The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (8 page)

^{substitute for Pluto's ferryman or the barman in the play Outward Bound. This impression was so strong that he shuddered and then it struck him that perhaps it was not so fanciful after all for, in a sense, he was indeed being reborn and that at this very moment he was stepping out of and clear away from the drab frame of his existence. In a matter of hours, he reflected, he had shed the accumulated responsibilities of a lifetime and as yet had no new ones to replace them but simply a rough set of clothes, eleven pounds ten shillings and two books of verse as his passport to the new world.}

^{CHAPTER TWO}

^{Mr.
Sermon Learns to Tap}

^{and Finds It Unexpectedly Profitable}

^{when
Mr. Sermon awoke it wanted but a few minutes to broad daylight.}

^{For the better part of this brief interval his half-conscious self wandered around inside his aching head, trying to recognise his whereabouts and relate them to a curious stiffness in his legs and the parched state of his mouth. His reconnaissance was unsuccessful. For several minutes he had not the least idea where he was, or how he had arrived there, sprawled full-length on three cushions that felt and smelled as though they had been stuffed with wire and dipped in a solution of creosote and tobacco juice. The stale odour in the carriage half-stupefied him and presently, because of it, he swung his feet to the floor and groped for the leather strap to adjust the window. Then, peering timidly into the thinning mist and down the line as far as the signal box, he suddenly remembered how he came to be the sole occupant of a third-class compartment on a stationary train in a deserted siding. He remembered this particular carriage first of all and used it as a guide rope leading to other discoveries. There had been the walrus-moustached guard who had piloted him to this carriage about 2.30 a.m. and before that . . . ? Ah, the change at Templecombe and the short journey on to}

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^{Westport-Revel! Further back along the line was the wait at Waterloo for the 11.3^ to the West and before that the silent bus flight from home. At this point the fog in his brain cleared and events stormed down on him in a body, his ludicrous wrestle with Sybil, his unsuccessful overtures to son and daughter, the two phone-calls, one of them certainly from Lane-Perkins' father, the trouncing of Lane-Perkins himself, all the seemingly unrelated events that had brought him here to this stuffy, evil-smelling railway carriage in the middle of nowhere.}

^{For a moment his brain reeled under the impact of this improbable avalanche and then, as the cool morning air began to enter the carriage, he sat up, put on his spectacles and stared at himself in the misted mirror slotted between fly-blown views of Ramsgate and Penzance on the opposite wall of the carriage.}

^{"By George!" he exclaimed aloud, "it really happened. It happened exactly as I'm remembering it," and he pranced to his feet and pulled his huge rucksack from the luggage rack, fumbling in one of the pockets for a packet of Players' he had put there when he left the train at Templecombe four hours previously.}

^{Mr. Sermon was not a smoker. He had given up cigarette-smoking more than three years ago, when he had developed a smog cough that threatened to revive his youthful asthma. He had never missed that habit until last night when they told him that he had more than an hour to wait for the
11.35.
Then, unaccountably, he had succumbed to an irresistible longing to smoke and as a gesture of defiance he had bought a packet of twenty at the buffet. On the journey down he had smoked four and this, no doubt, accounted for the dryness in his mouth and the slight ache in his head, but neither worried him much so he lit another and inhaled deeply. In the old days he had tried not to inhale but now inhaling seemed to him a devil-may-care habit, thoroughly characteristic of a man who struck out at everyone who crossed him and then ran away from home in corduroys and a grubby sweater. He leaned far out of the window, alternately gulping down air and smoke and he thought what manly comfort there was in a cigarette and what a milksop he must have been to let a suburban chemist talk him into denying himself such pleasure. For Sebastian Sermon, adrift in the world,.}

^SS

^{discovered that he was no longer a prey to innumerable abstract fears, like the fear of infected lungs. In the space of fifteen hours, a mere nine hundred minutes since he had thumped Lane-Perkins on the head, he had sloughed off layer after layer of inhibitions and was still shedding them, a craven host of prejudices and fads and whims and caprices that had been leeching him since he was a boy and their flight gave him a buoyancy and self-confidence that sent his spirit soaring over the bluish tract of moorland beyond the silent siding. In the whole of his life he could never recall an awakening such as this, or a time when he had felt more like exchanging banter with the first stranger he met and it piqued him to notice that the little train was shunted and abandoned by all but .himself and that the wayside station, marked 'Westbury-Revel' in white stones sunk in the embankment, looked like the station of a ghost-town in the mist of what promised to be a sparkling April morning.}

^{He slipped on his 'mac', slung his rucksack and went along the corridor bawling "Guard!" and "Hi there!" but it was just as he feared, there was no guard aboard and when he let himself out of the guard's van and stamped the length of the short platform no one appeared at the windows of the station-house and no wisp of smoke curled from the squat chimney.}

^{"Curious!" he said to himself but then reflected that perhaps it was not so curious after all, for the genial guard who had accepted a florin to let him sleep in the carriage had warned him that no train would depart for Exeter until 8.23 a.m. and that he doubted whether Fred Minims, the part-time level-crossing keeper at Westbury-Revel, would put in an appearance until just before 8 o'clock.}

^{Mr. Sermon had been so tired and so emotionally exhausted at 2.30 a.m. that he had given no thought to the prospect of breakfast and a wash-and-brush-up but now he felt a serious need of both. There was no water in the train closet so he roved the platform until he found a tap under which he soused himself thoroughly, using a vest as a towel. After that he felt less frowsty but hungrier than ever and after prowling round the shuttered station and shouting "Hi!" once or twice, he set off resolutely down the winding road in the}

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^{general direction of the West. It was easy to discover which was the West for a pale, yellow sun, tinged with crimson, was peeping over the horizon beyond the station buildings and this was clearly the East, so Mr. Sermon began his march with confidence.}

^{The way led over a wide heathland that seemed to Mr. Sermon to be entirely uninhabited. Folds of heather were dotted here and there with patches of gorse and lonely, wind-whipped firs but as he went along, climbing slowly, he passed through several small copses of beech, oak and ash, where wild flowers grew down to the roadside, a straggle of primroses, violets, campion and viper's bug-loss, with here and there the promise of bluebells in a week or so and once, where a stream ran under the road, a white cloud of wood anemones. It was an idyllic place to be at that time of day. Behind him the sun was now clear of the earth's curve and looked exactly like a vast poached egg, pale pink in the centre and washed-out yellow at the edges. The sky was stippled with ribs of cloud and the air was sweet and heady. After a mile or so his corn began to twinge but this was a trifling matter when measured with the glory of the morning and only the steady gnaw of hunger made him wish to share his solitude with other human beings. He kept a sharp lookout for a village or hamlet, or even an isolated cottage where he could buy some breakfast, any kind of breakfast, but for all he saw of human habitation he might have been pushing up the Amazon. He thought with mild sympathy of all the millions of people who lived in cities and suburbs like the one he had quitted the previous evening and such was his mood that he could find it in him to think tolerantly of Sybil and the children, and even of Lane-Perkins and the Reverend Victor Hawley, all not yet awake but doomed the moment they opened their eyes to tread the dismal round of come-day-go-day routine, slaves to the tyranny of bells and meals and striking clocks. Presently, however, the void in his stomach began to master him. He could not remember when he last ate. Was it a canteen lunch at Napier Hall an hour or so before flashpoint? He remembered that he had had no tea or supper, and .that he had bought nothing but the cigarettes in the station buffet, but it seemed to him now that weeks had gone by without his having swallowed so much as a cup of tea or a ham sandwich.}

^S7

^{He was plodding up a long, winding incline and praying that the summit would reveal a village, no matter how distant, when he heard the crazy rattle of the van behind him. Looking round he saw it starting to climb, a battered and heavily-laden station-wagon, proceeding at not much more than his own pace and making a great deal of fuss about it as it was slammed into low gear and coaxed forward by the man at the wheel.}

^{Mr. Sermon moved into the hedge to let it pass. He would liked to have called out or signalled to the driver but suddenly he felt self-conscious of his presence there at that time of day. He had plenty of time, however, to notice the eccentric appearance of the vehicle. It was, he would have judged, the bastard of a goods van. The chassis did not seem to be part of the general structure which had been added, not very expertly, from the remains of some other vehicle or vehicles. Its bodywork was a bilious yellow and its flat roof, fitted with a rack, was almost invisible under an assortment of household goods, all kinds of household goods, including a marble-topped washstand, two cane-bottomed chairs, a tatty-looking sofa and several copper pans tied on by the handles that boomed at every dip in the road. The back of the van presented an almost indecent appearance, for a bunch of chamber-pots were hanging from the handle of the door and these, looking like huge white pomegranates, chinked and pirouetted in an extraordinary manner presenting so compelling a spectacle that Mr. Sermon obtained no more than a glimpse of the inside of the van.}

^{It roared past him, shattering the peace of the morning like the passage of a juggernaut and then, breasting the slope, lurched to an uncertain standstill as the driver poked his head out of the window and called: "Going on to the main road? Want a lift, mate?" and Mr. Sermon waved his arms and began to run, uplifted not so much by the prospect of getting somewhere as by the chance this would offer for a closer inspection of the outfit.}

^{He was not prepared, however, for the risks he had to face in boarding the wagon. As he crossed the road, making for the nearside door of the driving cabin, the vehicle began to move backwards down the hill and the driver, clashing his gears, shouted: "Make it snappy! Make it snappy! The 'andbrake don't hold!" and began to}

^{lunge at the gear-lever like a swordsman battling for his life, while Mr. Sermon, one leg on the ground and one inside the cabin, had to hop for a clear ten yards before the gears engaged and the van began to grind forward again towards the crest of the hill.}

^{"Should have got her on the flat before I stopped!" said the driver, with a gap-toothed grin. "I c'n manage 'er empty but I got a good load on today. Is them jerries okay behind?"}

^{"Yes," said Mr. Sermon, breathlessly, "they seem to be managing and thank you for stopping, it's very good of you, I'm}

^.it

^sure!

^{The man looked at him with interest and Mr. Sermon looked back, thinking that the driver of this remarkable equipage exactly suited it for he was quite as outlandish as his vehicle. He was below medium height and as thin as a beanpole, with a largish head crowned by a pork-pie hat green with age. His face was broad and his expression genial, advertised as it was by the wide gap in his front teeth. His eyes, brown, tolerant and humorous, were very restless and he had the pallor of a city-dweller. His accent Mr. Sermon placed as somewhere between Hammersmith and Barnes, with Hounslow as its extreme limit. His hands were large and capable and Mr. Sermon noted this with relief for he had very little confidence in the van but decided that although it might get up to all manner of tricks this little man was more than a match for it, giving it plenty of rope but calling it to order when necessary.}

^{"Made an early start, didn't you?" said the man amiably.}

^{"From the station back there, I couldn't get any further last night," explained Mr. Sermon. "I was hoping to find somewhere for breakfast, I'm absolutely starving! You . . . you wouldn't happen to have anything to eat on board, would you? A bar of chocolate, or a sandwich or something? I'd gladly pay for it!"}

^{The man gave him another curious look so that Mr. Sermon instantly regretted having mentioned his hunger, but he replied:}

^{"You're dead lucky, mate! I'm bloody sharpset meself. We'll pull in at a transport caff at the crossroads. It's only a mile or so but first we gotter shake hands with the Hangman!"}

^{'The Hangman?" queried Mr. Sermon, anxiously.}

^{"Terrible 'ill. Worst round here. One in five an' bends all the way!}

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^{Usually go round the long way an' dodge it but I got a full day ahead so I thought I'd chance it."}