The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (17 page)

^{"I'm afraid so, but isn't almost everybody these days ?"}

^{He was going to make some kind of conventional response when they were interrupted by a shout from the promenade. Mr. Sermon looked up and saw the head and shoulders of an elderly woman thrust between the railings and staring down at them with an expression of extreme irritation. The woman's face was purple and she shook an umbrella in a very threatening manner.}

^{"Benson has been hooting and hooting!" she screeched, "and you haven't taken the slightest notice! I said midday and I meant midday! It's ten after twelve now and past the children's lunch hour! Bring them up at once! At once, do you hear ?"}

^{"Oh my God!" groaned the girl, "I'd completely forgotten the old bitch. She's the grannie and an absolute horror!" She chuckled and waved her hand. "I'm supposed to be a Nanny, but I'm a dead loss at it, I keep forgetting and then meeting you like this . . ." and she raised her voice and called: "Coming right away, Lady Wilkinson! Ralph! Geraldine!" and she summoned the children and scuttled towards the steps leading to the promenade.}

^{"Hi, just a minute!" protested Sebastian, "you've forgotten your book," and he picked it up and glanced at it. It was a dull-looking text-book devoted to veterinary surgery but he barely had time to note the title before she grabbed it.}

^{"When shall I see you again?" he began, "there's so much I ..."}

^{But the purple face over the wall had frightened her and she said, breathlessly, "Any time, I'm usually here with the children, I must go ... !" and disappeared, leaving him to relate her panic with his original impression of sturdy independence.}

¹⁰⁹

^{After a cafe meal he retraced his steps along the promenade to climb the towering bluff, skirting the slope of the links and mounting through winding paths to the summit where there was a coastguard's hut with a plank seat.}

^{From here the view was magnificent, even more striking than that looking south from the crest of the moor. The cliffs ran down in a series of small peaks and the afternoon sun had turned the bay to molten bronze, with bars of gold where sand-banks were exposed by the tide. He had purchased a picture postcard in the snack-bar, intending to send it to Sybil telling her where he was but when he came to unscrew his fountain pen, he found himself unable to progress beyond 'My Dear Sybil'. He would have found it possible to write a casual message saying that he planned an extended holiday had it not been for the shadow cast by Lane-Perkins. If the wretched boy's father did prosecute then the summons would find him in the end. In the meantime there was nothing to be gained by making its delivery any easier. As it was, the Reverend Hawley would almost certainly get in touch with Sybil by telephone and if she had no knowledge of his whereabouts, Hawley would be unable to track him down and this might even delay the issue of a summons until Lane-Perkins' bruises had faded and everyone concerned had cooled off. On the whole, he concluded, it was better not to write for a day or so, and he rescrewed his fountain pen and tucked the card into his jacket pocket, promising himself that he would make a trunk call tomorrow or the day after and tell Sybil that he was moving from place to place and perhaps give her a post restante address at some other town in the West.}

^{The incident, however, led him to contemplation of his immediate future and the consideration of personal finance. How long could one continue to lead this pleasant, vagabond life on his present capital? He took out his wallet and counted his money. Of his original eleven pounds ten, only about three had been used for the journey west and the remaining eight-ten had since been supplemented by Tapper's thirty pounds, of which nearly seven had been spent on food and drink at the pub and another four pounds paid out in rent. He now had something over twenty-five pounds, surely enough to support him for a month without drawing}

^{I 10}

^{on his account. Tucked away in Martin's Bank he had over three hundred on deposit and another hundred, he estimated, in current account. If he was careful, he could lead a simple life in a place like Kingsbay for more than a year on such a sum and after that . . . ? But here he deliberately checked himself from looking more than a year ahead. Who in the entire world could look twelve months ahead these days ? All the same fear of the future lay deep in his consciousness, the feeling that there was not much time left to get about, to meet interesting people and root about for what remained of his lost youth. It was the certainty that he had squandered his youth that was the driving force behind him now and as he sat on the hard plank and looked westward across the bay he did a kind of sum with his life, dividing it into periods and looking for profit in the total. He found none, or none worth having, until the moment of his awakening in the abandoned siding. He had been a lonely child, and a neglected weed at school, shouldered on one side by the strident and the mischievous. He had wasted his entire youth in study when other young men were dancing the Charleston and roaring about in Austin Sevens and playing ukuleles and kissing pretty girls in doorways. His marriage, despite Sybil's physical complaisance, had been arid. He could not recall a single occasion when, having embraced her, he had been rewarded by a flattering response, a thrill of gratitude or a sign of satisfaction in her having been mastered by a man. Their moments of intimacy had been achieved without recourse to words or even exchanges of tenderness expressed through the lips or hands and had become, year by year, a domestic ritual. Behind this mockery of a marriage lay his quarter-century trek as a schoolmaster and this had the same quality of sterility, the same absence of a single gleam of gold dust in the pan. As far as he was aware, not a single boy had been influenced by him, or had learned from him anything worth learning, not one pupil led through the golden gates of history or into the garden of English literature. A few, too few, might have imbibed his lessons parrot-fashion, sufficiently well perhaps to scrape through school-leaving certificate with a 61 per cent pass, but even this was by no means a certainty for he had always lost track of his boys at thirteen plus when they sat for Common Entrance and moved into the orbit of strangers.}

¹¹¹

^{Yet all this had changed, suddenly and very dramatically. He had been a complete success with Tapper, had fooled an astute man like Chipper Trowbridge, had been the centre-piece of a rip-roaring party in a public house and had so won the heart of a buxom girl like Bella, the barmaid, that she had put him to bed in her own room and brought him tea and kisses in the morning. Furthermore, almost by chance, he had located Avalon and pinned down his most elusive dream, and after that, for good measure, he had struck up a friendship in a matter of minutes with a woman like Olga Boxall, and as if that wasn't enough he had discovered the girl on the beach and learned from her that he had remained in her memory for years, he-a middle-aged nonentity, and she an extraordinarily pretty woman who was sufficiently sophisticated to have been through the divorce courts.}

^{Taken all round it was an encouraging record and a very heartening one indeed, so with a certain jauntiness he lit a cigarette and set out along the cliff path, having made up his mind to walk eastward for an hour, strike inland and pick up the road he had travelled that morning, thus having encircled all the high land north of the town.}

^{He arrived back at The Chalet as it was getting dusk. The circuit had taken it out of him for he had reckoned without the stiffness of his brogues and his lack of training. Three or four miles inland he had raised a blister on his great toe and the last mile or so was covered in great discomfort, so that he was very relieved when he descended the High Street and climbed The Coombe to see cheerful lights in the house under the pines.}

^{Olga Boxall greeted him rather anxiously. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd got lost," she said, as he limped into the hall, "you did say seven-thirty and it's nearly nine. Here,"-observing his limp -"take off your shoes and I'll give them a brush in the morning. You must be famished and you can bathe your feet after you've eaten!"}

^{He was too exhausted to protest at this unexpected fussing and gave her his shoes, climbing the stairs and having a quick wash}

^{I 12}

^{before descending to the long dining-room where a table was set under the so-called minstrel gallery. It was a very inviting-looking table, laid with a gleaming cloth, dishes from which issued an appetising smell and a pretty pink epergne full of narcissi, daffodils and a few late crocuses. He sat down gratefully while she served him with thick vegetable soup. He was extremely hungry and could hardly wait for her to lay down the ladle.}

^{"My word, this is splendid, splendid!" he exclaimed. "I'm famished after that hike and I'll do your cooking full justice, Miss Boxall." Then, pausing with his spoon half-way to his mouth: "It is Miss, I take it? You're not married, are you?"}

^{"No," said Olga, smiling a little, "I'm not married, I'm Olga Boxall, Spinster, of The Chalet, Kingsbay, Devon; of uncertain age and semi-independent means."}

^{He laughed and addressed himself to the soup, but after the first delicious mouthfuls he became conscious of her hovering attitude and said: "I say, how about you? Or have you had supper already?"}

^{"No," she said, "but I'm not particularly hungry, I'll have mine in the kitchen when you've finished."}

^{"Nonsense!" he protested, standing, "I hate eating alone!" and he lifted the lid from a dish and revealed a generous mixed grill. "I can't possibly eat all that," he added, "so lay a place for yourself, please!"}

^{He could see that she was delighted by the invitation and she said, "Oh, very well Mr. Sermon, if you insist," and got herself a knife and fork from the sideboard drawer, returning to serve the grill which Mr. Sermon thought completed the most satisfying meal he had ever eaten, not excluding the one at the 'Cat and Carthorse' the previous evening.}

^{Their conversation at the table was conventional, his walk, her garden and housekeeping problems, the state of the country's economics and the prospect of peace. After dessert, however, she seemed to shed her shyness and began to take the initiative, ordering him upstairs to soak his feet and apply salve to the blister while she cleared away and washed up. He was down again in time to help her dry and in the atmosphere of the little kitchen their relationship became guardedly cordial, rather like that of two passengers who}

^{find themselves unexpectedly stranded in a remote waiting-room and are there long enough to exchange information about themselves. He told her that he was a schoolmaster who had suddenly decided to take an extra holiday and was thinking of changing his profession, but for some reason, although he did not actually claim to be a bachelor, he did not mention Sybil and she did not ask him if he was married but talked about the impulse that had prompted her to close for the season and take the first extended holiday of her life.}

^{At this stage she said she would bring the coffee into the sitting-room and when he entered there he found a bright coal fire burning and the most comfortable armchair set back from the smallest television screen he had ever seen.}

^{"I'm not a TV fan, but it's company in the winter," she said, switching on and handing him his coffee. "I don't play golf and I'm a duffer at bridge and they say down here that if these two occupations are out you might as well be dead, but I seem to find plenty to do until this time of year. Time drags a bit after that and it isn't the slightest use my going to bed early. I only lie awake until the small hours and then feel hopelessly tired in the morning. You get used to living alone, of course, and in some ways it has a lot to recommend it, but I always find myself looking forward to late spring when the first of the visitors arrive. One is always surprised, I find, to hear oneself talking again after seven months' silence."}

^{Before he could comment on this the TV set had warmed up and , together they watched a travelogue about Brazil and half a Western about a gunman who wanted to reform but found his good resolutions baulked by a crooked saloon owner and a rather self-righteous heroine in a poke-bonnet.}

^{"Do you want this on?" he asked at length, when the gunman had reluctantly consented to fight a duel with two imported killers.}

^{"Not in the least, if you don't," she said and switched it off, much to Mr. Sermon's relief, for Keith, his son, was a 'Western' addict and conversation at home had for years been punctuated by gunfire and the death-howls of Sioux. The ensuing silence was like a balm. Olga put more coal on the fire, and began to gather the coffee cups.}

^{"Don't do that now," he said, "you've done enough for one day. Tell me about your trip. Is it a Scottish or Welsh tour?"}

¹¹⁴

^{"Oh no!" she said, looking almost guilty, "it's a cruise to Istanbul!"}

^{"Istanbul!" he exclaimed, as if she had said her route would take her across the Sahara to Central Africa. "Great Scott, I'd no idea, I thought . . ."}

^{"Everyone reacts like that," she said mildly, "but really I don't know why they should. After all, I shall only be gone about ten weeks and although it sounds dreadfully expensive you can't live at home for nothing can you? It's something I've always wanted to do, see Greece and visit Gallipolli. I had an uncle killed at Gallipolli}