by Tim Jeal
Take the average holiday-maker speeding towards the sands in his metal box, is his life, happiness and security not at risk? Apart from the fear of a fatal crash, what economic, social and moral pressures act upon him unawares as he rushes so blithely upon his way? What lewd memories of infant sexuality shape his subconscious mind and afflict his wife with lascivious dreams? A horrifying thought, and yet in one family car, one family man is aware of all the snares and hazards faced by married couples in a competitive and commercially distorted society, and furthermore this man has pledged himself, within the limited ambit of his own family, to do battle with these disruptive forces. Cushing’s Crusade, a modern morality play, with Charles epitomizing the power of wealth and lust, and Diana representing human weakness in the face of avarice and envy. The archivist himself is reason, moderation and decency. It had been some time, Derek reflected, since he had allowed himself the pleasant fatuity of such idly self-indulgent fantasies.
The heat in the car was increasing. In front of them the road floated in the rising waves of warm air; patches of melting tar made dark smudges. Kalulu was panting. The windscreen was now splattered with insect corpses, their body secretions smeared dribbles of yellow, red and brown. They intended to have lunch just outside Shaftesbury and already Derek was thinking with pleasure of liver sausage sandwiches, apples, plums and a cup of coffee from the thermos. Cold consommé would have been nice, followed perhaps by a light salmon soufflé. He must have started to doze because by the time he realized that Kalulu was retching it was too late to take evasive action. The cat had eaten half a tin of reddish-coloured meat early that morning, and now a thin greasy mess of roughly that colour was seeping into the fabric of Derek’s trousers. Several delicate strands of vomit and saliva hung from the corners of Kalulu’s mouth. Gone were all thoughts of food; Derek swallowed hard to banish the spasms of nausea he felt at the back of his throat.
‘We’d better stop,’ he murmured faintly.
‘Christ what a pong,’ Giles exclaimed, putting down his thriller for the first time on the journey. ‘Only another two hundred miles,’ he added considerately.
*
By late afternoon they had left the main road, and were threading their way through a network of Cornish lanes; tall hedges rose up on each side and long grass and cow-parsley brushed the sides of the car. For several hundred yards at a time the interlacing boughs of low stunted oaks formed a canopy overhead and shut out the sky. Through the open windows of the car Derek could smell the honeysuckle in the banks and hedges. A few more miles and the road dipped down from the plateau of hedged fields into dense woods of hazel, oak and holly.
A few miles farther on Derek, who had taken over the driving, stopped on a small stone bridge spanning a narrow creek. Away to their left they could see the main arm of the river winding in a deep, twisting channel through shimmering banks of mud. In the distance a group of gulls rose from the mud and wheeled high above the river: tiny white specks against the sombre green woods on the opposite shore. Beyond the bridge the road curved upwards into the woods, leaving the river for a while.
Nearer the sea, the mudflats and the narrow channel of brown-green water had vanished. A very different river now, and the woods had given way to fields once more. Between the granite pillars flanking farm gates they glimpsed shimmering blue water in V-shaped clefts where steeply sloping hills met. Across the wide estuary the evening sun caught the windows of a group of grey stone cottages and warmed the ochre lichen on the squat tower of a nearby church. A patchwork of cornfields and stony grassland sloped down to small shingle beaches and rocky inlets. Away to their right between two bracken-covered headlands was the sea, throwing a thin white ribbon along the rocks. Near the horizon a long bar of darker blue faded imperceptibly into grey where sea and sky met.
Charles’s directions for locating the house had been precise: ‘At the crossroads just before you get to Tregeare village, turn left; go on past the Wesleyan chapel and a white farmhouse and the drive is another 200 yards on the right just beyond a group of firs.’ There were no gates, just two stone piers surmounted by carved pineapples. Ahead of them, at the end of a short drive, flanked by rhododendrons, stood the house. Derek had expected something more imposing: Tudor, Carolean or Georgian, but what he saw was a rambling late Victorian house built around three sides of a slate-paved courtyard. To the right across rough grass was an overgrown tennis court and dilapidated summer house and beyond that a thicket of giant bamboos. Derek pulled up opposite the front door and switched off the engine. He smiled experimentally. Not a bad journey, traffic could have been worse. The cat was sick but apart from that we managed very well. I’m told that the prawning in these parts is quite exceptional…. Charles had appeared in the doorway. Derek threw open the door and jumped out energetically.
‘Dear God, it’s good to feel the ground under one’s feet after a long voyage,’ he shouted, as he leapt round to the other side of the car and opened Diana’s door with an excess of gallantry. ‘Step ashore, my lovely.’ Diana smiled wanly as Charles came up to them.
‘Come in and have a drink, or for Derek’s nautical benefit we might splice the mainbrace.’
‘The sun’s got to be below the yardarm,’ returned Derek in the gruff tone of a ham actor auditioning for the part of Long John Silver or Captain Hook. His opening line had been a joke that couldn’t be sustained and now almost in spite of himself he was bludgeoning it to death. ‘No drinks until the ship’s cat’s been watered. Giles, un-hatch the hold and fetch his tray and litter.’
A few sentences and already Diana was embarrassed by his heartiness. She always disparaged people who allowed pets to dictate routines. She hadn’t wanted the animal to come and would therefore hate him underlining the cat’s presence immediately on arriving. Better forget Kalulu and have a drink straight away, Derek told himself. Stupid to begin with such obvious wrecking; greater subtlety was required. But Giles had already extricated the tray and cat litter from the boot.
‘Can’t the cat wait?’ asked Diana.
‘He’s waited for nine hours,’ Giles countered. ‘You wouldn’t like to hold on that long. He must be bursting.’
Derek turned to Charles.
‘Is there a box-room or somewhere he can go for the time being?’
They followed Charles into the house; Giles lugging the sack of cat litter and Derek carrying the frenzied cat. Charles led them into a small unused conservatory tacked onto the side of the house.
‘This do?’ asked Charles.
‘It’ll need sweeping out and he’ll have to have a carpet and a bed…. No, it’s fine, perfect. He was sick all over me on the way so maybe food wouldn’t be a good idea.’
As soon as Giles had closed the door, Derek bent down and gingerly undid the leather straps of the basket. He had opened the lid barely six inches when Kalulu sprang out like a jack-in-a-box and backed away spitting defiantly.
‘Friendly little soul,’ Charles remarked with a forced smile.
‘He’ll be all right in the morning,’ replied Derek. The best thing would be to fill the tray at once and leave the room as quickly as possible. To delay would merely irritate Diana more. Derek’s plan had been to disarm through charm, to be so friendly, so likeable and good-natured that they would both feel ashamed to be deceiving such a good and pleasant man, and yet little flickers of anger like acid in the stomach wrecked his intentions. Why had he been fool enough to presume that he could muster sufficient self-control to play such a game? Better to have gone to Scotland and let them fuck freely until boredom brought an inevitable end. As he started to shake cat litter into the plastic tray he saw Diana’s disapproving expression, the slight puckering of her brow. As though his little sin in bringing the animal could compare remotely with her guilt. How dared she condemn anything he did, when his offences were so trivial? He pushed the tray over into a corner. Kalulu sidled up to it and started scratching at the litter sending handfuls onto the floor. Diana had moved towards t
he door. What delicacy. She was eager to leave before the animal urinated, before a dark stain formed in the tray. Derek began a monologue to detain her.
‘His name’s Kalulu which is a bit ironic really; the first Kalulu, you see, being a born traveller and our Kalulu hating journeys as he does. Kalulu was a young African boy adopted by Henry Stanley: not adopted as a child but as a pet: a delightful piccaninny to produce as an exhibit on lecture tours, all kitted out in Eton jacket, starched shirt and shiny black shoes. He was drowned in the end when Stanley was tracing the Congo to the sea; attempted to shoot some rapids and disappeared for good. He’s called Kalulu because of his black fur, not that there’s anything racist about it.’
Kalulu, who had produced two turds as well as a bladderful of urine, was covering up his doings with showers of litter. Derek smiled at everyone.
‘Shall we have that drink now?’ he asked.
Charles ushered them out into a short corridor that led into the hall and from there into the sitting-room, which overlooked the garden and the estuary. Derek had supposed that Charles would have transformed the interior of the house with hidden lighting, whitewashed rough brick walls and modern pictures and furniture, but his guess had been entirely wrong. Charles had evidently bought the house and its contents with the intention of keeping the place as it was. The sitting-room, like the hall and the main staircase, was panelled in oak and only saved from gloominess by wide french windows. Charles described it as Jacobean with a touch of Hollywood baronial. He was planning to get some antlers, a few Gothic armchairs and several highland scenes by Landseer. Diana laughed and suggested an Etty nude as well; Charles promised to get one when the opportunity arose. Derek imagined himself coming home from work and calling to Diana: Got your Etty, darling. Only a couple of thousand.
When Charles had poured drinks for all of them, he led the way out onto the lawn, which was bordered on both sides by a fuchsia hedge. At the end of the lawn a large rockery dropped away towards a tangle of shrubs and bushes which skirted a strip of woodland. Through a gap in the trees Derek could see the estuary.
‘What a heavenly place,’ murmured Diana. She sipped her drink elegantly and asked, ‘How far is it to the nearest beach?’
‘Just through those woods,’ replied Charles pointing. ‘There’s a path of sorts.’
‘So you’ve got a private beach?’ she came back with a mixture of surprise and pleasure. Derek felt his bitterness stirring again. As though the man hadn’t already told her. Perhaps they were enjoying the mutual joke of her girlish admiration. How clever to have a private beach; did you make it yourself or have it built by a firm? Starfish and rock pools optional extras. So much better than a swimming-pool somehow, more natural and so few people have them. Giles nudged his father and whispered. ‘There’s no such thing as a private beach, not below the tide-mark anyway.’
‘If you can keep people off there is,’ Derek replied quietly and then, turning to Charles, ‘What do you do when people land from boats?’
‘They very rarely do, so there’s no problem.’
‘You could put down a boom like they did in the war to keep enemy submarines out of harbours,’ Giles suggested.
‘I don’t think I’d go that far,’ laughed Charles.
But if they came in a small armada of pleasure boats, what would you do? If they spread out their plastic forks and plastic knives, their plastic chairs and plastic wives would you let them? But of course they wouldn’t come because they don’t like solitude and empty beaches, they like crowds, beach shops, caravan parks and seaside amenities. Trippers are bored by beauty; only we, who spend weekends in comfortable houses and cottages, really appreciate the country and an isolated coast, and there are so few of us, we like to think.
‘I’d put down mines,’ said Derek with conviction, but Charles couldn’t have heard because he was on his way back to the house to bring out more drinks.
‘Do you imagine you’re being funny?’ Diana blurted out. ‘You’ve been behaving like an imbecile ever since we arrived. One minute you’re like an idiotic buffoon and the next making some snide and vicious remark. Are you jealous or something?’
‘I am utterly consumed; I covet most excessively but will not openly admire what I cannot have.’ See my horns, madam, am I not a jealous fool? Derek expected her to continue but instead she walked away towards the rockery.
‘I’m jealous too,’ said Giles. ‘Imagine having a house like this and masses of money. Did you see his car in the garage? He really must be loaded.’
‘I wasn’t being entirely serious,’ Derek replied.
‘You were being snide?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Mummy thought so.’
‘That’s her affair. Now stop badgering me.’
‘Just because I said it’s nice here, and it is nice.’ Giles gave Derek a wounded look. ‘I’m going to walk down to the beach.’
Charles came out again with a tray of drinks and Diana rejoined them.
‘Where’s he off to?’ Charles asked, pointing at Giles, who was jumping down the rockery.
‘The private beach,’ Derek replied.
‘Why not call it the beach?’
‘It’s shorter,’ Derek conceded, as Charles poured him another drink.
‘And I prefer it,’ Charles added.
‘Fine; it’s shorter and preferable and it’s where Giles has gone, is going.’
Charles was looking at Derek quizzically.
‘Why did you change your mind about coming?’ he asked.
To stop you fucking my wife, to keep at bay feelings which some days ago seemed to threaten my personal equilibrium, to …
‘Diana,’ he said abruptly; the truth, no doubt about it. Charles was looking puzzled rather than alarmed. Diana glared menacingly at her husband.
‘Diana?’ Charles repeated.
‘Yes, Diana. She went on at me so much that I had no choice; she used everything but the thumbscrews. But being a firm believer in family holidays, I finally allowed myself to be persuaded.’
‘Absolute rubbish,’ cut in Diana, trying to cover her anger with a light bantering tone. ‘He realized what a fool he was being and changed his mind. Nothing to do with me.’
Charles looked disconcerted and slightly embarrassed.
‘I shouldn’t like to think you felt obliged to come.’
‘Please,’ implored Derek. ‘No really, I’m going to enjoy myself‚ I assure you. I haven’t brought my shrimping-nets for nothing, you know. Wait till you see me in my striped bathing-trunks.’
Charles forced his mouth into a smile and took Derek’s arm.
‘Quite right; the main thing is that you’re here. I’ve been a bit strained recently. You understand how it is?’
‘Perfectly,’ answered Derek.
Charles clapped him on the shoulder and looked at his watch.
‘I’m going to have to check our supper. The woman who comes in is as bright as a spent match.’ Diana laughed loudly and Derek accompanied her in a lower key. The Cushing family’s famous laughing duet. Charles was momentarily taken aback, but, not to be left out, he joined in too.
‘Bright as a spent match,’ chuckled Derek. ‘Tries to cook things in the fridge, I suppose.’ The trouble one has with staff these days. Take our butler for instance….
*
Half-an-hour before supper: Diana in the bath, Giles still down on the beach and Derek wandering in the rough grass near the tennis court. Looking back towards the house he could see Charles glancing along the side of the house and then walking to the beginning of the drive. For a second Derek contemplated hiding behind the summer house, but, before he had time to do so, Charles had spotted him.
‘There you are. What on earth are you doing?’ he shouted.
‘Looking for phantom balls,’ Derek yelled back.
‘I know what you mean,’ said the approaching Charles, nodding towards the tangle of tall grass and weeds in the court. ‘They never played
on it after the eldest son died in the trenches.’
‘Really?’
‘I meant that’s what it looks like.’
‘I’ll watch for ghostly players gliding through the grass.’
Charles was smiling sadly.
‘Derek, Derek,’ he said affectionately, ‘you didn’t think I expected you to give me the usual sycophantic balls about what a gorgeous house and all that. You’re one of the only people I know who’s honest with me.’
‘Tennis with sycophantic balls. That’s rather nice.’
‘I meant what I said,’ Charles replied reprovingly. ‘If I’d wanted some showplace to impress fools I wouldn’t have bought this. Just look at the garden!’ He threw up his hands. ‘But who wants beautifully manicured lawns with sprinklers spurting day and night and chauffeurs polishing cars in the drive?’
‘You sound like that song Who wants to be a Millionaire?’
‘All right, I’ll spare you any more.’ A brief silence before Charles continued. ‘I was annoyed but not for any reason you imagine. Do you want to hear?’
Derek felt sick. How many times would Charles treat him to sincere talks and man-to-man honesty?
‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘It was what you said about family holidays; it brought home to me the fatuity of having a place like this without a family.’
Charles was separated from his wife and children. Go back if that’s how you feel, Derek wanted to say.
‘Won’t Anne let the children come?’