The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (46 page)

^{He was listening but less than half her words registered, perhaps because he was searching and searching for all the odd pieces of the picture that made up the tableaux set in this house all those years ago; himself with a bunch of freesias calling on Sybil one mild autumn evening about the time everybody was chattering about Hitler and Czechoslovakia and Chamberlain's piece of paper and Sybil, pale and preoccupied, then bursting into tears and throwing herself in his arms and saying something about her having been a beast to him and that Norman Stephenson had treated her so badly going off like that when they were practically engaged. Then the old man, her father, had come into the room and administered little pats on his shoulder and gurgles of comfort for Sybil, and all the time this sharp-eyed old woman had remained silent in the background, watching all three of them with eyes that missed nothing and a mouth closed like a sprung trap. Well, he had been fooled all right, just like a character in one of those television plays the old lady despised but what difference did it make after all these years, after they had bred two not-so-brilliant children of their own and had lived through a world war and its aftermath? The knowledge that she had married him on the rebound did not make him feel resentful. Instead, he felt for her a kind of pity that she had been so shamefully humiliated and with sympathy came pride and wonder that she had recognised him as a man who could give her back her pride and self-respect, and as he thought this he began to see aspects of their early married life that had escaped him or that he had taken for granted or forgotten or mislaid in the weekly wash of married life.}

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^{He remembered, for instance, Sybil's long silences and troubled looks that he had thought indicated that she was not yet over the Norman Stephenson affair and this of course was true but with a difference, for she had not been thinking of Stephenson, in Malaya, but of his child and whether it could pass as her husband's! He had read of such subterfuges and seen them in films and plays, and inwardly he had always scoffed at them, but now he realised that they were not so implausible after all for until this moment he had never doubted the paternity of that stillborn child and even now he found it almost impossible to accept that what the old lady said was true. Then he remembered something else about that first year of marriage, something that took place soon after Sybil's return from the nursing home. There had been no more silences and no more troubled looks, and it had seemed to him then that he had at last succeeded in banishing the spectre of young Stephenson and his ear-splitting sports car. He had found in her, for a spell at least, a response that had lifted him to the heights and kindled in him ambition that had flared up like a rocket and then gone out, not to be lit again for twenty years. He remembered too, her almost frantic insistence that they should have another child at once and that when he cautioned delay on grounds of her health, she had pooh-poohed the risk and proved her point by having Jonquil with the greatest ease less than a year after she had lost her first child.}

^{It all came back and every piece fitted into place so that after all there was no doubting it and, strangely, he did not want to doubt it, for it answered so many questions about their lives and not least among them the question as to why he had never succeeded in inspiring her apart from those first few weeks when she could look at him with a reasonably clear conscience. He thought: 'I suppose it would be fatally easy to go out by the exit labelled self-pity, to persuade myself that she had made a complete fool of me and had never really cared a jot about me one way or the other, but this isn't so and I know it isn't so! She gave me the chance at that time and I didn't take it! Why didn't I take it? Because I thought so little of myself that I could never get close enough to her to treat her as a woman. I always stood off, wondering at my incredible luck, and asking myself how long it would last and somehow this self-doubt}

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^{must have communicated itself to her so that her good intentions went soggy and at length she began to see me as the person I saw myself. I'm as much to blame for everything as she is and perhaps rather more, because she began by being grateful and was eager to let gratitude develop into something more positive.'}

^{He
came out of his reverie to find the old lady still looking at him and behind her mask of impatient asperity there was sympathy and concern.}

^{"You aren't that upset by it, are you son? You don't have to be, she thinks a deal more of you now than she did then for all her tomfoolery. You do like I say and you'll see for yourself, I swear it, you hear me ? I knew her from the very beginning and people don't change much, take it from me! Like they are when they come that way they stay for the most part!"}

^{They heard a spluttering 'cough on the path and then the gate clicked and she jumped up and threw open the door.}

^{"It's Albert!" she said, "and he'll spoil everything if he sees you. Nip out of the back and round the side, quick!"}

^{He allowed himself to be hustled to the back door and into the sooty garden and as she opened the gate into the passage she said, "Don't forget that letter! Write it as soon as you get back! Where are you staying?"}

^{"The New Continental."}

^{"Right, off with you son and good luck," and she shut the side gate and shot the bolt.}

^{He went down between the garden fences to the street and found his car at the corner. As he crossed to it the once familiar sound of the suburb's summer-evening litany reached him, the low hum of traffic along the Surrey Road, the whirr of hand-mower and the cries of children playing on the pavements as the sun went down. It brought the past into such sharp focus that he could only nod and turn his head away when the driver asked: "Back to the hotel, sir?"}

^{He wrote and posted the letter that same night and then sent a telegram to Olga accepting her offer of the house in The Coombe.}

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^{The next morning when the girl brought in his tea, he saw that it was going to be another fine day but much hotter, 'a proper scorcher' as the Cockneys say, for although it was barely eight o'clock the sun blazed in a clear blue sky and dust motes danced above a patch of carpet quartered by the sunbeams. He sipped his tea, planning his day like a general preparing for battle. He knew that today would be Rubicon day, that if he returned to this fusty little room tonight with the situation unresolved then he would never see Sybil again, except perhaps over some impersonal solicitor's table. The reflection projected him from bed and into the tiny tiled bathroom where he looked closely into the mirror for signs of strain but found none, noting only that weeks in the open on Kingsbay promenade had given him a healthy tan and also that he badly needed a hair cut.}

^{After breakfast he went out and walked along the sunny streets to Regent Street, one hand in his jacket pocket fondling the banded roll of notes he had taken from his hoard. There were over three hundred there, all in soiled fivers and the touch of them gave him a degree of confidence never conjured from a cheque-book. He went into Hope Brothers and climbed the stairs where a young man gave him some patterns to inspect. He took his time, finally choosing a dark grey mixture and then submitted to the mild indignity of being measured for a new suit, quoted at thirty-four pounds ten. It would be ready for a fitting, they told him, in about a fortnight and he gave a banker's reference and Barrowdene as his address. It was an act of faith in the outcome of the day.}

^{Then, on impulse, he bought a ready-made suit, a charcoal material with a faint stripe and when he had put it on and had the clothes he was wearing parcelled, he bought two expensive shirts, a light blue tie, a pair of shoes and finally, three pairs of summer socks. The bill, apart from the made-to-measure suit, totalled fifty-seven pounds. Never in his life had he spent more than half this amount during a call at an outfitter's.}

^{He went out into the sunshine feeling extraordinarily pleased with himself. For once he felt he belonged here among smart cars and hooting taxis and making his way down towards Trafalgar Square he turned in at a hairdresser's and asked for a trim, short}

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^{back and sides but not much off the top. Relaxed in the comfortable leather chair he decided to have the whole treatment and ordered a rum shampoo, a face massage and a manicure. He thought, as he watched the pretty girl pare his fingernails: 'Why didn't I behave like this long ago? Why did I always creep along the backstreets of life ? Was it because I hated spending Sybil's money and never earned enough myself to buy good clothes and all the trimmings?' The man held the hand-mirror and he replaced his glasses to inspect the result. "That's splendid!" he said and gave man and girl half-crown tips. It was, he reflected, very cheap at the price, for never had he seen himself looking so suave and well-groomed.}

^{On the way back to his hotel he stopped and bought a small suitcase and upstairs in his room he packed his old clothes and collected the rest of his things. When he came to his knapsack he hesitated. Was this the time to strike his colours and surrender his standard to the future? He made a sudden decision and stuffed the knapsack into the inadequate wastepaper basket, a solemn act of defiance and renunciation. Then, donning a new shirt, new tie and new shoes he rang for the porter and ordered a hire car, giving instructions for it to call for him as soon as he had finished lunch.}

^{His route south-east took him over familiar ground, out through the maze of streets he had traversed the previous evening and then beyond them through the outer suburbs spaced by allotments and half-developed sites. He had seen this part of London change, for when his mother had first brought him here as a boy it had been almost rural, with rows of mid-Victorian houses set well back among clumps of chestnut trees loaded with conkers, with here and there a few fields enclosed by hawthorn hedges. Birds had sung in blackberry thickets and there were still country lanes to be found where cow-parsley sagged under a sprinkling of white dust but now this had been transformed into a network of crescents and avenues composed of houses that all looked the same, flat pink and white boxes, with tiny lawns and tidy flower-beds sprouting identical-looking flowers and anaemic shrubs. As they reached the Wyckham Rise crossroads, he said to his driver: "Very well, drop me here,}

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^{I'll walk over the hill!" and he paid the fare and set off through the sparse coppice that straggled up to the plateau overlooking the new suburb.}

^{The place seemed to him smaller and more concentrated, the effect perhaps of having widened his own horizons and he topped the rise rather breathlessly for it was now four o'clock and the glare of the sun drove him to seek shade under the birches. Here, however, walking was more difficult and his new shoes pinched, so that he had to sit down for a moment on the seat he had occupied the day he ran away from Napier Hall. Recognising it he realised he had completed a full circle and that his purpose here today was to begin describing another and wider one with Sybil in tow. For the first time since he had set out from Kingsbay his courage faltered but he rallied almost at once, encouraged by all that had happened since the day he had sat down on this very seat four months ago. It was not only memories that stiffened him but material evidence of his success in the outside world, the suit he was wearing and the roll of notes in his pocket. Up to yesterday the knapsack had been his talisman but now it was his wad of fivers and before he went on he did a little sum, calculating that he was now worth more than twice the amount he had been when he set out and that this in itself was a source of reassurance. He went on down the southern side of the slope and entered his avenue, also strangely shrunken, and at the entrance of the drive he drew a deep breath and walked in.}

^{Two cars were parked in the half-moon outside the terrace but neither car was Sybil's. At the sight of them he instinctively sought the cover of the rhododendrons and then inched his way round to the end of the verandah where he could look directly into the big living-room without much chance of being seen.}

^{His fears were confirmed. Sybil was presiding over one of her casting committees and he recognised every person in the room. They were seated three on each side of the reproduction refectory table, two men and four women, with Sybil at the far end facing his way. The men were Aubrey Marcheson, the bank cashier and Cyril Endsleigh, an older man whom he remembered as the O.C. scenery at all Sybil's productions. The women were Endsleigh's rat-toothed wife, Naomi, their daughter, a willowy and rather desiccated girl}

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^{up
accountably known as 'Bubbles', Mrs. Beckett, who sometimes co-produced and finally the Club Secretary, Miss Teake.}

^{He gave the group a careful scrutiny before dismissing them and concentrating upon his wife. She was looking very smart indeed in a black two-piece that trumpeted haute-couture, but his general impression was that she was not her usual self for her expression was bored, almost petulant, and always on these occasions she had looked serene and genuinely interested in all that was said. She was a little thinner, he thought, than when he last saw her but her face was more handsome than he ever remembered.}

^{At that moment, and without knowing why, he thought of Norman Stephenson again and the conviction grew in his mind that this was exactly how she had looked all those years ago when she had told the young bounder that she was pregnant and had listened to him playing for time to get on a steamship for Malaya. The pity he had felt for her when her mother had told him the story returned as he watched her glance shift from one speaker to another and with a sudden rush of protectiveness he wanted to stride clear of cover and walk through the window, but at this moment he heard a step on the gravel and saw the figure of Mrs. Balcombe, Sybil's mid-week daily, waddle through the kitchen door and walk towards the side gate. He called to her softly and she looked up with surprise.}