Titmuss Regained

by John Mortimer

  ‘The Psychoed’

  Hughes Mearns

  Chapter Fifteen

  At last the orchids and the foxes, the ancient beech woods and chalk downlands, the rare butterflies and the unusual snails were to be submitted to the processes of democracy, which would decide whether they should survive or be obliterated for ever. This was the judgement which Leslie Titmuss wanted to be pronounced by others in accordance with his secret and never-to-be-expressed wishes.

  The heart of Worsfield, the town hall built to resemble a gothic château, the railway station built to look like a cathedral, the old biscuit factory which was, in its way, more imposing than either, had been demolished. Now its centre was filled with toy-town architecture. Immensely tall office buildings, the colour of raw liver, embellished with blue-painted iron-work and plate-glass windows, looked as though some giant child had been let loose in the ruins with an infinite number of huge building bricks. Around these buildings the traffic swirled. Beneath the four-lane highways, in a warren of shopping malls, among boutiques and record stores and hamburger havens where the light of day never penetrated, the citizens of Worsfield went about their business like the rabbits which scuttled through the complex system of tunnels under the Rapstone Nature Area.

  High up in one of the Worsfield towers the twenty or so members of the planning committee of the District Council assembled under the energetic chairmanship of a Mrs Babcock-Syme. She was a tireless local politician with flashing eyes and a husky voice which could rise to sudden rage or sink to a tone of naked sensuality, even during the discussion of planning matters, which would startle and fascinate the male members of the committee to such an extent that many of them became clay in her hands. It was not, in fact, a hard committee to manage. The majority of those who had the time to stand for election and go to meetings were either local builders or farmers. The farmers, quietly spoken men in business suits, were longing to sell their land at a handsome profit to developers. The builders, dressed in old tweeds and corduroys and keen on rustic pursuits, were always on the look-out for somewhere new to build. Neither of these groups had any fundamental disagreements with the alluring ‘Chair’, who was inclined to give out permission for most things to be built in most places because, as she was fond of telling the admiring men by whom she was surrounded, ‘The name of the game is consumer choice.’

  ‘When I was a girl at Worsfield Grammar’ – Mrs Babcock-Syme was a local – ‘we could only get three sorts of yoghurt at the corner shop. At the last count Luxifoods in the Mall had twenty-three. I call that a smashing victory for consumer choice. Yes, Mr Parsloe?’

  Ted Parsloe, a retired headmaster whom Mrs Babcock-Syme suspected of not taking her entirely seriously, had raised his pencil and now said, ‘Thank you, Madam Chair. I must say, I’ve never cared for yoghurt.’

  ‘It’s the same principle, Mr Parsloe. Applied across the board. We’re giving the consumer the choice of living in an old town like Worsfield or a new town like Fallowfield.’

  ‘With respect, Madam Chair. What if I, as a consumer, don’t want to live in a town at all?’

  ‘Then I would suggest, Mr Parsloe’ – the Babcock-Syme voice sank almost to a whisper of flagrant sexuality – ‘you move to the North of England where I understand there are still lots of empty spaces.’

  ‘With respect, Madam Chair –’ Mr Parsloe was grateful for the fact that his advanced age made him safe from the allure of Hermione Babcock-Syme. He plodded gamely on like the only surviving explorer in a group otherwise gone down with an exotic tropical disease. ‘There are plenty of empty spaces in the old Worsfield station area and all the empty warehouses by the canal. Why not build there if we need new houses?’

  ‘May I, Madam Chair?’ A red-faced builder smiled at Hermione Babcock-Syme in a roguish sort of way.

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Entwhistle. Please do.’

  ‘It’s far cheaper and easier to build houses on greenfield sites. Cost a fortune to clear the old station and the warehouses.’

  ‘I’m sure we’re grateful,’ Mrs Babcock-Syme purred to Mr Entwhistle, ‘for that very practical contribution. Yes, Mrs Tippett?’ Mrs Tippett, the marriage guidance counsellor who had done her best to make sense of the love life of Evie Curdle, rattled her bangles, sighed heavily and said they still needed more houses in the middle of Worsfield for one-parent families on Income Support. When Mrs Babcock-Syme said that Fallowfield Country Town would provide rows of houses for such unfortunates, no one thought to remind her that low-income one-parent families would never be able to afford the delights of the new town.

  The Chair was now ready to sum up the discussion: ‘The Secretary of State has given us the lead in his super speech to the builders. We can’t have No Go areas for the operation of market forces. A new town would make Rapstone England’s Silicone Valley of prosperity.’ The Chair grew more eloquent as she saw a wide thoroughfare, bejewelled with the neon signs of fast-food outlets, leading between Parkinson Close and Titmuss Gardens to an imposing civic centre. Its name, she had reason to hope, would be Babcock-Syme Boulevard and her immortality would be assured. ‘What I think most of us see here, with a very few exceptions’ – she flashed a lethal smile at the headmaster – ‘is a tremendous opportunity to make – yes, what is it, Mr Plant?’ This was the planning officer whose secretary had just come in with a message. Certain plans, it seemed, concerning road access and a new sewage system had still not been supplied. Certain questions still had to be answered. With considerable irritation the Chair announced that, although she had little doubt of what the majority would decide, the matter would be adjourned until the next meeting.

  That night Eric Babcock-Syme, who owned a garage on the Hartscombe Road, a business he saw growing to supply the Fallowfield motorway-exit service area, told Vernon Beazley that S.O.V. might as well pack it in because, without a doubt, Hermione’s committee would give the green light to the new town. On the same evening the Right Honourable Leslie Titmuss made a speech to the Nottingham Chamber of Commerce. He made, of course, no reference to Fallowfield, which was, he was anxious to give the impression, no concern of his, at any rate for the time being. However, dedicated Titmuss-watchers were surprised to see that he spoke with considerable respect for the tiger, the black rhino and the world’s diminishing supply of elephants. He showed a new interest in the ozone layer and announced that all H.E.A.P.’s vehicles were now running on unleaded petrol. He made a number of jokes at the expense of the Greens, townees most of them he said, who probably thought a badger sett was something trendy you ordered at the hairdresser’s. ‘I wonder how many of them,’ he told his delighted audience, ‘earned sixpence a day cutting nettles, weeded a potato bed, scared off birds in an orchard or picked a big bunch of bluebells in the local woods on the two-mile walk home from school on Mothers’ Day?’ Unlike most of those who only noticed nature when they got bored with preaching socialism, Leslie Titmuss reminded his audience that he was ‘a countryman born and bred. I was brought up sniffing country air, that potent mixture of new-cut grass, cherry blossom and farmyard muck. My message to all of you is have no fear. So long as I’m at H.E.A.P. our environment is safe for future generations.’ It appeared that the greenish tinge, noticed by Ken Cracken with such amusement, had deepened and somewhere, although not necessarily in the Rapstone Valley, there would always be a wood where the small Titmusses of the future might disport themselves and gather bluebells. On the distant African plains the few remaining rhinos might also snort their relief that Titmuss, at least, was on their side.

  Although the new town seemed set for an early victory, the opposition to it was growing in strength. From its small and unpromising beginnings S.O.V. advanced rapidly and, greatly to his surprise, Fred found himself at the head of a substantial and fairly well-financed army of protesters. The converted barn, extended cottage, jacuzzi and carport owners were entirely with him. Although Fred disliked their habit of decorating the commons with gothic-lettered signs announcing the close
proximity of their houses, ‘Badgers End’, ‘The Coppice’, ‘Nut Trees’ or, in the case of an old chapel converted to house two youngish men in designer knitwear, ‘Shrivings’, he was glad of their support and their subscriptions. Going on his rounds he would come across old ladies in gaunt grey houses in the back streets of Hartscombe, or in the middle of villages, who had played in the Rapstone woods when they were children and gone there for long walks with husbands, now long dead, who knew the names of the orchids and the gentians. They opened attics and descended cellar stairs to return with three-pronged Georgian forks, wine coolers, tarnished candlesticks, old lamps, spotted mirrors, dusty glass candelabras, dim oil paintings of the river and Hartscombe Bridge, sabres once used in the Crimea and silver teapots carefully wrapped in newspaper and hardly used at all. They gave these treasures to Fred to sell so that the valley might be saved, although for years past it had been a place they only visited in memory. In addition to these small donations, S.O.V. received, from a firm of solicitors who said their client wished to remain anonymous, a cheque for five thousand pounds to ‘help in the propaganda war against Fallowfield Country Town’. Fred banked it gratefully and with no idea who their unknown benefactor might be.

  So, with a growing membership and bank account, Fred felt saddled with something he had never been used to – power. Could he and his strange assortment of allies hold their ground against what he still thought of as the Titmuss invasion and defeat the advancing tide of concrete, commercialism and pedestrian precincts? In moments of depression it seemed absurd even to try. But one day Mrs Vee told him that she had spent the morning walking in the Rapstone Valley. ‘You think it’s all yours, don’t you, Fred?’ she accused him. ‘Just because it’s where you lived all your life. You think we only got here lately and we’re nothing but trippers, the sort you see with their little folding-chairs and Tupperware spread out all over Rapstone Common any Bank Holiday.’ ‘Of course, I don’t,’ Fred protested, although if the truth were told this was very much what he had, uncharitably, thought of the Vees from the time he had first met them. Now he felt, guiltily, that he must devote himself more whole-heartedly to the cause. After all, Mrs Vee spent her days sitting on strange sofas, chattering with incessant brightness and achieving, either by charming or by boring her victims, cheques of a size he would never have dared ask for.

  ‘It’s all the fault of that ghastly woman.’ Mrs Vee rang him during his morning surgery.

  ‘What ghastly woman?’

  ‘The appalling Babcock-Syme. She’s about to bully the District Council into giving planning permission. For Fallowfield. Only one person that can do anything now.’

  ‘Really? Who’s that?’

  ‘You know Titmuss, don’t you? He asked you to his wedding. You know him well.’

  ‘Extremely well. In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘He’s the only one who can stop Babcock-Syme killing our valley. You can do it, Fred. You don’t know your own strength. You can charm Titmuss.’

  Fred had been expected to pull off many medical miracles, most of which were quite beyond his power; but he had never before been called upon to perform such a Herculean task as charming Leslie Titmuss. In view of Mrs Vee’s clear devotion to the cause and the trust of the old ladies who had ransacked their attics for him, he felt bound to try. He phoned the Ministry, penetrated to the Secretary of State’s office and left a message in which he felt no confidence. Then, driving on his morning rounds, he turned into the driveway of Rapstone Manor. It was not that he thought his diminishing fund of charm could be better spent on the new Mrs rather than the old Mr Titmuss. He told himself he would do better to call as an old family acquaintance and so arrange to talk to the Secretary of State. He could remember his short meeting with Jenny at her wedding and how her beauty had astonished him for many reasons, not least because it had so unexpectedly surrendered to Leslie Titmuss.

  Jenny came round the corner of the house when she heard a car scrunch the gravel of the drive and then a ring at the front doorbell. There was earth on her hands and under her fingernails and a mark on her forehead where she had brushed back her hair with dirty fingers. The knees of her jeans were damp and muddy.

  She stood still for a moment, looking at the back of the tall man by the front door. She noticed that his elderly tweed jacket hung from his shoulders as though from a coat-hanger. Something about the way he was standing, his hands in his pockets, at ease but in no way assertive, reminded her painfully of the lost husband she had been made to think of more often than she would have wished.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was not that Jenny was unhappy living at Rapstone with Leslie Titmuss. Her life contained almost all she hoped for and very little of what she feared. The house itself had more than fulfilled her expectations. She spent a lot of time alone in it, but was never in the least lonely. The soft greenish light that filled the rooms, the constantly changing views of the park and the garden that greeted her as she moved from room to room, her new obsession with growing things which, instead of taking years, as she had supposed, to come to fruition, seemed to shoot up and proliferate with magical rapidity, all these acted on her like a drug, so that during any prolonged time she had to spend away from Rapstone she suffered acute withdrawal symptoms. Old Bigwell, father of Len Bigwell who was now happily married to Evie Curdle, continued to do the garden, coming full-time instead of the few hours a week that Lady Fanner had been able to afford. Spurred on by Jenny’s constant praise and encouragement he resurrected the fruit cage, discovering in the jungle which filled it loganberries and white raspberries, as well as giant gooseberries which Jenny liked to explode in her mouth as she helped with the weeding. Slowly, like archaeologists excavating for traces of a lost civilization, they uncovered rose beds, bits of herbaceous border, patches where the strawberry plants were hidden under brambles and, under a rubbish tip, what must have been a forgotten rockery. Mr Bigwell, although secretly pleased by Jenny’s flattery, made it a rule, like most professional gardeners, never to do what she suggested. She was only occasionally able to outmanoeuvre him by telling him that one of her favourite plans was impossible and never to be attempted. She would then retire to the house and keep watch from an upstairs window in the hope, sometimes fulfilled, of seeing him start to demonstrate his independence by digging the bed, applying the manure or sowing the seeds she had suggested.

  Now she had taken to cooking and was proudest when she prepared the vegetables, or flavoured the meat with the herbs she and Mr Bigwell had grown together. Tony Sidonia had been a dashing cook who often improvised and she had thought herself a dull performer. But now she gained confidence and was happy in the kitchen, opening a bottle of white wine, chopping vegetables, listening to music and waiting, often for a long time, until Leslie got home. When he came he was always appreciative and rewardingly hungry. He praised her as fulsomely as she praised the gardener, and she was both pleased and unconvinced by his praises.

  One night Leslie, who had cleared his plate, pushed it away and said, ‘That was very tasty.’

  ‘What?’ she laughed at him.

  ‘That was what my father always said. Every bloody night of his life. After tea he said, “That was very tasty, Mother. Very tasty indeed.” I promise I won’t do it again.’ He looked at her, almost beseechingly. ‘Don’t let me, will you?’

  What was unexpected about him were the jokes. She and Tony Sidonia had ritually voted for the Labour Party and, between elections, just as ritually denounced and derided the government of which the Right Honourable Leslie Titmuss was a member. Tony Sidonia’s derision, however, was gentle compared to the savagery with which Leslie, at home with his wife, spoke of those of his colleagues who filled the other great offices of state. One might just as well have sent his suit to Cabinet meetings as it was ‘the only smart thing about him’. Another was thought to have been extremely intelligent ‘when he was alive’. A third had less idea of how to present a Bill than ‘a waitress in a teasho
p’. And so it went on, to such an extent that Jenny often felt, quite mistakenly, that her new husband shared at least some of the views she and Tony Sidonia had taken for granted. Leslie was careful never to discuss politics in general at home, nor did he ask Jenny to read his speeches. When they watched him on television and she raised her eyebrows at some of his more outrageous utterances, he assured her that he was only having ‘a bit of fun’ or ‘tweaking a few tails’ and she was inclined to share the general view that political life in England would have been a great deal duller without the tail-tweaking propensities of Leslie Titmuss.

  What she got from him was constant protection. From the start of their marriage he seemed determined to submit her to nothing she might find objectionable or even boring. He didn’t ask her to go to meetings or cocktail parties in London. If they were invited to dinner with the ‘colleagues’, he would get his secretary to ring up with a convincing excuse if she showed the slightest reluctance to go. She was convinced that he only wanted her to be happy. She was right about this, but his feelings had changed since their wedding. He had once thought he wanted Jenny as a new possession to show to the world. Now he was like a millionaire who buys a painting of rare beauty, perhaps from a dubious source, and wants it kept in his home, never to be lent out for an exhibition, for his eyes only. He treasured her in his private not his public world, but he wanted her to be happy. He was perceptive enough to understand that this would not be the case if she had to go on trips with him to Chambers of Commerce or to many dinner parties with other government wives. He suspected that the ‘colleagues’ laughed at him for keeping his much younger wife under wraps, but he didn’t mind, and when it came to laughing at people he could always win on points.

  So, contrary to all reasonable forecasts and to the amazement of her friend Sue Bramble to whom Jenny spoke on the telephone almost daily, the Titmuss marriage had every appearance of success. They got on well in bed, a fact Sue found impossible to accept. Leslie would return home with as sharp an appetite for making love as he had for his dinner and Jenny, intoxicated by the fresh air, the silence, the small dramas of the garden and the white wine she got through whilst cooking, received him gladly and as though in a continuing dream. Perhaps one of his attractions for her was that danger which Sue Bramble had assured her lurked somewhere in Leslie Titmuss but which she had seen no sign of so far.