The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (30 page)

^{"Ah, I'm with you there, Sermon," agreed the Clerk, "and nobody has more right to that opinion than a man holding public office but these fellows are very persistent and they know where you're domiciled, so watch out on your way down!"}

^{"On my way down where?" queried Sebastian.}

^{"To the Council Offices," said Bignall with a trace of impatience, "you promised you'd call this morning."}

^{"Did I ? I don't remember. I'll come of course, but why don't we meet for coffee in the town somewhere?"}

^{"Cafe coffee? Not on your life!" said the Clerk. "I've got the best coffee-maker in the West. She's a dreadful typist but I keep her on for elevenses. How about it then?"}

^{Nobody could ever have mistaken Benjamin Bignall for anything but what he was, Town Clerk of an Urban District Council in the provinces. He was Kingsbay in person and Sebastian felt that over the}

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^{past four decades not one among the few changes that had taken place in the Urban area had been instituted without his sanction, that no gardener would dare to convert a half-moon flower bed into a circular or rectangular bed without first having conveyed his intention to the Town Clerk through the proper channels, or that no local farmer could have secured by cajolery, bribery or any other means permission to allow a caravan to remain on one of the headlands overnight. Extending his hand across the vast desk, Mr. Sermon felt acutely conscious of the fact that he had called upon the Town Clerk wearing slacks and an open-necked shirt, but Bignall seemed far less patronising than on the previous day and motioned him into a comfortable chair, while a chinless girl crept in with coffee, laid the tray on the desk like an apprentice priestess tending an altar and crept out again. Bignall boomed: "You're not doing anything particular in our part of the world, are you, Sermon? By way of employment, huh? For the next two months or so?"}

^{Sebastian was rather taken aback by the directness of these questions and had the impression that, for a reason unknown to him, the Town Clerk had had his eye upon him ever since he entered the town and took up his abode at Olga's.}

^{"Well ... er ... no, not exactly," he stammered, "but I'm really on holiday. I'd heard about Kingsbay but I'd never visited it before, so I ... I just came!" he concluded, apologetically.}

^{Bignall's eyebrows shot up and he tapped his horsey front teeth with a pencil. Without quite knowing how it had come about, Sebastian realised that what had begun as a social visit had suddenly developed into an interview and at once hastened to make his position clear.}

^{"I'm ... er ... I'm not looking for a job," he said, "I have a sort of an agreement with Mr. Sugg, the antique dealer and that keeps me busy on Sundays. Beyond that . . . well ... I ... er ... I mooch about, swimming and ... er ... tramping you know!"}

^{He said this as though no one with the faintest regard for propriety would dare to admit to Benjamin Bignall that he was altogether idle.}

^{"Well, we won't beat about the bush," said the Town Clerk, briskly, leaning forward and handing Mr. Sermon his coffee. "Fact is, something unusual has come up and with the season opening I}

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^{find myself in a difficulty as regards supervision. Now I flatter myself I'm a good judge of character, Sermon! Never had a real wrong 'un yet and I've been engaging men and women since 1908! You look like a supervisor. Yes, you look like one, Sermon!" "A supervisor of what?" asked Sebastian, not unreasonably, he}

^felt.

^{Mr. Bignall blew out his big red cheeks and the trick made his face look like an inflated pink balloon. "Why the beach man, the beach," he barked, "what else ? I'd hardly offer a man of your education an artisan's position. Up to now we've not needed a supervisor in the real sense of the word, but with the pressure they're putting on me to convert Kingsbay into a miniature Blackpool-and that's what it amounts to, Sermon, that's exactly what it amounts to, mark my words-some kind of official supervision is obligatory! I'm committed to engage a full-time man by early spring next year but a man like that takes finding and vetting and the so-called Progressives on the Council"-he almost sneered the word 'Progressives' so that Mr. Sermon was sharply reminded of Pooh-Ba inviting an insult-"with that kind of pressure I'm compelled to appoint a stop-gap and I intend to find a man of my own choice before some irresponsible ass is foisted on me, you understand?"}

^{Mr. Sermon did not but he gathered that somewhere in Kingsbay there existed a faction opposed to Mr. Bignall's tyrannical determination to put the clock back to 1913 and that, for a reason that had very little to do with the rescue, Mr. Bignall not only trusted him but thoroughly approved of him.}

^{"What would this ... er ... position entail exactly?" asked Sebastian doubtfully, "and how many hours a day would it require ?"}

^{"We have here a number of beach undertakings," said the Town Clerk, now fairly launched. "Some are quite harmless-refreshment huts, deck-chair hire, public conveniences etcetera, but others have been wished on me during a process of infiltration perpetrated by a gaggle of till-hungry tradesmen! I don't care to imagine what will be the end of it all," he went on, darkly, as though he envisaged a Kingsbay in the year 2000
a.d.
full of brothels and one-armed bandits, "the donkeys and yachting pool and this new-fangled Children's Zoo they've just opened may seem innocuous to the}

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^{uninformed, Sermon, but to me they are the thin end of the wedge, sir, and a lethal wedge it will prove if I'm any judge!}

^{"What I'm looking for to tide me over until September is a responsible man to help keep an eye on our various undertakings, to check money, catch litterbugs, restrain vulgarity, oversee the temporary staff in the car-parks and chair-ranks, and, above all, to watch out for hanky-panky in the bathing-huts and band enclosure. Now this isn't an exacting job but it's a job for a gentleman and I'm sufficient of a snob to have you marked down for a gentleman the moment I saw you side-step that yammering crowd yesterday. Moreover-" and he lifted his hand for silence as Mr. Sermon opened his mouth to reply, "moreover, I'll wager you're accustomed to exercising authority. Am I right, sir?"}

^{"I was a schoolmaster for many years," said Sebastian, "but . . ."}

^{"Ha! There! I knew it and it confirms me! You have an additional advantage. No one knows you, you have no local affiliations that might encourage you to turn a blind eye to, say, short-charging the Authority on a parking ticket. Furthermore, something tells me you wouldn't condone hanky-panky. You wouldn't, would you?"}

^{"No," said Mr. Sermon, doubtfully, "I don't think I would, but}

^{"Now the salary I am authorised to pay is a modest one," continued the Clerk. "Suppose we say ten till four, five days a week, at two-pounds-ten per diem, a total take-home, less the insurance stamp, of eleven pounds a week."}

^{"But I know absolutely nothing about supervising beach undertakings, Mr. Bignall," wailed Mr. Sermon, "I hardly know my way around town and I should imagine that quite considerable sums of money . . ."}

^{"As to the topography," said Mr. Bignall ruthlessly, "I shall take you on a personally conducted tour and as to the money-all you have to do is to collect twice a day and pay in at the sea-front Information Bureau in exchange for vouchers. Perfectly straightforward system. Initiated it myself! That fool of a Finance Officer was getting into an unholy muddle, so come on, give it a try, man! If I'm willing to take a chance on you why should you question your abilities?"}

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^{"Well, really, I hardly know . . . it's very flattering of you, Mr. Bignall, but I can't help feeling I ..."}

^{"We'll tour the Foreshore at all events," said Mr. Bignall decisively, rising and pressing a bell that brought the chinless clerk into the office like a figure on a mediaeval clock. "Miss Vesey, I shall be gone precisely one hour. Hold all appointments! Come, Sermon, and see for yourself what a sinecure it is!" and he gave Mr. Sermon a prod that projected him past the priestess and half-way across the outer office where, so subdued were the staff, that not one clerk looked up from ledger or typewriter as they passed through the flap counter and down the stairs to Mr. Bignall's car in the courtyard.}

^{Touring the Foreshore in the wake of Mr. Bignall was rather like inspecting a front line behind a four-star general. Wherever they went,
u.d.c.
employees and tenants sprang to attention and the Town Clerk treated them all as though, like the Duke of Wellington, he regarded his troops as the scum of the earth. They visited the three refreshment huts, leased, Mr. Bignall explained, to the highest bidders at the annual auction of beach rights, the yachting pond and paddling pool, the deck-chair depot, the Sea Angling headquarters on the jetty, the four public conveniences, the lifeboat station, the two municipal parking lots, the cove where the donkeyman plied for hire and finally the two bathing-stations designated 'East End' and 'West End'. At almost every stop, Mr. Bignall was given respectful attention, with the word 'sir' interpolated between every other word, but there were three among the Foreshore staff who were not impressed by the majesty of the Clerk. The donkeyman seemed to Mr. Sermon to be short of wits for he bobbed and grinned like a village idiot when they approached and seemed bewildered when neither of them ventured to hire one of his mounts. To everything Mr. Bignall said to him he replied: "Oo-ahh, us is in business!"-a statement that appeared to Mr. Sermon to be an affirmation of faith rather than of fact, for the dejected donkeys remained tethered to a stake-rope and such children as were in the vicinity were occupied in building sand-castles along the strip of shore,where the shingle petered out and sand stretched as far as the western headland.}

^{"I trust," said Mr. Bignall censoriously, "that you feed the animals}

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^{adequately. Some of them seem to me to be rather undersized, even for children to ride."}

^{"Oo-ahh!" the youth assured him, "us veeds 'em now us is in bizness, mister!" and he bobbed up and down, whirling his goad.}

^{"Am I to understand from that," asked Mr. Bignall, "that if business is poor you under-feed the poor beasts?"}

^{The youth wrinkled his nose and looked to Mr. Sermon for enlightenment, but at this juncture Mr. Bignall, never a patient man, uttered a contemptuous growl and began plodding back to the promenade steps. "You see what I mean, Sermon," he complained, ploughing steadily through the soft sand, "they would have the donkeys and now they've got them the poor beasts stand around from morning until night waiting for hire."}

^{"I expect they'll be in demand during the school holidays," said Mr. Sermon hopefully, but he realised that far from seeking reassurance as regards financial possibilities of donkeys, Mr. Bignall was condemning recent Foreshore policy as a whole. "The busier we are in August the more bitterly I shall oppose progressive policy," he snorted. "Don't imagine that I'm one of those misguided fools who regard beach income as a source of relief for the rates. No, sir! That isn't progress at all but a policy calculated to reduce Kingsbay to the level of every other coastal resort, spa and watering-place, places that have forfeited their birthright and are now caught up in a spiral of competitive tragedy."}

^{Mr. Sermon tried hard to imagine what a spiral of competitive tragedy would look like, or whether or not it could be reduced to a graph on Bignall's office wall but the Town Clerk became more lucid when he reached the esplanade and continued: "What town councillors as a body have overlooked here and elsewhere," he explained, "is that the entire holiday pattern of the country has changed since the introduction of the Welfare State. In the old days the hoi polloi couldn't afford Kingsbay and now that they can they don't want it! Most of them would sooner spend a fortnight in gaol than in a place like this! They go abroad, Sermon, they gad about the Riviera and Spain and Switzerland, whereas the people who are looking for a place like Kingsbay, or like Kingsbay was, people on fixed incomes who are victims of the Welfare State, resent the new}

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^\

^{tempo the town is setting and prefer to do without a holiday altogether! Thus we lose our old visitors without attracting new ones, for today my friend, there is no middle course for coastal resorts. Either they run up their chromium stores, cinemas and dance halls or they stagnate. Yes, Sermon, they stagnate!"}

^{"But I say," protested Mr. Sermon, feeling defensive about Kings-bay, "this place hasn't stagnated. It's kept its character, it hasn't changed very much since Dickens' time I imagine."}

^{Mr. Bignall stopped and seized his arm, looking into his eyes with an expression that came close to pathos.}

^{"You think so ? You really think so ?" he said, piteously. "You're not saying that to flatter me ? You mean it ? You feel it ?"}

^{"Certainly I do," said Mr. Sermon, a little embarrassed by the Town Clerk's emotion. "It's what attracted me the moment I saw Kingsbay, it's got a ... Peggoty look . . . you remember, those Cruikshank illustrations in early editions of David Copperfield?"}