Notwithstanding: Stories From an English Village Page 7

  ‘Whist is the card game, I think you’ll find,’ offered the Reverend Godfrey Freemantle, diffidently. ‘Wisteria is a climbing plant, floribunda, formosa, sinensis, venusta …’ Here he caught the Colonel’s hostile eye, and added, ‘But, of course, as Perry says, it is indeed listeria that causes gippy tummy.’ Once more he smiled at the Colonel, who was notoriously irked by being corrected, and who, on account of just this very flaw, had once narrowly missed the opportunity of being made equerry to the Queen.

  The guests tucked into their fish, and declared it perfect, wonderful, superb, just right, and the best they had ever had. But the sorry fact was that Colonel and Mrs Barkwell had managed all the same to insinuate doubt into their guests’ minds as well. ‘It would have been better not to have said anything at all,’ reflected Leafy Barkwell, as she surveyed the mildly worried expressions upon their faces.

  The Rector had a second helping, motivated by Christian supportiveness, explicitly putting his trust in God by means of a fleeting supplication, and the Major had seconds because, as he put it, ‘In my time I’ve drunk water from a petrol can, and I’ve cooked fried eggs on the bare metal of an armoured car in the middle of the desert, and I’m damned if anything will ever make me ill again.’ He ate his second helping as a direct personal challenge to the fish, and to any and all bacilli that it might contain. Joan, his wife, who had heard this speech about petrol cans and fried eggs a hundred times, loyally corroborated the Major’s assertions. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘the Major’s never ill. It’s positively alarming what his stomach can put up with.’

  The Colonel glanced at the Major somewhat balefully. There had been a strong undercurrent of rivalry between them ever since the Major had disclosed that he had been in the only Foot Guard regiment senior to the Coldstreams. It was indeed an unfortunate coincidence that a former Grenadier had turned up in the same village as a former Coldstreamer, especially as both of them were of titanic build and forceful temperament. In this instance it irked Perry Barkwell that a Grenadier should lay claim to a cast-iron constitution, and so he countered with: ‘Ate a boa constrictor in Belize. Damned tasty actually. Not bad at all. Ate a dog in Malaya. Emergency. Not quite so good.’

  ‘Oh Perry, don’t, how could you?’ demanded Leafy Barkwell. ‘How perfectly horrid.’ She had not heard this story before, and suspected that her husband was elaborating falsehoods from somewhat base motives.

  The carcass of the salmon was cleared away, and in the kitchen Mrs Leafy Barkwell heaped its remains into Troodos’s bowl, having decided that it was probably not a good idea to keep it over for the following day. Nanna went out to rattle the biscuit box, and Troodos appeared shortly through the catflap, an anticipatory purr rattling in his throat. It was his right to eat leftovers, and he was never far away from the catflap at about eight o’clock in the evening, after which his night’s adventures could begin. The leftovers would be followed by flirtation, a little hunting, a little chromatic yeowling, and, with any luck, an exhilaratingly good battle with a farm cat. Troodos would often appear in the morning with the outer sheath of a claw embedded in the middle of his forehead like a piece of Ruritanian military regalia, and Perry Barkwell would extract it, saying, ‘Damn good soldier. Chip off the old block, what?’

  Dessert was served and eaten, and then the Colonel and the Major announced their intention to waive their right to stay on at table and pass the port while the ladies withdrew.

  They both felt uneasy because, naturally, the Reverend Freemantle would be remaining with them, and they would feel inhibited about coming out with the odd ‘bugger it’, or worse, and risqué anecdotes or even talk about old campaigns would be out of the question. The Rector, they suspected, was a milksop, a nice chap, but with no balls at all. Accordingly they all removed to the drawing room, and Nanna served coffee, returning to the kitchen to begin the washing-up, which she did with her customary fanaticism, polishing the plates until they glowed.

  Polly Wantage lit her pipe, and began a long discourse about a squirrel that she had recently shot. The Colonel and the Major listened with admiration, for Polly, with her plus fours, her pipe, her legendary past in the England women’s cricket team and her monocle, was the kind of woman a chap could really rub along with; none of that damned female nonsense about headaches and manicures and hairdos.

  ‘And so,’ said Polly, puffing on her pipe and creating the atmosphere of a damp bonfire in autumn, ‘there he was, the little bugger,’ (here everyone glanced at the Rector, who merely smiled theologically) ‘and I gave him the right barrel. Boom.’ (Here Polly wielded an imaginary twelve-bore.) ‘And bugger me, I missed. And then the little bugger takes a leap, and, like a flash, boom, I’m after him with the other barrel, and blow me down, I got him in mid-air, and he spins over and drops, and there he is, stone dead on the pine needles. One bad shot, and one blinder. Just like life, what?’

  Polly looked around with satisfaction, and the Rector observed, ‘Such a rich metaphor,’ while the Major and the Colonel responded almost in unison with ‘Jolly good, old girl. Splendid.’

  Joan and Leafy exchanged glances, and the former summoned up her courage. ‘Polly dear, I can’t help wondering why you have this thing about squirrels.’

  Polly puffed vehemently on her pipe, and then pointed the stem at Joan, stabbing the air with it for emphasis. ‘Rats,’ she said. ‘Rats with fluffy tails. Tree rats. Vermin. Full of fleas. Disgusting.’

  ‘Oh, I think they’re rather sweet,’ said Joan, unthinkingly.

  ‘It’s the songbirds,’ explained Polly. ‘You can have squirrels or songbirds, but not both. These grey squirrels eat the eggs, and they eat the heads off the chicks. Nice and crunchy, you see. I’m voting for songbirds. Bugger the squirrels. Got to get rid of them. Do you remember Eric? Before your time, I should think. Eric Parker? He was the last man to see a red squirrel in the village.’

  Just then Nanna flung open the door, hurled herself into the centre of the room and exclaimed, ‘Oh mein Gott, mein Gott, du lieber Gott, der Kater ist tot. Der arme Kater, oh oh oh.’

  The Colonel stood up abruptly, exclaiming, ‘What? What? What?’ and Nanna clutched the sides of her face with both hands, her eyes full of horror, tears running down her cheeks. She swayed like an opera singer imitating the effects of a storm, and Joan and the other women exchanged a ‘What do we do now?’ kind of glance.

  ‘Pull yourself together, woman,’ cried the Colonel, grasping Nanna’s shoulders, and for one horrible moment everyone thought that he was going to slap her, as if she were the stock hysterical woman in an old-fashioned film. Nanna looked up at him and managed to say, her voice choking with distress, ‘Tot, tot, tot ist der Kater.’

  The guests went pale in unison, and in unison their stomachs began to feel unwell. ‘Pussy’s dead,’ said Mrs Barkwell, horrified both by the news and by what it meant. A wave of social shame swept over her, for the time being postponing the jagged grief that she would feel for her beloved pet. ‘The salmon,’ she blurted out, looking to her husband for strength. ‘Oh my God, the salmon.’

  The Colonel had not spent all those years in the Coldstreams without learning the art of dealing with an emergency. ‘On the double,’ he roared, ‘quick march,’ and everybody, galvanised by this vocal explosion, jumped up out of their armchairs. ‘Into the hall,’ commanded the Colonel. He turned to his wife. ‘Start the car. Round the front!’ She seemed a little confused, but was electrified into action by his ‘Jump to it, woman, jump to it’.

  The Colonel addressed his troops. ‘Stay calm. Calmness essential. No hurrying. Cool head at all times. Women first.’

  ‘Where are we going, old boy?’ asked the Major.

  ‘Hospital. Stomach pump. Bloody obvious, man.’

  The Major was nettled by this last phrase, implying that he was short on understanding, and he stiffened. ‘Not for me, old boy. Cast-iron stomach. Waste of time.’

  The Colonel was nettled in turn. ‘Do as you’re bloody well told,
’ he said coldly. ‘My responsibility.’

  The Major, deeply riled, replied coolly but with clear hostility, ‘We are not in the army here, old boy, and, even if we were, a major of the Grenadiers does not accept orders from a mere colonel of the Coldstreams.’

  ‘Mere?’ repeated the Colonel. ‘Mere?’ He stabbed at his chest with a forefinger, indicating his natural superiority. ‘Nulli secundus,’ he exclaimed, ‘second to none, second to none!’ repeating the motto of his regiment.

  The Major stiffened and drew himself up to his full height. ‘Second to one, second to one.’ He struck his own chest. ‘Senior regiment. Grenadiers. Damned Coldstreams, bloody sheepshaggers.’

  Colonel Perry Barkwell became livid beyond all reckoning. ‘Sheepshaggers?’ he spluttered, outraged by this ancient but ever-hurtful slur. ‘Sheepshaggers? You’ll answer for this, sir, you’ll answer for this.’

  The two elderly giants were by now eyeball to eyeball, their faces puce, their white clipped moustaches quivering, and it took their respective wives to intervene. ‘Get off me, woman,’ they both cried, but allowed themselves to be prised apart. The Major and his wife were hurried through the front door by the Rector, followed by the Colonel’s bellows of ‘You shall be answerable, sir, you shall be answerable’. At the gate the Major turned round and intoned ‘Baaaa, baaaa’ and thus he continued his derisive bleating until well out of earshot while the Colonel trembled with implacable ire.

  In the car, on the way to hospital, Mrs Barkwell reflected that there would not have been room for all of them anyway, and she hoped that the Major and Joan would be all right. ‘Damn them both,’ exclaimed the Colonel fiercely, and no more was said on the subject as he drove, in the grip of an ecstatic rage, pell-mell through the sinuous country lanes towards the little casualty unit at Haslemere hospital. The other four did not know whether they felt sick from the salmon, or from the terrifying and vertiginous speed of their journey, or from being crammed together like dates in a box, or from retrospective horror at the viciousness of the quarrel that they had just witnessed. They were flung against each other unmercifully as the old Rover skidded and screeched around the corners, and the Rector prayed aloud, his left upper arm forced against the copious but unmaternal bosom of the resolute Polly Wantage, whose overpowering aroma of wet tweed, dogs and bitter pipe dottle contributed generously to the general feeling of sickness and nausea experienced by all the passengers in the bucketing car. Polly’s companion whimpered softly to herself, and Leafy Barkwell, white-faced in the front seat, closed her eyes and tried not to think. She realised suddenly that they had forgotten poor Nanna altogether, and that Nanna had also eaten the salmon, but somehow she lacked the will to tell the Colonel to turn back for her. A wave of unhappy fatalism overcame her, and she decided to try not to think about what it would be like to die by overleaping a ditch and crashing into an oak tree.

  When the car left the twisting lane and reached the main road from Brook to Haslemere, everyone felt relief tempered by the knowledge that the Colonel’s wrathful driving could still easily leave them dead. Polly Wantage realised she was longing to know about the origins of the ‘sheepshagger’ jibe, but even that formidable lady baulked at the idea of raising the subject when the Colonel was still in an incendiary state of vexation. She would keep a straight bat on this exceedingly sticky wicket, and hope that it would see her through. Certainly she had not felt such trepidation since she had faced the fast bowling of Tricky Trent-Donovan in that memorable match in which she had almost been caught in the slips for a duck before going on to get fifty-six not out.

  At last the Rover slewed to a halt in the hospital car park, and its occupants staggered out, bewildered, sick, but relieved to be alive. The Colonel corralled them together and shushed them towards casualty like particularly troublesome sheep. ‘Get a move on, that man,’ he said curtly to his wife, and ‘Jump to it’ to the Rector.

  It was not a busy night in Haslemere hospital, and in the waiting room there was only a doleful man with a fish hook embedded in his forefinger and a diminutive nun from the hilltop convent in Notwithstanding, who was suffering from superficial abrasions because she had been dragged a short way along the lane when her habit had caught in the door of Sister Concepta’s minivan. The Colonel’s party was met by a small, plump Asian doctor, who came from behind the partitions and wished them ‘Jolly good evening’.

  ‘Bloody awful evening,’ riposted the Colonel, who then pointed his finger at his unfortunate knot of dinner guests. ‘Food poisoning. Stomach pump,’ he declared. ‘Chop-chop.’

  The doctor bridled; he had always resented the way in which a certain kind of person tried to push him around as if he were a mere orderly. Knowing that the stomach pump was invariably unpleasant and humiliating and could even be painful if passed down the gullet with sufficient lack of sympathy, he squared his shoulders, looked the Colonel in the eye, and said firmly, ‘Very good, sir. You first.’

  * * *

  It was an hour and a half before Colonel Perry Barkwell and Leafy returned to their house, pale and weakened after their ordeal, crushed and tired beyond all reckoning, almost too overwhelmed by the awfulness to be able to speak to each other. Leafy Barkwell was sure that never again would they be able to give another dinner party, and the Colonel could still feel the pain of the prolonged and energetic sluicing that his guts had had to endure. He felt unsteady on his feet, and all his imperial bravado had vanished. He leaned on his wife’s shoulder for support and wiped his white moustache repeatedly with a monogrammed handkerchief, repeating, ‘Oh God, oh God.’

  The pallid couple were met in the hallway by Nanna, who was clearly perfectly well, albeit still tearful about the untimely demise of the misadventurous Troodos. ‘Oh Nanna,’ exclaimed Mrs Barkwell, her voice trembling with horror, ‘it was simply dreadful.’

  Nanna held out her hand, in which she was holding a small piece of paper. ‘Der Kater,’ she said. ‘Eine Nachricht.’

  Mrs Barkwell took the note and eased herself wearily down on to the chair beside the hall chest. She began to read it, and then said, ‘Oh God, oh my God, oh God …’ She looked up at her much-diminished husband, who was holding himself upright by clutching on to the banister ball that Nanna loved so much to polish. ‘It’s about the cat,’ she said. ‘It’s from Totty Banks.’

  The Colonel took the message and read the first lines. ‘“Dear Leafy and Perry, I am so dreadfully sorry about poor Troodos. I do believe that I was almost as fond of him as you were …”’ The Colonel raised his eyebrows. ‘Damned curious,’ he said. ‘Letter of condolence already. Rum do.’

  ‘Read the rest of it,’ said Mrs Barkwell softly, and the Colonel continued, reading aloud, ‘“He was a very great character, a real personality in the village, and, if it wasn’t an insult to such a fine cat, I would have said that he was almost human.”

  ‘Quite. Quite,’ agreed the Colonel, and then he continued once more. ‘“I dearly wish that I could turn the clock back, believe me, and I am so desperately sorry that I could do nothing about it. I suppose that Troodos was crossing over into the field to look for voles. I do hope that you will be able to forgive me, but I just didn’t see him at all until the last minute, when it was too late to swerve …”’

  ALL MY EVERLASTING LOVE

  HE SPENT THE morning shooting at daffodils with his air rifle. To be more exact, he was trying to shoot through the stalks so that they keeled over. He would not have tried shooting through the flower heads, since he was not insensitive to their beauty, and, in any case, that would have wrecked his mission. His mother Joan had sent him out to pick daffodils for a dinner party that she was having in the evening.

  When she had asked him, he had grimaced and his heart had sunk. This was a girl’s job. His jobs were to empty the waste-paper baskets and burn the rubbish, chop wood, prune the fruit trees, rescue birds and mice from the cats, walk the dog, scoop up pet vomit, dig trenches, cut the hedge, go up ladders to clean out the gutter
s and roam around the countryside with his catapult and air rifle. The only girl’s task he ever did was to make the coffee after supper. His sisters had to clean and tidy inside the house, activities from which he was exempt, apart from emergencies that required the use of the Hoover. His father washed up after supper and also hoovered in emergencies. It was an enlightened household, in which it seemed as though the women did all the work, but in which anything very unpleasant or strenuous always fell to the men.

  Peter would not have had it any other way. He had just turned thirteen and had only recently left behind his shorts and become eligible for jeans. He loved his jeans, as the whole country loved jeans. They were the epitome of comfort and modernity, without being either modern or comfortable. It was the late sixties; disreputable people had taken to wearing them. They were raffish and daring and they proclaimed the beginning of a more casual age, when the platoons of commuters walking to the station suddenly gave up wearing bowler hats. Even his father, the Major, had taken to wearing jeans at weekends, and even the Major’s hair had become fractionally longer owing to the subversive influence of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The Major and Joan disapproved strongly of the Beatles and the Stones, even though they had once had a soft spot for Elvis, and so it had been Granny who had taken all the children to see Help! and A Hard Day’s Night. Granny thought that George and Paul were sweet. The Major used to say that those bloody pop stars (who couldn’t even sing, with or without a fake American accent) should serve some time in the forces; that would straighten their ideas out. It was discipline they were short of. What he really wanted was to tie them down, gag them, cut their hair off and then shoot the lot of them, along with George Brown and Harold Wilson. But his hair became longer nonetheless. One day, perhaps five years hence, he would even sport sideburns in the wake of his wife’s crush on Engelbert Humperdinck, and he would wear, briefly, a kipper tie with paisley swirls. But he would never sink so low as to wear brown shoes with a black suit.