Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (41 page)

John's face contorted in the series of grimaces that he knew by experience appealed to his viewers. He leaned forward in his chair and smiled with peculiar intimacy. 'I've had a great number of letters from you asking me to discuss the results of my investigation of the Ministry's treatment of Mr Harold Cressett. It is certainly very pleasing to see the extraordinary and very sympathetic interest that this affair has aroused. It does after all mean that the defenders of our liberties are on their toes. I wish I
could
talk to you about it this evening, but, as you may have read in your daily newspaper, the Minister has now ordered a full inquiry into the conduct of the Government servants concerned. I'm sure you will understand that in these circumstances it would be most improper for us to discuss it.'

Professor Clun turned to his wife. 'Very remarkable chap, you know. Unusual to find a sense of responsibihty with such a gift of the gab,' he said. John Middleton had become the outlet for all the rather naïve enthusiasm in him which the years had buried so deep. He would praise remarks from John's lips or pen that he would have snapped at from anyone else. He settled himself in his chair and smiled at his wife. Mrs Clun felt an unusual sense of well-being. She loved John Middleton's half-hour; it was the only time when her husband smiled upon her passion for television.

John, too, was smiling now - the smile of an indulgent parent who has a pleasant surprise up his sleeve. 'All the same, I don't want to disappoint you just because of a point of legal etiquette.' He grinned at the viewers as though to say that if the trip to Whipsnade was off, they might at least hope for Regent's Park.
'You're
interested in Harold Cressett. You have a perfect right to know more about him. Neither Mr Cressett nor his wife sought this publicity. I'm sure they'll be only too glad when the fuss is over and they can get back'to the comfortable days when they could open their daily paper without the embarrassment of seeing their name in print. But, as I've told them, once a man's in the news, well, he's in it. You've found in Harold Cressett a symbol of your daily fight against petty tyranny. However little he may relish the publicity, Mr Cressett is proud of being at the centre of that fight. I think you'll see all that for yourselves when I ask Mr Cressett a few questions this evening. For that's what I'm going to do. The first people in this evening's interviews will be Mr and Mrs Harold Cressett. We shan't, as I've told you, discuss their little trouble with the Ministry, for which I may say they expressed heartfelt thanks; but we shall have a few words about their daily life and especially about what it feels like to be in the news.'

John glanced quickly towards the studio door through which the Cressetts were to appear. After meeting them, he had felt the gravest apprehension about bringing them before the public; he had even felt, beneath all the thick layers of his skin, a certain doubt about the value of the whole Pelican affair. However, there was an increasing stream of letters demanding more of the Cressetts, and John never believed in denying the public what they wanted.

Mr Cressett came in wearing a very tight navy blue suit and a stiff collar; he was greatly embarrassed by the powder that had been put on his face. Mrs Cressett, in ample puce lace, had refused all but the minimum of make-up. She appeared very large, he very small....

'Oh, my God,' said Maureen. 'Poor Dad!'

'Your stepmother looks very imposing,' said her hostess.

Maureen did not answer, but Derek said, 'She's every sort of a cow.' Their hostess looked a little shocked.

'I could kill Johnnie,' Maureen whispered to Derek, 'for getting Dad into this.'

'I'd like to know what that old cow's leading poor old Johnnie into,' he whispered back.

Their hostess frowned and put her finger to her lips for silence. It was all very well the Kershaws having all their friends and relations on T.V., but to pretend that they didn't like it was a simple show- off. ...

'I believe you come from East Anglia, Mrs Cressett?'  John was asking now. He gave an encouraging smile, as though she might fear that if she answered the question a lion would swallow her up. But Alice Cressett had no fears. 'That's right,' she said. 'I was born at Lowestoft. We lived twenty-two years at Melpham. That was with Canon and Mrs Portway. She was his sister-in-law, you know, a well-known actress. Then we were at Norwich and then we came to London. I married Harold Cressett late.' It was not very interesting to the viewers and she did not try to make it so. They had asked her to tell them the facts and she did so. However, they had also told her to look cheerful, so she attempted a smile upon her comfortable features.

Many viewers remarked on what a simple, ordinary, pleasant-faced woman she was. Gerald's host at a West End club, peering into a darkened room, whispered, 'That's the television room.'

Gerald, seeing John was on the screen, was about to move on as quickly as possible when Mrs Cressett's name was spoken. He looked at her with great interest. It may have been an unconscious memory of her harsh treatment of his sprained ankle that made him uneasy, but he thought, 'She doesn't look the good, simple soul that Mrs Portway described. I trust I shan't have to interview
her
about Melpham.'

'Good old soul,' said his host with a laugh, and they went on to the coffee-room....

'Father was a coachman,' Mrs Cressett was saying.

'Well, that certainly takes us back a bit,' John remarked, 'but I believe it was once his lot to take part in an important archaeological excavation. Not the usual duty of a coachman, I must say.'

'Yes,' said Alice, 'Father helped with the digging. They discovered the grave of an old bishop in the grounds of Melpham Hall where we worked.' She had wanted to say 'the tomb of Bishop Eorpwald', but for some reason Mr Middleton seemed to think she ought not to know its proper name.

'Ah, yes,' John smiled, 'the tomb of Eorpwald, Bishop of Sedwich, I believe. He died in 695. Quite a long time ago. I suppose the discovery caused a good deal of talk locally,' he said breezily.

'Oh, yes,' said Mrs Cressett, 'and in London. Scholars came from everywhere. But
we
didn't make much of it.' She brought out this last sentence with evident reluctance. Once again she had been
told
to say it, though why it should be supposed that the villagers of Melpham would not have been interested in a local event that got into tbe London newspapers she couldn't imagine. ...

'Trust her to do all the talking,' Derek whispered.

'Anything is better than poor Dad making a fool of himself,' Maureen replied. She spoke too soon. ...

John turned to Mr Cressett. 'I suppose you were very interested when you found that your wife had been associated with an archaeological excavation, whatever
she
may have thought about it. I believe you're a very keen reader of history and indeed a great reader generally.'

'Yes,' said the little man in a sad, slow voice. 'When I am not gardening I always have my nose in a book' - Mrs Cressett's eyes narrowed with hatred - 'Archaeology in particular,' he went on, 'interests me greatly.' He paused, and John, knowledgeable in such things, feared that he was about to dry up. Indeed, Mr Cressett was overcome with terror and could not remember a word of the script they had rehearsed. Suddenly, however, the article on archaeology in one of his favourite encyclopaedias came back to him and, just as John was about to intervene, he began to recite it.

'Archaeology,' he said, 'is yearly proving itself to be one of the most valuable handmaids of human knowledge. Year after year treasures come to light revealing the past in all its day-to-day detail - treasures unearthed from the very ground on which we take our evening stroll or from which we get our annual harvest. Mesopotamia, the birthplace of civilization, has revealed its mighty temples, its rich carvings, and its strange writing cut in stone known to scholars as cuneiform…'

John shifted uneasily and began to mumble, but Mr Cressett went on: 'Perhaps no single discovery has so excited the imagination of the man in the street as the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen, the Pharaoh of Egypt. ...'

Maureen seized Derek's arm. 'Oh, my God!' she said, 'I can't bear it. I'm sorry,' she turned to their hostess; 'I knew something awful would happen. I can't face it, Derek. We must go.'

Their hostess looked quite annoyed.
'I
think your father's marvellous. Fancy being able to reel all that off!' She turned to rebuke Maureen for her unfilial attitude, but her visitors had fled. Into the darkness of the room Mr Cressett's sad, weak face peered from the little screen.

'It was archaeology, too,' he went on, 'that revealed to us that one of the earliest ancestors of man once trod our own familiar island. Piltdown Man ...'

It is doubtful if John's two dearest ones - Inge and Larrie - would have realized any more than the mass of viewers how near the programme had come to disaster, so instant and powerful were the geniality and charm with which he burst in at the first hesitation in Mr Cressett's recital. In any case, as it happened, they were spared the spectacle of Johnnie's discomfiture and of the wretched market-gardener's sudden attack of automatic memory.

They had fully intended to view the programme together in the drawing-room. Indeed, they had promised John that they would do so as a pledge of their agreement not to quarrel any more. As time had gone by, their quarrels had grown more and more frequent, until their ominous echoes had penetrated even John's egoistic world. It had needed all his charm on his last visit to heal the breach. His visits had come recently at increasingly greater intervals. It was one of the causes of their quarrels. Inge saw less and less charm in a Larrie who did not keep Johnnie at home; Larrie found his new home more and more irksome, unrelieved by Johnnie's presence, while with Johnnie's supplies of cash coming at longer intervals, he was increasingly imprisoned within the four walls of Inge's capricious hospitality. John had been forced to promise that he would make a long stay there in order to reconcile them. The Cressett television programme which they should watch together should be his last engagement for a fortnight. To impress them further he sat down and cancelled his other appointments on the spot. When he was alone with Larrie, he promised the additional reward of a motor tour in Europe in the coming month.

After dinner Inge produced a bottle of Irish whiskey as an earnest of her sincerity in the reconciliation. It was a noble gesture, for a large part of their quarrels had arisen from Larrie's getting drunk. Inge, perhaps, marred the effect a little by underlining her broadminded-ness. 'You see,' she said, 'old Mrs Middleton is not always a spoilsport.'

Larrie put his arm round her waist and dug his fingers into her stiff corseting. 'Sure, and you're a darling, sporty old woman,' he cried. They would have gladly welcomed a return to their former sentimental pictures of one another, for they both loved life to be sweet and happy.

Inge ruffled Larrie's tousled head. 'It is nice to have my
good
little Irish boy back again,' she said. 'We have had such a nasty little boy staying here all these last weeks, not a bit like my nice Larrie.'

Larrie wrinkled up his nose at her. 'It's your own Larrie that's here to stay for good and all now,' he said.

Neither of them felt any embarrassment at this nursery style of talk, though Larrie might have done had a third party been present. He almost promised not to do anything naughty again, but when he remembered his last naughtiness he decided not to mention it. He had been short of cash and had relieved the monotony of his life there by having the German maid over to the stables flat at night. Inge, taken with a sudden romantic wish to look at her early roses at midnight, had caught Irmgard coming back to the house. Clean sex was one thing, but sex with the maids was quite another. It was an interpretation of her precept that servants should be treated as though they were friends which did not fit in with her picture of Larrie as a little orphan boy. He did wisely not to recall the incident.

'Now take the whiskey into the drawing-room. I must go and make myself look splendid for John to look at,' she said.

'And don't you come in rustling your lovely dress after he's begun to speak or he'll not forgive you,' Larrie replied. It was one of the favourite whimsies of their friendly times that John could view them from the television screen as they could view him.

Larrie poured himself out a strong whiskey, sat down in a large oatmeal-coloured armchair, and made his head comfortable on a silver satin cushion. He thought of his holiday with John and of how best to ask for a sports car of his own. He was so overcome by the charm that he intended to use that he already saw John paying out the cheque in the motor sale-room. This in turn filled him with gratitude to the man who would give him foreign holidays and cars. Sure, he thought, the mother of a pal like that was bound to be a grand old lady. And so she was; for all her funny ways, she had a heart of gold and a soul of kindness. When he thought of the alternatives to being at Marlow - beds where and how chance brought them, or the hard work at the pub which Frank Rammage's help represented - it seemed well worth putting up with Inge. He clenched his fist and stiffened his lips and decided that he would 'go straight' to show Johnnie what stuff he had in him.

Inge, too, went upstairs with a light step. Johnnie would be home tomorrow for a whole fortnight. That fortnight seemed to stretch indefinitely in her mind. But she would need Larrie's help. Johnnie's other friendships had been taking him farther and farther away from her; she must not allow this opportunity to disappear. She reminded herself that she had no right to expect perfection of Larrie. If she had brought an ex-Approved School boy into the house, she had no right to complain if he behaved like one. Hostility and criticism would not reform him; she would show patience and kindliness. She was proud of this determination. Also, if Johnnie did not object to Larrie's drunken fits and his other naughty ways - this covered in her mind the unpleasant episode of Irmgard - it was not for her to complain. Better an unreformed Larrie who brought Johnnie home than no Johnnie. Of this chain of thought she was less proud. She began to tell God that she had not really meant that part of her thoughts; if only Johnnie were to stay longer than the fortnight - a week longer, no, four days would be enough, no, perhaps a week - she would honestly and truly try to help Larrie.