled with familiar faces and some unfamiliar ones, eager, youn
gish men with dark suits and businesslike expressions who were Leslie’s new colleagues. Fred, who had called in after a day’s work, found himself talking to someone who was quite unknown to him, a man who had smooth, dark hair like a seal, a suit, shirt, tie and breast-pocket handkerchief in various shades of blue, a heavy gold wristwatch and Gucci shoes. He spoke in a controlled and persuasive voice, as though he were forever selling some product.

  ‘Never seen Leslie in the ancestral surroundings before.’ The man was looking across at the Fanner family. ‘Doesn’t go with his image, really.’

  ‘What’s his image?’ Fred wondered.

  ‘My firm does P.R. for Hartscombe Enterprises,’ the man explained. ‘We’ve taken on Leslie’s political profile as well. You know, gritty man of the people, all that sort of rubbish. Good thing there’s no press about. He ought to be at the Young Business Man of the Year do at the new Worsfield Motorway Inn, not swigging champagne up at the Manor. Known Leslie a long time, have you?’

  ‘Oh, since we were children.’

  ‘I imagine he’s changed a lot since then.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Fred told him. ‘Hardly at all.’

  On the other side of the party, Mrs Mallard-Greene had introduced herself to Simeon. ‘Sorry we haven’t got round to coming to church yet.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Simeon assured her. ‘As a matter of fact, I hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Of course, we’d like to go. But our young aren’t in the least interested. Such a difficult time for young people, isn’t it?’

  ‘It usually is.’

  ‘We always hoped our Simon would follow Malley into the B.B.C., but now it’s come to the crunch they’ve got nothing to offer him. All the same, I’ve got to hand it to Simon. Rather than hang about round the house he’s going into window-cleaning with Gary Kitson. I think they’re doing rather well but it wasn’t what we had in mind when we sent him to Bedales.’

  Simeon smiled and wandered away from her then. He wanted to speak to Bridget whom he had seen taking out a tray of empty glasses. He followed her into the kitchen corridor and called after her, ‘Bridget! It’s been so long since we’ve seen anything of Glenys. I do miss her typing so.’ She stopped with her back towards him. ‘Is she well? And the baby, not a baby now, I suppose.’