A Disturbing Influence (15 page)

‘Tick? Do I tick?’

‘No, no. What do you think about all the time? What do you feel? You never say anything about what you feel.’

‘I feel good,’ he said, but only after a long pause. Then he got up and said: ‘I’d better be getting back. Raymond may want the car,’ and I didn’t want him to go so soon, so I said: ‘Teddy thinks you’re evil,’ but he said: ‘Oh, really?’ and went into Teddy’s room to get dressed, and then he came back and said: ‘How do you like sweating when you make love?’ and I hadn’t thought about it, but I
had
felt exhausted, so I said: ‘It’s tiring,’ and he said: ‘It’s a pity you want to be an English lady, Jane,’ so I said: ‘What do you mean?’ and he laughed and said: ‘Every English woman thinks sex is a bore till someone shows them, and then they don’t always change their minds. Do you think you’ll change yours, Jane?’

‘But I never thought it
was
a bore.’

‘Yes, you did, with your Ralph. It’s a means to you, to every woman, first of getting a man, then of getting a child.’

‘I think you’re terribly rude.’

‘I’m not a gentleman,’ he said, and he stood there mocking me with his beautiful deep
rich
-brown eyes, and then he said: ‘And I’m not even an angry young man. Poor Jane, nowhere to fit me in. I think it’s time you got married, Jane,’ and I wondered if he was proposing to me, and I suppose he saw that, because he said: ‘Not to
me
,’ very quickly and nastily, and soon after that he went back to Cartersfield and for an hour or two I
did
hate him, because I hate everyone who says things I don’t understand, except Teddy, but then everything he says is nonsense, and then I decided I didn’t, and next day I phoned and asked if he was coming over that afternoon to play tennis, and he said he was terribly sorry but he’d pulled a muscle that last time and couldn’t play for a week or two, he was sorry, and I could tell from the way he said it that he was lying, and I told him so, but he insisted it was the truth, in a sort of astonished and polite way that was simply
maddening.

‘But won’t you come over anyway?’

‘I’m afraid Raymond wants the car.’

And so I knew he wouldn’t come back to do
that,
and I suppose I knew it the same way Teddy thought he knew David was evil, and for a day or two I wondered if he might not be right, Teddy, I mean, but then evil’s all nonsense, and I’d never
liked
David very much, and there’s an awful difference between being not very nice and being evil, and anyway I found I couldn’t even hate him properly. He’d never really touched my feelings at all, you see, and though I cried after he’d said that on the phone, I didn’t cry for long, though I thought about him a good deal, but not him so much as his body, and I wished he
would
come over, because I decided I really didn’t care
what
he was like, but he was terribly good at making love, and it was nonsense about me not enjoying it and I wanted to prove it to him, and there was only one way of doing
that,
and then I said that awful word once or twice to myself, but
it didn’t have the same power when I said it, it needed a man’s voice, and then I pulled myself together and went and practised my service, only it was rather awful coming back to the house and knowing he wasn’t there to come in and put his hand there like that without a word, because even if he was rather odd he was terribly exciting.

And Mummy asked where he was these days, and Daddy said: ‘Poor Jane, she’s lost her young man,’ till I could have killed him, because he wasn’t my ‘young man’ ever, he was, well, he was David, and very special, and when Daddy said that he sounded so protective and loving, and he obviously didn’t understand at all, I could have killed him, that’s all.

I
T WAS
a heat-wave, said everyone. Every day for a week now the sun had shone bright and hot, as though determined to make up for the dismal spring. Nearly midsummer, the evenings were full of swifts and martins, and the trees were richly green along the roads and lanes round Cartersfield. Mr Thomson at Mendleton and Mr Ponting at Long Acre Farm had safely gathered their first hay, and Mr Henderson smiled without impatience when people stopped him in the street to ask him not to go praying for rain again. The gravel-pits were busy every evening, with the high criesofchildren competing with the twittering of birds across the water, moorhens scuttering for shelter in clumps of reeds, dogs barking furiously at their swimming masters, incensed at the incomprehensible change of element, the moon slowly filling in a sky that dwindled and dwindled but seemed scarcely to fade into night till long after
everyone
had gone home.

On Saturday there was the usual dance at the Lord George Brunswick Memorial Hall. The doors stood open, since the evening was so warm, and before one could distinguish a tune one heard the steady thump-thump-thumpity-thump-thump of the cymbal and drum from the four-piece band. Nearer one could distinguish occasional gusts of saxophone and a few tinkles from the upright piano used for Thursday choir practice and the Women’s Institute’s opening and closing hymns. The fourth musician played a
double-bass
that was always inaudible, but the band leader said he kept the
whole combo together if you really listened. On the big drum was written
CHUCK CARPENTER AND HIS RHYTHM
. All the men wore white shirts with claret bow-ties and black trousers, and Chuck himself sported a pale-blue velvet coat. From time to time he sang, his eyes swooning at the sounds of his own voice, and his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down dramatically.

‘It’s high time you and Allen got married,’ said Betty Tarrant to Ruth Stevens. They were standing together with a group of girls near the door.

‘I don’t see why,’ said Ruth. ‘We get on fine the way we are.’

‘How many years have you two been going steady now? It’s a scandal.’

‘Just because we like each other’s no reason for thinking that,’ said Ruth.

‘Don’t you ever want to settle down and have a family? Or are you going to spend your life selling lipsticks at Hudson’s?’

‘I’ll suit myself,’ said Ruth, ‘so you needn’t bother
your
head about it, thank you very much.’

‘There’s no need to get stuffy,’ said Betty. She did let her engagement ring show for a moment, though, as if to demonstrate the superiority of her position. Ruth sniffed.

‘Oh, look,’ said Betty, nudging her, ‘there’s that nephew of the vicar’s. Quite a smasher, isn’t he?’

‘He’s not bad.’

David joined a group of men of his own age at the other side of the hall, apparently unconscious of the stir his entrance caused. The week’s sun had given him no tan, merely a slight sallowness, as though his face was slightly and evenly dirty. He stooped his head for a moment to light a cigarette, then leaned back against the wall and observed the scene with an indolent smile. Chuck Carpenter began to sing ‘Teen Angel’.

‘There you are,’ said Ruth to Allen Bradshaw, ‘where have you been?’

He wiped his mouth guiltily on his sleeve and said: ‘Just having a wet.’

‘Men,’ said Ruth. ‘All you want to do is drink.’

‘You don’t mind me having a drink, do you?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t leave me alone here, that’s all. Betty’s been on at me about why we aren’t engaged.’

‘Well, that’s none of her business.’

‘It’s mine, though,’ she said. They were dancing now, and she paused as they passed the bandstand in order not to be drowned by the wails of Chuck Carpenter’s saxophone, he having decided that the maximum emotion could be wrung from ‘Teen Angel’ only with the maximum, and amplified, volume of his horn. When they were out of immediate range she said: ‘Why aren’t we, Allen?’

‘Because I haven’t proposed to you, Ruthie, that’s why.’

‘I know
that
.’

‘Listen, I’m only twenty-one. What do you want me to do, tie myself down?’

‘I’m twenty-one, too.’

‘You didn’t spend two years in the Army. I don’t want to get married yet, Ruth, that’s all. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you or anything. I just don’t want to get married yet.’

‘You could ask me to marry you, all the same.’

‘Not likely. Then everyone’d start pestering about the day. I don’t want to set a day. I’m too young to be married.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ said Ruth.

They danced in silence for a few more moments, then she said: ‘I want to sit down.’

‘O.K.’

They went over to two chairs under a portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh and sat down.

‘Look.’ said Allen, ‘we’ve been through all this before, haven’t we? I’m very fond of you, Ruth, but don’t push me. I’ve only been out of the Army a year. I want to get on a bit before I settle down. I don’t earn enough yet, anyway.’

‘We do together,’ said Ruth, at once. ‘I could stay on at Hudson’s for a bit, till you start getting good money.’

‘No,’ said Allen. ‘Let’s not talk about it.’

Ruth got up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to mind my own business in the ladies’,’ she said, angrily. ‘As though it made any difference to you.’ She crossed the hall and disappeared through a narrow door.

The band played ‘Primrose Lane’. Then Carpenter said
seductively
into the microphone: ‘Intermission, kids.’ People wandered about, gossiping and occasionally slipping out in pairs. The sweet night air was full of shadowy couples. An occasional squeal could be heard, and once a loud ‘You stop that’. The band came back from the Brunswick Arms and began to play what Carpenter called ‘a medley of number one hits of all time’. Allen waited impatiently for Ruth to reappear.

When she at last came through the door he stood up, ready to greet her, but she was intercepted by the vicar’s nephew who asked her to dance, and she accepted, ignoring Allen’s furious shrug of indifference from across the hall. Allen watched for several minutes, but when they continued dancing after the end of the first number he went out. There was still half an hour before closing time.

‘What are you doing back here?’ said Dennis Palmer, the
landlord’s
son. He worked in the bar on busy nights.

‘Women,’ said Allen, ‘they make me sick. Give us a pint, Dennis.’

‘Something up with Ruth?’

‘Oh, she’s always on at me.’ He looked round the narrow bar and said: ‘Anyone for a game of darts?’

In the hall David said to Ruth: ‘Want to step outside for a moment? It’s rather warm in here.’

‘All right.’ Ruth had seen Allen leave, and she was thinking: I’ll show him he’s not the only pebble on the beach.

Betty Tarrant nudged her fiancé, Bill Ponsonby, and they
giggled together, as Ruth and David stepped through a knot of people by the door and disappeared.

‘My car’s just up the road,’ said David. ‘Would you like to go for a ride?’

‘All right,’ said Ruth. He can just stew in his own juice, she thought. Expects me never to dance with anyone else, and won’t even
say
he wants to marry me. Not even when no one else need know about it. Thinks I’m his slave or something.

They walked a hundred yards up the road to where Henderson’s car was parked, an old black Wolseley with a sturdy upright body and a very middle-class respectable air.

‘That’s the vicar’s car,’ said Ruth.

‘That’s right. He lets me have it when I want it.’

They got in, and David said: ‘Where do you want to go, Ruth?’

She didn’t know.

‘I think I know a place,’ he said, starting the engine.

‘All right,’ said Ruth.

*

Raymond Henderson was showing David the church. They had come to the pulpit, an elaborately carved Jacobean piece, with a heavy canopy that looked dangerously liable to fall down on the preacher’s head if he were to become too violently rhetorical. The panels were beginning to come loose with age.

‘You should come and hear me preach one day,’ said Raymond, not looking at his nephew. ‘I know you feel it’s wrong to go to church when you don’t believe, and I respect that feeling, but I
am
your uncle and the vicar, and you might’—he was trying to sound more reproachful than reproving—‘just give it a try. You know, many people have difficulty in believing, but they still go to church, hoping they’ll find faith. And often they do. The Lord works in mysterious ways.’

‘Yes,’ said David. He was examining the carving with a show of
interest. ‘More than three hundred years old. Most remarkable.’

‘It’s not the age that matters, David,’ said his uncle, almost crossly. ‘Christianity is older than any relic of it. I mean, there are old things in the church and new ones, but they are held together and make a unity because they are all dedicated to a single purpose. For instance, we have to keep the roof in repair, and I dare say there isn’t a single original brickbat left by now, but that doesn’t mean …’ He stopped. It was no use. David didn’t listen to half what one said.

‘Who’s that old man?’ David pointed at the tomb of Sir Giles Phellips and his wife. They reclined in sumptuous elegance and apparent comfort on alabaster cushions.

‘Ah, the Phellips monument. It’s very fine, very fine indeed. They used to live at Mendleton, the family built it, possibly. They were a very old family—came over with the Conqueror, that sort of thing, and he was one of the last and most remarkable.’

‘He can’t have been the last,’ said David. ‘Look at all those children kneeling round.’

‘Well, now.’ Henderson became enthusiastic. ‘There are
fourteen
, aren’t there? A vigorous man. But if you look carefully, David, you will see that six—yes, six—are facing outwards. That means they were dead before their parents. As you can see, they are in swaddling clothes, so they were probably born dead, or at least they died very young, in infancy.’

‘Poor bastards,’ said David impersonally. ‘But what about the others? They can’t all have been impotent.’

‘Let’s look. Six girls and two boys survived. Now the Phellipses were a very interesting family, because they stayed Catholic while the rest of England went Protestant, and naturally they came in for a good deal of—persecution, I regret to say, under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. In fact Sir Giles died in’—he muttered to himself as he peered at the Roman numerals—‘in 1624. And much reduced in circumstances.’

‘But the tomb’s vast.’

‘True. But I dare say they never finished paying for it. The eldest son died a few years later, fighting under the Duke of Buckingham at the Île de Rhé, I think. There’s no monument to him. But that’s what’s so remarkable about those people—they were loyal, even though they were Catholics, and that was an
anti-Catholic
war, as far as I remember. He was married, and left one son. His brother wasn’t loyal: he went over to the continent and came back as a Jesuit some years later, and was supposed to be influential at the Court, but he was banished later and disappeared altogether.’

‘They were certainly a sporting lot,’ said David. ‘But what about all those girls?’

‘Well, there can’t have been much for them in the way of a dowry. I suppose they vanished into the yeoman class.’

‘Vanished into the yeoman class,’ said David, and laughed. He looked admiringly at Sir Giles and his plump placid wife. ‘He must have been quite a man.’

The knight leaned on his elbow, ignoring his wife who gazed at heaven in a self-assured way, as though daring God not to admit her, her hands joined in prayer across her breast. Sir Giles kept one finger in a book, as though keeping the place while someone asked him if he remembered where he’d put the quotations dictionary. The book, thought David, might well have been an ancient
equivalent
of the
Financial
Times.

‘If they were Catholics, what are they doing in here?’

‘Ah. When the civil war came there was still a chapel at Mendleton, but it was pulled down by ardent Puritans and
everything
in it was smashed. But the wife of the son who was killed, and the grandson, persuaded the vandals to let them move the
monument
to the church. You can see where there was probably a cross in the wife’s hands which they wouldn’t have allowed, of course, and there may have been angels or something on top—there are marks where something was broken off.’

‘But why did they let them do that?’

‘I’ve no idea. The Phellipses probably knew some pretty
influential
people. And the English have never been much good at
consistency
. So here they are, and really very fine, too. The paint needs touching up, though.’ There were traces of what must once have been red, blue and gold on the decoration round the edge of the tomb.

‘Why aren’t people like that now?’ said David. ‘He looks as though he would know what to do, whatever might happen.’

‘Well, people still are like that,’ said Henderson. Sometimes David could be very irritating. ‘People are still prepared to be loyal and decent and honourable. Why don’t you think people are like that?’

‘Well, they’re not, are they? And, anyway, his son may have been all those things, but you haven’t said anything about him. He doesn’t look honourable to me, he looks crafty.’

‘Crafty? Perhaps he was. He made a great fortune in the 1590s, and then he retired quietly to Mendleton, married, looked after his property, that sort of thing.’

‘Why do you say he was so remarkable, then?’

Henderson looked puzzled. ‘Did I? I really don’t know very much about him, to be honest. But the tomb is so magnificent, isn’t it? He must have been remarkable to have built himself a thing like that.’

‘It doesn’t make him honourable, though,’ said David. ‘He looks as though he’d swindle you out of your false teeth.’

‘Now, David, really!’

‘He’s got guts, Raymond, and arrogance. He knew what he wanted, you can see that. And people aren’t like that now. They go and work in the city and save enough money to build a tennis court, then they go back to work again, like Gilchrist. People don’t die for things they don’t believe in, they don’t go out and become Jesuits these days.’