The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (45 page)

^{"In excellent health," said Sebastian, gravely, and then, as a parting shot, "I think you can safely assume that I'm over the menopause, Headmaster!" and he rang off before he could decide how the Reverend Hawley had reacted to this rather unsporting remark.}

^{He then asked the operator to get him a personal call to his mother-in-law at Beckenham, telling the man that when the caller asked to know who was ringing he was to say 'an old friend' and plug the call through to his room. He did not, on any account, want to converse with his father-in-law, feeling that his advantage lay in keeping his presence in London a secret from Sybil.}

^{When the old lady heard his voice she seemed excited.}

^{"Sebastian? It's really you? You're in London? You've gone back to Sybil?"}

^{"No, mother, I haven't but I intend to on certain conditions. Is Sybil's father there? I want very much to talk to you but I don't want him interfering at the moment."}

^{There was a pause, then she said: "No, he's not here, he's gone over to the Conservative Club and won't be back until after eleven. Why don't you come straight over? You could be here and gone before he shows up." Her voice became earnest, "I'd like you to do that Sebastian. I've discussed this silly business with Sybil and I want very much to talk to you before either of you do anything stupid. Will you come? Will you come straight away?"}

^{"Yes," he said gratefully, "I'll get a car and come right away, so long as you're sure he won't be there to confuse the issue." 'He won't be, I promise you!" she said and rang off.}

^{He asked the head porter to get a hire car and while he waited for it he thought
with
affection of the shrivelled little woman in the old-}

²⁸³

^{fashioned villa at Beckenham. Although it had been Sybil's father who had encouraged his suit he had always much preferred Mrs. Rudge, a simple but intelligent woman who let her husband's bluster flow over her like the cries of a child at play, but one, he suspected, who had always respected him and had been immensely relieved when he stepped in and snatched her daughter from under the noses of the flighty young men who surrounded her.}

^{The car took him over Vauxhall Bridge and through the congested districts of New Cross, Catford and Ladywell and as they passed between rows of yellow-brick houses and shops, with hardly a hint of tree or bush, he wondered why his parents-in-law had never moved further out to a suburb where it was at least possible to draw breath without the taint of petrol fumes and sweating tarmac. Perhaps their roots went down too far in this asphalt and chalk of London so that they found security in this wilderness of brick and grime and perhaps a little of their Cockney prejudice had rubbed off on their daughter who clung to the outer rim of the city as tenaciously as they clung to the inner.}

^{"Turn left here and then second right," he told the driver and the car stopped outside the hideous Edwardian house with its sooty flower beds and mottled laurels.}

^{The old lady met him in the hall and shook hands. She was never one for kissing thought Sebastian as he followed her into the room she still thought of as 'the parlour'. There was a bottle and one small glass on the bamboo fern-table and she said: "You'll have a glass, Sebastian, the same old brew!" and without waiting for an answer she poured a glass of her homemade raisin wine and sat on a high-backed chair opposite, her hands folded on her lap, her beady little eyes regarding him with a mixture of affection and curiosity.}

^{"Now then, let me hear your side of it, I've already heard hers," she said and waited.}

^{He told her his side of it and she listened without a single query or interruption, until he reminded her that he was still technical owner of the Wyckham Rise house and could use his ownership to force Sybil's hand.}

^{"That's a real sensible move," she said approvingly, "providing you'll follow it up, of course!"}

²⁸⁴

^{"Follow it up with what, Mother?"}

^{"How would I know that? It depends how sure you are of yourself. Anyway, if you do sell the house you'd best sell it to me."}

^{"To you?"}

^{"It's the only way you can do it quickly and without a lot of talk and a lot of time wasted. I know Sybil; she's not a bad girl and never was really but she's lazy, real lazy I mean, not about cooking and keeping the house clean but about making up her mind on everything that matters. Giving that money to her was the worst turn her father could have done the girl. With that sort of money you don't have to think, bank managers and such-like do it for you, you follow me? Yes, you'd better sell me the house at cost. Then I'll make a profit on it and that'll stop Albert putting his oar in! He never could resist a profit, no matter how he come by it!"}

^{The clarity and cunning with which the old lady approached the problem made Sebastian's head spin but he did not doubt her judgement or suspect for one moment that she might have an ulterior motive. She had never been greedy for money and she was right of course about the necessity for taking action before Sybil could make trouble one way or another.}

^{"How could it be done?" he asked, "how could we put it into effect at once?"}

^{"Easy," she said, "you write me a letter in reply to one I write you, stating price and completion date. Write it tonight with yesterday's date and I'll take it over to the lawyer's and get it drawn up as soon as it arrives."}

^{"But you haven't written me a letter yet," Sebastian protested, smiling and thinking how Tapper Sugg would have enjoyed his mother-in-law.}

^{"I'll send one on," she said impatiently, "but it'll have last Monday's date on it! What did you pay for the place? Three-five wasn't it?"}

^{"Three seven-fifty but it's worth double that now," he told her.}

^{"So much the better," she said, "I won't spend any of it and it's all coming to you an' Sybil an' the kids anyway. The kids don't touch none of it until they're twenty-five though, I put that in the will and I'd have made it thirty if the lawyer had let me!"}

²⁸⁵

^{"Well," he said admiringly, "that seems to be that, so long as you're sure it's legal."}

^{"It will be by the time she gets to looking into it," replied the old woman grimly, "but the house is not all that important, Sebastian, and selling it won't do no good unless you stand up to her and show her who's really boss. I don't mean just a lot o" bluster like my Albert, I mean that streak you've got in you that you've never let out, not for her to see anyway! I reckon I knew it was there years ago and when I heard you'd run
off
I was glad at first because I reckoned it would bring her up short and so it did. Then she goes and makes a muck of it, or you do, or you both do, so now you got to set to and start all over again!"}

^{She was silent for a moment but Sebastian waited, knowing she had not finished her summing up.}

^{"This other flibberty-gibbet, not the one who's found herself a man but the other one-you aren't really struck on her are you? If you are you might as well call it a day and let my girl stew in her own juice and I can't say as I'd blame you. I wouldn't have any part in making you go back if you hadn't a mind to go."}

^{Sebastian decided to meet honesty with honesty.}

^{"No," he said deliberately, "I'm not in love with Rachel and she's aware of that but I've been to bed with her. Once. Today, as a matter of fact because I was half-crazy with rage over Sybil taking that damned photographer into her confidence."}

^{The old lady gave no sign that she was shocked or displeased.}

^{"Well, I suppose that's your affair," she said, "but don't be such a fool as to tell Sybil about it. She'd sooner not know anyway-most women would sooner not know but you men will start confessing the minute you get worked up! You keep that bit of the tale to yourself and take the initiative from the minute you come out in the open about selling the house over her head. She'll storm back o' course, but that's your cue and don't muff it a second time, you understand?"}

^{"No, I don't, not altogether," admitted Sebastian, "you mean that's my cue for insisting she starts packing and coming back to Kingsbay with me?"}

^{The old lady looked exasperated.}

²⁸⁶

^{"You seem to stow away any amount o' book learning son," she said, "but you don't seem to have learned much about my girl all the time you've been living with her. You been insisting she comes where your job is, haven't you, and where's it got you so far? You're still down there and she's still up here and now the pair of you are getting cluttered up with other people! If she stays high and mighty when you tell her you've sold the house and bought another for her then I reckon she'll deserve all that's coming to her and you'll have to fall back on the rough stuff, same as she told me you started to before you left."}

^{"Rough stuff?" protested Sebastian, "oh but look here, Mother, that's what began it all! You can treat some women that way but not Sybil, she isn't that sort at all!"}

^{The old woman looked at him pityingly.}

^{"Isn't she? It's like I said, you're bright about some things but you got a lot to learn about Sybil. ^411 those stuck-up women are 'that sort' as you call it! All of 'em, take it from me, and she's no exception. They need to have it slapped out of 'em and if I'd had my way I'd have done it for you when she still wore plaits!"}

^{She looked so small and fragile sitting there in her old-fashioned black dress with her hands folded on her lap that Sebastian found it impossible to picture her chastening a strapping girl like Sybil, yet there was about her an air of authority that told him both Sybil and her father would have gone some distance out of their way before crossing the old lady when she was roused. He said, half-jokingly, "That's old fashioned stuff, Mother and I don't suppose you gave her more than a clout or two!"}

^{The old lady smiled, very grimly, he thought, and her eye seemed to kindle. "Her father was on the road in those days," she said, "and I had the bringing up of her. She'd have been different I can tell you if he'd stayed a commercial traveller! She tried to put it over of course but we didn't have no more than half a dozen set-to's. That was plenty!" and she nodded sharply, as though to drive the point home.}

^{"What did you quarrel about?" he asked curiously.}

^{"The usual things, putting all that stuff on her face too soon, staying out, answering back, the usual. The first couple o" times I}

²⁸⁷

^{did clout her and send her upstairs but after that I showed more sense. I took a stick to her and made sure I caught her in the bathroom when she had nothing between her and the stick. Twice I did it and the second time she had her breakfast standing! We didn't have no more hanky-panky after that, not until her father come home for good and set about ruining her. Came close to doing it properly that one time, he did, he could never get over her being so pretty an' popular with the boys."}

^{The old lady's narrowed expression told him that she had used the verb 'ruin' in the final and Victorian sense and that she meant a great deal more than 'spoil'. He said:}

^{"How do you mean, 'that one time'? When?"}

^{Mrs. Rudge seemed to retreat into herself for a few moments, almost as though she was on the point of dropping off to sleep and then like the sudden switching on of two tiny masked lamps, her boot-button eyes twinkled and a half-smile creased the line of her tightly-folded lips.}

^{"Ah, then you didn't know about it after all? I never thought you did, not really, and naturally I never said nothing and never would have, not even now if I didn't think it might jolt you into going about it in the right way! You remember that kid she had, the one who come before its time soon after you was married?"}

^{"The first one? The one we lost at six months?"}

^{"It wouldn't have been yours if it had lived, it would have been that young scallywag's-what was his name?-the one who nipped off abroad!"}

^{"Norman Stephenson? That boy with the sports car that woke up the neighbourhood ? Sybil and him!" and he jumped up, staring down on her with stark amazement on his face. "Are you sure of that? Are you absolutely sure?"}

^{"Yes, I am sure but don't you ever let her know it was me who told you," she said sullenly. "If you want my advice, and after all that's what made you come here, you'll keep it to yourself same as I have all these years but you'll act on it none the less. Remember it, just so long as she holds out and then forget it again!"}

^{"How could I do that?" he stuttered.}

^{"Sit down again and don't fly off the handle like one o' them}

²⁸⁸

^{actors who give me the gripes on the telly!" she said imperturbably. "It all happened twenty years ago and she's never let you down since, I can swear to that! But she was very gone on that young waster, tho' I could see what he was worth from the start and so could she as soon as she told him she was expecting. He did just what anyone might have expected him to do, took to his heels and didn't stop until he fetched up in China, or Africa, or some outlandish place! Then she pulled herself together and as it was things worked out pretty well all round. Until now, that is, when most couples have got through the worst of it and have grown up like you and Sybil never have!"}