Paradise Postponed

by John Mortimer

  Bridget turned slowly to face him and stared silently over her tray. ‘I’ve got my fires to do,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not working too hard, Bridget, I hope?’

  ‘Fireplaces need blacking. You’ve got to get up early for that. I can’t stand here gossiping.’ She turned away from him, leaving him for a moment alone and staring after her. Then he went back to the party where he was immediately engaged in conversation by the ‘Contessa’, who wanted to know why Grace kept telling everyone that Leslie had joined the Water Board.

  ‘Wonderful types you get in country houses, like a lot of antiques. That cleric talking to the old queen in the corner, for instance. Terrific face!’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Get a face like that to endorse a product and you could sell cannabis to nuns. Good old Church of England parson, is he? The Tory Party at prayer.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Fred told him, ‘my father’s a Socialist.’

  ‘Your father?’ The man looked at him, apparently amazed. ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘I didn’t. But it’s Simcox, Fred Simcox.’

  ‘Not Doctor Simcox.’ Fred nodded and it was then that the man started to laugh. ‘Good God, that perfectly wonderful story! So it was you who got the Christmas stocking. What a life you must lead, down at the Rectory. I say, we never got properly introduced. I’m Wickstead. Kenneth Wickstead. I believe you know my wife.’

  Fred looked at him and could think of nothing whatever to say. Luckily there was a diversion – Leslie appeared on the staircase carrying the baby he had just insisted that Charlie should allow downstairs. ‘Great bit of P.R.,’ said Mr Wickstead and wandered off towards his client.

  ‘My Lord, Lady Naboth, Sir Nicholas and Lady Fanner, ladies and gentlemen,’ Leslie called out to them all. ‘Will you please welcome a future prime minister, Nicholas George Titmuss!’

  ‘Well!’ Grace murmured. ‘I must say we had to wait long enough for him.’

  But Dorothy moved to the bottom of the stairs, put out her hand and touched the baby’s head. ‘He really is rather handsome, isn’t he?’ she said.

  ‘He knew! Your husband knew all about Christmas. And everything.’

  Fred had met Mrs Wickstead, not in their usual pub in Notting Hill Gate but in the bar of the Great Western Hotel at Paddington station. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how did he know? That’s the point.’

  ‘I told him, of course.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘We’re very honest with each other. We don’t have secrets.’ Fred had come up from Hartscombe in the afternoon, deliberately missing lunchtime. Now it was six o’clock: the bar was full of businessmen with briefcases and large ladies with Harrods bags all having a stiffener before facing the long train journey back to the country. Mrs Wickstead looked into her vodka and tonic. ‘You rather like secrets, don’t you, Fred?’

  ‘Some secrets. I mean, some things are private.’

  ‘Priests have secrets, doctors and lawyers, all those sort of people. Well, Kenneth’s just an ad-man. We find it works to tell each other the truth.’

  ‘What about Mr Bugloss?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What about Mr Benjamin K. Bugloss? Did you tell Kenneth about him too?’

  ‘Of course, not that there was much to tell. Benny’s so in love with the movie business that he hasn’t got much energy for anything else. He really kept me on for the sake of appearances.’

  ‘And does Mr Wickstead keep you on for the sake of appearances?’

  ‘Not entirely. But he doesn’t mind. Can’t you get that into your thick head? He really doesn’t mind at all.’ She looked at Fred and smiled. ‘That shocks you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She finished her drink and spoke quietly. ‘I’ve been stupid.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘I should have pretended that it was all a great mystery and we were deceiving Mr Wickstead. You’d’ve liked that better, wouldn’t you?’

  Instead of answering her, he asked, ‘The flat in Notting Hill Gate, was it for both of you?’

  ‘I suppose so. From time to time.’

  There were shouts and chuckles from the other end of the bar. One of the businessmen was telling his friends and the barman a joke.

  ‘Did Mr Wickstead laugh a lot when you told him about Christmas?’ What Fred couldn’t put up with was the thought of them both laughing at his father.

  ‘I knew he’d think it was funny. That’s why I told him. Oh, come on, Fred. It was funny, wasn’t it?’ When he didn’t answer, she said, ‘I’ve blown it, haven’t I?’

  ‘It’s probably my fault.’

  ‘Why miss something enjoyable, just because Mr Wickstead knows about it?’

  ‘I know it sounds unreasonable.’ He took out his wallet and left a note on the table to pay for the drinks.

  ‘But you’ve got a train to catch?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I’m not coming with you?’

  ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘Or any night. I’m sorry you had to find out about Mr Wickstead.’

  Fred’s anger soon died. It gave way to a dull ache and a long period of emptiness during which he only just resisted the temptation to telephone Mrs Wickstead. He thought about her perpetually at first, then less often, and finally only with a stab of regret when anyone mentioned Notting Hill Gate, or he saw a young woman immerse herself in a fur coat.

  Leslie had less than two years in his government job before the miners went on strike. There were power cuts and fuel shortages and the great British public, reduced to working a three-day week, was expected to make an important decision. The young P.P.S. at Advanced Technology took his family down to Rapstone for the weekend so that he could put the Chairman of his local Party in the picture. ‘Ted Heath’s going to call an election.’

  ‘Your Mr Heath’s making a mistake,’ Nicholas thought.

  ‘Why? Do people really want the country run by the miners?’

  ‘I don’t think people want to be asked. They put Ted Heath there to get on and deal with things like miners’ strikes. They want to get on with watching their telly boxes, and filling in their pools and…’

  ‘Watering their begonias?’ They were in the sitting-room after lunch, and Charlie spoke from behind the shelter of New Society.

  ‘Well, exactly! They don’t want Ted Heath asking them questions all the time. I think they may teach him a lesson.’

  ‘I expect to double my majority in Hartscombe.’ Leslie was confident. ‘Meanwhile, it’s up to all of us to save the country.’

  ‘Are we having a war again?’ Grace was cheered by this call to arms. ‘I must confess I did rather enjoy the last one.’

  ‘We’ve got to take the situation seriously,’ Leslie told her. ‘I mean, we’ve got bricks in all the toilet cisterns. Speaking for myself, I do clean my teeth in the dark.’

  ‘Well, I hope your Mr Heath doesn’t expect Nicholas and me to “take a shower” together! That’s all I hope. I’m going up to my room. It’s not exactly entertaining down here. Discussing bricks in the lavatory.’

  ‘I had a good letter today, from Nicholas George’s headmaster,’ Leslie told Charlie when her mother had gone.

  ‘Nick’s only three. He hasn’t got a headmaster.’

  ‘The Headmaster of Knuckleberries,’ he explained to Nicholas. ‘Your grandson’s been down since birth, of course. I’ve been writing regularly, keeping the Headmaster in the picture. Simeon put in a word for me.’

  ‘He did that, did he?’

  ‘Oh yes. The Rector’s taken a considerable interest in him. So in due course we’ll be packing young Nicholas George off to Knuckleberries.’

  ‘Don’t you be too sure,’ Charlie warned him.

  ‘Of course I’m sure. You know who really governs the country? Not Ted Heath or the miners. It’s the fellows who went to Knuckleberries, so that’s why Nick is going to be one of them.�
�

  Up in her bedroom Grace wasn’t resting. She was playing Pinky Pinkerton’s old record of ‘You’re the Top!’ and dancing to herself. She thought no one saw her, and, in her elaborate turns, didn’t notice the window-cleaners. Gary Kitson, up his ladder, could see her and he called down to his partner, Simon Mallard-Greene, to join him. Watching the old woman pirouette on her own they laughed so much that Simon nearly fell off the ladder.

  26

  Collecting the Evidence

  SIMEON HENRY SIMCOX

  BORN 1ST JANUARY 1903

  DIED 21ST MAY 1985

  FOR FIFTY YEARS RECTOR OF THIS PARISH

  BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER

  ‘ “I KEPT MY WORD,” HE SAID.’

  Such was the inscription on Simeon’s tombstone. Dorothy was busy with her trowel and secateurs, cutting the dead heads off the standard rose she had planted at the head of the grave, and then clearing the weeds that had grown up around it. As she knelt she saw that a pair of uncleaned black shoes and unpressed grey flannel trousers had come to join her. The Rev. Kevin Bulstrode told her that he did like to see a family caring for the grave.

  ‘I suppose most families have got better things to do.’

  ‘Your son was here the other day. I saw him from the Rectory window.’

  ‘You saw Fred?’

  ‘No. Your eldest son.’

  Dorothy stood up and thought that it was rather disgusting how well roses did on graves – she could never get a Mrs Sam Macready to flower like that at home.

  ‘Henry? What on earth was he doing here? Never weeding!’

  ‘So far as I could see he was taking photographs.’

  ‘Whatever of?’

  ‘Of the headstone so far as I could tell, and of the inscription.’

  When Dorothy got home, unloaded her small car and struggled up to the front door with her handbag, shopping bag and tray full of gardening tools she found Jackson Cantellow, the solicitor, smiling and anxious to help.

  ‘Are you very busy?’

  ‘Extremely, the Bishop’s coming to tea.’ Dorothy didn’t want to be bothered with Mr Cantellow.

  ‘Is that true?’ Cantellow was carrying her possessions into the sitting-room. ‘No,’ Dorothy told him. ‘It’s a thundering lie. What on earth can you want with me?’

  ‘Don’t you know, Mrs Simcox? Didn’t you get my letters?’ She had seen the envelopes neatly typed and marked Cantellow and Machin. She told him that she burnt them unopened. ‘You couldn’t have anything of the slightest interest to say to me.’

  Cantellow smiled, prepared to take his time. ‘Aren’t we going to have a cup of tea?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘That’s very thoughtful.’ But when he followed her into the kitchen she used only one cup, one tea-bag and a little milk. She drank on her own.

  ‘Mrs Simcox’ – Cantellow ignored the lack of hospitality and perched himself on a high stool – ‘if you had read my letters you’d’ve been aware that your son, Henry, is attacking his father’s last will on the grounds that the late Rector was of unsound mind, memory and understanding. We shall need your views on that.’

  ‘Well, of course Simeon was mad.’

  ‘Really?’ The solicitor was gratified.

  ‘Aren’t we all? Aren’t you, Mr Jackson Cantellow?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I would say, mad as a hatter.’ Dorothy was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping her tea. ‘Writing me letters which I have no desire to read. Asking a lot of questions I have no desire to answer. Singing in those awful concerts.’

  ‘I really don’t see what the Worsfield Choral has to do with it.’ For the first time Cantellow looked hurt.

  ‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha… le… lu… Hallelujah! Taking forever just to sing one word! On and on and on until everyone dies of boredom. Why couldn’t you just say “Hallelujah” and get it over with, like a normal person?’

  ‘The evidence we already have shows signs of unfortunate mental instability growing in the late Rector since the end of the last war.’ Cantellow decided to ignore Dorothy’s attack. He opened his briefcase in a businesslike manner and took out a typewritten statement. ‘We give instances,’ he went on. ‘An occasion when he appeared on the doorstep of Rapstone Manor on his hands and knees, apparently trumpeting like an elephant. A time when he opened the front door to a couple seeking guidance on the Christian approach to marriage and was seen to be clad in female attire. An incident during an election when he wished that the guillotine might be reintroduced, for aristocrats and their doctors.’

  ‘This is total madness! What’s that you’re reading from?’

  Cantellow handed her the document. ‘A draft, Mrs Simcox, of your proof of evidence. I thought we might go through it together and I can include any further little nuggets that you might wish to add.’

  As soon as she had it Dorothy tore the ‘proof’ into small strips and dropped them into the tidy-bin. Cantellow seemed not at all perturbed as he told her he had a copy, of course, back at the office. ‘Some time you’ll have to tell us about these matters, Mrs Simcox, painful as they may be. Steps can always be taken to compel a reluctant witness to come to court, in the interests of justice.’

  ‘In the interests of justice I have to be visited by the awful little slimy hymn-singer! I have to be besieged in my own living-room! I have to be asked the most ridiculous questions about your father! Naturally Simeon went down on his hands and knees and trumpeted like an elephant. It was something he thought amusing.’ Dorothy had burst furiously into Fred’s consulting room, surprising the local bank manager who had come to chat about his piles.

  ‘Please, Mr Grimsdale. Could I ask you to wait outside? Just for a moment.’ When his patient had gone, Fred protested mildly, ‘This is a doctor’s consulting room, Mother. I don’t know if you remember?’

  ‘Well I wish you’d prescribe something for Mr Singing Cantellow, preferably rat poison. And you must stop Henry bringing this wretched case. You must know how to do that,’ she ended somewhat illogically. ‘You’re a doctor.’

  Fred told her that it would take more than a doctor to stop Henry, a feat which could hardly be performed by a battleship armed with Exocet missiles. So far as he could tell the only thing which would prevent Henry going on to contest the will in court was something he could see no sign of, a logical explanation.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A sane reason for our father leaving his money to Leslie Titmuss.’

  ‘It was his money, wasn’t it? I suppose he could do exactly as he liked with it.’ Dorothy was still trembling with rage after the solicitor’s visit. ‘That Mr Jackson Cantellow thought I was going to make him a cup of tea. But I didn’t, you know!’

  When Dorothy had left him, Fred telephoned his brother. He said he was coming up to London that evening and might he call in for half an hour? As he drove out of Hartscombe, across the bridge, up the hill and towards the motorway, Fred began to feel that he had a new purpose in life, that of protecting Simeon’s memory. He saw no reason why any court should find his father guilty but insane because of his will, or his jokes, or his political beliefs, and the fact that the Rector was no longer in a position to explain himself made Fred even more determined to discover the truth. If he had been entirely honest he would have had to admit that not allowing Henry to get his own way had its place somewhere in his list of aims and ambitions.

  When he arrived at the flat off the King’s Road he found Lonnie laying the table for a dinner party in the big room. While Henry poured drinks, Fred looked idly down at his brother’s desk and saw, to his considerable surprise, a photograph of their father’s tombstone.

  ‘Rather an important part of the evidence, don’t you think?’ Henry handed him a glass. Lonnie was muttering to herself as she laid out forks, ‘Is Fred staying for dinner? If he is it’s going to play silly buggers with my placement.’

  ‘You remember the inscription?’ Henry said it as though putting his brother throug
h some kind of basic intelligence test.

  ‘Do you think I’m likely to forget? “ ‘I kept my word,’ he said.” From the Bible, I always thought.’

  ‘You always thought! The trouble with you, young Frederick, is that you hardly ever think at all. As for the money wasted on your so-called education at Knuckleberries…’

  ‘It would mean sitting Fred next to another man – I could put him beside Ronnie Archpole.’ Lonnie was worrying round her dinner table.

  ‘ “Is anyone there?” said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door.” ’ Henry took a drink to his second wife and handed it to her as he spoke to Fred. ‘Does that ring a faint bell?’

  ‘ “Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,” he said.’ Lonnie recited it as she moved the place-mats around. ‘Walter de la Mare.’

  ‘The brilliance of a well-stocked mind!’ Henry applauded her.

  ‘Of course Ronnie Archpole is tremendously gay. Fred won’t mind that, will he?’ Lonnie wanted to know but her husband was asking his brother the next difficult question.

  ‘Have you considered the significance of our father choosing that quotation for his final resting-place?’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘The climax of megalomania! Simeon clearly regarded his passage through the world as a sort of Second Coming. He called on the great, inert masses to answer his call and accept the Kingdom of Equality, Christian Socialism and the Welfare State! Poor old Father. Nobody answered. That’s how he saw himself. The Great Prophet rejected. The misunderstood Messiah! Our psychiatrist says his hospital’s full of them.’

  ‘Our psychiatrist?’

  ‘The one we’re calling to give evidence.’

  ‘Anyway.’ Fred was thinking about the inscription. ‘Our father didn’t quote the lines about no one answering. He quoted the bit about keeping his word.’ He had picked up a dish of nuts and was eating thoughtfully. Lonnie removed them from him.