King of the Badgers

by Philip Hensher

  The flesh of the country grew brown, too; the moors a feeble beige, a dried-out dead colour. On his way to London at the bookends of the week, Kenyon noticed that the chalk horse at the midpoint of the journey had almost disappeared, so drab and pale had the turf it was cut in become.

  The crops wilted and browned; those who fancied themselves country folk talked gravely of the consequences of this dry spell. People had known hotter summers, and at the end of August, around the Brigadier’s funeral, there was a sudden drop in temperature, which seemed like the beginning of autumn. But it had not rained, and the temperature had crept up again for a last burst, an Indian summer, mid-September. Only now it rained.

  The clouds swept up in a great mass from the Atlantic, black-bellied and angry, and they hit something in the air—the Met Office could have explained what. First some fat drops, hitting the dust on the street, and then the collapse of the skies; girls ran through it, nothing to shelter under but their handbags. A single flash, somewhere over the castle, and simultaneously a great explosion of thunder, like a bomb going off, people said.

  What a treat for the farmers, the husbands of Hanmouth observed, hurrying inside, carrying the Sunday papers from the garden. There was a wash of beautiful fragrance from field, park and garden that had been locked up for months; a wash of fragrance, too, from the estuary, trickling along at the bottom of its course. In less than half an hour, the sloping streets of Hanmouth were bordered by rivulets, fast becoming brooks, a twist of bright water running down to the drains and the earth.

  What a treat for the farmers, the husbands of Hanmouth said again, and nobody rushed to get the washing in; that was all done in tumble-driers these days, even in an Indian summer.

  18.

  ‘I suppose the farmers will be glad of it,’ John Calvin said, in their sitting room, reading the paper. Laura agreed that they would. He was sitting reading the Observer with one sock off, occasionally giving the sole of his foot a small poke with the end of his crossword pencil—he suffered, always had, from athlete’s foot, a positive martyr to it. Laura was at her Sunday-morning task of ironing Calvin’s shirts. He liked to have them ironed and ready, twelve of them, on Monday morning, for the week ahead—a daytime shirt and an evening shirt. After the shirts, there were the trousers to put a crease in, his underpants to iron, his handkerchiefs, and then his socks.

  ‘Ooh, arr,’ Calvin said, in an uncommitted way. ‘It’s terrible, this collapse in house prices, Laura.’

  ‘Really?’ Laura said.

  ‘It says here, house prices have come down twenty per cent in a year. Twenty per cent!’

  ‘Have we lost money on our house, John?’ Laura said.

  ‘No, not yet,’ John said. ‘It’s got a long way to fall before that happens, Laura.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ Laura said. ‘Because I would really worry about that.’

  The two of them remained absorbed in their different tasks for a minute; John Calvin reading about house prices, and Laura Calvin finishing the last of her husband’s shirts.

  ‘I think it may be time for Neighbourhood Watch, Laura,’ John said.

  Laura set down her iron with a bang, point upwards. ‘I thought Neighbourhood Watch was on Tuesday nights, John.’

  ‘It usually is, Laura,’ John Calvin said. ‘But it isn’t always. Today Neighbourhood Watch is on a Sunday.’

  ‘People will be confused,’ Laura said. ‘The members of Neighbourhood Watch. They won’t know to come, will they?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Calvin said. He bent down, picked up his sock, turned it inside out and put it on again. ‘They’re all coming. They’re all very excited and interested.’

  ‘Well, I can only do biscuits,’ Laura said. ‘I haven’t made anything else. There are those walnut biscuits I made yesterday, and there’s a packet of chocolate Hobnobs.’

  ‘I thought you made a lemon drizzle cake on Friday, Laura,’ John Calvin said. ‘I distinctly remember you saying so, and we had a piece each, yesterday, at our morning coffee. I told you I thought it was delicious and moist. Did we finish that?’

  ‘No, John,’ Laura said. ‘You’re right. There is some lemon drizzle cake. They can have that.’

  ‘Mrs McGillicuddy from the dairy I happen to know especially likes lemon drizzle cake,’ John Calvin said. ‘And Signor Abbagataglia, the pizza chef, often brings a cake typical of his native Sicily to pass round. Poor Dr “Taff” Williams has been put on a strict diet by his new young wife, Blodwen, to get his blood pressure down.’

  ‘Fancy him not worrying about that sooner!’ Laura Calvin said. She bent down and unplugged the iron, set it down on a granite square. She carried the washing through to the kitchen, returned and started to fold up the ironing-board. ‘And him a GP, too.’

  ‘So he won’t be eating anything at all, Laura,’ John Calvin said. ‘Though I have known him to sneak a bite when Blodwen was not in the room. “Nary a word, boyo,” he said to me on one occasion, and winked. And then I know Mrs Patel will definitely be here, late as usual in her comical way. I am sure she will bustle into the room, fifteen minutes late, demand that we start again from the beginning of the agenda, and misunderstand almost everything while eating the rest of the lemon drizzle cake. She is really too fat, Mrs Patel is, with the sedentary life she leads.’

  ‘Would you call Mrs Patel fat, John?’ Laura asked. ‘I would not have thought she was as fat even as Dr “Taff” Williams.’

  ‘Yes,’ John Calvin said. ‘Yes, she is really quite definitely fat. Most people would describe that as her defining characteristic.’

  He picked up the newspaper again, flapping it open in a decisive way.

  ‘It’s simply pouring it down,’ Laura said. ‘Are you sure that they are going to want to come out in this weather?’

  ‘We airrn’t made oot of sugar, hinny,’ John Calvin said, from behind the newspaper, imitating Mrs McGillicuddy from the dairy’s voice.

  ‘I wondered whether it might not be more convenient for everyone to hold it on Tuesday night,’ Laura said. ‘Then I could make some really nice canapés, and I don’t believe there’s any sherry in the house to offer them.’

  John Calvin threw down his newspaper. ‘No, Laura,’ he said. ‘Neighbourhood Watch is happening this morning. In fact, it’s happening now. Look, there’s Signor Abbagataglia. I’m so glad he managed to get time off from the pizza parlour.’

  Outside, through the window, it was Sam and his dog Stanley; they were rushing home through the rain, as fast as either of them could manage. But Laura, her ironing done and out of sight, quickly laid out six plates around the pale oak dining-table, where John liked to hold his Neighbourhood Watch meetings.

  ‘Here is Signor Abbagataglia,’ Laura said, without opening the front door—they didn’t go that far, but making a gesture.

  ‘Beh—iz-a luvverly to see-a you,’ John Calvin said. ‘Beh, cannot-a believe-a the rain. Rain-a, rain-a, go away, we say inna my country. And-a the beautiful Laura—’

  A certain amount of frank kissing then happened. Signor Abbagataglia was a terrible flirt, unable to restrain his libido or his desire when he saw Laura. But everyone accepted that. ‘And Mrs McGillicuddy—how lovely to see you, Morag—and Dr “Taff” Williams. Now, Dr “Taff”, I know dear Blodwen is keeping you on a strict diet, so we won’t tempt you with any of those delicious little sweet things you like so much.

  ‘Or maybe just the one it is, boyo, if my drift you are getting it is, Mrs C,’ John Calvin said, pulling out Dr “Taff” Williams’s chair. Laura went into the kitchen, fetched the two-thirds remainder of the lemon drizzle cake, and the walnut biscuits she had made yesterday. She wished she had got round to the chocolate and star-anise brownies she’d read about in yesterday’s Guardian.

  ‘And, och, who else are we expecting the day, laddie? See’s yon cookie, Laura,’ John Calvin said, from behind Morag McGillicuddy’s chair.

  ‘And who else would it be but Mrs Patel?’ he went on in his own voice. ‘Mrs
Patel, has she ever arrived on time for anything, in her entire life? Dear old Mrs Patel—where would we be without her?’

  The company all laughed, except for Laura, who was wondering whether she had forgotten anything. ‘I’ll bring the tea in a moment, John,’ she said. He gave her a warning glance. ‘Everyone,’ she said.

  ‘I think we won’t wait for Mrs Patel,’ John Calvin said, as he did at every Neighbourhood Watch meeting. ‘Mrs McGillicuddy—Dr “Taff” Williams—Signor Aggabatablia, I mean Abbagataglia—I will get your name right one of these days, I really will!—do sit down, one and all. There’s a lot for us to get through today. Neighbourhood Watch. Neighbourhood Watch…’ and he went on rearranging the papers that were always kept at the end of the pale oak dining-table in a pile. ‘Yes. Well. As I promised,’ John Calvin said to the empty table, ‘I did meet with the local constabulary, on everyone’s behalf.’

  20.

  Kenyon stood by the cashpoint machine on Hanmouth Fore street, and fed his card in. He was sheltering under an umbrella: it had been raining steadily, sweetly, all day. He entered his four-digit security code, and pressed the button for cash withdrawal. He indicated that he would like a hundred pounds—it was Sunday night, and he would need some cash in the morning, when he went to London.

  The machine made an electronic murmur, and then produced a message: ‘INSUFFICIENT FUNDS’, it said. Kenyon looked at it, with a flush of heat all over his head. It was the ninth day of the month. This was impossible. But then he saw how very possible it was. The card was returned to him, and he performed the same cycle, this time asking for a mere fifty pounds. There was the same noise, and it again produced the message: ‘INSUFFICIENT FUNDS’. There was really no point in trying the credit card—he knew that was at its absolute limit, or somewhat beyond. The letters from Barclaycard he had taken to placing unopened in his briefcase, and disposing of in his office shredder without even reading them. He told himself that they were probably circulars, anyway, of no interest. But he did not believe that.

  What was it all spent on? Nothing. Just a place to live, eating out when Miranda didn’t want to cook, the occasional trip to the theatre or to the cinema, the occasional painting, three times a year a holiday, and then there were clothes, bills, things like that. You couldn’t live without any of that, you just couldn’t. Miranda earned £47,000 a year: he earned £62,000 a year, and the pair of them had no money at all. It all went on the gigantic mortgage. The card was returned to him, and once more he typed in his security code, indicated he wanted to withdraw some money, and typed in ten pounds. The message came back, but a different one: ‘SORRY THIS MACHINE ONLY HOLDS £20 NOTES. DO YOU WISH TO REQUEST A SUM AVAILABLE IN £20 NOTES?’ Kenyon agreed that he did, and asked for twenty pounds. There was a small solitary noise of consideration from within the machine, and then, amazingly, it produced a twenty-pound note, and thanked him for his custom. That was it, then: Kenyon, at this moment, had somewhere between twenty and forty-nine pounds in his bank account, or rather, his bank was prepared to lend him a further sum, between twenty and forty-nine pounds. Some years ago, a person would be allowed to remove twenty pounds if he had twenty pounds; now, a person would be allowed to remove twenty pounds if that was the sum remaining in his many-thousands overdraft facility, which in any case Kenyon had no recollection of ever requesting. ‘Retrench, retrench, retrench,’ Kenyon said to himself as he turned back towards his house, his impossible million-pound house with the £600,000 mortgage on it. He greeted a couple he knew, also out walking under umbrellas: it was the new couple. Their names—she was Catherine, he remembered. But they did not stop to speak to him beyond a brief greeting. Miranda would lend him some money. She would have to. After all, he’d lent her three hundred pounds at the end of September, to tide her over.

  21.

  Each polished surface in the sitting room on the first floor was a still life; each painting on the wall was also a still life. On the good antique walnut surfaces of the side tables, the low glass coffee-table, a modern 1960s console under a Mary Fedden, an arrangement had been placed. They were unchanging. On the walnut table by the side of the sofa, there was an enamel snuffbox, a ‘netsuke toggle’, as Billa referred to it, of an octopus embroiled in a struggle with a crab, and a brownish sort of ashtray, as well as an occasional light; on the console table there was a huge Swedish vase and what Billa recognized her guests would mostly consider a macabre object, a horse’s hoof half-encased in silver filigree, said to be the relic of the last cavalry charge Tom’s regiment ever made. Even on the coffee-table, the picture-books changed from time to time, but their general arrangement never; Billa went up to London from time to time, saw an exhibition every so often, came back and put the catalogue in the place that the catalogues had always been, next to another ashtray, a half conch shell rimmed, again, with silver. Neither Billa nor Tom had ever smoked, and their guests did not—had not—either; it would not, however, have suited them to be considered a non-smoking house.

  ‘I went to this,’ Sylvie said, picking up an exhibition catalogue. It was of Matisse and Picasso. She opened it. ‘I loved this show. God, was it as long ago as that—four years?’

  ‘That must have been the last thing we went to,’ Billa said. ‘Kitty and I, we used to be rather good at getting up to town, going round the shops, taking in things like that.’

  In fact, she had very little memory of the exhibition. It had for four years been sitting, in book form, on her coffee-table, a trophy brought back and then ignored. She had retained almost nothing of the exhibition itself, only enough to tell Tom a few things, pass on some impressions to Miranda and Sam and anyone else who might be polite enough to show an interest, and then she had forgotten about it.

  ‘Don’t you go?’ Billa said. ‘You must head up to London, surely. To see art, I mean.’

  Sylvie paused with her coffee cup halfway to her lips; blew judiciously on it; lifted it slightly, scraping it on the edge of the saucer, then poured the residue that had slopped into the saucer back into the cup.

  ‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘No, I don’t. Not if I can really help it. I know I should. I’m terribly lazy. Do you mind if I have a cigarette? I’m simply dying for one.’

  ‘Not at all. Don’t you need to keep up with stuff?’ Billa said.

  ‘Keep up? You mean what everyone else is doing? No, I don’t feel that need. You can get ideas anywhere.’

  Billa, who believed that Sylvie’s art extended only to cutting men’s parts out of dirty magazines and pasting them on canvas, said nothing to this. Her friendship with Sylvie had developed into cups of coffee on the mornings when Sylvie wasn’t teaching in Barnstaple, and, once or twice, a glass of wine in the early evening. Tom had formerly looked after the wine, and he’d done it well; there was an enormous amount down there under the stairs, it seemed to Billa, and some of it, she believed complacently, was really rather good. She knew nothing about wine, except that if one of Tom’s bottles were covered in dust, it was probably a valuable one. He had never encouraged her to fetch a bottle; that had always been his job, and he could take a surprisingly long time about it, weighing the claims of this and that. Now that he was dead—Billa’s unaccommodating formula to herself—Billa would just go down, fetch up a bottle of red or of white, open it, and drink some of it with Sylvie. ‘This is really delicious,’ Sylvie said once or twice, startling Billa, to whom ‘delicious’ was more likely to refer to food, even to the bowl of peanuts than to a glass of wine. One day soon, she would get in someone who knew about this stuff, and probably offload some of the best bottles. She had to admit, she didn’t really appreciate Tom’s collection.

  She appreciated Sylvie, though. She was the only visitor she had, these days, who arrived without bearing some kind of foodstuff, usually handmade, for Billa to heat up. At the first, there had been so much more than Billa could reasonably get through that she found herself eating heavy lasagnes, shepherd’s pies, moussakas, fish pies and pots of stews at
lunchtime and supper-time; the donators would always want their dishes back, so one couldn’t simply bung them in the freezer. The cakes and biscuits could be put on one side, but fewer people thought that would be what Billa would want or need. They thought, evidently, that she would not be up to the challenge of making a pie, and yet would welcome a made dish like that. Like W.B. Yeats and his nine bean-rows, Billa suffered under a terrible and exhausting glut of layered savoury dishes. Her fridge and pantry looked like a horizontal, clingfilmed archive.

  Sylvie had arrived, once, with a packet of tea—evidently quite nice tea—and that had been that. They had drunk the tea, commented on its deliciousness, and got stuck into one of Kitty’s coffee cakes. Not so delicious: made with coffee essence, evidently, and not with coffee. Kitty’s cooking had never quite moved on from the style she had learnt as a girl, in the 1960s. Billa and Sylvie had thoroughly dissected it at the time: on the other hand, they had also eaten the cake.

  Sylvie was relaxing company, flopping down on the sofa and talking over this and that. She hadn’t known Tom, and that was all to the good.

  ‘What news of Tony?’ Billa said jauntily. Outside, there was the clatter of a ladder against the wall—the window cleaner, she expected.

  ‘Ah, Tony,’ Sylvie said. ‘Counting the days. I told him for the fifth time at least that he ought to be finding somewhere else to live. He seemed surprised. I don’t know why. I want my house to myself again. On top of that, I hear he’s being made to retrain and teach media and film. No call for German, these days. He’s not very happy about that.’

  ‘Can you teach media and film? Oh, making it, you mean.’

  ‘No, just watching it. And then talking about it afterwards. Analysing it, you know.’