Practice no. 3 combined the first two: quick-draw-and-fire in one movement, often accompanied by a half-turn of the body to one flank or the other. Some minutes of this, and of bending and straightening each time the pistol needed a recharge, quickened his breathing and heartbeat and brought him out in a light sweat – but pleasurably, so that he remembered for a moment what it had felt like to begin to warm up in a game of racquets. At last he restored the pistol (filled) to its holster, emptied the remains of the water and started back to the house. He was almost there when the sudden appearance of Adela, returned from the village, sent him diving for cover at a speed he had not tried for years. The pistol was under his coat; the empty bucket could easily be explained, or left unexplained; it was instinct, the spirit of the thing. That morning, he felt, he had done a little more than pass the time.
Twenty-Three
It was just after one p.m. towards the end of the week before Christmas. In the kitchen were Adela, Shorty and George. Adela was opening some plastic packets of a kind of ham that also bore a plastic appearance; she knew it was not very nice, but it was protein, it filled people up, and its price had just been slashed by 1½p per packet. Shorty was stooped by the hearth, working on the fire with a leaky pair of bellows. George sat at the table; it was the second of what had become established as his two weekly days downstairs. Theoretically, he could have made such appearances every day there was, but he did not want to wear out his welcome, already (he rather fancied) losing its first freshness with Bernard, and there was his work. Without much wanting to, simply, as always, anxious not to appear sullen or bored, he said,
‘I was reading where a chap wrote this morning, I expect you saw it yesterday, about those four young swine who broke into the place to rob it, but there was hardly any money in where they keep the money, because the boss had just been and paid it in, so they hit him with a tightening-up affair and the iron business for the fire and so on, and took the money in what he was wearing and how you tell the time and even his smoking stuff. What can you do about people like that?’
‘I suppose you rush them to hospital,’ said Adela, making mustard. ‘These days they can—’
‘Hospital? There’s nothing wrong with them in that sense. They’re just—’
‘I think George means the thugs, Adela.’
‘Oh, I see, of course.’
‘But isn’t it appalling behaviour?’
‘Dreadful.’
‘Really frightening, George,’ said Shorty, thinking that the other had a very fair point, one that might well make an audience of homicidal maniacs properly sit up and take notice. A pity Bernard was not on the spot to appreciate it. ‘Shall I fetch the others, Adela?’ He put the bellows down on the iron fender.
‘Well, that’s up to you,’ said Adela, looking at them. ‘They leak too, don’t they, the others? I must get—’
‘I really meant fetch Bernard and Marigold for lunch, actually.’
‘Oh.’ This time, Adela sounded as Bernard sometimes did in this kind of one-down situation, loftily disappointed at such a trite answer to what on the face of it was a not uninteresting problem. ‘Yes, I suppose so. If you would.’
Shorty had just adopted the minor crouch necessary to get through the doorway when an approaching series of barks was heard, followed by an approaching patter of animal feet, closely followed by Pusscat very closely followed by Mr Pastry, soon afterwards followed by Marigold, eventually and finally followed by Bernard. He was in time to see Marigold clutching her pet to her in what even a stranger to our civilization would have recognized as a protective attitude while the dog, with many a snuffle, trotted round the room at an evident loss and George remonstrated with him. There was some tension.
‘That damned dog.’
‘It’s only a game, Bernard,’ said Shorty. ‘He wouldn’t hurt her, not him. Not really hurt her.’
‘Oh, wouldn’t he?’ Marigold glared hard.
‘How did he get out?’ asked George. ‘I thought he was shut up in the sitting-room.’
Shorty glanced at Bernard, but said nothing.
‘Somebody must have left the door open,’ said Adela.
‘The creature’s becoming intolerable.’ Bernard turned to Marigold. ‘Surely you must agree.’
Privately she did, and in full measure, but to express agreement with Bernard was so foreign to her instinct and practice that she confined herself to further crooning over her cat.
‘Just like him chasing his ball,’ said Shorty. ‘I allude, of course, to the tennis version thereof. Come on, Bonzo, my lad, you’d better get out while the going’s good.’
He took Mr Pastry by the collar and hauled him from the kitchen. Bernard, with a dissatisfied air, took his place at the head of the table. George could see the case for letting the incident blow over, but, in the silence, found himself saying,
‘I really must apologize for the wretched old fellow.’ He tried to keep his tone light. ‘And I do appreciate the way you all put up with him. If I could do anything myself, I would, but I’m—’
‘Granted as soon as asked,’ said Shorty, now doling out plates of ham. He continued in song, ‘How much is that dog-gy in the window? The one with the waggully tay-yool. How much—’
‘Potatoes here, Shorty,’ said Adela.
During the meal, there was some talk about Christmas, held together chiefly by the fact that what was said concerned Christmas in one way or another.
‘Of course, at my grandfather’s it was Christmas breakfast that was the real occasion,’ said Marigold.
‘Of course,’ said Bernard. ‘What else? Sorry, do go on.’
‘Thank you. There was game and venison and herrings and troutle-poutles and kidneys and bacon and great farm eggs and fresh-baked bread and gallons and gallons of home-brewed beer. Literally hundreds of people used to come from all over the county. I remember one year – I can’t have been more than ten or eleven – the bishop came, and he didn’t care for the rector, do you see, and he was a great big fellow, the bishop, and do you know what he did?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do, Marigold,’ said Shorty, pulling a piece of gristle from between his teeth. ‘He got so pissed he saddled up the poor bloody rector and rode him round the dining-room belting him with his riding-crop. You told us the whole story last night.’
All except George looked at Bernard, but he was sawing theatrically at a slice of ham, had shut off his attention as soon as he saw a fresh dose of Marigold’s cackle on the way, had delivered his token barb and relapsed into day-dreaming about the projects he had in train.
Into another silence, George said, ‘In Pilsen we used to go in for …’ He stopped when he found himself faced by devising on-the-spot periphrases for a whole mental shelf-load of commodities whose names, at the best of times, would have come to him more readily in Czech than in English; but he went on quite quickly, and he thought rather adroitly, ‘… all manner of stuff I’m sure you couldn’t get hold of now unless you were a Party boss.’
‘I remember Vera saying how she used to look forward to it for weeks every year, to Christmas, I mean,’ said Adela, who had noticed that her brother was a little more displeased with events than usual, and who still, in the teeth of a third of a century’s worth of evidence pointing hard the other way, believed that an affectionate reference to his late wife must have a softening effect on him.
This did reach Bernard. ‘You must be mixing her up with someone else.’ He sounded puzzled, driven to this conclusion against his will. ‘When she discussed the matter with me, on what I remember as a single occasion and for about thirty seconds in all, she said the whole thing bored her stiff. In fact, I think I can do better than that. Yes – an interest in Christmas is natural in children and something like to be pitied when old people have it, but in anybody else it’s a mark of gullibility and credulity and one thing and another. Something very much along those lines. W
hat the devil is the matter with you, George?’
‘Sorry,’ said George, who had been laughing almost silently and shaking his head for ten seconds or so, ‘but you’re the one who’s doing the mixing up. No Czech would say that, not one of Vera’s generation anyway. Who do you think invented Good King Wenceslas? No, the person who used to go round saying that was one of her so-called emancipated friends from over here. I’ve an idea … If you’ll give me a minute I’ll come up with her name.’
Bernard breathed hard. ‘I can recall the scene exactly. That rather vulgar house in West Harnham. I was at my davenport doing the Christmas cards, and Vera came in from—’
‘Bobs Butterfield! Bobs Butterfield! Rather small, Titian-haired type of girl, used to paint her nails and put too much rouge on her cheeks. Bobs Butterfield. I haven’t even thought of her for thirty years. Well, the old brain can’t be in too bad a state if it can reach back as far as that.’
‘I haven’t the slightest recollection of any such person.’
‘Well, I’m sure you could catch me out on a lot of things too. Do you remember her, Shorty? Just as a matter of interest.’
‘I didn’t have much to do with what you might call the social side in those days, George.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ said George tolerantly. ‘Bobs Butterfield. That’s right. She was a great one for getting away from Victorian attitudes. I wonder if she’s still going on about them.’
‘Very possibly,’ said Bernard. ‘Vera said to me what I told you she said to me.’
‘I’m sorry.’ George was shaking his head again. ‘She wouldn’t have.’
‘To you she may well never have done. To me she did, on the occasion I described just now.’
‘Ah, I think I’ve got it. I think I can explain the whole thing in a way acceptable to all. Vera was telling you what Bobs Butterfield had said to her about Christmas, and you missed that part because you were busy with the cards and thought Vera was saying what she herself thought.’
‘No. No.’
‘Well, I distinctly remember her telling me she loved Christmas,’ said Adela. ‘Vera telling me, I mean.’
‘We like Christmas, don’t we, Pusscat?’ whispered Marigold.
‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,’ sang Shorty, ‘just like the—’
‘She hated Christmas,’ said Bernard. He tried to stop his head trembling.
‘I’m sorry,’ said George again. ‘She didn’t.’
‘You’re not questioning my good faith, you just mean I’m honestly mistaken. Is that it?’
‘Exactly. After all, I did know her much longer than you did.’
For a moment, Bernard felt real regret at what must now actually happen to Mr Pastry. It was only for a moment, because Marigold, in a breathy murmur that George, for one, found hard to follow, said into the air,
‘I think it’s nicer to remember people for what they liked rather than for what they didn’t like.’
‘What?’ said Bernard on a long, steady note.
‘I said it’s nicer to remember people for what they liked than for what they didn’t like,’ said Marigold in the closest approach to a yell she was capable of, which was close.
Bernard’s reply would have reached the rearmost file of a battalion in column, had one been arrayed before him; even Shorty was impressed. ‘Perhaps it is and perhaps it isn’t, but one can’t remember what didn’t take place, and I know it’s late in life for you to start speaking at a normal level, but for God’s sake try.’
He left the room, limping heavily.
‘I’m sorry, dear,’ said Adela to Marigold; ‘he’s sensitive about being a bit deaf.’
‘And I’m sensitive about being shouted at.’
‘I’ll have a word with him.’
‘You’ve had words with him before and a fat lot of good they’ve done. I can’t stand it any longer, living in the same house as that man. I shall have to start making definite plans.’
Marigold went out too. In fact she was not offended; on the contrary, making Bernard lose his temper had toned her up, and she still felt relief almost to the point of elation at his having missed her lapse about her grandfather and the bishop. But the lapse itself was an unfavourable sign; her parting words in the kitchen had been intended as additional cover, should she finally be compelled to leave.
‘I shouldn’t worry too much, Adela,’ said Shorty. ‘I reckon she’s a sight too comfortable where she is to really think of shifting.’
‘Oh, I do hope you’re right.’
‘Mind you, she’s an odd piece, the madam is.’
‘I suppose I may have been a bit tactless, going on about Vera like that,’ said George.
‘Yes, George, you may have.’
Twenty-Four
On the morning of Christmas Eve, Bernard was in the sitting-room as usual. He remained altogether idle until, just after eleven o’clock, he heard the post being delivered; then he limped quickly but quietly to the front door. Mr Pastry arrived there a moment afterwards and did a little perfunctory barking. Bernard held him by the collar with one hand while he sorted the various cards and letters with the other. There was a letter for him (he recognized the handwriting as that of the one ex-member of his original regiment with whom he still maintained some kind of touch), a letter, a small parcel and three cards for Marigold, two bills addressed to Adela, nothing for George, nothing for Shorty. He put one letter in his pocket, kept the other in his hand and left everything else on the hall table; then, after a hasty look to and fro, thrust the letter he held at Mr Pastry’s snout.
‘Come on, boy,’ he whispered. ‘Go for it. Come on. Kill it. Good God, kill it, you fool.’
After wagging his tail uncertainly for some seconds, the dog caught on to the new game, which indeed was straightforward enough, consisting as it did of tearing the letter to shreds with his teeth. It was quite a short game. When it was over, Bernard dismissed his playmate with a light kick in the rump and moved, no longer quietly, to Marigold’s door, on which he knocked.
‘Yes, who is it?’ said a voice that might conceivably have come from a dedicated scientist in mid-experiment, or at least from such a character as shown in an old-fashioned film.
‘Fuck you’ was all Bernard said in reply, and he said it under his breath.
He found Marigold tying a piece of shiny green ribbon round a box-shaped object wrapped in shiny pink paper. She turned and looked up at him in understandable surprise.
‘What brings you here?’
‘It’s that bloody dog of George’s again, I’m afraid.’ He spoke with great seriousness, with some inner concentration too: forming an alliance with Marigold was not a venture to be approached lightly. ‘Look what I’ve just picked up by the front door.’ He handed over the tatters of paper and went on talking. ‘It really is too bad. In a sense, of course, I suppose one can’t blame the creature, but it’s hardly as if he’s a puppy, is it? I’m afraid it looks as if he’ll have to be—’
‘Do you know who it’s from?’ Marigold’s surprise had turned to something that closely resembled honest puzzlement.
‘How should I know?’
‘Well, it’s addressed to you.’
‘What?’
‘I said it’s addressed—’
‘I meant I … Let me have a look.’
For the second time in two minutes Bernard recognized his friend’s hand, and a part of his own name could still be made out on the remains of the envelope. By a great effort, he managed not to snatch from his pocket what he now knew must be Marigold’s letter. ‘You’re quite right,’ he said, so dizzy with rage that he put a hand on the corner of the dressing-table and knocked over a plastic bottle of baby oil. (What was she doing with baby oil?)
Her puzzlement gave way to suspicion. ‘What made you think it was for me?’
‘I didn’t really, I don’t know, I must have tho
ught, after all you get more letters than anybody else, it probably might have been for you,’ babbled Bernard, staring at a fragment of moist paper with Note new address: The … shire on it. Without volition he added, ‘There was one for you anyway. I—’
‘Where is it?’
‘I …’
What with his leg and her speed off the mark, she was several paces ahead of him at the hall table, but by then he had the letter in his hand.
In a moment Marigold said, ‘I can’t find any letter here.’
As she spoke, Bernard entered on a strange evolution: backwards (to look under the table), downwards (to look further under the table) and forwards (to pick up anything that might have been lying under the table). He got to his feet again with some difficulty.
‘Here it is. It must have slipped on to the floor.’
‘But it wasn’t there a moment ago.’
‘It must have been. You didn’t see it.’
‘But I would have seen it if it had been there.’
‘You didn’t, however.’ Bernard was trying to calm himself before he said anything more to compound his crassness. ‘I had to bend down to see it.’
‘But I’d have seen it while I was walking towards the table.’
‘You might well have done, I agree. Nevertheless you failed to.’
‘But it’s all scrumpled up.’