by David Nobbs
‘I would love to.’ She had an uneasy feeling that she was not being proactive enough. She asked a question now, knowing that there was a risk that it might be unwise. ‘May I ask, do you still love money and understand it?’
‘That’s a good question, Sally Mottram. And like all good questions, it’s hard to answer. I think I understand it as well as ever, but I am fifty-four and that might be an illusion. I think I don’t love it any more, but that too might be an illusion. I suppose, Sally, that I no longer think it’s enough, so perhaps now I only like it rather than love it. Oh, and I hate it too, but then I think you always hate the things you love. I hate this house, for instance. You find it hideous?’
‘I have to say I don’t much like it.’
‘You’re finding the tenor of the conversation just a little dangerous, are you not? Let’s move back to safer ground. The schedule. We will finish dinner … let’s say, nine o’clock. Ish. I don’t think we’ll be able to drag it out much beyond that, with the best will in the world. I don’t do long evenings. I will retire to my room, and you may use the drawing room or retire to your room. In the morning you will have breakfast in this room – it will be served in the buffet style – and then at ten-thirty Lung will bring you to the far office, which is entirely private. Nobody is allowed in under any circumstances – it is actually quite a privilege that I will see you there …’
‘Thank you, Sir Norman.’
‘My pleasure. I will then put to you my proposals for giving you the financial support you so need, and of course I hope you will agree. Please don’t say, “I’m sure I will.” You won’t know till I tell you. You’ll either be thrilled or disappointed. This should not take terribly long, and, if it’s a nice morning tomorrow – the weathermen promise rain, so it should be lovely, I am nothing if not a cynic – you might want to wander on the terraces. Somebody should. All those statues, nobody ever visiting them, how depressing, go to it, Sally, step out and admire. And then at twelve-fifteen we will meet for an early luncheon, which will be medium-rare roast beef with all the trimmings, horseradish not mustard – I insist on that, even though I can barely taste either – and then Cattermole will deliver you safely to Maidenhead station, where you will begin a Sunday-evening journey of quite horrid complexity and boredom. How does that all sound to you?’
‘It sounds very good, sir, except for the journey.’
And so that was what happened. They had dinner in the large dining room, which was the opposite of the drawing room, being rather too stark for Sally’s taste. Sally ate smoked salmon, lamb cutlets with Reform sauce, and syllabub. Sir Norman ate scrambled eggs on toast. Sally drank Meursault and Pomerol. Sir Norman drank water. Sally told Sir Norman all her plans for Potherthwaite, all about the march, all about the plans for the Quays, the High Street East and West, and the waste ground, and the shopfronts, and the Sculpture Trail, and even broached for the first time a rather wild idea that had been suggested to her by reports in the newspapers about ideas in more exotic places than Potherthwaite, places like Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, in which the houses in run-down neighbourhoods had been painted with wild, colourful murals. Perhaps the same could be done in the Baggit Estate, all undistinguished council houses in neat rows, where the likes of Ben and Tricksy, with the collaboration of the locals, would paint the walls with vivid murals.
Sir Norman remained largely silent, listening and nodding, and making just the occasional remark. Sally actually had the feeling that on a couple of occasions he was quite moved. At one moment she saw, she thought, a wetness in his eyes. He retired at twenty to ten, saying that he had not been up this late for many a long day. He told her to feel free to finish the wine. It was tempting – she might never drink such good stuff again – but she resisted the temptation. She had been a lawyer’s wife for too long to throw off the manners of the middle classes entirely. She mustn’t take advantage. It wouldn’t be seemly. Too much was at stake.
She found it difficult to sleep. The tension of the day had been exhausting, but tension is not good for sleep, and there was just too much on her mind. Also, the silence kept her awake.
But with the aid of a couple of paracetamol, she did eventually fall into a sound sleep. In the morning she felt a bit like a prisoner condemned to die at ten-thirty. She did not manage a hearty breakfast. Lung came to her at twenty-five past ten. He was tall and pale. He led her along corridors and up staircases and eventually knocked on a door.
‘Gloves,’ he reminded her.
‘Oh yes, thank you.’
‘Come in, Sally,’ called out Sir Norman. He sounded cheerful and Sally felt a terrible spasm of hope.
‘I shan’t come in,’ said Lung. ‘It is not allowed.’
He held the door open for her.
‘Good luck,’ he whispered unexpectedly. It was kind of him, but it made her feel worse.
‘Thank you, Lung,’ she whispered.
The far office was entirely round and Sally realized that they were in the great turret at the French end of the house.
Sir Normal sat behind a seventeenth-century walnut desk. He smiled, not unkindly. They shook gloves.
‘I’ll get straight down to it,’ he said. ‘No beating about the proverbial. What I am proposing to do, Sally, entirely unconditionally except for a few bits and bobs, is to offer to pay the council for the full cost of building the bypass.’
Relief hit Sally like the warmth from the opened door of a hot oven.
‘That’s incredibly generous of you, Sir Norman,’ she said.
‘I haven’t finished. Tiptree told me something of your personal situation, of the mess your husband left. I’m deeply sorry. Deeply sorry.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You need money. You need a job. But, if you had a job, you wouldn’t have the time for the Transition movement.’
‘That is true.’
‘You need what is in effect a salary, though for tax purposes of course it will not be called that.’
‘Oh, Sir Norman, in my position I will have to avoid even the smallest hint of impropriety. I need the support of the townsfolk.’
‘That is also true. All right, perhaps we had better call it a salary. For the same reason I do not want your personal remuneration to seem excessive. Fifty thousand pounds a year.’
‘That’s very generous of you too, Sir Norman.’
‘I haven’t finished. I want the townsfolk, those who can afford it, to contribute, either personally or through a programme of events. I will match, pound for pound, any monies raised.’
‘Again, Sir Norman, I’m deeply grateful.’
Sally was a little shocked to find herself disappointed that Sir Norman didn’t say ‘I haven’t finished’ for a fourth time. How swiftly we can become greedy.
‘Well, thank you very much, Sir Norman,’ she said. ‘Um … you did say you were making this offer … I think your words were something like “entirely unconditionally, except for a few bits and bobs”.’
‘Word perfect! Silly phrase, really, “bits and bobs”.’
‘Could you tell me what … um … I mean, this is all wonderfully generous, I don’t want to seem to be quibbling over small trifles … could you tell me exactly what these bits and bobs are?’
‘Of course. Just three really. Two are for the council. The money for the bypass is given on condition that they use the money they would have spent on the bypass entirely on other Transition projects.’
‘Thank you.’
‘The second is that what I am doing must receive no publicity. I know these councils. At the drop of a hat they’ll be calling the bypass “Sir Norman Oldfield Boulevard”.’
‘I will make that clear to them.’
‘Thank you. And the third condition is for you. You will have to marry me. See you at lunch, twelve-fifteen.’
THIRTY-THREE
A hard decision
Sally walked slowly along the towpath on the following Tuesday morning. It was a cool, cloudy da
y, with barely a hint of the approaching summer in the keen wind. She waved across the cut to Terence and Felicity Porchester. He was sluicing down their narrowboat. She was sitting in the cockpit, out of the wind, knitting a sweater for next winter. They brought a steady kind of love to Potherthwaite, a love that Felicity might have knitted herself, so snugly did it sit upon them, so perfectly did it fit. To come and be stranded in this silted backwater could have destroyed their marriage, but the disastrous decision to explore the Potherthwaite Arm had been a joint one, and they had quietly settled down together to make the best of it. Their love, reflected Sally, might not be a thing of passion (though it might!) but it was seamless, it was warming, it was another sweater for next winter. She didn’t envy them for it – she had jealousy only for Marigold, and less and less even for her. She hadn’t ever really loved Barry, and for many years he hadn’t loved her at all, if indeed he ever had. Conrad had found her attractive, but he hadn’t fallen for her. She thought back over her life since Barry’s death. It was awful, but the only man she would find it remotely interesting to see again was the odiferous and unshaven driver of a ramshackle lorry, and that only because she felt guilty that she hadn’t thanked him, in effect, for not raping her. She felt now that it had been absurd of her to have thought this worthy of thanks. It was more likely, given the state of her that night, that the thought of any kind of physical contact would have been revolting to him. Even to think about this man was to emphasize to herself how bleak the sexual side of her life had become. Would it be so very awful, under these circumstances, to marry Sir Norman?
‘We’re counting the days,’ called out Felicity cheerfully, cutting right through Sally’s melancholy thoughts. ‘Pity we don’t know how many days we have to count.’
If she married Sir Norman, work could begin very soon. If she didn’t, it might take years. How could she disappoint them? Could she face them if she disappointed them?
Here was Eric Sheepshank, dressed in dirty but no longer distressing denims. He no longer loitered on deck in his underpants. Newcomers to the area would have to ask, if they were interested in whether he still had a foreskin or not.
‘I’m looking at an old shed beyond the allotments,’ he called out to her. ‘Might be just right for a workshop. Sculptor’s block? What sculptor’s block?’
He locked his cabin with two different keys. Suddenly, in the chaos, there were things that he cherished and needed to protect. If she didn’t marry Sir Norman, what were the chances for the Sculpture Trail? She told herself that she had to do it. It wouldn’t be such a very unpleasant thing. She would live in luxury for the rest of her life. She would be rich. She would commute to Potherthwaite three days a week till the work was done, so she wouldn’t be trapped. She might even … well, no, she mustn’t think of that. Sir Norman had laid out, over the medium-rare roast beef, all the details of how the arrangement might work. He would trust her. He would keep her. He would feed her shopping habits as extravagantly as she desired. He would be kind to her, as he was to all his staff. He had told her, as he speared a small sliver of roast parsnip and looked at it on the fork, that she would be able to enjoy roast parsnips every Sunday for the rest of her life. Maybe, who knows, the parsnip had turned his thoughts to another small, narrow object, because at that moment he had lowered his voice, as if he hadn’t even wanted the Yorkshire pudding to hear, to confess to her that he had now been impotent for seven years and eighty-two days. She had wondered, but hadn’t dared to ask, what had happened, two thousand, six hundred and thirty-nine days ago, to cause this sudden incapacity. Perhaps it had been in Market Harborough. Whatever it was, it meant that he would not, as he put it, make any demands. ‘So why do I want a wife? You may well ask,’ he had said, just as she was thinking it. ‘Because I am lonely,’ he had said, over the sticky toffee pudding. ‘So lonely, Sally.’ ‘I hardly think you love me,’ she had said, ‘so surely you can find someone else?’ ‘People like you don’t grow on trees,’ he had said, and she had felt surprisingly touched by this strange compliment.
‘Think it over,’ he had said. ‘Take your time. I will give you …’ He had paused, working out, it seemed, what would be a fair deadline for this unusual proposal. ‘… a month.’
She was two days into that month, and she had not yet made a decision. She would be set up to live for her whole life with a kindly and generous man, and she would be able to bring the dreams of her many friends in Potherthwaite to a swift reality. To turn him down was to risk losing all that, to risk the Porchesters being stranded at the Quays till death, to risk the return of sculptor’s block to a disillusioned Eric. And all for what? The chance of love? The chance of that great rarity, perfect love? There had been no sign of it so far. Why should it ever be different? She wasn’t made like the Marigolds of this world. She wasn’t made for passion.
She had broken the journey at Barnet. ‘Beth has made a few little tweaks to her lasagne since you last came,’ Sam had said. ‘See if you can spot them.’ She hadn’t been able to identify them. Beth had been delighted. ‘I’ve fooled your mother, Sam,’ she had boasted. She had gone to bed early. At the door she had paused, and a look of shy pride had passed across her face. ‘The little one has to have its sleep too,’ she had said, with a blush.
‘You mean …?’ Sally had begun.
‘Yes,’ Sam had said. ‘We’re expecting.’
‘Well, congratulations,’ Sally had said.
‘Thank you,’ Beth and Sam had said in unison.
Sally had gone over to Beth and kissed her. Beth had blushed again.
‘So you don’t know its sex?’ Sally had asked.
‘No,’ Beth had said. ‘I hate calling it “it”, but it’s a small price to pay for the excitement of the uncertainty.’
When Beth had gone to bed, Sally had tried to talk to Sam about the baby, and their life together, but he had wanted to talk about her. ‘Something’s on your mind, Mum. I know you. You can’t fool me,’ he had said, and the utter impossibility of marrying Sir Norman had swept over her, and with it had come anger that he should even contemplate making her marry him as a condition of giving her money, and she also couldn’t conceive of a moment when she would have the courage to tell them, and Beth would have been thrown into such a panic by the news, and would have said, ‘He’ll be used to fine meals. I’d never dare serve him my lasagne,’ and she would have burst into tears and might even have lost the baby, so that next morning, when she had left Barnet, Sally had felt that it was utterly impossible even to think of such an absurd proposition.
But the moment she was back home, surrounded by the people who were living for the Transition, Sally had felt that it was perhaps not such an absurd proposition after all. Certainly it would make the financial situation infinitely more hopeful at the stroke of a pen in a registrar’s book.
And now, this windy Tuesday, it was as if all the arguments for marrying Sir Norman were presenting themselves to her. Another strong argument for marrying him had spotted her and waved. This argument was a stooping sort of argument, an ungainly kind of argument, a knobbly-kneed kind of argument, the sort of argument that clings to a person, maybe even stalks them.
The Revd Dominic Otley bounded over the bridge at the Quays, and approached her like an over-optimistic kangaroo.
‘Sally, what a pleasant surprise, what a joyous culmination for my walk.’
Sally suspected that he had been following her, but she didn’t mention this.
‘You have travelled, you have returned, all your financial problems are solved,’ boomed the vicar.
‘I beg your pardon, Dominic?’
How could he possibly have heard about Sir Norman’s offer?
‘Sixteen minutes, forty-three seconds.’
‘What?’
‘My sermon, on Sunday. Sixteen minutes, forty-three seconds. And who is this week’s lucky winner? None other than our unofficial leader, our unrivalled inspiration, Mrs Sally Mottram. Rumour has it that you’ve won eigh
ty-six pounds. Eighty-six smackers, Sally. Wouldn’t care to take a lonely vicar out to lunch, don’t suppose? No. Bad form. Let me take you – that feat deserves celebrating. Sixteen minutes, forty-three seconds exactly. Nineteen seconds longer than I’d calculated. Flung in a little extra quip about the Venerable Bede, you see. Fault of mine. Lets me down week after week. Could be subliminally deliberate, who knows? So, how about it, Sally? Lunch?’
‘I’m sorry, Dominic,’ she said. ‘I’d love to, but I can’t.’
The Revd Dominic Otley subsided like a pricked balloon. Sally hated the sight of it, hated the power she had over this man, and thought, ‘If I marry Sir Norman, I’ll never need to tell such a whopping great lie to the vicar again.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘enjoy the rest of your walk.’
The vicar was now unable to admit that he wasn’t actually on a walk, he had been following her, he had heard where she was from Eric, and had hurried after her. Now he had to walk on, along the hated towpath, to the silted winding hole that marked the end of the cut.
Sally walked back over the bridge, and up High Street East. She was walking through the town, but seeing nothing. The enormity of the decision she had to make was the only thing that registered in her brain.
A burst of sunlight flooded the Market Place and shone fiercely on Harry’s bald head. He was walking very slowly up High Street East ahead of her. She hurried after him.
‘Hello, Harry,’ she called.
He turned. The top of his head was glistening in the sunshine, and the sweat was running down into his eyes. His usually cheerful bluff, round face looked drawn, longer and paler and puffy round the eyes.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘She’s gone.’