Titmuss Regained

by John Mortimer

  She emptied the dustpan into the bin and put it away in the cupboard. She no longer wanted to hear about his power.

  ‘So at least it’ll be something different. You won’t want to live here any more, will you? Not when it’s surrounded with supermarkets and multi-storey car parks and all the things that you lot wish people didn’t want nowadays.’

  ‘And you?’ she asked. ‘Where’ll you want to live?’

  ‘In the future,’ he told her. ‘After all, I made it happen.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  There followed days of extraordinary stillness. The sun shone and there was almost no wind or cloud to be chased across the sky. The valley was silent and deserted as though preparing itself, in a period of withdrawal, for the onslaught of the bulldozers. Driving between the hedges, Jenny had an unusual sighting of a hare. Knowing what was to happen she found she no longer wanted to look at the landscape that had become a home to her. If everything had to change, it was time for her to go.

  ‘Are you sure it’s what you want?’ She and Leslie had been sleeping apart and when they met at breakfast they treated each other with the politeness of strangers.

  ‘You haven’t left me any choice,’ he told her.

  ‘I think I have.’ His unfairness had a sort of daring about it which took her breath away.

  ‘Either to be forgiven or forgotten? I’d best be forgotten.’

  ‘I shan’t forget you,’ she said. ‘I promise you that.’ He stood up then to leave for the airport. He was on his way to another European meeting, this time in Luxembourg. He stood, tall and pale in his dark clothes, and she wanted, for a moment, to comfort him. But he looked at her in a way that gave her no encouragement. Then he turned from her and left the house.

  Alone and because, in spite of all that had happened, it had become such a habit with her, Jenny telephoned Sue Bramble.

  ‘It’s Jenny.’

  ‘Jenny! How are you?’ Sue sounded nervous and falsely cheerful.

  ‘All right, I suppose. Leslie’s gone. It’s all over.’

  ‘What’s all over?’

  ‘Us.’

  ‘I see.’ And then, ‘I’m only surprised it lasted so long.’

  ‘That’s not the only thing. This place seems to be over as well.’

  ‘Your house?’

  ‘Yes. They’re going to build a new town all round it.’

  ‘Oh, of course. I read about that.’ Sue sounded as if she couldn’t believe they were talking as though they were still friends.

  ‘I’m coming up to London.’

  ‘To the flat?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve got to live somewhere.’

  ‘Of course you have. I told you I’d move out. I’ll go today. Oh, and I’ll get it all cleaned up for you …’

  There was a silence and then Jenny said, ‘No need to do that.’

  ‘No need to get it cleaned up?’

  ‘No need for you to go.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I don’t really want to be alone. Not for a while. Please stay if you think it’ll be all right.’

  ‘What do you mean, if it’ll be all right?’

  ‘After that awful business of me finding out.’

  ‘How on earth was that your fault?’ Sue was incredulous.

  ‘Well, I suppose none of it would have happened. If I hadn’t taken on Leslie Titmuss.’ Jenny’s voice was very quiet, as though at the start of tears.

  ‘Come up to the flat,’ Sue Bramble said. ‘I’ll do my best to look after you.’

  ‘Congratulations, Ken.’ The Minister looked up from his seat in the first-class compartment of the B.A. plane into the smiling face of his Secretary of State. ‘You’ve done very well out of all this, haven’t you?’

  ‘You mean out of the new town? I think you’ve done well, Leslie. Your reputation for selflessness is higher than ever.’ Ken Cracken, in his general disappointment at the turn events had taken, allowed himself a touch of irony.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean the new town.’ Leslie settled himself down and fastened his seat-belt. ‘That’s all ancient history. I mean the reshuffle. Your new job, Ken.’ He smiled again. ‘Your great opportunity.’

  ‘Opportunity?’

  ‘Oh, yes. You’re the new generation, after all. The young lad with the future before him. As for me, well, I’ve thought things over. Perhaps it’s time I made a nuisance of myself on the back benches. Then I can have a real go at you lot in the government whenever I think you deserve it.’

  ‘You’re going to retire?’ Overcome with amazement and hope Ken Cracken could do little more than repeat his leader’s words.

  ‘I made a mistake, it seems. I’d better be moving on, before I make any more.’ If what he said was a confession of failure, Leslie Titmuss’s smile showed no sign of it. What was the mistake? his number two wondered. Did he know he’d been outmanoeuvred over Fallowfield? All such speculation was drowned in the rising tide of his ambition.

  ‘I suppose that will mean a reshuffle.’ It was all going exactly as Ken had planned, with the ever-present help of his political adviser. Titmuss had been defeated over the country town and was retiring hurt, leaving a post for which his Minister of State was the obvious successor.

  ‘I hope you’ll enjoy your new job, Ken.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m sure I will.’

  ‘I had a word about you. In the appropriate quarter.’

  ‘That was very generous of you.’

  ‘I thought so. I pointed out your special talents. You do have special talents, don’t you, Ken?’

  ‘Well. I’m not sure which ones you’re talking about.’ Ken Cracken did his best to sound modest.

  ‘Strategic, tactical talents. “Young Cracken,” I said, “is a genius at guerrilla warfare. He lives and dreams ambushes and surprise-attacks. In his briefcase he carries a Para lieutenant’s swagger-stick. He’ll do well somewhere where the fighting is certain to go on forever.” So you’ve got it, Kenneth.’

  ‘Minister of Defence?’ Ken was puzzled.

  ‘Something that’ll suit you much better than that. This is really active service. You’re going to be number two at the Northern Ireland Office. Now, what time do we get back tomorrow? I’ve got an extremely important dinner date.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Ken Cracken spoke in the tones of a man who has just seen himself bound for oblivion. ‘Who with? Someone beautiful?’

  ‘Someone extremely beautiful.’ Leslie got out his briefing papers and prepared to conceal his feelings for the rest of the journey. ‘My mother!’

  ‘I know. I promised you’d never have to move from here.’

  ‘You did, Leslie. You promised me faithfully.’

  ‘And I’m going to keep my promise to you, Mother.’ Leslie Titmuss was being cooked dinner by Elsie in ‘The Spruces’ in what must have been one of the most dust-free environments in the world. Even the glazed crust of the steak and kidney pie looked as though it had been done over with Mansion polish. He paused to eat, deciding on how to put the matter in the most politically advantageous fashion. ‘There is this business,’ he said carefully, ‘about the new country town.’

  ‘Can’t that be stopped?’

  ‘I don’t see how it can. I gave my word, you see.’

  ‘You gave your word to me as well, Leslie,’ Elsie Titmuss said with one of her sweetest smiles, and scored a hit.

  ‘Of course, these things take years to build. Ten years at least.’ Leslie Titmuss came back at her with an even more powerful smile.

  ‘That’s all right then. This place will see me out.’

  ‘It might see me out too. I’m going to sell the Manor. No good rattling about that old mausoleum now, is it?’

  ‘But Leslie. It was to be your home.’

  ‘Not my sort of home, really. The sort of place where the old-school farts hang their tweed hats in the hall and sit for hours reading Country Life in the lavatories. That’s never been my style at all. You know that, Mother.’

&
nbsp; There was silence as they ate. Then Elsie said, ‘Are you sure you have to be on your own, Leslie?’

  ‘Yes, Mother. Quite sure.’

  ‘That Jenny seemed such a nice girl.’

  Leslie didn’t answer.

  ‘Not a ban-the-bomber, was she?’

  ‘No, Mother. She wasn’t one of those.’

  ‘I suppose you’re not going to tell me what was wrong then, exactly.’

  ‘What was wrong?’ He looked at his mother very seriously. ‘She couldn’t make a steak and kidney to touch yours, Mother.’

  ‘Would you have another helping now, with the crust on it?’

  ‘It’s very more-ish.’ She helped him to another slice of pie and he took a potato with butter and parsley. In the brightly shining room the clock on the mantelpiece ticked like a bomb and the china ornaments gleamed behind the glass door of the display cabinet. Elsie gave herself a minute second helping just, as she said, to keep her son company. She wanted to console him, even if he didn’t want to be consoled. ‘There wasn’t somebody else, was there?’

  ‘I suppose you could say that.’

  ‘Another man?’ She breathed in sharply.

  Leslie’s mouth was full so he nodded and then looked down at his plate.

  ‘She didn’t seem at all that sort of girl to me,’ his mother told him. ‘Appearances are deceptive.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. If they do build this new town while we’re both around, Mother …’

  ‘You will be, Leslie. You surely will be.’

  ‘And you, most probably. We’ll make them put in a new house, just where this one is. A new “Spruces”. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? And it’ll be in the middle of town, you see. Handy for the shops.’

  Elsie thought about it and then repeated, ‘This’ll see me out, Leslie.’

  ‘Well, we’ll have to see. There’s a long time to go yet.’

  ‘Perhaps you could live in it, Leslie. If you have to sell the Manor. I’d like to think of you settled.’

  ‘Live in it? In Fallowfield Country Town?’ There was something about the idea that seemed to amuse him. ‘Well, yes. Perhaps I could.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Elsie said after another silence. ‘About that other man.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘I think I’ve seen him off. I shan’t be lonely. Not so long as I can keep working. Oh, and have dinner with you here, when I feel like home-cooking.’

  ‘I don’t know how Jenny could do that.’ Elsie Titmuss pursed her lips in wonder and outrage. ‘Not when she had you, Leslie.’ Then she looked again at her son’s plate and saw that he was down to his last mouthful. She lifted the spoon over the pie dish hopefully. ‘Won’t you take pity on this last little bit?’

  ‘No, thank you very much. I couldn’t fit it.’ Leslie pushed his now empty plate away from him and said, as his father had before him, ‘That was very tasty, Mother. Very tasty indeed.’

  And Ever Afterwards

  Then wilt thou not be loth

  To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess

  A Paradise within thee, happier far.

  Paradise Lost

  John Milton

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Just over a decade later, the world had got considerably warmer. The sea rose, sloshing over many Pacific islands and flooding expensive houses on the coast of Australia. Ice-caps in the north began to thaw, leaving polar bears stranded, alone and hungry, on floating rafts of diminishing ice. The increasing temperature produced plagues of locusts and the ladybirds became intolerable. The biological clocks of many tortoises were put considerably out of time and the world’s ornithologists sought in vain for Ketland’s warbler or the burrowing owl.

  Defeated on local issues, the Vees turned their attention to wider matters and the remnants of S.O.V. still met in their house for buffet suppers and talks on the ending of the world. One speaker broke the news to them that the ice was being melted not, as was popularly supposed, by the fumes of ever-increasing traffic; the damage was done, so he said, by myriads of termites, set at large by the destruction of the rain forests, breaking wind. ‘Is this the way the world ends?’ Fred asked with attempted solemnity. ‘Not with a bang but a termite’s fart?’

  ‘Honestly, Dr Fred,’ Mrs Vee rebuked him. ‘Can’t you ever take the universe seriously?’

  Despite Fred’s scepticism, the global changes affected Hartscombe. The punts tethered at the riverside rose and were known, in certain weathers, to float into the road. In what was left of the countryside, the harvest mouse was an exotic rarity, the nightingales had been decimated and the adonis blue butterfly was totally extinct. And, as inevitably as the Pacific Ocean advanced to kill the crops and displace the islanders, Fallowfield Country Town flooded the Rapstone Valley.

  The change had started slowly. It was noticed that the narrow lanes became full of traffic. Then cars often had to back up to allow the passage of heavy lorries and building machinery. Then bulldozers came to tear up the hedges and flatten the fields for urban construction. These beginnings were greeted by a final flurry of S.O.V. demonstrations from which the Curdles were notably absent, for as the tide of Fallowfield advanced this family was washed to a new height of prosperity.

  What had happened was this. With his new-found authority as Chairman and Managing Director of the family business, Len Bigwell had consulted Jackson Cantellow on the question of the lease of the rabbit hacienda from one of the farmers who was about to turn his arable land into car parks and supermarkets and high-priced housing estates. When he saw the lease, Jackson Cantellow pursed his lips and couldn’t resist humming a triumphant bar or two of Haydn’s Creation. What Dot Curdle seemed to have obtained, more by luck than legal cunning, from a farmer whose mind was clearly on other matters, was a tenancy protected by the Agricultural Holdings Act. ‘And they can’t shift you,’ Jackson Cantellow rumbled in his most resonant bass. ‘Except with untold gold.’ So that was how the Curdles became converted to the ‘country town conception’ and could afford to buy the freehold of Rapstone Manor when the Right Honourable Leslie Titmuss put it on the market.

  So the house remained unaltered, on the very outskirts of the town. The garden was given over to a high-density development of rabbit hutches, mainly containing angoras. The food-producing animals were left to the many subsidiary farms and freezer-packing facilities the Curdles had acquired in various other parts of southern England. From their headquarters in the Manor the family branched out into other businesses, including double-glazing, patio doors, loft conversions and the covering of ceilings with whirling patterns of raised plaster – a form of folk art which had become enormously popular with the inhabitants of Fallowfield Country Town. The Bigwells had now produced three healthy children and Len, who had been elected to the town council in the Conservative interest, would become one of Fallowfield’s early mayors. Grandmother Dot had retired from business and sat for much of the day dozing in the conservatory and dreaming of past lovers. Billy, her youngest child, having grown out of his period of juvenile delinquency, now ran the Cordon Bleu Lapin Frozen Dinners export department. He had fallen wonderfully in love with Sharon Wellings, the daughter of a Fallowfield dentist, who was still in her last year at school. They had met at an old-time Barry Manilow concert in the Fallowfield Arts and Leisure Centre and they carried on their affair secretly, it having been expressly forbidden by Mr and Mrs Wellings who disapproved of Billy Curdle as an older man with a criminal record and as such unsuitable company for young Sharon.

  Rapstone Manor remained unchanged and isolated amid the ocean of new building, and so did the Rapstone Nature Area which had been privatized and become the property of Greener Than Green Ltd (Chairman and Managing Director Sir Christopher Kempenflatt), a concern which owned a number of other nature areas as well as maximum security prisons, mental hospitals and remand centres. Hector Bolitho Jones, ten years older and ten years more lonely, was still in charge and ran his kingdom in accordan
ce with the strict rules laid down by Greener Than Green Ltd. The new regime was entirely to his taste as it was designed to make public access to the area brief and patrons were encouraged to spend as much time as possible in the café, the hall of animal waxworks and the gift shop at the area gates. Children, of course, were allowed to enter the area, but only at specified times, in supervised parties and if they followed the clearly marked Instructional Nature Trails. Their grandparents could also visit at certain times, but they were confined to Senior Citizen Rambles. Young people were allowed in only in accredited groups and had to show their identity cards at the turnstile in accordance with recent legislation designed to stamp out Nature Area hooliganism. No one of any age was permitted to stray from the designated paths, sit or lie down, carve their initials on trees, sing, dance, picnic, drink alcohol, smoke or play any sort of musical instrument. As he looked over his domain at night, under a sky turned orange by the lights of Fallowfield, Hector Bolitho Jones was profoundly grateful that in his small world plants and animals reigned supreme. Men, women and children were second-class citizens.

  Walking home one evening from having locked the turnstile, Hector saw an unwelcome scrap of litter on one of the trails. He stooped and felt sickened by the sight of a small packet which had once contained what his ex-wife Daphne, in a way which had distressed him, had called ‘rubber johnnies’, but which he preferred to give their proper medical title. The appearance of a condom here revolted him as a piece of obscene graffiti on a cathedral column might have outraged a bishop. He went indoors to burn the offending object and in doing so forgot to repair a small gap in the fencing down by the stream, a job he had postponed once before. From that time he didn’t merely dislike the human beings who polluted his Nature Area, he hated them passionately.

  It cannot be said that Fallowfield Country Town, when it was complete, was quite the bright and shining monument to the success of Titmuss’s England that its developers had promised. To pay back the loans raised from Jumbo Plumstead and other bankers, Kempenflatts charged the Fallowfield shopkeepers heavily. Those who had opened in high hopes in the glistening, mock-Georgian shopping malls, setting out their health foods and designer knitwear, their Country Craft table mats and their large selections of sentimental or suggestive greetings cards, found their sales inadequate to meet the soaring rents and soon went bankrupt. The big chain stores moved in. But they also found that the amounts they were required to contribute to Jumbo’s interest charges made their businesses unprofitable. Many shops closed and remained empty. Some pedestrian precincts became deserted, being used as public urinals by those made pugnacious or nauseated by Fortissimo lager.