Chapter Two

 

Family Lunch and the Garage Committee

 

On Saturday morning Marion got up at the same time as usual. It was not yet nine o’clock when she called out sharply: “Breakfast.” Grundy came down in his dressing-gown, ginger hair rumpled. They sat in the eating annexe with its picture window, which looked out across grass to the house opposite, where Peter Clements sat eating his breakfast. The television producer showed his big teeth, and waved. A couple of minutes later he was joined by the slender figure of Rex Lecky. Rex also waved. Marion and Grundy waved back. This was almost as much part of the routine of breakfast as brown toast popping up, Cooper’s Oxford, the electric percolator, crunch of solid, slurp of liquid, crackle of morning paper. On this morning, however, Grundy lowered his paper earlier than usual.

“I ought to explain. About last night.”

Marion said nothing. He buttered a piece of toast, spoke carefully and slowly.

“I went upstairs to the lavatory, but someone was in it. That girl – what’s her name, Sylvia – called to me from Dick’s bedroom. She said the zip on her dress had caught in those frilly curtains round the dressing-table, could I get it free. That’s why I went in there. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“The zip is at the back of her dress. I couldn’t get it free, I tugged it and as I tugged I tore the dress. Under those fish scales it was very thin stuff. When I did that she swore at me, screamed, then scratched my face.”

“There was the mark of your hand on her shoulder.”

“I got angry when she scratched my face, and I must have gripped her shoulder. I said something too, I can’t remember what it was. Then she ran out and down the stairs.”

Marion’s voice was painfully patient and reasonable.

“Please, Sol. I was at the bottom of the stairs. I saw the way you both looked. As I said last night, we’re both civilised people. We ought to be able to discuss these things sensibly. If you sometimes feel you want to make a – I suppose you’d call it a pass – at another woman, I can understand. We both know that monogamy isn’t—”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Grundy flung down his newspaper. It knocked his cup on to the floor. The cup broke. Liquid flowed from it on to the wood block floor. “For an intelligent woman you certainly are a bloody fool.”

He got up and went upstairs. Marion called after him, “Don’t forget Mum and Dad are coming to lunch.” Then she picked up the broken cup and wiped the floor. From across the way Peter and Rex watched with interest.

 

Marion’s father, Mr Hayward, was a big jovial red-faced man who looked as though he should have been a publican or a butcher, although he had in fact been the accountant to a firm of timber merchants. At the age of sixty he had retired, and he and his wife had sold their house in Croydon, and bought one just outside Hayward’s Heath. The coincidence of names never ceased to please him. “Doesn’t belong to me, this Heath, you know,” he would say to friends, adding with a mock-rueful shake of the head, “Wish it did,” or in a variant of this ploy he would say solemnly, “Used to be mine, this whole area, they even named it after me, did you know that? Had to sell it, though, when money got tight.” His wife was a little wispy woman, who was generally silent, but upon certain subjects became extraordinarily voluble. To outsiders it seemed remarkable that Marion, cool, logical, progressive Marion, should have had such parents, should be extremely fond of them and should call them Mum and Dad. To Grundy, however, who remembered the quiet, docile young librarian he had courted thirteen years earlier, a young woman who had been perfectly at home in what her family called the good residential part of Croydon where they lived and had been intent to console them for the loss of her elder brother Robert who had been killed on the Normandy beaches, what seemed strange was the metamorphosis of the Marion he had married into the woman who now sat opposite to him at meals. In the presence of her parents Marion was transformed again into the docile young lady of Croydon, the treasure her parents had been so unwilling to lose.

“You like this, then, do you? You like it here,” Mr Hayward said as he had said several times before, with a note of surprise. “Wouldn’t do for me, I can tell you that.”

Grundy nibbled nuts, drank sherry, made no reply. It was Marion who said, “Of course we like it, Dad, or we shouldn’t have come here.”

Mr Hayward walked over to the window, jingled the coins in his pocket. “No, wouldn’t do for me. Sharing everything with your neighbours, haven’t even got a bit of garden to call your own except for that pocket handkerchief out there. Living in a goldfish bowl.”

“It wouldn’t do for us all to like the same things though, would it?” Mrs Hayward said boldly.

“No, it wouldn’t. You’re just about right there, it wouldn’t,” her husband assented.

“I’d better make sure nothing’s boiling over.” Such a remark from Marion invariably preceded a lengthy period of absence.

“Well, Solomon, how are things?” Mr Hayward always spoke Grundy’s ridiculous Christian name in full, and did so with a sense of its absurdity, which was not less obvious because it was always repressed.

“All right.”

“Our little girl looking after you properly? That’s one thing she was brought up to do at home, isn’t that so, Mother? Got to feed the brute.” His tone changed.

“What have you done to your face?

“A cat scratched me.”

“Puss puss,” Mr Hayward called. “You haven’t got a cat.”

“A neighbour’s cat. Have some more sherry.”

They had some more sherry. Mr Hayward kept up a monologue about a holiday in Spain from which they had just returned, until Marion came back, becomingly flustered, to say that lunch was ready. They ate their steak, chips and salad sitting in the picture window. Peter and Rex were in their places opposite.

“That chap, he’s a TV producer, I think you told me,” Mr Hayward said. “Does he do Emergency Ward 10?”

“No. Plays of different sorts.”

“Ah. You get a lot of arty types here, don’t you? Shouldn’t care for it myself.”

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” This was Mrs Hayward.

“We get all sorts. Professional men mostly, I should think you’d call them.” Marion offered the remark, as it were, to her husband, but Grundy was not disposed to call them anything. Mr Hayward’s eye, which did not lack keenness, followed this exchange or lack of exchange.

After lunch, back to the living-room for coffee. “You don’t have to hurry away, do you?” Marion said, but her parents had promised to have tea with friends near Reigate. There was a lot of traffic on the road, Mr Hayward said, and they must start soon. The word traffic might have been a spring that released his wife’s tongue. She began to speak at once.

“The traffic I call a disgrace, really I do. What are they doing, putting more cars on the roads when they’re not fit to take the ones we’ve got already, that’s what I ask. And the learners, they should be kept off the road for a year if they fail their tests, they’re a real danger. This morning, we’d just come through Redhill and were turning on to the Banstead road—”

“Didn’t come through Redhill this morning,” her husband said.

“You know what I mean. It was just after we’d passed that black and white farmhouse—”

“Glyte’s old house, you mean?” Marion was leaning forward attentively.

“You turn down All Souls’ Lane, and then take the second right by Barrington Church—”

“Glyte?” her father said to Marion. “You mean old Ronnie Glyte? He never lived there.”

“No, no, not Ronnie. His cousin, the one you used to call Chappy. You took Robert and I there for the day once, don’t you remember? He was a friend of someone you knew, Dad, was his name Fairclough?”

“Yes, I remember. But his name wasn’t Fairclough. Let me see, now—”

“Just after the church there’s a sharp bend and this man, this learner, I don’t believe he had anyone with him in the car, was on the wrong side of the road.”

“There’s no left turn after the church, Mother,” Mr Hayward said severely.

“Of course there is. Not a turn, a bend. You go right round the churchyard.”

“Round Easonby Churchyard?” Her husband’s face was purple. “How can you go round it?”

“Not Easonby, Barrington.”

“Barrington. But that wasn’t where we met the chap.”

“Fairweather,” Marion said triumphantly. “His name was Fairweather.”

“Going out for a walk,” Grundy said. “Got a headache. If you’ll excuse me.”

There was silence, then Mrs Hayward said, “I think we ought to be going, Dad.” Her husband agreed.

He took Grundy by the arm, led him outside. “I must do a Jimmy Riddle before I go. Everything all right?”

“Why not?”

“Thirteen years you’ve been married now, is that right? They say the first twenty-one years are the worst.” They were standing outside the door of the lavatory. Mr Hayward laughed, then became grave. “I want my little girl to be happy. Is she happy?”

“You’d better ask her.”

“I shouldn’t like it if I thought she was worried by – cats.” Mr Hayward’s face lost its usual beefy jovial look, and became almost menacing. Then he stepped into the lavatory and locked the door. Five minutes later he and his wife had crunched away in their Rover down the gravel drive of The Dell.

Marion waved them away, smiling. When she came back into the house, she said, “Why do you have to spoil everything?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“How often do they come to see us? Once a month, for a few hours. Can’t you be polite to them even for that little time?” Her voice was as cool as usual, but a note of strain moved through it like a red thread in a neutral pattern.

“I had a headache.”

“You can’t bear to see me enjoying myself, why not say so?”

“I can’t help it if your father and mother are bores, and you know very well that they are.”

Now her voice did rise, as though the thin red line had widened, was spreading over into the neutral part of the pattern. “Bores, are they? And what did you say that was so brilliant?”

“How can you be brilliant with bores? They wouldn’t understand.”

Her upper lip was raised from her teeth, she was snarling at him like an animal. “What makes you think you’re anything but a bore yourself? What are you but a cheap commercial artist doing a comic strip for morons, a sort of prostitute—”

His large hand, swung back from a distance, struck the left side of her face. It was the first time he had struck her.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She put one hand to her cheek as though he had wounded her, then ran out of the room and upstairs. Grundy began to collect the coffee things, his big hands placing them gently upon the tray.

 

That evening Grundy attended a meeting of the garage committee. The question of the garages had become a matter of increasingly bitter discussion during the past months. When The Dell had been built seven years earlier, neat modern garages had been provided for the houses numbered 1 to 50. The houses numbered from 51 to 100 had not been ready for occupation until eighteen months later, and by that time the price of land had increased. The SGH Trust, the company which financed the building, had suggested that part of the ground which had been designed as a lawn should be used for garages, so that they might save the cost of the extra ground, belonging to a man named Twissle, which would have to be bought. This proposal had, naturally enough, been resisted by the residents of the houses with numbers above 50, since through it they would be losing the amenities of a large lawn. The matter had drifted on from month to month, and even year to year, with nothing done. What should have been a green lawn was a patch of waste ground, on which what were understood to be temporary car ports had been erected. These car ports, roofed with corrugated iron, were undoubtedly an eyesore, but they did provide garage space, and the price of the ground on which the garages might in the first place have been built increased every year. The SGH Trust now demanded an extra sum from each resident if they had to buy this ground and use it for garages. They offered to put up permanent garages to replace the temporary ones on the waste ground, but this met with strong objections, especially from those who lived in the houses that faced the car ports. It was possible theoretically for any householder to attend committee meetings by giving notice in advance, but in practice this right was never exercised. Twice a year a public meeting was held, at which severe criticism of the SGH Trust and of the committee was voiced. One or two committee members resigned each year, and new blood, which soon grew as thin as the old, was injected.

The garage committee met that evening in the Jellifers’ house.

The members, besides Jellifer, were Dick Weldon, Peter Clements, Felicity Facey, Grundy, and Edgar Paget. Felicity Facey was the wife of a local chemist with artistic inclinations. She was herself an enthusiastic painter of abstract pictures. The Faceys lived in one of the houses directly opposite to the waste ground.

The Jellifers, the Weldons and the Grundys all lived in the upper numbers, and so were directly concerned with the garage question, Peter Clements, who was not, had been included to show that those lucky enough to possess proper garages were sympathetic to the fate of their unfortunate neighbours.

Paget was present as a representative of the SGH Trust. Finally, the committee chairman was Sir Edmund Stone, a retired civil servant who lived in Brambly Way and thought The Dell architecturally detestable, but had taken the position of chairman because he felt it his duty to preserve local amenities.

The Committee meetings were informal. They sat around in chairs and on sofas, grouped to face the abstract painting with its suggestion of a fish, its vaguer hint of a bottle. Arlene came in with a tray of varied bits of liver sausage and salami and cheese, placed on slices of rye bread, and decorated by fragments of pickled cucumber. When she had departed Jack solemnly made coffee in a machine with a special filtering device, which he said produced the only coffee worth drinking. While he superintended this, poured the coffee into minute cups, and handed it round, Edgar Paget was talking. Almost every meeting ended with Edgar reporting back to the SGH people, and the next meeting began with their reactions.

“I’ve been asked to repeat that the SGH Trust has no intention whatever of backing out of its contractual obligations. At the same time, it’s got to be understood that the time has gone by when it was possible to get Mr Twissle’s land for any figure which would make the erection of garages an economic proposition. We must be realistic, that’s what I have to impress upon you, ladies and gentlemen, the need for realism. Any proposals submitted by me on behalf of SGH—”

“Are there any proposals?” Felicity Facey boomed. She was a big horse-faced formidable woman, with a mane of coarse black hair.

“I am coming to that.” Edgar swayed a little but recovered, like one of those shot-based toys that resume their position however hard they are hit. Once he was on his feet it was impossible to get him down in much less than ten minutes. It was necessary for the committee to sit through his recital of SGH’s good faith, and his analysis of past negotiations, before coming to their present offer, which was to purchase Twissle’s ground and erect garages on part of it absolutely free of all charge. A little sigh of pleasure was exhaled at this point by two or three committee members. Edgar rocked a little, swayed but not bowled over by this sigh, and added that there was one condition. The residents paid a sum of £25 a year each for upkeep of the lawns and paths. In view of the heavy additional costs involved, it would be necessary to double this sum for all of the householders, not only those directly concerned because they lived in Nos 51 to 100.

The sigh became a gasp. Edgar rocked a little in response to it. “If you want my advice, I tell you frankly that this seems to me a very good offer. I strongly advise acceptance.”

Peter Clements showed his big teeth, more in anger than in amusement. “Speaking for myself, I must say I find it hard to see why on earth our upkeep figure – and I’m really speaking I’m sure for the rest of us who already have garages – should be doubled. If you could tell me why that has to be so, Paget, it would help me to, what shall I say, sell this idea.”

Sir Edmund tapped with a pencil on his saucer. Jack Jellifer viewed the tapping with alarm for the saucer.

“Just address your remarks to the chair, Mr Clements.”

“There are some things I should like to know,” Felicity boomed. “First, Mr Chairman, can Mr Paget assure us that Mr Twissle is prepared to sell?”

Edgar replied, “At a figure, yes.”

“Next, are the garages to be built according to the design submitted by us?”

“Absolutely, just that design.”

“All right, then. Bill and I are sick of looking out at a dump with some cars on it. It’s blackmail, but I’m in favour.” She bit decisively into salami and cheese.

“I don’t think one can be in favour of blackmail.” That was Jack Jellifer.

“Please.” Sir Edmund looked down his long thin nose. His general appearance was that of a perfectly preserved waxwork, and he brought a breath of old-world superciliousness into everything in which he engaged. “It is really not necessary to use such language.”

“Call a spade a spade,” said Felicity.

Sir Edmund looked at her with barely concealed distaste, as if wondering how such an obvious representative of trade had got into their midst. Then, fixing a monocle into his left eye he addressed Edgar with little more warmth.

“There is one point about which I am not altogether clear, Mr – ah – Paget. Supposing this proposal is – ah – rejected, what would be the attitude of the Trust about the upkeep question?”

“Glad you asked me.” Edgar was on his feet again at once. “Quite frankly, the costs of upkeep are becoming impossible. They’ll have to go up.”

Dick Weldon’s long nose was in the air. “I’d like to know what authority there is for an increase.”

“In the leases,” Edgar said promptly. “All in the leases. I know, I helped to draw ’em up.”

“Read the small print,” Felicity barked.

“Not at all. I resent that remark. It’s not a question of small print, just of reading the leases.”

There was a sense of strain. Sir Edmund looked at Felicity, then dropped his monocle as though in acknowledgement of the folly of expecting anything else but brash remarks from a tradesman’s wife. Grundy cleared his throat. They all looked at him as though he were a wild animal about to be unleashed.

“Some things I’d like to know. First, we’ve all heard rumours that Twissle’s already sold his land to the Trust. Is that true?”

“Certainly not. Quite inaccurate.”

Grundy lowered his big head. “He hasn’t sold it to you, has he?”

It was unusual for Edgar to flush, but he did so now.

“Mr Chairman, I resent, I very much resent, that remark.”

Sir Edmund put in his monocle again. “Most improper. Mr Grundy, I really must ask you to withdraw it.”

 

There was a general murmur, whose exact import could not easily be interpreted. “Let him answer,” Grundy said. “If he doesn’t, we shall know what to think.”

“Perhaps, after all, Mr Chairman, our friend Edgar might—” Jack Jellifer began richly, but Edgar was on his feet again.

“I shall not stay here to be insulted, particularly when the insults come from a man who thinks nothing of assaulting the woman friend of a ni–coloured man.” He reached the door and fired a parting shot. “I can tell you that SGH Trust takes a serious view of all these coloured people coming to live in The Dell. It’s letting down the neighbourhood, I can tell you that.”

“Please, Mr Paget,” Sir Edmund said with what, for him, almost approached agitation.

“No disrespect to you, Sir Edmund, but I’m not coming back till I’ve received an apology.” He was gone.

Sir Edmund looked about him like a man who can smell something unpleasant, without being able to tell quite where the smell is coming from. “I don’t quite know – I am not sure whether there is any purpose in continuing this discussion—”

“I must say I hope it won’t be broken off,” Jack Jellifer said. “I think that I for one might be prepared to reconsider.”

“Reconsider?”

Jellifer was looking at the fish picture. His gaze dropped for a moment and met the militant stare of Grundy. From this he hastily averted his eyes, looking instead with some intentness at the thick horse hair of Felicity Facey. “I think it’s necessary for the good of the community that we should come to a settlement, and personally I think we’ve had enough of those disgusting temporary garages. I am in favour of accepting the offer.”

“You called it blackmail five minutes ago,” Grundy said.

“I suppose we are allowed to have second thoughts,” Jellifer said in a voice both irritated and ponderous.

“I’m with you. And I don’t think driving Mr Paget away has helped.” That was Felicity. She added with a slightly spurious forthrightness, “I think he’s got a point about the coloured people too. Of course I haven’t any personal objection, we have a very pleasant coloured family, the Belandos, living only two doors away from us. But the fact remains that if we get another half-dozen coloured families living here it’s going to affect the value of our property seriously.”

Grundy’s long legs were stretched out so that his shoes scuffed the mushroom-coloured carpet. “One of my best friends is a nigger, but I don’t want more than one.”

“That was quite uncalled for,” Felicity barked.

Dick Weldon spoke, his tone pacific as always. “There really is no need for this, Sol.”

“Isn’t there? Why aren’t they represented, then?”

“Represented?” Dick was momentarily foxed.

“There are four coloured householders here now, the Belandos, the Mgolos, the Challises, and now Kabanga. Three of them have the same rotten temporary garages that we’ve got. Don’t they have a right to be represented?”

“Oh, Sol, Sol,” Dick sighed. In the distance there could be heard faintly the Jellifers’ tuneful door chimes.

“You really are being difficult, old chap.”

“Do you want to restrict coloured immigration to The Dell? Shall we fix a percentage limit?”

“I hate to have to say this, but I wasn’t the cause of Tony Kabanga and his friend leaving the party last night, was I?”

Sir Edmund, who had been following these exchanges with increasing bewilderment, now tapped again on his saucer. “This has gone far enough. I really don’t know what you’re talking about, but if this bickering goes on I shall have to close the meeting. We are here to consider garages, not coloured people. Mrs Facey and Mr Jellifer have said that they are in favour of Mr Paget’s suggestion. Will you let us have your views, Mr Weldon?”

It was at this moment that the door opened and Arlene appeared, looking, for one of her general assurance, almost nervous. Behind her, in a lightweight light-coloured suit, stood the smiling figure of Tony Kabanga.

The members of the committee stared at him, open-mouthed. Sir Edmund, who had never met Kabanga, looked the least surprised. He stuck in his monocle.

“Good evening. Can we help you?”

“I heard that there was a meeting. Is it permitted to come to it?”

Grundy laughed, a raw sound. Jack Jellifer said ponderously, “I don’t think you know our chairman, Sir Edmund Stone. This is Mr Kabanga, who has just come to live in our community.”

Kabanga smiled, showed his very white teeth. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance. I heard that there was a meeting, and decided to attend. You must inform me if I am out of place.”

A chorus of sounds avowed pleasure at his presence. With thin superciliousness Sir Edmund said, “It is unusual for residents to be present at our deliberations, but I am sure there will be no objections. Please sit down.”

Kabanga sat, placed one leg over another, and offered Russian cigarettes, which nobody except Jellifer accepted.

“We were discussing an offer made by the SGH Trust in relation to the – ah – vexed garage question.”

“Not correct.” Grundy shook his ginger head. “We were talking about coloured people living here.”

“You are out of order.”

“I said there were four coloured residents, and they ought to be represented. Most of them seemed to think four families were three too many.”

“You will please stop.” Sir Edmund’s voice had risen. and issued now in an unfortunate squeak.

“This is absolutely too much,” Felicity cried.

Grundy grinned at her. “Didn’t you say another half-dozen coloured people coming here would seriously affect the value of our properties?”

Felicity’s face was red. “Oh, you’re insufferable.”

Kabanga stood up, put out his cigarette, then walked over to Grundy, who looked up at him.

“I have tried to ignore what happened last night, but you will not allow me to do so. Please will you understand that all we wish is to be left alone.”

“You don’t understand. I’m on your side, boy.”

In his soft, classless voice, Kabanga said, “If you make trouble for me, Mr Grundy, I shall make trouble for you.” He turned to Sir Edmund. “I think it is better that I should go. I am sorry.”

When he had gone Sir Edmund tapped on his saucer once more. “I am closing the meeting. And I must say, Mr Grundy, that the way in which you have comported yourself has made this an extremely painful occasion. Extremely painful. In a lifetime’s experience of committee meetings I cannot say that I have ever known one so—” He seemed to search for some really explosive word, but the one that came was tame, “–unsatisfactory.”

“Sorry about that. Don’t see what I’ve done, beyond sticking up for our coloured neighbours, but there’s only one thing to do about it. Dick, you’re secretary, will you accept my resignation from the committee here and now.”

Nobody expressed distress. The meeting broke up. Dick Weldon and Grundy walked home together. When they reached Dick’s house he said, “Come in for a drink, Sol.”

“No, thanks.”

Dick had lighted his pipe as soon as they left the Jellifers’. Puffing away, he said, “What’s up?”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“That was a queer show you put on in there. Do you want to put everybody’s back up?”

The night was fine, filled with stars. “I don’t mind either way.”

“I see.” The remark was quite untrue. The idea that one might not care about the social attitudes adopted by fellow human beings towards oneself was totally incomprehensible to Dick Weldon.

Grundy looked up at the stars. To his left there shone one of the specially designed Dell street lamps, which cast a spectral light upon them both. “I don’t belong here.”

“You’ve been here five years,” Dick said, too logically.

“Even so. Sometimes the whole place is too much for me.”

“How do you mean?”

“The whole place, community living, what anyone does is everybody’s business, little committee meetings to blather away about garages. Too much bloody order.”

“Why don’t you move, then?”

“Not possible.”

“Not possible. Why not?”

Under the lamp Grundy loomed above him, a giant.

“What you do is something that happens to you, do you understand? It changes you. You come to live here, very well then, that’s the sort of person you are and you can’t get away from it. It’s not what you think that matters, it’s what you do.”

“I see,” Dick said again, untruthfully. “But you can do something else.”

“You can try.” Grundy’s voice was deep, hoarse, despairing. “But what’s happened is part of you, you’re part of it. You can never cancel what’s happened to you, you have to accept it.”

“Suppose you can’t?”

There was silence for a moment. “You have to. You have to try. If you can’t—” Grundy scuffed with his foot and did not finish the sentence.

Dick took out his pipe, looked at it, put it back again, and brought the conversation down to good firm practical ground. “But you want proper new garages, don’t you?”

“Oh, sure. By all means.”

“Well, then. Sure you won’t come in for a drink?”

“Sure.”

“We’ve known each other five years, Caroline and I, you and Marion. We’d be sorry if – what I mean to say is, if there’s any trouble, I hope you’ll let us help.”

“Thanks. There’s no trouble.”

Dick ventured a joke. “Guffy McTuffie been playing you up?”

Grundy laughed, a bellow that was an unseemly disturbance of the peace of The Dell. “That’s right. Guffy McTuffie’s been playing me up.”