Rotting Hill (10 page)

    As I lifted the sheet of paper there was a thumping in the hall and a ringing: immediately Eleanor came in to announce the Storby car. It was a little windy outside. As Rymer drooped like a dejected porpoise over the sash of the car-window I warmly shook the poet’s hand. He cheered up as I shook him and as I drove off he was singing his good-byes. I heard Eleanor’s firmer note and agitated my hat out of the window.

    I never had such a good visit again to Bagwick. Either there were young people there or Rymer was preoccupied by the worries of his
cure,
connected mainly with the hostile activities of the young farmer. But when he came up to London he was in better spirits. He returned to the excitements of his youth: he would have been to see a new Italian film which reminded him of the early Russian ones when he was an undergraduate. Another time he would have been to see a socialist curate in an East End parish who reported packed churches of slum-dwellers, to listen to a sensational mixture of inflammatory social doctrine and tawdry mysticism.

    Two months or more after my visit I sent him a post-card message as follows:

    “Recalling my discourse socialism and Christianity. Have just seen something written or said by David Low, the famous Cartoonist. Here it is.

    “‘If any man come to you from the Right or the Left and promise you economic security on condition that you first surrender your personal and political liberty, kick him downstairs. You won’t get the security and what is more having surrendered your liberty, you will then be in no position whatever to argue about it.’

    “I fear that Low will have lost an admirer in Bagwick.”

    Whenever I saw Rymer I made a point of enquiring if any new moves had been made, by his enemies in the parish, to have his living taken away from him. I got the impression that they had given it up as a bad job. He did not say so, but that is what I gathered was his view.

    Then one day in January, while a young Italian workman was “hacking out and reglazing” one of our hall windows, the icy wind from Siberia still blowing in, there was a knock at the front door. The young Italian went on hacking. Mr. Rushbottom, my old man of errands, my washer-up and guardian of the street-door key was standing hat in hand, counting with difficulty his silver. “Shall I see who it is, sir?” he enquired. I asked him to do so, and he went out into the hall. A moment later he returned, practically walking backwards with his customary exaggerated deference. He was followed by the massive form of Rymer, limping, and with a large black patch over his left eye. The Rymer that looked at me out of the other eye was a stranger.

    “Rymer, of all unexpected visitors!”

    “I’m sorry,” the stranger said.

    “Aren’t you cold? Come over here and sit by the fire.”

    “I’m not cold,” said the stranger.

    “Sit down,” I repeated. “Have you hurt yourself?”

    “No. I have not hurt myself.”

    “No? And you are limping, too. Bad luck. One moment, I will settle with Mr. Rushbottom.”

    I accelerated Mr. Rushbottom’s ritual of the-change-out-of-a-pound, dismissed him with old-world courtesy on both sides—a bow from Mr. Rushbottom at the door towards the ominous vault of Rymer’s back. That finished, I returned to the fire, facing my visitor.

    “You look as if you had been fighting,” I observed.

    “I have,” said the stranger.

    Gradually I grew accustomed to the lonely eye, staring at me with a new expression. It was not the eye of the Bishop’s Fool. Samuel Hartley Rymer was there, as he had begun: the parson that was underneath the rags and patches—which he was not wearing today: the man who played the Bishop’s Fool for my entertainment. Even the poet had deserted this forlorn figure.

    All those attributes removed, the personality was as it were undressed. However, this sort of psychological nudity was presented to me with dramatic satisfaction, so the old Rymer was there after all, peering at me dully out of his one eye.

    There was a long silence. Rymer looked down at the floor. The “hacking and glazing” the other side of the door filled the room with violent sound. Rymer turned towards the door.

    “Who is that?” he enquired.

    “Why, that is an Italian workman,” I told him, “putting in a new pane of glass. He cannot speak, nor can he understand, the English language.”

    A silence ensued.

    “See this?” He pointed to the black patch obscuring his left eye.

    “I do,” I nodded.

    “The farmer did that,” he told me, panting a little.

    “I am sorry, Rymer. How disgusting.”

    “Yes, I’ve come up to see a lawyer. And a doctor.”

    There was a short deep silence.

    Several deep groans broke from him like successive belches. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his uninjured eye.

    “Will this lead to anything tiresome?” I asked him.

    “Lead to anything! I have been told to pack. I am to move into rooms in Storby. The Archdeacon came over last night. I was still in bed, he came into the room and told me no other course was open to them, I must go
at once.
I asked him what I had done. I have done nothing, people have done things
to me.
It is not I who should move away from the neighbourhood, it is Jack Cox. But they are such liars, a lot of people have come forward to testify that I…
was drunk.
”

    “You
drunk!
”

    “
Drunk.
They say that I
stank
of whisky. I never drink anything at all; even if I have people to lunch or to dinner and buy a bottle of wine for them at the grocer’s in Cockridge I never have any myself.”

    This I was able to confirm.

    “I noticed,” I said, “when you brought a bottle of claret back for lunch one day, that you drank nothing yourself. Here, I have offered you everything from beer to burgundy—certainly you do not
drink.
You’re the driest man I ever met.”

    “No, I don’t drink. But they say I do and that’s all that matters.”

    “A beastly situation! How did it all come to pass? You seem to have a lovely black eye.”

    He told me then how he had been trapped. Knowing him as I do it was not difficult to reconstruct the scene. I could see him as clearly as if I had been there, attempting to extricate himself. But a clergyman is a very easy prey, and this one perhaps especially so. He was a most unpractical man and at the same time over-confident in himself. His was so subjective a temperament that he was disposed to feel he could subdue to his will the most resistant fact. He behaved often as though the objective world were clay to be fashioned—not rock to negotiate. If a solid fact came into collision with him, as in this case for instance with his eye, he would be nonplussed.

    How things began was as follows. A married woman in the village in whom his wife and he had taken an interest (I suppose because she was a bad hat) had got herself in a fix. She had stolen something in a shop in Storby, and the presence of the stolen article in the house had led to difficulties—the details are immaterial. He wanted to ask his wife to come down and see this woman, and he went into “The Marquess of Salisbury” to telephone to the Rectory.

    The public telephone was situated at the far end of a passage, and in order to reach it one passed the two doors leading into, first, the public bar, and, next, the saloon bar. It was Saturday afternoon about two o’clock and there were people in both bars. As he passed the second door, which was open, he saw Jack Cox at the bar with two other farmers. He telephoned, and, having done so, as he turned around he found Jack Cox was standing there in the narrow passage looking at him.

    “Ah, hallo, Jack. I thought I saw you inside with Joliffe.”

    But Cox did not speak. What was more, he did not move and there was no room to pass him.

    Rymer is the most pacific and friendly of men, for all his arrogance, and I honour him for it, I cannot imagine him speaking roughly to anybody. Cox was plainly barring his way out and it might be assumed that he had been drinking enough for his ego to have swollen. There was probably nothing to be done but to push him out of the way. But English clergymen are not supposed to push human obstacles out of the way.

    “Well, Jack,” said Rymer, as if addressing an awkward child. He rested his shoulder against the wall and crossed one leg over the other, as though settling down for a chat. “How is the farm? I must run up there and pay you a visit. I’ve been intending to for some time.”

    “I shouldn’t,” said Cox.

    “Oh, why not, Jack?” he sang musically, with a teasing note, as if Jack was being a little silly.

    “Because I’ll kick you out of it on your bloody neck. That’s why.”

    “But
why?
That’s nonsense, Jack. Aren’t we friends?”

    At this point the most pacific clergyman should have taken steps to bring this colloquy to an end. Not so Rymer. No, he would charm this enraged animal into docility.

    “Jack,” he coaxed, “you’ve got this all wrong you know. You are not pleased with me, of course I know that, but you’ve got the wrong idea about me. Let’s talk it over, Jack! Shall I come up and see you tomorrow?”

    “Yes, come and convert me to communism. You’ve tried it on all the men who work for me. Come up and try it on me. But first of all take
that.
”

    With which he hit Rymer, the blow breaking two of the new set of Health teeth. Rymer straightened himself in a bound, putting his arms up in front of him—not pugilistically but to create an obstacle, and advancing at the same time: but Cox sprang to one side and shot in a second blow which brought the blood out of his nose.

    Jack Cox, whom I have seen, is half Rymer’s size, a little legginged English yeoman with a reddish bullet head. Although much older, I should suppose the larger could have annihilated the smaller had he wanted to. In this case the annihilation took a different form. With a great roar of “Jaaack!” which echoed all over “The Marquess of Salisbury”, the Man of God, as if in an access of love, flung himself upon Jack Cox and folded him in an ardent maternal embrace. Dropping blood all over Jack’s face and shoulders—when they caught sight of them people got the impression that Cox had been half murdered—Rymer practically carried him out of the public house.

    “Now, Jack Cox! Will you behave yourself,” he croaked huskily and breathlessly in Jack’s ear, as he hugged him under the inn sign of a bearded man, ostentatiously plastered with stars and medals.

    Those in the bars had come out into the street and people had come out of their houses, men, women and children, so that by now most of Bagwick was watching him. They did not watch in silence. The greater part of the men were Cox’s labourers. Rymer was surprised at the hostility towards himself. He had always believed himself popular and several of the hostile faces he could see as he struggled with his foully cursing prisoner belonged to men with whom only recently he had had most friendly conversations about labour conditions. But apparently they hated him! He thought inevitably of Christ and the Jewish populace.

    His tattered suit, under the strain of this violent encounter, was showing signs of disintegrating. Several patches had been torn off by Cox and he could hear a man derisively shouting: “Hi, sir, ye ’comin’ onstuck! Why don’t ee get t’misses to sew ee together!” But voices on all sides gave him very little comfort—the great tattered bleeding clergyman, hugging and heaving this way and that the little farmer, who was spitting insults up into his face like a little geyser of wrath, was not the sort of man to appeal to Hodge. He heard them cry: “Let him go! You coward, stand up to him!” “Trip him up, Jack! Kick him, Jack, he’ll drop yer then!” “Murder! Parson’s murdering Jack Cox!” There were no counter-cries to these. All were against him.

    Then Bill Crockett, the village “red”, arrived on the scene. Rymer could hear him coming and his heart sank. It only needed Bill Crockett to consummate the scandal. It would become a political issue, that man could be guaranteed to make political capital out of a dogfight. The “red’s” voice could be heard in raucous argument not far away, though there was so much noise he could not hear what he was saying. Rymer for the first time began to despair—this was just what Cox wanted. “Go away, Bill Crockett!” he called. But he had loosened his hold a little in order to expand his chest to shout, and Cox managed to jab him under the rib. Suddenly Crockett was shouting in his ear, “Squeeze the life out of the dirty little exploiter, Mr. Rymer. Teach him to soak the poor!” “Go away, Bill, for Heaven’s sake!” Rymer panted. But Crockett was kicking Cox on the shin-bone in his ideological enthusiasm. There was an indignant roar from Cox’s chorus, and out of the corner of his eye Rymer could see Bill Crockett exchanging blows with one of Cox’s men.

    Rymer became more depressed, confused and obsessed with the dread of the consequences every minute. “This is a bad dream. It cannot be
happening!
” was the semi-comforting idea that helped to sustain him.

    Releasing Jack Cox, and stepping back, he said:

    “Jack, let us put a stop to this disgraceful scene. You see what is going on. It does credit to neither of us. Do be sensible, Jack, and stop striking me. I am a clergyman, you know I cannot strike you back. It is cowardly to attack me.”

    Cox’s little eyes shone with malice as he stood listening and his little fists were tightly clenched. One of his little fists flew up into Rymer’s face. That is how he got his “shiner”. This nearly sent him to the ground; it also made him angry. He sprang at his enemy before the little fists could be used again and this time pinned him to the wall of the inn—holding him as before in his arms but up against the brick wall. That way it was less hard work, the wall assisting. Not of course that Cox remained just a bundle in his arms; he kicked, jerked this way and that, and stamped on Rymer’s toes. Nor, of course, did the people round them give him any peace and they might suddenly intervene in favour of their boss. Bleeding, perspiring, panting, he rode his little nightmare in a chaos of shouts, oaths, kicks, and chatter. The shrill voices of women pierced the murky fever of his mind. Mrs. Rossiter’s voice was the nearest and shrillest. His left eye was closing up now, so what happened to the right of him (the brick wall being in front) was less in his field of vision and less distinct.