Margot Bennett - The Man Who Didn't Fly

“The country life is wonderful,” he said, groaning a little.

Hester turned her mind away from him. She saw that the blackberries had ripened early. She picked some, and ate them. She held out a handful, offering them to Morgan.

“They might be poisonous,” he said. “You shouldn’t go eating berries.”

“I thought you said you’d been brought up in the country. Where did you live, Morgan?”

“I was born in London. My father – well, I’m too old now to talk about my father,” Morgan said, hatred flashing across his face. “He wasn’t a careful man about money.”

“Lots of people aren’t, I suppose. Think of Harry.”

“Harry! I don’t want to think about him. I always thought I’d like to meet a poet. Harry isn’t my idea of a poet,” he said accusingly.

“Morgan, are you happy here? Are you sure you like living in the country?”

“All those fields to look at! Yes, I like it. It’s quiet, you see, Hester, I’ve got to have quiet. My heart…” He sat down again.

“Perhaps you should go to bed when you get home. And I’ll get Doctor Nelson.”

“No.” He stood up, and they went on.

About fifteen yards above the road Morgan stopped and clutched Hester’s wrist.

Three men were drooping along the road. They weren’t at all like the strangers who usually passed through the village, bent under rucksacks or excessively tweeded. They wore jackets of a markedly Edwardian style, trousers that were tight everywhere, and narrow, pointed shoes that seemed to be giving trouble.

One of them sat down by the side of the road and began to dust his shoes with his handkerchief.

“I limp so bad,” he said.

“Smell the country air,” another advised bitterly. “You haven’t breathed so good since you was a boy at Southend.”

“Five miles to the next pub,” the first said. “Turn right, turn left, turn right round, cross the field with the bulls, and I’d fight the field full of bulls to be back in Old Compton Street right now. What gave that foggy-boy the idea he was living here? Living! The country is the part of England they should dispose of, which is what I’m going to do when we get to that railway station.” He limped dejectedly behind the other two.

Morgan stared after them down the road. Hester, looking at him curiously, saw that he was standing erect and breathing naturally. His heart attack appeared to be over.

“Go on, Hester. Don’t wait for me. I think I’ll sit around and rest for a little,” he said in a strained voice.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” she asked doubtfully.

She was glad to leave him. She wanted to walk alone and think about Harry.

She crossed the road and went into the woods on the other side, her mind moving irresponsibly around Harry’s appearance, changing his clothes, seeing that his hair was cut regularly and his shirt was always clean. She thought of the attic room as her father had planned it, with a white floor and green rugs. She furnished it with a desk and some clean paper, and set Harry to work, writing a more jocund version of the Waste Land. In the autumn they went to Italy, and lived simply in a villa within reach of Florence.

She came down on the road again and walked through the village. Poetry didn’t earn much money, but there was satisfaction in being heralded at literary lunches and making experimental dashes into the poetic drama.

Moira Ferguson waved to her, and she smiled back from Stockholm, where the Nobel prizes were being distributed.

“Come in and have some tea,” Moira said. “Joe’s raging against Harry, and it’s much nicer for him to have a new listener.”

Hester made the correct social noises and then went in, although Moira Ferguson always made her feel immature and badly dressed. Joe treated her like a favourite niece, and the household was an entrancing but resistible specimen of the comfort associated exclusively with wealth.

The grey stone house had once been a farm, but the farmer had been glad to move out and build himself a red brick bungalow. The barn had been converted to a servants’ flat; the dairy to a squash court; and where the pigs had lain, gasping with gluttony on the straw, was now a rose garden.

Inside the house, in the corner by the fireplace where generations of farmers had sat mourning over night frosts, east winds, spring droughts, Uncle Joe now sat worrying about the weather. It was hot, it was hot even for August, and people were staying away from the cinemas he owned.

“Do they care?” he demanded passionately of Hester. “In the winter they come begging, they stand in queues, they go to my managers with tears in their eyes, two, only two, they beg, even at seven-and-six. Now, in the bad times, they keep the half-crowns in their pockets and walk in the park instead.”

“We have no money, Hester,” Moira said comfortably. “Just fancy, we are ruined.” She put a finger idly on the bell and a parlourmaid materialised with a tea tray.

“Moira is always thinking about money. It’s the curse of the age,” Joe boomed happily. “We can’t afford to keep the servants, she says, but we have two, only two. We want a holiday, we go to Bermuda, Gleneagles, anywhere we like. Money, money, money, she says. We must save. She wants a new skirt. Go to Paris, I tell her. Get Dior, Balmain, one of those, to make you a skirt. No, we can’t afford it, she says. Now if I wanted to play the violin, I would hire Menuhin to teach me, but not Moira. She would go to Miss Botts down the street. Money!”

“We could think about it more than we do,” Moira protested idly. “We have three cars. Two cars make sense. What’s the use of three?”

“It’s no good keeping up appearances unless you keep up a good appearance. I can’t keep up appearances with a motor bike. Moira tells me I’m having a financial crisis. I remember having a financial crisis in Persia. I left it with forty-two thousand owing. I paid back every penny, except what I owed the Persians. Money! I never think of it.”

Hester accepted her tea. She wanted to turn the cup over and see if the price was written on the bottom. Joe looked at her, grinning.

“Twenty-five shillings each, about, these cups cost,” he said.

“Uncle Joe, you are clever,” Hester said admiringly. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

“It’s a parlour trick,” Moira said contemptuously. “He can always tell when people are wondering what something cost. That’s the kind of thing they often wonder, in this house. They don’t ask about the Shropshire Fergusons, nor even the Berlin branch of the family. It’s always what it cost.”

“But I wasn’t thinking how much the cup cost,” Hester protested. “I – I—”

“You were thinking, perhaps, I would like it to be known how good our cups were,” Joe said. “You come here,” he added in a voice of immense sorrow, “to see how the rich live. You are a welfare worker in reverse. But you come to the wrong place, my child. We don’t live as the rich do. We are the little pigs who have built our house of paper money, and one day the wolf comes and he huffs and he puffs and he blows our house down. So inside the house we must tell ourselves we are very happy. But when the house is blown down, what can I do? Only one thing. I can drive a car. Perhaps when you are buried you look round on your way to the churchyard, and find I am driving the hearse.”

Hester began to laugh. She liked Joe and the blasts of energy that came from him. Moira looked sulky and bored. It was possible she had heard the joke before.

“I wanted to ask you, Uncle Joe, is Harry really your nephew?” Hester said cautiously.

Joe swallowed his tea and crashed the cup on the table. He was as dismal as if he were staring through a series of empty cinemas. Moira looked at him angrily.