Fairness

by Ferdinand Mount

  There was another reason why St Col’s drew me and held me. When I had first seen the board outside the church with the tiny lettering on a piece of paper rather ineptly pasted over some earlier inscription, announcing that the Rev. James Moonman MA was temporarily at the helm, I wondered whether it might be the same man who had been the vicar in the next-door village when I was a child, the father of Gerald Moonman the editor of Frag magazine and Lytton Strachey lookalike.

  The Moonmans of my childhood were said to be rich, by the standards of vicars anyway, but to keep chickens in their kitchen, or perhaps in the larder. I never got inside their house to test the truth of this but remember once biking past it and seeing Mrs Moonman standing on the gravel sweep in a large blue cloak like a nurse’s and hitting her son deliberately about the face for refusing to get on a pony that was standing quite docile a few yards away. Moonman too was standing docile as the blue cloak swirled and another blow fell on his cheek. Delighted by the spectacle, I took my feet off the pedals and stood astride the bike on the verge the other side of the road. Moonman himself had turned his face to the skies and seemed seraphically indifferent to his mother’s assault. He did not utter a word. Frightened of being caught snooping, I pedalled on.

  The stooped elderly man in a cassock came out of the church and reaching the pavement looked up at the skies to inspect the weather. It was the seraphic indifference with which he turned his long face up to the lowering clouds that brought back to me the incident of Moonman and the pony. This was indeed Moonman’s father, and the slow, even languid way he moved was like his son and so was the quickness of understanding which took you aback, so that you thought the languidness must be a pose to conceal some cunning plan rather than a natural physical attribute.

  ‘Gus,’ he said before I had a chance to say a word, ‘what brings you here?’

  ‘I was just passing.’

  ‘Passing here? Well I suppose people do pass this way. There are pavements. I am standing in for a friend who is on a mission to convert the natives in Rhodesia. He returns next Christmas when he has converted them and I can then go back to Norfolk.’

  ‘How is Mrs Moonman?’

  ‘Dead, I am sorry to say. She was never the same after we had to sell the house. You remember Tussocks?’

  ‘Yes of course.’

  ‘We had to sell it. She entrusted all her money to a rogue and he spent it or lost it in some imprudent speculation, we were never quite sure which.’

  ‘Do you see Gerald much?’

  ‘He does not see me. He disapproves of me, you know, doesn’t care for all this’ – Mr Moonman waved his hand at the grimy brick pinnacles of St Col’s and its mottled green spire on which a light drizzle was now falling, to which in proper Moonman fashion he paid no attention, his earlier interest in the weather now having disappeared.

  ‘That’s sad.’

  ‘It is, although at my age there is a certain satisfaction in being disapproved of. Gerald distrusts people, you know, rather a useful gift if you intend to be a journalist – he gave the word three full syllables and a faintly French pronunciation – ‘and if one is to distrust people one had better start with one’s father, don’t you think? He gets it from his mother, although of course in matters of money, in which I may say she was keenly interested, she was trusting to a fault. But then we all have our blind spots, in many ways they are our best spots, do you not think so? Being too perceptive can be a burden, though it is not a burden which my parishioners are often called upon to bear. But I still have Bobs.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ I said, at a loss. A faithful dog perhaps, or even the pony, though it would be old by now? Perhaps he kept the pony in the kitchen now that Mrs Moonman was no more. Or could Bobs be the last of his poultry, some mouldy cockerel chosen to accompany him from Norfolk?

  ‘He’s taking me to lunch at his club. Not something I look forward to as greatly as I ought. I am always delighted to see the dear boy, but – ah there he is now.’

  A small red MG, not in its youth, the hood repaired with sticking plaster and a dent in its front bumper, came over the brow of the hill, quite a steep brow, and pulled up by the laurels. The young man who got out was unmistakably part of the Moonman range but an economy model, four or five inches shorter with a face squashed upwards to make room for an Adam’s apple of memorable size to repose on a red-and-yellow cravat. The tweed jacket, green with a widely spaced brown check like the ground plan of the prairie states, grubby twill trousers and scuffed chestnut brogues completed an ensemble that must have been a planned riposte to Gerald Moonman’s get-up – long beard, flowing black cloak, black boots, and a general air of belonging to some extreme Hassidic sect on bad terms with its rivals.

  ‘Sorry, Dad, club’s shut, so it’ll have to be spag bol at the old Salerno.’

  ‘What a pity,’ said Mr Moonman looking cheerful – although like Gerald he never looked melancholy exactly, despite his costume and his languor. Rather, at moments of particular satisfaction, a lightness of being seemed to take hold of him, as though he might if he wished levitate, casually and with no fuss, and hover a couple of inches off the floor until his mood changed.

  ‘The new chef’s an absolute ace, he does amazing things with tarragon. Hallo, a blast from the past. Remember me, Baby Bobs?’

  Nowhere in the files could I dredge up any recollection of a chubby younger brother.

  ‘Much younger,’ said Mr Moonman, as usual squinting effortlessly into my mind, ‘Bobs would have been little more than a baby. An afterthought. A blessing of course,’ he added after a pause.

  Bobs was paying little attention, being already occupied in pulling back the MG’s hood and pressing down the bits of sticky tape loosened by this manoeuvre.

  ‘My dear Bobs, isn’t it a little . . .’

  ‘Don’t be soft, Dad, it’s almost stopped. A bit of air will give your tubes a good blow-through.’

  ‘Air yes, but this’ – he turned his palms to the sky, suggesting an incident in some parable.

  Bobs did not answer but opened the passenger door and tipped his father into the low bucket seat roughly but not without affection. Mr Moonman’s untidy grey hair, already lank-tressed from the rain, was smeared across his forehead and his spectacles were pushed half-off, his nose having caught the edge of the windscreen getting into the car. With his cassock twisted about him, he looked like the victim of some multiple pile-up wrapped in a blanket by the emergency services.

  ‘So nice to have seen you again,’ he said, ‘do come to St Col’s one Sunday if you care for that sort of thing.’

  The little car achieved a few unconvincing revs before breaking out into a convulsive growl that reawakened all the life-enhancing uncertainties of early motoring.

  The farewell smile Mr Moonman gave me, turning as best he could in the confines of his seat, kept me under his spell and drew me back to St Col’s.

  Even Bobs seemed to bathe in his father’s glow a little, so that when he rang me up, his voice, which wasn’t at all like his father’s, being quick and yappy, not reflective or sonorous, still made me think of Mr Moonman shuddering with mock despair as Bobs put the MG into gear and they went off up the road in a spurt of mud and leaves and gravel.

  ‘You seemed interested in cars,’ Bobs said, ‘I thought you might like to have a drink at the Clutch on guest night. There’s usually some quite interesting chaps.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Did you what?’

  ‘Seem interested in cars.’

  ‘You asked me whether I had the A model or the B.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Oh well, perhaps it was somebody else. But come anyway.’

  So I did, though I knew nothing about cars and cared less.

  ‘You a member?’ asked the voice on the intercom from the second floor in a bleak alley off Regent Street.

  ‘No, I’m a guest of Mr Moonman’s.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Moonman. M.O.O. –’

 
‘I can spell. He’s on the stop list. Hasn’t paid his sub.’

  ‘Well, is he in there?’

  ‘Not if he hasn’t subbed up, he can’t be, can he.’

  ‘Can I come in and wait for him then? It’s cold out here.’

  ‘Can’t help that, mate, I didn’t invent bloody November.’

  ‘Well, if he does turn out to be up there, could you tell him I’m waiting down here.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  For the next five minutes I stared vacantly at the supercilious plaster mannequin wearing a silver fox stole in the furrier’s window, then felt a slap between the shoulder-blades and turned round to face Bobs. He was wearing exactly the same outfit as on our first meeting, down to the cravat.

  ‘You should have gone upstairs and had a drink on me.’

  ‘They wouldn’t let me in.’

  ‘That’s appalling. Have to speak to the secretary. Been a lot of complaints about Brad lately, I believe he’s got wife trouble, but he oughtn’t to take it out on the guests.’

  His face under the street-light was pale and furrowed with concern – unlike his father or his brother, neither of whom ever showed anxiety, certainly not on behalf of anybody else.

  I wondered whether this was the moment to alert Bobs to his subscription problem, but he produced a gold key out of his pocket and thrust it in the door with a flourish of his wrist, as though this wasn’t an ordinary key but one which demanded a certain manly skill.

  The walls of the stairs were painted with big black parallel lines wiggling round the corners in imitation of a Grand Prix circuit. Leaning out of spectator stands or crouching behind straw bales, there were caricatures of racing drivers, and other figures in the game – owners, commentators, engineers, drivers’ wives or girlfriends, some of whom looked familiar but I couldn’t put a name to. The doorway at the top said THE CLUTCH CLUB. Underneath, the same cartoonist had drawn a man with a moustache falling over with a chequered flag falling out of his outstretched hands.

  ‘Full tonight,’ Bobs murmured unnecessarily as he piloted me through the crowd. I had to admit, to my chagrin, that the place had a buzz. The men seemed on the whole rather small, Bobs’s height or less, and dressed like him too, quite a few with RAF moustaches which looked stuck on. The women were mostly taller than the men, with beautiful white shoulders and short, spiky blonde hair and startled looks. Great cheerfulness, a sense of belonging to a fraternity that wasn’t much interested in what the rest of the world thought of it.

  ‘Let’s get a bit of peace and quiet,’ Bobs said leading me in the direction of a flashing red arrow with PIT LANE underneath it. Down a couple of steps, there was an area with tables where we took our drinks and sat down.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about the girls here.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well some places, I wouldn’t touch them with a barge-pole or any other type of pole, if you know what I mean, but here . . .’

  ‘Oh good.’

  ‘Clean, absolutely clean.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘So don’t mind me, you just go ahead.’

  ‘How do they know for sure, I mean they don’t, well, inspect . . .’

  ‘Christ man, it’s not that sort of place. I just meant they’re a nice sort of girl.’

  ‘Ah yes, I see.’

  These fine distinctions were beginning to befuddle me. The quick yapping of Bob’s voice was not as irritating as what he said might suggest, because there was an unreal quality about it as though he was some alien agent flawlessly trained in accent and intonation but with no grasp of or perhaps even interest in the meaning of the lines he had been fed. It was hard even to tell whether Bobs himself had approached these girls, except that he then said: ‘I mean, it’s not something I go in for now, not at all. It’s more of a phase you go through in your first year, really, isn’t it?’

  First year of what, I wanted to ask, but then with that habit he seemed to have of answering the question you hadn’t asked, he said: ‘Not that I’m the university type, not academic at all. Gerry collared all the brains in our family. Unfortunately, brains was all we had after that chap walked off with Mumsy’s money. Water under the bridge now, Dad’s completely forgotten we ever had any cash.’

  This, I noticed, like many other things Bobs threw out seemed to be not quite true, in fact not true at all. He also had a knack, second sight almost, for getting things wrong, even things you might expect him to know about. There was an easy impartiality about his wrongness which stepped up the impression not so much of him not being all there as not being all here, not least when he gave off the air of being in his element, like in the Clutch Club.

  ‘She’s something else, isn’t she?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her. Over there.’

  He pointed to a cluster of habitués by the bar, tightly packed with their arms round one another’s shoulders. I noticed that quite a few of the members had a way of gripping their friends like so many steering wheels. On the way through to the Pit Lane, one of them had given my shoulder-blades an amicable kneading before realising we were strangers and mumbling sorry.

  Then the scrum parted and in the dim amber light a mop of blonde hair gave itself a brisk shake.

  ‘There.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know her.’

  ‘You know her? How amazing.’

  ‘We were nannies together, in France. She’s called Helen.’

  ‘Nannies? Fantastic.’

  He was already off his velvet stool and moving towards the cluster at the bar which annoyed me, though there was no good reason for me not to go up to her. Had I been by myself I would have sat there several minutes longer, perhaps even until she was leaving, before making the approach. There would have been a sidelong pleasure in watching her toss her head and drink her drink without knowing that I was there. Had I always had these furtive tastes or were they growing on me as my life became more dull and solitary? Anyway I was the weird one and Bobs going up to say hallo instinctively without consulting me was being natural.

  ‘Helen what?’ he asked over his shoulder.

  ‘Hardress.’

  ‘Funny name,’ he said, almost as he began introducing himself to her without waiting for me. ‘Hallo, I’m Bobs Moonman, expect you’ve heard of my brother Gerald, he edits that magazine Frag, you probably think it’s a bit of a rag, but people have heard of him and nobody’s heard of me, anyway it’s great to see you here. I was just having a drink with thingy here and I thought you two familiar faces ought to get reacquainted.’

  ‘You,’ she said to me. ‘Well. I didn’t know you were a racing driver.’

  ‘I’m not, but then I didn’t think you –’

  ‘Tolly is, or was till he did his knee in.’

  Coming forward out of the shadow, Tolly d’Amico exuded Sicilian melancholy. The amber light caught the crevice in his forehead so it now looked like a dark amulet.

  ‘Only vintage cars, most of the drivers are twice as old as the motors.’

  ‘He had an Alton Special. I bet you don’t know what that is.’

  ‘Nor did she until five minutes ago, when I showed her the picture. There.’

  By holding the photograph up to the light, we could just make out a bulbous blue racing car with a younger smiling Tolly standing beside it holding his leather helmet. At the other end of the car there was a dark girl in a beret.

  ‘Who’s that lovely totty?’ Bobs asked.

  ‘My sister.’

  ‘Go on, give us her phone number.’

  ‘She died seven years ago.’

  ‘Oh God, Bobs does it again. I am most dreadfully sorry.’

  Tolly patted him on the shoulder. It was almost a caress, a gesture of solicitude which at once calmed Bobs.

  ‘You never told me,’ Helen said. ‘How did she die?’

  ‘Meningitis.’

  ‘I wish you had told me.’

  ‘Well, now I have’ – but he said it with a ge
ntle opening of his hands like a priest starting a blessing and Helen too became less agitated, though she went on looking at him in a puzzled way.

  Bobs had recovered from his gaffe and was chatting to her, standing very close which she didn’t seem to mind. He was also talking very quietly, all the yap gone out of his voice as though he had turned off some booster mechanism. I couldn’t hear what they were saying and was irritated that I minded this.

  ‘She is irresistible, isn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, Helen?’ I temporised. We were standing, Tolly and I, by the heavy curtains at the end of the room, a yard or two from the rest of the group. How had we come there? Had the drinks been stronger than I thought, or had Bobs poured more of them down me? He was generous, solicitous as a host. Because he was so vexatious, it was hard to be properly grateful.

  ‘You only have to look,’ Tolly said. ‘All the men – there.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right obviously. It’s just when you’ve known someone for ages, you don’t think of them as irresistible.’

  ‘Don’t you? Are you sure? Perhaps you prefer not to notice because it is almost embarrassing. I remember with my sister –’

  ‘I’m so sorry about that.’

  ‘No, no, it was long enough ago, I can talk about her now. My mother can’t of course, but I can.’

  It was plain that he couldn’t really, and his grief began to unman me and my knees went wobbly and my eyes filled with futile tears. The heavy curtains enveloped us like mourning robes. The earthlings still chattering around the bar seemed miles away.

  ‘How do you think it would take you, being like that?’

  ‘Like what?’ I mumbled.

  ‘Irresistible. Like the other Helen.’