Ancestral Vices (16 page)

In a slightly less distracted state of mind he went down to breakfast. But here his rationalism took a fresh knock. Willy had already gone to work and Mrs Coppett, having shed her dubious finery of the night before, was fresh-faced and homely and dangerously concerned and coy.

‘I don’t know what you must think of me,’ she said, placing a large bowl of porridge in front of him, ‘and you a professor and all.’

‘That’s nothing,’ said Yapp modestly.

‘Oh but it is. Willy told me last night. He was ever so cross.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. Did he say what about?’

Mrs Coppett broke two eggs into a frying-pan. ‘About you being a professor. They were talking about it down at the pub.’

Yapp cursed silently through a mouthful of porridge. Once it got round Buscott, the Petrefacts would wonder why he hadn’t been in touch with them. On the other hand they were bound to know fairly soon and it had been naive of him to imagine that he could conduct his researches without their learning about it.

All the time he ate and thought his attention was
drawn back to Mrs Coppett, who chattered away over the gas stove, her conversation circling monotonously about his being a professor, a title she probably didn’t understand but one which endowed him with a tremendous importance. Yapp’s egalitarianism asserted itself.

‘You mustn’t think of me as someone special,’ he said in direct contradiction to his feelings. Decently dressed, she was an attractive working-class woman whose physical endowments were poignantly heightened by her lack of mental ones. ‘I’m just a guest in your house. I would like you to call me Walden.’

‘Ooh,’ said Mrs Coppett and exchanged the porridge bowl for a plate of bacon and eggs. ‘I couldn’t.’

Yapp concentrated on the eggs and said nothing. A waft of that perfume still lingered and this time he was aroused by its message. Besides, Mrs Coppett had very nice legs. He hurried through the rest of the meal and was on the point of leaving the house when she handed him a tin box.

‘Sandwiches. You mustn’t go hungry, must you?’

Yapp muttered his thanks and was once again engulfed in the terrible empathy which her simple-minded kindness evoked in him. Taken in conjunction with the appeal of the rest of her, and in particular of her legs, its effect was devastating. Muttering his thanks with an embarrassment that masked his desire to take her in his arms and kiss her, Yapp turned away and hurried through the cenotaphs of gnomes and was presently striding down the road into Buscott, his mind sorely divided between
what he was going to do to the Petrefacts and what he would like to do to and for the Coppetts.

At the abattoir Willy did not reciprocate this goodwill. He best expressed his feelings by stropping his knife on the end of his belt while explaining to the manager that he wanted the day off for apparently no good reason.

‘You must have some excuse,’ said the manager to the upper half of the face that stared at him over the edge of his desk. ‘Don’t you feel well? I mean if you’re sick . . .’

‘Not,’ said Willy.

‘Then perhaps your wife . . .’

‘Not sick either.’

‘Any relatives down with the . . .’

‘No,’ said Willy, ‘don’t have any.’ Under the desk he stropped his knife harder which, since he couldn’t tell exactly what Willy was doing, led the manager to suppose he was doing something else.

‘Listen, Willy,’ he said leaning forward, ‘I am perfectly prepared to let you have the day off. All you’ve got to do is give me some good reason. You can’t just come in and do whatever you are doing down there, and while we’re on the subject I wish you wouldn’t, and expect me to say ‘Yes’, just like that.’

Willy considered this reasonable request and came to no very good conclusion. In the hierarchy of his regard Mr Frederick stood infinitely higher than the manager of the slaughterhouse, and while Mr Petrefact hadn’t
actually told him not to say anything to anyone about following Yapp he didn’t feel like disclosing his instructions.

‘Can’t,’ he said finally, and unconsciously tried the edge of his knife on the ball of his thumb. The manager found the gesture reason enough.

‘All right. I’ll just put you down as having domestic reasons for wanting time off.’

‘Have,’ said Willy, and left the manager even more bewildered than before. He trotted up the street towards Rabbitry Road and was just in time to spot Yapp striding down it towards him. Willy merged with a woman pushing a pram and emerged when Yapp had passed. From then on he was never far behind, though it took him all his stamina to keep up, and by the time Yapp marched into the Museum Willy was glad of a breather. Peering through the glass door he saw Yapp accost the Curator and then slipped inside to listen.

‘The Petrefact Papers?’ the Curator said. ‘Yes, they’re certainly here but I’m afraid I can’t let you see them.’

‘But I’ve already explained my credentials,’ said Yapp, ‘and I have here a letter from Lord Petrefact . . .’

Willy made a note of the fact and also its failure to impress the Curator.

‘I still have to say No. I have explicit instructions from Miss Emmelia not to allow anyone to see the family documents unless she has authorized their viewing. You’ll have to get her permission.’

‘I see. In that case I will obtain it,’ said Yapp, and after
glancing briefly round the Museum and complimenting the Curator on the display of early farm implements, went out into the street. Willy followed. This time their route took them down to the Mill where, much to his surprise and Yapp’s premature approval, they found a line of pickets carrying placards demanding higher pay for shorter hours and threatening scabs and blacklegs. To the best of Willy Coppett’s knowledge pay was high and hours short at the Mill and he couldn’t for the life of him understand it. Yapp on the contrary thought he could, but disliked the suggestion that he was a scab and blackleg.

‘My name is Yapp, Professor Yapp. You may have heard of me,’ he told the leader of the pickets, a large man whose placard while smaller than the others had a rather heavier handle which he waved menacingly. ‘I wouldn’t dream of strike-breaking.’

‘Then you don’t cross the picket line.’

‘I’m not trying to cross it,’ said Yapp, ‘I have come here to make a study of your working conditions.’

‘Who for?’

Here Yapp hesitated. The truth, that he was working for Lord Petrefact, was hardly likely to find favour and it went against his nature to tell a downright lie, especially to a shop steward.

‘I’m from Kloone University,’ he equivocated, ‘I’m Professor of Demotic Historiography there and I am particularly interested—’

‘Tell it to the bosses, mate. We aren’t.’

‘Aren’t what?’

‘Particularly bleeding interested. Now shove off.’

To emphasize the point he raised his placard. Yapp shoved off and Willy took up his station behind him with the satisfying knowledge that whatever extras he might have been offered the night before, Professor Yapp was getting nowhere fast today. And fast was all too true. By the time they had walked, and in Willy’s case dashed, for a mile along the river bank, had gone aimlessly up one street of mill houses and down another where there were no front gardens in which he could possibly conceal himself so that he had to wait until Yapp had turned the corner before he sprinted after him, and had had to run a gauntlet of abusive small boys in the process, Willy was beginning to think he was earning his ten quid the hard way. To make things even harder Yapp stopped several times to speak to people and Willy had to repeat the interview to find out what he had said.

‘He wanted to know what I knew about the bloody Petrefacts,’ shouted one old man when Willy had managed to convince him that he wasn’t addressing a nosey child but a genuinely inquisitive dwarf. ‘I told him I didn’t know the buggers.’

‘Anything else?’

‘What it was like in the Mill, how much they paid me and such like.’

‘Did you say?’

‘How the bloody hell could I, lad? Never set foot in
place. Worked all my life on railway up at Barnsley. Here on visit to my daughter.’

Willy dashed off, shot round the corner and was only partly relieved to find that he hadn’t lost his quarry. Yapp was seated on a bench overlooking the river talking – or, more accurately, shouting questions into the hearing aid of another old-age pensioner. Willy moved behind a post box and listened.

‘You’ve lived here all your life?’ yelled Yapp. The old man lit his pipe with a shaking hand and nodded.

‘And worked at the Mill?’

The man continued to nod.

‘Can you tell me what it was like, conditions of work, long hours and low pay, things of that sort?’

The nodding went on. But evidently Yapp’s hopes were rising. He opened his tin and took out a sandwich.

‘You see, I’m making a study of working-class exploitation by mill owners during the Depression and I’m told that the Petrefacts are notoriously bad employers. I would appreciate any information you could give me.’

From behind the post box Willy listened with interest. At last he had something to report, and since he had recognized the old man as being Mr Teedle who, besides being stone deaf, had contracted the habit of nodding instead of opening his mouth thanks to a long married life with a woman of strong character and a loud voice, he felt the Professor was in safe and uninformative company. Willy left his hiding-place and
crossed the road to the River Inn where he could have a pork pie and several pints while keeping an eye on his quarry at the same time. But first he’d make a phone call to Mr Frederick. With the freedom that came from being the town’s popular dwarf he carried a beer crate to the phone and dialled the Mill and asked for Mr Frederick.

‘All he’s doing is asking people what’s going on here?’ Frederick asked when Willy had finished. Willy nodded and Frederick had to repeat the question before he could overcome the dwarf’s speechless deference.

‘Yes,’ he mumbled finally.

‘He isn’t asking questions about anything else?’

‘No.’

‘Just what we’re making here?’

‘Yes,’ said Willy, who preferred to maintain his new standing with Mr Frederick by not mentioning low pay and bad working conditions. This time it was Frederick who was silent. He was debating what to do. There were a number of choices, none of them pleasant.

‘Oh well, grasp the bloody nettle, I suppose,’ he muttered finally.

‘Which one?’ asked Willy.

‘Which what?’

‘Nettle.’

‘Nettle? What the hell are you talking about?’

Willy relapsed into mute awe and before the question could be satisfactorily answered his money ran out and the phone went dead. With a sigh of relief Willy climbed
off the crate and returned to the bar. Yapp was still engaged in his interrogation of Mr Teedle and Willy settled down to his beer and pie.

In his office Frederick poured himself a stiff whisky and cursed his father for the umpteenth time. The old devil must know what he was doing, must know in fact that he was endangering not only the rest of the family but his own position in society by sending Yapp to Buscott. It didn’t make sense. At least the idea of the strike had been a good one and the pickets had seen the brute off. And with the consoling thought that it was a good thing Aunt Emmelia was such a recluse and stuck to the obscurity of her immaculate garden, he went out for lunch.

For once he had miscalculated. Emmelia Petrefact might take the family tradition of keeping herself to herself to extremes but the same thing could not be said for her cats. They led gregarious and promiscuous night lives, usually in other people’s gardens, and it was as a result of her favourite Siamese, Blueboy’s, indiscreet courtship under Major Forlong’s bedroom window and the Major’s remarkably accurate aim with a flower vase that she was taking the partially neutered animal to the vet when she saw the pickets outside the Mill gates. For a moment she hesitated but only for a moment. Blueboy’s name might have to be changed, but that of the Petrefacts must not be sullied by strikes. Ordering her chauffeur to stop and then convey the stricken cat to the vet she stepped out of her 1937 Daimler and marched across the road.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ she demanded, and before the pickets could begin to explain she had crossed the line and was making her way into the factory.

‘Where is Mr Petrefact?’ she asked the woman at Enquiries so imperiously that the secretary was left speechless. Aunt Emmelia marched on. Frederick’s office was empty. Emmelia passed through into the first workshop and was astonished to find the place filled with
women busily at work with sewing machines. But it was less the lack of any evidence of a strike that astonished her than the nature of the garments they were producing.

‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ asked a forewoman. Emmelia gaped at a pair of crotchless wet-look camiknickers which one of the seamstresses was lining with chamois leather and could find no words for her horror.

‘These are one of our most popular garments,’ said the forewoman. ‘They go down extraordinarily well in Germany.’

The words reached Emmelia only subliminally. Her revulsion had been drawn by a woman who was stitching hairs to what had all the awful appearance of being a bald pudenda.

‘And where does that go down?’ she asked involuntarily.

‘Here,’ said the forewoman indicating the groin of an all too obviously male costume model. ‘The straps go round the back.’

‘What for?’

‘To hold the merkin in place, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Emmelia in such a trance of prurient curiosity that what she had intended to be a disgusted exclamation lost its emphasis. ‘And do many people buy merkins?’

‘You’d have to ask sales but I suppose they must. We’ve increased production by thirty per cent this year.’

Emmelia dragged herself away from the repulsive
object and wandered off down the line of women making merkins, plastic leotards and inflatable bras. What she was seeing was utterly revolting but it was counter-pointed by the chatter which seemed to take merkins and scrotum restrainers for granted while concentrating on banal domestic dramas.