Titmuss Regained

by John Mortimer

  *

  It was Leslie who said they should have Sue to stay. Jenny was grateful to him for the suggestion, although nervous about the outcome. In the end she couldn’t resist showing off the house and the garden to her friend. Sue Bramble drove herself from London on a bright, spring day when the daffodils and the cherry trees were out and the azaleas in bud.

  ‘Well?’

  Sue had walked round the house as silent and non-committal as a police officer inspecting the scene of the crime. Now, when she had opened a bottle of wine in the kitchen and started to get the lunch, Jenny could stand the suspense no longer and asked again, ‘Well? What do you think of it?’

  ‘Terrible.’

  ‘This house, and the garden? Terrible?’ Jenny was standing in front of a chopping-board holding a half-moon shaped blade, frozen into puzzled immobility.

  ‘Terrible that it’s all so beautiful. Mr Titmuss used it to seduce you.’

  ‘You don’t think I married him for the house, do you?’

  ‘One day I suppose I shall understand what you did marry him for.’

  Jenny didn’t answer that but started to chop parsley energetically, producing a clean, grassy smell and getting rid of the irritation she felt at Sue’s obstinate disapproval. Then she chopped more slowly, smiled and said, ‘You won’t be too hard on my Mr Titmuss, will you?’

  ‘Is he so delicate?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He got rather badly laughed at once. He’s remembered it all his life.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll treat him like a rare china ornament. I mean, I’ll try to take him seriously.’

  ‘I ought to tell you this.’ Jenny pushed the chopped parsley into a neat pile with her blade. ‘Something quite extraordinary’s happened.’

  ‘You’re not … ?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well. Not up the spout, are you?’ Sue knew that her friend had been told that she couldn’t, that she never would, have children. Had this extraordinary marriage, she wondered, produced some sort of medical miracle?

  ‘No. Nothing like that. It’s just that, well, we seem to be sort of entirely happy together.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ Sue seemed to accept the fact. ‘Of course I want you to be extremely happy. Always.’ Sitting at the kitchen table Jenny’s friend raised her glass and drank to that.

  ‘What were the games we used to play?’

  The first evening of Sue’s stay was going well. Leslie got home early and was perfectly polite, listening to her with studied concentration, as though it were important for him to understand everything she said. He was proud rather than embarrassed that they had met under strange and compromising circumstances and reminded her, ‘You remember me? I was the one in the dicky-bow making early morning tea.’ During dinner he enjoyed the company of two women, the blonde and the dark, laughing together in the candlelight. He opened more wine, spared them news of his day at the Ministry and listened sympathetically to Sue’s accounts of the deceptive nature of men in general and racing trainers in particular. After dinner she lay back in a chair by the big log fire and reminded Jenny of the games they used to play.

  ‘Charades. Wink Murder. “In the Manner of …” Oh, and the Truth Game, of course.’

  ‘The Truth Game?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Sue explained it to Leslie. ‘If you did something wrong – I mean, failed to drink a glass of wine in one gulp, or let the ash fall off your cigarette – then you got asked a question and you had to answer truthfully.’

  ‘How did anyone know if you were telling the truth?’ Leslie was interested.

  ‘Oh, we could tell. We all knew so much about each other. Of course’ – Sue looked at Jenny – ‘Tony never had any problems with that game.’

  It was the first time Tony Sidonia’s name had been mentioned since their honeymoon. Jenny was quiet, hoping it would not be said again. But Leslie, raising his eyebrows, asked, ‘Why didn’t Tony have any problems?’

  ‘Oh, because he always told the truth. Quite naturally. All the time. Didn’t he, Jenny?’

  ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact. Who’s for more wine?’ Jenny got the bottle off the table and refilled their glasses, wishing for a change of subject.

  ‘Such a truthful person, Tony. It really wasn’t any fun playing the game with him.’

  ‘But how can you be sure it was always the truth?’ Leslie seemed eager for information.

  ‘Oh, because he just couldn’t lie. He wouldn’t have been the slightest good at it. Would he, Jenny?’

  ‘What would you like to do tomorrow?’ It was Jenny and not Leslie who wanted to stop the Tony reminiscences. ‘Would you like to go out to lunch somewhere?’

  ‘Sunday lunch in the country. You remember those ridiculous great parties in Tony’s garden?’

  ‘In the summer?’ Leslie’s interest was apparently undiminished.

  ‘The summers seemed so much better then, and longer. There were always such an extraordinary number of guests. All sorts of people, writers, painters. Tony’s mother, who was once a ballet dancer.’

  ‘Myra was wonderful,’ Jenny explained. ‘Huge dark eyes and this amazingly straight back. She was really quite old then, but she’d play the piano for us and even dance occasionally. She danced so beautifully. No wonder so many men fell in love with her.’

  ‘All sorts of writers, and wasn’t there a general or something?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Definitely a general. She said she took his mind off the war.’

  ‘Do you remember,’ Sue started to laugh, ‘Willoughby Blane’s shorts?’

  ‘You were outrageous!’ Jenny couldn’t help laughing at the memory.

  ‘Sir Willoughby Blane.’ Leslie was smiling. ‘The old bore who can tell you all you never wanted to know about prawns?’

  ‘The man who brought us together.’ Jenny did her best to bring the story up to date, but Sue remained firmly in the past with Tony Sidonia. ‘It was so hot that year,’ she said. ‘We were all wearing, well, not very much really. And Willoughby Blane turned up in these vast, voluminous shorts. Tony had a long table with oh, about twenty people round it, out in the garden. I was sitting opposite Willoughby and he was next to that dreadful ex-ambassador’s wife. What was her name?’

  ‘I always forget.’ Jenny was trying to put the past behind her.

  ‘Mrs Lessore?’ Leslie, who never forgot a name, had met her at the Oxford lunch.

  ‘Gudrun Lessore was next to Willoughby Blane. On his right, I think.’ Sue was apparently blessed with total recall. ‘And, as I say, I was sitting opposite. Now you’ve got to understand that Tony’s garden was always in a hell of a mess. This was before he married Jenny. The grass was never cut and was full of old bones and bits and pieces the dogs couldn’t eat. Well, I looked under the table and I saw, what do you think? A chicken’s foot! I suppose we’d had chicken for lunch and this old claw had got out into the garden. I hadn’t got any shoes on so I somehow got the awful old yellow chicken’s foot between my toes. And I managed … Jenny saw me do this, didn’t you, Jenny?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny had to admit, ‘I saw you.’

  ‘Well, I managed to lift up my leg under the table and insert this terrible dead claw up Willoughby’s baggy shorts. And he thought Gudrun Lessore was making a most intimate pass at him. He became all giggly and flirtatious.’

  When she finished there was silence. Jenny looked anxious. Sue, not in the least contrite, smiled down into her glass. Leslie sat forward in his chair, frowning as though seriously trying to assess the full significance of this story, and then he burst into loud laughter. Much relieved, Jenny then laughed with him, as though the incident were much funnier than it had seemed at the time.

  That night in bed Leslie lay quiet again, apparently asleep with his eyes open. Jenny watched him for a long time and then he said, ‘Was he really like that?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tony Sidonia.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jenny apologized for her friend. ‘I don’t know why
Sue kept on about him. It was stupid of her.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How did you know he was always telling the truth?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She tried to think of a reason which would convince him and failed. ‘I just did know. That was all.’

  ‘And that was important to you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The most important thing in the world.’

  He seemed to think about that for a while, then he closed his eyes and was really asleep. The subject wasn’t mentioned again that weekend and Jenny wasn’t troubled by thoughts of Tony Sidonia until much later when she saw the back of Fred Simcox as she walked round the house.

  ‘Of course, I remember you at the wedding.’

  Now that she was facing Fred in the sitting-room she could see that he didn’t really look in the least like her late husband. All the same Tony Sidonia felt nearer to her at that moment than he had been since he died. Jenny thought again of Tony when Fred said, with a kind of self-confident modesty, ‘I’ve become the sort of pest who dumps leaflets on people.’ Indeed, he had a glossy folder in his hand, decorated very much like the developers’ propaganda, with a picture of sheep grazing. This document had been prepared for S.O.V. by an advertising agency well known to Mr Vee.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What’s it all about?’

  ‘The new town we’re threatened with.’

  Jenny took the folder politely, feeling he was glad to be rid of it. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘I’m sure you’re attached to the valley.’

  ‘I’ve come to love it. Of course, you know it much better than I do.’

  ‘Since I was a child. Your husband and I were boys together. My father was the Rector.’

  ‘And Leslie used to cut his nettles.’

  ‘He’s told you that?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Quite often.’ He smiled when she said that and she felt she had been disloyal to her husband. ‘I don’t think you need worry too much,’ she said. ‘Leslie doesn’t want this valley spoiled, either.’ So she established Leslie’s credentials as a responsible and caring politician.

  ‘I just hope’ – Fred looked at her, smiling – ‘he’s going to tell the District Council that.’

  ‘What’ve they got to do with it?’

  ‘Quite a lot. If they say “yes” no one can appeal. And it seems they’re all ready to give the green light to Fallowfield.’

  ‘Does Leslie know that?’

  ‘I’m sure he knows most things. But it wouldn’t do any harm to remind him. I’ll give him a ring, if I can, over the weekend.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear from you.’

  Fred wasn’t so sure. All the same he felt he’d gone as far as he could with the beautiful and apparently receptive Mrs Titmuss. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I won’t bore you any longer.’

  ‘Your patients’ll be waiting.’

  ‘Not many round here. They’re terribly healthy in this valley and seem to live for ever.’

  ‘Like Lady Fanner?’

  ‘She was well over eighty when she died,’ he told her. ‘A pretty good advertisement for a diet of gossip, champagne and cigarettes.’ He was looking out of the tall windows. ‘You’ve tidied up the garden.’

  ‘If you’ve got time I could show you what we’ve done.’

  ‘I’d like to see.’ And when they were walking down the long border she’d planted and he was admiring the white cloud of narcissi in the rough grass of the orchard, she wondered what old Lady Fanner had been like. ‘Extremely malicious. She had a bad word to say of everyone. I must admit, I miss her dreadfully. The Rapstone Valley’s a much duller place without her.’

  As she walked him to his car she said, ‘I’m glad you’re fighting for the valley.’

  ‘I don’t know about fighting. I seem to spend my time asking people for money. Oh, and organizing strange sorts of events. I want to get some jazz evening going in aid of S.O.V., but the people I used to play with are knocking on a bit.’

  ‘You play?’ Tony Sidonia didn’t perform on any instrument but she remembered the piles of old records he listened to, Bix Beiderbecke, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Django Reinhardt and Le Hot Club de France.

  ‘On drums with the Riverside Stompers. That’s what we used to call ourselves. We might try the pub at Skurfield again. If we manage it I’ll send you a ticket. And your husband, of course.’

  Jenny tried to imagine Leslie at a jazz evening in a pub and failed. As Fred opened the car door she said, ‘I’m sure they’ll come in droves to hear you drumming for the valley. Everyone’ll want to help.’

  ‘Including you?’

  ‘Of course. I told you.’

  ‘You mean you’ll join S.O.V.? You get all sorts of treats.’ He laughed, inviting her to laugh at his organization also. ‘Not only me on drums. Car-boot sales. Sponsored footpath walks with Colonel Wilcox. Wine, cheese and poetry reading in the Hartscombe Town Hall. How can you possibly resist it?’

  ‘I don’t suppose I can.’

  ‘Good. I’ll send your membership card.’

  And he drove away, leaving her alone and wondering, only for a moment, whether she had done the wrong thing. What she had done, in fact, was to kick away the small stone which would start an avalanche.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Fred drove back to Hartscombe in a distinct glow of triumph. He told himself that by enlisting the support of the Secretary of State’s wife he had struck a powerful blow for the salvation of his native countryside. He also allowed himself to feel that he had scored a victory over Leslie Titmuss, undermining that hitherto undented self-confidence which assumed that everyone connected with him would always do exactly what he wanted.

  So, when he walked into the bar of the Olde Maypole Inn at lunch-time and found Mrs Vee running through the agenda of the next S.O.V. meeting with Daphne Jones, Fred couldn’t resist taking his beer over to them and raising his voice above the muzak and the squeals of computer games to say, ‘What do you think? Jenny Titmuss has joined the group.’

  ‘You invited her?’

  ‘Well, yes. I was up in the valley, so I called.’

  ‘Mr Chairman!’ Mrs Vee spoke in a tone of vibrant admiration which filled Fred with immediate foreboding. ‘You’re a political genius!’

  ‘It wasn’t at all hard. She’s very sympathetic.’

  ‘God!’ Hector Bolitho Jones’s wife was also awestruck. ‘Think of the publicity we’re going to get.’

  ‘Front-page stuff. No doubt about it,’ Mrs Vee agreed. ‘PLANNING MINISTER’S WIFE JOINS ANTI-PLANNERS. S.O.V.’s really going to be put on the map. Thanks to our Chairman. We ought to give an exclusive to the Fortress,’ she suggested, ‘and then they’ll be sure to make a big thing of it. I’ll ring Vee and get him to take it on board.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No announcement in the papers.’ Fred had decided.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Because that’s just what they’d do.’

  ‘What who’d do?’

  ‘The opposition. If something like that happened to us they’d get the newspapers full of it. We’ve got to show them we’re different. So let’s keep quiet and treat Jenny Titmuss just like any other member.’ To his surprise his words came out with authority. But he was thinking, why am I tangling with a world I was never cut out for? All I shall succeed in doing is making trouble for a woman I found myself liking very much.

  Mrs Vee looked at him in a penetrating and deeply understanding way. ‘Is that your decision, Mr Chairman?’ she said in the solemn tones she might have used if he had just announced that he was terminally ill.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ve decided.’

  ‘For God’s sake.’ Daphne Jones had no doubts on the matter. ‘I don’t agree with that. If I catch my enemy with his balls hanging out and I happen to have an axe in my hand, I strike!’ This was a political precept which she had heard enunciated by the Pre
sident of the Worsfield Students’ Union and she had been much impressed by it.

  ‘No, Daphne!’ Mrs Vee was prepared to behave with nobility. ‘Fred has his principles. We’ve got to respect them. That’s why we chose him to be our Chairman. All right, Mr Chairman. Sir.’ She put a proprietorial hand on his knee where it remained visiting. ‘No publicity from us, although God knows what the gentlemen of the press are going to find out for themselves.’ So Fred finished his lunch and went about his business visiting the sick, feeling that he had, in some way, betrayed both Jenny and Mrs Vee and he hoped, so far as Jenny was concerned at least, that he had done his best to repair the damage.

  It goes without saying that as soon as she was left alone, Mrs Vee telephoned her husband with the news and he then put through a call to the Fortress into whose Mr Chatterbox column he often dropped hints about clients who employed him in their charitable concerns. The name Mr Chatterbox did not, as might be expected, mask the identity of an elderly, grey-haired gossip but a languid, comparatively young, untidy and dissolute old Etonian called Tim Warboys who, although he found anyone who hadn’t been to Eton, and many who had, totally absurd, had a strong sense of self-preservation. He was about to be promoted to the Whispers from the Gallery parliamentary column and he knew that writing stories hostile to Leslie Titmuss in the columns of the Fortress was the journalistic equivalent of searching for a gas leak with a lighted match.

  So, after getting the news from Mr Vee, Tim Warboys rang the press officer at H.E.A.P. and was told that any suggestion that Mrs Titmuss had joined a group at war with her husband was totally untrue, that any hint of such news would be met with a writ and that the Secretary of State would no doubt be speaking to the Fortress’s proprietor Lord Dowdswell, who, as Tim well knew, was a close personal friend. As all this was relayed after a pause for consultation with the Secretary of State himself, Mr Chatterbox said that he had never believed the story anyway and had thought it only right to alert the press officer to so scurrilous a rumour. He then went to the first of four cocktail parties persuaded that it was true but that his column had much better concentrate on the ludicrous attempts of an allegedly socialist M.P. to get himself elected to White’s Club. So, in the course of one day, Jenny’s membership of S.O.V. was pushed towards centre stage and then back into the wings to become a matter of concern for no more than three people.