Titmuss Regained

by John Mortimer

  Leslie had persuaded himself of the justice of his claim to the Fanner house many years before. He felt it was his because the family owed it to him. He had married their only daughter, who had not only been consistently unfaithful but indulged in political activities which were anathema to his party. The fact that he had married Charlotte Fanner because her father was chairman of the local Conservatives represented a debt which he had long since paid off. So he planned to acquire the house, when Grace Fanner died insolvent, from the deeply caring West Country Bank. But if he bought it, the question was, what should he do with it?

  His mother didn’t want it and his son, at any rate for the moment, seemed to regard the prospect of owning a large country house in an appalling state of disrepair as akin to a sentence of death. Then Leslie met Jenny Sidonia and thought that, although she might find the idea of life with him a doubtful prospect, life with him in a house which had impressed her, in a place she found beautiful, would prove a temptation she could not resist. So he decided to go ahead and buy the place. It was while the sale was going through that he picked up the information that Ken Cracken, his Minister of State, had been careful to keep from him, that there were plans afoot to submerge the Rapstone Valley in Fallowfield Country Town. He thought of the pointlessness of offering the girl he hoped to make his bride a charming and historic country house situated within hailing distance of the municipal Leisure Complex and the bus centre, bang in the middle of the pedestrian precinct. From that moment Leslie Titmuss became a secret underground member of S.O.V.

  Nipping in the bud such an expensively fertilized plant as Fallowfield presented him with a problem which even he felt was a challenge to his political skills. His speech to the construction industry had been a great success and he didn’t intend to retract a single word of it. However, as he had said to Ken Cracken, in the encounter that led Ken to the astonishing conclusion that his boss had gone green, free scope for market forces and healthy commercial development must be balanced against the claims of the environment, and there was, surely, more environment around the Rapstone Valley than almost anywhere else in the British Isles. Moreover, there was another powerful reason against the erection of Fallowfield Country Town. Christopher Kempenflatt stood to make an extraordinarily large sum of money out of it and Kempenflatt, as the Secretary of State would remember until the day he died, had publicly humiliated Leslie Titmuss at the Young Conservative dinner dance.

  The question was how to prevent Fallowfield without the charge that he was doing it to provide a quiet and privileged home for his new family. The answer was, Leslie thought, perfectly simple. There would be a free and independent public inquiry, and the function of a free and independent public inquiry was, the Secretary of State had no doubt, to reflect his preferably unstated wishes. When the inquiry had reported that, after careful deliberation and having heard all sides, the Rapstone Valley was not, after all, a suitable site for urban development, he would have no alternative but to accept its recommendations. There might be a few snide comments in some discontented newspapers, jokes about his back garden, but his reputation would merely grow greener and thereby more attractive. Jenny and he, together with the deer and badgers and the Duke of Burgundy’s fritillary butterfly, could enjoy the valley unmolested, and the best-laid schemes of Kempenflatts the builders would come to nothing.

  It was a time for weddings in Rapstone. Dot Curdle, using her full authority as head and undisputed ruler of the Curdle family, ordered her daughter, Evie, to take Dr Simcox’s unpalatable medicine, somewhat hastily prescribed, and ‘have a go’ at marriage guidance. It was a command that Evie felt she had to obey, so she presented herself, wearing an extremely sullen expression, at the office under the Town Hall in which the marriage guidance lady appeared once a week to give counsel. With Evie was her fiancé, Len Bigwell, a ginger-haired, plump and perpetually smiling young man who loved her tenderly and was deeply moved by her heroic efforts to adjust herself to the unpalatable business of loving him.

  ‘Sit down, both of you, and do just relax.’ Mrs Tippett, the marriage counsellor, was a substantial, dark-haired woman with tragic eyes who wore a knitted suit, boots and numerous bangles. Evie and Len sat, perched nervously on the edge of their chairs. ‘Sex,’ Mrs Tippett opened briskly, ‘is really nothing to be afraid of, is it?’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Evie looked profoundly unconvinced. ‘I don’t know so much.’

  ‘Now then, Miss Curdle.’ Mrs Tippett’s voice became softer, more cajoling. ‘I’m sure you’re very much in love with your Les.’

  ‘No.’ Evie’s small mouth shut tight as a mousetrap.

  ‘You mean, you don’t love Les?’

  ‘No.’ Evie’s mouth was only opened wide enough to admit the smallest morsel of cheese and then snapped shut again.

  ‘And yet’ – the counsellor’s eyes moved imploringly towards heaven – ‘you’re going to become his wife.’

  ‘No.’ Evie felt she was winning.

  ‘Oh dear. Has something gone rather wrong? A lovers’ tiff sort of thing? This is marriage guidance, you know. That’s what we’re here to help you with. Now tell me, dear. Why aren’t you going to marry Les?’

  ‘Because I don’t know no Les.’ Evie feared that she had let herself down and said too much.

  There was a moment of real panic in the counsellor’s large eyes. Seldom or never had she given marriage guidance to a couple who were not only not married but didn’t even know each other. And then the smiling man broke his silence to say, ‘I’m Len. Len Bigwell.’ ‘Oh dear. Silly me!’ Mrs Tippett laughed musically and her bangles rattled an accompaniment. ‘Of course you are. Sorry, Miss Curdle. I’m sure you’re very much in love with your chap, Len.’

  Evie sat with her mouth shut, giving no more away.

  ‘Len loves you. I’m sure about that. Don’t you, Len?’

  ‘No problem,’ Len assured her. ‘Never has been.’ He looked at his fiancée and blinked away tears, apparently of happiness.

  ‘And you love Len, I’m sure. Don’t you love Len, Miss Curdle? And may I call you Evie?’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘You don’t care for Len. Really?’

  ‘I don’t care if you calls me Evie.’

  The bangles jingled again as the counsellor looked at her watch; so far the interview seemed to be getting nowhere. ‘You do want Len to be happy, Evie, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not worried.’ Evie Curdle looked longingly at the door.

  ‘What?’ The counsellor looked deeply concerned.

  ‘She’s honestly not worried,’ Len explained, still smiling proudly, ‘if I’m happy or not. That’s what she’s trying to tell you.’

  ‘That’s Len’s business, isn’t it? If he’s happy.’ Evie agreed so far with her fiancé.

  ‘Your business too, Evie. When you’re married to him. And if you make Len happy, then perhaps you’ll make yourself happy too.’

  ‘Not by doing it I won’t.’

  ‘Evie. Can I ask you this? Have you ever tried?’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘I have,’ Len admitted proudly. ‘On numerous occasions.’

  ‘Well … how did Evie react?’ Mrs Tippett clearly felt as though she were getting somewhere at last.

  ‘Told me to get lost.’ Len still looked admiringly at his future bride.

  ‘But Evie. Don’t you think Len loves you?’ Mrs Tippett seemed increasingly pained.

  ‘He says he does.’

  ‘And you believe him?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Well, then …’

  ‘If he loves me he can do without it. Loving me ought to be quite enough for him. Anyway, that’s what I reckon.’

  ‘Evie.’ The counsellor got up and paced the room, her arms crossed on her bosom, her military-style boots clicking on the linoleum. ‘Evie, my dear …’ She was about to embark on an inquiry which she knew might prove long and painful and she feared it might be difficult to obtain a str
eam of recollection from a client who was addicted to monosyllables. ‘I wonder if we could go on a little journey together. Into your past. Now, I want you to be a hundred per cent honest about this. Is there anything in your childhood, anything at all, which might account for your distaste for … the physical side of married life?’

  ‘Yes.’ Evie answered immediately and the counsellor felt she had been pushing at a door which opened far too quickly and overbalanced her.

  ‘Reeaally? How … how interesting! Do you feel you might be able to tell me?’

  ‘I was brought up with a lot of bloody rabbits.’

  ‘Rabbits?’ The counsellor was slow to take in the relevance of the answer.

  ‘Angoras and eaters. And I works on her family’s rabbit hacienda with Evie. We are fellow workers,’ Len explained.

  ‘The angoras is the worst,’ Evie told her counsellor with disgust. ‘Always at it.’

  ‘I see. Yes, of course. I do see.’ Mrs Tippett sat down and consulted her watch, causing another jangle of jewellery. ‘I think we must have a long chat about this. A real heart-to-hearter. Do you think you’d be able to come regularly on Thursdays? And it would be a terrific help if Les, I mean Len, would come with you.’

  ‘You mean for marriage guidance?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘How long’d we have to keep coming?’ Len was prepared for anything.

  ‘Until we’ve helped you sort out your little problem.’

  ‘You mean, until I give him sex?’

  ‘Well, I suppose you could put it like that. Yes.’

  Evie thought it over. ‘If I do it once a week, I won’t have to come?’

  ‘Well, no. I’m sure Len thinks that reasonable. In view of your rather unusual upbringing. Wouldn’t you, Len?’

  ‘I’d settle for that.’ Len was his usual cheerful self. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Then it’s either sex or marriage guidance?’ Evie looked at the door again.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t put it exactly like that.’

  ‘I’ll do the sex,’ Evie said with the grim air of a youthful offender opting for a short, sharp shock rather than a long period on probation. ‘I’d rather do that than come here again.’ And then she made for the door with Len hurrying eagerly after her.

  Not long afterwards and influenced by her intense dislike of marriage guidance, Evie and Len made love in a darkened caravan on the rabbit farm. The effect on her was not noticeable, but Len became a changed man. He smiled less but his self-confidence increased hugely. He worked out new ideas for packaging the freezer joints and toured the countryside looking for more retail outlets. ‘Health food is the name of the game nowadays,’ he told Dot Curdle with his new-found enthusiasm. ‘We’ve got to sell rabbit as nature’s greatest health food. Country-fed rabbit. A genuine green dinner.’

  ‘Green?’ Dot was doubtful. ‘Only if it’s gone off.’

  ‘And I bet rabbit cures a lot of illness.’

  ‘Does wonders for your love life, anyway.’ Dot laughed. ‘You found that, didn’t you, Evie?’

  ‘Please, Mum. Don’t be disgusting!’

  All the same, Evie admired the new, entrepreneurial Len Bigwell and, by the time they walked down the aisle of Rapstone Church together, she felt able to tolerate his love-making, which was already having such a beneficial effect on the family business. As for Len, he was so overcome with emotion brought on by the day, the organ music, the smell of orange blossom and Evie’s new compliance that he looked at his bride through another blur of devoted tears. Fred, who had been invited to attend the ceremony, wondered at the success of Mrs Tippett’s marriage guidance as an aphrodisiac in which he had not, up to then, had a great deal of faith.

  A few weeks later he was back in the same church for another wedding, that of the Right Honourable Leslie Titmuss, MP and Jenny, only daughter of Edward and Joanna Banks. Leslie, who had had the invitations printed, had not included the name Sidonia on them.

  As he sat in the church, crowded with the notable inhabitants of Rapstone and the surrounding countryside, Fred wondered why he had been invited and why he had accepted the invitation. More years ago than he cared to remember Leslie had asked him to be his best man when he married Charlotte Fanner, and Fred, a young medical student with a love affair in tatters, had welcomed an afternoon away from the study of the central nervous system. Over the years they had grown so apart that they now seemed like strangers from distant countries, brought up in alien cultures: the country doctor who despised politicians, and particularly politicians of the Titmuss variety, and the Secretary of State who found Dr Simcox’s retreat from the world of great issues and tough decisions into the safety of a country practice merely pathetic. So why had Fred come? Curiosity, he supposed, and – he thought how little, on the whole, he had changed since his student days – on an impulse to break up the monotonous routine of his life. As for why Leslie had asked him, the reason was obvious as soon as Jenny, crowned with flowers and smiling as though still amazed at what she was getting up to, entered the church on the arm of a conveniently tall cousin she hardly knew. He was standing in for her father who couldn’t get away from his considerable family in Oakwood, California. Leslie Titmuss clearly wanted to show her off and fill his few friends and many enemies with wonder and envy. Leslie had no doubt that Fred had patronized him from his childhood and had despised his ruthless pursuit of fame and fortune. And now, Leslie had wanted to say, what have you got for keeping your hands out of grubby politics? Nothing but the prospect of a lonely old age, whereas I am now standing in front of the altar, where your father once prayed in vain for the coming of a new Socialist Jerusalem, waiting for a slim and beautiful young woman to deliver herself to me, forsaking all others. This may not have been exactly how Leslie Titmuss would have put it, but Fred Simcox thought it was, and Fred was never able to attribute high motives to the man he looked on as a threat to England in general and to the Rapstone Valley in particular.

  It was all done with considerable dispatch. Kev the Rev. gave a short address in which he managed to mention ‘compassion’ four times, ‘values beyond the marketplace’ three times and ‘England’s green and pleasant land’ at least twice. He had nerved himself to give this homily, which he thought of as a daring attack on government policies, but Leslie sat smiling imperturbably and Jenny seemed lost in thoughts of her own. Then the organ played and the happy couple, together with Elsie Titmuss and Jenny’s mother, a flustered and larger edition of her daughter, who had arrived late and spent most of the service whispering loudly about the present she had bought and forgotten to bring, or forgotten to buy and therefore hadn’t brought, or meant to buy as soon as she got a moment, set off down the aisle. So Jennifer Sidonia, feeling that she had said goodbye to her name and so to much of her past, became Jennifer Titmuss.

  When they came out of the church and into the rain they were met by a political demonstration. It seemed, at first sight, to consist mainly of members of the Curdle family, with Evie prominent and showing all the joy and vitality she had lacked at her own wedding ceremony and waving a S.O.V. poster tacked on to part of a disused rabbit hutch. HANDS OFF OUR VALLEY, TITMUSS, other placards read, and IT’S YOUR BACK GARDEN TOO, LESLIE. Dot Curdle grasped in one fist a threatening placard reading DON’T LET THE BASTARDS CONCRETE OVER OUR FURRY FRIENDS, whilst the other opened to hurl a cloud of confetti at the newly wed Titmuss. She shouted, ‘God bless you, sir, and your lovely lady!’ Colonel Wilcox and his wife, who had refused an invitation to the church on grounds of conscience, stood to attention in their cotton hats, it now being officially summer, holding up the only insignia of the Ramblers’ Society they had been able to find readily, a cheerful drying-up cloth showing a well-marked footpath snaking across a green landscape. Mr and Mrs Vee were among the assorted demonstrators, having organized the occasion without reference to their Chairman, who now came out of the church and looked at them with considerable surprise. Dr Simcox, the Vees felt, was far too old-fashioned t
o take advantage of the magnificent photo-opportunities the Titmuss wedding would provide.

  ‘Not much of a demo, Fred. I was disappointed. Couldn’t your Friends of the Earth have done any better than that?’ Leslie Titmuss spoke with smiling belligerence. ‘I thought at least you’d have had a bit of manure thrown, or organized an attack with reaping hooks by outraged yokels in smocks. Bit of a damp squib, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Fred felt, as his champagne glass was refilled by an elderly waitress hired from the Hartscombe Rowing Club, that the least he could do was apologize. ‘I really didn’t know it was going to happen.’

  ‘But aren’t you Chairman of the Save Our Valley Society? That was certainly my information.’

  ‘Well, yes. I suppose I am.’ It was Fred’s way to smile at the pomposity of the title.

  ‘You mean you’re the Commander-in-Chief and the troops don’t tell you when they’re going to attack?’

  ‘Not on this occasion, no,’ Fred admitted.

  ‘I’d call that mutiny.’ Leslie Titmuss laughed. ‘I suppose you’d say it was democracy at work?’

  ‘I think they should have stayed away from your wedding.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mind in the least. I don’t mind anything now I’ve got Jenny.’ Leslie looked across to where his wife was talking to the Lord Lieutenant of the county with wonderfully simulated animation. ‘I’m going to make it work, you know. This time I’m honestly going to make it work.’ And he said it with such intensity that Fred was even more uncomfortable than he had been when he spotted Colonel and Mrs Wilcox holding up a tea-towel in the rain.