by Alan Clark
‘I suppose it’s National Service that makes the young men of today so terribly over-sexed,’ said Mrs. Roydon, nightmarishly. ‘Do you think that’s a possible explanation, Mr. Crane?’
And yet, I could do it, couldn’t I? I had only to say something, make my excuses; this was a time for desperate measures, for the Dunkirk spirit. I could feel droplets of perspiration coming out on my forehead; with a tongue the size of a log I said: ‘Mrs. Gevaert, Mrs. Gevaert, I’m afraid I don’t feel at all well. I wonder if, if’—I was standing now, it seemed—‘it’s quite all right, I ate a something, in the town I mean, I ate a paste sandwich …’
It was a rout, a shambles, the baggage train had been destroyed, but at any rate I had got out and had gone thumping up the stairs to my room.
. . . . .
The other incident had, in fact, occurred that same morning, and, though seemingly trivial, had, in its own way, been equally unpleasant.
Little Paul’s tutorials were scheduled to end at noon, which gave me a theoretical hour to myself before lunch, but Mrs. Gevaert had caught me in the hall at five past.
‘Oh, Mr. Crane, there you are. I do wish you could help me. I can’t find Max anywhere and I do want some things fetched in the car, if you could …’
‘Delighted,’ I said. I always like a drive, and, anyway, Mrs. Gevaert had a very charming smile, of a county, asexual kind.
But things had gone badly from the start. The Gevaerts’ car had a ‘free wheel’ which, although it was meant to make driving easier, simply had the result, in my own case, that the car made a series of desperate mechanical shrieks when changing gear and that the engine stalled whenever I lifted my foot off the accelerator pedal. This was a particularly unfortunate combination in the narrow, hilly and crowded streets of Westerlea, where loud yelps from the gearbox alternating with long, queue-forming periods yur-yur-yurring at the self-starter had made me, by the time that I arrived at Flowers’, the principal grocer in the town, an object of universal note and derision.
Traffic moved very slowly in the complex of one-way streets that led round, and off, the High Street—no faster, indeed, than the pedestrians themselves. So it was that I seemed to be in difficulties on each occasion before the same audience, whose attitude I could feel becoming progressively less charitable. I felt myself building up a fund of indignation, and this was soon to be of significance.
As good luck would have it, there was a parking place almost outside Flowers’ and I hurried inside to do Mrs. Gevaert’s errands. The shop was full, mainly of upper-classish sort of people who took a great deal of time to make up their minds; greeted one another loudly; gossiped a lot about respectable county subjects such as the Pony Club ball, duck-shooting prospects, and so forth, and, owing to the fact that their faces were familiar to the attendants, got served before me without reference to the time of their arrival in the shop. When, finally, I emerged on to the pavement, heavily laden with parcels, including a box containing a half-dozen soda-water siphons, I was in ugly mood.
Now there was the problem of extricating Gevaert’s car from the close rank of parked vehicles in which it stood and into the slowly, but inexorably, nosing line of station wagons, Land Rovers, and Humbers, creeping past in a more or less continuous stream; their tweedy, red-faced, watery-eyed, cock-pheasant owners peering indignantly through the windscreens as they, too, sought somewhere to alight.
After much revving and clutch-slip, and jerking, and generation of exhaust gas, I got the car into a position where, if a gap in the stream were to present itself, I could, I thought, dart briskly forward and get under way. Someone would have to apply his brakes—briefly, of course—but then there seemed no other way out, and, anyway, it would be no more than the merest act of courtesy on his part. What more appropriate subject for such demonstration than a rather grubby-looking Mark VI Bentley that was approaching with a small stuffed-looking man wearing a dog-collar leaning out of the passenger window? Let’s see a little Anglican spirit, I thought to myself grimly, and gave Gevaert’s car the gun in bottom gear.
Too late—far too late—the servo brakes on the Bentley came violently on, its nose dipped sickeningly, and, with a light crunch, we hooked bumpers. There was an interval, that seemed longer than it can have been in reality, during which I stared fixedly and, I hoped, menacingly ahead. Then the doors of the Bentley opened.
‘Good Christ, what the devil do you think you’re doing?’ The driver, a great, tall, charged-looking man in a bluish-green tweed suit, came striding up to me.
Ignoring this blasphemous invocation of two rival deities, the pastor, curate, or whatever he was, said to me, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Two other people had got out of the back doors of the Mark VI, and also came crowding up. One of them, a tall, narrow man with a pink face, wearing a Guards blazer and tie, declared, ‘You’ve hooked bumpers.’
The other man was much younger, with red hair—very good at games, I should think. He said, ‘That was a pretty filthy bit of driving.’
I had remained in the driving seat. Rather foolishly, perhaps, I pushed the door handle forward so that it was locked and wound the window up about eight inches; placing my lips in the small gap that remained I hissed, ‘Your reactions are too slow; you had ample time in which to brake.’
‘Of all the nerve,’ said the little clergyman.
‘You miserable little bounder,’ said the tweedy man.
The red-head tugged violently at my door handle. ‘Aren’t you going to do something about it?’ he asked in a clipped voice.
‘You’ve hooked bumpers,’ said the pink-faced man in the Guards tie.
The crowd gathered round more densely. Among their number I recognized several spectators of some of my earlier exploits in the back streets.
‘That was a bit of careless driving if ever I saw one.’
‘They oughtn’t to allow that sort of thing, not like that.’
‘Where’re the “L” plates, chum?’
‘Mummy, it’s that funny man.’
‘Look here, my wing’s scratched, you know,’ said the big man. ‘I think I’d better have your name, if you don’t mind.’
‘I say, isn’t that Max Gevaert’s car?’ said the youngish man. ‘What’s that fellow doing in Max Gevaert’s car, anyway?’
This was awful. They would report the incident to Gevaert; he’d fire me, or, even nastier, I’d have to stay on while my wages were devoted to repairing that damned Bentley. Or perhaps these people would get a policeman. Already the queue behind me was building up to formidable proportions, and in the middle distance I could hear the plaintive toot and parp of those who, like myself, were anxious to get back to their lunch. Tentatively, I raced the engine and let the clutch in a little. The car edged forward, to the accompaniment of a considerable straining noise from its rear quarter. A little more gas, a bit less clutch and we might do it. Slowly we gathered speed, with the Bentley (the big man had evidently forgotten to apply the hand brake) firmly in tow. Beside me pattered the little clergyman, all agog.
‘But goodness gracious, what are you doing? That’s Major Riddle-Brede, you know, one of the magistrates, and in the back was Lord Crabley. We don’t like that sort of thing here, you know. Here, stop, stop, this isn’t at all the sort of thing …’
Behind him Lord Crabley, if that were his name, shouted, ‘I say, steady on, you’ve hooked bumpers, you know.’
But I was careless now, the High Street also was oneway, and with all that traffic silted up behind me I had a clear run. Fiercely I trod on the accelerator and with a final rending clatter we broke loose and careered off, to the accompaniment of some ribald cheering from a group of oafs standing outside Woolworth’s.
Trembling, and in a light sweat, I steered the Rover back to Pyedums by the side streets. My feeling of elation had passed and as I entered the house I was feeling exceedingly apprehensive. I was late for the meal, arriving at the moment when Gevaert was serving himself
a generous second helping from what clearly had been a rather delicious Irish hotpot. Never explain, never apologize, however, and I sat without appetite waiting for the telephone to ring with the irate Major Riddle-Brede on the line.
But nothing happened, and by the time that I had got through a rather jittery afternoon’s tutorial with little Paul I began to think that I had got away with it.
4 * More of Gevaert
Little Paul wasn’t so much spoilt as wet. On the whole he was quite amiable, unless thwarted, and on those occasions I would derive a certain satisfaction from thinking about how much he would be bullied at school. But he had his mother’s fly side in combination with the complacency of his father, and I soon discovered that he was adroit at avoiding work and ‘cooking’ exercises. The modus operandi that we had adopted was for him to read after I had delivered an initial explanatory peroration, and subsequently write on whatever subject we had selected for the particular session, while I sat in the window observing the street below, ready to assist, amend, or explain, where necessary.
On that Saturday morning he was writing, with substantial aid from the various basic textbooks, an essay on the Chartist movement. I had managed to get my chair into a position by the open window where a powerful beam of sunlight fell if I edged about every ten minutes or so, strongly and, I hoped, therapeutically, upon my face and neck. Periodically I would open my eyes and look first to see that little Paul was not drawing guillotines and then down at the passing scene of Scattercrumb Street. I was feeling much less apprehensive that morning, partly, I suppose, because the sunlight had made me drowsy, but I did suffer a momentary frisson of alarm when I saw the little clergyman who had been riding in Major Riddle-Brede’s Bentley coming busily up the street with a sheaf of papers under his arm.
‘I say, Paul, who’s that little chap in a dog-collar?’
Glad of the excuse, Paul scrambled over to the window and looked out. ‘Oh, that’s the Reverend Pick.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Who’s he? Don’t you know? He’s the vicar.’
‘Do you think he’s coming in here?’
But even as I said it he went past the door. ‘I mean, does he know your parents well?’
‘Of course he’s not coming in here, he’s gone past, silly. Oh yes, he and Daddy are great friends, they do betting together.’
The hell they do, I thought, and would have pressed for further details had I not observed Mrs. du Chair’s dear little daughter come out of her house at the end of the street and begin her slow, curvaceous walk up in the direction of Church Square. She gave a gay wave, I was annoyed to see, to the Reverend Pick, who responded perfunctorily before rounding the corner at the Battery.
‘Go and sit down now, Paul, and get on with it.’
‘I can’t, I’ve finished, I’m stuck.’
‘Well, sit down and read it through, and make the best of it you can.’ From the corner of my eye I could see Kitty du Chair had come almost to a standstill outside the house and was looking in at the ground-floor windows. I wanted to tap on the glass and wave, but found little Paul’s presence inhibiting. ‘Go on, do make an effort,’ I snapped. ‘You’ll never get through your exams at this rate.’
‘But look, it says here …’ At his whiniest little Paul clambered up to me again waving textbooks in order to corroborate some quite spurious problem. ‘… I mean how do I know which they mean?’
By the time that I had dealt with this the street was deserted again. Then, after a few minutes, Mrs. du Chair herself appeared, wearing a green, close-fitting woollen dress, green hat, veil, and stole or shawl, and black high-heeled shoes. She trod briskly up the street and turned into the porch of the small Roman Catholic church. I scrutinized her legs closely as she went past, and was compelled to admit that, from that distance at least, they seemed in good shape. There might even, in view of those five-inch heels and nylon stockings that were about fifteen years too pale, be something in the rest of Mrs. Roydon’s allegations. After what must have been the briefest of prayers she came out again, and waltzed, or tripped, lower down the street until she came to the door of Pyedums, which she entered, without knocking or ringing.
‘Isn’t it time yet?’ said Paul. ‘What’s the time?’
The tutorials were meant to go on until noon. It was then twenty to. ‘O.K., you might as well knock off now,’ I said. ‘But don’t let your father see you or I shall cop it.’
‘Oo,’ he said, in his worst kid-star manner, ‘super,’ and rushed out, giving an impersonation of a dive-bomber.
After little Paul had left I tidied up and carried the textbooks up to my own room. I ought, I supposed, to start correcting his ‘exercises’. Gevaert was sure to ask me about them soon, and there was the added point that this would leave me the afternoon free—Saturday was a half-holiday—and I might take a stroll with the possibility, perhaps, of meeting the elegant adolescent, Kitty du Chair. But from my window I could see the garden basking in the midday sun, and at the far end, by the mulberry tree, two deck-chairs invitingly set out, but unoccupied. How much nicer, I felt, to do my correcting down there.
Hardly had I settled than I heard the french window open and there was Gevaert coming across the lawn towards me. He had a tumbler threequarters full of a dark amber liquid in his right hand, but evidently he was not bringing me a whisky-and-soda because, seeing that some of it was spilling, he stopped midway across the lawn and drank a deep gulp.
‘Ho ho! Congenial surroundings for work, eh?’ He was standing right over me with the sun behind his head. I blinked up at him.
‘I know, I’m shirking, really, but it just seemed so lovely.’
‘I too have been having a hard morning grappling with my papers.’
I hadn’t yet been able to make out exactly what Gevaert’s ‘work’ was. A little reviewing, possibly? Criticism? He seemed sometimes to have musical interests. He orbited twice, like a dog in long grass, and then sat down heavily, caught out, as people often are, by the depth of his deck-chair, and spilling some more of the drink on his wrist and cuff.
‘This harvest festival is a bad business,’ he said.
‘Mrs. du Chair certainly seems to hold strong views on it.’
‘Gah. You know there is a lot of local politics involved. I don’t expect it is apparent to you, but pressure is being brought to bear on me.’
As so often when in conversation with Gevaert, I found it almost impossible to comment intelligently. ‘When does it actually come off?’ I asked.
‘The festival? Last Friday in August. Next week, in fact.’ Gevaert heaved in his chair. ‘But, my God, cramped with these women here, I feel cooped up! Always pressure for this and that. Do you not find the womenfolk here troublesome at times?’
The reference was as plain as it was unexpected. In fact Mrs. Roydon had been progressively less hostile over the last few days in that she was, at least, showing some awareness of my presence, allowing me to be drawn into general conversation, and so forth.
‘Oh no, sir,’ I said. ‘Not really.’
‘You know, Crane,’ Gevaert went on, ‘naturally I have in the past committed certain indiscretions’—I had got used to Gevaert’s phlegmy style of delivering Rs but his voice did seem rather more slurred than usual that morning—‘no more than those of every vigorous man.’
I could use one of those whiskies myself, I felt.
‘My veive, my veive and I …’ He faltered. ‘Not that I would do anything that might prejudice little Paul, of course.’
I got the impression that there had been several prefaratory whiskies while ‘grappling with his papers’. Probably he’d been brooding over some reverse, or blackmail—‘pressure’ meant blackmail, didn’t it?—in his study, and had been trying to fortify his resolution. Anyway, I didn’t want to hear his beastly confidences. I had enough anxieties of my own, with the heat, and a curious swelling that I had noticed on the left side of my cheek when shaving that morning, and the ‘Account re
ndereds’, small but overpowering, that were already beginning to filter through to me down here in Westerlea. Changing the subject in a particular rather than a general sense, I said, ‘Mrs. du Chair’s daughter is rather pretty, isn’t she?’
Gevaert gave me a look of acute shiftiness, and a deep-red flush spread over his face. ‘Ah yes, such a pretty child. A child, of course, so pretty, so intelligent. She’s so interested in architecture. I expect you’ve heard we used to go for drives in my car and look at some of the Marsh churches. But you know how people gossip here. I mean the cruellest things—’
‘I hadn’t heard,’ I cut in.
‘You hadn’t? No, but the fact is, Crane, I found out that she was rather old for her age.’
I could feel my features creasing into a smirk. Too late I let it go, trying, as I looked into the sun, to transform it into a grimace of pain. ‘This sunlight,’ I said, shielding my eyes and at the same time covering my face. I could feel him watching me closely—I must not antagonize Gevaert—‘Yes, girls are precocious these days.’
‘Precautious,’ he said, slapping his thigh and laughing loudly, ‘precautious, you mean. No, but actually, my friend, the trouble in this village is with the older women. They busy themselves inordinately.’
That seemed as good a way of putting it as any, so I said nothing, but gave another grunt of encouragement.
‘Now in the case of my veive’s sister,’ he went on, ‘my vieve’s husband’s sister, my veive’s brother’s husband, my God …’ He was stumbling badly over his words. ‘My veive’s sister-in-law, I mean, Fleur, she makes a great fuss about poor Nora, but really it is the pot that calls the kettle black as much as anything. She would just as soon be riding on that float herself, as I expect you realize, eh?’