The End Of Solomon Grundy (4 page)

“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?”