The Caxley Chronicles (36 page)

The first Caxley visitors to the flat were his Uncle Bertie and Aunt Kathy, on their way to meet friends in London.

'You look so happy!' exclaimed his aunt, kissing him. She stood back and surveyed him with her sparkling dark eyes. 'And so smart!' she added.

'My demob suit,' said Edward, with a grimace. 'And tie, too.'

'Well, at least the tie's wearable,' observed Bertie. 'At the end of my war, I was offered the choice of a hideous tie or "a very nice neckerchief." How d'you like that?'

Edward pressed them for all the Caxley news. Bertie noticed that he was eager for every detail of the family. How soon, he wondered, before he would return? Certainly, he had visited Rose Lodge on several occasions, and his present home was conveniently near Western Avenue for him to make his way to Caxley within a short time. At the moment, however, it looked as though Edward was comfortably settled. His decree nisi was already through; before the end of the year he should be free, but as things were, it seemed pretty plain that his nephew was happy to return to a bachelor's existence.

The greatest piece of news they had to offer was that Joan was expecting a child in the late summer, and that Michael, now demobilised, had decided to learn more about the catering trade by working for a time in Howard's Restaurant. Sep had
suggested this move, and although Michael realised that there might be difficulties, he was glad to accept the work as a temporary measure, until the baby arrived.

'And how has Robert taken it?' asked Edward, after expressing his delight at the prospect of becoming an uncle.

'Fairly quietly, so far. I don't think it would be very satisfactory permanently though. His temper is getting more and more unpredictable. Two waitresses have left in the last month. It's my belief he's ill, but he flatly refuses to sec the doctor.'

'He's a queer customer,' agreed Edward, 'but times are difficult. He must have a devil of a job getting supplies. Food seems to be shorter now than during the war—unless it's because I'm a stranger here and don't get anything tucked away under the counter for me. I'd starve if it weren't for the works' canteen midday, and some of the stuff they dish up there is enough to make you shudder.'

'Father says that people mind most about bread rationing,' said Kathy. "Never had it in our lives before," they say, really shocked, you know. And poor dear, he
will
get all these wretched bits of paper, bread units,
absolutely
right. You know what a stickler he is. I was in the shop the other day helping him. People leave their pages with him and then have a regular order for a cake, using so many each week. It makes an enormous amount of book work for the poor old darling. Sometimes I try to persuade him to give up. He's practically eighty, after all.'

'He Won't,' commented Bertie, 'he'll die in harness, and like it that way. And Robert's more of a liability than a help at the moment. He resents the fact that Sep didn't hand over the business to him outright, when he gave you the house. It's
beginning to become more of an obsession than ever, I'm afraid.'

'He was always dam' awkward about that,' said Edward shortly. 'Good heavens! Surely Grandpa can do as he likes with his own? If there's anything I detest it's this waiting for other men's shoes—like a vulture.'

'Vultures don't wear shoes,' pointed out Kathy, surveying her own neat pair. 'And whatever it is that screws up our poor Robert it makes things downright unpleasant for us all, particularly Father.'

'And Michael and Joan?'

'Michael's such a good-tempered fellow,' said Bertie, 'that he'll stand a lot. And Joan's at the blissfully broody stage just now. I caught her winding wool with Maisie Hunter the other evening with a positively maudlin expression on her face.'

'Maisie Hunter?' echoed Edward. 'I thought she'd got married.'

'Her husband-to-be crashed on landing at Brize Norton, about six weeks before the war ended.'

'I never heard that,' Edward said slowly. 'Poor Maisie.'

Bertie glanced at his watch and rose to go.

'Come along, my dear,' he said, hauling Kathy to her feet. 'We shall meet all the home-going traffic, if we don't look out.'

Edward accompanied them to the gate and waved goodbye as the car rounded the bend in the lane. It was strange, he thought, how little he envied them returning to Caxley. It was another world, and one which held no attraction for him. Much as he loved his family, he was glad that he was free of the tensions and squabbles in which they seemed now involved.

He bent down to pull a few weeds from the garden bed
which bordered the path, musing the while on his change of outlook. He revelled in his present anonymous role. It was wonderful to know that one's neighbours took so little interest in one's affairs. It was refreshing to be able to shut the door and be absolutely unmolested in the flat, to eat alone, to sleep alone, and to be happy or sad as the spirit moved one, without involving other people's feelings. It was purely selfish, of course, he knew that, but it was exactly what he needed.

He straightened his aching back and looked aloft. An aeroplane had taken off from nearby Northolt aerodrome and he felt the old rush of pleasure in its soaring power. And yet, here again, there was a difference. He felt not the slightest desire to fly now. Would the longing ever return? Or would this numb apathy which affected him remain always with him, dulling pleasure and nullifying pain?

It was useless to try to answer these questions. He must be thankful for the interest of the new job, and for this present quietness in which to lick his wounds. Perhaps happiness and warmth, ambition and purpose, would return to him one day. Meanwhile, he must try and believe all the tiresome people who kept reminding him that 'Time was the Great Healer'.

Perhaps, they might, just possibly, be right.

A
S THE
summer advanced, affairs in the market place went from bad to worse. The aftermath of the war—general fatigue—was felt everywhere. Food was not the only thing in short supply. Men returning from active service found it desperately hard to find somewhere to live. Women, longing for new clothes, for colour, for gaiety, still had to give coupons for garments and for material for making them, as well as for all the soft furnishings needed. 'Makes you wonder who won the war!' observed someone bitterly, watching Sep clip out the precious snippets of paper entitling her to three loaves, and the feeling was everywhere.

Sep, hard-pressed with work and smaller than ever in old age, maintained his high standards of service steadily. But he was a worried man. The shop was doing as well as ever, but the returns from the restaurant showed a slight decline as the weeks went by, and Sep knew quite well that Robert was at fault. It was becoming more and more difficult to keep staff. Robert was short with the waitresses in front of customers, and impatient and sarcastic with the kitchen staff. How long, wondered Sep, before Michael, who was working so wonderfully well, found conditions unendurable?

He made up his mind to take Robert aside privately and have a talk with him. The fellow was touchy and might sulk, as he had so often done as a boy, but at the rate he was going on
Howard's Restaurant would soon be in Queer Street. Sep did not relish the task, but he had never shirked his duty in his life, and it was plain that this unpleasant encounter must take place.

He crossed the square from the shop as the Town Hall clock struck eight. The restaurant was closed, the staff had gone and Robert was alone in the kitchen reading
The Caxley Chronicle.
Sep sat down opposite him.

'My boy, I'll come straight to the point. Business is slipping, as you know. Any particular reason?'

'Only that I'm expected to run this place with a set of fools,' muttered Robert, scowling at his clenched hands on the table top.

'I'm worried more about you than the business,' said Sep gently. 'You've been over-doing it. Why not take a holiday? We could manage, you know, for a week, say.'

Robert jumped to his feet, his face flushing.

'And let Michael worm his way in? Is that what you want? It's to be Edward all over again, I can see. What's wrong with me—your own son—that you should slight me all the time?'

'My boy—' began Sep, protesting, but he was overwhelmed by Robert's passionate outburst.

'What chance have I ever had? Edward has the house given him at twenty-one. The house that should have been mine anyway. Do I get given anything? Oh no! I can wait—wait till I'm old and useless, with nothing to call my own.'

His face was dark and congested, the words spluttered from his mouth. To Sep's horror he saw tears welling in his son's eyes and trickling down his cheeks. The pent-up resentment of years was bursting forth and Sep could do nothing to quell the violence.

'I've never had a fair deal from the day I was born. Jim was
a hero because he got himself killed. No one was ever allowed to mention Leslie, though he was the kindest of the lot to me, and I missed him more than any of you. Kath's been the spoilt baby all her life, and I've been general dog's body. Work's all I've ever had, with no time for anything else. The rest of the family have homes and children. I've been too busy for girls. Edward and Bertie and Michael came back from the war jingling with medals. What did I get for sticking here as a slavey? I'm despised, I tell you! Despised! Laughed at—by all Caxley—'

By now he was sobbing with self-pity, beating his palms against his forehead in a childish gesture which wrung his father's heart. Who would have dreamt that such hidden fires had smouldered for so long beneath that timid exterior? And what could be done to comfort him and to give him back pride in himself?

Sep let the storm subside a little before he spoke. His voice was gentle.

'I'm sorry that you should feel this way, my boy. You've let your mind dwell on all sorts of imagined slights. You were always as dear to me and your mother as the other children—more so, perhaps, as the youngest. No one blames you for not going to the war. You were rejected through no fault of your own. Everyone here knows that you've done your part by sticking to your job here.'

Robert's sobbing had ceased, but he scowled across the table mutinously.

'It's a lie! Everyone here hates me. People watch me wherever I go. They talk about me behind my back. I know, I tell you, I know! They say I couldn't get a girl if I tried. They say no one wants me. They say I'm under my dad's thumb—afraid
to stand on my own feet—afraid to answer back! I'm a failure. That's what they say, watching and whispering about me, day in and day out!'

Sep stood up, small, straight and stern.

'Robert, you are over-wrought, and don't know what you are saying. But I won't hear you accusing innocent people of malice. All this is in your own mind. You must see this, surely?'

Robert approached his father. There was a strange light in his glittering eyes. He thrust his face very close to the old man's.

'My mind?' he echoed, 'Are you trying to say I'm out of my mind? I know well enough what people are saying about me. I hear them. But I hear other voices too
—private
voices that tell me I'm right, that the whisperers in Caxley will be confounded, and that the time will come when they have to give in and admit that Robert Howard was right all the time. They'll see me one day, the owner of this business here, the owner of the shop, the biggest man in the market square, the head of the Howard family!'

His voice had risen with excitement, his eyes were wild. From weeping self-pity he had swung in the space of minutes to a state of manic euphoria. He began to pace the floor, head up, nostrils flaring, as he gulped for breath.

'You'll be gone by then,' he cried triumphantly, 'and I'll see that Edward goes too. There will be one Howard only in charge. Just one. One to give orders. One to be the boss!'

'Robert!' thundered Sep, in the voice which he had used but rarely in his life. There was no response. Robert was in another world, oblivious of his father and his surroundings.

'They'll see,' he continued, pacing even more swiftly. 'My
time will come. My voices know. They tell me the truth." The persecutors shall become the persecuted!" That's what my voices tell me.'

Sep walked round the table and confronted his son. He took hold of his elbows and looked steadily into that distorted face a little above his own.

'Robert,' he said clearly, as though to a distraught child. 'We are going home now, and you are going to bed.'

The young man's gaze began to soften. His eyes turned slowly towards his father's. He looked as though he were returning from a long, strange journey.

'Very well, father,' he said. The voice was exhausted, but held a certain odd pride, as though remnants of glimpsed grandeur still clung to him.

He watched his father lock up. Sep, white-faced and silent, walked beside his son across the market square, watching him anxiously.

Robert, head high, looked to left and right as he strode proudly over the cobbles. He might have been a king acknowledging the homage of his people, except that, to Sep's relief, the square was empty. When they reached their door Robert entered first, as of right, and swept regally up the stairs to his room, without a word.

When faithful old Miss Taggerty brought in Sep's bed-time milk, she found her master sitting pale and motionless.

'You don't look yourself, sir,' she said with concern. 'Shall I bring you anything? An aspirin, perhaps?'

'I'm all right. Just a little tired.'

'Shall I fetch Mr Robert?'

'No, no! Don't worry about me. I'm off to bed immediately.'

They wished each other goodnight. Sep watched the door close quietly behind the good-hearted creature, and resumed his ponderings.

What was to be done? Tonight had made plain something which he had long suspected. Robert's mind was giving way under inner torment. He was obsessed with a wrongful sense of grievance against himself, and worse still, a gnawing jealousy, aimed chiefly against Edward. These two evils had become his masters. These were 'the voices' which he claimed to hear, and which were driving him beyond the brink of sanity.