Portrait of Elmbury (15 page)

Oh innocent folk-lorists! There is a very learned book by a great professor, I have forgotten the title but you will find it in the British Museum catalogue; and on page 561 or thereabouts you will read this paragraph:

“… An equally remarkable figure, differing only in degree, existed until
c
. 1720 on a hillside in the neighbourhood of Elmbury. It is stated by Maffikins (op. cit. p. 301) that this figure was destroyed by the orders of the incumbent in that year: a piece of gross vandalism inspired no doubt by concern for the morals of his villagers. …”

Thus even so humble a person as Mr. Parfitt may contribute his quota of knowledge to our Island Story.

I shall have more to say about this mischievous little man, whose presence at Furniture Sales (where he obtained the odds
and ends of table legs, panels, and worm-eaten wood which were the raw materials of his trade) did much to enliven those dreary and often dreadful events. I say “dreadful” advisedly; for there was a certain kind of sale which did indeed fill me with dread and horror and which, in the end, proved the determining factor which made me decide to throw up my job. These were sales held under what is called Distraint. If a tenant fails to pay his rent the landlord is entitled, having given due notice, to “distrain” upon his possessions. A bailiff enters the house and remains there to see that the tenant's goods are not taken away; and after a certain interval, if the rent is still unpaid, the goods are sold by auction and the arrears of rent are paid to the landlord out of the proceeds of the sale.

I do not suggest that this is necessarily unjust; while private landlords exist they must clearly have the right to protect their interests. But the practice never failed to shock me and I hated having to participate in it. Almost always the smallest and meanest cottages provided the scene; almost always the amount involved was only a few pounds; almost always the defaulting tenant was less to blame, in my view, than the social system which had in many cases denied him the means of making a livelihood.

Whenever I could I made some excuse or discovered some urgent job in order to avoid taking part in these dreary little ceremonies. Sometimes I could not get out of it; and I remember in particular—because it was the last and the decisive occasion— one such sale in the village of Tirley on a drizzly miserable November day.

Tirley, being set in the midst of low-lying meadows, surrounded by dykes, and shrouded for most of the year in mists and miasmas, is never a very cheerful place. On this day it was almost islanded by dirty brown floods dimpled by innumerable raindrops. The cottage stood in its own little garden; pools of water lay in the potato-patch and the single flower-bed. Outside were the usual half-dozen prams belonging to village women who could neither resist the sale nor leave their babies unattended, Mr. Eric Smith's unmistakable bicycle, and Mr. Parfitt's pony-and-cart.
Inside I found Reuben Bowles, the bailiff, a salmon-fisherman by trade who performed this grisly function in the close season. Reuben was a very gloomy man, as befitted one whose chosen task was so unenjoyable; he was sitting in the only comfortable chair in the only downstairs room, and he addressed me sombrely, shaking his head several times as if he reported a great catastrophe:

“There ain't fifteen quid's worth 'ere, mister. You'll be lucky if you makes two.”

The distraint was for about fifteen pounds.

“In this room,” Reuben went on, “there's one chair wot I'm sittin' on, and one that's bust. There's a table worth seven-and-sixpence and a carpet full of holes and a kettle that leaks and a teapot without a spout and some cracked crockery, and a lot of wot you calls bric-a-brac that I wouldn't 'ave for a gift. Upstairs there's a washstand and a towel rail and a busted jerry and a bed; but by law you've got to leave him a bed.”

That was so; the Law is just so merciful. Not even the landlord may take a man's bed in order to sell it for the rent.

I felt sick and I said to Reuben:

“Is the tenant anywhere about?”

“He's down at the Police Station. Tried to commit suicide this morning,” said Reuben, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Cut 'is wrist wiv a safety razor blade,” said Reuben, gloomily enjoying himself. “Then come cryin' down to me wiv 'is hand all bloody. Fair turned me up it did. I bound it for 'im; but it was bleeding something 'orrible and I couldn't stop it, so I sent for the policeman, and 'e took 'im away. ‘E'll look after 'im and stop 'im doing any 'arm to 'isself. Then 'e'll let 'im go; though there ought to be a charge rightly.”

Yes, I supposed there ought to be a charge rightly. We contrive our world in such a fashion that a desperate man prefers to take his leave of it; and we are so shocked at his dislike of our beautiful world that we call him a criminal. I asked Reuben what the trouble was and he said: “Football pools.” Off the
shaky table he picked up an exercise book full of calculations about the number of goals the Arsenal and West Bromwich Albion might kick next Saturday.

“'E was ill,” said Reuben, “and 'e couldn't get work, so 'e took to Football Pools. Could never see the sense in 'em myself. But that's where the rent went. Two or three bob a week, and always 'oping to make a fortune.”

There was the familiar, trivial, undramatic story. He fell ill and he couldn't get work, because employers don't want sick labourers. He could have gone to hospital? Not unless he was an urgent case; the hospital has no beds for “chronics” who are also paupers. He could get help from the Parish? from Public Assistance? from some charity? No doubt; but men— even the meanest, idlest, most ineffectual men—often have an absurd pride. He preferred the romantic dream; he preferred Football Pools. What was two bob a week after all?—when he might wake up any Monday morning the possessor of a thousand pounds? Thus he could get his own back on the world that had used him badly; thus he could establish himself again, in his own esteem and others', as a proper citizen, who'd got the better of ill-fortune and made himself master of his fate. … After all, it
did
happen sometimes. It happened to somebody every week.

But it didn't happen to him. Perhaps he wasn't very good at Football Pools. He wasn't very good at anything: not even at committing suicide.

“Reuben,” I said, “can't anything be done? Must we go through with it?”

“Can't stop it now,” said Reuben inexorably, nodding towards the poster on the wall: The Sale will commence at twelve o'clock promptly. (Why do auctioneers always write commence instead of “begin”?) “Can't stop a Distress,” said Reuben indignantly, “just because a bloke tries to commit suicide.”

He didn't mean to be funny, I'm sure he didn't mean to be funny, but I'll swear he added, “or we'll have everybody else doing it.”

And now indeed it was too late; for the time was twelve-fifteen,
and two women with babies in their arms, and Mr. Parfitt, and the unpleasing Mr. Eric Smith, had come into the room. Others were on their way down the creaking stairs. Eric Smith said cheekily:

“Come along, Mister, we ain't got all day. Can't wait all morning for a few sticks of furniture which ain't much more than firewood.”

So I began; I commenced. I felt as if I was committing some appalling indecency, but there was no escape and I sold the bric-a-brac and the ornaments and the cooking utensils and the only comfortable chair. Reuben continued to occupy it, and I couldn't even bring myself to laugh when one of the women called out:

“Are you selling Reuben as well, Mister?” and another one said coarsely:

“From what 'is missus tells me 'e ain't worth as much as the chair!”

Then I went upstairs and sold the rubbish in the bedroom; and in the end I made eight pounds seventeen and sixpence for the landlord and according to the law I left the bed.

I got in my car and drove away from the damp, dreadful cottage and the miserable village of Tirley where the rain still dimpled a hundred acres of flood water and made a sound like a soft sigh. I was angry and bitter and I asked myself whose fault it all was: not the tenant's, who'd never had a chance; not the Football Pool promoter's, who provided quite honestly a few hours' cheap entertainment each week for millions of people who had little entertainment in their lives; not even the landlord's, perhaps, who for all I know may have been himself a poor man to whom fifteen pounds was desperately important. Who, then, was to blame? I didn't know the answer then, and I am not sure that I know it now. But at least I determined, as I drove back to Elmbury, that I would take no further part in a business of which some aspects were so unpleasant and distasteful. I walked into my old uncle's office and to his great astonishment told him I was going to chuck up my job.

This action of mine was not so quixotic and impetuous as I have perhaps made it out to be. There were other reasons as well as my genuine distaste for the “distress” sales which decided me to take leave of my uncle's dusty office. There was the matter of trigonometry. It was deemed necessary that I should pass an examination for a Fellowship of the Surveyors' Institution; and in order to do so I must know both the theory and practice of surveying. Mr. Chorlton, good classicist, while teaching me to love Latin had also taught me to hate mathematics. Moreover, he had very improperly taught me that it was a good and gentlemanly thing to despise mathematics, unless they were of the Higher kind when a philosopher might take note of them. I therefore despised mathematics at school and in my uncle's office; and when I went up to London for the examination I despised trigonometry so successfully that I got nought for my paper on that subject. However, I got 100 for forestry and 100 for Agricultural Botany and nearly 100 for a curious subject, about which I have now forgotten everything, called Agricultural Chemistry. I might have scraped through; but unfortunately there was also a practical exam in the course of which I was confronted with an instrument called a theodolite. I knew that the purpose of the thing was to measure angles; and indeed there were two striped posts some distance away and I was requested to find the angle between the instrument and those two posts. I pointed the telescope in the direction of the first post and looked through the eyepiece but could see nothing. I therefore resolved to bluff. I swung it slowly in what I thought was the direction of the second post, looked hard through the eyepiece, frowned, calculated, and made a guess. The angle, I said, was thirty-one degrees. The examiner looked surprised. “As a matter of fact,” he told me, “you are very nearly right; but I can't give you any marks for your guess, because you omitted to take off the cap from the end of the telescope.”

Naturally enough, I did not pass the exam; and I was very
unwilling to try again. For I had discovered, while sitting on the high stool in my uncle's office, a passionate and painful pastime, that of writing stories. With my uncle's foolscap paper and my uncle's scratchy office pen, and for dissemblance's sake a copy of some such book as
The Law of Landlord and Tenant
open on the desk in front of me, I wrote with fierce delight two whole novels. The first was very properly rejected by seven publishers; the second was accepted by the first I sent it to. Its subsequent fortune has nothing to do with this book; but at least it provided me with an answer when my astonished uncle, shaken for once out of his quiet courtesy, almost shouted at me:

“But what the devil are you going to do instead?”

“Write,” I said.

“Write! That's a hobby, my boy, not a profession!”

So I showed him the publisher's letter, and a cheque for a hundred pounds.

However, I did not leave his office at once; for it was late autumn, a season when auctioneers are generally busy, and I volunteered to stay on until the Christmas markets were over. I therefore took part in one more Grand Christmas Fat Stock Show and Sale at Elmbury; and I unwittingly enlivened the occasion with a great comedy.

I had graduated, during three years, from sticking labels on the behinds of cattle to selling cattle myself. At Christmas Market, however, it was my uncle's custom to mount the rostrum and with due dignity auction the finest fat beasts; when he grew tired one of the partners took on the job. So I was relegated to that part of the market occupied by the poultry. Fat turkeys, geese, ducks, cockerels and the like, even rabbits, guinea-pigs, and ferrets were my humble merchandise that day.

I must explain that all this miscellaneous livestock was housed in little pens or hutches arranged in tiers along a wall, and numbered from 1 to 200. As each lot arrived before the sale it
was taken out of its hamper and placed in one of the pens. That curious old man, Fred Pullin, who had been my grandfather's coachman, had the job of doing this and also of writing down, on a sheet, the owner's name, the description of the lot, and the reserve price, if any, thus:

That meant, of course, that I mustn't sell Mrs. Trotwood's turkey under 22/-; if less was offered I must buy it in on her behalf. Unfortunately old Fred, who was half-blind and couldn't see the lines on the foolscap paper, wrote this particular reserve price in the wrong place; so I sold Mrs. Trotwood's fat turkey to an old woman called Mrs. Peel for seventeen and sixpence.

Mrs. Trotwood, however, was unaware of this; for auctioneers often use false names when they “buy in” a lot that has failed to reach the reserve. Mrs. Trotwood had faith in me and remarkable faith in Fred, and finding Pen 20 unoccupied she carried her turkey thither in order that I might try again.

When I came to Pen 20, there was a turkey of which I had no record in my book. I asked whom it belonged to. “Mrs. Trotwood.” I assumed that Mrs. Trotwood was the possessor of more than one turkey; and I knocked it down to a farmer's wife called Mrs. Doe for nineteen shillings.