The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (19 page)

^{One day, when the boy Blessing was otherwise engaged, he took a turn at minding the shop and made his bow as a salesman, selling a copper warming-pan for four pounds ten and a Victorian scent bottle for two pounds seven and six, sales which Tapper described as}

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^{'not bad fer a start, mate, but you come down a bit too much fer the public!'}

^{Tapper told him that it was their practice to open on Sundays in summer to cater for visitors but this year Blessing had refused to break the Sabbath because he considered Sunday was his day for a bit of fishing off the jetty.}

^{"I'll gladly come in Sundays if I can be of any use ?" volunteered Sebastian and Tapper eagerly accepted the offer, promising him a flat rate of two-and-sixpence an hour, plus five per cent commission on new stock and seven-and-a-half on back numbers, that is, stock that had been on show for more than a month.}

^{The first Sunday, a bright and sunny day, Mr. Sermon sold very little, a fact which did not surprise Tapper for he explained that fine weather was the worst possible thing for the antique trade inasmuch as it kept people on the beach and away from the town. On the second Sunday, however, it clouded over about eleven o'clock and people were in and out of the shop all day. Sebastian sold about sixty pounds' worth of goods, including a battered corner cupboard that Tapper said had been gathering cobwebs for nearly two years.}

^{"You're better at this lark than I am an' pretty near as good as young Blessing!" he declared delightedly, when Mr. Sermon handed over the cash and cheques and received four-pounds-fifteen in salary and commission. "You gonner be around all summer? I reckon you could pay your digs and fag money working one day a week here!"}

^{"I really don't know how long I'll be staying," Sebastian told him and realised that he did not and that his future was as vague and unpredictable as on the first day he set foot in Kingsbay.}

^{"How are you making out with Olga Boxall?" asked Tapper, shrewdly.}

^{"I like her, I like her very much," admitted Mr. Sermon, but as he said this he felt a double prick of conscience, the first springing from his failure to inform Sybil of his continued existence and a second that could be traced to his failure to tell Olga he was a married man with two grown-up children. In the ten days or so since he had arrived at the coast he had made several half-hearted attempts to}

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^{write to Sybil and on one occasion had even gone out to a call-box with the intention of 'phoning her but at the last moment he had relented, partly because he had an uncomfortable certainty that his idyll would cease the moment he heard Sybil's voice but more so because he could not determine upon the correct approach in advance. It all depended, he thought, upon Sybil's reaction. If she was shrill and shrewish he was confident that he could withstand her on the telephone, and, in the last extremity, hang up on her, but if she sounded unhappy and pleading he was not at all sure he could hold on to his new freedom and the fact was that this had become extremely important to him, so much so that he ultimately abandoned the idea of ringing up and reverted to his original idea of writing a postcard. About a week after his arrival in Kingsbay he did write a letter, but he did not post it for, as he stood beside the pillar-box, the terror of putting a term to his adventures and finding himself back inside Napier Hall rose up like a spectre and drove him to take shelter on the promenade where he promised himself another forty-eight hour respite.}

^{His reluctance to admit the facts to Olga sprang from an altogether different source. He had convinced himself that it would shatter mutual trust and end in Olga putting him out of the house, to continue his truancy in some dreary little boarding-house or hotel. He did not want to get used to a new room and new people and he did not want to take a chance on hotel cooking when Olga's was so excellent and varied. He was very happy where he was and enjoyed Olga Boxall's company in the evenings. It was like being married with nearly all the advantages and without any of the disadvantages and on the few occasions when he was completely honest with himself he knew that a confession on his part would slam the door on the decorous flirtation that was beginning to bud at The Chalet.}

^{Matters stood like this when they went on the charabanc trip and afterwards, whenever he thought of that dramatic occasion, Mr. Sermon blamed not himself or Olga but the driver of the vehicle for what happened. If the man had looked where he was treading, there would have been no crisis at Poppleford Steps and Mr. Sermon would never have been called upon to prove his manhood, either then, in front of eighteen strangers, or later with Olga}

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^{Boxall, spinster, of Kingsbay, Devon, and semi-independent means.}

^{It was while he was whistling his way along the front after his morning dip one Monday morning that Mr. Sermon noticed signs that Kingsbay was putting on its summer clothes. Modest strings of fairy-lights were being suspended from the esplanade lampposts and two or three longshoremen were erecting blackboards announcing the inevitable trips in the bay. There was slightly more traffic about and several early morning strollers from the three hotels on the front. Kingsbay, in short, was preparing its annual sacrifice to the urbanised tribes of the East and North, handing over its peace and selectivity in exchange for the money the invaders were prepared to pay for board, lodging and the strains of the stringed orchestra already tuning up in the bandstand near the jetty.}

^{Near where The Coombe met the front stood a coach-tour centre and Mr. Sermon, whose blister was still giving trouble, suddenly made up his mind to take a day off and enjoy the country further afield from the cushioned seat of an excursion coach. Boards advertised day trips to Cornwall, Dartmouth, Exeter and almost everywhere else in the peninsula, and after studying the company's literature he selected the North Devon trip, taking in Lynmouth, Watersmeet, the Doone Valley, Ilfracombe and home via the uplands of Exmoor, with a stop for tea at Poppleford Steps. The ticket cost him fifteen shillings but as he was paying for it, it occurred to him that Olga too had earned a day off and that perhaps this would be a small way of repaying her hospitality. On the spur of the moment he bought two tickets and when he told her he was almost embarrassed by the pleasure it afforded her.}

^{"Really, that's most charming of you, Mr. Sermon! It's years since I saw those places and years since anyone did anything like that for me without my having to suggest it! What time does it start? Ten o'clock? I'll have to change and there's the washing up. And the beds not made and ... oh ... no, you go alone, you'll enjoy it better."}

^{"I shouldn't enjoy it half as m'uch!" declared Mr. Sermon, stoutly, "so pop upstairs and change and I'll wash up while you're doing it. I shall go like this, in sweater and slacks. After all, it is an excursion."}

^{He almost pushed her upstairs and carried the breakfast things into the kitchen. He had almost finished drying when she reappeared}

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^{and he gasped at the transformation. She was wearing a smart, navy blue costume with white piping and matching high-heeled shoes that looked both Italian and expensive. Her navy hat was a very daring affair for Kingsbay, a wide, down sweep over the left ear and a small white pompom over the peak. Her lips were scarlet and her eyes sparkled as he had not seen them sparkle before. She said, laughing at his expression, "Well, will I do ?"}

^{"Do? You look . . . quite wonderful, Miss Boxall!"}

^{And he decided that she did indeed and displayed the kind of taste one seldom found in women who lived alone. He stood looking at her so long that she began to blush and as the colour flooded into her cheeks he dropped the dishcloth he was holding, bobbed forward and kissed her on the mouth.}

^{It was an impulsive and rather clumsy kiss but all the safer for that, given as it was received entirely without embarrassment. A moment later they were sailing out of the house like a couple of children romping off to the beach.}

^{The charabanc was almost full when they arrived at the park. There were several elderly women, of the kind that seemed almost to populate Kingsbay, matrons in heavy, serviceable tweeds, who talked in loud, hectoring voices, the product-or so Mr. Sermon imagined-of Spartan army homes, tough boarding-schools and hill-stations in pre-war India. There were one or two middle-aged tradesmen taking their wives on an excursion before the summer rush began and one very obvious honeymoon couple, who reminded Mr. Sermon that it was now the season of the year when young people rushed into marriage in order to save income-tax. This pair were Northerners and occupied a seat immediately in front of Sebastian and Olga. They engaged his attention almost at once because they were a kind of parody of a honeymoon joke, sitting so closely together that over their heads he had an uninterrupted view through the windscreen. The man was a thickset young fellow, moon-faced and pink-cheeked and the bride, almost as lumpish, had straight black hair, permanently parted lips that seemed to Mr. Sermon rather rubbery and a honeymoon glaze in her eyes. They communicated with each other by means of almost inaudible sighs and when the coach passed over a bump they merged together with}

^{a kind of sensual ecstasy. Sebastian winked at Olga who was also amused by them and after the lovers had occupied a straight stretch of road by gazing into one another's eyes and then resolved themselves into a mass once more as the big vehicle swung round a sharp bend, he leaned towards Olga and whispered the title of the currently popular Chevalier song, 'I'm glad I'm not young any more" and she giggled and had to take out a handkerchief and pretend to blow her nose.}

^{They stopped at Lynmouth for coffee and Olga told him she had come here one autumn afternoon with the boy who was killed abroad and Mr. Sermon asked her outright if the recollection made her sad but she answered, brightly, "Not in the least because if one allows oneself to be nostalgic about every place associated with memories of youth one would end up quite static in a crowd of strangers!" and he thought this a sensible observation but could not help feeling grateful for a complete lack of nostalgic memories in his own background and a correspondingly heightened sense of living in the present.}

^{The sun was warm but there was a pleasant breeze and he felt extraordinarily at peace with the world. Olga, sitting opposite him at the little table, looked prettier than ever, he thought, and glancing into an advertisement mirror behind him he noticed how tanned and healthy he looked and how little the streaks of grey showed at his temples.}

^{"By George, I ought to have done this years ago!" he said, expressing his general satisfaction with life.}

^{"You mean, come out on a coach excursion?" she said, but he laughed and added, "No, no, although this is very pleasant and relaxing I must say; no, Miss Boxall, I mean I should have set off looking for life instead of beetling round and round the inside of a glass hoping that someone would lift it up and let me out!"}

^{They reassembled and went on up the wooded hill to Watersmeet, now in spate and a very impressive sight, and as they looked down at the tumbling brown flood Olga said; "I should never have lived by the sea, I much prefer rivers. Rivers are more personal and less moody, I think." He agreed but confessed to a lurking fondness for salt water, but she went on, "When I was a little girl I always wanted}

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^{to live in the country with a river at the bottom of the garden. It probably came from reading
The Water Babies.
Were you impressed by The Water Babies, Mr. Sermon?"}

^{"Very much," he told her, "particularly the bit where Mr. Grimes gets wedged in the chimney-pot and bullied by the policeman! After that I was always terrified of policemen and deeply suspicious of my father's repeated injunctions to approach them if I was in difficulty. I think I should have walked about London all night rather than approach a Bobby and chance being wedged into a chimney-pot and banged over the head with a truncheon!"}

^{She laughed and it occurred to him that her laughter had a pleasant note and that this was the first time he had heard it, although she had smiled at several of his sallies in the kitchen and by the fire of an evening. Another thought struck him, the speed with which they had learned to communicate with one another, the simplicity of conveying an idea to her without an explanatory preamble. It was like talking to someone in shorthand and this was a new experience to him. He had known Sybil for more than two decades but it had never occurred to him to tell her of his fear of policemen. This, he reflected, was real companionship, the kind of association a man needed in his fifties, for by then one should have progressed beyond the stage when one sat thinking up things to say to a pretty woman one wanted to impress. He went on to develop this thought. Surely, at his age, one should be done with all that panting and sighing employed by the honeymooners in the coach. True he had kissed Olga that morning but 'kiss' wasn't the right word for it, there was another word, an old-English word, that conveyed the salute far more accurately-'buss!' that was it, and what was a buss between a man of forty-nine and a woman sixteen years younger ?}

^{"All in, sir, we got long ways to go!"}