The Crack In the Teacup

by Michael Gilbert

  “You mean the public enquiry about Haven Road?”

  “I do.”

  “I agree that we don’t want to prejudice the enquiry. But we can easily avoid doing so. Approval of the report can be made without prejudice to our decision about the Haven Road Enquiry.”

  Sellinge looked thoughtfully at Southern. They were the two ablest men, and the two strongest characters in the room, and they were conscious of each other’s strength.

  “If the Council accepts the report, won’t it mean that it is bound to oppose the appeal? The report specifically allocates Haven Road as residential.”

  “I don’t think so. The Council can approve the report in principle without binding itself to support every detailed recommendation.”

  As Sellinge hesitated, Southern went on, “You said there were two reasons.”

  “My second reason isn’t going to recommend itself to some of you, I know. But I have to remind you that we are less than three weeks from the Council elections.”

  “What of it?” growled Miss Barnes.

  “I think that if a decision is going to be made which may dictate the whole development of our town, it might be better to defer it for a fortnight so that the new Council can decide on it.”

  Willie Law said, “I don’t agree. We can’t put off decisions just because an election’s coming up. That’s daft.”

  “I agree.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Absolute nonsense—”

  “The feeling of the meeting is against you on that point, Mr. Sellinge.”

  “I thought it might be.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Then,” said Southern, looking at the Mayoress, “I think—”

  “You want me to put it to the vote.”

  “I think that is the general feeling, yes.”

  “You have heard the report of the Lands Development Committee, and have had an opportunity to comment on it. The proposal is, that the report be adopted. Those in favour?”

  Eight hands went up.

  “Those against.”

  Five hands went up.

  The Mayoress looked baffled. Five and eight made thirteen. Excluding herself, there were surely fourteen people at the table.

  “Could we do that again?”

  Eight people. Andrews and Law, Southern and Lincoln-Bright, Clifford and Miss Barnes, Miss Cable and General Crispen. All staunch Independents.

  “Those against.”

  Viney, Allerton and Lawrie, as expected. Sellinge of course, and that cuckoo, Amy Planche.

  Of course – Gulland had abstained.

  “Are you voting, Mr. Gulland?”

  George Gulland came out of a dream. His face was as brown as one of his own lobster pots. “Oh, aye,” he said. “I’m voting.”

  “For which side?”

  “I’m with them.”

  “You mean that you’re against the report.”

  “I’m with the last lot.”

  “But that means,” said the Mayoress, patiently, “that you are against the report of Mr. Lincoln-Bright’s committee.”

  “Don’t twist his arm,” said Chris Sellinge. “He’s already said it twice.”

  “Very well,” said the Mayoress. She would have to speak to George’s father about this. George’s father was over eighty, but had a lot more sense than George. “That makes eight votes in favour and six against. I declare the motion carried.”

  “I should like the actual voting recorded.”

  “Very well, Mr. Viney.”

  “And I would like to register a protest.”

  This unexpected attack baffled the Mayoress. She looked at each of the Councillors in turn. They all seemed as surprised as she was.

  “I think it’s an insult to democracy that a biased report should be forced through the Council on a party ticket—”

  Good gracious! This was coming from the body of the hall. She peered into the misty dimness. No. It was from the press bench. Surely this was out of order? She looked round desperately for support.

  “You’re out of order, Mr. Ambrose,” said Raymond Southern.

  “I’m no more out of order than the Council is.”

  “You’re being childish. The press and the public are admitted to these meetings on sufferance. If you can’t behave yourself, you will have to leave.”

  “A fair example of the way discussion is stifled in this town.”

  Southern said something to the clerk, who scuttled round the table and disappeared.

  “And before your hired bullies arrive to throw me out, I should like to ask a question. Who was the Chairman of the Lands Development Committee? Mr. Lincoln-Bright. And who’s his chief supporter? Mr. Crawford. And who are members of the syndicate which run the hotels on the eastern side of Barhaven? Lincoln-Bright and Crawford.”

  “Will you sit down.”

  “And who’s going to benefit most if the development comes on the eastern side? Lincoln-Bright and Crawford. And who’s going to line their own pockets at the expense of the citizens of Barhaven—”

  The clerk reappeared, accompanied by a constable and one of the Council employees.

  “I must ask you,” said Southern, his face still amiable, “either to sit down and undertake not to interrupt Council business further, or to leave.”

  “I shall do neither.”

  “In that case—Constable—”

  “I protest.”

  “You’d better come along, sir.”

  “I refuse.”

  “Take his other arm, Waller.”

  At this moment a magnesium flash went off, as one of Mr. Ambrose’s assistants, carefully stationed in the gallery, levelled his camera.

  “Take one,” said Sellinge.

  Chapter Seven

  Anthony Observes his Secretary out of Office

  “Eight-six,” said Anthony.

  He held the soft black ball delicately in the tips of the fingers of his left hand, dropped it on to his racquet, and struck it in a high, gentle parabola into the backhand corner of the court. Chris Sellinge observed it suspiciously, decided it was going to come off the wall in time for him to hit it, swung hard and hit wall and ball simultaneously.

  The ball rocketed across the court and smacked into Anthony. The head of the racquet snapped off, flew into the air, and bounced off the back wall. Sellinge swore.

  “Game and set,” said Anthony. “Sorry about your racquet.”

  “It doesn’t matter about the racquet. It was an old one. What does worry me is why I can never beat you.”

  “You don’t put your feet in the right place.”

  “I remember you telling me so before.”

  “Take that last shot. How can you expect to play a backhand shot if your left foot is almost up level with your right?”

  “You can tell me about it in the shower.”

  They left the squash court and climbed up the wooden steps to the gallery to collect their towels and sweaters. Sellinge, who had strolled along to look at the other game, said, “There’s some nice form in Court Two.”

  Anthony walked across to look. The sports club professional was having what was evidently an instructional game with a girl.

  Anthony’s first impression, foreshortened and from above, was of a pair of tapering legs in very short white sports-briefs.

  “What a piece of home-work,” breathed Sellinge. “Can’t Bunny Davies pick ’em.”

  “Can he?”

  “He’s laid every layable girl in Barhaven.”

  Anthony said nothing. He was examining the girl.

  On his visits to London he had sometimes strolled down Greek Street and studied the photographs which hung outside the Strip Clubs. He had come to the conclusion that there must be something wrong, either with the photographs or with himself. Presumably they were hung there to attract and stimulate customers? They had filled him only with nausea. Those breasts like children’s balloons after a party
– enormously inflated, but now sagging very slightly in the heat; the nipples like bell-pushes; the coat-hanger hips, the soft, feather-bed bottoms.

  As this girl swung half-round to play a backhand shot he noticed with appreciation that her top half, covered but not concealed by a clinging sports vest, was constructed on infinitely more satisfactory lines than the odalisques of Soho. The small firm breasts seemed to be forward extensions of an integrated system which started somewhere up at her shoulders and shoulder blades, not disassociated flabs slapped on to the front of the body like lumps of plasticine. The stomach was flat and the hips, though wide, were unexaggerated.

  The professional stopped the rally by catching the ball in his hand.

  “You’re holding your racquet all wrong,” he said. “Let me show you.”

  “Here we go,” murmured Sellinge.

  “Like this.” He stood behind her, holding her right wrist lightly, and laying his left hand on her bare arm. “Drop the head a bit. Bring the left foot forward. If you try and keep that position in relation to the flight of the ball you’ll hit it easily enough.”

  “Thank you,” said the girl politely.

  Anthony found himself blushing. He moved away.

  “Do you think it’s wise to leave ’em without a chaperone?” said Sellinge.

  “I wouldn’t trust Bunny,” said Anthony, “but the girl’s quite reliable. I’m going to have a shower before I get cold.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Certainly. You’ve met her too. She’s my secretary.”

  “Knock me down,” said Sellinge. “I thought I’d seen that bottom before. She looks quite different in her office clothes, doesn’t she?”

  “Oh, quite,” said Anthony.

  “Did you know she was a member here?”

  “I didn’t. But there’s no reason she shouldn’t be. She’s quite—I mean, her father was a Captain in the Army.”

  “My father was a film actor,” said Sellinge. “And look at me.” He stepped under the shower, turned on the hot tap by mistake, swore, and jumped out again. “If you should get a chance of seeing the first version they ever made of Ben Hur, you’ll notice him rowing. He’s in the second galley, on the third bench.”

  They got dressed, and strolled across to the clubhouse.

  The Splash Point Country Club was built on a shelf in the shoulder of the downs overlooking the former estuary of the River Barr. Some six hundred years ago the river had circled the tiny fishing village of Barhaven to the east, and run out to sea through a network of marshy channels. Then an enterprising group of inhabitants, whose names were preserved in the Wool-market (Anthony had got most of this from James Sudderby during their walks over the downs) had decided to divert the river, and to drive it straight out to sea through the Chine on the west of the town. From that date Barhaven had flourished.

  Its long, slow decline had then started, like the gentle, untroubled years of a man who has been too successful in youth. By the middle of the nineteenth century, when wool was coming from Australia and corn from Canada and shipbuilding was being done on the Tyne, and it looked as though Barhaven might drop off to sleep altogether, it was rescued for a second time by royal favour. Queen Victcria, who spent a number of enjoyable weekends at Ditchling House, was much taken by the quiet and decorous charm of the little fishing village. When her Paulet Commission was reorganising county boundaries in 1880, and Barhaven was unceremoniously detached from Sussex and incorporated into Kent, its privileges as an ancient and independent borough were reserved to it by a fresh royal charter.

  In gratitude Barhaven had named a confusing number of streets, avenues, crescents, terraces and squares after members of the royal family. A statue of the queen, erected outside the railway station, and paid for by public subscription, had proved a convenient resting-place ever since for stormbound seagulls.

  As Anthony strolled with Sellinge along the asphalt path which led from the squash courts to the main clubhouse the town lay spread out at his feet in the evening sun. It was framed on one side by the cobalt blue of the sea and on the other by the green and brown of the fields. If you looked closely, you could see the thin red lines of town development forcing their way outwards, through a network of narrow streets.

  “Just like an aneurism, getting ready to burst,” he said.

  “What a disgusting metaphor. All the same, I wish I knew which way it was going. Someone’s going to make a packet out of it.”

  “Money isn’t everything.”

  “And that’s such a bloody silly remark,” said Sellinge, “that you can buy the first round of drinks.”

  The early evening crowd was already in the club room. It was mostly men, who would drive out to Splash Point on their way home from work, postponing for half an hour the moment when they would have to be husbands and fathers again. Wives came out with them at weekends but were discouraged at other times.

  Anthony pushed his way to the bar. Jack Crawford was there, talking to Lincoln-Bright and Raymond Southern. Southern said, “Hullo, young Anthony. How’s your father?”

  “He was in good form at lunch,” said Anthony. “Sitting up and taking nourishment and damning the younger generation. Two ginger beer shandies, please.”

  “Ice, sir?”

  “No. Just stir them.”

  “You’ve been well brought up, I can see,” said Southern. “Never put ice in, or near, beer. Terrible American habit.”

  “Your father is a great lawyer, and a credit to this town,” said Crawford, swinging suddenly round to face Anthony, and bringing a blast of whisky-sweetened breath with him.

  This was the sort of remark that Anthony found it difficult to deal with. The first part, he knew, was wrong. His father was a very competent solicitor, but had no pretensions to being a great lawyer, and would have laughed if he had been accused of it.

  “Well, that’s very good of you,” he said.

  “Get it in writing,” said Southern. “You’ll be able to put your charges up.”

  “I’m serious,” said Crawford, putting on his serious face. “I wasn’t a client of your father myself, but I’d have trusted him—implicitly. And why I should have trusted him implicitly was because he put the town first.”

  “Four-and-eightpence please, sir.”

  “Some of us,” said Lincoln-Bright, “are prepared to put the community above our private interests.” He had the thin, incisive voice of a man who has few opinions but has memorised them thoroughly.

  Anthony pocketed his change with some difficulty, picked up the two pint glasses, and started to edge his way out.

  “Grab one of them, will you,” he said to Sellinge, who had come up to help him.

  Sellinge stretched out a hand, and at that moment Crawford swung round, holding a full whisky glass. A lot of the whisky went on to the floor, some of it slopped down the front of Crawford’s coat.

  “Sorry,” said Sellinge.

  “Handkerchief,” said Southern.

  Crawford went very red, and said, “Would you bloody well mind out what you’re doing.”

  “Don’t think it was entirely his fault,” said Southern. “Mop it off before it stains your coat, and I’ll buy you another.”

  Crawford took no notice of this. His mouth was working, framing something ugly. He said, “This Club was intended for gentlemen. It seems to have got clattered up with estate agents.”

  There was a pool of silence in the little crowd in front of the bar. Then Sellinge said, “Either you apologise for that, or I shall report the remark to the committee and ask them to cancel your membership.”

  “You can report it to your Aunt Fanny,” said Crawford. “I’m not taking orders from a jumped-up land profiteer.”

  Sellinge raised his glass of shandy and tipped it down the front of Crawford’s shirt.

  Spluttering an obscenity, Crawford swung a low short arm jab which, if it had landed where he meant it to would have done some damage, but Sellinge turned and caught it
on the hip. By this time, Anthony and Raymond Southern had manoeuvred themselves between the two men.

  They were the centre of an embarrassed crowd. The only person who seemed to retain a grasp of the situation was Southern. He said, “Better come and change your shirt, Jack. I’ve got a spare one in the locker room,” and to the barman, “There’s been some drink spilled, Bob. Clear it up, would you.”

  Before Crawford could protest he had grabbed him by the arm and steered him out of the room.

  Sellinge said to Anthony, “I’m going home.”

  “Me too,” said Anthony.

  As they left the room they heard the pent-up comment burst into spate behind them.

  Chapter Eight

  Anthony Encounters Opposition on All Sides

  “Quite a shemozzle at the sports club yesterday evening,” said Ann, as she brought in Anthony’s post and proceeded to slit it open for him. “Did you see it all?”

  One of the differences between Ann and other secretaries he had had was that she seemed to have no idea that she should wait for him to speak to her. If she wished to introduce a topic she did so, boldly and forthwith.

  “I was there,” said Anthony.

  “Did Chris Sellinge empty a pint tankard over Crawford’s head?”

  “Down his front.”

  “Because Crawford called him a Communist.”

  “He called him an estate agent, actually.”

  “I missed it by five minutes. It’s always the way. If anything exciting happens, I’m in the next room. The only morning I came down late for breakfast was when my aunt threw the electric toaster at my uncle. She hadn’t bothered to unplug it, either.”

  “When I saw you,” said Anthony, “you seemed to be having quite an exciting time yourself.”

  Ann looked puzzled.

  “In the court with Bunny Davies.”

  “Oh, that was you in the gallery was it. He’s certainly a trier. When he put his arm right round my waist to demonstrate a drop shot, I asked him if he was teaching me to waltz or play squash. That cooled him off a bit.”

  “He’s got a very bad reputation.”

  “Can you be warning me against him?”

  “Er—yes.”

  “I expect you mean it kindly,” said Ann, “but you ought to know that it’s absolutely fatal – warning girls about men. You might just as well say to a wasp, there’s jam in that there jar. Steer clear.”