Remembrance Day Page 8

  Tebbutt felt an impulse like lust blossom in him. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he announced to the company. ‘When I was in Birmingham, I knew a man by the name of Cracknell Summerfield. A real rough diamond. He made a packet of money at one time or another. I used to go down to this place near London, near Heathrow, where he gave lavish dinners for his clients.

  ‘Cracknell dealt in swimming pools in a big way. Mind, this was before the Obnoxious Eighties. This time I was down at his place, he was negotiating a deal with some Kuwaitis. There were three of them to dinner, very polite in lounge suits. They were going to finance hotels, Cracknell was going to build the pools and do the landscaping. I was going to print all the prospectuses and brochures. There was also a pretty young duchess there.’

  ‘Now comes the sexy bit,’ said Yarker, winking.

  ‘The duchess had a contract to supply all the internal decor of these Kuwaiti hotels. Worth millions. She’d begun the evening very off-hand with everyone, but we’d all had a lot of champagne. She was on Cracknell’s right. His wife was on his other side.’

  Am I to go on with this lie? Tebbutt asked himself, but already he heard his own voice continuing the tale.

  ‘At the end of the meal, Cracknell suddenly turns to the duchess and says, “Show us your quim”, just like that. Instead, she jumps up, pulls off her clothes, every last stitch, and climbs up on the table. There she dances a fandango among the plates, naked as the day she was born, and a sight more attractive.’

  Mutterings all round from the company, until Pauline asked, ‘What did the Kuwaitis do?’

  ‘Oh, they all thought it was a normal part of English home life.’

  ‘You Brummies had a rare old time,’ Yarker said, enviously.

  After closing time, the drinkers staggered into the night air. Langham lay about them, quiet and serious, with the great stone shoulder of the church looming darkly nearby. They stood outside the pub, in no hurry to say goodnight to each other.

  Offering to give Tebbutt a lift home, Yarker flung a heavy arm round his shoulders and propelled him in the direction of his car. He ignored Tebbutt’s protestations that he preferred to walk. As soon as her husband’s back was turned, Pauline Yarker grabbed young Georgie Clenchwarden and planted a big kiss on his lips.

  The drink had given the lad courage. Returning the kiss, he grabbed as much of her as he could. Someone cheered. In the dark, lit only by the light from the pub windows, in the middle of the road, the two danced slowly together. The others made way for them, muttering encouragingly. ‘Git in there, Georgie boy, it’s yer birthday!’ Slowly they gyrated, while Pauline sang ‘I am Sailing’ into Clenchwarden’s ear.

  Turning at the car, Yarker saw what was happening. A kind of war cry escaped him. He rushed forward. Warned by the roar, Clenchwarden let go of Pauline and started to run in the direction of Blakeney, yelling for help as he did so. Burton, the ferret man, with a wit quicker than anyone would have attributed to him, started up his stinking motorbike and ran it between Yarker and his quarry. A swearing match started. The landlady appeared and begged them to be quiet. Tebbutt took the opportunity to escape.

  He marched home in a cheerful frame of mind. Though darkness had fallen, the ambience of a summer’s sunset lingered, with a legacy of honeysuckle fragrance. Bats wheeled about the church where, in a few hours, a congregation would be gathering. A harmony of slight noises rose everywhere, from farm and field, comprising the orchestral silence of a Norfolk night. By the entrance to a lane, he halted to urinate under a tree, listening to a leaf fall within the circumference of the branches. He plucked another leaf, pricking himself in so doing. Holding it woozily before his eyes, he made out its sharp outline, with a green heart rimmed by yellow; without being able to determine the colours, he could distinguish their difference. It was a leaf of variegated holly.

  ‘That’s right, that’s the ticket,’ he said aloud, ponderously. ‘That’s life right enough. Variegated. Very variegated.’

  He was impressed by his own wit, and sober enough to stand for a minute listening to the night about him. Even at this distance from the coast, the presence of the sea could be felt, calming, chastening.

  That story of the dancing duchess, he reflected, had been an invention to make his past life seem more exciting than it was – to others, but to himself above all. The truth was, Parchment had always been a slog. His uncle had seen to it he was underpaid. He knew Cracknell Summerfield, but no dancing duchesses. Well, you had to make what you could of the moment, and no harm had been done.

  Truth was, he rather despised the company in the Bluebell, and despised himself for going there so regularly.

  When you think about it, they’re always running down women. What’s the matter with them? Is that just an English thing? Or maybe none of them have had my luck in finding a Ruby in their lives.

  It’s impossible to see how things will get better for us. I’m not likely to find a better job. Not at my age.

  But at least I’ve got Ruby …

  I suppose some would say I’ve made a mess of my life, seeing the family business go bankrupt; the economic climate was mainly to blame for that, but I realize I shouldn’t have trusted the word of a liar and a crook. There were danger signs. I ignored them. I was dazzled by all his money …

  Perhaps I’m attracted to liars. I hated being told always to tell the truth when I was a kid because I could see even then how adults were terrible liars and dissemblers.

  Still, you can’t say life’s a complete cock-up, he told himself complacently as he slouched down the country road, listening to the echo of his own steps. I had the savvy to marry Ruby.

  Shows I know what’s what. First time I set eyes on her. That day she came into the works I was in a bad temper – can’t remember what about now. She brought those samples over from Dickinson’s. I hardly glanced at her and made some crappy remark about the colours. And she answered me so nicely, not at all put out.

  So then I looked up. There she was. Neat and bright and slender. So slender, and with a playful air I still catch in her sometimes. You couldn’t really say it was love at first sight, but certainly I took a shine to her there and then. Escorted her to the door, in fact. She was wearing sandals. Watched her going down Bridge Street, thought – oh, what a real darling of a girl she was. I remember it so well, standing at that door. It had been raining; the pavements shone.

  Those first impressions have never left me, never have. I was going with Peggy Barnes at the time – let’s see, of course that was the year I traded in my old Triumph for my first car – but I slung her up. In a rather rotten way, sad to tell. Unfeeling sod, I was. It was Ruby awoke tender feelings in me. Maybe the blokes at the Bluebell never had anything like that.

  By ringing Ruby’s firm, I got her name. Ruby Silcock. She was engaged to a chap in the tax office, what was his name?, but she agreed to have a milk shake with me in the lunch hour.

  Time I’d got to the bottom of that glass, I knew I was mad about her – I didn’t tell her so, of course. Not then. Didn’t want to scare her.

  He peered back into the past, recalling how he’d been late back to work that afternoon, so that his uncle had grumbled.

  Then we were meeting again. Then she let me take her to the Saturday hop. Oh, to feel that body against mine, to look into her eyes, to move with her!

  There was always something restrained about Ruby. Withdrawn, do I mean? Not sexually, mentally. Still is. Not a chatterbox, a blabberer, not like Peggy Barnes, thank God. A girl who can keep a confidence.

  Nearly home. You did well then, matey. Not such a ditherer in that instance.

  I walked on a sea of thistledown when I found she had a little warmth for me. Happy in a hundred ways. My mind and heart were full of her like being crammed with flowers. Oh, yes, Ruby, darling … how you haunted me, possessed me!

  She rang me one day – we’d known each other about three weeks – to say she’d broken off her engagement. Alex was his name. S
he never told me then how she did it or what happened. It was just off.

  Oh, the passion of those days! Me, whose idea of foreplay was to drag my pants down – I was a fast learner. You could never feel that way twice in a lifetime, could you? I sometimes think it’s all gone, then back it comes. We lived in a dream, didn’t know ourselves.

  Amazing how it’s lasted. Oh, when I saw her naked … I could have eaten scrambled egg out of her darling armpits.

  Well. Ruby, love, pissed though I am, I have to say you make my life worth while. You’re my religion. The Bible.

  It wasn’t all lovey-dovey. Christ, was I a fool! When I first met her younger sister, Joyce, I kidded myself I fancied her more. Some kind of madness, just because she was the snappy dresser. Silly bugger. Ruby caught me kissing her. What a row we had! She gave me such a clout! Naturally I was all bull and rubbish, all the time thinking I’d shat on my chips as far as she was concerned. Women know how to stage-manage these things.

  That’s long enough ago. We soon made it up. Then when Jenny was coming along, we decided we’d better get married. Just as well. Without a contract, she’d have left me, the way Cracknell Summerfield’s wife left him …

  What’m I saying? ’S balls. She’d never do anything like that. Too loyal – it’s part of not being a blabbermouth. She’s a good ’un, is Ruby, a real good ’un. Better missus than any of that lot have got. I don’t think I could face life without her.

  I wonder how long it is since we went to a dance? ‘Softly, Softly, Come to Me’ – that was our tune.

  He attempted to sing the song aloud, but had forgotten the words, could only remember ‘… and open up my heart.’

  An owl called as he passed Field Dalling church. He recognized its cry as that of a barn owl. Tebbutt reeled slightly from side to side as he walked. There was no traffic on the road, apart from a cyclist without lights, who shouted a goodnight as he passed. The cyclist too was unsteady.

  Tebbutt turned off Clamp Lane and in at his own gate. He tapped on the living-room window, the curtains of which were drawn, and sang ‘Come into the garden, Maud’, before letting himself in at the front door. The door was unlocked, awaiting his return.

  The cosiness of the living-room registered on him as he marched in. It was lit by a lamp on the side table where the Radio Times lay. The electric fire, with one bar blazing, set a tongue of crimson on all the shiny surfaces of the room, on Ruby’s jugs, on the glazing of various framed pictures, and on the doors of the bookcase which housed their green-bound John Galsworthy novels and copies of the National Geographic. In front of the fire the cat lazed.

  Ruby sprawled in the bigger of their two armchairs in her nightdress and dressing-gown. Beside her was her mending. She had been patching one of her husband’s shirts. The work-basket which stood open had been her mother’s until Agnes could use it no more. The delicate sewing scissors, with their Sheffield mark, probably dated from the turn of the century. Work done or abandoned, she was watching a movie on TV. A car was driving in pursuit of another car in a North American city with plenty of narrow side-alleys. Luckily, no pedestrians were involved.

  ‘We’ve seen this one before,’ Ruby said, switching off and removing her glasses. ‘So I believe.’ Setting the cat down on the hearthrug, she rose and surveyed her husband for damage, smiling, shaking her head, and making slight clucking noises like a hen.

  Tebbutt sat down heavily and pulled his boots off. ‘Usual crowd,’ he said. ‘That little bugger Clenchwarden was snogging with Pauline.’

  ‘You drunken lot of country bums …’

  ‘Bumpkins,’ he said, ‘variegated bumpkins,’ as his wife went through into the kitchen to boil a kettle for him. Bolivar followed her out, hoping for a last snack.

  ‘Tom Squire was on the telly news earlier,’ Ruby called from the kitchen.

  ‘He’s always on telly.’ Ray was feeling distinctly dozy, and had no inclination to talk.

  ‘He looked very nice, I thought.’

  He stirred himself, asking between yawns, ‘What was he on about, then?’

  From the kitchen came the chink of a spoon in a mug as Ruby replied. ‘It was something about paintings and computers, I don’t know. Oh yes, something he’d been up to in Russia, in the Soviet Union. I didn’t quite understand. Someone or other is threatening to shoot him. I wasn’t listening.’

  ‘It’s about his fruit. Everyone’s fed up …’ He had some difficulty in getting the words out.

  He heard her laugh. ‘You want to lay off the booze, old duck.’ She began to talk to the cat in a manner at once scolding and caressing; it was her nightly address to her pet. ‘Fruit … fruit … What’s he on about, then, Bolivar? You don’t know, do you? No more do I.’

  Ray drank with gratitude the tea she brought him, grasping the mug in both his calloused hands. They shut Bolivar downstairs and proceeded up the creaking stair to bed. Ruby went ahead, carrying her slippers. He reached up and grasped her bottom.

  On the landing, they could hear Agnes’s soft snores emerging from her poky bedroom at the rear of the house. The hesitant noise filtered through her door, ajar as always.

  Once in their own bedroom, Ray and Ruby threw off their clothes and climbed naked into bed. Ray began feeling his wife at once. He never ceased to relish the way in which she lay with her legs wide during their love-making, as if doing the splits. On occasions, she made a little humming noise at the back of her throat, when it was particularly pleasant for her.

  ‘You’re so smashed you can’t get it up, my honey lamb,’ she whispered teasingly.

  But he could.

  Tebbutt sat at the counter in the kitchen next morning, sipping coffee while Ruby was in the garden tending the goat. Only then, thinking vaguely over the night before, did he recall the suicide of Billy Lamb.

  When Ruby reappeared and he started to tell her the news, she said she knew about it; Bridget had phoned her. Ruby then repeated word for word what she had heard of the matter.

  When she got to the end of the story, Ray said, ‘It wasn’t quite like that. The way I heard it, Lamb hanged himself in the packing shed at Pippet Hall.’

  ‘That’s not what I was told. Bridget has a customer lives in Hartisham. She heard he hung himself with his clothesline in his own home, in the garden, from the branch of an apple tree. No, perhaps it was a pear.’

  ‘We can probably get the details from the paper tomorrow. Pity we can’t ask Mike – he works at Pippet Hall, after all.’

  She started to clear the breakfast things. ‘It’s nothing to do with us, fortunately. It was rotten for him, though, poor chap. He was in his forties – not much chance of another job.’

  ‘I thought he was in his twenties.’

  ‘You’d better get properly dressed, my lad. There’s a lot to do with Jenny coming this afternoon, and I must finish the ironing before they arrive, her and her Czech.’

  I can just imagine the flap Mother’s in. Of course she always gets excited when I’m about to show up – no wonder I don’t show up very often. And turning up with a foreign chap … It’s bound to be embarrassing.

  All I hope is that Father won’t start to argue with Jarry. There’s a bizarre streak in my father. I don’t understand it. Funny, he always says he doesn’t understand me. When I think back to when I was a teenager, I really hated him. Really really hated him. Anything I liked, he was against it. Music, hairdos, boyfriends, clothes – every one of them, he had to sound off about. And of course the money … Old miser. What a pain. What a bummer. Did he have to make me feel so bad? Bad enough as it was, stuck in that miserable dump with old gran going on about this and that, eating in that disgusting way of hers.

  They seem happy enough there, I’ll say that for them. Jennifer, you must swear you’ll be cheerful and nice, even to bloody old gran.

  Running off. Of course it was a shock for them. I suppose I was a bit thoughtless. I wanted to get back at them.

  I never planned to leave home like that,
as I remember … It was when I went over to Norwich on that chap’s bike. Derek? We got involved with the CND march. He didn’t want to know. He supported Norwich City. I stopped to listen, can’t think why. That woman who spoke, Joan Ruddock. It was as if for the first time a real live thought about something other than myself entered my head.

  That was it. Suddenly, I saw I could live outside myself, live for something else other than a new pair of shoes. All right, a cause. The sort of thing they laugh about in the office, just as I do nowadays.

  But – why, it was a burning issue! A conversion, almost religious. One moment I was just a selfish bitchy little teenager, the next moment I was a crusader with a blazing desire to get rid of nuclear weapons, defying the mad male world. Although it seems silly to me now I’m older, I still miss something – that pure sense of conviction, I suppose. Nothing else mattered, only that. All the issues were clear. Funny how you change.

  I went and joined the women picketing the Lakenheath base.

  The excitement of it! I can see why blokes want to go to war. It’s a way of booting up your life. There was this bloody great airforce base, loaded with Cruise missiles, right in the middle of peaceful old Norfolk, enough of them to blow the world to bits. And there we were, almost a hundred women at one time, camping among the pines and bracken. Oh, how wonderful the camp looked and smelt and felt. Just women. Very funny that. Just women. I wouldn’t like it now, but of course I was a virgin then, practically.

  Of course I’d always heard how Grandad and Grandma Tebbutt had been killed by bombs, but that was just a piece of the family’s lousy luck, like Dad’s printers going bust. It didn’t touch me. I mean, it wasn’t the reason why I got the hots for nuclear disarmament. Nor had I ever bothered my head about nuclear war – too ig. for that, Jenny girl. It was the older women worried themselves sick about that kind of thing.

  Many of them had deserted their husbands. Some left families behind, just up and quit. They were really nice to me, perhaps because I ran about doing what I was told. They didn’t see it all as fun like I did. They used to try and organize themselves like men, like soldiers, keeping sentry duty and all that. It was just fun for me. Like nipping off somewhere and shitting in the bracken.