Summer Season Read online

  How difficult it is to be polite when one is bored, I thought. If I am going to be bored for the next three weeks how soon will it be before I become, or seem to become, rude? I said: ‘Very interesting. I didn’t realize the house was so early.’

  ‘Oh, didn’t you? I should have thought you could tell from the façade. It was built for Samuel Pyedum the great Methodist, you know. Westerlea has a long tradition of Puritanism. Anyway’—he went on in the manner of a lecturer who has dealt effectively with an irrelevant interruption—‘it has the advantage that there is a communicating door between my study and the lounge and also between the dining-room and the new kitchen. I should make this plain now, that the communicating door between my study and the lounge is never left open under any circumstances.’

  At this point it was no longer possible for us to ignore the fact that the door from the dining-room to the kitchen had not only been left open but that there was issuing from it a considerable hubbub, as of two females in dispute.

  ‘You always try to block everything decent that I try and do,’ one voice was screaming.

  ‘Not at all,’ said the other, calmer, voice, which I recognized as Mrs. Gevaert’s. ‘It’s only that I, we, don’t want you to make a fool of yourself.’

  ‘I don’t see what’s foolish about trying to bring a little charm and poetry into some horrible pagan sort of—it isn’t foolishness, it’s just that you’re too mean to help me pay for the float from Brownlees.’

  ‘Nora, please. Do let’s try and be sensible about it all.’ Mrs. Gevaert had moved into our range of vision and noticed us. ‘Max,’ she appealed.

  ‘Now then, now then,’ gutturally boomed Gevaert, ‘haven’t we got all this settled yet?’ He turned to me and said, ‘A Parliament of Women.’

  The new woman, who was also in her late forties, with enormous, pale, watery eyes and a soft, but wrinkled, skin, said, ‘Max, Max, what shame there must be in your heart at this betrayal.’ Raising one elbow like a ballet dancer, she turned to me. ‘Let us ask this young man what he thinks of it all.’ She lowered her lashes at me perfunctorily and went on: ‘He looks so intelligent that I’m sure he will be on my side. Who is he, Elizabeth?’

  Judging from the composure with which Mrs. Gevaert effected our introduction she must be pretty used, I felt, to this sort of conduct by the new woman, whose name, it seemed, was Mrs. du Chair.

  ‘Kenneth Crane, little Paul’s new tutor.’ Mrs. du Chair repeated the phrase and gazed at me in silence for an uncomfortably long period. ‘Well, Mr. Crane, wouldn’t you say that a beautiful poetic tableau of a bride, and her attendants, a bride all in white with a beautiful bouquet, a lovely veil, a long white lace veil that my mother wore at her wedding and that I wore at my wedding—don’t you think that such a tableau, with all its quiet beauty and dignity, would be just the thing in a parade?’

  ‘In a parade?’ I said, licking my lips.

  ‘That’s what Elizabeth and Max and Fleur thought, all of them, a couple of months ago when we first discussed it, and now I’ve got my wedding dress out and my dear little daughter to stand by my side—’

  Gevaert cleared his throat and addressed himself to me. ‘We have a rather special harvest festival here in Westerlea,’ he said; ‘some quaint survival of an old custom of the peasants and farmers in the Marsh. There is a procession in the evening down the High Street of certain simple tableaux depicting appropriate’ (each syllable was indistinct, but separately emphasized) ‘scenes.’

  ‘But in the last few years,’ chimed in Mrs. Gevaert, ‘I’m afraid the rougher types in the town have rather monopolized it. They get drunk, you know, and there is a lot of horseplay and so forth.’

  ‘All the more reason,’ said Mrs. du Chair, who had dropped the scream now that she had secured a larger audience and spoke in a penetrating, but not melodious, sing-song tone, ‘all the more reason why it becomes our duty to try and bring a little sweetness and light to such a gathering. And, what’s more, I was speaking with Canon Brooke the other day and he told me that he thought it would be a very good idea indeed, and as there is every chance that he will also be on the prize committee——’

  ‘That meddler,’ said Gevaert.

  ‘Now, Max, one thing at a time,’ said Mrs. Gevaert.

  Mrs. du Chair said to me, ‘He’s the rural dean.’

  I could feel my sense of nervousness coming galloping back. All this pointless clamour, these mad babbling voices, what was it all about? What business was it of mine? What was I doing here? Who was this maddish woman? The very insecurity of our position, poised in the doorway between these two rooms, in the background the steaming, bubbling pots on the stove—it all seemed symbolic, somehow, and I began to feel myself a character in one of those Expressionist German films of the twenties. At any moment there was going to be some terrifying sadistic close-up. I could feel my mouth going dry. It must be those two big sherries of Gevaert’s; alcohol distends the blood-vessels of the brain, doesn’t it?

  ‘I think I’ll go for a stroll,’ I said, backing. ‘I mustn’t intrude on you—on your …’ But they weren’t even listening, and I turned tail and made my way across the dining-room, and the small, dark hall with its mediocre panelling, and the double porch where Mrs. Roydon had blocked my entry earlier that afternoon, and out into the street.

  It was pleasant out there, and peaceful. I stood for a few moments and took several deep breaths—an effective therapy, I have discovered, against attacks of angst.

  Scattercrumb Street, in which the Gevaerts’ house was number eleven, was possessed of great charm of a rather obvious kind. It was a wide, cobbled cul-de-sac running from, at one end, Church Square—itself almost unbearably picturesque—with a gentle undulation in the centre, and finishing abruptly at a small, faked-up ruin, known as the Battery, which looked out over the Marsh. In the seventeenth century Westerlea had been sacked, at intervals, by the French and Dutch. This, and the frequency with which natural fires started and spread in those times, and periodic legislation decreeing minimum spacing between houses which was as often repealed, allowing, later, narrower houses to go up in the gaps, had led to an assortment of architectural styles. And although varied, the result was rarely offensive.

  The residents had a long tradition behind them of prosperity and kindness to God’s lesser creatures: ‘While the Town waf yet beleaguered the honeft folke of thif ftreete were wont to scatter breade, and all manner of goode thingf elfe, as waf their cuftom to the birds of the air.’ An inscription to this effect had caught my eye on an old—or what purported to be an old—map, exposed in the window of a ‘Curiosity Shoppe’. I had inspected it while pausing for breath on my way up from the station. Judging from the number of new Rovers, Humber Hawks, and Wolseleys that sat, inaccurately but solidly parked, outside their owners’ houses, the habit of prosperity still flourished. No ‘Jags’ here, but good ‘honeft folke’.

  I raised my head at the noise of high heels rapping along the pavement—a sound always capable, I find, of arousing a faint erotic flicker—and there, approaching, was a very delightful-looking girl, or child, or girl!

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  This approach, though, ultimately, welcome, was sudden and unexpected and put me out rather. ‘Greohlo,’ I mumbled, looking away.

  ‘I saw you come out of Pyedums,’ she indicated the Gevaerts’ front door. ‘Is Ma there?’

  She was not wearing lipstick, but had put, unnecessarily, some mascara on her already long and prominent eyelashes. From the extreme freshness and purity of her complexion I estimated her age to be sixteen, or less perhaps. ‘Ma who?’

  She put her thumb to the tip of her nose and extended her hand, at the same time giving a sort of wriggle that was both engaging and provocative. ‘Mrs. du Chair,’ she said.

  So this was Mrs. du Chair’s ‘dear little daughter’. She had her mother’s large eyes and oval face, enlivened by a bitchy vitality that Mrs. du Chair had long ago dissipated, if she ever ha
d it. I could well visualize the sort of circumstances that Mr. and Mrs. Gevaert foresaw if this girl were put on a float with her ankles at eye-level and exposed to ‘the rougher elements in the town’.

  ‘She’s been having a bit of an argument,’ I said. ‘Do you want her?’

  ‘Not specially, I just thought she might of been. My name’s Kitty, by the way.’

  ‘How do you do. Mine is Kenneth.’

  ‘Oh uh.’

  There was a pause. I could feel Gevaert’s sherries performing their proper function at last. For the first time since my arrival in Westerlea I was feeling comfortable.

  ‘How do you like Max?’ she said.

  ‘Max?’

  ‘Mr. Gevaert.’ She pronounced it ‘ert’ instead of ‘aert’.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘He’s O.K. is Max. Him and me, we get along fine.’

  ‘You sound like a moll giving evidence before a crime-busting senatorial committee.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said I’m here to educate Max’s son Paul.’

  ‘You didn’t.’ She remade the thumb-against-the-nose gesture so that I could see that she had it on the brain. ‘And don’t try long words on me because they don’t work.’

  ‘Well, here come five monosyllables. Don’t-you-go-to-school?’

  ‘No. And right now I’m taking off from here. You can go and look after that little drip Paul.’

  ‘Is he a drip? Tell me about him.’

  But already, with her lissom stride, she had put some distance between us. Being young, however, and obviously in a more or less permanent state of over-excitement, she was unable to preserve the effect, and stopping some thirty yards farther on called to me.

  ‘See you around.’

  ‘I hope so,’ I replied, less loudly, but certainly with equal or greater conviction, and turned back into Pyedums.

  3 * Riddle-Brede and Others

  A couple of days went past, but I cannot say that I felt any more at ease. The weather was infernally hot, and I hadn’t been sleeping at all well. I would lie in my bed perspiring uncomfortably and ruminating on the multitude of troublesome and variegated personal problems that were crowding me. I didn’t know how to deal with all these damned Gevaerts, for one thing, and, perhaps because of this, my existence at Pyedums wasn’t turning out to be nearly as comfortable and leisured as I had planned.

  Also, the actual liquid position of my own finances was very poor. Two cautious sallies into the more genteel of Westerlea’s public houses had reduced the six shillings and tenpence with which I had arrived at Pyedums to a handful of copper coins, mainly halfpennies, that fell noisily through the hole in my trouser pocket from time to time, but were, from the aspect of their purchasing power, almost wholly impotent. Furthermore, I didn’t want to show my hand by asking Gevaert for an advance on the two guineas that would not, presumably, be paid over until the following Thursday—not that any division of what was, ab initio, such a ludicrously small sum would be anything but farcical and humiliating.

  Under these conditions my sense of insecurity flourished, and I had one or two nasty bouts of nervous angst. The first of these was brought on during the meat course of dinner on the Friday evening, the day after my arrival. Mrs. Roydon, who had seemed to be spoiling for a fight during the tinned game soup, suddenly interrupted some secondary monologue of Gevaert’s on the importance of good living in ‘this day and age’.

  ‘That was a very nasty case at Wicklesham the other day.’

  I ought to have taken my cue from the other two, who remained silent, but I was anxious to placate Mrs. Roydon. ‘Case?’ I said.

  ‘Rape. A young girl was raped by two youths in a van. Terrible.’ She sniffed.

  ‘Oh well, I’m afraid such things do happen from time to time,’ said Mrs. Gevaert in a soothing voice. To me she said, ‘Have you got enough vegetables?’ (It was plain that my plate was crowded with vegetables.) ‘Have some more of these little carrots, they are out of the garden.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘I’d hang brutes like that,’ said Mrs. Roydon. ‘They ought to be hanged, or shot, and do you know what they got?’

  ‘I’m sure everything was taken into account, whatever it was,’ said Mrs. Gevaert.

  ‘Probation. Probation. Would you believe it? Scotfree for one of them, the other got six months.’

  ‘That does seem rather lenient,’ I said, with some genuine indignation.

  Thoroughly wound up now, Mrs. Roydon went on: ‘Aha yes, but you see Elizabeth had a point there when she said about everything being taken into account, because their lawyer—and why swine like that should have a lawyer, we pay for it, you know, oh yes, it comes out of our pockets, his fees—he said that she had been leading them on, apparently she was a girl of loose morals in spite of her youth. It was said that she had been living with an older man, and of course the boys’ stories fitted. I think that it’s all too horrible.’

  ‘Well, let’s not talk about it, shall we?’ said Mrs. Gevaert. She smiled at me brightly, signalling, with unmistakable clarity, her desire for me to start up some neutral, independent topic.

  In sickly fashion I returned the smile, but my brain was far too absorbed in coping with the complex of minor irritants that had begun suddenly to assail it. I was annoyed by those youths getting off like that. Probation for rape, it was monstrous. Then again, I found the evident unease of the Gevaerts, particularly of Max himself, who had remained silent since having been interrupted and was mushing the food about on his plate without eating it, both embarrassing and infectious. I am not particularly squeamish, and it was not so much the subject-matter as the atmosphere generated by it that was responsible for my stomach tightening up. My tongue had gone dry, which made it almost impossible to swallow the food that was already in my mouth, much less finish those great mounds of vegetables. Yet I must say something, a comment on the little carrots perhaps? Mrs. Roydon beat me to it.

  ‘No, but I think it’s dreadful. Max, you’re strangely silent. What do you think of a young child being corrupted by a married man?’

  In a thick voice Gevaert said, ‘Nature has her own laws.’

  Almost simultaneously Mrs. Gevaert said: ‘I’m afraid such things do happen and it’s all part of life. We simply have to do our best,’ she added, rather oddly.

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’ Mrs. Roydon’s generally husky voice was rising again. ‘In all these things going on under our very noses, and nobody really bothering, of course it’s the parents who are as much to blame as anyone. How anyone could let their daughter roam around the way Nora does, for example, I mean she’s only herself to blame——’

  Mention of Mrs. du Chair was quickly capitalized by Mrs. Gevaert.

  ‘Oh dear, Nora is creating so terribly over the festival,’ she said.

  Mrs. Roydon allowed herself to be diverted. ‘That woman,’ she said. ‘Of course, I’ve never made any secret of my views, but of all the disgusting, unsuitable, exhibitionist things to want to do. I mean, we have to keep up some standards in front of the townspeople, don’t we, and to tell the truth I can’t decide which is the more unfortunate: the ridiculous side of it all or the appeal to their prurient interests.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say it was quite like that,’ said Mrs. Gevaert. ‘But from a money point of view, apart from anything else, I do think it is a bit of a waste. Brownlees charge ten pounds for the hire of a float, including towing fees for the tractor.’

  ‘From a money point of view, quite,’ mumbled Gevaert.

  ‘And, of course, there are tips and things at the end, on top of it all.’

  ‘Money, money. I sometimes wonder if that isn’t all you think about, Elizabeth. But it’s the morals, the moral side of it, that I object to. All she wants to do is to show herself off—she’s still very proud of her legs, you know—and that horrible child of hers, who, if I may say so, is already causing untold harm in the village.’

&nbs
p; There was another of those ominous silences with nobody catching anyone else’s eye.

  ‘Angel going through the room,’ said Mrs. Gevaert. ‘It must be twenty past.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Or is it twenty to? I can never remember.’

  Very foolishly I said, ‘Surely her legs won’t show if she’s dressed as a bride?’ I don’t know why I said this. Partly from mischief, I suppose; partly because I hadn’t spoken for a longish time and felt an urge to communicate, even if to do so involved accepting the dotty fictions that this long, rumbling, chronic dispute seemed to generate.

  Mrs. Roydon didn’t acknowledge the remark directly, but said to the table at large: ‘She’ll find a way of showing them, we can be sure of that. Climbing on and off the float, and moving about in that sort of twirling, swirling way she does, and just knowing that the village boys are waiting to look up her skirts.’

  ‘Fleur, honestly,’ said Mrs. Gevaert.

  ‘Fleur,’ said Gevaert, ‘I have often told you that you are obsessed with sex.’

  ‘I’m not going to sit silent while my own brother-in-law insults me. I should have thought that you, Max, of all people would be aware of the faults in the du Chair family, anyway.’

  Gevaert scraped back his chair and said, ‘I don’t seem to have much of an appetite tonight; if you’ll excuse me I’ll be getting on with some important papers that I must get sorted.’ He went across the room to the door, looking rather short and hunched.

  The realization that I was now left alone with the two women made me feel very ill indeed. How enviable was Gevaert, sloping off like that to his study, doubtless to mix himself a fine, mellow drink before retiring early to the warmth of his bedroom. I had noticed that he seemed to be sleeping in the dressing-room, although there was a double bed in Mrs. Gevaert’s room. I looked at Mrs. Gevaert, and then quickly away again so as to avoid any incoming signal. She was wearing an expression of fixed, slightly lunatic optimism, in marked contrast to her sister-in-law, who had reverted to her deeply injured look. Accompanied by a quite powerful choking feeling came the realization that now Mrs. Roydon was going to turn on me in some way. As on the previous evening, I felt an urge to escape. The irregular manner in which I had been eating had induced some considerable dyspeptic pain. There could be nothing more desirable, I felt, than to wave a wand that would have me sitting propped comfortably among the pillows, sipping a mild bicarbonate of soda, thumbing through, in ruminative mood, my black notebook.