The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (7 page)

^{"Me-
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Me be my age! I don't know what's the matter with you but if you think you can treat me like a ... a ..."}

^{She did not complete the protest. As he took a single step towards her she jumped for the bathroom door and this time she got there with a yard to spare, slamming it and shooting the bolt.}

^{For a moment he contemplated hurling his weight against it, knowing that the bolt was flimsy and would give at the first rush but the urgency had ebbed from him and although he still felt aggressive and masterful it was not in the same sense. He lifted his hand to thump the panels of the door and then let it drop.}

^{"Sybil!" he said, evenly, "come out of there at once!"}

^{"I most certainly will not," she said, "not until you go and lock yourself in your dressing-room."}

^{"I could break through that bathroom lock with one kick," he announced.}

^{"If you do I shall open the window and scream!" she countered but he noticed an unfamiliar quaver in her voice. Could it be, he wondered, that she was secretly enjoying this romp? Did she want to be pursued and manhandled ? The malevolent imp inside him, who had been dozing since his final gibe at the Head, suddenly woke up and urged him to increase his stake and damn the consequences.}

^{"Sybil!" he said, heavily, "I'm warning you! Either you come out and get into that bed or I walk out of here tonight and I'm not fooling, you ask them up at Napier Hall. There are times when a man needs his wife and this is one of them, so stop being so damned coy and come out this instant. If you don't you'll regret it, I promise you!"}

^{He waited. Ten, fifteen seconds passed. He fancied that he could almost hear her heartbeats and could certainly feel his own. All around them was complete silence. The clock had stopped ticking and still lay where it had fallen amid the wreckage of the bedside table. He took out his watch and polished the glass with his sleeve. It was nine-forty-two and outside darkness had fallen. Through a gap in the curtains he could see lights winking on the hillside and the night breeze came soughing through the open window, striking cold on his temples.}

^{Sebastian," said Sybil at last, and now her voice sounded emin-}

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^{ently reasonable, "suppose you stay where you are and tell me exactly what's happened? Then, when you've calmed down a little, and if you promise not to be too silly, I'll come out and we can discuss this like sensible people!"}

^{He looked at his watch again. "I'll give you ten seconds to open that door, Sybil!" he said, "and I'm not making conditions, you understand ?"}

^{There was silence again while another ten seconds ticked by. Inside the bathroom she laid her hand on the knob of the bolt but she did not draw it, remaining quite still, listening. Her mind was a turmoil of astonishment, indignation and alarm but buried deep under these there existed an intense and burning curiosity that urged her to risk a second encounter with the man on the other side of the door, even to the extent of provoking him to commit further outrages on her person if she could determine exactly how far he was likely to go in the improbable role of satyr. Intense Curiosity warmed and excited her, so that she felt her limbs trembling and her heart pounding and it surprised her that the sensation was not entirely unfamiliar for now she recalled feeling like this once before, just once, a long, long time ago before she had married Sebastian. The memory, flickering across her mind like a distant shaft of lightning, pleased and stimulated her, so much so that desire rose in her belly like a slow, strong tide, banishing resentment and the ache in her back where she had cannoned against the door-jamb. Then his voice came to her, very flat and thin it seemed and certainly not the strident tone of a moment ago, so that suddenly she felt deflated and disappointed.}

^{"I'm going, Sybil. I'm going away and I don't know when I shall come back. Perhaps never!" he ended dramatically.}

^{It was a little boy threatening to hold his breath until he died. She heard him go into the dressing-room and rummage in his chest of drawers, then descend the step to the corridor and move along to the back of the house. Slowly she drew the bolt and re-entered the disordered room, moving round to the far side of the bed to gather up the ck»k, the broken pieces of lamp and the fragments of splintered wood and toss them into the window recess. Then, with great deliberation, she peeled off her foundation garment, removed}

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^{stockings and brassiere and stood regarding herself in the mirror, patting herself here and there as she had done when Sebastian was watching her from the dressing-room. She saw her robe on the floor and picked it up, musing awhile, then threw it over the back of the chair and went softly to the dressing-room door. There was a light in the corridor and she remained on the threshold a moment, listening but hearing nothing except a goods train clank along the branch line in the valley.}

^{"Sebastian!" she called at last but there was no answer and she pouted, moving across the dressing-room and into the corridor. "Sebastian, dear," she repeated, and wondered at the invitation in her voice. Still no answer and she began to feel vaguely frightened, hurrying back into the room, slipping on her gown and making her way along the corridor to the head of the stairs. She was standing there, one hand on the newel post, when the front door banged and the sound came to her like the first rumble of an avalanche so that she gave a little cry of alarm and darted across the landing to the window that looked over the lawn, pulling aside the curtain and peering down on to the short, curved drive.}

^{She was just in time to see him pass out of sight behind the laurels that grew down to the gate, a slight, shadowy figure, with what appeared to be a lump on his back and a stick in his hand. She gasped with astonishment and dismay, unable for a moment to believe that she was not caught up in an extravagant film in which a sober, blameless husband walked out into the night with a bundle on his shoulder and hate in his heart.}

^{When the Imp's time-limit had expired outside the locked door Mr. Sermon surrendered wholly to his directions. The Imp said: "Well, you've issued a challenge, now make it good!" and Sebastian obediently turned on his heel and walked through his dressing-room, into the corridor and up the stairs to the attic. He could not have said why he went to the attic until he reached there but then he knew. He went over to a rack where Sybil stored her theatrical props and took down the one possession of his own that rested there,}

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^{a huge khaki knapsack, with innumerable straps and pockets and buckles. Even empty, it must have weighed about six pounds.}

^{He took it under the naked electric bulb and dusted it with his hand. It had never been used. He had bought it years ago, intending to take it on a Whitsun walking-tour but somehow, when he came to pack it, it had seemed a ridiculously clumsy accoutrement for a three-day trip to Snowdonia and he had taken instead a small two-section knapsack that they used on picnics. Now, however, he regarded it carefully, for tonight it was a good deal more than a mere travelling bag. It was a kind of symbol or banner proclaiming his new self, the reckless man who banged insolent boys about the head, defied his Headmaster, threw up his job and then marched home to rape his wife. It had a rakish, devil-may-care look and its pockets seemed to wink at him and promise years of rewarding sin. Forgetting Sybil for the moment he threw it across his shoulder and went out on to the top landing where stood an oak chest of drawers that had been banished to the top floor because it lacked a leg and had to be propped against the wall. In here he kept his holiday clothes, a pair of thick corduroys, two or three check shirts, his swimming trunks, walking socks, brogues and an old, stained mackintosh. He made a selection, returned to the box-room and changed. Then he stuffed spare shirts, an extra sweater, the mackintosh, socks and three handkerchiefs into the main section of the bag and fitted it on to his shoulders. It was not nearly so heavy as it looked and settled snugly against the curve of his spine. The brogues were stiff and he decided that he must buy some thinner socks, which made him think of money. He emptied his pockets of a scholastic jumble, leaving keys, letters and other odds and ends in his discarded jacket and retaining only a notebook, his fountain-pen, cheque-book and wallet. The wallet contained eleven pounds ten in notes and his P.A.Y.E. and National Insurance cards. He looked at the cards sourly, deciding that both were unpleasant reminders of servitude and was tempted to tear them up but he thought better of it and stuffed them back in his wallet. Then, with long, springy strides, he ran downstairs to the drawing-room where his glass-fronted bookcase stood in the window alcove and ran his eye along the top shelf where he kept a}

^{dozen or more old favourites, bound in soft leather and tooled in gold.}

^{Mr. Sermon's books were not like other people's books, dust-hoarding and unused. They showed evidence of considerable handling over the years and the pages of all of them turned noiselessly, like considerate friends stealing past a sleeping man. He estimated the size of the long pocket in the knapsack and decided that he had room for three. Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Robinson Crusoe he knew almost by heart and he was almost equally familiar with David Copperfield, Silas Marner and Carlyle's French Revolution. He would have taken Froude's English Seamen of the Sixteenth Century had it not reminded him unpleasantly of the afternoon's riot. In the end he chose verse and took two anthologies, one modern and one classical. As an afterthought he added a well-thumbed copy of Baron De Marbot's saga of the Napoleonic Wars. At most of the crises in his life he had turned for solace to one or other of these volumes and he remembered reading Marbot's account of the Russian retreat when he was waiting for Jonquil to be born.}

^{He paused and looked around the room for the last time, noting its clinical cleanliness and Sunday afternoon decorum. He decided then that he had never liked this room, never in fact liked any part of the house. It was utterly impersonal and if you lived in it long enough it reduced you to a two-dimensional person, w'thout a past or a future. As he was re-entering the hall he heard Sybil call from upstairs and for a moment, he paused, miserably indecisive. Then he decided that she was still in the bathroom and this stiffened his resolution. 'To hell with her!' he thought. 'She can't really believe I'll do it but I can and I will!' It was as well for the new Mr. Sermon, however, that he could not see her at that precise moment, standing naked at his dressing-room door and manifestly ready to capitulate. Even so, it needed a great deal of determination to make him turn away towards the front door and it is doubtful if he would have succeeded in doing so had not the phone begun to ring, loudly and persistently, so that it sounded like the tolling of Newgate bell and conjured up a horrid vision of a crowded court, a savage-looking magistrate, a wan and bandaged Lane-Perkins standing in the witness-box and himself, manacled perhaps, in the dock opposite,}

^Si

^{with a policeman at his elbow. It was, his reflexes told him, a very improbable vision but it was stark enough to make him leap for the open, his initial impetus carrying him through the front door at a sprint and down the drive into the avenue, now empty and silent under a sickle moon. He looked back at the house as he went along under the wall and saw the lights at the big landing window and then the curtain fall into place as Sybil, now apparently watching, went to answer the phone. At the thought of what she might hear over it he broke into a shambling trot, his knapsack jolting on his shoulders, his stiff brogues punishing the corn on his little toe. Only when he reached the bus stop and boarded a 108 heading towards London did he exchange alarm for a mounting exhilaration. "By George, I've done it!" he said, almost aloud, "I've done something I've been wanting to do for years and years and years," and he sat back, easing his feet and slipping his knapsack on to his knees as a yawning conductor reached out for his fare.}

^{"Where to?" the man asked, clamping a hand over his mouth.}

^{Mr. Sermon had no idea but he remembered that the bus had had the word 'Vauxhall' on the front so he said: "Do you pass near Waterloo Station?"}

^{"York Road," said the conductor and then, regarding his solitary passenger with faint interest, "Going to the country, mate?"}

^{Mr. Sermon beamed. It was years, he reflected, since anyone had addressed him as 'mate' and he warmed towards the man.}

^{"As far as I can get on these two feet!" he said and realising that it must sound somewhat unusual to hear Waterloo Station named as the starting-point of a walking tour, he added: "First lap by train, of course, then due West, Somerset or Devon to begin with."}

^{The man shivered slightly for the night air was chill and a strong draught explored the bus.}

^{"Sooner you than me, mate," he said, emphatically, "my terminus is Vauxhall Bridge Road an" then kip till nex" duty!" and he rolled the ticket and gave Mr. Sermon change.}

^{Inside the bus it seemed extraordinarily remote and isolated, so much so that Mr. Sermon, closing his eyes and letting his fancy rove, had the impression that he was in transit between two worlds like a soul on its way to rebirth and that the lugubrious conductor was a}