A Disturbing Influence (5 page)

Now our High Street, as well as being narrow, is straight. Jokes have been made about this which I do not intend to repeat. From the crossroads in the middle of the town you can see a full mile in both directions. And coming from what must have been Aldermaston was the march. Right in the distance, turning the bend, was the front banner itself, a huge black and white and red job, and beyond it a whole lot of other ones in different colours. The road slopes down to the crossroads, and then on and up again, so I had a splendid view, and shattered I was by it, I may say. I’m sure that in all its history Cartersfield never saw anything like it.

‘For God’s sake!’ I said to the dim pupil, whose mouth was hanging open like a letter-box. But he simply looked at me again as though I was mad and ran off, telling his friends, I dare say. So I turned to a perfect stranger beside me, a policeman as it happened, and said: ‘But I thought it was supposed to go along the by-pass?’

‘Special request,’ said the policeman. ‘Coming down here instead. Got the message this morning.’

And then I realized. Harry had really pulled a trick to shatter his home-town. But if he’d fooled us, then so had the march fooled him, because it was much bigger than he’d estimated. I should say his five hundred was exceeded several times, not that I know. I dare say there are statistics somewhere if you want to find out. The marchers came on and on, like a medieval army, flags flying, banners
streaming
, just like the pictures in fact. I kept thinking of
Henry
V
, though I didn’t notice Laurence Olivier out there leading them into the breach. In fact as the front of the procession came nearer I saw that
the leaders, about a dozen of them, included (you’ve guessed, of course) Harry Mengel, and he’d got someone on the other end of his banner, and he was strutting along at the front as though he was the Great Panjandrum himself, his chest swollen up like a balloon and his eyes front as though he was back in the Army. A band somewhere farther back was playing ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’. Very appropriate.

Well, when I saw him it was too much for me, much too much. I wasn’t letting him get away with it that easy. I just jumped straight in and took the other pole of his banner away from whatever nabob of the march had a hold of it, and shouted at him. What I shouted isn’t altogether repeatable, but the gist of it was, what did he think he was doing, how the hell had he managed it, and what about his precious Easter eggs?

‘You’ll see!’ he yelled back, and really he looked so happy I didn’t want to spoil it for him by being narky, so I just marched along beside him at the head of the carnival, that bloody great procession, and whenever I saw anyone I knew, and I know most of the people in Cartersfield, I said: ‘Join the march’ in my most ferocious schoolmaster’s voice, and as most of them had been my pupils at some time or another, quite a lot of them were sufficiently frightened or awed or something that they
di
d
join in, so that we had a pretty impressive Cartersfield group banning the bomb by the time we came out the other side of the town. I don’t know what had got into me, but when they came up to us—the big-wigs, I mean—and said: ‘O.K., you’ve had your glory, Cartersfield, back with the boys now,’ I was about to brain them with the banner, but Harry said: ‘That’s right, and thanks a lot.’ So off we went to the back, or rather, since the back was so far away, to the middle or thereabouts, in with a lot of students from (it had to be) Reading University. By this time I was cooling down, and beginning to realize just what a fool I’d made of myself, but then the procession stopped for a moment, and I had a good look at it.

All through the town, and up the hill over the crossroads, the
march beetled along, people singing, waving, shuffling, striding, as though there wasn’t a by-pass round Cartersfield at all, and the life had come back to it again, and things mattered—you know what I mean? For a moment I nearly cried, and it takes a lot to make me even think of wanting to do that, Hiroshima or no Hiroshima, but luckily the procession started up again then, and the fools around us started singing ‘Free beer for all the workers’, which made me very angry indeed. If there’s one thing that makes me ache with rage it’s intellectuals pretending to love the proletariat.

Well, after about another twenty minutes of staggering along under this banner of Harry’s which was no light weight, let me tell you, and like a barrage balloon when the wind blew even softly, we stopped for a break. And here Harry really did himself proud. When the procession moved off again he stood at the side of the road with four vast boxes of Easter eggs, giving one to every single man, woman and child on that march. I watched him for a bit, wondering what he was going to do next. Because I’d had enough. I hate physical exercise of any sort, and I’d already walked farther than I’d any intention of doing, and I was going home to face my shame. So, as the end of the procession began to move past him, I went over to Harry and said: ‘Coming home now, boy?’

He was flushed and excited, like a twelve-year-old at Christmas, unwrapping the presents he’s given, because he can’t bear to wait for the happiness with which they will be received. And when he saw what I meant he looked as though he’d just seen his favourite toy smashed in front of his face and said he supposed so.

And then I did something which maddens me still every time I think about it. I go white with rage and practically fall asleep if someone even mentions it casually. Because if there’s one thing—no, I’ve said that before—but, really, this time I mean it—if there’s one thing that I find quite intolerable in my fellow human-beings, it’s the way they step out of character to be heroic and noble, or even unheroic and ignoble, depending on the character. And I am
not
the sort of person who does this sort of thing even in my
dreams, ever, and I have absolutely
no
intention of ever doing
anything
of the kind again, and before I tell you about it I want that to be understood quite clearly.

I looked at him suffering pangs of longing, split right down the middle between profit and honour, and I said: ‘Why don’t you go on, Harry? I’ll go and mind your bloody shop for you.’

And he looked at me as though I was Lenin arriving at the Finland Station, or the Archangel Gabriel, or some other figure of religious literature, and he didn’t say a word, he just grabbed his banner and ran off to join the end of the procession. Not so much as a thank-you.

‘You bastard!’ I shouted after him, already shuddering with rage again, but I don’t think he heard, unfortunately.

And that, since you wanted to know, is how I came to serve for the first and last time in my life behind the counter of a shop.

S
O
THERE
I am, one whole week of holidays gone by, August the fourth now edging up to noon, sixteen and Stirling Moss, with co-driver-sister Jane ‘Madcap’ Gilchrist beside me, biting her lip and knuckles white against the dashboard, and here’s the turn and into it like Fangio, but not out of it like anyone very much, skid and wheel-spin, car aslant and rearing like a horse, impossible to hold, head bang against the roof, and then there we were, rocking slightly, but upright, gravel sounding still in our ears, in the field, and dirty tracks to betray us, but breathing and not a scratch, and Jane, Jane, we didn’t turn over, why are you crying?

‘Damn,’ I said. ‘Oh, damn and hell. If we hadn’t skidded like that we’d have clipped at least five seconds from the record.’

The record, established at four-thirteen the previous day, was forty-seven seconds from the end of the drive to the house.

‘Don’t blubber, Jane, for God’s sake.’ I was trembling myself, my wrists were as weak as rotten tree-stumps, moss-strangled, hollow, the marrow extracted, bone clean as a pea-whistle.

‘We might have turned over,’ said Jane. ‘We might have been killed.’

‘Nonsense.’

The car—a 1937 Ford Ten, with sliding-roof long stuck fast and leaking a little in the rain—started at the first attempt.

‘It still works, anyway,’ I said.

We moved backwards, then forwards, sedately, back on the
drive, facing the house and who knew what music? We got out to repair the ravages of the gravel, kicking and scratching the yellow pebbles into the rut we’d made. Rain would help.

‘It doesn’t look too bad.’

‘There’s still the marks in the grass.’

Like tank-tracks, they were, deep, lush, indelible.

‘A harrow would get them out.’

‘A harrow!’ Jane laughed. Shakily, but laughed. ‘And where does Stirling Moss think he’s going to get a harrow?’

‘Shut up. Get back in the car.’

‘It’s sagging, look.’

She was right, too right. It sagged like a ship holed near the stern on the port side.

‘There’s no puncture.’

‘You’ve done something
terrible,
Teddy.’

‘The car still goes, doesn’t it?’

‘But look at it!’

‘Arthur will know what’s wrong.’

So back into the car, slow and steady, limping home to haven, a collision at sea, a man lost, alas, but under own steam, making harbour.

As I shut the garage doors I said to Jane: ‘If you tell anyone about this I’ll kill you.’

‘Oh, pooh,’ she said. ‘It’s so obvious I won’t have to tell anyone anything. You just have to
look
.’ She was quite recovered now, colour back, a mocking little-girl smile, and her fourteen. ‘You’ll be in awful trouble, Teddy. I told you not to go so fast.’

Treason, simple straight-forward treason, the co-driver is not to be trusted. But what can you expect from a sister—from any girl—girls understand nothing, nothing whatever, only Molly can understand me, Molly Simpson, and this is August the fourth and I still haven’t seen her this hols. Molly, when shall I see you?

Arthur the gardener said: ‘It’s a broken spring.’

‘Gosh. Is that expensive?’

‘I’d say so. Cost quite a bit.’

‘Oh God.’

And so to lunch, and how to break the news, and there at the pit of my stomach is a pudding, all stodge, as chewy as wet cement, a huge disgusting pudding I can never absorb, which will sit there for ever, growing and growing, a cancerous black pudding swelling and swelling. People will think I am pregnant. But, no, I can’t eat a thing, honestly, Mummy, you know how I hate potatoes, and cold ham I
used
to like, but today, it’s odd, isn’t it, I’m just not hungry at all.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said my mother. ‘Of course you must eat. What’s the matter with you, Teddy? Is your liver all right?’

My liver is fine but my lights are low, Mother.

‘Nothing’s the matter. I’m quite all right. I’m not hungry, that’s all. What’s odd about that?’

‘What’s the matter with him, Jane? Where did you two go this morning?’

Blankness, blanched blankness.

‘Teddy, if you’ve been driving that car beyond the gate, you know what your father said.’

‘Oh, Mummy …’

‘What do you mean, “Oh, Mummy”?’

‘Of course I didn’t go beyond the gate.’

To go beyond the gate, to speed the three miles from Mendleton to Cartersfield, to seize Molly Simpson and carry her off in the old Ford Ten to bliss and heaven, world without end, amen. To drive at seventy-five (it couldn’t get up there, of course, poor battered old Ford) from Cartersfield to London, and there, in splendour, to dine out with Molly, and then to the theatre every night of our lives, and so to bed. Oh, bed with Molly Simpson, that endless scene for ever playing in my mind, the late late and the early early show, the morning, noon and night performance, We Never Closed, Molly Simpson and I——

But interrupted, from time to time, by newsreels, shots of
racing cars, Ferraris, Maseratis, Bugattis, BRMs, the sensuous clash of gears, the high-pitched squeal of speed, panic in the pits, new goggles, four wheels changed in fourteen seconds flat, then off again, through the gear-box, Bristols, Jaguars, A.C.s and Frazer Nashes, the Lotus, the Cooper, the Climax, cars like free electrons buzzing in my head, and Saturday afternoons with the portable radio, Brands Hatch and Silverstone, and the commentator shouting above the roar of engines, the groan and snarl and rage and screech, of pistons’ hammer and brakes’ yelp and oil slicks and skids and maniacal cars, driven beyond endurance, charging the crowd like maddened bulls, snorting and spewing and bleeding fuel, into the bales of straw, against the barriers, and drivers wheeling in the air to fall flat and broken, Saturday afternoons and the race-track of life….

And there I am, with the garlands round my neck, and my arm round Molly Simpson, and the crowd is going wild, and the pits are hushed, the loudspeakers proclaim new records, new clipped seconds to add to my glory, and it’s Le Mans next, and Indianapolis and the Monte Carlo Rally, and after the race Molly and I sip Pernods by the Mediterranean, dark and blue as Molly’s night-dress….

But now there is this pudding in my stomach, and it is swelling. I am feeling not ill, exactly, but not too well, and frankly I shall have to confess, to tell her. Daddy will be furious, let her break the news to him, let her face him first, but I didn’t go beyond the gates.

‘Mummy, I’m afraid …’

‘What have you done?’

‘Arthur says it’s just a broken spring.’

‘A spring?’

‘At the back. I don’t think it’s serious.’

She stopped eating. ‘Why didn’t you tell me at once?’

Because you would be angry, because you might say I could not drive at all, not even as far as the gate, in an old beat-up Ford Ten.

‘I’m sorry.

‘Sorry? I should think you are. What do you think your father will say?’

Jesus Christ, is this why I pay for you to go to an expensive school? So that you can come home in the holidays and smash up my cars? What have I done to deserve a son who wants to drive racing cars for a living?

‘I’m really not hungry at all, Mummy. May I leave the table, please?’

‘Certainly not. How did it happen?’

‘Well, you see, we were just going along, and then there was this sort of bump, and …’

And Jane is watching me, her eyes growing rounder and rounder, and her mouth wide open to speak. Put something in it, Jane, a potato. I told you I’d kill you if you told. Eat, Jane, eat, please eat.

Jane took a mouthful and choked.

‘I don’t know what you children learn at school,’ said my mother. ‘Have you no manners at all, Jane? Don’t stuff yourself so.’

Dear Jane, the tears in your eyes, but you didn’t speak, co-driver and cohort, stuff yourself as much as you like.

‘And as for you, Teddy, I’ll have a look at the damage myself. I warned you, if you did anything to that car, you’d have to pay out of your own pocket-money.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it won’t cost much, Mummy.’

‘And we’ll have no more driving for a few days, if you don’t mind. I’m sick and tired of hearing you roar up and down the drive. There’s hardly a pebble of gravel left.’

‘We put it all back, honestly.’

‘So you
were
going too fast.’

Well, I didn’t mean to, for heaven’s sake, I didn’t want to go off the drive, you
can
’
t
think that, I was trying to break the record, that’s all, it’s perfectly simple and obviously I wouldn’t be able to break the record if I skidded off into the field, would I, so I didn’t mean to, and I’m sorry, but what can I do about it now? But no, all
they can see is the gravel off the drive, and the tracks in the field, and they don’t know what it’s like, coming into that corner just a little too fast, they’d never dream of doing such a thing, of
course
not, they don’t understand what it’s like not being allowed to drive on main roads, but the pudding is going away, thank God, and it won’t be back till tonight, because Daddy’s away at the office and I wish I had an idea of how much he gets paid, because I’m sure he could easily afford to give me an Aston Martin for my birthday, my seventeenth birthday. How long will that be? Another five months and then I can take my driving-test, and then I’ll be free, in my Aston Martin, and zoom … But he’d never give me an Aston Martin, not in a million years, no, never, never, never.

*

So an explosion that evening when Father returns, like some furious giant, from London, and then it’s forgotten, but no driving for a few days, you hear me? So, what shall I do? And Molly is coming tomorrow, with her parents, for drinks, so I read all her letters, they’re on pink paper, and I think of the mornings at school when they used to come, Tuesday mornings, always Tuesdays. I’d be up and shaved a few minutes early, knowing a letter was coming, then wait, elaborately casual, for the post, and seize my letter before anyone could see the pink envelope or guess at the faint scent of the sheets, and off to my study to read it quietly and quickly, then in to roll-call and breakfast, heart fluttering, to kippers (this was Tuesday, Molly and kippers), and then after breakfast to read it more slowly in the lavatory, because now the study wasn’t safe, Jackson would be there, who shared it with me, Jackson with the tuft of red hair and pale eyes from whom no secrets were hid, who jeered and gibed, coarse humorist that he was, no sensitivity, none whatsoever, and no sense of privacy, opened my letters quite shamelessly, Jackson who made such lewd comments about my photo of Molly, I had to take it down. What a picture that was! Molly on Shylock, her pony, soaring over a gate at the Cartersfield gymkhana. Oh, my
Molly! What earnest endeavour in that photograph (courtesy of the local paper, the nerve of them, to print my Molly without so much as a by-your-leave, and then to charge me for her!), what black-and-white attention to the matter in hand, though your hands reach forward, giving Shylock his head, just resting against his neck, ready to pull him up, to steady him, and your knees gripping him, squeezing him, one with the saddle, one with the pony. Oh, Molly, my Amazon, my pony-club heroine, we’ll have you co-driver before we’re done.

*

I walk beneath the yews, the avenue supposed to be haunted by a medieval lady. The branches meet. It is quiet and dark, smells rich and mysterious. I raise my head from the roots like anatomy lessons. You walk towards me, slowly and seriously, gentleness in your face.

But that is tomorrow. She must find me here, and we will stroll, watching the sun as it sets at the end of the avenue. (Does it really set there? It must.) The house looks fine from here, from the sunrise end (and will we be found here at sunrise?) it looks old and mellowed and English (all that’s best in Britain) and the old part, the Elizabethan part, with its one fine wide window, reflects the day, dying expansively in pale green and blue, one vapour trail, shaped like the whisker of a crab, orange across the sky.

*

They come at six and drink in the drawing-room. Molly and I go out to play croquet. Oh, the games we could be playing! What shots through what hoops, Molly, dear Molly! And then we stroll off the lawn and round the garden, past the roses, past the sweet peas, past the herbaceous border, and we have nothing to say. Yes, I was in the second eleven, and next year, perhaps, I will be in the first. No, she hadn’t done anything worth talking about. And here we are under the yews, their great thick trunks like the feet of some vast
ancient animal, gnarled and wrinkled, rhinoceros-coloured, and the long sweeping branches of dark hard green. Did I know that yew was poisonous to horses? And how is Shylock? How many gymkhanas this summer? And she is rather bored with riding, it seems, because she doesn’t answer. She walks slowly beside me, and I listen to her skirt against her calves and think of the sea hushing itself in a golden cove in Scotland. We are going to Scotland in September—September the first—and are the Simpsons going anywhere?

And alas they are, and all too soon, on August the sixteenth the Simpsons are going to France, to the Loire valley.

We stop beneath the yews, and my arm, which has been fidgeting all this while against my side, reaches across, volitionless, and touches her shoulder, hovers there a moment, hesitates, then moves slowly to her waist, curls itself round it, settles down, holding her lightly, feeling her relax against it. And she says: ‘Then we won’t see much of each other, will we?’

‘No.’

And we stand there in silence, and my arm shifts, holds her more firmly against our absence from each other. We walk slowly on.

I say: ‘We could run away together. We could drive off somewhere and they wouldn’t find us for ages.’

She smiles, a little sad, says nothing.

‘We did
Romeo
and
Juliet
last term,’ she says, suddenly. We are near the end of the avenue, the sunset end, but the sun is still quite high, it won’t set for an hour or more, and she will be gone by then.

‘I played Mercutio.’