Paradise Postponed

by John Mortimer

  ‘For you.’ He felt unexpectedly flattered by Henry’s accusation, and by the fact that Agnes accepted his visit as part of her day, with no particular motive behind it. She was making a steak and kidney pie to drive off to that night’s dinner party, cutting out a pastry flower to decorate the top. ‘What’ve you been doing anyway?’ she asked him.

  ‘More or less what your father did. Oh, and I’ve started to play again with the Stompers.’

  ‘Aren’t they getting a bit old by now?’

  ‘All jazz players are getting a bit old. We’ve got another gig at the Badger in Skurfield. We might be a bit less pure this time. Perhaps they’ll only throw tin cans during “St James’ Infirmary”.’ She had finished decorating and was wrapping the pie in silver foil, ready for the journey. ‘Why don’t you come?’

  ‘To hear you play the drums?’

  ‘You haven’t for a long time.’

  ‘Aren’t you any better at it?’

  ‘Come and see.’

  ‘Would you like coffee?’ She put the pie into a cardboard box with other silver-wrapped courses. ‘Or a drink or something?’

  ‘A drink or something.’

  There was a bottle of white Rioja open in the refrigerator. She splashed some into tumblers and they drank. ‘Why did Henry think I might want you to spy for me?’ asked Fred.

  ‘He said you were playing at being a detective. Is that true?’

  ‘It was. I’ve finished now.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I’ve got the truth.’ He tried not to sound triumphant.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ She was sitting at the kitchen table, in front of her drink, her lighter and packet of cigarettes, prepared for a chat. He sat opposite her and thought clearly for the first time in his life about his father and felt a surge of affection for the man who had often seemed remote and too involved in the simple solution of world problems to notice his immediate family. And, as he understood Simeon, he knew he couldn’t let his brother go on publishing his misunderstandings to the world. ‘I’m going to stop Henry making out our father was an idiot,’ he told Agnes. ‘At last I can shut him up.’

  ‘Is that what you really care about?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shutting up your brother.’

  ‘No. Of course it isn’t. But he needs to be given a little truth, after all these years.’

  ‘What sort of truth exactly?’

  Fred took out his wallet, extracted the folded blue letter and handed it to her. Agnes took it reluctantly and, for a while, didn’t care to look.

  ‘Please. I want you to see.’

  She started to read and he was glad that she was the first person to whom he had shown the letter. After a while she looked up at him. ‘Careful,’ she warned him, ‘how you go about it.’

  When Dorothy had moved out of the Rectory she had left a lot of bits and pieces from the study, books and papers, articles of no particular value, and promised to pick them up sometime. She had never done so and Kev the Rev. had often telephoned Fred to say he had a tea-chest full of Simcox memorabilia in his attic, and what would be a convenient time to call for it. Fred, wondering if he really had room for dozens of Left Book Club volumes and Fabian tracts, had put off this transfer of property but now he decided that it was a convenient moment.

  The Reverend Kevin was on his way out when Fred arrived at the Rectory. ‘Twenty-four-hour vigil in Worsfield Cathedral for better industrial relations.’ He impishly displayed a paperback of The Dogs of War. ‘Jolly naughty of me, I know, but these occasions can get deadly boring. Have you come for a good old bash at the problem of evil?’

  ‘No, I told you, for my father’s bits and pieces.’

  ‘Oh, right. I’m sure Monica’ll show you. It’s Dr Simcox, darling!’ Kevin Bulstrode shouted back through the front door. ‘Can you let him have the stuff in the attic?’

  Fred went past his old bedroom. Through an open door he saw a pile of clothes on the floor and a child’s unmade bed. He went up a ladder to push open a trap-door, and climb into the dark, flyblown cavern above the rafters. He switched on a naked, dangling light bulb and recognized some of his and Henry’s old toys, a tailless rocking-horse, toy guns, an old cricket bat and a box of dusty Christmas decorations. And there was his first, childhood drum set. He worked the pedal and produced a sagging, hollow thud. Then he saw the tea-chest with the bust of Karl Marx in a nest of pamphlets. When he got it home he found even more treasures, pipes, tobacco jars, faded posters, petitions for forgotten causes together with African carvings and Indian gods which had been presents from politicians, peace groups and bishops in distant lands. At the bottom he found an old 78 record; he looked at the label and was not particularly surprised. He took it out of its envelope and blew off the dust, then he adjusted his record-player and put the old disc almost reverently on the turntable. Karl Marx’s bust was lying on its back, staring at the ceiling with sightless eyes, as Pinky Pinkerton’s piano tinkled and his soft voice began to caress the old Cole Porter number ‘You’re the Top!’

  Once more Mr Bugloss had bought champagne. After so many years, after so many hopes and disappointments, a city consortium had put together a deal with a Canadian, an Italian and several Germans, and the first day of principal photography, the day when everyone hoped to get paid for Pilgrims, was fixed. ‘I shall be there,’ Henry told him, ‘provided it doesn’t clash with my giving evidence in court.’

  ‘My dears’ – Mr Bugloss raised his glass in Henry’s flat – ‘good luck to our dear movie, and all who sail in her! She has a great script. May she receive twenty Oscar nominations, and make us all rich and famous. Jack Polefax must be kicking himself he never took up his option. Remember when we first had the idea? In that restaurant on the Coast, and you’ – he looked at Lonnie more in sorrow than in anger – ‘you disappeared into the john, and never came out again.’

  ‘That was his other wife.’ Lonnie was displeased.

  ‘Of course.’ Mr Bugloss smiled, not at all put out. ‘And she walked home. I mean, his other wife walked.’

  ‘Agnes wasn’t dull, was she? You couldn’t say that about her.’ The phone began to ring on Henry’s desk at the other end of the room, and he went to answer it. ‘Not dull!’ Lonnie muttered when he had gone. ‘He says that to me!’

  ‘She walked!’ Mr Bugloss was still amazed, after so many years. ‘About thirty blocks along Sunset. I can bear witness to that… er, Mrs Simcox.’ Mr Bugloss played for safety. ‘You’ve been right behind your husband through eight rewrites of Pilgrims. It’s paid off, you see? We’ve got the end money guaranteed.’

  ‘And what do I get for always supporting Henry?’ Lonnie asked him. ‘For always being on his side against everyone? He tells you, “There was one thing to be said for Agnes, she was never dull”!’

  ‘That was Fred. He wants us to come down to Hartscombe and see our mother.’ Henry returned from the telephone with other things to talk about.

  ‘See Dorothy?’

  ‘He thinks she might be ready to make a statement.’

  ‘Is Fred on our side now?’ Lonnie wondered.

  ‘I honestly don’t know what he’s up to now. I’ve got to find out. Do you want to come?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’ll come.’ Lonnie included Mr Bugloss in her sigh. ‘I’ll be there supporting you, naturally I will.’

  On the day that Henry and Lonnie were to come down to Hartscombe, George Titmuss, temporarily eluding his wife, presented himself once more at the Brewery gates and talked to Den Kitson, who was again on picket duty. He still wanted access to the accounts department. ‘Mistake to retire,’ he said, ‘Mother doesn’t want me at home, get under her feet all the time, nothing to do but sit out in the garden. ’Course, we always paid the old Rector his wages.’ He went on talking at random. ‘Not that he did a stroke of work for it, other than marches and pinching other people’s ornaments. It’s the pre-war balance sheets, that’s what needs to be looked at.’

/>   ‘You mean you want a look round your office for old times’ sake?’ On that basis, and although it was an official dispute, the pickets were persuaded to let George in as a tourist for a trip down Memory Lane. Later that afternoon, Trafford Simcox, working on the final details of the Brewery sale, was disturbed by sounds from the deserted accounts department. He went along the corridor to find old Titmuss surrounded by dusty ledgers, annual statements and balance sheets which hadn’t been looked at for years. ‘I’m not blaming you, Mr Trafford.’ George spoke calmly, as though he had been expecting the interruption. ‘It was done in your father’s time. It was done in Mr Pym’s day. I think it was kindly meant at first, and then it got written up wrong. I shouldn’t have passed it, not when it was written up like that. It’s got to be put right some time.’

  ‘What’s got to be put right, George?’ Trafford Simcox, forever anxious, sat down beside George Titmuss and had it explained to him, at considerable length.

  ‘Young Dr Fred’s still out on his rounds,’ Mrs Beasley, Dr Salter’s old housekeeper, and now Fred’s, told Henry and Lonnie when they arrived at the surgery. ‘He wants you to go on up.’ In the living-room Henry wondered what you had to do to be called ‘young’ in middle-age. ‘Never move on,’ he suggested to Lonnie. ‘Stay where you’re planted, and like Fred, you can be called “young” till the day you die.’

  ‘He hasn’t put much of himself in here, has he?’ Lonnie looked round at Dr Salter’s old furniture. ‘Except the drums.’

  ‘It’s the room of a man totally unaware of his surroundings,’ Henry agreed. ‘Or of a man pretending to be totally unaware of his surroundings,’ he added. ‘That’s the impression Fred wants to give; he’s very devious.’ He helped himself and Lonnie to drinks from the sideboard. ‘There’s absolutely no limit to the deviousness of little Freddie. For instance, he’d like us to believe that he’s quite uninfluenced by the thought of money. It’s dishonest. People who say they don’t care about cash are usually lying, or they’re after something far more unpleasant.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Moral superiority,’ Henry decided. ‘The principal vice of our father.’

  ‘I thought your father was meant to be mad.’ Lonnie had learned to answer back a little, over the years.

  ‘That too, of course.’ Henry defended his position. ‘Madness was his other vice.’

  Fred came in then and apologized for being late. One of the Hunt boys, up near Mandragola, had got his hand caught in a tractor belt; it had given the Doctor a chance to do a bit of stitching.

  ‘Jolly considerate of the Hunt boy to get his hand caught then. Is Mother coming here?’

  ‘No. But I thought we should meet here first. At Sunday Street the drink flows like cement.’

  Lonnie wondered where in the evening’s events dinner would be fitted in. Her heart sank when they arrived at Dorothy’s house and her mother-in-law greeted them with ‘I really don’t know why you should want to come all this way. I’m not putting on a dinner party you know.’ As they went in and disposed themselves round the living-room, a place which in its own small way preserved the Rectory’s reputation for howling draughts, Dorothy expanded on the subject of her not providing food. ‘Simeon and I always avoided dinner parties. I started to notice the way people eat. I never listened to what they were saying then, I just watched them chewing or trying to slip food into their mouths when they thought you weren’t looking, or, worse still, picking their teeth furtively with a little finger-nail. Once you notice people eating it’s an end to dinner parties.’ She looked round at her visitors with amusement. ‘All the family!’

  ‘I suppose I’m a bit of an outsider.’ Lonnie was hungry.

  ‘Yes.’ Dorothy looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Still, you go with Henry, don’t you? You always go with Henry.’

  ‘Perhaps a cup of coffee?’ Henry suggested. He looked at Dorothy who didn’t move, so Lonnie got up and went out to the kitchen.

  ‘Mrs Nowt… You know old Dora Nowt lives in Hartscombe now? Anyway, she brought me some elderflower wine. I do wish she wouldn’t,’ Dorothy whispered confidentially. ‘It’s particularly revolting.’

  ‘Fred told us’ – Henry called the meeting to order – ‘that you felt ready to make a statement.’

  ‘A statement? Good heavens, what about?’

  ‘About our father.’

  ‘I think what Henry’s looking for,’ Fred told her, ‘is some sort of explanation.’

  ‘Oh, dear. I do hope an explanation won’t be necessary.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be if Henry decided to give up the case.’

  It was, Fred knew, an impossible request. The truth would have to be shared and he supposed it was better done in the sitting-room in Sunday Street than in a law court, with a judge writing it all down and barristers to ask questions and throw doubt and newspapers to report it and old men in macs, wandering in off the street for the sake of the central heating and the free entertainment, to hear all about it. All the same he avoided looking at his mother, and came to the matter obliquely, by way of the tea-chest in the attic.

  ‘Perhaps I should tell you what I did this afternoon,’ he said. ‘I got a box of our father’s bits and pieces out of the attic in the Rectory. You know what I found?’

  ‘Not another will?’ Henry had little hope of it, all Simeon’s papers had been searched by the solicitors before they were stored away.

  ‘More important than that. I found a gramophone record.’ Fred looked at Henry, still turning away from his mother. ‘Down at the bottom of the box was Pinky Pinkerton’s rendering of “You’re the Top!” If you remember, it contains the immortal line “You’re the Top! You’re the Lady Gra-ace!” It’s something Grace Fanner plays to everyone. It even got played at children’s parties. She gave a copy of it to our father.’

  ‘What on earth’s the point of bringing us here to tell us someone gave Simeon a gramophone record?’ Henry acted superhuman patience.

  ‘There would be no point at all if only you hadn’t said our father was insane.’

  ‘Go on then, what do you want to have said about him?’

  ‘He wasn’t in the least mad. He wasn’t a saint either, not a saint at all. He was a man, like anyone else, who falls in love and can’t possibly explain it.’

  ‘Of course, his behaviour was completely irrational.’ Henry was triumphant, and then he said, more quietly, ‘Who are you suggesting he fell in love with?’

  ‘Do you want to tell them?’ Fred looked at Dorothy, but she offered him no help, only murmuring, ‘I don’t see why any of these things have to be said.’

  ‘Some things have to be.’ Fred stood up. Now the time had come he felt tired, as at the end of a long day’s work with the most difficult patients still to treat. ‘I suppose it was about the beginning of the war, before the bomb hit the old Café de Paris, when the late lamented Sir Nicholas was doing his bit in Bognor. I suppose it was the time Charlie was conceived.’

  ‘Charlotte!’ Henry was genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Fred told him, ‘she’s one of us. She was. She was really the problem, wasn’t she, Mother? She wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t interested in clothes. She wasn’t even a snob. So Grace hated our father’s child.’

  ‘It can’t possibly be true!’ Henry looked at Dorothy, angrily, accusingly, as if whatever had happened must have been her fault. She started to speak then, as though released by his disbelief, and the words, held in so long, came flowing out of her. ‘That’s why he always felt so guilty. Poor Simeon. He was guilty about practically everything, living off shares in Simcox’s Brewery.’ She smiled. ‘Just like any other capitalist, not having sufficient faith in Socialism. Not believing enough in God, and then, of course, having a child he couldn’t acknowledge, who got no love from her mother.’

  Lonnie chose that moment to come back from the kitchen with a tray of coffee and biscuits, cheerfully announcing, ‘It’s only Instant.’ The others seemed not to notice her,
and Dorothy didn’t stop talking. ‘And having a secret from me, I suppose. Of course, it couldn’t stay a secret for ever, because of Tom Nowt. I’m afraid Tom saw Simeon and Grace, oh, I don’t know exactly where. He wasn’t bad you know, Tom was never bad. He probably wouldn’t have said anything if that stupid woman hadn’t gone after him about his poaching. She complained to Nicholas so that any stories Tom spread about her could be called malicious slander. In the end, Tom never told Nicholas. The only person he told was me. Perhaps he thought I should know about it. Anyway, we were friends. We both knew about the woods. I used to show his children where to find the spider orchid. He told me about Simeon, and I persuaded Tom not to tell anyone else. I gave him a bit of help for his hut for instance, things like that. I really don’t think I could have managed it on my own but I did have a friend.’ Lonnie bit audibly into a biscuit. Dorothy noticed her but went on telling them. ‘A friend to advise me. He was a sensible man. Much more sensible than Simeon, of course. And he was kind to me. He knew that Simeon might want to pay for his… his adventures in the end. So Dr Salter left me this little house.’ She looked round the room, smiling. ‘I must say, it’s a good deal easier to dust than the Rectory.’

  There was a long silence. Henry was not prepared to give up without a struggle. ‘None of that explains why Simeon could possibly have wanted to benefit Leslie Titmuss.’

  ‘Poor Leslie!’ Dorothy was still smiling. ‘He was never a really happy child. Of course your father must have been delighted when Leslie married Charlotte, and there was someone to look after her. It was a load of guilt off his mind. But then Charlie became unhappy, and of course she died. Simeon thought perhaps she’d killed herself and it was all his fault again. He had to pay a debt to her and to her child. So he left his money to Leslie Titmuss.’ She looked round at them all, at Henry silent and Lonnie, apparently frozen, holding up her half-eaten biscuit. ‘It wasn’t entirely his idea,’ Dorothy explained. ‘I thought that if he left the money to Leslie, Nicky would benefit. I’m sure he will.’