by David Nobbs
‘So what’s the problem, Ben?’ she asked gently.
‘I’ve been accepted by Wimbledon College of Art.’
‘Well, that’s marvellous, Ben,’ she said. ‘That’s great news. Oh, I’m so pleased for you.’
‘Yes, but … Oh, and thanks. Thanks very much, Sally, but …’ He hesitated.
‘Hasn’t that got a great name, particularly for sculpture?’
‘Yes, it has, but …’
‘Well, that’s a great achievement, Ben. No, really, congratulations.’
‘Thanks, Sally. I want to say … I need to say … I couldn’t have done it without you.’
‘Of course you could.’
‘No!’ He almost shouted it. ‘No, you did it. You gave me the confidence. I was still scared, but … not as scared as I would have been if I hadn’t met you. If I hadn’t met you I might never even have thought about it. But …’
‘Don’t think like that, Ben. You’re going and you’ll be brilliant. You really will. Don’t be nervous.’
‘I’m not nervous. Well, I am, but not about that.’
‘So why are you nervous?’
‘I feel dreadful about this, but I’m not going to have time to do the shopfronts. That’s a great way to repay you, isn’t it?’
He had to hold his right hand firm with his left hand in order to get the coffee to his mouth.
‘Ben! You mustn’t be upset about that. You’ve got your life now.’
‘That worries me about college, Sally. I won’t be doing it for anybody. I’ll just be doing it for myself. I think I might feel there isn’t any point to it.’
‘You mustn’t feel like that. Art is for oneself.’
‘It shouldn’t be.’
‘Well, it doesn’t have to be when you’ve got your degree.’
‘If I get my degree.’
‘Don’t think like that, Ben.’
Ben took another sip of coffee, with less difficulty this time. He was looking disappointed, and with that look he suddenly seemed much younger than eighteen.
‘I thought you’d be disappointed,’ he said. ‘About the shopfronts.’
‘I am disappointed,’ said Sally. ‘I’m very disappointed.’
‘You don’t look disappointed.’
‘I’m hiding it. That’s what grown-ups do.’
‘I think it’s a pity to hide things.’
‘Well, maybe it is. Ben, I think your shopfront ideas would have been wonderful, but it’s your life and I understand it and I’m just going to have to find somebody else.’
‘You won’t.’
‘What?’
‘There isn’t anybody else. Not in Potherthwaite. Lots of people could do some of it, but nobody could do all of it, except me. I’ve heard about that idea about painting the Baggit Estate – cool, great, that’ll be fine, anyone can do that, same with the Sculpture Trail – but the shopfronts, they’re, like, in my head, so how can they be in anybody else’s heads as well? It’s as if Picasso had said, “Sorry, I haven’t time to do Guernica, get somebody else.” Not that I’m, like, comparing me with Picasso.’
‘Good. I’m glad of that. So, Wimbledon, eh? Do you think you’ll miss Potherthwaite?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Do you … see much of …?’
‘Lucy?’
‘Yes. I remember that day when you went off after her. You looked so good together.’
Ben looked very uncomfortable, very young, very vulnerable.
‘Yeah. Didn’t work out.’
‘Oh dear. That’s a shame.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, it was.’
‘I really thought you two might—’
‘I don’t want to talk about it any more, Mrs Mottram.’
Ben’s use of the words ‘Mrs Mottram’ hit Sally like a sack of coal. In that moment she knew a terrible thing. She wished Ben was her son, not Sam.
Ben was right about one thing. Sally hunted for a replacement to do the shopfronts. There wasn’t anybody. And she realized something else. The town was in transition, but so were the love lives of the people in it. We have seen the blow suffered by Linda Oughtibridge. We have seen the Revd Dominic Otley going at least halfway to conquering his yearnings for Sally. We have also heard, from none other than the man himself, that Matt Winkle’s marriage was not going terribly well. Sally had now learnt that things had gone from bad to worse. He had been having a burgeoning affair with Jade Hunningbrooke, manageress of ‘Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow’. Jade was thin and tall, with almost no bust, but she had a voracious mouth, mischievous eyes and legs that went on for ever. One evening, slightly the worse for wear on drink and drugs, he had told her that his wife Nicola was a very sound sleeper, and they had entered upon a little bet for no less than £20. She would win if she could throw an object at Matt’s bedroom window, waking him but not Nicola. The following evening, even more the worse for drink and drugs, she had lobbed a nectarine very gently at the Winkles’ bedroom window. The window had shattered. The nectarine had been as hard as a new cricket ball. It hadn’t helped when she had told Matt that she had bought it, advertised as ‘Juicy and ready to eat’, at his supermarket. Nicola had run out of the house, screaming. Jade had said, ‘Come on, Matt, there’s something here that really is juicy and ready to eat.’ Matt had not appreciated the humour at that moment. Jade had been, rather like the name of her business, here today and gone tomorrow, but so had Nicola, and, in his more sober moments, Matt was devastated.
Who does this leave among our new friends? Harry and Jill. Marigold and Conrad. Ellie. And of course Sally herself. Were their lives in transition too?
Sally, post-Conrad, had given up on all thoughts of transition for herself. All her energies were to be devoted to the Transition of Potherthwaite.
Ellie’s life could hardly be said to be in transition. There was no change in her situation, by definition. She was stuck in the front room of number 6 Cadwallader Road. Yet in a way she was in the biggest transition of all. When she could walk again, as she would if she could stick to her new regime, her life would be utterly transformed.
Harry and Jill had suddenly found themselves bereaved within a matter of days. The whole town knew that they had brought Harry’s yawl home together. The whole town knew that they had been on a painting course in Montepulciano together. The whole town assumed that they would now feel free to go to bed together. The facts that in truth Harry’s only lapse had been the secret one of having had to cope with and defeat a very healthy erection in the corridor of their hotel in Montepulciano after a day in the sun and humiliation from the principles of perspective, while Olive and Arnold had gone to bed together in the cul-de-sac without even a pretence of resistance, were not known to anybody except Harry. Even Jill didn’t know.
Each’s garden gave access to the other’s. It was a situation to dream of. And why should they not go to bed together, when everybody in the town except themselves knew that they were? Well, they didn’t. They were inhibited by the very obviousness of the situation, by the freedom of opportunity, by the apparent inevitability of the action. And they were inhibited even more by their love for their dead spouses. Jill missed Arnold’s lovable pomposity, which had not seemed truly lovable until he died. All the obsessive little rituals of the writer, and particularly of the untalented writer, were suddenly endearing. Harry missed Olive’s cooking and the inexhaustible opportunities for criticism that it afforded. He missed her social awkwardness, and all the fidgety, jittery movements of her tense, worried body.
Harry thought that Jill must be expecting him to pounce, shower her with passionate kisses, remove her summer dress and kiss those smooth, bare, burnished legs that no woman in her seventies had a right to have, and that very few men in their seventies would be able to resist.
Jill thought that Harry must be waiting for her to tease him, to tempt him, to seduce him with a thousand little subtleties.
They played Scrabble four times a week, twice in his house, twice in hers. H
e beat her more than she beat him, which embarrassed her in her role as a writer’s widow. At the end of the evenings they kissed each other on both cheeks. Once a week they went to the Weavers’ Arms together. On the other two evenings they sat at home on their own and watched programmes they had recorded. Harry watched sport and series about serial killers. Jill watched series about serial killers and cookery and travel programmes. They no longer went away together. The longest trips they made together were to the canal, to help with the slow, painful clearance of the silt, the removal of rusted bicycles and shining, indestructible old lavatory bowls; disintegrating condoms and Tampaxes; the carcasses of poisoned rabbits, badgers and fish; a statue of an owl; a child’s hand; and a great mass of sodden paper which Inspector Pellet identified as being, mysteriously, thirty-three copies of the same volume of the Macropaedia Britannica, the volume that went from ‘Excretion’ to ‘Geometry’.
Conrad introduced Marigold to the rather regimented charms of the Shoulder of Mutton and took her back to the classier, more individual attractions of the Drovers’ Arms, where the bar stools swivelled so easily. They went, with a party of his friends from flood control and their spouses, to the Chinese restaurant. They talked about sex, food, drink, sex, flood control and sex. Marigold was a little concerned to hear that Potherthwaite was due a major flood. She was even more concerned to notice how deftly Conrad changed the subject at this point. A huge amount of food swivelled on the lazy Susan, and a lot of seriously indifferent wine was drunk. As they got into their car, she commented that it was not encouraging that the most senior of all the flood controllers had seemed utterly incapable of controlling the flood of his conversation. Conrad laughed, said how wonderful it was to be with a woman who was both beautiful and witty, and, gently, with perfect timing, just as he said ‘beautiful and witty’, placed his left hand very gently on her beautiful, witty right thigh. She let it stay there for a moment, then gently removed it, but she squeezed it very slightly as she did so. Her heart was racing. She had known that she couldn’t just accept dinners for ever. She had known that the moment would come when she would have to brace herself for the possibility of another commitment to a man. She had known that there were only two explanations for the slow pace of his seduction. Either he didn’t want her enough, or he wanted her so much that he couldn’t let impetuosity frighten her. If it was the latter, he was doing too good a job.
‘Come back to “The Larches” for a nightcap,’ he said. ‘See what I’ve done with Sally’s old place.’
She tried to speak, couldn’t find the air, swallowed desperately, only just stifling what would have been one of the worst-timed burps in the history of romance. She wished she hadn’t drunk so much.
‘Only a nightcap,’ said Marigold.
‘Of course.’
Marigold didn’t like what he’d done to the house, or rather, what he hadn’t done. He’d had nearly a year, but he seemed to have just plonked his furniture down. Sally’s sitting room had become Conrad’s lounge. Most of Sally’s furniture had gone, replaced by a bulky three-piece suite, an elderly Lloyd Loom chair and an inappropriately elegant Pembroke table. On the table were two mounted photographs, one of a much younger Conrad receiving a medal from an elderly man, and one of an older but still young Conrad in full morning dress beside his rather short, slightly plump, toothily smiling wife Magda, who looked quite attractive despite these defects, but not as attractive as Marigold. There were no decorations, no flowers, no paintings on the walls, just ghostly spaces where Sally’s paintings had once been. It was a room waiting for a woman. Was she that woman?
His choice of drinks lacked anything unusual. Wine, beer, whisky, gin, vodka. She opted for a vodka and tonic. Wine would have been safer, but the wine in the Chinese restaurant had not put her in the mood for more. It had left a gentle but dangerous burn of acid in her throat.
As she waited for him to return with her drink, her mind raced. Would the vodka be of seducer’s strength? Why had he not produced any friends from his old life? It was good news that his wife hadn’t been as pretty as her, but why hadn’t she? Was he not as good a catch as she had thought? Why were there no pictures? She had vowed never to marry again, never to trust a man again, never to be hurt again. What was she doing here?
The vodka was reassuringly, disappointingly weak. He walked towards a cavernous settee; she veered off to sit in an equally bulky chair. It was a suite for giants. The room felt cold, although the evening was reasonably warm. She shivered slightly and he put the flame-effect fire on with his remote control. The brief reference to Potherthwaite’s floods was nagging at her, and it wasn’t helping her to feel romantic. A few minutes ago she had been worrying that they might go too fast. Now she was worrying that they might not go at all. The evening was dying, and that definitely wasn’t in the plan. She wished that she was sitting with him on the settee, so that she could just touch him. But to move over to join him would be too obvious a tactic.
He offered her another drink and she felt that to refuse would be to risk never being invited again. It was as if the whole potential relationship was sliding away. She accepted, came with him to the kitchen to watch him make it, sat beside him on the settee on their return. She asked him questions about his wife. He said that Magda had never had a day’s illness before the cancer struck. She used this moment to put her arm round him. They sat with their arms round each other, but almost motionless. She longed for the same thing as she dreaded, which was for him to kiss her fiercely. He didn’t. She yawned theatrically.
‘I should be going,’ she said.
She stood up rather abruptly.
He kissed her, but not fiercely.
‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I’m not over the limit.’
He drove her home. She was glad the evening was over, but she longed to see him again. That was ridiculous. This wasn’t going to work.
He switched the engine off.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘No, thank you,’ she said.
‘I’m inspecting the town’s flood-relief plans tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘Sally’s going to be there.’
‘Ah.’
Marigold was quite pleased with her ‘ah’. She felt that it had been completely devoid of meaning.
‘I think it would be rather nice if you were there,’ he said. ‘After all …’
He stopped. She realized that she had no idea how he would have continued, if he hadn’t stopped. ‘After all, you’re really her second-in-command, aren’t you?’ ‘After all, if I’m there alone with Sally people will talk.’ ‘After all, I’m hoping that before too long you’re going to be my wife.’
It had been an evening half cool, half warm, which had ended in a room with no decorations or charm, with unimaginative, careful, rather weak alcoholic drinks and a complete absence of nibbles. It had been a meeting between a woman who was frightened of the man going too quickly and frightened of him going too slowly, and a man who seemed so conscious of the significance of his movements that he didn’t make any real movements at all. Had it been a good evening? Had it been a bad evening? Had it been a successful evening? Would there be another evening? If so, would it go better or would it go worse?
She had no idea.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Flood control
Next day, she met Sally and Conrad as arranged. Conrad was accompanied by a senior colleague, Stanley Willink, a tall and grizzled man with a hooked nose and penetrating eyes.
A persistent rain was falling, and all four carried golf umbrellas. They walked up the main road towards the head of the valley. As they walked, Marigold referred to the conversation of the previous evening, in the Chinese restaurant. She asked for more information about the Potherthwaite floods. Conrad and Stanley exchanged a look, then Stanley spoke.
‘There have been occasional devastating floods in Potherthwaite throughout known history,’ said Stanley. ‘Strangely, the last three have occurred at intervals o
f thirty-five years.’
They were passing the allotments now. The allotments were deserted on this grey, inhospitable morning. Under Sally’s inspiration, would they one day soon be brought back to teeming life?
‘And how long ago was the last flood?’ Marigold asked.
Conrad and Stanley exchanged another look. Stanley’s look indicated that he felt that Conrad should answer this question.
‘Thirty-four years,’ said Conrad.
They were walking past the supermarket and its attendant car parks.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ said Stanley Willink. ‘There can be no significance to the thirty-five-year gaps. Weather doesn’t work like that. In the nineteenth century, the gaps between floods were forty-two years, eleven years and twenty-eight years.’ He paused. ‘Nevertheless,’ he added.
‘Precisely,’ said Conrad.
They had reached the head of the valley. They stood in silence for a moment, looking at the river. Here the Pother came hurling itself thunderously down off the hills, spray flying, foam leaping, as the young stream learnt to play, found energy, surged ecstatically from rock to rock, became aggressive, and flung itself with angry spoilt impotence against the long wall of the supermarket car park. Its failure to destroy this wall seemed to sober it, teach it something of the bitterness of life. It became a little calmer, a little slower, a little wiser. At the moment the water here was barely halfway up the banks. On went the river, past the back of the allotments, almost straight now, slightly dull in truth. Now, suddenly middle-aged, it would flow, slowly, serenely, through the western outskirts of the town. Now it would set its course to the east-north-east, away from the southern range of moors. Beyond its right bank a road of houses, scheduled for demolition, separated it from the end of the Potherthwaite Arm of the Rackstraw and Sladfield Canal. Down in the town it would seem to pose no threat. Here, at the foot of the hills, they could all sense its potential power.
‘Nevertheless,’ said Stanley, ‘we are taking no chances. In flood-control circles our friend Conrad here has long been marked out as something rather special.’