A Disturbing Influence (3 page)

For a moment I didn’t see what he meant. Then I said: ‘But she’s not married.’

‘My dear Raymond,’ said Nye, ‘it is not my duty as a doctor to inquire into the legal status of all the girls who come to me asking for obvious necessities.’

‘I think you should have told me.’

‘I have already broken the code of my profession in telling you now. The ambulance will be round in about half an hour, I hope.’

He saw himself out, and I went and told Isobel that she was to go into hospital for observation. She looked at me out of her fever and said with great calmness: ‘I’m going to die. I know I’m going to die. That girl has killed me.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Isobel,’ I said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘It’s simply for observation. Nye says your temperature is extremely high.’

‘Very well,’ she said, smiling slightly. ‘But I know I am going to die.’

She directed me to pack a small bag for her. Since her illness had begun we had used separate bedrooms and she had to tell me which
drawers everything was in. From time to time she asked me to show her some garment she didn’t want to take with her, but which she wanted to see. ‘I am going to die,’ she repeated again and again, always with that slight smile. ‘That girl has killed me.’

‘Listen, Isobel. You simply have a high temperature. You are not going to die.’

‘Oh yes, I am. We all are. Everyone dies in the end.’

I became seriously worried that her mind might indeed be affected. I felt very relieved when the ambulance came. I went with her to the hospital and saw her into bed. Nye put her under sedation immediately.

‘She’s not going to die, whatever she may think,’ said Nye. ‘Not yet, anyway, unless I’m very much mistaken. I’ve always thought that she probably has milk fever or one of those things. But I must tell you, Raymond, that I don’t think that’s all she’s got.’

‘Well?’

‘The tests may still be negative, but it looks to me like a clear case of cancer. I haven’t told you before, because it’s not certain.’

‘I have suspected it myself.’

‘Her present condition isn’t caused by cancer, of course. But if she has it it won’t make things any better.’

‘Yes.’ I had a momentary vision of my beloved wife as a body falling apart with various diseases. I shuddered.

‘Has Isobel ever had malaria? Anything like that?’

‘No, never. Her sister and nephew have both had it.’

‘It can’t be that, then. I don’t know.’

Next day was Sunday, and for the first time in my life I did not write a new sermon but repeated an old one. Miss Spurgeon looked suspicious but said nothing. At the hospital the nurses told me that Isobel kept talking about someone called Lindy. Nye suggested that I dismiss the girl, if that was what I was going to do, and tell Isobel I’d done so in one of her moments of calm.

I wasn’t at all sure that I was doing the right thing when I summoned Lindy to my study next morning. But events had
made me their puppet, I felt, and I had no choice but to dismiss her.

‘It has come to my notice, Lindy, that you have been behaving—badly—with Mr Johnson. I’m afraid I cannot possibly continue to employ you.’

She looked at me quite blankly.

‘You know very well what I mean, Lindy. Fornication is a very serious sin.’

She smiled feebly and blushed. ‘But I haven’t, sir.’

‘That is a lie, Lindy. Don’t make things still worse by telling me lies. I happen to know that you and Johnson are guilty of fornication. In his case adultery, too. It is a very serious matter.’

She blinked at me, but did not look in the least put out. If anything she looked smug.

‘Do you realize what I am saying, Lindy? Your conduct is absolutely disgraceful. Here are a month’s wages. And I may as well warn you now that I am going to tell your mother.’

Lindy began to sniffle. But she took the envelope and fingered it. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘It’s not enough to be sorry, Lindy. You don’t seem to be in the least repentant. Don’t you know that you have committed a grave sin?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The sniffles continued, but they were not, I thought, very convincing.

‘And, besides that, I cannot tell you how disappointed both Mrs Henderson and I feel. We have done a great deal for you, Lindy, and you have let us down very badly.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, really I am.’

‘I don’t believe you’re in the least sorry. Will you promise me that this will never happen again?’

She stopped sniffling and looked up at me. ‘I don’t know, sir. He’s so kind.’

‘Really, Lindy, this is too much. Have you no sense of decency? Mr Johnson is a married man. Have you thought of the misery you are causing his wife?’

‘No, sir.’

I gave up. She simply wasn’t listening to me. Or, rather, she was listening to my words, but paying no attention at all to my meaning. I had a moment of depression, wondering how many of my parishioners ever understood a word of my sermons, not because they were difficult sermons but because, if Lindy was any guide, they chose to ignore them.

‘I shall not require your services any longer in the choir, Lindy. I can’t tell you how disgusted I am by your apparently total lack of moral sense. You, who have been such a useful person in the community, who have done so much for the church, and for me, too. I am very disappointed indeed.’

Lindy did not say anything at all. She wiped away her perfunctory tears and went home. She had seemed, I thought, basically indifferent to everything I had said. I dare say I wasn’t very impressive that morning, as a matter of fact. But I had more important things on my mind.

That afternoon, however, I went as I had promised to see Lindy’s mother.

‘Hello,’ she said, opening the door.

‘I wonder if I might have a few words with you, Mrs Badham.’

‘Come in, then, sir.’

I followed behind the bottom Isobel had thought so unpinchable into a dark parlour, full of old furniture and the smell of disuse. There were lace curtains at the windows.

‘It’s about Lindy, I dare say,’ said Mrs Badham, crossing her massive arms.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Well?’ She looked formidable indeed.

‘I have been obliged to discharge Lindy, Mrs Badham. You may not know that she and Mr Johnson, your lodger, are carrying on an affair together.’

‘I know that,’ said Mrs Badham.

I was taken aback. ‘You know? And you’ve done nothing about it?’

‘What should I have done, sir, may I ask?’

‘You should have stopped it, Mrs Badham. I am very shocked to hear you speak so calmly about it.’

‘Well, sir, I don’t see that I should have stopped it.’

‘But Mrs Badham, Lindy is your daughter. What kind of a reputation do you think this will get her? Do you want her to be known as a—as a prostitute?’

‘Don’t you say that, now,’ said Mrs Badham. ‘Lindy’s a good girl, and I won’t have anyone using words like that about her. I don’t care who it is.’

‘How can you call her good when you know what she’s been doing? It’s a disgrace.’

‘Now you listen to me, Vicar.’ Mrs Badham spoke with her usual authority. She emphasized her points by wagging her whole forearm at me. ‘What chance to lead a decent life do you think Lindy has? She’s terrible-looking. None of the boys here would ever look at her, would they? What I say is, this is her one chance, and she’s right to take it.’

‘But, Mrs Badham, it’s immoral.’

‘Oh, immoral,’ she said with a sweeping gesture. ‘I dare say it is. But there’s a lot worse things going on in the world than Lindy and Bill going to bed together.’

‘That may be true in a sense, Mrs Badham, but it’s not the point. Lindy’s behaviour is a disgrace, and you seem to be condoning it. As her mother you should know better.’

‘D’you think I want Lindy getting a bad name?’ she said. ‘Of course I don’t. I wouldn’t let her carry on with anyone, you know. Bill’s a good man.’

‘But he’s married.’

‘So much the better. No one would ever want to marry Lindy, now, would they? There’s no point in giving her false hopes.’

‘But what of Mr Johnson’s wife?’

‘There’s no reason she should know about it, is there?’

It was a warning as well as a hint. I continued to argue for
several minutes, but Mrs Badham was immovable. She was sure she was right, she was not interested in what the world might think, she was scornful that God could disapprove of her. I went away deeply disturbed. There seemed to be no sense of morality in her at all. Isobel had called her ‘morally huge’ but to me she seemed immorally a giantess. Yet, as I thought about it, it seemed to me that in a sense she was unanswerable. If one were to live in a non-Christian morality her position was certainly tenable, and she obviously did live in such a morality. I felt that I was a great failure if so loyal and dutiful a girl as Lindy remained a pagan at heart. The Christian values were no more than a superficial veneer on the life of Cartersfield.

Isobel’s fever remained high for several days, and for some time she was on the danger list, though she raved about other things after I had told her that I had sacked Lindy and seen her mother. Altogether it was an awful summer. Whenever I saw Lindy or Mrs Badham or Johnson I felt obliged to cross the road. To my intense irritation Johnson would sometimes touch his cap as he passed. I employed a new girl to look after the house, but she was most unsatisfactory.

Suddenly, in October, our months of prayer were answered. The nights were chilly, but we had a succession of perfectly lovely days, hazy but warm, and England suddenly seemed unbearably beautiful again, as it so often does after one has given up all hope. The by-pass was finished. Johnson went home to the north, or to another job and another Lindy—I did not inquire which, though I suspect the latter. Isobel came home again, and got so much better that she could laugh about herself raving that she was going to die. But she was going to die. It was cancer without any doubt now, and though it was kept from her I think she knew it herself. I would find her standing abstractedly in the middle of a room, lost in thought, or going round the house touching various objects, and I could easily guess what she was thinking.

One day she brought me tea in my study and said: ‘Guess who I met in the street.’

‘Evangeline?’

‘No. Lindy Badham. I was thinking that perhaps it would be right to take her back now that that man has gone.’

‘But, Isobel, you objected so strongly.’

‘I know I did, dear, and I was right in a way. But one shouldn’t remain unforgiving. Does she have any kind of job at the moment?’

‘I really don’t know.’

‘She needs one. She’s going to have a baby.’

‘No!’ I was really shocked.

‘She’ll need the money while she can get it, dear.’

So we took Lindy back again, though she showed as little emotion at being taken back into the fold as she had at being
dismissed
from it. But I drew the line at taking her back into the choir. It seemed to me that it was hardly setting an example to have a girl pregnant with an illegitimate child working in a vicar’s house, and really carrying charitableness too far. But I wished to give Isobel what I could in her last months, and I made the sacrifice of principle without a whisper from my conscience, though with several heated words from Miss Spurgeon. It gave me not a little pleasure to irritate that old maid.

One day I asked Lindy why she had been so careless.

‘Careless?’ she said.

‘In having a child.’

‘I wanted to have one,’ she said, looking as ugly and blank as ever. There didn’t seem to be anything at all for me to say.

After Christmas Isobel hardly ever left her bed. In February Lindy’s child was born. It was the usual healthy bawling creature that Cartersfield girls produce, a boy, and called William Johnson. It was with some difficulty that I persuaded Lindy not to call him simply Bill. Against a good many principles I christened him in March. Isobel urged it. She even became rather fond of the baby, making Lindy bring it with her in the mornings, for she was soon back at work with us. It was one of Isobel’s last wishes. She died shortly after Easter.

The end, so long expected, came as a release for her, as people say, but it was a great blow to me. Isobel had stood with me for over twenty years, and I grieved for her for many months. My personal loss was combined with a great sense of failure, a failure of which the presence of Lindy’s baby in my own house was symbolic. For some time I confined myself to routine work and reading, a pleasure I had denied myself for many years. I lived mostly in my study. One of my few solaces, curiously, was hearing the gurgles and screams of William Johnson. I was, after all, only one in a succession of vicars, and no doubt many of my predecessors had gone through similar periods of despondency and known exactly the same sense of failure when they heard the cries of newly born bastards. Indeed, my scanty researches into the past seem to show that at least one early vicar of Cartersfield had some illegitimate children of his own.

Sometimes Mrs Badham would come to collect Lindy after lunch, and I would hear her authoritative voice trying to coo over the baby. Then all three would parade proudly down the High Street, William in an old pram, Lindy pushing, Mrs Badham like a policewoman beside them. It was a spectacle which gave me much pleasure, though of course I could not approve it conscientiously. But my conscience tended to be quiet.

Miss Spurgeon enjoyed a couple of Sundays’ protesting absence from church after William Johnson’s christening, but after a few months she was gossiping with as much malice and inaccuracy as ever, though with a new gleam in her eye that meant, unmistakably, ‘I told you so’. However, I gave her as little credence as before, and our brushes continued to sharpen both our spirits.

It is autumn as I write, and I feel particularly strongly tonight that I was right that day, which now seems a long time ago, when I felt that my duty was to the things that are traditional to Cartersfield and to the English spirit. There is, after all, no telling what William Johnson may not grow up to be.

O
URS
is a small town. That’s how it is, that’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it always will be, unless it gets smaller, and dwindles away altogether. But I can’t see why anything should ever change here much—oh, a bit up now, a bit down now, but pretty well the same in the long run. Come to that, I can’t think why anyone comes here at all, unless it’s the complete lack of anything interesting to do or see; that could, I suppose, to certain minds have a sort of charm. It does to mine, as a matter of fact. One can be absolutely certain at any given hour of day or night what is happening in the house opposite, the house next door, the houses all over the town. Because this little place of ours is having one of its downs at the moment, it’s got lost, pushed aside by the great new road that whizzes its traffic a mile away beyond Chapman’s Wood. You see, Cartersfield began as a stop for coaches whenever it
was that coaches began to trundle regularly along the roads of England. You know the sort of thing—a pub, a place to change horses, to drop mail—all that stuff. And then the coaches didn’t come any more and cars started coming instead—few at first, of course, not that I can remember, but obviously it’s only since the war that things have got quite out of control and there have been more cars than roads to put them on. And the jolly old government decided a few years ago, about thirty years too late, as a matter of fact, that we were living in the age of the automobile now, the dog-cart was dead, and there
were many, many towns, like ours, which were a positive menace to navigation. By Jove, said one civil servant to another, look here, old boy, do you see that Cartersfield’s High Street is only three feet wide, and that High Street of theirs carries the main road from Slough to Reading? (Or rather, being a civil servant, and having, one likes to think, a wider view, from London to the west.) I say, old man, said the other civil servant, that’s a bit thin, what? And they both guffawed a bit, and then one of them said, I say, don’t you think we ought to say something to someone about this, old boy? I mean, now we have all this money to build new roads, wouldn’t it be a really jolly good thing to pull old Cartersfield High Street right off the map? And the other one said he thought that might be a little too strong, so they built us a by-pass instead, and our High Street is still only three feet wide (I exaggerate, of course), and the cars whizz through what used to be the north-east corner of Chapman’s Wood. Which leaves us, as you might say, out of the mainstream of life. Which is where I am quite happy to be, thank you, and personally I couldn’t be more pleased that the garages have all moved out to the by-pass, and we can walk across our charming little High Street with its pretty red-brick eighteenth-century houses and its faintly absurd Victorian street-lamps (which people are always preserving with petitions) without more than a sixty-forty chance of being knocked down by one of those madmen in goggles driving export models to the docks (speed limit 30 m.p.h.) at seventy-five through the middle of the place where our stomachs used to be.

You get the picture? I could go on, telling you all about the drears who live here and think that by electing Mr Ponsonby, the ironmonger, to be mayor every year they are helping to preserve all that’s best in Britain. I could tell you about the terrible scandal of Dr Nye, who made the unholy error of patting Miss Spurgeon (age seventy-three) on the knee-cap when she complained of sciatica in her elbow. But I won’t, partly because the whole thing would be tedious beyond words, partly because I don’t believe a
word of it anyway, and mostly because I have a much more interesting story to tell you, about Harry Mengel, who isn’t German, as you might think with a name like that, though he isn’t quite altogether English, you know, either, since his great-great-great-God-knows-how-many-times-grandfather was something to do with one of those Moguls who came over with William the Third, who was, if I remember right, the one married to Mary. Anyway, this ancient Mengel married a nice English girl in Cartersfield, and so the family has gone on ever since, though the big-wig from Holland and his lot died out somewhere around the time of the battle of Waterloo. Nobles come, bringing their trains with them, you see, and then they die and the servants stay on. History. Those who’ve read some tell me it’s fascinating, and I’m sure they’re right. From such a minor question as the origin of Harry Mengel’s surname we get a whole picture of social development. Hurrah.

Not that there was much development in the Mengel family, who remained, I imagine, resolutely servile till Harry’s father bought a sweetshop during the depression, managed to keep it going through the ’thirties, the war, rationing (history will keep breaking in, excuse me) and so on, so that when he died a couple of years ago it was from a thoroughly deserved stroke, since his little
sweetshop
had become the largest grocery store in the town, he had no inhibitions about testing his stock on his stomach, and his belly was the subject of much speculation among the younger members of our community. Harry, in fact, learnt, or so it seems to me, his business skill at an age when he should have been learning his lessons, because kids being kids, bets would be made about the size of old Mr Mengel’s waistline, accurate statistics upon which could be gauged only by a member of the family—i.e. Harry. He took ten per cent for his measurements. In fact, what he did was to measure his father’s trousers (his father having several pairs, as should be obvious), not his old dad at all, but his figures were agreed to be good. Furthermore, his father’s waist went in and out a good
deal, since he made spasmodic and quarter-hearted efforts to get off the fat. Thus speculation on his belly was more or less constant, or traditional, rather, among the boys at the school, and Harry did nothing to discourage it, taking his ten per cent without a qualm.

This precociousness was not the only thing which singled out Harry among his contemporaries, I may say. Of course he stole apples, broke windows, played cricket in alleys, booted a football about and so on, like any English kid, but he did all these things, or so it seemed to me, with a certain lack of enthusiasm. I should explain, I suppose, that I am the schoolmaster of Cartersfield. All right, I know, go and talk to the barmaid if you’d rather. Well, when I say
the
schoolmaster I don’t mean that at all, really, you see there’s a very good little Grammar School in Cartersfield, only it’s very small, and I am only one of seven masters and four mistresses. None the less, my opinion of my colleagues being what it is, I am, in my own eyes at any rate,
the
schoolmaster here, though the headmaster, who considers himself an almost unbearably fair man, would tell you I’m just a member of his staff. Anyhow, what I’m getting at is this—Harry was brighter than average, not brilliant, no, but decidedly brighter than average, and I, being a sort of damn-fool enthusiast, and pleased with his progress in mathematics, which is what I teach, encouraged him, with the doubtful assistance of his father, to try for a scholarship to Reading University. Now you may say, if you’re a snob, that Reading University is not the sort of university that you’d want your child to go to, and if you are that sort of snob then to you I say, go to hell. Reading is near by, I went there myself, and it is an excellent university. Furthermore Harry had about as much chance of getting to Oxford or Cambridge as I have of being the first man on the moon, someone who is, as it happens, a man I should very much like to be. And from this you will gather why I hold a low opinion of my colleagues—Cartersfield Grammar School has had exactly one pupil at a university in the last ten years. He was sent down from University
College, London, for getting a girl with child. (As though that was any reason to deprive him of further education: quite the contrary, in my opinion, but that’s the sort of thing we’re up against.)

Where was I? Oh yes, Harry Mengel. Well, though the headmaster, turning somersaults to be fair to everyone, was against me, and the rest of the staff was against me, doing its damnedest to be unfair to everyone, I was for me, Harry was for me, and between us we taught him enough to get in, if the examiners hadn’t had some prejudice against the school, and possibly against me and Harry as well. I’m prejudiced against the school myself, but I still think Harry was good enough for a scholarship, and if Reading University has the nerve to ask me for money to help them build new buildings again I shall write and tell them exactly what they can do with their new buildings and offer them Cartersfield Grammar School into the bargain. Well, I was exceedingly angry about all this, and Harry was very disappointed, of course, the poor boy, and between us we had a good cry. I hate to see talent chucked away like that. Things are bad enough in this country without wasting perfectly good men like Harry Mengel. But that was that, and I think old Mengel was rather relieved in a way, and Harry went into the store like a good son, and his father got fatter and fatter, though Harry no longer measured him for other people’s bets, and I went on teaching the kids the difference between
and parallel lines never meeting, and they still didn’t understand, the dolts.

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever lived in a town like Cartersfield, right out, as I’ve said, of the mainstream of life, but let me try and explain what living there meant to a boy like Harry. As I told you, he was bright, not brilliant, but quite intelligent enough to realize that life of a different and much more exciting variety might very well be going on somewhere else, such as London, or Reading University. After a while he began to brood, just as many young men do, I suppose, about the unfairness of having been born in a place which was dying just as he was beginning to live. Because
while he was swotting away for Reading night after night, the by-pass was being built, and by the time he’d been told he wasn’t good enough the thing was finished, and Cartersfield had started on one of its downs. You see, for the last four years it’s been fading away, not altogether, no, but definitely fading, like a tree without water. The road was our water, and they’ve altered its banks to take it away from us. Goodness, a metaphor from a mathematician, but that’s it, really. That’s it, and that’s life, and, anyway, everyone was all for it—though they didn’t know what would happen at the time—and, as I say, I like it, I like living in a quiet little town. Deadly dull, but it gives you a chance to get on with your own life. But not everyone would agree with me about that, and one person who didn’t then was Harry Mengel. ‘Has it ever occurred to you,’ he said to me one day, ‘that there is only one dance hall in Cartersfield, and that is open only one evening a week, and, anyway, no drinks are served?’ Well, of course, it hadn’t. I’m no dancer myself, I never have been, and it certainly hadn’t entered my mind that the inadequacy of the Lord George Brunswick Memorial Hall might be a source of juvenile resentment. But I saw his point. Years of teaching adolescents have taught
me
a few things, and one of them is that dancing is considered among the half-grown as not merely—inadequate word—‘fun’, but also a social necessity. Ugh. However, I have the interests of my charges at heart, and I could see that he was really on to something. There was nothing to do in Cartersfield
whatever.
There were pubs, of course, but one could hardly call the pubs of Cartersfield places of sparkling entertainment. There was the Alhambra Cinema, which showed torn copies of films that ceased to be in vogue about the time D. W. Griffith began to shoot
Intolerance
(if indeed he did begin to shoot it, and not someone else—I’m not very good on films, though my ex-wife was a cineaste and took me to all the classics. Frankly, I have always preferred horror and science-fiction films. I suppose I should explain that when I say ex-wife I mean that divorce proceedings had been begun by me when she died in childbirth, the child, itself dead, having been
fathered by that standby of the newspapers, the other man.) And apart from these two cultural centres there was the Lord George Brunswick Memorial Hall, once a week, eight to twelve, non-alcoholic. I have no idea who Lord George Brunswick was, or why he gave us a hall to remember him by, but judging by the statue which stands outside he was himself a chronic alcoholic, since the veins on his nose are distinctly swollen. However, there are no drinks in his hall, and I have now described to you the whole glittering range of social possibilities.

Now I am not a political man, in any sense. As I’ve said, I prefer living my own life to participating actively in the life of a community. I don’t vote, on principle. But there are various, to me non-political, issues about which I take what must be considered by retired officers in general, and are so considered by Brigadier  Hobson in particular (he lives on the edge of the town), extreme views. I am against hanging, for instance, and against the
reintroduction
of the cat and the housing of prisoners three to a cell. About these and related topics I feel very strongly indeed, and can even be persuaded to sign petitions. I also feel, though more mildly, that it would be a great mistake to start another war, or to have anything to do with one started by anyone else. Oh, I fought myself, I was patriotic and all that rubbish, but I decided soon after the war was over that I had been wrong to do so. I’m not a Christian or anything loony like that, it’s just a decision I came to by what I hope was logical reasoning, and though I don’t hide my opinion, I don’t go around preaching it, either. I don’t try to convert my pupils, or anything subversive like that, in fact I urge them to do their national service, but I do try to get them to realize that there is a problem to be thought about, and then to think about it. And Harry Mengel did think about it, more seriously than most. After he’d been weighing his father’s flour for about six months he went off to the Army, became a corporal, was sent to Cyprus, saw a little bit of the world beyond the by-pass, heard the screams of men being tortured, didn’t like the idea, worried about it—cautiously, of
course—wrote to me about it, read my even more cautious answers, did nothing heroic, came home and was demobbed.