Titmuss Regained

by John Mortimer

  The incident of the kiss was curiously isolated. When it was done they left the bedroom and continued their tour of inspection. They walked for a while in the overgrown and neglected garden and then drove into Rapstone village. Leslie, now acting as a tour guide of his past life, showed Jenny the church, starting with his father’s grave, and then took her inside, where they found the Reverend Kevin Bulstrode pinning up notices about a vigil for Aids Week.

  ‘Mr Titmuss! This is an honour.’ Although he preached weekly sermons about the lack of compassion and true Christian principle of the government, Kev the Rev. became effusively respectful to the Cabinet Minister. His eyes sparkled and he blushed like a young girl in the unnerving presence of a pop star. ‘I see your mother, of course, and she tells me all about your doings. We’re very proud of you in Rapstone.’

  ‘This is Mrs Sidonia. She’s thinking of taking a place in the country.’

  ‘Am I?’ Jenny smiled, but the Rev. Kev ignored her, having eyes for Leslie alone. ‘Terribly expensive here now, of course. For the smallest two-up, two-down. That is, unless you’re like me and work for the C. of E. Then you get a tied cottage.’

  ‘You mean that draughty great Rectory, falling to pieces?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. In the Church we have to accept draughts like the Thirty-nine Articles.’

  ‘Your organization needs to slim down. Sell the Rectory to the highest bidder and put you in a decent bungalow. With double-glazing. I used to cut nettles for the old Rector,’ Leslie told Jenny. ‘Sixpence a day and a glass of ginger-beer. The Reverend Simcox was a Socialist. You’re not a Socialist, are you, Rector?’

  ‘Only’ – Kev the Rev. blushed more deeply, horribly torn between good manners and his obligation to the truth – ‘in so far as Our Lord was a Socialist.’

  ‘How far was that? Paid-up member of the Nazareth Labour Party, was He?’

  Now Jenny was torn. She thought what Leslie had said quite funny, but she hoped the Reverend Kevin wasn’t being bullied. She gave him one of her most glittering smiles and said, ‘It’s so lovely round here. Quite extraordinary.’

  ‘Well, we think so. And we hope it’ll stay that way. There have been rumours –’

  ‘Never believe rumours,’ Leslie advised him, ‘until you hear them officially denied. By the way, Bulstrode. I wanted to thank you for what you did for my ex-mother-in-law. At the end. Apparently it was well beyond the call of duty.’

  ‘I did what I took to be my pastoral job. She wasn’t an entirely easy woman to visit.’

  ‘She was impossible.’ Leslie spoke with feeling. ‘She must have been hell when she was doing anything as common as dying. You did very well. And I’m not going to forget it.’

  What did he mean? As a member of the Cabinet, Leslie Titmuss obviously had considerable influence. Might it be Rural Dean? For a heady moment the vision of a mitre swam before Kevin’s eyes. He accompanied his visitors down to the lychgate and saw them into their car, bowing like an old-fashioned Hartscombe shopkeeper who has been patronized by royalty.

  They drove out of Rapstone into the next village. Jenny saw that it was in every way uglier and looked more down at heel than the cluster of old brick and flint cottages and half-timbered houses they had left. ‘This is Skurfield,’ Leslie told her. ‘My village. That’s ours – “The Spruces”.’

  ‘The birthplace?’ she asked, and he didn’t laugh. The small house, as neatly kept as his father’s grave, was where his mother lived.

  ‘Don’t you want to call on her?’ she asked politely.

  ‘Another time, perhaps.’

  ‘She’ll be upset, won’t she, if she finds you’ve been down here without calling?’

  ‘If you don’t mind, then.’ He looked grateful.

  They rang a bell which chimed and went into a strong smell of furniture polish and an array of gleaming china ornaments. Jenny was surprised at how pretty the old woman was, and how pleased she seemed to be to see her. They stayed only long enough for a cup of tea to be made and drunk. Jenny admired the house and Leslie’s mother said, ‘I told my son, I don’t want him to move me from here. Not ever.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Leslie laughed. ‘I’ve given up that idea.’

  When they left, Elsie Titmuss said to Jenny, ‘I hope you’re not the sort to go on demonstrations?’

  ‘Not really,’ Jenny smiled.

  ‘And I hope to see you back in my house, dear. I really hope so.’

  After that they drove back to London. When he dropped her at her flat Leslie said, ‘See you next week,’ and she said, ‘Yes.’ They met regularly but they didn’t sleep together, nor did he kiss her seriously again for a long time. This puzzled her. She knew that there was about to be a great change in her life and she was eager to begin it.

  ‘What on earth,’ Sue Bramble said, ‘can you possibly see in him?’

  ‘He’s like no one else.’

  ‘Thank goodness.’

  ‘And he knows exactly what he wants. That’s quite an unusual thing to know.’

  ‘What he wants is you, undoubtedly.’

  ‘He comes from the country.’ Jenny ignored Sue’s remark. ‘A most beautiful place. I think he really loves it there.’

  ‘You mean, he’s just a local yokel at heart?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Jenny. The man’s a Cabinet Minister. In the government. He’s always on the television. You don’t get there with a straw in your mouth and a few rustic sayings, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything at all about Cabinet Ministers.’

  ‘Just watch him on the box. Especially when he’s trying to be terribly sincere. Then you can tell how devious he is. And his suits! He looks like a man with his foot in the door who’s trying to sell you encyclopaedias.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s in the least bit fair.’

  ‘Jenny Sidonia,’ her friend told her, ‘it was a bad day when you decided to be fair to Leslie Titmuss.’

  Whether or not Leslie was as devious as Sue Bramble said, he hadn’t told Jenny the whole truth about his purchase of Rapstone Manor. Certainly he had had several conversations with the manager of the caring West Country Bank in Hartscombe and it was true that they had discussed a deal. He had waited, however, until he had shown Jenny the house before he decided to buy. The day after their journey into the country he made his final offer. Then he strolled, in his shirt sleeves, into the office of his Minister of State.

  ‘Ken,’ he said. ‘I could do with a word with you in private.’

  Joyce gathered up some papers and left the room, confident that she would soon share in any secret the Secretary of State had to offer.

  ‘Are you trying to be funny?’ Leslie asked when the two men were alone.

  Ken, also wearing a striped shirt, braces and no jacket, as was the working custom at H.E.A.P., looked up innocently from his desk. In his heart was the great hope that he had got his superior rattled.

  ‘Funny about what exactly?’

  ‘About the proposed Rapstone Valley development.’

  So he knew. Ken thought that Leslie would find out sooner rather than later. ‘Oh, that. Well. I didn’t want to trouble you at this stage.’

  ‘Trouble me, Ken. That’s what I was put here for. And if you don’t trouble me, my lad, I’m quite likely to trouble you.’

  ‘It’s very early days. I just happened to hear something in confidence.’

  ‘From Kempenflatt and his construction company? When you were at the opera together?’

  ‘Something like that. Yes.’

  ‘In future, when you hear something in confidence, Ken, you share it with me. Otherwise I might lose confidence in you. There’s a bit of a minor reshuffle in the wind, you know.’

  He’s threatening me, Ken thought. He really is rattled. ‘I didn’t think you’d be interested in every little development scheme that just might be applied for.’

  ‘Or did you think I’d be particularly intereste
d in this one? Did you decide not to tell me until it was all nicely sewn up?’

  ‘I couldn’t do that, could I? The final decision will be entirely up to you, of course.’

  ‘Of course. I think, Ken, that’s something you should bear in mind. That’s my advice to you, my lad.’

  ‘But Fallowfield Country Town, if it ever happens, is something I thought would be absolutely in line with your present thinking.’

  ‘Is that your view of the matter?’

  ‘It’s yours, isn’t it? You put it so well in that smashing speech you made at the U.C.D.A. dinner. The one about the whingers and belly-achers who don’t want to share England’s green and pleasant land with any upwardly mobile young couple who can save up enough to buy a house. You remember, when you talked about “not in our back gardens”?’

  ‘I didn’t realize’ – Leslie sat down, half-despairing, half-amused, in the armchair from which Ken Cracken habitually held forth to particularly privileged journalists – ‘that I’d got a Minister of State who was entirely wet behind the ears. Politically speaking.’

  Politically speaking, Ken thought to himself, I think I’m doing rather well.

  ‘What I say to one pressure group or another, Ken’ – Leslie spoke quietly, patiently, as though instructing a child – ‘doesn’t pre-judge any decision I may have to make. At the end of the day. The whingers and belly-achers, as you called them –’

  ‘As you called them.’ Ken was confident enough of his own position to interrupt.

  ‘I may call a good many people, including you, all sorts of names from time to time. But at least have the sense to remember that the whingers and belly-achers have votes. The green welly brigade is going to support us at the next election, unless we push them too bloody far.’

  ‘The construction industry’s likely to vote for us too.’

  ‘Exactly. Maybe they’ve got enough to be grateful for already. They don’t need any more favours. And it’s not just the green wellies, Ken. It’s not just the lot with converted barns you mix with at Glyndebourne Opera House or wherever you choose to spend your leisure hours. There are millions of little people, perfectly decent people in small businesses, up and down the country, who are deeply concerned about the environment.’

  ‘You mean the Save the Whale nutters?’ Cracken did his best to sound sceptical.

  ‘Have you got something against whales, Ken?’

  ‘Well, not personally.’

  ‘Well, you’d better not knock them. They may not be very much use to anyone, swimming about the ocean and suckling their young, or whatever it is they do. They may not add much to our gross national product. But don’t knock them, lad! There are plenty of votes in whales. People find them sympathetic. Just like they worry about rain forests and the ozone layer. I hope you’re not going to call good folk who’re concerned about the ozone layer belly-achers, are you, Ken?’

  ‘Well, no, of course not,’ said the Minister of State, who had been tempted to do so.

  ‘In the same way there are plenty of people, decent, small people, who are concerned about our beautiful English countryside. They’re not snobs, Ken. They’re not down-at-heel country gents with stately homes. They’re folk who were born there. Take my mother, for instance.’

  I don’t believe this, Ken thought, amazed at the effect he was having on the head of his department. He’s going to go on television and start talking about his mother.

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘Well, her vote is just as good as Christopher Kempenflatt’s, I should think.’

  ‘Just as good,’ Ken conceded.

  ‘Concern for the environment’ – the Secretary of State stood up, as he reached his peroration; he was no longer rebuking a Junior Minister but making a public pronouncement – ‘is vitally important. What we are doing to this world of ours. Can we keep the place free of litter and pollution? That’s the great political question of our time. And remember this, Ken. It’s a safe political question. It’s got damn all to do with socialism or public ownership, or the so-called welfare state or the politics of envy, as we knew them in the Winter of Discontent and the bad, sad old days of Harold Wilson, who didn’t give a fart about whales, from all that I can remember. It’s everyone’s concern, from the chairman of the building society to the girl in the local hairdresser’s who’s prepared to give up aerosol sprays for the sake of her convictions. It’s the way we can appeal to the whole country, including –’

  ‘Including your mother?’

  ‘I think you’ve got the message.’ Leslie gave his subordinate an extra-long stare and then moved slowly to the door. ‘Keep me informed on the Rapstone development, will you? Every inch of the way.’

  When Joyce returned to the room she found Ken alone and barely able to contain his mirth. ‘It’s Leslie Titmuss,’ he told her. ‘He’s gone green!’

  Tomorrow

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.

  ‘The Second Coming’

  W. B. Yeats

  Chapter Nine

  Kempenflatts, the builders, opened their attack on the Rapstone Valley, not with a salvo of bulldozers and a bombardment by concrete-mixer, but with a delicately understated exhibition which the public was graciously begged to attend in Hartscombe Town Hall. To the piped music of Purcell and Edward Elgar the citizens could see an artist’s impressions of Fallowfield Country Town which made it look, not a blot, but a thing of beauty on the landscape. Fallowfield, it seemed, would be a tastefully conceived Camelot with pedestrian precincts and parking facilities, an up-to-date version of the lost Atlantis which had that mythical city’s talent for disappearing tactfully from view. Just as Atlantis dived beneath the waves, Fallowfield Country Town was, it seemed, quite capable of vanishing between folds in the hills and behind newly planted municipal coppices, so that it would not, God forbid it ever should, give the slightest offence to the critical eye of the most dedicated rural conservationist.

  So the watercolour paintings in the Town Hall showed ponies trotting, badgers building, birds nesting and fox cubs sporting in the foreground and, somewhere in the leafy distance, a vague impression of rose-red desirable homes, an occasional elegant church spire or a slimmed-down municipal clock-tower peeped shyly over the brow of some well-positioned hill. Nothing, it was stressed in the captions to the surrounding photographs, would be lost by the proposed development. Rapstone Nature Area, and here Hector Bolitho Jones was shown bottle-feeding a baby lamb on his patch of ancient chalk downland, would be kept intact and carefully preserved as a public park for the delight of the fortunate citizens of Fallowfield. The public-spirited Kempenflatt was, out of the kindness of his heart, prepared to add many facilities to the Nature Area, including a children’s play area, hand-rails for senior citizens who wished to climb the steep path to the woodlands, and the free supply of Walkmans to visitors so that they might stroll through an area of unspoiled countryside with rustic information plugged into their ears.

  More photographs showed the enhanced quality of life in other Kempenflatt developments. There were carefully selected views of children laughing in school playgrounds, old people feeding ducks by municipal ponds and string quartets performing in shopping piazzas. Over this part of the exhibition ran the modest legend HOW KEMPENFLATTS BUILT JERUSALEM IN ENGLAND’S GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND.

  The local inhabitants didn’t, at first, react strongly to this exercise in gentle persuasion. The exhibition was mainly attended by old people who were not allowed to return to their bed and breakfast accommodation until nightfall, and children seeking free gifts of Genuine Old Rapstone Country Mint Humbugs and I LOVE FALLOWFIELD T-shirts to add to their collections. They showed little interest in the photographs and drawings on display and were unimpressed by the news that an application was in hand to twin the as yet non-existent Fallowfield with Siena.

  An underground movement opposed to the Kempenflatt occupation was soon t
o find its voice, however, and freedom fighters were to hear a somewhat muted call to arms. The centre of the resistance was, at first and appropriately enough, centred on an isolated spot above the Rapstone Valley. There was a field, so high that it was sometimes obscured in low clouds, which on bright days commanded a view of no less than three counties. It should have been in itself an area of great natural beauty. To be honest, it wasn’t. To be brutally honest, it bore a close resemblance to those make-believe shantytowns which privileged American students erect on their campuses as a protest against the intolerable conditions in Soweto.

  There was a rickety fence around the field and two posts on each side of the gateway which supported, except on the frequent occasions when it blew down in the high winds sweeping the area, the ranch-style notice CURDLES RABBIT HACIENDA: ANGORAS OUR SPECIALITY – ALSO BRED FOR YOUR TABLE DELIGHT. Beneath it, in smaller letters, was the invitation Come in and Take Your Pick of Rapstone Free-Range Lapin Dinners – Prepared for Your Freezer in Handy Packs. Behind the fence, in a number of home-made buildings of various shapes and sizes, assembled from scraps of available corrugated-iron, hardboard, tea-chests, sheets of asbestos and the bodies of defunct pick-up trucks, the rabbits, destined to become Tasty Segments or Cuddly Sweaters, bred with enormous rapidity and little assistance. These buildings were also liable to collapse like card houses in the wind, sending the liberated occupants bounding off to ravage the carefully tended gardens of the neighbourhood. Further into the field, and under the shelter of the trees, three huge mobile homes, sunk up to their axles in foul weather, housed the members of the Curdle family who had been as fecund as their charges. These homes, which also served as the hacienda’s offices, were connected by an elaborate system of outdoor wiring to a huge generator, for the Curdles went without no modern aid to living and were lavishly supplied with coffin-sized freezers, calculators, video machines, cordless telephones, microwave cookers and even a small but powerful electric organ which none of them could play. A large dish, also sunk perilously into the mud, picked up a flickering supply of soft porn and children’s cartoons from satellites wandering above them in the heavens. Around these dwellings another shantytown provided sheds, workshops and an outside lavatory. Cropping the remains of the grass was a shaggy and under-exercised pony on which the Curdles offered to give riding lessons to anyone foolish enough to pay them for such a service.