The Caxley Chronicles (22 page)

C
HRISTMAS CAME
and went. The tree in the market square grew bedraggled, the tinsel in the shop windows tarnished. It was a relief when Twelfth Night came and everything could be tidied away. Down came the brittle holly, the withered mistletoe. Into the rubbish bins went the dusty Christmas cards, the broken baubles, and the turkey bones, and into the cupboards went some unwanted Christmas presents, placed there by the more frugal for future raffles and bazaars.

It grew iron-cold as the New Year broke and little work could be done on the site of the restaurant. Sep did his best to be patient, but it was almost more than he could endure. This was the great year when he would open his new venture. He wanted everything ready by the spring, down to the napkins and the flowers on the tables. From Easter onwards he looked forward to a growing volume of trade. These delays irked Sep sorely.

In the midst of his frustration he heard that Bender was again in hospital with pleurisy. Sep went at once. He was deeply shocked at Bender's appearance. He had not seen him since his visit to Rose Lodge before Christmas. His eyes were sunken, and he moved his head restlessly on the pillow. His hand, as he took Sep's, felt hot and damp. Now there was no vigour in his grip. He could barely speak.

Sep tried to hide his distress, and talked gently of things which he felt might interest the sick man. Bender scarcely
seemed to hear him. He began to wheeze alarmingly, and a young nurse hurried towards him and tried to hoist him higher on the pillow.

'Let me,' said Sep, sliding an arm under Bender's shoulders. All his memories of wounded men at Caxley station in war-time flooded back to him.

'You've got a good touch, Sep,' wheezed Bender. 'Got a knack you have. That's better now!'

'That's the spirit!' rallied the young nurse, tucking in the bedclothes with painful vigour. 'Not dead yet, you know!'

'It's not death I'm afraid of,' responded Bender, with a flash of his old spirit, 'but living on—with this dam' pain!'

He put a hand to his side and lay silent for a minute.

'Tell me,' he managed to say at last, 'tell me, Sep, about the shop. The plants are ready in the greenhouse whenever it's fit to put them out in the garden. Hilda'll let you have them. And Sep, the jasmine wants trimming back at that old arbour. Makes a deal of growth every year, that stuff.'

Sep promised to attend to it. Suddenly Bender's eyelids drooped and his head fell back. The nurse hurried forward.

'He's asleep again. I think you'd better leave now, Mr Howard. He's having drugs, you know, to relieve the pain.'

Sep nodded and rose to go. There was something pathetic and defenceless about the sleeping man, a look of the boy that Sep remembered years ago. He stood silent, loth to leave him, loth to turn away.

The nurse touched his arm, and he moved unseeingly towards the door. He knew now, with utter desolation, that he would not look upon Bender's face again.

***

It was very cold that night. The market square glistened with frost. Icicles hung from the lions' mouths on the old Queen's fountain. The pigeons, roosting on the ledges of the Town Hall, tucked their heads more deeply into their feathers. The stars above were diamond-bright, the air piercingly sharp.

The ward where Bender lay was dim and shadowy. The young night nurse, on duty, sat at the table at the end near the corridor, a pool of light upon her papers. She shivered in the draught and wrapped her cloak more tightly around her.

It was deathly quiet. Only the sound of laboured breathing, and an occasional moan from the red-blanketed beds, broke the stillness. It was the time of night, as the nurse well knew, when life was at its lowest ebb.

She raised her head, suddenly aware of a change in the ward. Someone, somewhere, had ceased breathing. There was a chill in the air which was not wholly natural.

Quietly she rose and glided swiftly to Bender's bedside. His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open in a smile which was infinitely young and gentle. The nurse held the warm wrist and put her ear to the quiet breast.

At last, she straightened herself) crossed Bender's arms and covered his face with the sheet.

The day of Bender's funeral was cold and bright. It happened to be market day, and Sep, as he crossed the bustling square, thought how Bender would have liked that last touch.

St Peter's was crowded with mourners, many of them from the stalls outside. Bender had been known and respected, not only in Caxley, but for many miles around. His great figure
was as much a part of the market scene as the bronze statue which dominated the place. Bender was going to be sadly missed.

The church looked very lovely. The candles wavered and flickered—now tall as golden crocuses, now small and round as buttercups, as the breeze caught them. On the coffin, at the chancel steps, a great cross of bronze chrysanthemums glowed in the candlelight. The family mourners sat, straight-backed and sad-faced. Among them, Sep was surprised to see, was young Edward.

Winnie and Bertie had not wanted the children to be present, feeling that the occasion was too harrowing for them, but Edward had pleaded passionately to be allowed to attend.

'He's my grandfather. I want to be with him till the end,' announced Edward, his mouth stubborn. 'I'm not a child any more. You must let me go.'

Winnie had been about to protest, but Bertie restrained her.

'The boy's right,' he said quietly. 'He's part of the family. Let him take his place.'

And so Edward was the youngest mourner present. Sep and Edna sat towards the back, and Sep couldn't help noticing how old and bent many of the congregation were. It was a shock to realize that he would be seventy in a few years' time and that these people were his and Bender's contemporaries. Did he too look so old, Sep wondered? He did not feel any older than he had when he had first taken his lovely Edna to live in the market square, and together they had worked so hard to build up the business.

And that would not have been possible, thought Sep, his eyes on the coffin, if it had not been for Bender's timely help.
He had a debt to him which he could never repay—and it was not only a material debt. His whole life had been inextricably bound up with that of the dead man. Bender's influence upon him had been immeasurable. To say that he would miss him was only stating a tenth of the effect which Bender's passing meant to him.

What was it, Sep mused in the shadowy church, that created the bond between them? They had shared schooldays, manhood and all the joys, troubles and setbacks of war and peace. Together they had played their parts in the life of Caxley. The market square had been their stage—the kaleidoscopic background to tragedy and farce. Their families had intermarried, their grandchildren were shared.

But that was not all.

Sep felt for Bender—and always had—a variety of emotions: fear, affection, pity, hero-worship, and, at times, distaste for his ebullience and ruthlessness. Perhaps he could best sum up these mingled feelings as awareness. Whatever happened to Bender affected Sep. Whatever had happened to Sep was measured for him by Bender's possible reaction to it. He could never remember a time when he had been entirely independent of the other man. Bender mattered. What Bender thought of Sep mattered, and reason, principles, codes of conduct—even religion itself—could not entirely guide Sep's actions while Bender lived.

A vital part of Sep had died too when Bender died. From now on the stuff of Sep's life would be woven in more muted hues. The brightest, the strongest, and the most vivid thread in the fabric would be missing.

***

That afternoon Sep made his way alone to the old garden behind the restaurant. It was sadly neglected. The workmen had trodden down the borders, the lawn was bare and muddy, the shrubs splashed with lime and paint where the men had plied their brushes carelessly.

Sep stood in silence, taking stock. With care, before long, it should look as it did in Bender's day. The grey spiky foliage of pinks still lined the edge of the path. The lilac bushes already showed buds as large and green as peas. Dead seed-pods of irises and lupins made rattling spires above the low growing pansies and periwinkles at their feet. It should all be as it was, vowed Sep silently surveying the scene of decay.

He made his way to the ancient arbour which was covered with jasmine. It had been made years earlier for Bender's mother to sit in and enjoy the sunshine. Now it was damp and mouldering. Sep sat down on the rickety bench. Bright spots of coral fungus decorated the woodwork, and splashes of bird droppings made white arabesques on the floor. An untidy nest spilt grass and moss from the rustic work at the corners of the doorway. Broken snails' shells surrounding a large flint by the entrance showed where the thrushes used their anvil. The brick floor was slimy and interlaced with vivid lines of green moss and the silver trails of slugs.

It was very tranquil. The river whispered nearby and the overgrown jasmine rustled gently in the little breeze from the water. Tomorrow, thought Sep, he would bring his shears and trim back the waving fronds as Bender had directed.

He rose to go, and then caught sight of something white half-hidden in the shadows under the seat. He bent down to retrieve it and carried it into the dying light of the winter afternoon.

It was a toy boat. It must belong to one of the Parker children, he supposed, but it was exactly like the boat he had once bought for Leslie long ago. Money had been short, he remembered, but the boy had looked at it with such longing in his dark eyes, that Sep had gone into the shop and paid a shilling for the little yacht. How it brought it all back!

Sep stroked the rusty hull, and straightened the crumpled sail. How many generations had sailed their boats on the Cax's placid surface? And how many more would do so in the future?

With the first flush of warmth that he had felt that day, Sep remembered Edward. One day his children—Sep's great-grandchildren-would carry their boats across this now deserted garden and set them hopefully upon the water.

Smiling now, Sep made his way from the peace of the riverside to the noise and confusion of the emerging restaurant. He paused to set the little yacht on the foot of the stairs leading to Bender's old home, where its young owner would find it—safely in harbour.

The short afternoon was rapidly merging into twilight. The stall holders were beginning to pack up now. The children from the marsh were already skimming round the stalls, like hungry swifts, and screaming with much the same shrill excitement. This was the time when the stall holders gave away the leavings, when a battered cabbage or a brown banana or two were tossed to eager hands. Many a prudent Caxley housewife was there too, glad to get a joint or some home-made cheese or butter at half price.

The dust vans were already beginning to collect the litter.
The dustmen's brooms, a yard wide, pushed peelings, straw and paper before them. Colour from all over the world was collected and tossed into the waiting vans—squashed oranges from Spain, bruised scarlet tomatoes from Jersey, yellow banana skins from Jamaica, the vibrant purplish-pink tissue paper which had swathed the Italian grapes—all were mingled with the gentler colours of the straw, the walnut shells and the marbled cabbage leaves from the Caxley countryside.

Already the sun had sunk behind St Peter's, where earlier in the day Sep had watched part of his life put quietly away. The air ; was beginning to grow chilly, and the market people redoubled their efforts and their clamour to get their work finished before nightfall.

Sep turned at his doorway to watch them. For them, it was the end of just another market day. For him, it was the end of an era. He let his eyes roam over the darkening scene. In an hour's time the market folk would have departed—folk as colourful and ephemeral as summer butterflies.

But the market square would remain, solid and enduring, a place of flint and brick, iron and cobbles, shabby and familiar, ugly and beloved. There was no other place quite like it. Caxley life might pulse throughout the network of streets and alleys on each side of the slow-running Cax, but here, in the market square, was the heart of the town.

Here sprang the spirit, here the hope. Sep looked across at the dark shell of Bender's old shop, awaiting its future life, and was comforted.

I
N THE
weeks that followed, Sep's spirits rose. An unusually mild spell gave the workmen a chance to make progress unhindered by frost. If things continued at this pace, he would certainly open on time.

Whenever he could spare a few moments from his own shop, Sep was at the new premises watching with a keen eye all that was being done. He took a particular interest in the remaking of the garden. He knew little about gardening. He had never owned one, and had been too busy to acquire much knowledge of plants and flowers, but Bertie proved to have the North flair for gardening, and he and Edward offered to help in the work.

Bertie's own garden was a constant joy to him. He was very proud of his property and liked to do jobs himself. Since his father's death Winnie was often at Rose Lodge with the children, and Bertie was left undisturbed to enjoy his gardening and his attempts at carpentering and decorating.

Bertie had tried to persuade his mother to make her home with him, but she disliked the idea of becoming dependent upon the next generation. She had always felt a fierce pride in possessions, and would not consider parting with any of the things which made Rose Lodge so dear to her.

'It would break my heart to have to sell, Bertie, and that's what I'd have to do. There simply wouldn't be room for
everything, and every single piece means so much to me. That desk of your father's, for instance—and that ugly old flat-iron to hold down his papers! Why, I can't throw that away! And that chair—I used to sit on it to change your nappies, dear. Just the right height for me. No, it can't be done! I shall stop here until I'm too old and doddery to cope, and you must all come and see me as often as you can.'

And so it had been settled. After the first shock of grief had gone, Hilda set about running the house and her many charitable activities with all her old zest and efficiency. She went out and about to friends and relations in Caxley, and delighted in her grandchildren, but she was thankful to settle by her own fireside at Rose Lodge each evening, with all the dear souvenirs of a happy life around her.