As Far as You Can Go (6 page)

His own chest was all right, though, in fact if there was a criticism to be made of it, it was that it could, perhaps, have done with a little of his father’s protective camouflage. There were three or four long and repulsively pubic-looking hairs around each nipple, but that was all. They looked as if they had stopped off at the two pink and rubbery oases on their way from chin to groin, or vice versa. Harold had cut them off once with a pair of nail-scissors, not because he didn’t want to appear masculine, but because their lack of numbers and excessive length in such an isolated position made him feel ridiculous. But they had only grown again, longer and more idiosyncratic than ever. He gave them a friendly rub, and they responded by curling round his fingers. An example of the very purest Narcissism, he thought.

His body was always rather a problem. Stark naked he really looked rather good, he considered, but one didn’t want to strip in front of everyone, and Helen was very boring about making him wear pyjamas. So only bits and pieces ever showed, and they didn’t do him justice. His legs, for instance, were really very nicely shaped when seen from hip to ankle, but in shorts they lost all proportion. The knees looked weak, the thighs too large, the calves too small. It was the same with his torso. With the eccentric hairs around the nipples
of an otherwise nude chest, he felt absurd without a shirt. But remove shirt
and
trousers, and everything looked splendid: plenty of hair in all the right places then, and a solid chunky body that was definitely pleasing. He had once thought about joining a nudist club to give his body a fair showing. But he had decided against it, somewhat to his own relief. They all seemed to take it so seriously, to judge by those dreadful magazines, and they were all frankly hideous. He couldn’t very well stare at himself all day long. And anyway, you could never tell, the whole thing might prove impossibly embarrassing.

Helen knocked loudly on the door.

Sighing, Harold left the mirror and began to dress. There was quite a lot to do before he went to Buckinghamshire for the week-end. Mrs Fanshaw might be back in Craxton Street by now, wailing over her damaged kitchen. Harold’s own flat had to be put in order.

“I must be off,” he said to Helen. “I shouldn’t really have spent the night here. The house may have caught fire again while I was away. That happens, you know. A second fire a few hours after a first.”

“It would be no loss,” said Helen. “Those houses should be pulled down. It’s time you found somewhere better to live, Harold.”

He ignored what he regarded as deliberate provocation for a moment, then decided to cause alarm and
despondency
.

“Dennis was offering me a job in America yesterday,” he said casually.

Brenda said, “Oooh,
Harold,
how exciting.”

“What kind of job?” said Helen.

“A sort of vague—I don’t know—an assignment, you could call it.”

“Hmm,” said Helen. “I should have thought it a pity to leave Fenway’s after the work you’ve put in there.”

“Of course,” said Harold. “But one gets fed up, restless. I’m seriously considering it.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Helen. “I’d like to see what your parents would have to say to
that
.”

But she looked rather shaken. Pleased with himself, Harold kissed her briskly good-bye and went back to Craxton Street.

T
HERE WERE GUESTS
for dinner at the Barlows’, and Harold could not remember their names. One of them, he was almost sure, was called Mrs Crankshaw, but it might be Crowhurst, and the other was Captain Boulding or maybe Bilding or possibly even Burden or Barton. He had never met either of them before, and it soon became clear from his mother’s contrived air of politeness that he almost certainly wouldn’t meet them again. They were newcomers to the village, and claimed to be brother and sister, widower and widow. They had taken the Old Vicarage on a long lease, and complained about the lack of shops in the village and that they had to go four miles to get to the station.

Mrs Barton had invited them, thinking it her duty to be pleasant to new neighbours, but their succession of complaints was visibly annoying her.

“But how can you say that?” she said to Captain Barton or Boulding, who had just made some disparaging remark about the lack of a decent Saloon Bar in either the Royal Oak or the Buckley Arms. “We don’t want coach-loads of people coming here, surely. The whole point about Peterham is that it’s quiet and country and almost
untouched
.”

“I can’t agree with you,” said the Captain. “I think one needs the modern conveniences, you know. It’s awfully hard to be comfortable without them.”

“Well,
I
think coach-loads of beer-drinkers would be a most terrible
in
convenience, I must say.”

“I don’t like a cess-pit,” said the Captain. “A main sewer man, that’s me. Things are always going wrong with
cess-pits
. They’re not healthy.”

“I can see you’re not a true countryman, then,” said Harold’s mother. “We’ve never had anything else, and it’s never been the slightest trouble.”

“Wait a moment, Mary,” said Mr Barlow. “We did have that time we had to call in that man from Marlow, you remember.”

“Oh, dear,” said Mrs Crowhurst or whatever, “I do hope we don’t have any trouble. Jack is simply
not
good at doing things around the house, are you, darling?”

Mrs Barlow winced at the “darling”, but she said, “I dare say plumbing is very simple at sea, isn’t it?”

“Not too difficult. The basic principle is to chuck
everything
overboard. Saves a lot of time and trouble.”

“I must say I don’t altogether approve of that,” said Mr Barlow. “This pollution business is becoming a real problem, you know, quite ruining the fishing in places.”

“Ah, but that’s not the Navy, you know. That’s a wholly different problem. It’s the factories. I saw a most remarkable sight the other day, somewhere near Slough, I think. There was a little canal thing, it looked like, completely covered with white foam. They say it’s something to do with
detergents
. That’s the sort of thing that’s ruining the fishing. You can put what you like in the sea, it won’t hurt it.”

“But the bathing,” said Mrs Barlow. “I’m told there are beaches in Lancashire which used to be beautiful, but now they’re simply insanitary.”

“Yes,” said the Captain. “But that’s not the Navy, either, Mrs Barlow. That’s the towns discharging their sewage into the sea. They don’t get it far enough out. Or they don’t take into account the prevailing tide, so the stuff simply gets washed straight ashore! I agree with you, it’s most
unpleasant
, but it’s not the Navy.”

“Well, something should be done about it.”

“Oh, I agree. I agree absolutely.”

“When did you retire, Captain?” said Mr Barlow.

“Just a year ago. I’ve been looking around for something to do ever since, really. But I thought it would be better to find somewhere to live, first. And then Dolly’s husband died and we decided to go fifty-fifty. I must really set about
finding
myself a useful and lucrative pastime. The Navy’s a splendid life, you know, and you feel a bit let down when they say time’s up. But you have to make way for the young.”

He looked so smug when he said that that Harold wanted to ask him what he felt about the youth of today, but he managed to stop himself.

“I don’t think the young are worth making way for, myself,” said Mr Barlow. “They don’t seem to have the will. The
spirit,
that’s what’s missing.”

“You’re not far wrong there,” said the Captain. “When I was doing a couple of years at Dartmouth—oh, just after the war, it was, wasn’t it, Dolly?—I remember we had great difficulty in getting the right type of boy, and even when we got him he wasn’t as good as he should have been. It’s the sense of service that’s lacking, we found. They have
everything
too easy these days, I suspect. I’m not an illiberal man, and I think the Health Service, for instance, has done a lot of good for some people, but there’s no doubt about it, the welfare state attitude isn’t good for the Navy.”

“That’s it,” said Mr Barlow, “that’s it exactly. They don’t have any sense of service. No loyalty, that’s what it amounts to.”

“Oh, you’re so right,” said Mrs Crankshaw-Crowhurst, “you couldn’t
be
more right. Trying to get a decent servant today is like looking for a needle in a haystack. And the amount of money they want, it’s simply disgraceful.”

“I think you’ll find people in the village are very
reasonable
,” said Mrs Barlow. “They all like to earn a little extra. I have no trouble in getting women in to do the housework.
No
trouble at all.” She smiled patronizingly.

“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“Not in Peterham.”

“Absolutely impossible to get them to
work,
too.”

“I think you’re exaggerating a little. I think you’ll find the women only too glad to earn a little extra.”

“Like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Dolly Crawshaw, as Harold suddenly recalled the name. She smiled at Mr Barlow as though asking for help against his wife.

“Men are just as bad,” said the Captain. “We’re trying to get ourselves a gardener—the place is simply overgrown at the moment, you know—but the only people we can find want a fantastic wage. Over seven pounds a week.”

“There’s a minimum, you know,” said Mrs Barlow. “It’s fixed by the government.”

“I don’t care who fixes it, it’s too much.”

“And then,” said Mrs Crawshaw, “they expect you to pay some enormous amount a week in the form of insurance stamps. It’s simply wicked. I don’t know how people like us are supposed to make ends meet.”

“It’s always the wretched middle-classes,” said Mr
Barlow
. “The rich can have their take-over bids and all the rest of it, but the middle-classes are the ones who pay the taxes.”

“You’re in the City, aren’t you?” said the Captain, leaning across the table at Harold. “Isn’t there some way these terrible people can be stopped from buying everyone up?”

“Not really,” said Harold. “It’s called free-enterprise capitalism.”

“Now, Harold, let’s not have any of that left-wing
nonsense
of yours.”

“It’s not left-wing nonsense. It’s plain fact, that’s all. If you like free enterprise, then you have to put up with
takeover
bids.”

“Are you Labour?” said Mrs Crawshaw in amazement.

“He’s practically Communist,” said Mr Barlow. “Thinks we all live too well.”

“Not at all. I work in the City, don’t I?”

The Captain gave Harold the sort of look that he had no doubt practised for years on junior officers who got uppish in the wardroom. Then he said, “I don’t think Macmillan will have much trouble winning the election, do you?”

“Shouldn’t have,” said Mr Barlow.

“Are you going to vote Labour?” said Mrs Crawshaw to Harold. “You can’t, surely, I mean, can you?”

“I shan’t vote at all,” said Harold. “Politics bore me. There’s no one I want to vote
for,
you see.”

“That pretty well describes what I’ve got against people of your generation,” said the Captain, giving him the
quelling
look again. Harold immediately added Belsen to the list of possible names for him. “You all sit around moaning and complaining, and you’ll none of you put your backs into a job of work. No sense of service.”

“No spirit,” said Mr Barlow.

“Nothing personal, of course,” said Belsen. “You may be an exception. I don’t know you well enough to say.”

“Oh, you’re absolutely right,” said Mr Barlow. “Harold has about enough spirit to warm a pan of milk.”

“Really, dear,” said Mrs Barlow, “you know Harold works very hard.”

“Thank you,” said Harold.

“Works hard to avoid work, if you ask me.”

Belsen laughed. Harold gave him the contemptuous glance of one who knows that, if it came to it, he could run further and faster than his opponent, implied in which was a superior sexual ability and an accusation that Belsen and his like were responsible for two world wars. It was too complex a glance to be very effective, but it was satisfying to use.

Mrs Crawshaw said, “Aren’t you rather hard, you men?”

“Not hard enough, that’s the trouble,” said Mr Barlow. “Harold’s brother, you know, insisted on going straight up to the university in the hope he’d avoid national service. And it looks as though he will.”

It was the one thing Harold would always have over his brother in his father’s eyes, and at times he was genuinely grateful. Timothy, though, might conceivably get a Blue for golf, which would be unpardonable.

“You neither of you have children, do you?” asked Mrs Barlow, brightly sympathetic.

“Alas, not,” said Mrs Crawshaw.

Captain Belsen looked thoughtfully at Mrs Barlow, opened his mouth as though to say something, then shut it again, and pushed at a few pieces of cheese-rind with his knife.

“Shall we withdraw?” said Mr Barlow, breaking what was beginning to be an awkward silence.

“You
must
allow me to help with the washing-up,” said Mrs Crawshaw to Mrs Barlow.

“Oh, no, my dear, there’s nothing to do. There’s a woman in the morning to see to it.”

Obviously nettled, Mrs Crawshaw said, “You must be marvellous with servants, Mrs Barlow.”

“I have them,” said Harold’s mother with a sweet smile. “You go ahead, would you, while I get the coffee?”

Harold helped his mother clear the table, not minding clearing anything like as much as washing-up.

“Who are those terrible people?” he said.

“Hush, dear, they might hear you. They
say
they’re brother and sister, but if you ask me they’re nothing of the sort. In fact, if I was old-fashioned, I’d say they were living in sin. I expect one of them can’t get a divorce. I certainly don’t believe that they’ve both lost husbands and—you know what I mean.”

“They could still be brother and sister,” said Harold.

His mother straightened up sharply from the trolley on which the dishes were being put. “You
can’t
mean that, Harold.”

“Well, it’s possible.”

“You shouldn’t say such things.”

“I only said it’s possible.”

“Do you think they could be?”

“It’s happened before.”

“Oh, no, it’s too outrageous,” said Mrs Barlow. She bent to the trolley again. “Well, we needn’t bother to have them again, anyway.”

“No. But they’ll have to ask you back.”

“If you ask me, they’re not the sort of people we want in Peterham, anyway. And if they go on not liking it as much as they do now, with any luck they’ll have gone in a few months.”

“Why is Daddy so crotchety this evening? Have I done anything I shouldn’t have?”

“I don’t think so, dear. He’s been grumpy for days.”

Harold wandered round the room, making no further effort to help, then suddenly said, “I’m getting awfully fed up with Fenway’s.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I’m just bored, that’s all. They expect you to go on being bored for years before you do anything
interesting
, and to be honest it’s not very interesting even when you get it.”

“But it’s a very good job, Harold.”

“I know that. And that I’ll make a lot of money later on. But it’s very tedious waiting.”

His mother looked at him for a moment, then she said, “You don’t want to get married or anything, do you?”

“God, no.”

“Well, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, really. I just feel fed up.”

“Well, dear, everyone has to go through it. I know it seems a long time before you get really established, but it’s the same with everything, you know.”

“I don’t
want
to be established, Mummy. I can’t think of anything more awful than being established.”

“Now you’re being silly,” she said. “Go on and join the others. I’ll bring the coffee in in a moment.”

“But, don’t you see, everyone’s established, and it’s a bore. You just go on and on till you become very established indeed, and then you retire. It’s all so dull.”

“Well, what do you want to do, then?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

She gave him a thoroughly old-fashioned look and wheeled the trolley out, saying, “You can’t help those who won’t help themselves.”

Harold wondered what she meant, then decided she was simply repeating a piece of folk wisdom that didn’t mean anything but which sounded incontrovertible and
comforting
. Of course you could help people who wouldn’t help themselves. It was called aid to underdeveloped areas.

He stared out at the garden, wondering what on earth he did want to do, until he saw his father and Belsen and Mrs Crawshaw come out on to the lawn with croquet mallets. He hoped very much that Belsen and Mrs Crawshaw
were
brother and sister living in sin. It was certainly more
interesting
being incestuous than working at Fenway’s and motor-scooting off to copulate with Helen. It would be doing
something,
anyway.

His father took a cheroot out of his mouth and shouted, “Harold! Where are you? Come and play croquet.”

He went to play croquet.

As the light faded, Harold took considerable pleasure in despatching his father’s ball into the darker corners of the shrubbery. Mrs Crawshaw, tactically, he sent into the
rose-garden
. Belsen didn’t seem to enjoy the game much, and was content to do whatever Harold told him, or at least to try and do it. His eye didn’t seem too good, Harold thought, and blaming it on the lawn did Belsen no good with Mr Barlow.