The Trouble With Harry (3 page)

The afternoon grew older and warmer. The bracken, the acres of bracken, the many level stretches and valleys and rises of bracken, supported a shivering haze of heat. A shivering, quivering, dizzy haze of reflected warmth. The bracken, the deep, shiny rhododendron, the chestnuts, the heather and the soft, fine grass and all the heath breathed a warm, visible breath. The afternoon grew old and warm and mature.

Captain Albert Wiles grew tired and hot and sticky. Usually by this time he was asleep and snoring. Already, his breathing had changed to yawning. The
corpse lying unattended on the broad, sunlit path grew stiff and attracted flies. The captain decided to get rid of this body once and for all.

He was crawling out of the shrub with this objective when there came a crashing and a crackling in the undergrowth. With a sigh – a patient and resigned sigh – the captain wriggled backwards into his hiding place.

He had scarce settled himself, his face on his hands, his rump high, his knees tucked under him, when a tramp walked round the bush and stood staring down at the corpse. He was a very English and very dirty tramp. A tramp redolent of many doss-houses and haystacks. A tramp touched in some subtle manner by all the counties of England. The reeds of the Fen country thatched his head; his face was the brown and grey clay of the Black Country; his dirt-ringed eyes held the muddy water of the Upper Thames; his jacket was a remnant from a night at ‘The Dorchester’ – somebody else’s night – while his trousers were woven and unwoven with the straw of the Cotswolds. He was the complete tramp – at least, he was almost the complete tramp. He had
everything the successful tramp should have except a pair of boots. His feet were naked except for the layers of dirt.

For a moment he stood staring down at the body. He touched it with his foot. He bent over it and spat into its staring eye. No living eye could have suffered that unblinking, so the tramp was satisfied. And being satisfied he sat down alongside the corpse and began unlacing its shoes.

All this Captain Wiles watched and as the sight of the happy young mother had made him glad to be a murderer, so the sight of this dirty, impersonal predatory man-tramp made him regret his irresponsible shooting. The captain closed his eyes for a moment and for the first time sent up a prayer for forgiveness. He vowed he would never go shooting again. He vowed that if he escaped the noose just this once he would turn Evangelist or join the Salvation Army.

While the captain was praying and the tramp was taking the dead man’s shoes and socks, a man and woman came walking along one of the many tributaries of the main path. A man and woman
holding hands. A couple. They walked in a nervous fashion, as though half afraid of being seen. It was obvious they were married, but married to different people.

The woman was a blonde. The woman was, moreover, A Blonde. One of the stereotyped blondes. A blonde with high curls of hard gold. A blonde with blue, toneless eyes. A blonde with one of the six shades of lipstick applied in one of the six ways. She was a blonde out of a moulding, mass-produced by the age, thrown out by the million, conceived by progress, born of cinema, out of magazine. She was one of the nameless, ageless women of the twentieth century. Nothing she had was her own; nothing
of
her
was
her. She was the blonde of Piccadilly, High Street, Market Street and the council houses. The blonde of young men’s dull moments and old men’s bright moments. The blonde you meet in every town, village and hedgerow in the world. Her toilet requirements, her underclothes and the way she said ‘maybe’ were a mutual property.

This international institution walked Sparrowswick
with her landlord, Mark Douglas, for it was rent day.

Mark Douglas was a lover of blondes. He was also a lover of brunettes, red-heads, albinos, negresses, Mulattoes, Eurasians, Asiatics and hotel receptionists. Mark Douglas loved anything in skirts that didn’t play bagpipes. He was a small man, full of an unpleasant energy.

They were laughing and talking as they walked, even though they were keeping their eyes alert. Every time they laughed Mark Douglas took the opportunity to slap the blonde’s behind. This seemed to give them both a lot of pleasure.

‘Last night,’ said the blonde, ‘he asked me how I got bitten in such queer places.’

They roared with laughter and Mark Douglas smacked her.

‘Where were the queer places?’ he asked.

They roared with laughter and he smacked her again.

‘Where do
you
think!’ said the blonde.

They roared with laughter and he smacked her again.

‘What kind of bites – man or beast?’ he asked.

They roared with laughter and he smacked her again.

‘Mosquitoes!’ she said, and the word was on the bubble of her last outburst of laughter.

He smacked her again and this time he kept his hand on her. ‘Where shall we sit down?’ he asked, conveying the importance of his words with his fingers.

‘I don’t think we ought,’ said the blonde, using the blonde vocabulary.

‘There’s a big rhododendron over there,’ said the little landlord.

He guided her towards the big rhododendron. When they came out on to the main path by the shrub the tramp had just completed the transfer of the shoes and socks. As soon as the couple made their appearance he had the good sense to lie back with the corpse and stare into the sky.

‘Tramps!’ said the blonde, disgusted.

‘Lying right across the path!’ said Mark Douglas.

‘We’ll carry on a bit up that other path,’ said the blonde.

‘You’re telling me!’ said Mark Douglas, slapping
her again and moulding her with his fingers towards another secondary path in the bracken.

Presently, while Captain Wiles was falling asleep under the rhododendron, the tramp got up and walked away, muttering to himself about the relief of Mafeking.

While these momentous things were happening on the heath, nothing was going on down amongst the trees and the bungalows. Nothing was happening, the way it happened every afternoon when the people who came home to lunch had gone back and the tradesmen had finished calling. It was an active, participative kind of nothing.

Butterflies flew in little couplets amongst the bushes and into the gardens. White butterflies and brown, the small, valueless kind. Butterflies and cherry-eaters. Bees swam around the heads of gladioli, stopping to kiss and sample and then
swimming on, fatuously, contentedly. Wasps settled like buzzards on fallen fruit and dustbins, while double hollyhocks stood in groups catching the breeze and talking things over.

So far as the world was concerned – the world which came along the road in motorcars and buses and cycles – the Sparrowswick Bungalow Estate was a thick wood which clung to the side of a hill, with here and there a roof or a chimney showing amongst the leaves. The entrance to the estate was a stony track with a bungalow on one side and an old, ivy-covered cottage on the other. This stony track was just wide enough to take a medium-sized motorcar. Higher up, out of sight of the road, other tracks dribbled away between the trees and these were just wide enough to take a small motorcar or a motorcycle combination. From these paths other little paths of dirt and leaf-mould wandered away to isolated bungalows in which lived, of necessity, people with feet or bicycles.

In the old, ivy-covered cottage by the road lived the widow Wiggs, proprietress of the Wiggs' Emporium. Mrs Wiggs sold groceries, lisle stockings, bacon and other provisions, toothache tincture on cards,
beautifully coloured packets of seeds, stationery, shopping-bags and everything imaginable except the thing you wanted when it was early closing in the nearest town. Mrs Wiggs also sold original paintings, watercolours, oils, black and white sketches, half-tones; all with the artist's name inscribed off-handedly yet unmistakably in one corner: Sam Marlow.

Besides these examples of painting and drawing the widow Wiggs sold other forms of fine art. At least, she stocked other forms. She stocked little wisps of poetry written in fine Indian ink on white cards. She stocked flowers and ornaments fashioned from coloured wax and dull with the dust of months. She stocked little books bound in hand-patterned leather which could be used for contract bridge scoring or as a diary. And by some amazing feat of packing Mrs Wiggs stocked all these commodities in her front room, which was roughly two yards square and contained as well as a small bacon-slicing machine with a broken blade, a short counter and a brass till. In this small front room turned into a shop then, were stocked groceries, lisle stockings, bacon
and other provisions, toothache tincture on cards, beautifully coloured packets of seeds, stationery, shopping bags and fine art. All this plus the fixtures; one bacon-slicing machine, one till and one Mrs Wiggs. By careful manoeuvring it was also possible to get two customers in the shop, though it meant one had to be small and sit on a biscuit tin.

The window of this shop was one pane wide, half being taken up with feminine and intimate drapery, and the other half with a painting of a glossy-haired young man advertising cigarettes.

The history of the Wiggs' was the history of success. The old cottage had stood there long before the bungalows were dreamt of; long before the ancestors of Mark Douglas had begun to disclaim him as a descendant. The cottage had been a game-warden's cottage and Henry Wiggs had been a game-warden. It follows that Milly Wiggs had been a game-warden's wife.

When the landed gentry to whom the shooting estate belonged became buried gentry, it was found necessary to sell the estate to meet the legacy of debts. It was then that Mark Douglas, would-be landlord
and lover of blondes, conceived his plan.

He had bought all the land except the piece on which the cottage stood. This had been left, freehold, to the Wiggs' in appreciation of the game they had preserved for killing. Henry Wiggs, a shrewd man who could see one hundred and fifty paces on a dark night, had immediately gone into business. By the time the estate was built – a six-week miracle – he had stocked in his front room all that human beings living in a wood might need. In the years that followed a brisk trade was carried on in the little cottage, for the nearest shopping centre was three miles away – a garden city which sprawled across a neighbouring hill like the dirty red wounds of a gravel workings.

Sixpences passed across the counter by the thousand. Sixpences and shillings and, after the drapery had started, odd sums ending in
three-farthings
. Confidences, too, were exchanged across this counter and gossip was rampant. The little store became to Sparrowswick Estate what the centre of any busy metropolis is to any busy metropolis. The Wiggs came to know the new woodland denizens as well as they had done the old quadrupeds, and
to like and dislike and recognise the foxes and the rabbits and the snakes amongst them. The people with no money began to run up their little bills and pay them, while the people with plenty of money began to run up big bills and leave them unpaid, and gradually a state of urban normality came to the heath.

The death of Henry Wiggs could be directly attributed to the unpleasant Mr Douglas. One autumn evening, on his way to collect some rent from one of his blonde tenants, he had called in on Henry Wiggs and asked that ex-gamekeeper if he stocked a certain commodity. Mr Wiggs had been sharpening the bacon slicer at the time and he had almost cut off the top of his finger. He made a noise similar to a hog in distress, which Mr Mark Douglas had interpreted as ‘No'. Thereupon Mr Douglas had suggested, well-meaningly, that Mr Wiggs would do well to keep a little supply in some discreet corner of the shop. Moreover, Mr Douglas had personally guaranteed a steady sale of this commodity. It was at this stage that Mr Henry Wiggs had dashed into his back parlour
and appeared a moment later grasping the
double-barrelled
shotgun.

There had then occurred a chase the like of which had never been seen before on that heath or any other. Mark Douglas had gone running wildly away up through the woods on to the heath with Henry Wiggs in hot pursuit. And after Henry there came Mrs Wiggs, and after Mrs Wiggs the blonde with whom Mr Douglas had an appointment, and after her most of the residents of the estate, for it was a time of day when a little diversion is welcome. All over the heath they had travelled at a smart pace, and four times the barrels of the shotgun were discharged without effect. Nobody knew the exact reason for the pursuit of their landlord by their provisioned but it was naturally assumed that Mr Wiggs had found Mr Douglas in a compromising situation with Mrs Wiggs, for although Mrs Wiggs was plain and elderly she did wear a skirt and she did not play bagpipes.

Eventually, by hiding all night in the bracken, Mark Douglas had escaped the wrath of Mr Wiggs. But Henry never fully recovered from that chase.
He was no young man and the landlord had shown a turn of speed and ingenuity that no pheasant or hare of Henry's experience had ever shown. Henry strained his heart. He was on his death bed for six months, but never once did he regret his action, for right to the end his shop retained a Catholic purity of stock.

Such was the background of the Wiggs’ Emporium, standing that hot, summer afternoon between the world and the woods; between Sparrowswick and ‘The Rest’.

Mrs Wiggs attended her stall. The stall was a number of planks thrown across trestles and covered by a white oilcloth. This stall stood half a dozen yards in front of the cottage and almost on the verge of the road. It was a stall designed to stop motorists and other road users. There was still lemonade on this stall and cut flowers and sandwiches and aspirins. Some of the brighter
watercolours signed ‘Sam Marlow’ leant against the front and above them the wisps of poetry, threaded by their corners with darning-wool, hung from drawing pins.

This was Mrs Wiggs’ summer enterprise. This was a way of capturing trade other than her staple trade. Once, on a Thursday, a charabanc had stopped at this stall and she had sold all her still-lemonade and a bunch of asters. Somebody had talked of buying one of the pictures, but it had come to nothing. Ever after that Mrs Wiggs watched the road for charabancs but never did she see another. It was to be supposed that that particular charabanc had wandered from its route.

Mrs Wiggs, then, sat in the shade of a chestnut tree, behind her stall, and waited for trade. She was a narrow woman with a broad, accommodating mind. Narrow shoulders and hips and a narrow mouth. She had no colour, either florid or pale. She was a neutral woman, with nothing positive or negative about her. She was so insignificant that even if you saw her many times in a single day you would find it hard, under close examination,
to swear that you had seen her at all. Yet she was a kindly woman and tolerant, thoroughly agreeing with everybody.

Suddenly, yet gradually, to this woman came a song. Amidst the occasional traffic noises, the straining of lorries over the hill, the changing of gears going down the hill, the whirr of faulty crown wheels, the rhythmic flip of asymmetrical tyres, above and through all these noises came a song. A strong, virile, baritone voice floating high above the trees behind her singing the song
Jerusalem
:

A song that swelled into the sunshine and became a part of the strong, hot light. A song that might well have come with the sunshine as one of Heaven’s odd amenities.

As she heard the song she sighed a little and reached over to set the paintings to better advantage. She looked at the paintings and in them she could recognise the voice she was hearing. It had the same
confident, carefree style. The same ethereal yet earthy style. It was the same man. It was Sam Marlow.

Down through the trees and the shrubs came the voice. Down past ‘The Ship’ and ‘The Haven’ and ‘Bon Vista’ and ‘Chaos’ and ‘The Chestnuts’ and ‘The Woodlands’ and all the bungalow names in the world. Down through the woods and up over the heath went the voice. Swelling into the limitless spaces of the summer sky. All heard it save one and he was dead. All heard it and in some way were gladdened by it. Abie’s mother, in the garden of ‘Chaos’, heard it as she was feeding cakes to her son and she watched the wonderful figure striding down through the foliage. Miss Graveley heard it as she was combing her hair and smiling to herself in a mirror in ‘The Haven’. In Miss Graveley, who had heard that voice so many times and remained unmoved, it wrought painful, ecstatic emotions. As the young god went past she covered her face with her hands and cried for joy. Up on the heath a tramp heard it.
This tramp, comfortably shod, was walking between the heat-soaked bracken and his thoughts were concerned with the solution of triangles according to the ancient Greeks. This song immediately sent his mind along fresh tracks towards the migration of the Asiatics into the American continent. In the bracken Mark Douglas, the landlord, heard it and immediately slapped the behind of George’s blonde mother, at which she giggled. And in his dreams beneath the rhododendron the new captain heard it and he smiled, and by some curious reflex action his snores subsided.

Only the corpse of the man called Harry was untouched by this glorious song on this glorious day in this glorious country. It lay, shoeless and sockless, staring bleakly into the chalk-blue sky.

Down through the bushes towards the road went Sam Marlow the artist. A young man, carved it seemed from solid gold. He was a big young man. He wore clothes, but they were more a convention than a covering. Indeed, there was much of him uncovered. A broad, thick body, well-proportioned yet not muscular. The crown of his head swayed
about six feet above the ground when he walked. His thin hair was sparse and fair from sun bleaching. His eyes were blue if you could see them, but usually they were screwed up as though viewing a distant sunset. He had a full mouth of white teeth and a square, stubbly chin. His throat was long and prominent and his chest, a golden barrel, made his ragged shirt look silly and inadequate. His waist was not athletic, being as far round as his legs were long. His old flannel trousers gaped at the top as he walked and his navel was plainly and unashamedly visible amongst his torn shirt and a quantity of hair. He wore sandals and no socks and his feet were big and chocolate brown. He looked as he sounded, as though he were bursting with summer.

Under his arm he carried a large watercolour.

He reached Mrs Wiggs and her stall with his song still unfinished. Reluctant to stop singing, being intoxicated with the words and his own voice, he walked around her three times before coming to the last fine note. The thin, colourless and elderly woman stared out across the road and the field and woods beyond, enjoying the music but passing no comment.
When he had finished she said: ‘Good afternoon, Mr Marlow.’

He looked at the stall. He walked from end to end looking at his pictures. When he had walked along the stall one way he turned and walked back. At last he stood in front of Mrs Wiggs, the new painting held between his stomach and his toes.

‘Woman! Woman! You haven’t sold a picture!’ He swept his hand in a grand gesture of disgust. ‘All my pictures standing in the same place!’

The woman was unruffled. She shrugged apologetically. ‘There’s so few cars … They don’t seem to want … I think the lemonade takes their attention …’

‘You naughty, naughty Wiggy!’ cried the artist, waving his fist at her. ‘You naughty, naughty Wiggy! The lemonade indeed! Throw it away. Drink it.’ His voice descended to the soft register of pathos and he bowed his head. ‘Not a picture sold …’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Marlow. Let’s see your new one. Hold it up.’

‘I’ve a mind
not
to let you see it,’ he said. ‘You don’t deserve to see it. How am I going to eat?’ He
thumped his stomach and the woman tried not to look at his navel.

‘Mr Wiggs always said it’s a funny spot for anything like that,’ said Mrs Wiggs.

Sam Marlow turned about with a suddenness that made the woman flinch. He took a long look at the empty fields and the woods. He could see two cows, a crow, and the smoke from a distant train. He turned back to the woman as though struck by a sudden thought. He put his face down to hers.

‘You think we’d do better in Bond Street?’

Mrs Wiggs looked uncertain. ‘If there’s more people there, Mr Marlow.’

‘Oh, there are! There is! Crowds. Thousands of people. Millions and billions of people.’

‘It might be better then,’ said Mrs Wiggs mildly.

‘But!’ the young artist exclaimed. ‘But!’

Their faces were very close together now and Mrs Wiggs was waiting patiently for the disadvantages.

‘What
kind
of people?’ he said. ‘What sort? What
breed!
Stop! I’ll tell you, Wiggy. They’re
little
people, Wiggy …’ He crouched down in a demonstration and he screwed his face up and looked like a squat
scarecrow. ‘
Little
people!’ he hissed. ‘
People with hats on!
’

Mrs Wiggs nodded, understanding. Sam straightened up and scratched his chest.

‘What are your cheapest cigarettes?’ he asked rationally, his voice twenty decibels lower.

‘Woodbines, Mr Marlow, same as always.’

‘What’s the smallest quantity you have?’

‘Packets of five, Mr Marlow.’

‘Give me five, Wiggy, and the scissors.’

‘Yes, Mr Marlow.’

Mrs Wiggs gave him a packet of five cigarettes and the scissors she used for trimming the flower stalks. She sat and watched him cut the cigarettes in half and tuck them back into the packet. He then held up his new painting.

‘Oh, Mr Marlow!’ she exclaimed.

‘You like it?’

‘It’s wonderful!’

He sighed with gratification.

She said: ‘What is it?’

He sighed a resigned sigh. ‘Good old Wiggy,’ he said, putting the painting alongside the others. ‘My sternest critic.’

Mrs Wigg accepted the compliment gravely. ‘I think your work is beautiful. So does Mrs Rogers.’

‘Aha!’ exclaimed the artist, his voice expanding again. ‘So you talk about me?’

Mrs Wiggs was slightly embarrassed. ‘Well, I only said …’

‘That’s the pretty woman with the little boy at “Chaos”?’

‘Yes, Mr Marlow.’

‘And what does the pretty little thing think of me, eh?’

‘Well …’ Mrs Wiggs suffered the natural reluctance of a confidence breaker. ‘She thinks you ought to be on the stage.’

Sam Marlow took this as a boxer might take a heavy blow. He shook his head and recovered. ‘Let’s go into the Emporium,’ he suggested quietly. ‘I want some food.’

Mrs Wiggs and the artist walked away from the stall and into the shop as a big and impressive Rolls-Royce car slunk to a stop against the pictures and a man wearing a sun helmet and horn-rimmed spectacles looked at the pictures and waited for attention.