The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (25 page)

^{tears in her eyes they would find themselves in an emotional maze that would soon make nonsense of her decision.}

^{"I don't think we can make any conditions about this, Martin," she said, when she had mastered her weakness and could stop pretending to refill the teapot. "I only know that every instinct I have about us told me to go out and switch boats because only that way do we stand a chance of making an intelligent decision."}

^{Suddenly she stopped searching for words and addressed him directly, both hands gripping the guard-rail of the stove and holding her body rigid. "This has no bearing on me loving or needing you, Martin! Last night I wanted you and I took you, almost against your will, and in spite of the warning you were decent enough to give me. Well, as I said, I don't regret that one bit but now that I've had time to think I'm sorry for your sake because you have an instinctive chivalry about women and to use something as rare and fine as that for one's own ends would be contemptuous, don't you see? Now let's stop all this and enjoy what's left of the day. I'm going out of here early tomorrow and nothing you can say is going to make me go back on it. You can stay on-I'd be glad if you did, we'll go to Britton's, the estate agents and make you official tenant, but don't try and talk me out of it, I had quite enough trouble talking myself into it!"}

^{A Verey light exploded in Sebastian's brain and suddenly he did understand and with a clarity that astonished him. He understood that this woman was in love with him but was deliberately removing herself from him because instinct told her that he was unable to return that love in a way that could bring either of them lasting happiness. He knew that she realised too many of his years had been spent within the orbit of another woman to whom he was bound by the chains of an attachment formed when he and all his world were young, and that although he might run from this he could never out-distance it. He understood that she was right when she said that his own journey was far from finished and that this involvement was a kind of half-way stage and a long way short of horizons that would have to be crossed if he was to learn anything worth learning from his odyssey.}

^{"This house," he said presently, "I found peace and joy in it and I}

^IS8

^{should like to stay here if it could be arranged but I must pay a proper rent, I don't see why you should lose by your decency, Olga. Let's go and arrange it and then I'll help you pack."}

^{They got through the day with less difficulty than they had anticipated. He signed for the house at a rental of twenty-eight pounds a month and gave her a cheque in advance, the first he had cashed since leaving home, and when her trunk was locked and roped, and transport to the junction had been arranged, he gave her a gift he had bought while her back was turned, a lizard-skin bag that had caught his eye in the window of Gilroy's next door to the estate agents. He gave it to her after supper and when she kissed him and held him in a quick, nervous embrace her nearness disturbed him more than it had the previous evening, for it promised more than physical relief and the triumph of being the first man to possess her. They sat for an hour or so and talked in the manner of the days preceding the crisis and it gave him pleasure to realise that, beneath the restraints the new situation placed upon her, she was excited at the prospect of visiting towns and cities she had dreamed of since girlhood for this made her journey less of a flight and more of an adventure, sweetening the sour thought that he had been the means of causing her unhappiness. He said, summing up this conviction, "In a sense, you're doing the same thing as I did, Olga. We both waited overlong but I think you'll get the same kick out of it the moment the boat casts off. I haven't looked back, so don't you! For the next twelve weeks treat every day as a separate existence!"}

^{He pictured her as he said this, going ashore in a chattering party to view Pompeii and Naples and the Piraeus, and part of him longed to be with her, drinking local drinks in little cafes and making tourists' observations, but he knew that this was not his road and if he was tempted by it he would only have to retrace his footsteps sooner or later and for him there was even less time to spare.}

^{CHAPTER FIVE}

^{Mr. Sermon Enlarges His Audience}

^{sebastian sermon's
physical, mental and spiritual enlargement moved on to its next stage within an hour of his waving goodbye to a rather tremulous Olga Boxall at the bottom of The Coombe, where she picked up her taxi. He had helped the taximan carry the trunk down the unmade roadway to the sea-front and when the car had passed out of sight among High Street traffic he felt so glum that he yearned to do something strenuous and grabbing costume and towel he turned his back on the empty house. He crossed the edge of the links and went on down the bluff to the eastern edge of the Bay where there was a section of shingle beach not much patronised by the paddlers and shrimpers.}

^{The water was warm and he swam slowly westward, making for a moored launch that lay about a hundred yards offshore and being careful to skirt the most westerly groyne that projected eighty yards into the Bay. He had reached its point when he saw the child, a girl about four or five wearing a sunsuit and carrying a shrimping net with which she probed the concrete buttresses of the breakwater. He regarded her warily, thinking that the adults in charge of her were taking a chance to allow a child of that age to walk the slippery planking with deep water on either side and as he thought this he caught a glimpse of her mother, or whoever it was, standing}

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^{on the concrete drum nearer the beach and gesticulating at the perched infant.}

^{Perhaps the child's attention wavered between the swimmer and the mother, or perhaps a ninth wave submerged the groyne and caused her to lose her footing. At all events the child suddenly toppled backwards into deep water and the woman on the beach uttered one of the most piercing screams Mr. Sermon had ever heard, not excluding those practised by despairing actresses on the}

^telly.

^{As he rose on the swell Mr. Sermon caught a glimpse of people converging on the woman as she stood knee-deep in the water and then he was over the groyne and diving deep at the point where the child had disappeared.}

^{He was not much of a diver and without glasses his range of vision was limited but he had the sense to turn inland and ride the surge of the next breaker and as he surfaced he saw his quarry, a threshing, rolling bundle turning over and over in the swell and bobbing up just long enough to glare at him with a desperate ferocity, so that even in the tumult of the moment Mr. Sermon decided that she was likely to prove a difficult handful. He went after her however, with wild, chopping strokes and just as she disappeared for the second time he grabbed her by the shoulder-flounces of her sunsuit, tugging her backwards so that he could enlarge his grip before they went under together and he swallowed what seemed to him a gallon of water.}

^{They seemed to struggle there a long time, Sebastian on his back, the child held by her shoulders against his belly, and all the time the breakers thundered over them and pitched them this way and that until Mr. Sermon felt that he too was on the point of drowning. Then, as he kicked out madly, they dropped into a trough and before the next wave broke over them he got his breath and his bearings and without relaxing his grip worked himself into a more horizontal position so that the next wave swept them inshore. It went over them nevertheless and the child gave a violent belch, striking out with her feet and hitting Sebastian in the groin, the blow causing him to yelp and swallow yet another mouthful. Then, with a sense of unspeakable relief, he felt bottom and somebody fully-clad reached out and}

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^{relieved him of his burden and he was able to struggle ashore. Reaching the tideline he fell forward on hands and knees, gasping and retching as the beach swam before his eyes. Kneeling there he was hardly conscious of the fact that he was surrounded by excited holiday-makers and that a fisherman was crouching over the child and working her arms like pump-handles.}

^{As soon as his vision cleared Mr. Sermon succumbed to yet another wave, this time of indignation directed at the hysterical woman he had seen waving to the child before she toppled into the water. 'Damn them!' he thought savagely, 'why the devil can't people look after their children properly? Any fool should have seen the danger of letting a child that age walk the length of a slippery breakwater with a shrimping net! I hope she was scared! She damn well deserves to be scared! Supposing I hadn't turned aside whilst making for the launch, supposing . . .' but at that moment the little devil he had rescued rolled over, sat up and began to shriek and everybody round her cooed and exclaimed, and the fisherman stood up beaming round on the ever-growing circle as though he and not Mr. Sermon had been responsible for averting tragedy. Sebastian was so disgusted by the man's bearing that he got up, spat out more water and began to plod down the beach towards the spot where he had left his clothes and spectacles. Then everybody seemed to notice him at once and a young woman shouted "Wait! Hi there! Wait!" and people turned away from the fisherman and the screaming child and began to thump him on the back and exchange first-hand accounts of the rescue, as though they were talking about someone they had read about in the newspaper. Scraps of their conversation reached him as he stood there hemmed in by spectators and some of whom prodded him as they might have touched a curious exhibit taken from its museum case: 'Jolly Good Show!'-'Saw it all!'-'Came up with her four times- wouldn't let go!'-'Ought to get one of those medals!', and so on, until Mr. Sermon's bewilderment gave way to acute embarrassment and he shuffled forward mumbling, "Excuse me-my clothes- rather cold-get something on."}

^{It was the most ill-advised remark he could have made for at once he was half-buried under a rain of blazers and mackintoshes,}

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^{and hands led him up the beach to a refreshment hut and somebody thrust a cup of tea in his hands and urged him to 'drink it up before he did another thing!' He sipped the tea gratefully enough and then a very plump, rubicund man wearing office clothes that made him very conspicuous among so many bikinis and beachshirts, elbowed his way forward with an air of indisputable authority and said, "Excuse me, sir, but would you mind giving me your name? It's official, for the record! I'm the Town Clerk here-Bignall's the name-and I'm sure to get asked, bound to in the nature of things, huh?" He ended his request on a note of query, the 'huh' coming out sharply and authoritatively, so that Sebastian was browbeaten into mumbling, "Sermon's my name, but please, I ... er ... I really don't want any fuss about it! It was just lucky I happened to see her go in, I ... er ... I had a presentiment she would! Is she all right now?"}

^{"Right as rain, right as rain, huh?" barked Mr. Bignall. "Coming up the beach now and none the worse, none the worse, huh?" and he pointed to a little group picking its way up the shingle with the child in the centre. She was still uttering dolorous cries and being ineffectually comforted by the woman, the fisherman and the few hangers-on who had not yet deserted her in favour of the hero.}

^{"Well, I'm glad about that!" said Mr. Sermon, privately deciding that what the child needed in addition to more competent supervision was a good spanking, and then, as he was about to tell Mr. Bignall something of the circumstances, he checked himself for he recognised the nursemaid as the girl who had spoken to him that first morning on the beach, the one who had remembered him from her brief sojourn at Napier Hall Preparatory School and had been frightened away by the Reverend Victor Hawley.}

^{God bless my soul!" he exclaimed, "will you excuse me a moment, sir? I ... I'd like to speak to the young lady and there's still my clothes and towel-" and draped in a stranger's raincoat, he pushed his way through the crowd and touched the girl on the arm.}

^{"Hullo there! It is you, isn't it ? I hadn't my glasses, I didn't realise." The young woman turned a harassed gaze on him and then, with some difficulty, allowed her features to relax in a wry smile.}

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^{"Yes, it's me, up to my neck in trouble as usual! Geraldine, for goodness' sake-this gentleman saved your life! Won't you stop howling long enough to say 'Thank you'?" and Mr. Sermon recognised the child as the little girl who had hurled stones at seagulls, a memory that confirmed him in his opinion that she was not a child he would have elected to save had he been given the choice.}

^{"All right, then I'll say it for you! Thank you a thousand times, Mr. Sermon! And if I hadn't been so horribly involved I should have clapped and cheered like mad! Geraldine, for pity's sake!" and she lifted her shoulders in a gesture of hopelessness as the child, her wails rising an octave, tore loose and rushed into the embrace of the testy old woman Mr. Sermon remembered as the owner of a car half as big as Grosvenor Square.}

^{"Oh, God, that's put the tin lid on it!" said the young woman, her hand flying to her mouth.}

^{"I say, are you likely to get into trouble about this?" asked Mr. Sermon and suddenly found himself ashamed of contributing to the sensation. The girl looked very glum and seemed reluctant to emerge from the thinning crowd.}

^{"Trouble? I shall be fired like a gun! You'll hear the report from the far side of the town. Well, here goes! Let's get it over with and I suppose I ought to be glad in a way but I'd much sooner have fired them!"}