The Caxley Chronicles (2 page)

'Just serving Miss Violet,' replied Septimus. He paused as though wondering if he should say more. Unwonted excitement nudged him into further disclosures.

'She's as good as promised me the order for Miss Frances' wedding cake,' he confided. 'You could've knocked me down with a feather.'

He hurried into the shop in front of Bender and scurried behind the counter. Beaming indulgently, Bender followed with heavy tread. The air was warm and fragrant with the delicious odours from steaming pies, pasties, scones, fruit cakes and a vast dark dish of newly-baked gingerbread, glistening with fat and black treacle.

Mrs Howard was serving. Her hands scrabbled among the wares, dropped them in paper bags, twirled the corners and
received the money as though she had not a minute to lose. Howard's bakery was patronised by the stallholders as well as the town people on market day and trade was brisk.

'A pork pie, please, Sep,' said Bender. 'A big 'un. I'll pay now.'

He watched the baker inspecting the row of pies earnestly and felt amusement bubbling up in him. Same old Sep! Dead solemn whatever he was doing! Why, he'd seen him at school, years before, studying his sums with just that same patient worried look, anxious to do the right thing, fearful of causing offence.

'They all look good to me,' said Bender. 'Any of 'em'll suit me.' Lord love Almighty, he thought, we'll be here till Christmas if old Sep don't get a move on!

The baker lifted a beauty with care, put it in a bag and came round the counter to give it to Bender.

'I'll open the door for you,' he said. 'So many people pushing in you might get it broken.'

'That's what you want, ain't it?'

'You know that,' said Septimus earnestly.

They found themselves in the doorway, Sep still holding the bag.

'I should be able to let you have the last of the loan at the end of the week, Bender,' he said in a low voice.

'You don't want to fret yourself about that,' answered Bender, with rough kindness. 'No hurry as far as I'm concerned.'

'But there is as far as I am,' said Sep with dignity. 'I don't like to be beholden. Not that I'm not grateful, as you well know—'

'Say no more,' said Bender. 'Hand us the pie, man, and I'll be getting back to the shop.'

The baker handed it over and then looked about the market square as though he were seeing it for the first time.

'Nice bright day,' he said with some surprise.

'Expect it in June,' replied Bender. 'It'll be the longest day next week. Then we'll start seeing the trimmings going up. They tell me the Council's having bunting all round the square and down the High Street.'

'Well, it's over sixty years since the last Coronation,' said Septimus. 'About time we had a splash. It seems only yesterday we were decorating the town for the old Queen's Diamond Jubilee!'

'Four years ago,' commented Bender. 'That was a real do, wasn't it, Sep? Beer enough to float a battleship.'

He dug his massive elbow into the baker's thin ribs, and gave a roar of laughter that sent the pigeons fluttering. Septimus's white face grew dusky with embarrassment.

'Ah! I was forgetting you'd signed the pledge,' chuckled his tormentor. 'You'll have to change your ways now the war's over and we've got a new King. Be a bit more sporty, and enjoy life, Sep! Once we've crowned Edward the Seventh on June the twenty-sixth you'll find Caxley'll start fizzing. Keep up with the times, Sep my boy! You're not a Victorian any longer!'

Muttering some excuse the little baker hurried back to his customers, while Bender, balancing the fragrant white parcel on his great hand, strode back through the puddles and the pigeons, smiling at his secret thoughts.

***

Septimus stepped down into his busy shop, trying to hide the agitation this encounter had caused. Why should a brush with Bender always give him this sick fluttering in his stomach? He had known him all his life—been born within a few yards and in the same year as this man. They had shared schooldays, celebrations, football matches, and all the life of the little town, but always the rift remained.

'You're nothing but a yellow coward,' Sep told himself disgustedly, stacking hot loaves in the window. 'Why can't you meet Bender man to man? He's no better than you are. His joking's only a bit of fun, and yet you are all aquake the minute he starts to take a rise out of you.'

He watched Bender stopping to speak to one of the stallholders. He saw his great shoulders heave with laughter as he turned again and vanished into the murk of his shop. At once Sep's tension relaxed, and he despised himself for it. Did Bender ever guess, he wondered, how much he affected other people?

Take this morning, for instance, thought the little baker, threading his way through the customers to the comparative peace of the bakehouse at the back. Bender could never have known how much he would upset him by talking of Queen Victoria like that. The death of the old Queen had shaken many people. Septimus Howard was one of them. She was more to him than a reigning monarch. She was the mother of her people, a symbol of security, prosperity and order. She offered an example of high-minded principles and respectable family life. She was the arch-matriarch of a great nation. And Septimus loved her.

He loved her because, in his eyes, she had always been right
and she had always been there, safely on the throne of England. His father and mother, staunch Methodists both, had revered the Queen with almost as much piety as the stern God they worshipped, thrice every Sunday, at the Wesleyan Chapel in the High Street. Their children, with the possible exception of flighty Louisa, shared their parents' devotion.

Septimus knew he would never forget the shock of that terrible news which Caxley had heard only a few months before. It was a dark January afternoon, the shop was empty and Sep had been engaged in cutting wrapping paper ready for the next day's supplies. He saw Tom Bellinger, the verger of St Peter's across the square, hurry up the steps and disappear inside. Within three minutes the tolling bell began to send out its sad message.

Sep put aside his knife and went to the door.

'Who's gone?' he asked Sergeant Watts, the policeman, who was striding by.

'The Queen, God rest her,' he replied. For one moment they stood facing each other in silence, then the policeman hurried on, leaving Septimus too stricken to speak. He made his way to the quiet warmth of the bakehouse and sat down, stunned, at the great scrubbed table where he made the loaves, letting the tears roll unchecked down his cheeks. Not even when his father had died had he felt such a seme of loss. This was the end of life as he knew it. An England without Queen Victoria at its head seemed utterly strange and frightening.

Septimus disliked change. He was not sure that he wanted to be an Edwardian. Something in that new word made him as nervous as he felt in Bender's presence. He suspected that the new monarch had some of Bender's qualities; his gusto, his
hearty laugh, his ease of manner and his ability to know what the other fellow was thinking. The new King loved life. Septimus, his humble subject, was a little afraid of it. He mourned Victoria, not only for herself, but for all that she stood for—a way of life which had lasted for decades and which suited him, as it had suited so many of his fellow countrymen.

At the time of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, a fund had been opened in Caxley to provide a lasting memorial of this outstanding reign. Septimus Howard was one of the first contributors. He gave as much as he could possibly afford, which was not a great deal, for times were hard with him just then, and his fourth child was about to be born. But he was proud to give, and prouder still when he stood in the market place, later that year, and watched the fine drinking fountain, surmounted by a statue of Her Majesty, being unveiled by the Mayor in his red robe of office.

Now four years later, the statue stood as an accepted landmark in Caxley. Children played on its steps and drank from the four iron cups chained at each corner of the plinth supporting the sovereign. The cheerful rogue who sold bunches of roses in the market, sprinkled his wilting blooms with water from the great basin, and Mrs Petty dipped in an enamel mug and sloshed the contents over the fish stall before the afternoon customers arrived. The fountain was much appreciated, and Caxley folk often wondered how they had managed so long without it.

But to Septimus, the statue above it gave greater comfort. He looked down upon it every morning whilst he shaved at the mahogany stand in the bedroom window. The view, it is true, was shrouded a little by the lace curtains which modestly
covered the windows, but that morning glimpse of Victoria meant much to the little baker.

And now, on this hot June morning, with excitement mounting everywhere at the thought of the Coronation so soon to come, Sep looked again at the small bronze crown just showing above the flapping awnings in the market square. The shop was more crowded than ever, the heat was intense, the noise deafening, but Sep had found new strength.

Bender's visit, the thought of the money he owed him, the staggering news from Miss Violet about the order for her niece's wedding cake, suddenly seemed to matter less. Somehow, Sep knew, he would be able to face everything. Surely, to have spent all the thirty-five years of one's life with the example of the Queen to follow must give a chap enough strength to recognise and perform his duties, and to welcome her son without trepidation!

He squared his shoulders, dropped six sugary buns into a paper bag and handed it down to a waiting urchin.

'Threepence, my dear,' said Mr Howard the baker briskly.

All fears had gone, and Sep was himself again.

'N
ASTY ACCIDENT
over at Beech Green,' observed Bender to his wife Hilda that evening.

'What's happened?' asked Mrs North, putting down the vast pair of trousers, belonging to her husband, which she was mending.

'Some youngster—forgotten his name—fell off the top of one of Miller's hay wagons. Young Jesse Miller was in the shop this afternoon. He told me. Just been up to see the boy at the hospital. Wheel went over his shoulder, so Jesse said. Pretty bad evidently.'

'People have no business to allow children to get into such danger,' said Hilda North firmly. 'Asking for trouble.'

Bender laughed.

'What about our kids and the boat?' he replied.

'I'm always saying,' retorted his wife, 'that I don't hold with it. One of these days one of ours will be drowned, and you'll only have yourself to blame, Bender.'

'You fret too much,' said Bender good-naturedly. 'They can all swim. What's the point in having a fine river like the Cax at the end of the garden if you don't have a bit of fun on it?'

His wife made no reply. This was an old argument and she had too much mending to get through to waste her energies that evening. Bender turned back to his desk and silence fell again in the sitting-room.

It was a vast, beautifully proportioned room on the first floor. It ran across the shop below and had three fine Georgian windows overlooking the market square. During the day, the room was flooded with sunlight, for it faced south, but now, at nine o'clock on a June evening, the room was in shadow, the gas lamp hissed gently in its globe on the ceiling, casting its light on Hilda's needlework and the great back of Bender bending over his crowded and untidy desk as he wrote out some bills.

Through the window before him he could see the last of the stallholders packing up. Two men with brooms were brushing up cabbage leaves, pieces of paper, orange peel and all the market day débris. The setting sun shone pinkly on the upper parts of the buildings at right angles to Bender's shop. Septimus's bedroom window gleamed like a sheet of gold as it caught the last hour or so of dying sunlight. Soon its light would be doused by the creeping shadow of St Peter's spire, which lengthened and climbed steadily up the west-facing shops and houses in the market square, like some gigantic candle snuffer.

It was quiet in the great room. Bender hummed now and again and shuffled his papers, a faint squeaking from Mrs North's well-laced stays could be heard when she moved to reach more thread from her work-box, and occasionally the whirring of a pigeon's wings as it returned to roost on the parapet of the North's roof.

At last, Bender pushed his papers carelessly to the back of the desk, anchored them with a small ancient flat-iron, and threw himself, with a contented grunt, into the arm chair opposite his wife.

'Why you use that ugly old thing for a paper-weight I can't think!' commented Hilda. 'What's wrong with the glass one we bought at Weymouth last summer?'

'Too fiddle-faddle,' answered Bender easily. 'I like my old dad's flat-iron.'

He began to fill his black Turk's head pipe with deliberation. The fragrance of strong tobacco crept about the room as the great china tobacco jar beside him stood un-stoppered. His big roughened fingers worked delicately at his task, and when the tobacco was tamped down exactly as he liked it Bender took a long paper spill from a vase on the mantel-piece and, crossing to the gas lamp, held it above the globe until it caught fire.

Soon the room was wreathed in clouds of blue smoke, the stopper was replaced and secured with a massive brass screw on the top of the tobacco jar, and Bender was prepared for his evening relaxation.

He looked about him with pleasure. His possessions—the dearest of them still busy with her mending—gave him enormous quiet pride. He liked the grey watered silk wall-paper that had been new when they married twelve years ago, and was now comfortably grubby. He liked the sofa, the armchairs and the two prim little occasional chairs, flanking the sofa, all upholstered in good dark red velvet. He liked the heavy mahogany sideboard, richly carved, and crowded permanently with silver, china, bronze, as well as the ephemera of daily living such as letters awaiting answers, bundles of knitting, indigestion tablets, and spectacle cases.

There was something particularly satisfying too about the octagonal mahogany table which stood always by his arm-chair. His niece had worked the pink and red silk roses on the black satin mat, which stood plumb in the table top's centre. It was a handsome piece of work for a twelve-year-old to have accomplished, thought Bender approvingly, and she had finished it with a splendid silky fringe a good two inches in length. She had also made a companion piece which ran the length of the top of the walnut piano against the wall. Its beauties were somewhat hidden by Hilda's group of naked china cherubs and the two great nautilus shells which stood on each side of them, but the little girl's workmanship was much admired by those waiting to sing, one elbow lodged nonchalantly on the black satin runner while the accompanist was propping the music on the music rest.