The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (13 page)

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^{slowing down to turn into a narrow arch that led to a cobbled yard, half surrounded by lighted windows.}

^{"Is this Kingsbay?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.}

^{"No, mate, it's two mile short of it," said Tapper, "but this'll do for a start. Nothing in the town to beat this for grub and home brew. Good service too, so long as Bella ain't swamped be visitors and she won't be, seeing it's on'y April and the season ain't started."}

^{He parked the van and piloted Mr. Sermon through a swing door into the most cheerful-looking pub lounge Mr. Sermon had ever entered. Everything in it was clean and twinkling and dancing firelight played on half a hundred horse brasses and gleaming warming pans and copper measures fastened to the panelled walls and oak beams. There was a semicircular bar near the vast chimney piece and behind it, lit with green and ruby lights and electrically wired fisherman's floats, were scores of bottles and pewter tankards, an appropriate setting for the comfortable-looking woman behind the bar. The room appeared to be empty of customers and Tapper breezed in as one sure of a welcome, accosting the barmaid with a cheerful shout.}

^{"How's me Home-Comfort? How's me Luvely?" he demanded and when Mr. Sermon hung back, still hazed with sleep, he pushed him forward and introduced him as' 'a-real-live-perfesser-who's-come-all-the-way-from-Smoke-just-to-drink-the-wallop-and-view-the-upholstery-at-the-bar-of-the-Cat-and-Carthorse!"}

^{Bella, the barmaid, did not seem to resent this boisterous introduction and Mr. Sermon was surprised and elated at the impression she made upon him.}

^{She was not exactly plump but very solid-looking so th?.t Mr. Sermon recalled the phrase crime-reporters always used about barmaids found murdered in ditches-what was it?-'The Body was partly-clothed and well-nourished!' That was it exactly! Bella was exceptionally well-nourished but her proportions were very pleasing indeed, fulfilling the description 'hour-glass' applied to her type of figure. Her bust was large and her hips rounded and heavy but Mr. Sermon thought it would be very pleasant indeed to encircle her waist with both hands in order to discover exactly how far round it his fingers would stretch. As he stood there, prospecting}

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^{her as it were, she reached out to retrieve their tankards and as she bent forward her low-necked frock dipped to reveal a shameless expanse of bosom. It crossed Mr. Sermon's mind that Bella's action in stooping over the sink must have brought thousands of customers into the bar and been responsible, more or less directly, for selling oceans of beer. Then he gave himself a kick in the moral shins and told himself that if he didn't watch out he would soon develop into a dirty old man and in this briefly exalted frame of mind he followed Tapper to a table near the fire and when the girl arrived with the plates of cold meats and pickled onions he piously averted his eyes and stared into the fire. The penitent mood, however, did not survive the meal or even the next draught. A kind of pink cosiness stole over him, ironing away such quirks and creases of his old self as had survived the last thirty hours, and in the glow of the luxurious present he threw off the last of his inhibitions and began to revel in the banter Tapper and the girl were exchanging, laughing aloud when Tapper, who seemed never to have possessed any inhibitions at all, pinched her behind when she was slow at replenishing their glasses.}

^{Towards nine o'clock customers arrived but no longer departed and the bar began to fill, the buzz of talk reaching Mr. Sermon as from a distance. Then several of Tapper's personal acquaintances came in and each was introduced to Mr. Sermon but by this time he had consumed too much liquor to differentiate between them and the only one who really registered was a round-faced woman with blonde, lifeless hair whose laugh was as arresting as the blast of a factory siren and who seemed to dissolve during a paroxysm and then coalesce again the moment it passed. At one stage of the evening they were all exchanging jokes and Mr. Sermon remembered feeling slightly sad because he did not know any, and later on they played darts and he scored a winning double-nineteen which almost shocked him into sobriety, but after that the mists of draught beer and the roar of conversation isolated him so that it was as if he was watching the party through an uncurtained window and somebody kept switching the light on and off, destroying continuity.}

^{It must have been about then, and getting on for closing time, when he was conscious of Tapper dragging him by the arm and}

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^{leading him towards an upright piano and then he found himself sitting at the instrument and letting his hands run over the yellowing keys while all the others stood around him shouting encouragement and waving their mugs in his face.}

^{In a moment of comparative clarity he heard Tapper say: "He can play, o' course he can play, he's a perfesser from Oxford and Cambridge!" and, even in his totally uncritical mood, Mr. Sermon thought it rather foolish of him to name both Universities when either would have sufficed but nevertheless he began to strum, playing from ear, the way he had often played for the boys at school. For some reason his instinct led him to play songs of youth, of his own youth and the youth of most of those people around him, hits of the twenties like 'Ain't She Sweet' and 'Yes We Have No Bananas' and lively numbers like 'Valencia' and 'Bye Bye Blackbird.'}

^{The success of his repertoire delighted everybody and a kind of mad and rapturous exuberance bubbled up from within him, demanding wilder and wilder expression so that he found himself bawling the lyrics at the top of his voice. In between each number somebody pushed a mug of beer to his lips and he sucked down a mouthful or two and then ducked under the mug to continue the concert, pounding his way into the thirties and down the years of popular sheet music as far as 'Roll Out The Barrel', the song that everyone was singing when war broke out more than twenty years before. And there Mr. Sermon stopped playing, right in the middle of what his friend Tapper would have called 'a twiddly bit', for the piano seemed to open up and engulf him and his fingers shot off the keyboard and clutched madly but unavailingly at the polished panel of the upright and Mr. Sebastian Sermon, until that moment the life and soul of the party, took off into outer space studded with constellations of flashing, soaring star-shells that hummed and whizzed and wailed as they rushed past leaving him floating in a blue, velvet emptiness bounded by the distant roar of the sea.}

^{When Mr. Sermon opened one eye the first thing he saw was a woman's dress. It was empty and suspended on a hanger that was}

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^{hooked to the picture-rail a yard from the narrow bed in which he lay. He studied it objectively, noting the cellophane sheath in which it reposed and the broad lace collar with exaggerated points that reminded him of the shirt stained with Charles I blood that he had seen in the United Services Museum, in Whitehall.}

^{He studied the dress for more than a minute, deciding that it was too loud and flouncy for his taste but it was not until his single eye roved along the wall towards the window and observed other items of female clothing piled on a chair, that he related the garment to his present whereabouts and wondered what on earth he could be doing in a bed within reach of such things. Then, like a douche of ice-cold water, the two streams of thought mingled and poured over him and he jerked himself upright, gazing round the little room with amazement and alarm.}

^{He did not recognise it or anything in it. It was neatly and simply furnished with a small wardrobe, a bedside table, a small rug laid on patterned linoleum and cretonne curtains that were half-drawn, but apart from the items of clothing there was nothing whatever to give it an identity. Sebastian at last opened the other eye, which seemed to have been gummed up during the night and was reluctant to view the daylight. He then saw his own rucksack, which brought him a little comfort for it was the only familiar object in the room and then, with both eyes open, he recognised his clothes, neatly folded and placed on a stool near the wardrobe. Like a swimmer far out to sea who has sighted a distant vessel, he projected himself upward and outward from the bed, giving a kind of yelp and springing on to the cold linoleum to dive for his trousers. It was only when he had fished out his wallet and found his money intact that he realised he was wearing nothing but; his short cotton underpants and as though escaping from a burning building he plunged into his trousers, fastened them with trembling fingers and began a minute inspection of the room, half his attention on what he found and half engaged in a desperate grapple to reconstruct his last conscious period.}

^{He remembered arriving at a pub with a ridiculous name, 'The Dove and Donkey' or 'The Dog and Dove'-no, that wasn't its proper name, it was something much more staid, the Something}

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^{Arms, an old coaching hostelry approached by a narrow arch that led to the cobbled yard. He ran across to the little window and looked out. There was the identical yard and he was now looking down on it from a great height. He then remembered the party and rivers of beer, and himself roaring out choruses at the piano and a game of darts and then . . . ? He darted across and looked at himself in the mirror and saw that he needed a shave but apart from this his face looked familiar, a little drawn and bug-eyed perhaps, but not noticeably different from the narrow, thoughtful face he inspected every morning whilst shaving. It then occurred to him that he should have a hangover, surely a terrible hangover after all that draught beer consumed in that smoke-laden atmosphere, but he had no hangover, not a trace of one and the certainty that he had not helped to restore his confidence so that he said, aloud: "This is a rum do! Where the devil am I? A hotel, certainly, and the hotel Tapper took me to last evening but in whose room? Obviously not my own but somebody else's, a perfect stranger's!"}

^{Then his eyes moved from the suspended pink dress to the pile of clothing on the chair and he reached out and picked up one of the garments, dropping it as though it was a live snake when he realised what it was, a pair of white, silk panties, with blue lover's knots embroidered on the hem. After that he began to panic. His mouth felt dry and his heart pounded so mercilessly that it hurt his ribs and he felt sick with apprehension. He looked carefully at the bed, relieved to discover that it had but one pillow upon which was the imprint of his head and nobody else's. The discovery steadied him somewhat so he was able to cross over to the marble-topped wash-stand and pour water into the china bowl and slop it round his face and over his neck and ears. Then he found his toilet bag in the rucksack and gave himself a proper wash. He put on his vest and shirt and was in the act of pulling on his socks when he heard the pleasant rattle of china outside the door and then a gentle double-knock that sounded to Mr. Sermon like an impersonal summons to the guillotine.}

^{"Co . . . come in!" he squeaked, and the door opened to reveal a smiling Bella, with a small tea-tray skilfully balanced in the crook of her elbow.}

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^{"Hullo, Professor!" she said cheerily, "I thought you might like some tea. No extra charge. No charge at all in fact. Sleep well?" She indulged herself in a little giggle. "I'll bet you did! You was out cold when I laid you there, never moved a muscle you didn't." She}

^{glanced at the bed. "Tidy sleeper, too! There now, shall I pour you}

^{«,, a cup?}

^{"Er ... do ... please!" stuttered Mr. Sermon, overwhelmed by her breezy warmth, and then, "I say, Bella-it is Bella, isn't it? Exactly where am I ? I mean, whose room is this ?"}

^{"It's mine," she said, apparently surprised by the question, "whose should it be?"}

^{"Yours!" He jumped up, stuffing his shirt into his trousers with frantic haste. "But Good Lord-I mean-how, why?"}

^{She laughed and pushed him down on the bed.}

^{"Here, drink it down. I bet you're parched but I'll also lay odds you haven't got a hangover, have you now?"}

^{"No, I haven't," admitted Mr. Sermon, "but I ... I should have, never in my life have I drunk as much as I did last night!"}

^{"Well, you got me to thank for that!" she said triumphantly. "Tapper said don't bother but I came back when he'd gone, lifted you up and made you drink it. You did too, like a lamb. It's my special, Worcester Sauce base, dash of milk and egg yolk, with two Codeine dissolved separit and added."}

^{"It was very good of you, I'm sure," said Sebastian, "but why . . . er . . . why didn't you book me in to an ordinary room as a guest?"}

^{"In your condition ? Don't be silly! We couldn't have got you up the front stairs without a scene and the boss would have heard all about it from the residents. On'y too pleased to bleat, they would have been, I mean to say, a bit of a sing-song in the Public's one thing but putting the drunks to bed on the premises is another, isn't it?"}

^{"Yes," said Mr. Sermon dismally, "I suppose it is, but was I ... was I quite as helpless as all that?"}

^{Helpless? Well I don't know how you coulder been more so. I mean to say, when a chap's legs trail behind him like empty bicycle toobs, and his head hangs down like a snapped-off crysant
hi
a vase, you got to do something with him, haven't you?"}