The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (34 page)

^{She was speaking off the cuff and not one statement was the result of reflection over the lonely days and nights that had preceded this reunion, yet, in so far as she was aware of what she wanted, it was an honest response and therefore, to his mind, a final one. He realised}

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^{then that they really had grown away from one another and that the longer they lived the more widely their paths would diverge until, any moment now, they would pass out of hailing distance and push on alone, or with somebody who happened to be going their way. Perhaps this was the best thing that could happen but it seemed a sad enough ending when a little .pliability on her part would have given them a chance to start out afresh. She was her old self again now, the Queen of the Amateurs, cool, detached, and mistress of her emotions. He had been touched by her when she looked bewildered and helpless on the sea front and had even thought how exciting it might be to win her all over again but now the impression of girlish uncertainty had gone and she was the woman she had been on the night he left home, the woman who had married him on the impulse because she did not seem to be able to make up her mind which of the over-confident young men she wanted as a husband.}

^{She stood up and he followed her to the door. Her abruptness irritated him and when she said, stiffly, "I should like to pay my share, Sebastian!" his temper flared up and he snapped, "Don't be so damned silly, Sybil!" and flung down a pound note, walking into the street without waiting for the change.}

^{"Look here," he said, turning back for a final try, "let's go home to my place and talk. We can't leave things like this. Or, if you prefer it, let's get the car and drive out somewhere?"}

^{"I think we've said everything we have to say for the time being," she said quietly. "If you are as happy as you seem to be down here working as a beach inspector then good luck to you, Sebastian! I mean that, I'm not sneering at you-but it surely proves we no longer have a thing in common and talking won't bring us together. We might as well shake hands and part like civilised human beings!"}

^{He winced at the word 'civilised', recognising it as a suburban cliche almost invariably applied to the man and woman whose marriage had worn threadbare and who had agreed to separate without acrimony. It was a much misused word. The final parting of a man and woman who had lived together for twenty years was not 'civilised', no matter how much people like Sybil persuaded themselves that it was.}

^{"What do you intend doing, then?" he asked sourly.}

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^{"I suppose that depends very much on you, Sebastian."}

^{"How on me ?"}

^{"Well, I shan't take any steps to divorce you until I think you've had long enough to arrive at a final decision. That doesn't mean, however, that I'm prepared to wait indefinitely! If you decide to act sensibly and come home with me now I dare say we could pretend that it had never happened at all."}

^{It staggered him that his plea had made so little impression upon her and he said, wonderingly, "You . . . you don't even begin to understand what's happened to me, do you ? I believe you still think your money is important to me and that I can be collected like a ... like a stray dog and taken home to be scolded and forgiven for running away!"}

^{"I think you're making it far more complicated than it is," she said coolly. "The point is you would be welcome now but in the end I might have to take certain advice."}

^{"You might be very surprised at the 'certain advice" given you!" he retorted, battling with a temper flayed by her polite arrogance. "After all, I've offered you a home down here and within limits a wife is legally obliged to live where her husband works!"}

^{"Not this wife," she said grimly, her glance sweeping up the busy High Street, "and within limits can mean different things to different people!"}

^{He made one last effort, taking her by the arm and turning her towards him. He had forgotten that holiday-makers were passing up and down the street and that some had to move round them as they stood in the middle of the pavement immediately outside the cafe.}

^{"Sybil, I can't let you go like this! If you took all that trouble to find me and come down here on the off-chance, then it must mean you . . . !"}

^{"Hullo there! I missed you! They told me all about the spectacular deliverance from the Bastille . . .! "}

^{It was Rachel Grey, shouting to him from the kerb where she had succeeded in parking the Morris in a tiny space between a van and a private car. It was obvious that she did not connect him with Sybil for she bounded out of the car and bustled across, radiating high spirits.}

^{Her sudden appearance confused Mr. Sermon. He had forgotten}

^{their luncheon appointment and he saw Sybil give the girl one of her quick, appraising glances, noticing also that Rachel recoiled from the inspection, as though contrasting Sybil's smart clothes with her own jeans and sweater.}

^{"I'm sorry," she said, stepping back, "I didn't realise you were with somebody," and she looked so awkward that Sebastian spared something of his own embarrassment to feel sorry for her.}

^{"This is my wife, Rachel," he said gravely, "Sybil, this is Miss Grey who runs our Children's Zoo. Her father is the Headmaster of the school I was telling you about."}

^{"How do you do?" said Sybil, striking a neat balance between disinterested acidity and common politeness. So she might have responded to the arrival of a breathless and untidy schoolgirl introduced into the house by her daughter Jonquil.}

^{Rachel reacted like a schoolgirl. She did not exactly say 'Ooo-er!' but a passer-by could have been forgiven for thinking she had. The exclamation, however, was not without its use for it revived Sebastian's sense of humour and he said: "If you're jumping to the conclusion that it was my wife I rescued from the ladies', Rachel, you're wrong. That would be stretching coincidence too far! Sybil arrived when the actual victim was tipping me a ten shilling note for services rendered!"}

^{"You don't mean to say she coughed up ten shillings!" said Rachel, forgetting Sybil for a moment. "My God, that must be a record in Kingsbay. They're notoriously mean with small change around here," she said, turning back to Sybil but then Sybil's expression froze her exuberance and she said, awkwardly, "Have ... er ... have you had lunch?" and when Sebastian nodded, "Fine! Well . . . er . . . if you'll excuse me, I'll pop in and get mine, I'm famished!" and she disappeared into the cafe without saying goodbye.}

^{"What an extraordinary young woman!" said Sybil. "The daughter of a headmaster, you say?"}

^{"Yes," said Sebastian, crisply, "but a very eccentric headmaster I'm afraid, not in the least like the Reverend Hawley!" They walked silently down the High Street and along the promenade towards the Royal Albert. He felt more deflated than at any time since he had left home and this was not only because their reunion had been such a}

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^{failure but because he sensed he had once again lost the initiative and had been driven to defend himself like a child called to account by a disapproving parent. It was odd, he thought, how a single hour with Sybil could puncture a man's self-esteem and reduce his stature sufficiently to pop him back in a place like Napier Hall. He was sure that she did not intend to have this effect upon him, but she had and was obviously prepared to take advantage of it for when they reached the hotel she stopped and offered her hand.}

^{"I don't think there is much point in you seeing Jonquil. She's not the easiest of children and she was very upset when you came out of that place wearing that cap!"}

^{"I don't see why you all want to make such a bloody fuss over my cap!" he burst out. "It's only a badge of office and most people wouldn't find anything ridiculous in it! The fact is Sybil, you and Jonquil are a couple of snobs and I suppose that's one of the snags we foundered on!"}

^{"Yes," she admitted, quietly enough to make his outburst seem childish. "I am a snob! I was born one and it's far too late to do anything about it. One would imagine," she went on, looking round in a general way and lifting the conversation from its personal groove, "that in a remote provincial town like this old-fashioned prejudices would have survived the Welfare State but I see that this isn't so. If anything, the general levelling process has made more progress here than it has at home. Well now, I expect you've got to get back to your duties so I won't detain you any longer!" and somehow made it sound as if she was keeping a conscientious workman from his sewage pipes. "You'll write again I suppose and perhaps you had better give me your full address. I'll write it down before I forget," and she extracted a tiny address book and propelling pencil from her handbag and waited, pencil poised over the page marked 'S'.}

^{Sullenly Sebastian repeated his address and she wrote it down in her small, careful script reserved for addresses and telephone numbers. A kind of smouldering rage took possession of him and he longed to shatter her studied detachment but realised that there was absolutely nothing to be gained by a public quarrel on the steps of Kingsbay's largest and stuffiest hotel.}

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^{"You won't change your mind and stay a day or two, Sybil?"}

^{"No, Sebastian, I won't, I realise now that it was rather unfair of me to descend on you like this. We shall start back in an hour or so but there is one more thing, I talked on the telephone to that man Hawley before I left and he told me he had managed to straighten things out at school. If you want to take a term's holiday you can, without vacating the post. He told me to tell you that."}

^{"I'm damned if I'll return there!" growled Sebastian, "and you can tell him so if you like!"}

^{"It's for you to tell him," said Sybil. "I shan't have any reason to contact him will I?" and she smiled, as though enjoying her pitiful little triumph and walked briskly up the steps to the swing doors.}

^{It was a week before he could put Sybil out of mind and begin to enjoy life again. For several days following her visit his new friends found him taciturn and listless and during this period he was grateful for the company of Rachel, the only one among his Kingsbay associates who had actually met his wife and been able to form an independent estimate of her character. Rachel's estimate was not a flattering one and she announced it with characteristic outspokenness.}

^{"I don't know why the hell you're mooning over the woman, Martin," she said bluntly, as they faced one another across the identical cafe table where he and Sybil had lunched. "Physically I thought her attractive and she has a dress-sense I envy but she just isn't you any longer. She may have been once but she isn't now, and sooner or later you'll have to face the fact. Damn it, I had to once and now I'm better for it, at least, I hope I am! I dare say you've got old-fashioned ideas on divorce, so if I was in your shoes I wouldn't do anything at all, I'd just wait for her to make the first move. Surely even people of your generation don't find anything sordid in divorce on grounds of desertion, or do they?"}

^{"But I haven't deserted her, not in the legal sense," argued Sebastian. "I've changed my job and my place of residence, and I've invited her to join me. Legally I'm in the clear, particularly as she enjoys two thousand a year in her own right!"}

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^{He had never mentioned Sybil's income to her before and Rachel was staggered by the figure.}

^{"You ran out on two thousand a year?" She looked at him admiringly. "Then, that surely proves my point, you and she are incompatible.
She
wouldn't run out on five hundred! Come to that, I don't think I would! You're absolutely unique, Martin, the only middle-aged man I've ever met who doesn't show evidence of Shelley's 'world's slow stain'!"}

^{He reflected that she had her father's childlike ability to select certain aspects of life, enjoy them to the full and neatly side-step everything that threatened more than sixty seconds' depression. Suddenly he had the urge to confide in her, to explain not only the nature of his quarrel with Sybil, and the flashpoint of the explosion that had blown him westward, but also his indeterminate affaire with Olga Boxall. She listened carefully and he was surprised that he could tell her so much without embarrassment.}

^{"What the devil gets into these women I wonder?" she mused after he had tried to explain Olga's motives for insisting on a prolonged separation. "One would suppose that life was five hundred years long and they had all the time in the world to enjoy it! How old is she? Thirty-three you say? Well, she wants her head examined and in a way she's as bad as Sybil, she just doesn't deserve luck with men. Imagine that! A virgin until thirty-three, then finding a sweetie like you, then running out on him! But maybe I'm wrong, maybe she's a natural spinster!"}

^{"She isn't anything of the kind!" protested Sebastian stoutly. "She's a very affectionate woman, so much so that I sometimes think it was damned unfair of me to take advantage of her."}

^{Rachel's shout of laughter was so loud that he had to hiss at her and cast a warning look at neighbouring tables.}