Titmuss Regained

by John Mortimer

‘You said she’d been a ballet dancer.’

  ‘With Sadler’s Wells, I think it was. Oh, before the war. And she was with the Russians too. The Monte Carlo company. I can’t remember who else.’

  ‘I was never a great one for ballet.’

  ‘I wouldn’t think you were.’ Jenny smiled at the thought of Leslie watching grimly as young men pranced about in revealing tights. ‘Have you ever seen one?’

  ‘Well, not so far as I can remember.’

  ‘I didn’t think so.’

  ‘And she danced under her own name?’

  ‘No. She called herself something else. What was it? Myra Zirkin. She said that was the name Fokine gave her because it sounded vaguely Russian. It seemed a bit pointless when her own name was so … impressive.’

  ‘Is she alive?’

  ‘Oh, no. She died before Tony. That was a good thing in a way. It would have been a terrible blow to her.’

  ‘Pity. It might have been fun to ask her down.’ Leslie opened his red dispatch-box and sat with it on his knees. He began reading documents with great rapidity, scribbling comments which were mostly dismissive and sarcastic. It was late, the fire was dying and Jenny got up to put on another log.

  ‘What would you like? Tea, a drink or something?’

  Leslie didn’t answer but looked at the flaring wood and said, ‘What about Tony’s father?’

  ‘Oh, he was killed in the war. When Tony was very young. Why do you want to know that?’

  ‘I thought the dancer might have married an exiled prince or something romantic. She must have had a hard time getting Tony educated. I mean getting him so very educated.’

  ‘I think his father left some money. A pension perhaps. He went away to boarding-school. Nothing else you want to know?’ She felt that Tony should be allowed to rest in peace and not be summoned to answer some sort of interrogation. She was prepared to say as much in answer to Leslie’s next question.

  But now he smiled at her and said, ‘Did you say tea? That would be very nice.’

  It was Arthur Nubble’s practice to travel by bus and charge for a taxi, and it was only a short bus ride from his office to the narrow passage leading into the Charing Cross Road where he walked into the Entrechat bookshop. He pushed open a door, the bell pinged and a young man in a bow-tie uncurled himself from behind a pile of books, programmes, posters and other souvenirs of the dance to look at him with an expression of considerable hauteur. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And what can we do for you?’

  Arthur Nubble explained he was a solicitor wishing to trace the whereabouts or family of a certain Myra Zirkin in order that she might hear something to her advantage. The young man registered increasing distaste until he heard that Nubble’s clients would pay generously for information. Then he burrowed into pre-war programmes, searched indexes and finally unearthed a Zirkin who danced minor roles at Sadler’s Wells, in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and, above all, in Dame Felicity Capet’s Empire Ballet which, before the war, occupied a now defunct theatre in High Holborn.

  ‘Zirkin? Of course I remember Zirkin. I knew all the secrets of all my girls. They used to confide in me. I insisted on that.’

  This time Nubble had gone on a long bus ride to the furthest reaches of Putney and there, in a small flat at the top of a dull grey block, he had found Dame Felicity, a very old lady with huge, saucer eyes who had known Pavlova and who now sat among photographs of fauns, firebirds and sylphides in a cluttered room which smelt overpoweringly of cats. There was a black tom on Nubble’s lap, marching round in search of the most comfortable position to sleep, its open claws pricking him through his trousers. ‘Do push Dr Coppélius off if he’s being a bore. You did say you loved cats, though?’ Her long, white fingers were wrapped round the handle of the walking-stick she used to rap on the rehearsal room floor to stop the music so that she might abuse the dancers. ‘And you say you’re writing about the Empire Ballet?’

  ‘With special reference, Dame Felicity, to your own career.’ Nubble liked to vary his cover stories to add interest to his work.

  ‘I don’t know why you bother with Zirkin. She had very little discipline and, as I remember, particularly unfortunate knees. Only one good point,’ Dame Felicity allowed grudgingly. ‘She had a face like a magnolia.’

  ‘She also had a son?’ Nubble asked.

  ‘Not as far as I was concerned she hadn’t.’ The old woman seemed to have no doubts. ‘And I’d certainly’ve known about it if she had.’

  ‘Really?’ The cat had gone to sleep now, a hot, dead weight on his groin. ‘I think I met her at Oxford after the war. She used to come and stay with her son who was a friend of mine.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ In the old Empire Ballet she had never suffered fools gladly. ‘After the war Zirkin wasn’t in Oxford, or anywhere else in this world, for that matter.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dame Felicity. I don’t quite understand what you’re telling me.’

  ‘I’m simply telling you, my dear man, that she went out to Germany with a concert party to entertain the troops during the war. She danced the Dying Swan as one of the turns, something she was quite unqualified to do. Anyway, the concert party’s train was bombed, apparently by mistake. I suppose you could say’ – the old lady was smiling gently – ‘she died in action. Of course’ – she forced the smile off her face – ‘it was extremely sad. An amusing girl but hardly a genius.’

  So Zirkin, the dancer, died during the war, a time as he knew from his briefing before the second Mrs Titmuss had been born. Nubble felt relieved that the interview was over and he could get out into the fresh air, away from this old woman who treated him as though he were some sort of idiot. Before he went he tried a final question.

  ‘Dame Felicity. Does the name Myra Sidonia mean anything to you?’

  ‘Myra Sidonia?’ The huge, disapproving eyes were turned on him; the voice rose as though he’d tripped over the prima ballerina in the finale. ‘Why ever should you bother me with questions about her?’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Pale sunshine continued until December and then withdrew, discouraged, as north winds and heavy skies promised snow. At midnight mass Kev the Rev. prayed, ‘Oh Lord, guide the hands of Thy ministers and officials at Housing and Ecological Affairs to spare, if it be Thy will, this valley from falling victim to a materialistic society.’ As his congregation shook his hand and came out into the cold, the doors of their Range Rovers were glued with ice and their children woke to a snowy morning which seemed intent on preserving the traditions of rural England. How God the Great Planning Officer would conduct Himself when the inquiry opened the following month remained a subject of endless speculation. In the Baptist’s Head Len Bigwell was offering two to one against Fallowfield Country Town ever being built now the protesters had suddenly found themselves able to engage a Q.C. reputed to be the best planning lawyer in England.

  After Christmas the snow lay fresh on the Rapstone Nature Area, marked with the hierographics of many pads and claws. In Worsfield it turned as grey as dirty washing, clogged the gutters and made the steps of the District Council offices a peril. Inside, in an atmosphere made soporific by central heating and legal argument, Gregory Boland, the Inspector, sat high over a sea of plans and towers of documents. The lawyers whispered, made jokes and passed each other notes. Young men and girls from Kempenflatt’s office dozed, then woke with a start and tried to look interested. In the public benches sat the members of S.O.V., who did their best during long hours of anaesthetizing boredom to preserve their high mood of concerned outrage. The Curdles had arrived in force, dressed as for a wedding, and passed round tubes of wine gums and Polos. They then sat with their jaws working in a threatening manner. The Vees took copious notes of the proceedings which would later be fed into the computer in Mr Vee’s office and circulated to many people who would never read them. At the press table the elderly man from the Worsfield Echo, who lived in an area so entirely bereft of natural beauty tha
t the issue didn’t concern him one way or the other, filled in his football pools and waited for something dramatic to happen. Such was the scene in the council chamber when Dr Frederick Simcox was called into the witness-box.

  Every group throws up its own leader but Fred wondered, as he swore to tell the truth and tried to look as though he were taking the whole thing seriously, if S.O.V. hadn’t thrown up the wrong one. Dot Curdle would have overflowed the witness-box, dominated the room and given everyone a piece of her mind. Mrs Vee would have had the facts at her fingers’ ends and Mr Vee would have been able to lower his voice to that tone of quiet urgency which was so effective in gathering money which would go, after the payment of his considerable percentage, to feed children in remote parts of Africa.

  The expensive barrister hired with Leslie Titmuss’s secret contribution was a Mr Alistair Fernhill, who was about to become a judge. So he would go, after a lifetime in town planning, to a new world of murder, mayhem and indecent assault, of which he had no experience whatever. In that moment in a barrister’s life, before being enveloped in scarlet and ermine and whisked into a position above the battle, Mr Fernhill had come to do his cases in a detached and world-weary manner, as though already remote from the struggles of lesser men. This aloof Alistair Fernhill, Q.C., revealed that Fred was a doctor who had been in practice locally for over a quarter of a century, and who, as Chairman of the Save Our Valley society, was one of the principal objectors. What would the new town do to the amenities of the countryside, the beauty of the landscape, the safety of the roads and the health of the population? Fred was taken through his evidence rather as an unwelcome visitor is led through the corridors of some grand house by a superior butler. His answers, he felt, lacked conviction.

  It was as though all the talent for belief in his family had been taken up by his dead father. The old Rector of Rapstone had believed passionately in everything: Socialism, pacifism, Ban the Bomb and some essential good in human nature. After such an immense outpouring of faith the Simcox stock, it seemed, had been exhausted. If Fred believed in anything it was the countryside he had grown up in, the dark woods and secret hiding-places in the bracken, the memories of afternoons of love in Tom Nowt’s old hut and moonlit swims in the muddy water of the river. And yet, as he tried to find words for these feelings which would be acceptable in a court of law, he thought of other arguments, different points of view. Might not childhood be as vivid in a Worsfield housing estate? Might not love be equally memorable if it were crammed into the back seat of a Ford Cortina behind the multi-storey car park? It was Fred’s curse to see two sides to every question; it was freedom from this unfortunate character defect which had brought Leslie Titmuss his considerable success.

  ‘You’re a medical doctor, aren’t you?’

  The superior butler and embryo judge had sat down, to be replaced by another learned friend. This one had a voice like a hacksaw blade, gold half-glasses three quarters of the way down his nose and an expression of puzzled incredulity. This was Carus-Atkins, Q.C., Counsel for Kempenflatts, the builders.

  ‘Not a doctor of botany, or forestry, or other rural mysteries?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘So you are not an expert on the countryside?’

  ‘No. I have just known it all my life. Perhaps I have a special feeling for the Rapstone Valley –’

  ‘As a doctor you will be paid by the number of patients you attend.’ The barrister interrupted the answer.

  ‘I understand that’s the intention of the present government, yes.’

  ‘Then won’t a new town suit you very well? You’ll have a great many more people to provide pills for. You might make a great deal more money, might you not, Doctor?’ There was some obedient laughter from the staff of Kempenflatt’s office.

  ‘I’d rather have less money, fewer patients and no new town.’

  ‘Some people might think that rather an eccentric view.’ Carus-Atkins peered over his spectacles at his supporters in the Kempenflatt camp. ‘But then you are a somewhat eccentric doctor, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Given to acting as a drummer in a local public house?’

  ‘I’m a member of a jazz group. Yes.’

  ‘Enlighten me, Doctor.’ The builders’ Q.C. dug his hands deeply into his pockets and leant forward, his head on one side, his ear cocked as though he were eager to receive knowledge. ‘Do you think eating rabbits an excellent cure for heart failure?’

  Gregory Boland, the Inspector, pursed his lips and looked as though someone had just burst into song or started to undress in the course of the proceedings. The Curdle family nodded wisely, in total agreement with the proposition, and Mrs Vee hid her face in her hands and whispered, ‘Oh Christ, here it comes!’

  ‘No,’ Fred answered without hesitation.

  ‘How very strange.’ Carus-Atkins received a newspaper cutting from an attentive junior and took it with the delicacy of a great surgeon about to employ a scalpel. ‘Did you not say as much to a journalist working on the Fortress?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. That report was totally inaccurate.’

  ‘Where do you suggest the journalist got the idea from?’

  ‘From someone who came into my surgery and might have seen a document containing that piece of information.’

  Looking round the council chamber Fred noticed Jenny for the first time. Had she been there long or had she wandered in late, as she had done when he played with the Riverside Stompers? Seeing her brought the whole room into sharper focus. He felt suddenly younger, more energetic and, for a moment, mercifully unable to tolerate the opposition. At least there was no possible doubt about his dislike of Mr Carus-Atkins.

  ‘Are you prepared to tell us who that person was?’

  Fred looked at Jenny and was not prepared to supply the information.

  ‘Dr Simcox. Are you really here to help this inquiry?’ the Inspector intervened.

  ‘So far as I can.’

  ‘Then perhaps we could ask you to deal with the matter in hand.’ Gregory Boland looked at him with a severity which Fred felt should have been reserved for his inquisitor. ‘That matter is about building houses. It’s got nothing to do with the medical properties of rabbit meat. May I ask you to remember that, Doctor?’

  ‘Exactly my view, sir.’ The Carus-Atkins effrontery astounded Fred. ‘Now, Doctor. Please direct your mind to the issues in this case. You have told me you have a special feeling for this countryside, around Rapstone.’

  ‘That’s perfectly true. Yes.’ Fred was looking at Jenny and the sound of the hacksaw voice seemed to grow faint as she gave him a small smile of approval.

  ‘Are you a selfish man, Doctor?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Isn’t it rather selfish of you, if you love it so much, not to want to share it with other people?’

  ‘If it’s all built over, there won’t be anything to share with anyone.’

  ‘He’s improving,’ Mrs Vee whispered.

  ‘Slightly,’ Mr Vee whispered back.

  ‘Dr Simcox. I understand your father, the Reverend Simeon Simcox, was a clergyman who indulged himself in a large number of anti-government protests.’

  ‘He had strong beliefs, yes.’

  ‘And he used to march all over the place. Organize demonstrations.’ Carus-Atkins waved his spectacles aimlessly to suggest mental confusion in the old Rector. ‘And the like.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Is that a characteristic you have inherited?’

  ‘I hope I have inherited some of his concern for social justice. Yes.’ In the ordinary course of events these were words which would have made Fred squirm with embarrassment. With Jenny looking at him from her seat among the protesters, he felt a certain pride in his answer.

  ‘You have also inherited his dislike of Conservative governments.’

  ‘My complaint against this Conservative government is that it’s failing to conserve anything.’<
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  Fred was rewarded now, not only by Jenny’s interest but also by some laughter and a clearly audible ‘Doctor got you there, then, didn’t he?’ from Dot Curdle.

  ‘And I’m bound to suggest’ – Carus-Atkins was leaning back on his heels now, looking at the witness with an indulgent expression such as might be used to a tiresome child – ‘that your Save Our Valley society simply exists to satisfy your family craving to protest against the government. However much employment and wealth and prosperity it brings, you’ll never be satisfied, will you, Doctor? You’ll just … carry on marching.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s necessary to involve this inquiry in a political argument.’ Again the soft Scottish rebuke from the red-haired Inspector seemed directed at Fred rather than at his assailant.

  ‘I think it’s entirely necessary for me to answer the question.’ Fred raised his voice and felt he was speaking directly to Jenny. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve got no particular interest in politics. I don’t want to spend my time organizing protests or going on marches. Protests and marches make me feel ridiculous. I’d like to be left alone to look after my patients and go drumming in public houses, as you put it so charmingly. But you won’t leave us alone, will you? Your clients want to buy up the farmland and make money out of us. The government wants to change our lives and wreck our valley for ever. Nobody who lives around Rapstone wants that to happen. Nobody! But it seems we’re all at the mercy of strangers –’

  ‘Dr Simcox!’ The Scottish protest rose suddenly to a bleat, but Fred carried on.

  ‘Do you think I enjoy spending an afternoon standing here answering your ridiculous questions about rabbits? I’d rather be treating carbuncles and changing dressings. But you don’t give us any choice. When you come down here, hired by people trying to make money out of us, what else can you expect us to do?’

  Fred had listened to himself in some surprise. He was further surprised to see Mr Carus-Atkins sit down and look triumphantly about the court, his cross-examination over. Perhaps he thinks he’s proved I’m a total nut-case, Fred thought, and then the red-haired Inspector said, ‘Thank you, Dr Simcox,’ and he left the witness-box.