Death of a Fool (3 page)

Chris, the ruddy one, looked quickly at Trixie, turned the colour of his own hair and shook his head.

“And I’ve already met Uncle Ernie,” Camilla ended and heard her voice fade uneasily.

There seemed little more to say. It had been a struggle to say as much as that. There they were with their countrymen’s clothes and boots, their labourers’ bodies and their apparent unreadiness to ease a situation that they themselves, or the old man, at least, had brought about.

“Us didn’t reckon you’d carry our names so ready,” Dan said and smiled at her again.

“Oh,” Camilla cried, seizing at this, “that was easy. Mummy used to tell me I could always remember your names in order because they spelt DANCE. Dan, Andy, Nat, Chris, Ernie. She said she thought Grandfather might have named you that way because of Sword Wednesday and the Dance of the Five Sons. Did you, Grandfather?”

In the inglenook of the Private, Mrs. Bünz, her cider half-way to her lips, was held in ecstatic suspension.

A slightly less truculent look appeared in old William’s face.

“That’s not a maid’s business,” he said. “It’s men’s gear, that is.”

“I know. She told me. But we can look on, can’t we? Will the swords be out on the Wednesday after the twenty-first, Grandfather?”

“Certain sure they’ll be out.”

“I be Whiffler,” Ernie said very loudly. “Bean’t I, chaps?”

“Hold your noise, then. Us all knows you be Whiffler,” said his father irritably, “and going in mortal dread of our lives on account of it.”

“And the Wing-Commander’s ‘Crack,’ ” Ernie said, monotonously pursuing his theme. “Wing-Commander Begg, that is. Old ’Oss, that is. ’E commanded my crowd, ’e did. I was ’is servant, I was. Wing-Commander Simon Begg, only we called ’im Simmy-Dick, we did. ’E’ll be Old ’Oss, ’e will.”

“Ya-a-as, ya-a-s,” said his four brothers soothingly in unison. Ernie’s dog came out from behind the door and gloomily contemplated its master.

“We can’t have that poor stinking beast in here,” Trixie remarked.

“Not healthy,” Tom Plowman said. “Sorry, Ern, but there you are. Not healthy.”

“No more ’tis,” Andy agreed. “Send it back home, Ern.”

His father loudly ordered the dog to be removed, going so far as to say that it ought to be put out of its misery, in which opinion his sons heartily concurred. The effect of this pronouncement upon Ernie was disturbing. He turned sheet-white, snatched up the dog and, looking from one to the other of his relations, backed towards the door.

“I’ll be the cold death of any one of you that tries,” he said violently.

A stillness fell upon the company. Ernie blundered out into the dark, carrying his dog.

His brothers scraped their boots on the floor and cleared their throats. His father said, “Damned young fool, when all’s said.” Trixie explained that she was as fond of animals as anybody, but you had to draw the line.

Presently Ernie returned, alone, and, after eying his father for some moments, began to complain like a child.

“A chap bean’t let ’ave nothin’ he sets his fancy to,” Ernie whined. “Nor let do nothin’ he’s a notion to do. Take my case. Can’t ’ave me dog. Can’t do Fool’s act in the Five Sons. I’m the best lepper and caperer of the lot of you. I’d be a proper good Fool, I would.” He pointed to his father. “You’re altogether beyond it, as the Doctor in ’is wisdom ’as laid it down. Why can’t you heed ’im and let me take over?”

His father rejoined with some heat, “You’re lucky to whiffle. Hold your tongue and don’t meddle in what you don’t understand. Which reminds me,” he added, advancing upon Trixie. “There was a foreign wumman up along to Copse Forge. Proper old nosy besom. If so be — Ar?”

Camilla had tugged at his coat and was gesturing in the direction of the hidden Mrs. Bünz. Trixie mouthed distractedly. The four senior brothers made unhappy noises in their throats.

“In parlour is she?” William bawled. “Is she biding?”

“A few days,” Trixie murmured. Her father said firmly, “Don’t talk so loud, Guiser.”

“I’ll talk as loud as I’m minded. Us doan’t want no fureignesses hereabouts —”

“Doan’t, then, Dad,” his sons urged him.

But greatly inflamed the Guiser roared on. Camilla looked through into the Private and saw Mrs. Bünz wearing an expression of artificial abstraction. She tiptoed past the gap and disappeared.

“Grandfather!” Camilla cried out indignantly. “She heard you! How you could! You’ve hurt her feelings dreadfully and she’s not even English —”

“Hold your tongue, then.”

“I don’t in the least see why I should.”

Ernie astonished them all by bursting into shouts of laughter.

“Like mother, like maid,” he said, jerking his thumb at Camilla. “Hark to our Bessie’s girl.”

Old William glowered at his grand-daughter. “Bad blood,” he laid darkly.

“Nonsense! You’re behaving,” Camilla recklessly continued, “exactly like an over-played ‘heavy.’ Absolute ham, if you don’t mind my saying so, Grandfather.”

“What kind of loose talk’s that!”

“Theatre slang, actually.”

“
Theatre
!” he roared. “Doan’t tell me you’re shaming your sex by taking up with that trash. That’s the devil’s counting-house, that is.”

“With respect, Grandfather, it’s nothing of the sort.”

“My grand-daughter!” William said, himself with considerable histrionic effect, “a play-actress! Ar, well! Us might have expected it, seeing she was nossled at the breast of the Scarlet Woman.”

Chris and Andy with the occasional unanimity of twins groaned, “Ar, dear!”

The landlord said, “Steady, souls.”

“I really don’t know what you mean by that,” Camilla said hotly. “If you’re talking about Daddy’s church you must know jolly well that it isn’t mine. He and Mummy laid that on before I was born. I
wasn’t
to be a Roman and if my brother had lived he
would
have been one. I’m C. of E.”

“That’s next door as bad,” William shouted. “Turning your back on Chapel and canoodling with Popery.”

He had come quite close to her. His face was scored with exasperation. He pouted, too, pushing out his lips at her and making a piping sound behind them.

To her own astonishment Camilla said, “No, honestly! You’re nothing but an old baby after all,” and suddenly kissed him.

“There now!” Trixie ejaculated, clapping her hands. Tom Plowman said, “Reckon that calls for one all round on the house.”

The outside door was pushed open and a tall man in a duffle coat came in.

“Good evening, Mr. Begg,” said Trixie.

“How’s Trix?” asked Wing-Commander Simon Begg.

Later on, when she had seen more of him, Camilla was to think of the first remark she heard Simon Begg make as completely typical of him. He was the sort of man who has a talent for discovering the Christian names of waiters and waitresses and uses them continually. He was powerfully built and not ill-looking, with large blue eyes, longish hair and a blond moustache. He wore an R.A.F. tie, and a vast woollen scarf in the same colours. He had achieved distinction (she was to discover) as a bomber-pilot during the war.

The elder Andersens, slow to recover from Camilla’s kiss, greeted Begg confusedly, but Ernie laughed with pleasure and threw him a crashing salute. Begg clapped him on the shoulder. “How’s the corporal?” he said. “Sharpening up the old whiffler, what?”

“Crikey!” Camilla thought, “he isn’t half a cup-of-tea, is the Wing-Commander.” He gave her a glance for which the word “practiced” seemed to be appropriate and ordered his drink.

“Quite a party to-night,” he said.

“Celebration, too,” Trixie rejoined. “Here’s the Guiser’s grand-daughter come to see us after five years.”

“No!” he exclaimed. “Guiser! Introduce me, please.”

After a fashion old William did so. It was clear that for all his affectation of astonishment, Begg had heard about Camilla. He began to ask her questions that contrived to suggest that they belonged to the same world. Did she live in “town”? Was it the same old show as ever? Did she by any chance know a little spot called “Phipps” near Shepherd Market — quite a bright little spot, really. Camilla, to whom he seemed almost elderly, thought that somehow he was also pathetic. She felt she was a failure with him and decided that she ought to slip away from the Public, where she now seemed out-of-place. Before she could do so, however, there was a further arrival: a pleasant-looking elderly man in an old-fashioned covert-coat with a professional air about him.

There was a chorus of “ ’Evenin’, Doctor.” The newcomer at once advanced upon Camilla and said, “Why, bless my soul, there’s no need to tell me who this is. I’m Henry Otterly, child. I ushered your mama into the world. Last time I spoke to her she was about your age and as like as could be. How very nice to see you.”

They shook hands warmly. Camilla remembered that five years ago when a famous specialist had taken his tactful leave of her mother, she had whispered, “All the same, you couldn’t beat Dr. Otterly up at Mardian.” When she died, they carried her back to Mardian and Dr. Otterly had spoken gently to Camilla and her father.

She smiled gratefully at him now and his hand tightened for a moment round hers.

“What a lucky chap you are, Guiser,” said Dr. Otterly, “with a grand-daughter to put a bit of warmth into your Decembers. Wish I could say as much for myself. Are you staying for Christmas, Miss Camilla?”

“For the winter solstice, anyway,” she said. “I want to see the swords come out.”

“Aha! So you know all about that.”

“Mummy told me.”

“I’ll be bound she did. I didn’t imagine you people nowadays had much time for ritual dancing. Too ‘folksy’ — is that the word? — or ‘artsy-craftsy’ or ‘chi-chi.’ Not?”

“Ah, no! Not the genuine article like this one,” Camilla protested. “And I’m sort of specially interested because I’m working at a drama school.”

“Are you, now?”

Dr. Otterly glanced at the Andersens, but they were involved in a close discussion with Simon Begg. “And what does the Guiser say to
that
?” he asked and winked at Camilla.

“He’s livid.”

“Ha! And what do you propose to do about it? Defy him?”

Camilla said, “Do you know, I honestly didn’t think anybody was left who thought like he does about the theatre. He quite pitched into me. Rather frightening when you come to think of it.”

“Frightening? Ah!” Dr. Otterly said quickly, “You don’t really mean that. That’s contemporary slang, I daresay. What did you lay to the Guiser?”

“Well, I didn’t
quite
like,” Camilla confided, “to point out that after all
he
played the lead in a pagan ritual that is probably chock full of improprieties if he only knew it.”

“No,” agreed Dr. Otterly drily, “I shouldn’t tell him that if I were you. As a matter of fact, he’s a silly old fellow to do it at all at his time of life. Working himself into a fizz and taxing his ticker up to the danger-mark. I’ve told him so, but I might as well speak to the cat. Now, what do
you
hope to do, child? What roles do you dream of playing? Um?”

“Oh, Shakespeare if I could. If
only
I could.”

“I wonder. In ten years’ time? Not the giantesses, I fancy. Not the Lady M. nor yet the Serpent of Old Nile. But a Viola, now, or — what do you say to a Cordelia?”

“Cordelia?” Camilla echoed doubtfully. She didn’t think all that much of Cordelia.

Dr. Otterly contemplated her with evident amusement and adopted an air of cozy conspiracy.

“Shall I tell you something? Something that to
me
at least is
immensely
exciting? I believe I have made a really significant discovery —
really
significant — about — you’d never guess — about
Lear
. There now!” cried Dr. Otterly with the infatuated glee of a White Knight. “What do you say to that?”

“A discovery?”

“About
King Lear
. And I have been led to it, I may tell you, through playing the fiddle once a year for thirty years at the winter solstice on Sword Wednesday for our Dance of the Five Sons.”

“Honestly?”

“As honest as the day. And do you want to know what my discovery is?”

“Indeed I do.”

“In a nutshell, this: here, my girl, in our Five Sons is nothing more nor less than a variant of the Basic Theme, Frazer’s theme — the King of the Wood, the Green Man, the Fool, the Old Man Persecuted by His Young — the theme, by Guiser, that reached its full stupendous blossoming in
Lear
. Do you
know
the play?” Dr. Otterly demanded.

“Pretty well, I think.”

“Good. Turn it over in your mind when you’ve seen the Five Sons, and if I’m right you’d better treat that old grandpapa of yours with respect, because on the twenty-first, child, hell be playing what I take to be the original version of
King Lear
. There now!”

Dr. Otterly smiled, gave Camilla a little pat and made a general announcement.

“If you fellows want to practice,” he shouted, “you’ll have to do it now. I can’t give you more than half an hour. Mary Yeoville’s in labour.”

“Where’s Mr. Ralph?” Dan asked.

“He rang up to say he might be late. Doesn’t matter, really. The Betty’s a free lance after all. Everyone else is here. My fiddle’s in the car.”

“Come on, then, chaps,” said old William. “Into the barn.” He had turned away and taken up a sacking bundle when he evidently remembered his grand-daughter.

“If you bean’t too proud,” he said, glowering at her, “you can come and have a tell up to Copse Forge tomorrow.”

“I’d love to. Thank you, Grandfather. Good luck to the rehearsal.”

“What sort of outlandish word’s that? We’re going to practice.”

“Same thing. May I watch?”

“You can
not
. ’Tis men’s work, and no female shall have part nor passel in it.”

“Just too bad,” said Begg, “isn’t it, Miss Campion? I think we ought to jolly well make an exception in this case.”

“No. No!” Camilla cried. “I was only being facetious. It’s all right, Grandfather. Sorry. I wouldn’t dream of butting in.”

“Doan’t go nourishing and ’citing thik old besom, neither.”