The Pandervils

by Gerald Bullet

  ‘I saw everything,’ agreed Farthing, ‘and I heard everything. If you’ll come across the road with me, sir, my missus will mop you up a bit. My, that was a good hard punch, that was. A dangerous fellow, to be sure!’

  For days Egg was haunted by one recurrent fear: I shall have to leave the choir. They’ll never want to speak to me again, those chapel folk. And he wondered if the Reverend Shadrach Pierce, when he had referred to him as ‘a great sinner’, had had in mind some highly coloured account of how, many years ago, he had flung his aged mother-in-law into a cab … And in due time he appeared in court to answer for his misdemeanour. In the witness-box Mr Farthing, that grey-haired respectable tradesman, claimed to have seen everything. He knew the defendant well, but would rather not say whether or not he had always been on friendly terms with him. Pressed on this point, he admitted that he had had words with defendant on the very morning of the alleged assault, but insisted that he was not prejudiced.

  ‘Now let us get this clear, Mr Farthing. Are we to understand that you saw the encounter between defendant and plaintiff? That you were present throughout the proceedings?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The defendant pleads gross provocation. Did you see anything that could properly be so described?’

  ‘Well, sir …’ Mr Farthing shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh, it don’t amount to anything.’

  Mr Farthing was sternly asked what he meant.

  ‘If I was to say,’ said Mr Farthing, ‘if I was to say as the gentleman hit Mr Pandervil first, I would be telling you a lie. For hitting and kicking are two very different things, aren’t they now? And I’m not saying that Mr Pandervil didn’t deserve to be kicked. And I’m not saying. …’

  Did witness assert that he saw the plaintiff kick the defendant? Yes. And was this kick delivered before the defendant’s alleged assault on the plaintiff? Yes. Would witness, remembering that he was on oath, describe this kick more exactly?

  ‘It was what I should call,’ said Mr Farthing reluctantly, ‘a kick on the behind. But I wouldn’t call it provocation. Not for a punch like that, I wouldn’t.’

  And so justice was betrayed; Mr Farthing was perjured; and Mr Pandervil retained his office in the Ebenezer choir.

  2

  Of the sixteen perspiring mortals crammed into that inadequate parlour and overflowing into the kichen beyond, Bob Pandervil alone—young Bobby, grown older, and self-shorn of his tender and belittling suffix—seemed unaffected by the general excitement. It was his twenty-first birthday party, and everybody else was preparing to make the best of it. Those of the guests for whom chairs had been found were selfconsciously sitting in them; the rest were lined up against the walls trying to look as though they preferred standing. Between these two parties there was a constant exchange of polite offers and friendly chaff. ‘Do come an’ ’ave a bit of a sit-down, Daniel. Ern’ll make room for you, won’t you, Ern?’ ‘Mustn’t sit down, Aunty Min. Fraid of losing me appetite.’ There was general laughter at this, the more hearty because Daniel Finch, Mabe’s middle-aged fishmonger husband, was not a man much given to jocularity. He was lean, cadaverous, morose; he had a habit of eyeing women with an emphasis that was apt to give offence; no one but Mabe knew, though more than one guessed, why Mabe had ever consented to marry him; and in Egg’s eyes he was an unqualified disaster. Next to Daniel Finch stood Mabe herself, stubbornly refusing a chair, and saying at intervals to chosen auditors: ‘Remember my twenty-first birthday party, Aunty Min? What, you don’t! Well, that aint surprising, after all, seeing I never ’ad none.’ Aunty Min, sometimes called Algernon’s Min, was a spare, spry, darkish woman nearing sixty, whom nature had apparently designed as a foil to Algernon’s rosy corpulence. She could not rest long in her seat, but must be for ever darting to and fro, lending a hand here and having a word there, and passing the time of day with fellow-revellers so distant, and so decidedly cut off from her, as to have been inaccessible to a woman less nimble of body or less resolute in geniality. She was childless, and by that fact disappointed; but her inextinguishable cheerfulness—a thing so unwarranted, so absurd, that people couldn’t but laugh when they encountered it—made her a general favourite. Already, fifteen minutes after her arrival at the party, she was being called ‘Aunty Min’ by all the young men present, among whom were Ern Farthing and smart Alf Catch.

  ‘It’s going to be a very brisk little party,’ said Uncle Algy approvingly. ‘I can see that. What do you say, Mr Farthing, sir? A very brisk little party, hey? Same as my wife here—hey, old lady? Ha ha ha! A brisk little party same as my Min … Eggie old boy, didjer hear that one, old son? I was saying to Mr Farthing here … ’ Algy was in great form, in spite of an occasional twinge of gout which he advertised with a waggish catcall; and his little jokes were well received, especially by Ern Farthing, who having nothing to say for himself was eager to laugh at anything and everything, and by Alf Catch, the butcher’s son. These two youths had been Bob’s schoolfellows; yet what a distance there was between them: the one so spruce and debonair—his tie-pin alone must have cost half the price of a pig—and the other such a slowcoach, such a quiet pedestrian fellow! It was notorious that Ern Farthing couldn’t say boo to a goose, and, if the invitations had been left to Bob, Ern’s claim to a seat at the party might have been overlooked. But here he was, for old times’ sake, and his father and mother were with him, to say nothing of three negligible elder sisters.

  ‘You’ll keep your eye on that girl of yours, Mr Algernon, if you take my advice.’ It was the voice of Mr Farthing, whose white hairs now commanded, among friends, the admiring attention once given to his jokes.

  ‘I didn’t quite catch you, Mr Farthing, old friend.’

  Mr Farthing tried again: ‘That girl of yours, I said, that lively young party you was speaking of, you better keep an eye on her, Mr Algy, with these ’ere young men about.’ Everybody laughed. Mr Farthing, failing to catch Algernon’s eye, rose with an effort from his chair and leaned across the table: ‘Mr Algy, a word with you.’

  ‘Hey? Certainly, old friend!’

  ‘What I wanta say, don’t take me amiss, that’s all. What I said about your good lady here. Nothing personal, y’know. No, no, no. Just my chaffing way, that’s all.’ The two rival humorists solemnly shook hands, and Mr Farthing resumed his seat.

  ‘Ah, but there’s a face I’d like to have seen here,’ said Carrie, with the air of continuing the conversation. ‘And that’s dear old Mr Pummice’s face.’ For Carrie, too, was at her son’s party, having left her bed of sickness and pain for the express purpose of ‘seeing to everything’. And she had brought her party manners with her, a curious blend of hospitable gaiety and sad unction. ‘Ah, well, we must all come to it in the Lord’s good time,’ said she.

  ‘What, old Mr Pummice gone?’ said Uncle Algernon. ‘I hadn’t heard!’

  Farthing nodded. ‘This twelvemonth or more. The yella jarnders, it was. Why,’ added Mr Farthing in a tone of pleased reminiscence, ‘your brother and me was bearers!’

  Mr Pummice was not the only neighbour who would never again see the sun shining or the rain falling on Farringay High Street, and for a while the talk turned on death. ‘Ah,’ sighed Carrie, the pride of the Ebenezerites, ‘and I know who’ll be the next to be taken. And if it’s the Lord’s will, I’m ready … Now where’s that dratted Elp! Sleena! Come ’ere, girl, with that teapot! Where are you running off to now, pray? If I’ve told you once I’ve told you twenty times … ’ Selina Bush, the Elp, had been engaged at the age of seventeen to take Mabe’s place as general household drudge. She was now a very mature twenty-two, a thin slip of a girl, rather pretty in a colourless fashion, and at her best just after her face had been washed. Nothing could have exceeded her devotion to Nicky and Egg, between whom and the wrath of Carrie she eagerly interposed her simple personality.

  ‘Say, Eggie old man! What a pity old Sarah and old Ernest couldn’t a come! And the girls too.’ By ‘the girls’ Algy meant his four younge
r sisters who—some married, some virgin, all out of sight and generally out of mind—were scattered to the four points of the compass.

  Egg deplored the remark, for he had taken care not to expose himself to rebuff by asking Sarah— who was, after all, a real Vicar’s wife—to attend her nephew’s celebrations. ‘Oh, Sarah’s not so well nowadays, I fancy,’ he said. ‘Nor so young as she was, come to think of it.’

  Egg contributed a remark to the general noise whenever he could think of anything to say, and at other times, nervously affable, he laughed and murmured rather vaguely, and to no one in particular: ‘Splendid! Splendid!’ He, in common with these others, and with Harold and Nicky and the two strange young men described as ‘Bob’s business friends’, was more or less enjoying the festive confusion. Bob himself, you would have said, carried the only perfectly cool head among them. If numbers counted for anything it would be a highly successful party.

  The feast was called high tea; and the viands included ham, pork pie, boiled eggs, sardines, pressed beef sandwiches, bread and butter, various jams, and a magnificent birthday cake made by Mother for Mother’s Boy. Accompanying these dainties was a generous supply of dark brown tea, tea with a tang to it, under whose stimulating influence Carrie Pandervil, getting the ear of the company by addressing herself intimately to each member in turn, discoursed largely of life and motherhood and what it meant to be tied down, as you might say, to your bed. ‘First it come on in the small of the back, Aunty Min, and then it spread itself up round the side of me—no, not the left side, the right side—and what with this place and that place and the other place, soon it was pains all over. What do you think of that, Mr Farthing! Pains all over it was. But there!—I mustn’t sit here talking about my alimence. I’m only telling you, Uncle Algy, because you’re a man of the world and understands things, and a better uncle never breathed as I’m sure my boy will bear me out. ‘Ave a bit more of this pie, Ern, do! What, finished already! Couldn’t so much as look at food, Aunty Min, when them pains was at their worst. Could I, Mabe? Your Uncle Algy understands what sickness is, him with his poor gout. And you, Daniel boy, and you, I daresay, Alf Catch, young as you are and strong too by God’s blessing, you understand that a person doesn’t take any pleasure in being ill and lying a-bed when they might be up and doing, as poor Mr Pummice used to say, if only they had their health and strength. Another cup of tea, Alf? That’s right. All over my back the pains come, Aunty Min, and in my stomach too. Not what I’d call a gnoring pain, Uncle Algy, but a sort of nagging, achey pain. A sort of achey pain, Mr Farthing. And sometimes in the middle of the night I feel as I can’t bear this cross a minute longer, what with giving so much trouble and being in the way, as I can’t help seeing, not being a blind bat. Sometimes, as my Mabe well knows—don’t you, ducky?—I feel as though … Daddy! Why don’t you cut Mr Farthing another slice of cake! It’s there to be eaten, Mr Farthing, you know. It don’t want saving for the birds.’

  Mr Farthing held up an arresting hand. ‘No, Egg, my dear fellow.’ At last—startling innovation!—these old friends addressed each other familiarly. ‘Not another crumb, Mrs P, thanking you all the same as I’m sure we all do. I’ve done splendidly. A fair treat, I’m sure. And great praise due to the cook!’

  Everybody applauded this sentiment.

  ‘Ah!’ sighed Carrie, smiling round the table. ‘It’s nice to be among friends who’ll take us as they find us. When I was younger … ’

  ‘When you was younger, Mrs P,’ interposed old Farthing, with a bow, ‘you’d a made two large cakes instead of one large cake. And when I was younger I’d ’ave eaten the blessed lot.’

  ‘Ha ha ha!’ roared Uncle Algy. ‘I see your meaning, Mr Farthing, sir.’ He winked at Mr Farthing, as though to say that this was the kind of joke that only a connoisseur could fully appreciate. ‘I take your point, old friend. Ha ha ha!’

  ‘Well,’ said Carrie, ‘if you’ve really all finished, and won’t change your minds, Sleena can clear the things away … Sleena, where you got to, girl?’

  ‘Your clock right, Eggie, old son?’ asked Uncle Algy. ‘Bit fast according to me.’

  ‘Ten minutes fast as near as nothing,’ said Egg. ‘Or so I fancy. Perhaps Bob here could tell us the exact time. Eh, Bob?’

  This was considered very cunning of Egg, and won him great applause, for everybody knew that Uncle Algy and Aunty Min had given Bob a magnificent watch for his birthday; and this was the sign for that young man to pull it out of his pocket and expose it to the admiration of the company.

  ‘Stuff and nonsense, my boy!’ said Uncle Algy, with hearty depreciation of his gift. ‘You deserve something better than that, from what I hear of you. What, is it still going! Well, I am surprised! D’ye hear that, Min? That twopenny ha’penny bit of a brass ticker is still going.’

  ‘Get along with you, Uncle Algy!’ cried Mabe, leading the protestants. ‘That’s never brass. That’s gold, that is. And well you know it.’

  Uncle Algy resolutely turned his back on the temptation to embroider the theme. ‘Yes, Eggie old son, I hear great things of Master Bob. Bray-vo, Bob! Not content with scholarships in galore, me lord must needs go and crown all by getting a high-class little job in an office! Isn’t that the idea, Bob my boy?’

  ‘Yes, Uncle,’ said Bob indifferently. ‘Estate agents. Not much at first, but it may lead to something better.’

  Someone gave Egg a nudge. It was Mr Farthing. ‘Who d’ye think I had a letter from ‘smorning, Egg Pandervil?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Egg.

  ‘You’d never guess!’

  ‘Woont I?’ said Egg, with a grin. ‘Then you tell me, friend. It’ll save time.’

  ‘Wimmett!’ said Mr Farthing explosively.

  ‘Go on! Not Wimmett!’

  ‘Yes, Wimmett himself.’

  ‘Well I never!’ exclaimed Egg. ‘Wimmett himself! And whatta dee got to say?’

  ‘Message for you,’ said Mr Farthing. ‘Member me to all old friends, specially Mr Pandervil. Seems he’s got some sort of a regular job at last, warehouseman up in the city. Keeps things going but they ’ave to live in two rooms—yes, the whole dang lot of them … Well, of course they’ve the two girls out in service now, so that’s something.’

  ‘Hard,’ ruminated Egg. ‘Man of his age, y’know. Must be a tidy bit past sixty.’

  ‘Ay, sixty-six or seven he’ll be as I figure it. About a year behind me he was. Member how he used to call himself the Honourable So-and-so Wimmett? And laugh at himself for it, so’s you’d a thought he would a died o’ laughing. And slap ‘is knee. He was a great knee-slapper, was Mr Wimmett.’

  The two friends contemplated in silence for a while this rather surprising picture of a man who had seemed to most people quite the reverse of robust and jocular. But Egg made allowanes for his friend’s view. Mr Farthing had always been a great joker, and Mr Wimmett had always laughed uproariously at his jokes.

  ‘A saddish sort of man in a way,’ ventured Egg.

  ‘In a way,’ conceded Mr Farthing reluctantly. ‘I wonder,’ he added, ‘how it began, that little joke of his about the Honourable So-and-so Wimmett?’

  ‘Oh, that! Some nonsense of mine, I believe … I forget,’ said Egg, remembering. ‘Wasn’t much of a joke anyhow … Who’s that trying to knock the house down, I wonder?’

  ‘Someone at the door, Daddy!’ cried Carrie sharply.

  But young Harold had already gone out of the room to find out what was the matter. He presently returned, followed by slow footsteps and an ominous tap-tap of a stick. Harold held open the door; everybody stopped talking and looked up, half in alarm; so that Mrs Noom achieved just the entry that in the days of her prime she would have desired. She stood in the doorway blinking at the sudden light; for the parlour was illuminated and the journey through the ‘hall passage’ had been a dark journey, with only a distant gleam to guide her. Even now, it seemed, she could not see the company very distinctly; for at first she stared up at the ce
iling as though she had been a blind woman. In this attitude she waited, listening. Her face, so aged and frail and sunken in the cheeks, was enigmatic, giving no hint at all of what was in her mind. Because so old, because she might—one felt—at any moment drop dead, she was an intimidating spectacle; and the silence, persisting for several seconds after her entry, was a reluctant tribute to that fact.

  She opened her mouth to speak, baring her one tooth. ‘Well, my dears! You’re not very pleased to see Granny, I’ll be bound!’

  ‘Why, Ma,’ said Egg, moving forward to greet her, ‘we’d quite given you up! Still, better late than never, you know. Eh?’ He laughed nervously.

  The ancient woman now lowered her gaze from the ceiling and stared about her, scanning the faces of the guests. ‘What’s the matter with ’em all?’ she asked Egg. ‘Aint they got tongues in their ‘eads?’

  ‘Here’s a chair for you, Granny,’ said Bob. ‘Won’t you sit down?’

  ‘Who’s dead?’ inquired Mrs Noom. With help from Egg she slowly lowered herself into the chair. ‘Who did you say it was, Egg? I’ve lasted them out, whoever they are.’ She tittered feebly. ‘He he he! I’ve lasted them out.’

  ‘It’s Bob’s birthday,’ said Egg. ‘We’re having a party for him. You remember, Ma! We come and tell you only last week. Bob’s twenty-one to-day.’

  ‘Bob?’ Mrs Noom wrinkled again her wrinkled brow. ‘Bob, d’you say? Now which Bob would that be? Did he make a nice corpse?’

  Egg wished the others wouldn’t sit and stare so curiously and silently. ‘Rubbish, old lady!’ he said. ‘It’s our Bob’s birthday, I tell you. Birthday. Your grandson, our Bob.’

  ‘My grandson! My little Bobby!’ She dabbed at her eyes with a wad of handkerchief. ‘And nobody even told me he was sadly, poor lamb!’

  Egg, with the assistance of Bob himself, began again at the beginning of the story. But in the middle of their joint narration the inner door opened and Carrie entered, followed by Mabe, and, timidly, by Selina Bush.