Hilary Mantel - A Change of Climate

‘Well, they may,’ said his father. ‘But I cannot see very clearly who they would be. Your Uncle James will be wanting a rest by then, and the children of my colleagues on the committee are pursuing their own paths in life.’

‘It seems to be looking too far ahead,’ Ralph said.

‘Oh,’ Matthew said, ‘I thought the millennia were as naught to you. Really, you know, to plan five years or ten years ahead is nothing. All businessmen do it. We do it when we invest money – though you would know nothing of that.’

‘I suppose I wouldn’t.’

‘My object, my plan – and here I may say the other trustees agree with me – is that the Trust should be forever administered from Norfolk, no matter how wide its interests may become. It is local money that has set it up – and we must keep our feet on the ground. So you will want to base yourself here in Norwich, or elsewhere in the county if you prefer. When you return I will buy you a house, because you will make no money while you are out in Africa. That goes without saying.’

If that is so, Ralph thought, why say it? He said, ‘Had you any particular house in mind?’ But he could not summon the strength of purpose to put venom into his tone.

‘I want the Trust to benefit my own countrymen,’ Matthew said, ‘not just James’ collection of drunks and wastrels. Don’t mistake me – I have respect for James’ work – ’

‘Yes, I understand you,’ Ralph said. ‘You don’t have to talk to me as if you were addressing the County Council.’

He thought, from now on I shall take control, I shall order my own life, just as I like. I am going to Africa because I want to go, because Anna wants it. When I return I shall be my own man.

He did not feel demeaned when his father wrote out a cheque for a wedding present and put it into his hand. Payment was due, he reckoned, a tribute from the past to the future.

Four days before the wedding James telephoned from London to say that there was a spot of trouble, could Ralph possibly get on the train and come right away? He was due to appear in court as a witness, one of his inmates having assaulted a police constable; his assistant appeared to be having a nervous breakdown, and there was no one but Ralph who could be trusted to oversee the hostel for a day.

Ralph said, ‘What will you do when I go out to Dar?’

His uncle said, ‘That’s another thing – I want to talk to you about that. Don’t hang about – take a taxi from Liverpool Street. St Walstan will pay.’

Ralph picked up his coat and hat and strode off to the station. He feared the worst. His uncle was going to tell him that he was needed here, in the East End; that the tropics could wait, and that he and Anna should see about renting some rooms a bus-ride from the hostel. He wondered whether he would say yes and supposed he would. Anna would have to unpack her cotton dresses and put them in mothballs, and begin her married life as an East End housewife visiting street markets with a basket over her arm. He rehearsed some inner rebellions: let James sacrifice himself, James is a clergyman, he has no life of his own. He bought a cup of tea in a café near Liverpool Street. He thought of going back into the station and taking the next train back to Norwich; or alternatively, the next train to somewhere else.

It was half-past five when James came back from court, and the hostel was almost full that night, so before he had any conversation with his nephew he took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves and began to help with the day’s last meal. It was stew – it usually was stew of some sort – but there was all the bread to be cut and margarined. The inmates always wanted bread, three slices per man, whatever the rest of their meal was. They grumbled if they did not get it, as if their rights had been violated.

When the meal was over and the men on the washing-up rota had been identified and corralled and set to their task, James with a twitch of his head beckoned Ralph into his office. They closed the door and with a single purpose, without a word, heaved a filing cabinet at the back of it; they knew from experience that it was the only way they could get a minute without interruption.

‘Is it about the posting?’ Ralph asked. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘No, no problem.’ James sat down at his desk, and found space for his elbows among the unpaid bills and begging letters and rubber bands. ‘Why do I have these rubber bands?’ he wondered. ‘What are they for? No, Ralphie, there is no problem with Dar-es-Salaam, it is just that something more urgent has come up, and I thought that you should have the chance to consider it.’

Here it comes, Ralph thought: my future on the Mile End Road.

James said, ‘Would you like to go to South Africa?’

On the outskirts of Swaffham today there is a goodly selection of dinky bungalows. They have wrought-iron gates and birdbaths, trellises, hanging baskets, shutters and dwarf walls. They have raw brickwork and shining windows, and scarlet floribundas in well-weeded beds. Their carriage lamps are the light of the twentieth century. In the market-place Ralph hears the broad drawling accent in which his grandfather spoke moderated to the foul contemporary tones of middle England.

These bungalow dwellers repopulated the villages of Breckland, which were empty when Ralph went to Africa. Between settlements, there are still tracts of heather and furze, and black pine plantations: barren, monotonous, funereal, like the contents of an East European nightmare. But the bowed, arthritic pines that line the roads creep to the edges of the small towns, intruding themselves among the DIY merchants and filling stations and furniture warehouses; they gather round the new housing estates, like witches at a christening.

It is only in the land marked off by the military’s fences that the old country can be seen. ‘Danger areas,’ they are called on the map. It is said the army builds models there, of life-sized Belfast streets, and that snipers and marksmen creep behind empty windows and false walls. From the roads you can see Nissen huts, like slugs in formation. Signs read ‘No Entry without Permit – Ministry of Defence Property’. Vegetation creeps like serpents around their metal poles. The wind topples them.

To the east, where Ralph and his children now live at the county’s heart, the great wheat fields roll on to the horizon, denatured, over-fertile, factory fields. A farm that employed eighty-five men now employs six; the descendants of the other seventy-nine have delivered themselves from rural squalor, from midden and rotting thatch, and live in the bungalows, or in redbrick council houses with long gardens. In spring, primroses struggle in the verges. In June, there are dog-roses in such hedgerows as remain.

Ralph dreams; again, he is three years old. Somewhere behind him, unseen, his father walks, and Uncle James. He curls down inside his grandfather’s coat.

They are going to the church. His grandfather will show him the angels in the roof, and the Pedlar of Swaffham carved on a stall end, and the pedlar’s dog with its round ears and big chain.

The Pedlar of Swaffham: John Chapman was his name. He dreamt one night that if he went to London, and stood on London Bridge, he would meet a man who would tell him how to make his fortune.

The day after this dream, Chapman put his pack on his back and with his dog set off to London. On London Bridge he stood about, until a shopkeeper asked him what he thought he was doing. ‘I’m here because of a dream,’ the pedlar said.

‘Dream?’ said the shopkeeper. ‘If I took any notice of dreams, I would be in some country place called Swaffham, in the garden of some yokel called Chapman, digging under his damn-fool pear tree.’ With a sneer, the fellow retreated to his merchandise.