The Pandervils (26 page)

At other times—for the tedium of the sermon had to be avoided somehow—he let his fancy stray as far as the Lord God himself. He thought of God as an old man, scholarly, gentle, and preoccupied—a man, indeed rather like his own father. Pictures of God's life in heaven floated to him unbidden and uncensored upon the tide of Mr Pierce's disregarded eloquence. God, in this fantasy of Egg's, spent his eternal day wandering about a large room lined with books, a rather stuffy room smelling of leather; wandering up and down, peering over his spectacles at this title or at that, taking down a book here, a book there, and at last, the choice made, sitting at the table with it to read it from end to end. It was Egg's old Sunday game, this fantasy, and it repeated itself, with variations, week after week. And one day, out of nowhere, there came the odd thought that these thousands of books were simply the lives of all the people in
the world, and that God was their author. Why does he read them, asked Egg, if he wrote them all himself? P'raps he's got a bad memory. I wonder what he thinks of us all? … But of course it was only fancy. God wasn't really like that at all. God was really—‘Let us conclude the morning's worship by singing together Hymn Number …' The responsibility of being in the choir made it impossible for Egg to come to any definite conclusion about the true nature of God.

All things considered, the Ebenezer Chapel could certainly be counted among the pleasures of his life. And, if it did nothing else, it provided him with a sanctuary from Carrie. During that blessed hour-and-a-half every Sunday morning and evening, Carrie could not call out to him (in a voice so like her mother's! ): ‘Eggie dear! I'm in dreadful pain. But of course you don't care whether I live or die.' In chapel he was immune from this persecution; and Carrie, sitting in a pew with Mabe and Bobby and Harold, forgot her own sufferings in the enjoyment of her Saviour's. Mabe was now ‘quite the young woman'; Bobby was fifteen and a winner of scholarships; Harold was ten and suety. Their mother took pride in them, if only the pride of possession; but their father continued to catch himself, in moments of unwariness, wondering why he had begotten them. He couldn't recall having wanted a wife, still less a family; yet here he was, amply provided with both. It's queer, the way things happen, he said to himself. Very queer it is. Now who'd a thought …?

Egg was a chorister of twelve months' standing, and very much at home with the brethren though still shy of their peculiar religious idiom, when a fourth child was born to him. The affair was so ridiculous as to be almost a scandal; and it was just like Egg, said Carrie bitterly, to get her another at
her
age. For nearly ten years she had been ‘lucky', and now, when a body might have supposed all danger past, she was ‘caught'. The child was a boy, and they decided to call him Nicholas.

‘Why Nicholas?' demanded old Mrs Noom, to whom Egg had been bidden carry the news.

‘Why not Nicholas?' retorted Egg.

‘Nicholas Noom or Nicholas Huggins?' asked she.

‘Neither,' said Egg. ‘Nicholas Pandervil. That's all. Now keep your hair on, Ma! You've had your turn. You've had it twice, as I see things. There's Mabel Noom Pandervil, and there's Robert Huggins Pandervil, and there's Harold Richard, called after his poor grandpa.'

‘Nicholas!' Mrs Noom had lost all her teeth but one, and this last survivor lent a certain imbecile emphasis to her sneers. ‘I never heard of such a name. But bless my soul, Egg Pandervil, the poor mite must be named
after
someone! You woont 'ave 'im a heathen, would you?' She brooded in silence for a while; then broke into grumbling speech again. ‘Nicholas! There's never bin no Nicholas in our family, that I
will
say. And if I can't speak my mind to my own son-be-law, things 'ave come to a pretty pickle. Nicholas!—why,
Old Nick 'imself is the only one
I
knows of.' She giggled, baring her one fang again. ‘Hark at me!' she said, self-admiringly, with shrill laughter.
‘Swearing
I am, and me a granny four times over!'

Nicholas began life as a puny child, and his mother had a grudge against him. She had contracted a permanent ill-temper which obliged her to take to her bed a week after her recovery from the effects of the confinement. And once back in bed she gave every sign of intending to stay there, doing unto others as she—in her own mother's reign—had ‘been done by', filling the house not with the sound but with the nervous expectancy of dramatic crisis and lamentation. She would call in a weary singsong tone to husband or to daughter, and, when one of them came to find out what she wanted, she would smile sourly and give this respondent a piece of her mind. It was not, we must hope, a large piece; for there was kindness and courage somewhere dormant in her, and Egg had seen flashes of both, though not so many as he chose both privately and publicly to pretend. Ah, she knew she was a nuisance, she would say, and she prayed that God would forgive them for wishing to be rid of her, for it was only natural, but meanwhile, if she could have a little food sometimes, it would help her to bear up. You're more like your Ma every day, thought Egg—not for the first time, nor yet for the second. And he could hardly be blamed for feeling that young Nicky, the cause of this last manifestation, had put
in a most untimely appearance. Nor did the child make any visible effort to get himself beloved. He cried a great deal; and with Carrie so tiresome, and Mabe gluttonous of sleep after drudging in house and shop all day, the burden of getting out of bed two or three times a night, to feed the baby or rock the baby or carry the baby up and down the room, fell upon Egg's shoulders. The more of these attentions Nicky got, the more regularly and confidently did he demand them; and as time went on, Egg found himself becoming quite unexpectedly and preposterously fond of his torturer. When Nicky reached the age of two it became evident to a discerning eye that he was a Pandervil, the first in this family. One day that comical knob in the middle of his tiny face would become a straight, small, delicately shaped, Pandervil nose. He's going to be like Father to look at, thought Egg; and the flame of vicarious ambition kindled in him. Perhaps the boy would be brainy like Father, too; a scholar, a reader of books. Egg derided himself for daring to entertain such ill-founded hopes. What chance had the son of a struggling grocer!

From bitterness such as this the Ebenezer Chapel was something of a refuge, and for that reason he was shy of anything that might seem to imperil his position as a respected chapel-going citizen. This makes it all the more surprising that he should have behaved as he did to the glossy gentleman who kindly came down from London with the most generous proposals to him. He appeared,
this glossy gentleman, on the morning following a particularly disturbed and unhappy night; and he was received in the parlour, while Mabe attended to customers. He was the most radiant person Egg had ever seen. His boots sparkled; his eyes glinted behind gold-rimmed pince-nez; his teeth flashed goldenly; and his speech was like honey from the honeycomb.

‘I see,' said Egg. ‘If you'll excuse me a minute I'll just have a word with my wife about it. But I'm sure she'll say no, same as I do.'

‘That would be very misguided policy,' returned the glossy gentleman, staring tenderly at the crease in his trousers. ‘If I might suggest, as a friend. …'

Egg did not much like his visitor. ‘I won't keep you more than a minute,' he said. And in very little more than a minute he was back reiterating his decision not to sell Pandervil's Stores to the large and important firm represented by the glossy gentleman.

‘You won't even consider the matter?' The glossy gentleman couldn't believe his ears. ‘Let me persuade you.' Egg shook his head, and moved suggestively towards the door. ‘I could mention a figure that would interest you.'

Egg led the way back into the shop, where his visitor was forced to follow him. ‘No figures would interest me. Thanks all the same.'

‘Then I shall be put to a great deal of trouble,' murmured the glossy gentleman, in a sad, insinuating tone. ‘Do you know what I shall do, Mr
Pennyvil? I shall take a note of all your prices. At whatever sacrifice I shall procure other and better premises uncomfortably near to you. And I shall undercut you. We are a very big organization, and we can afford to lose money for ten years. Does that amuse you, Mr Pennyvil?'

Egg stared in surprise at the smiling face that so blandly interrogated him. The meaning of what was being said to him slowly cohered in his mind. And then he experienced, for the third time in this history, one of those rare moments of release from his world of diffidence and hesitancy into a kind of madness.

‘And I tell you what
I'll
do, mister,' he said, in rising tones. ‘I tell you what
I'll
do.' he repeated excitedly. His eyes were blazing, his fists clenched. ‘I'll PUNCH YOU ON THE NOSE!'

He punched, and punched mightily, feeling that he was somehow, by this violence, taking a sort of revenge on all the circumstances that had tricked and trapped him into becoming what he was become. The glossy gentleman roared and backed away; his pince-nez clattered to the floor. Then Egg's brain cleared; the mists rolled away; and he perceived that he had behaved in a ridiculous, an undignified, indeed a criminal way. He was suddenly ashamed. Yet in the midst of this shame he recalled, with exultation, that absurd battle-cry: I'll punch you on the nose. And for the life of him he couldn't help grinning. But the grave face of Mr Farthing checked his mirth. How long had Farthing been in the shop?

‘You saw!' spluttered the glossy gentleman. ‘I claim you as a witness.'

‘Yes, sir.' Farthing was surprisingly ready to oblige. ‘I saw everything. I saw this man here punch you on the nose. And a right hard punch it was, if I'm any judge.'

‘I shall charge him,' said the stranger. ‘You saw everything. You saw everything. You're my witness.'

‘I saw everything,' agreed Farthing, ‘and I heard everything. If you'll come across the road with me, sir, my missus will mop you up a bit. My, that was a good hard punch, that was. A dangerous fellow, to be sure!'

For days Egg was haunted by one recurrent fear: I shall have to leave the choir. They'll never want to speak to me again, those chapel folk. And he wondered if the Reverend Shadrach Pierce, when he had referred to him as ‘a great sinner', had had in mind some highly coloured account of how, many years ago, he had flung his aged mother-in-law into a cab … And in due time he appeared in court to answer for his misdemeanour. In the witness-box Mr Farthing, that grey-haired respectable tradesman, claimed to have seen everything. He knew the defendant well, but would rather not say whether or not he had always been on friendly terms with him. Pressed on this point, he admitted that he had had words with defendant on the very morning of the alleged assault, but insisted that he was not prejudiced.

‘Now let us get this clear, Mr Farthing. Are we to understand that you saw the encounter between defendant and plaintiff? That you were present throughout the proceedings?'

‘Yes.'

‘The defendant pleads gross provocation. Did you see anything that could properly be so described?'

‘Well, sir …' Mr Farthing shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh, it don't amount to anything.'

Mr Farthing was sternly asked what he meant.

‘If I was to say,' said Mr Farthing, ‘if I was to say as the gentleman
hit
Mr Pandervil first, I would be telling you a lie. For hitting and kicking are two very different things, aren't they now? And I'm not saying that Mr Pandervil didn't deserve to be kicked. And I'm not saying. …'

Did witness assert that he saw the plaintiff kick the defendant? Yes. And was this kick delivered before the defendant's alleged assault on the plaintiff? Yes. Would witness, remembering that he was on oath, describe this kick more exactly?

‘It was what I should call,' said Mr Farthing reluctantly, ‘a kick on the behind. But I wouldn't call it provocation. Not for a punch like that, I wouldn't.'

And so justice was betrayed; Mr Farthing was perjured; and Mr Pandervil retained his office in the Ebenezer choir.

Of the sixteen perspiring mortals crammed into that inadequate parlour and overflowing into the kichen beyond, Bob Pandervil alone—young Bobby, grown older, and self-shorn of his tender and belittling suffix—seemed unaffected by the general excitement. It was his twenty-first birthday party, and everybody else was preparing to make the best of it. Those of the guests for whom chairs had been found were selfconsciously sitting in them; the rest were lined up against the walls trying to look as though they preferred standing. Between these two parties there was a constant exchange of polite offers and friendly chaff. ‘Do come an' 'ave a bit of a sit-down, Daniel. Ern'll make room for you, won't you, Ern?' ‘Mustn't sit down, Aunty Min. Fraid of losing me appetite.' There was general laughter at this, the more hearty because Daniel Finch, Mabe's middle-aged fishmonger husband, was not a man much given to jocularity. He was lean, cadaverous, morose; he had a habit of eyeing women with an emphasis that was apt to give offence; no one but Mabe knew, though more than one guessed, why Mabe had ever consented to marry him; and in Egg's eyes he was an unqualified disaster. Next to Daniel Finch stood Mabe herself, stubbornly refusing a chair, and saying at intervals to chosen auditors: ‘Remember
my
twenty-first birthday party, Aunty Min? What, you don't! Well, that aint surprising, after all, seeing I never 'ad none.'
Aunty Min, sometimes called Algernon's Min, was a spare, spry, darkish woman nearing sixty, whom nature had apparently designed as a foil to Algernon's rosy corpulence. She could not rest long in her seat, but must be for ever darting to and fro, lending a hand here and having a word there, and passing the time of day with fellow-revellers so distant, and so decidedly cut off from her, as to have been inaccessible to a woman less nimble of body or less resolute in geniality. She was childless, and by that fact disappointed; but her inextinguishable cheerfulness—a thing so unwarranted, so absurd, that people couldn't but laugh when they encountered it—made her a general favourite. Already, fifteen minutes after her arrival at the party, she was being called ‘Aunty Min' by all the young men present, among whom were Ern Farthing and smart Alf Catch.