The Quick and the Dead (5 page)

The Wiccombes, and the remoter Jack-mans, by no means complete the tale of our neighbours at that time. At the corner there was Thomas Tallent the dairyman, with his wife and his daughter Lily. Lily was a couple of years older than I—a rather prim and silent girl, with a walk as stiff as starch. There was Arthur Vay, who lived with his father at the bottom of Bunnard's Hill and whose mother was mysteriously ill and elsewhere. I saw Vay then, and I see him more clearly now, as an unhappy child driven to seek relief from his unhappiness in a dramatization of himself. I surmise that his curious position was exquisitely painful to him socially. In effect he was a boy whose mother was neither alive nor dead. In this he was conspicuously unlike other boys of his acquaintance, and he felt himself, I suspect, to be a kind of outcast. This made him rather defiant in manner, rather proud, and disposed to make much of his mystery. I remember an evening when four of us—Bertie, Jackman, Arthur Vay himself, and I—hung about his garden gate talking spasmodically,
in the way boys have, and obstinately refusing to remember that our elders had expected us home ten minutes ago. Dusk had fallen, and stillness, and our small clear voices sounded unnaturally loud. It was like talking in an empty church, or churchyard. ‘We've had to have the doctor to my mother,' said Bertie Wiccombe importantly. Arthur Vay leaned on his gate and faced us with an expression of precocious gloom. He smiled, faintly superior; and we, standing in the road, waited for him to speak. He had the actor's trick of inviting attention to himself by a casual gesture.
‘My
mother,' he said, almost jauntily, ‘has been ill for a whole year.' Was she getting better, we asked. ‘Oh, getting better?' echoed Arthur Vay, affecting casualness. ‘I never know about that. She may die any day.' We stared at him agape, enjoying the fearful thought. ‘Yes,' he added coolly, ‘she may be dead at this very moment, for all I know.' And Bertie Wiccombe, the simpleton, after a shocked silence, asked him: ‘And don't you
care?'
Vay's manner changed; his face closed stubbornly against us. ‘What d'you want to know for?' he retorted. Then he said he must go in, and we others drifted away to our respective homes.

And now, as memories come crowding upon
me, I am tempted to introduce Mr and Mrs Latti, an amiable elderly couple, short of stature and with brown blunt faces, who lived within a stone's throw of us Calamys, and whose weekly excursions to the synagogue gave me much matter for conjecture. Uncle Claybrook, too, clamours for attention; and Aunt Mary Westrup; and the Reverend John Peacock; in short, all the figures that come to mind when I recall my visits to Lutterthorpe, in Mershire, where lived so many of my mother's relations. Those holidays in the country were blissful and intoxicating indeed. The excitement of setting forth; the panorama of the long train journey; the enchanting little stations of Mershire with their bright white fences, their vistas of green field and flowering hedge, their slow-speaking population of porters and station officials so different from the more-than-half-cockneyfied rural folk of Broad Green; the being met by Aunt Claybrook in a pony-cart, and the five-mile drive—
clip-clop clap-clop
—through winding undulating lanes whose very smell, to a child's sense, was ‘different' and lovely and a promise of immortal joy: these are things I can never hope to experience again, unless, in some heaven beyond my expectation, I should be reborn and become as the child I then was. Nor
can I remember that the anticipation engendered in me by those preliminaries ever failed of realization. At Foxcombes, my Uncle Claybrook's farm, I was petted and made much of by everybody, including—as it seemed to my radiant fancy—the very cows and horses, the pigs and geese, the rats skulking in the granary and the rabbits I joyously halloo'd to in the fields. Everything seemed to have been made for my delight: I could not have wished it different in a single particular. So it seems at this distance. I was very small then, and all my later experiences of Lutterthorpe were coloured by those early visits. Because I was four or five when first I was taken to the place, I always saw it afterwards through four- or five-year-old eyes—as perhaps I do still. One of the most curious and agreeable of the endowments we share with Brother Horse and Brother Dog is the capacity for experiencing what the Behaviourists, heaven bless them, call Conditioned Reflex. The dog who salivates at the sound of the dinner-bell is so far a lucky dog, even though he is defrauded in the sequel; and I, in whom the sight or sound or thought of the name Lutterthorpe induces the shadowy renewal of an ancient rapture, enjoy my good fortune none the less for being sternly admonished that the
process is mechanical from beginning to end, Consciousness being an illusion, and Mind an unnecessary and naughty hypothesis. It is a pretty good machine that can produce so enjoyable an illusion of an illusion; I am content to make the best of it.

But Lutterthorpe and its associated reflexes must wait their turn. For we have not yet finished with the Reverend Benjamin Fleer.

After that conversation with Calamy in which he, the pastor, had come off second best, Mr Fleer left us alone for some weeks. But his heart was not idle, nor his fancy quiet. Late one summer's evening my mother came running home in a state of great agitation, and taking me as well as Calamy into her confidence told us that she had encountered Mr Fleer at the foot of the downs and that he had frightened her by his strangeness. He had begun with prayer and ended with denunciation, and my mother hardly knew which of the two was the more distasteful to her. In the middle of her story she became suddenly conscious of my perplexed and perhaps frightened gaze, and broke off. Calamy, saying nothing at all, put an arm round her; she hid her face against his shoulder, and with a pang sharper than anything I could remember having experienced before—sharp, subtle, maddening—I saw that she was shaking with unshed tears. I had never seen her so distressed before; the sight shocked me, and for a moment I was filled to the brim with lust for
murder. If only I could have got at Mr Fleer with a hatchet! It was odd to be thinking such thoughts of a man I had been taught to hold in conventional respect, a man at whose feet we as a family sat every Sunday morning of our lives. But indeed I had never had any liking for him, and I could not help knowing that Calamy hadn't either. Now, seeing how he had hurt this child my mother, I believed of him the worst that my uninstructed imagination could conjure up. And, with all due allowances made, I fancy I was not far wrong. There is little doubt that the chance meeting with my mother, following on a week or more of angry brooding on her supposed misdemeanours, had wrought up Mr Fleer to a pitch of very ugly excitement. I conjecture that this ‘sinner', this ‘scarlet woman', had haunted his imagination for many days and nights. And here she was, in the dusk of a summer's evening, alone and at his mercy—so, I think, ran the man's excited thoughts. Alone in the dusk; and he, as God's minister at Broad Green, must plead with her and punish her and lash her to repentance. In his sick fancy he saw her moved by his eloquence to the delicious anguish of tears, took her quivering young body into his arms, and comforted her with his forgiveness—and God's. His blood
boiled at the thought; his eyes narrowed and glittered. But my mother did not weep. She listened to him in bewildered silence; and when at last he stretched out a hand to touch her she turned and ran home to her husband and her son. And here she was, weeping soundlessly on Calamy's shoulder.

I was embarrassed. My devotion was inexpressible. I could do nothing but stand stiffly at her elbow and say: ‘Never mind, mum. Doesn't matter what that old swine says.' At that she lifted her head and threw me a loving glance. A smile, wan and fugitive as of a child half comforted, flickered over her tearful face; and she stood between us, Calamy and me, giving a hand to each.

‘Am I really such a wicked mother, Claud?' she asked me.

The moment was too intimate for shyness, and I answered from the heart, with boyish solemnity: ‘I'd have walked to the end of the world to find a mother like you.'

Calamy cried: ‘Bravo, my boy! We're lucky fellows, you and I, aren't we?'

She embraced us both, with laughter and tears. And we were all unashamedly happy in the love that united us. ‘But I wonder,' she said presently, with a perplexed frown, ‘I wonder what it is he wants of me, that Mr
Fleer? What must I say or do to satisfy him?'

This set me thinking that the man must have threatened her; and vaguely, child though I was, I surmised that some form or hint of blackmail had been used. My mind began revolving dark schemes of revenge. I would break his windows. I would throw stones at him in the street. And … and … ‘Anyhow,' I remarked, ‘we won't go to his beastly chapel any more, will we?'

My mother tossed her pretty head. ‘Certainly we will. I'm not afraid of the old wretch. And he needn't think it.'

Already she had recovered her poise. She was a naturally joyous person—that was the simple secret of her charm—always quick to throw off a sad humour. Nor was she capable of nursing ill-will. In our later conversations that week she always spoke of the ‘old wretch' with humorous indulgence. He was a joke, a scarecrow, not to be taken seriously. These days, indeed, were some of the happiest we three had ever known together; the house was full of laughter. Between my mother and Calamy there was now, quite evidently, a perfect understanding. Life had never run anything but smoothly in our household: kindness among us there had always been. But now there was a deeper contentment.
Different as they were—she restless and impulsive, an eager spender of herself: he a visionary, living mostly with his books and his thoughts—they had need of each other and were aware of it.

So, for those few days we were very happy. Nevertheless I was visited by a faint premonition of danger as we set out for chapel next Sunday morning. I thought it odd that our neighbours Mrs Tallent and Lily, emerging from their door just as we were passing, should at sight of us plunge back into the house. I was puzzled by the awkwardness, the not unfriendly embarrassment of Mr Wiccombe, whom we overtook within a few yards of the chapel. And I could not be blind to the fact that, when we entered the sacred edifice, the eyes that peered round at us shone with a more than ordinary inquisitiveness, and, feigning to have seen nothing, were turned away in a haste due to some other sentiment than reverence for the House of God. Calamy, innocently noticing none of these portents, went to his seat in the choir, which was accommodated on six benches placed in front of the congregation and at right angles to the pews; three rows of women facing three rows of tenors and basses. Mother and I, with her arm in mine (and this, too, was unusual and significant)
took our accustomed places and bobbed forward in prayer, this being the established ritual in our chapel. I was beginning to be both angry and afraid, and was perhaps never more in need of praying than at that moment. But my mind was whirling, passionate, and my notion of God more nebulous and less encouraging than ever. I remained head in hand for the statutory twenty seconds, and then sat up defiantly and looked about me. Mr Fleer came out of his vestry and mounted the two steps to the platform from which the service was conducted. In the middle of this platform stood what we called, in courtesy, the pulpit —a small deal table upon which was set a wooden lectern. Here Mr Fleer took his seat, leaned forward with his face reverently covered, and (it is to be presumed) asked the blessing of his Deity upon this day's enterprise. He remained lost in prayer for several minutes—an edifying performance for us all. Then, rising, he faced his flock. I saw his eye searching among us and resting with a flicker (or was that fancy?) upon my mother's face. He moistened his lips and in a bland caressing voice announced that we would now commence the worship of Gard by singing together hymn number two hundred and forty-one, the two hundred and forty-first hymn. There was a
snuffling sound as of bellows as the sallow Miss Briggs, who presided at the harmonium, got to work with her feet; the tune came oozing into the air; and we all rose to sing. I do not pretend to recall the words of the hymn, but it was probably one of those pieces of perverted eroticism in which our hymnal was so rich, full of pieto-sadistic gloating about Jesu's Blood and Blessed Agony. But I remember well enough that the First Lesson, which immediately followed, was taken from the seventh chapter of Proverbs; I remember how Mr Fleer contrived to invest that noble prose with an almost leering particularity; and I am unlikely to forget (it reappeared for me in a dozen childish nightmares) the lascivious unction of the man's tones, the flash of darkness in his little eyes, when he came to the heart of his matter:
I discerned among the youths a young man void of understanding, passing through the street near her corner; and he went the way to her house, in the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night: And behold there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtil of heart. She is loud and stubborn: her feet abide not in her house: now is she without, now in the streets, and lieth in wait at every corner. So she caught him and kissed him, and with an
impudent face said unto him
… The voice went slow and smooth. My mother's hand stole into mine. I glanced at her anxiously, but without full understanding. As the reading ended, a little shudder passed through her body. She seemed to guess that there was worse to come.

‘Let us pray,'said Mr Fleer, turning his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Almighty Gard, Our Heavenly Father. We thy children here gathered together in worship do humbly beseech Thy blessing upon us this marning. Give us to know and do Thy holy will, O Lard, that all things may be ordered as seemeth good in Thy sight. Thou hast heard, O Lard, the passage from Thy Word which Thy servant has just read to the congregation here assembled at Thy footstool; and Thou knowest that we kneel here to-day with heavy hearts, because of the bold and terrible sin that has been committed by one of our number. Yea, Lard, there is one with us this marning who has fallen into the snare of the fowler, even into deadly and carnal transgression of Thy commandments; and we do humbly beseech Thee of Thy great mercy to visit her with the scourge of Thine anger, that she may repent of her wickedness and be led through the waters of affliction to the foot of Thy dear Son's most Holy Cross.
Purge Thy little flock here in Broad Green, O most merciful Father, of the vile contamination that is come amongst them; give them strength to resist the beguilement of carnal lust; and put it into their hearts that henceforward they shall suffer themselves to hold no manner of communication with this scarlet woman, this daughter of evil, whether by word or look. Likewise would we ask Thee to fortify the hearts of her unhappy husband and her innocent son with a stern and righteous wrath, that they may be moved to deal justly with her and so bring her at last to Thy mercy seat. Comfort in their affliction, O Lard, these two whom she has so cruelly wronged: more especially Thy beloved and faithful servant Robert Calamy …'