The Big Day Page 6

  ‘Good God,’ Beazely said. ‘Who wrote that?’

  ‘Chap called Said.’

  ‘He’s the one who’s been propositioning Miss Tynsely’s girls.’

  ‘He’s got a very flowing style,’ Mafferty said.

  ‘Now just a minute,’ Binks said. ‘Is language a means of communication or is it not? You used the word “dictatorship”.’

  ‘I did indeed,’ Beazely said. ‘Advisedly so.’

  ‘Now hang on a minute,’ Binks said, ‘let us get our terms right. If language is a means of communication, let us get our terms right.’

  Mafferty ceased listening, knowing the discussion would lead eventually to Bink’s utter confusion. Beazely was unbeatable in argument, being a past master at putting out verbal smoke screens, behind which he retreated, when pressed, to some narrow, unassailable ledge of logic.

  The procession of a marriage is very lovely, as well as the procession of divorce if a man should digest it not to be a divorce but a visit or relaxation.

  Looking up bemused from this, Mafferty saw Bishop entering with a file under his arm. ‘Have you finished your coffee?’ he said to Mafferty. ‘You have? jolly good. Could I have a word with you in my office?’

  ‘By all means,’ Mafferty said. Bishop of course would be wanting to prepare him for his interview with the Principal. He put the pages of the essay together, folded them, and put them into his jacket pocket. Then he rose and followed Bishop along the corridor to his office.

  This was much smaller than Cuthbertson’s and done out in cream and pale blue, a combination that always seemed incongruously dainty to Mafferty. Bishop himself, fidgety, jovial, given to sudden loud laughter, seemed to fill the room and palpitate as it were to the very walls, so that anyone else there felt curiously redundant.

  ‘Take a pew, old man,’ Bishop said. He himself went rapidly round behind the desk and opened one of the drawers. There was a short silence, during which Mafferty observed that there were now several water-colour paintings on the wall behind his desk, people doing things on the banks of canals, or sitting in haycarts. He was trying, in a slow, mesmerised way, to picture Bishop going through the business of acquiring them, when the Senior Tutor said, ‘I thought it might help if we put our heads together and had a bit of a chat.’

  ‘By all means,’ Mafferty said, summoning his goodwill smile.

  ‘I thought it might clear the air.’

  Chats with you, Mafferty thought unkindly, tend to have the opposite effect, or such at least has been my experience in the past. They tend to cloud and … what was the word?

  ‘I don’t believe in beating about the bush,’ Bishop said. ’I like to get things out in the open, out in the light of day.’

  Obfuscate.

  Bishop picked up a pipe from the desk and put it into his mouth. ‘I like to get things clear,’ he said, speaking rather indistinctly.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I said I like to get things clear. The Principal is rather worried about you, Michael.’

  ‘Worried, is he?’ Mafferty stopped smiling and frowned to indicate concern.

  ‘I’m speaking off the cuff, of course.’ Bishop looked seriously at Mafferty as if he very much wanted this point to go home. ‘The Principal and I have not cooked up anything over this. We have thought our way through to it separately.’

  Mafferty nodded without speaking and after a moment or two Bishop went on, ‘He has been under a great deal of stress lately, you know. Perhaps you don’t know him as well as I do, but I can see it in his face, in the way he … in a score of small ways.’

  For the umpteenth time Mafferty wondered whether Bishop had a penchant for Cuthbertson, whether it was some kind of ghastly, emotional involvement that kept him so devoted to the Principal’s interests. Bishop was a man who might harbour all manner of lusts and leanings, preserved intact from schooldays in the murk and confusion of his being as in some chemical fluid … Dedicated himself to the principle of self-interest, Mafferty found it very difficult to understand any form of altruism, and so he sought, very naturally, by a process of belittlement to bring it within his range. His general method was the attribution of unworthy motives, or stupidity, to any person he had dealings with. Knave or fool was the only decision he had to make about them. He was pretty sure which it was in Bishop’s case, but thought he might be kinky too.

  ‘He doesn’t want to seem remote and… er…’ Bishop paused, seeking the mot juste.

  ‘Inaccessible?’ Mafferty suggested.

  ‘Inaccessible, precisely. He wants to be one of us. One of the team. It is an Arthurian idea, basically.’

  ‘Arthurian?’ Mafferty said, with a sudden desire to be obstructive. ‘I don’t believe I’ve heard of that.’ Bishop’s moralizing, and that deep-throated, socially irreproachable accent of his, always aroused his hostility in the end.

  ‘Arthurian, did you say?’ he said, simulating honest puzzlement.

  ‘You know, the Knights of the Round Table, the King sitting with them … Ex pluribus unus. No, hang on a tick, that’s not it …’

  ‘I don’t believe I’ve heard of that,’ Mafferty said again, pursing his lips and frowning, as if seeking to perceive a meaning. The man didn’t know his arse from his elbow, that was the top and bottom of it. He wouldn’t know what he wanted till it was served up to him on a plate. And how often, Mafferty enquired of himself, clear-sighted and wise, how often are the objects of our desire and deepest yearning dished up that fashion? A man has to go forth into the highways and byways, sniff it out like a hound, follow it up. Bishop had a clogged nose, only the hound’s loyalty left…

  ‘Primus inter pares,’ Bishop said. ‘You know the old tag?’

  ‘No, I don’t know her,’ Mafferty said. ‘Who is it you mean?’

  ‘What?’ Bishop removed his pipe.

  ‘Miss who, did you say?’

  ‘I thought since you are a Cambridge man …’ Bishop said, uncertainly.

  ‘Is she from Cambridge? Do you mean Miss Tynsely? I know her of course.’

  ‘Miss Tynsely?’

  ‘I only say that because I heard you mentioning earlier that you had to interview a student who had been writing love-letters to one of Miss Tynsely’s girls, not that I think that is such a grave misdemeanour – ’

  ‘They were not love-letters in any accepted sense of the term. They contained lewd suggestions. And it wasn’t just one girl, but several.’

  ‘Well, I’ve just been reading an essay of his, and if that is anything to go on they would have had to concentrate hard to detect lewdness, or anything else. I thought, you see, that you thought that she was making too much fuss of the whole thing, and that was why you referred to her in that disrespectful way.’

  ‘I did not refer to her in a disrespectful way.’ Bishop was looking flushed. ‘I did not refer to her at all,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mafferty said. ‘I thought you did. If you’ll forgive me saying so, when you speak with the pipe in your mouth, some of your words are indistinct.’

  ‘Now I am going to be absolutely frank with you,’ Bishop said, removing his pipe. ‘Lateness on the part of the staff cannot be tolerated. And students have complained that you smell of drink.’

  ‘They smell of worse things, some of them,’ Mafferty said. He was indignant.

  ‘I daresay they do, old man,’ Bishop said. ‘Now, if he raises any of these points, just accept them without demur, will you? Because, not to mince matters – and if there’s one thing I dislike more than another it’s a fellow who goes beating about the bush, bring it out in the open, give it an airing, that has always been my practice – ’

  Probably what you do in the park on Sundays, Mafferty thought. Flasher written all over you. ‘It’s a good principle,’ he said. ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Well,’ Bishop said, ‘to be absolutely frank with you, it is your general attitude that is at fault. Now I am not saying that I see it his way entirely, but he’s very shrewd
in his judgements, you know, very shrewd; we’ve got to remember that he built this business up from scratch, the place was falling to pieces, so I’m told, but he saw the possibilities right from the start. Venit, vidit, vicit.’

  ‘Excuse me, I don’t quite – ’

  ‘Like the great Julius, you know.’

  Seeing the expression of puzzlement return to Mafferty’s face, Bishop said hastily, ‘The point is that he has very definite ideas about the way things should be done here, and he needs careful handling, especially today, he’s very tense today, today is Degree Day, as I hardly need to remind you …’

  ‘You mean I should humour him,’ Mafferty said, but realized at once that he had gone too far.

  ‘Now just hold on a tick,’ Bishop said, regarding him with an unusual and rather disturbing directness. ‘I don’t like that kind of remark.’

  Mafferty became disagreeably aware of the primitive bulk of the man behind the desk. If Bishop were ever able to see anything clearly enough to act on it he would be formidable.

  ‘If you don’t show the right attitude,’ Bishop said, ‘you’ll probably get your marching orders on the spot. No one is indispensable, you know.’

  Mafferty kept his sense of outrage well away from his face. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Thank you for telling me. I won’t forget it.’ Won’t forget either of you, he thought. Creeps. Well, my turn is coming. Maybe sooner than you think, old boyo. Maybe sooner than you bloody well think. It depended on Weekes really.

  ‘I regard it as a real favour, you taking me aside in this way,’ he said.

  Bishop was still regarding him rather closely, ‘Praemonitus praemunitus’, he said. ‘There’s a lot of truth in it.’

  At the Royal Albert Hall last night, said Mrs Greenepad’s radio, where five thousand company chiefs were attending the Institute of Director’s annual conference –

  Her room-mate, Mrs Mercer, had slipped down the passage for a word with Mrs Oakley, and Mrs Greenepad had taken vindictive advantage of this to switch on, just catching the ten-thirty news summary.

  The former Coal Board chairman referred to strikes as the ‘Achilles heel’ of our society and attacked …

  I’ll teach her, Mrs Greenepad thought, to contradict her betters about the echelons of the B.B.C. Making up her face and looking at workmen. Putting the margarine out. Fury at the recollection of all this insulting behaviour made Mrs Greenepad grind her dentures. Sitting there on her fanny listening to news items on a radio not her own …

  Two more of the victims of the bomb outrages which took place late yesterday evening have died in hospital, bringing the total of deaths to twenty-five. It is still not clear which terrorist group was responsible.

  In Bangladesh attempts at famine relief are reported to have come too late to save the inhabitants of the worst affected areas. Here is Barrington Smallbeam, our correspondent in Dakkar: What remains of Sabed Ali’s family is still together, squatting on the concrete floor of the gruel kitchen outside Rangpur. He told me their younger daughter died yesterday, and his wife Sultana nodded with no sign of –

  At this moment Mrs Mercer came back into the room, and Mrs Greenepad switched her radio off. However, Mrs Mercer was so eager to impart news she had just heard from Mrs Oakley that she affected not to notice this.

  ‘You know Mrs Wass?’ she said.

  Of course I know Mrs Wass.’

  ‘Well she was standing outside Tesco’s yesterday afternoon when they started selling some baked beans they had just got in, and when the people outside heard about it they all started rushing to get in the queue and Mrs Wass got knocked down in the rush and she broke her hip.’

  ‘Asking me if I know Jenny Wass.’

  ‘She’s in hospital now and Mrs Oakley says she’s on the critical list.’

  ‘I knew her before you ever came here.’

  ‘They was like wild animals, Mrs Oakley says.’

  ‘Well, if people will stand outside stores during a baked beans crisis, they must abide by the consequences.’

  ‘Considering you have known her such a long time,’ Mrs Mercer said, with sudden spirit, ‘you don’t seem – ’

  At this moment there was a knock at the door.

  ‘That will be my visitor,’ Mrs Mercer said. She looked hard at her room-mate, but Mrs Greenepad made neither movement nor sound.

  Lavinia knew that something was wrong, the minute she entered the room. Normally, by a tacit arrangement, when one or the other of the old ladies had a special visitor, the other vacated the room until the visit was over. On this occasion, however, Mrs Greenepad made no move to leave. Indeed, she seemed to settle herself more firmly in the armchair in her half of the room – the room was divided exactly between them, and every inch was accounted for. It was obvious in any case, even without that basilisk immobility, that Mrs Greenepad had decided to include herself in the visit, because she had taken pains with her appearance. Her scanty white hair had been wetted and combed carefully and she had a new-looking, pale-blue woollen jacket on. Her little, red-rimmed eyes surveyed Lavinia with an expression at once derisory and composed.

  ‘Oh, good-morning, Mrs Greenepad,’ Lavinia said brightly. ‘How nice to see you.’

  ‘Good-morning.’ Mrs Greenepad made no effort to respond to the question implicit in these last words.

  ‘How are you this morning, Mrs Mercer?’ Lavinia said, turning her look of determined brightness that way.

  ‘It is kind of you to enquire.’ Mrs Mercer never answered queries as to her health or feelings directly, allowing them to emerge or be distilled from the general tenor of her speech. ‘Very kind of you, as I always say, and I appreciate it, finding time to visit a lonely old woman. No one could call me lacking in appreciation, not like some, that has friends for twenty years and then can’t take no interest when they get trampled on, and their hips broken.’

  ‘Dear me,’ Lavinia said. ‘Who trampled on her?’

  ‘She got caught in a baked beans rush.’

  ‘Dear me,’ Lavinia said again. ‘Look, I’ve brought you some apricots, the first of the year.’ She took a brown paper bag from her shopping basket, and laid it on Mrs Mercer’s little table.

  ‘Forced, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Mrs Greenepad said, spitting inadvertently.

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Mercer said. ‘Thank you, dear, but there are people in this world without the milk of human kindness anywhere about them, not like you.’

  She shifted her large body indignantly in the armchair, and raised mottled hands to her hair, which in spite of more determined efforts than usual she had not succeeded in ordering. This mass of brown hair, from which outsize hairpins were constantly detaching themselves, hanging off or actually falling, had always seemed to Lavinia intimately connected with the old lady’s style of speech, which was a constant struggle to prevent the escape of noises that were not words.

  ‘My son and daughter-in-law came on Saturday,’ Mrs Mercer said, feeling in her hair. She said no more for the moment, merely sat, emitting the tiny, incessant sounds that had lately become characteristic of her. During the past few months she had developed a sort of sucking, savouring habit of the mouth, as if she had some tiny sweet in there, permanently central.

  ‘How are they getting on?’

  ‘Some people come to see you,’ Mrs Mercer said, ‘but more out of a sense of duty. I don’t mean you, dear. They only come once a month.’

  Mrs Greenepad coughed with surprising loudness, and tapped both heels on the floor.

  ‘Dear me,’ Lavinia said. ‘We are in the doldrums today, aren’t we? Your son and daughter-in-law live in Sheffield, remember that, Mrs Mercer. That is a long way from here. It is really very good of them to come and see you so regularly. They have small children, too. I remember you telling me.’

  ‘Three,’ Mrs Greenepad said suddenly, in her dry, snapping voice. ‘And they are so above themselves, you would not credit it.’

  An ominous silence descended on the room. Lavinia looked
for some moments at the hall above Mrs Greenepad’s neat bed. It was decorated with embroideries, the work of Mrs Greenepad herself, who had retrained in old age her nimbleness with the needle. One in particular stood out, a garden crowded with flowers of every hue. Beneath in stitched copperplate, were the words, ‘Let’s gather Flowers, instead of Thorns, the World is what We make it.’

  It was while she was puzzling over the meaning of those words, in particular what was meant by gathering thorns, that Mrs Mercer said, ‘I’ll walk along the passage with you,’ just as if Lavinia had suggested leaving.

  Outside the door, in whispers, the story of the quarrel came out. Some disagreement arising from a news bulletin, Lavinia gathered, though she couldn’t quite make out the details.

  ‘That’s not the real reason,’ Mrs Mercer said. ‘Her nephew that used to come every week has gone to Canada. She had a friend that sometimes came, but she died. She never has visitors now. That is why she’s taken against me. She’d never admit it, though. Now she won’t let me listen to her table radio. When I come in she switches it off.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask for a new room-mate?’

  ‘Put in for a transfer? There’s a waiting list as long as your arm. Every person in this Home wants a transfer. You have to wait months for a change, and inside a week you are not on speaking terms. It isn’t worth it.’

  ‘And she won’t let you listen to her radio at all?’

  ‘She switches it off when I come in. She waits till I’m inside, then switches off.’

  Lavinia had had a charitable impulse, but she said nothing about this to Mrs Mercer. She merely reminded the old lady about her party that evening.

  ‘The taxi will come for you at nine-thirty,’ she said.

  ’I’ll be ready for him,’ Edwina said. She craned her head forward suddenly. ‘Listen,’ she said. The sound of a male voice was coming from the room behind them. ‘She’s got it on again,’ Edwina said, looking intently at Lavinia.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Lavinia said. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’

  She left shortly after this and made her way back along the High Street. Here, in an electrical goods emporium, she inspected several radios, choosing finally a large portable set, which she paid for by cheque and arranged to have delivered to Mrs Mercer at the Home.