The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl Page 9

  ‘You’ve done wonders, m’dear,’ Burlington Grimple-Tones replied, pulling at his garden chair so that he came squarely in front of the sandwiches.

  ‘She’s easy to train,’ Mrs Grimple-Tones said modestly.

  ‘Speaks much better now,’ Burlington said. ‘Never an h wrong these days. Cuts a very delicate sandwich, too. Wonders, m’dear.’

  ‘At heart she’s a good gel. It just needed a touch of kindness, and the influence of an upright home, to bring it out. She accompanies me to church every Sunday, you know, Burlington.’

  ‘Wonders.’

  ‘She’s really more of a companion than a maid. And it’s nice for Gerald to have a companion, too.’

  ‘Generous little soul, Gerald,’ Burlington said. ‘I saw him in the paddock just now, giving young Charlie a ride on the pony.’

  ‘So you see, Burlington,’ Mrs Grimple-Tones said with a smile at her husband, ‘all your worries – about receiving an evil influence into the house and so forth – were silly, weren’t they?’

  ‘You were right, m’dear. You always are. Still: I hope you’re not thinking of extending your charity too far?’

  ‘I’m not thinking of taking on another gel, Burlington, if that’s what you mean. That would be extravagant and quite unnecessary. For one thing, gels are so much better when you train them yourself. For another, Effie does the work of two.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Burlington replied. ‘But that wasn’t what I had in mind.’

  ‘What was it, then, dear?’

  ‘If Lady Gourd should call: you wouldn’t think it was a work of Christian charity to receive her, would you?’

  ‘Lady Gourd? Why shouldn’t I receive her, Burlington?’

  Burlington leaned forward. ‘At dinner with the Elfins, Lady Gourd declared she could see nothing reprehensible in the conduct of Mr Osc [mumble] Wi [mumble].’

  ‘How sad,’ said Mrs Grimple-Tones reflectively. ‘I’d always thought Lady Gourd a good woman.’

  ‘Just because it’s sad,’ Burlington said, ‘You wouldn’t—? I mean to say: you thought Effie’s history was sad.’

  ‘O Burlington, but the two cases are quite different. Lady Gourd flaunts her wickedness. Effie was repen – Yes?’

  Mrs Grimple-Tones looked up and spoke more sharply than usual, because she had been caught talking about Effie by Effie, who had silently crossed the lawn and was standing by the trunk of the cedar tree.

  ‘Lady Gourd is here, madam.’

  Burlington Grimple-Tones looked intently at his wife.

  ‘Please tell her’, Mrs Grimple-Tones said serenely to Effie, ‘that I’m no-ta-tome.’

  ‘But madam,’ Effie cried.

  ‘I’ve told you before, not to put your hand up to your mouth in that way. It’s a singularly vulgar gesture. Now what do you wish to say?’

  ‘You are at home, madam. I can’t tell a lie.’

  After a moment, Mrs Grimple-Tones said in her gentlest voice:

  ‘I’m deeply disappointed, Effie. I had hoped you’d put behind you the insolence that it characteristic of the milieu you came from. Tell one of the other servants to give my message to Lady Gourd, while you go and pack for yourself and young Charlie. You must be out of Porringers by nightfall.’

  4

  ‘I don’t like it here, mum,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Don’t talk so roughly, darling. Call me mother, not mum.’

  ‘I still don’t like it here, mother. There’s no space and everything has a sort of smell. I miss the pony. I miss Gerald.’

  ‘If it’s any comfort to you,’ Effie said, ‘Master Gerald will soon be leaving Porringers himself, to go to school.’

  ‘Do you mean he’s coming to my school?’ Charlie asked excitedly.

  ‘No of course not. His is a preparatory school, a boarding school.’

  ‘Is a boarding school different from a Board school? They sound alike.’

  ‘Well, they’re not. Master Gerald couldn’t go to your school.’

  ‘Why? Isn’t he a good enough scholar? Wouldn’t the school take him in?’

  ‘They’d be honoured to have him. But his parents wouldn’t let him. Master Gerald at the Board school at Market Frumlington, indeed!’

  ‘Isn’t it a good school, then? Then why do I have to go to it?’

  ‘To get an education,’ Effie said.

  ‘Then what does Gerald get at his school?’

  ‘That’s a silly question.’

  ‘I don’t like it at school. The schoolroom’s smelly.’

  ‘That’s not a nice word, darling. I’ve told you not to talk roughly.’

  ‘I try to talk rough. The other boys tease me if I talk sissy.’

  ‘Pay no attention. They’re only ignorant market-town boys.’

  ‘They say you’re the town tart.’

  ‘That’s not a nice word either.’

  ‘They say I’m a bastard and you were turned out of Porringers without a character and the only way you can keep the wolf from the door is to go with all the men on market day in Market Frumlington.’

  ‘I keep telling you not to speak roughly. Please try to speak like Master Gerald, Charlie.’

  5

  Gerald Grimple-Tones came out of evening chapel, turned left towards the fives court and was ambushed by three boys, who surrounded him.

  ‘Grimple-Tones! What’s your first name, Grimple-Tones?’

  ‘Gerald,’ said Gerald.

  ‘Ge-rald! Ge-rald!’

  ‘You can call me Gerald, if you like. I don’t mind.’

  ‘Gerald says he doesn’t mind.’

  The chaplain came round the corner, saw the group and paused, pretending, in case he should be seen, to be lighting his pipe.

  ‘Are there any more at home like you, Gerald?’ the biggest of the three boys asked.

  ‘I’ve got a baby brother. As a matter of fact, he was only born last week.’

  ‘And I wonder which of you is wetter.’

  The three boys laughed. Suddenly the tallest stepped forward and punched Gerald on the cheek.

  Gerald’s eyes became watery.

  ‘See,’ said one of the three boys. ‘Wet.’

  Reluctantly Gerald turned round and presented his other profile.

  The three boys moved towards him.

  So, quickly, did the chaplain. ‘Now then, you lot. Aren’t you due at late prep?’

  ‘Yes sir. Sorry sir.’

  All four began to scamper away.

  ‘Tones!’ said the chaplain. ‘Wait.’

  The chaplain joined Gerald and stood puffing at his pipe, looking down.

  ‘Seldom,’ he eventually said, ‘have I seen such a wet, spiritless little sneak. Why didn’t you defend yourself, boy?’

  ‘Please sir, because of “And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also.”’

  ‘Is it, I wonder,’ said the chaplain, puffing in an ostentatiously wondering way, ‘insolence or priggishness.’

  ‘Please sir, I don’t understand you, sir,’ Gerald said in a frightened voice.

  ‘Or perhaps it is sheer obtusity.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Now listen to me, Tones. The precepts of Our Lord, which we learn in chapel, apply on the very highest level of principle and morality. To apply them on the level of day-to-day existence is to cheapen them by dragging them down to our own mundane level of being. I trust I have put that clearly enough for even your somewhat mundane intelligence to grasp. Now cut along to late prep, and don’t let me catch you being such a beastly little wet again.’

  6

  ‘Open your lesson books at page seventy-three,’ said Miss Bight, moving the cane to the left of the sloping top of her tall desk. ‘We come now to one of the most glorious chapters in our history: Agincourt. This was an occasion when the ordinary people of England shewed a bully that they were made of the stuff of heroes. Now: can anyone remembe
r what the war was about?’

  A little girl raised her hand.

  ‘Yes, Lucy?’

  ‘The kings of England owned part of France. But the French king tried to get it back.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Weren’t they Christians, Miss?’ asked Charlie Snuck.

  ‘If you want to ask a question, Charlie Snuck, put your hand up.’

  Charlie did so.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Weren’t they Christians, Miss?’

  ‘Of course they were Christians. Weren’t you paying attention in the lesson where I told you how religion overcame paganism?’

  ‘But if the French were Christians, Miss, why didn’t they let the English take the land? And if the English were Christians, why did they resist when the French tried to take it back? In Scripture, Miss, you said: “him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also.”’

  ‘Come to my desk, Charlie Snuck. Hold out your right hand.’

  Miss Bight caned Charlie’s right palm.

  ‘Now hold out your other hand also.’

  Miss Bight caned Charlie’s left palm.

  ‘I hope that will help you, Charlie Snuck, not to confuse personal matters with affairs of state. On the national level, we have but one duty, our duty to king and country. While it is important to render unto God the things which are God’s, it is no less important to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s. Now go and spend the rest of the lesson outside the door.’

  7

  ‘From all you say, padre, the boy’s obviously a wet. Thing is: is he also a swot?’

  ‘Not he, Headman. Matter of fact, I’d say he was exceptionally obtuse.’

  ‘Him. We’d better give him some extra cramming, then, if we’re to get him into public school.’

  8

  Beside the name Snuck, C., Miss Bight wrote:

  ‘A stupid boy, who does not pay attention during lessons, though he occasionally remembers a bit parrot-fashion, without understanding it. Since he is unable to benefit, he should leave school as soon as possible and be apprenticed to some simple handicraft.’

  9

  ‘O Charlie,’ Effie said, ‘what have you done? If you break your apprenticeship, you’ll have nothing to come back to.’

  Charlie still had a year to serve of his informal apprenticeship to a market gardener in Market Frumlington.

  ‘If you knew what pinching out the young lettuces does to a man’s back, mum, you’d see I had to get spliced while I was still game for it.’

  ‘I don’t object to your getting married,’ Effie said, ‘though you shouldn’t have let yourself get caught so young, and if you’d taken the trouble to keep your ways nice you could have done a lot better for yourself. But why did you have to join the army as well?’

  ‘Call of king and country,’ Charlie replied. ‘I thought it was time to render unto the Kaiser a few of the things which ought to be the Kaiser’s. Anyway, it can’t be worse than market gardening.’

  ‘I do hope, Charlie, you won’t let being among soldiers influence you to speak roughly.’

  10

  Charlie had heard the new second-lieutenant was named Grimple-Tones and had realised that it must be Gerald. He spent more energy dreading their meeting than dreading the German shells. In the event, however, Gerald, in the course of making his way along the trenches, simply noticed Charlie and said without embarrassment:

  ‘Hullo, Snuck. Haven’t seen you for ages.’

  A week later, Charlie and Gerald went out together beyond the wire and brought in a wounded man who had been groaning. Both behaved with extreme courage and were wounded themselves.

  The man they rescued turned out to be a German, and he died anyway.

  Charlie recovered from his wound at base hospital, Gerald in an officers’ home. They were sent back to different sectors of the line. Gerald was awarded the Military Cross, Charlie (because he wasn’t an officer) the Military Medal.

  11

  Market Frumlington took several years to subscribe the cost of a war memorial, perhaps because many of its inhabitants were out of work.

  It was not until a cold summer day in 1926 that old Mrs Grimple-Tones, recently widowed and herself veiled, unveiled a large, dark grey, grainy angel.

  Beside her stood her surviving son, Hugh.

  A bishop (whom Mrs Grimple-Tones had known when he was plain Mr Chaunt, the curate) read the ceremony of dedication, and a military bugler sounded the Last Post.

  When the crowd had left, Effie led Charlie’s son towards the plinth.

  Charlie’s wife Lucy had left their son with Effie when she went to work in a munitions factory. After Charlie’s death, Effie heard no more from her.

  Charlie’s son read aloud the legend incised on the granite: ‘In Memory of the Officers and Men of Market Frumlington who Gave their Lives in the Great War, 1914–1918.’

  Beneath the heading, three names were cut in large letters filled in with gold. Among them was Lieut. G. de B. Grimple-Tones, M.C.

  Then a line was incised across the surface. Beneath that there were three columns of names in smaller letters and without gold.

  From near the bottom of the second column Charlie’s son read aloud ‘C. Snuck,’ and commented ‘That’s my dad.’

  ‘Call him your daddy, darling,’ Effie said. But though she could not prevent herself from correcting him, she was proud of the child’s excellent elocution, which he had learnt from her.

  She took his hand to lead him away. She was due to go out later in the afternoon to clean the municipal offices – casual work that came her way only when the offices had to be prepared for an evening ‘function’.

  ‘Wait a minute, granny,’ the child said.

  She waited while he silently read the legend again.

  ‘Why does it say “Officers and Men”, granny?’

  ‘Because those are the two sorts of soldier, of course.’

  ‘Aren’t officers men, then?’

  ‘What a silly question,’ Effie said, feeling disappointed; she had hoped the child was going to be clever.

  12

  ‘I expect you’d like to look round the place and get the feel of things again.’

  Hugh Grimple-Tones made that suggestion because he, Hugh, always felt disorientated when his son Derek arrived home for the vacation.

  Understanding this, Derek obligingly took a walk round ‘the place’ – the Porringers gardens and estate, which covered most of the hills overlooking Market Frumlington. Some of the more ‘composed’ or ‘picturesque’ panoramas on the Porringers land were in fact what presented themselves to Derek’s mind’s eye whenever people spoke of England.

  At dinner Hugh asked his son:

  ‘Well, what do you and your contemporaries feel about the great question of the day?’

  ‘This Hitler business? O, I don’t think that’ll come to much. Some of my friends are doing some flying: with the University club, you know, at the weekends. They say you never know when it might be needed. I was thinking I might join them next term – but more for the fun of it.’

  ‘Well, be careful,’ Hugh said. ‘Of accidents, I mean – not Hitler. I think he’ll blow himself out. No, I meant: what did your friends feel about the Abdication?’

  ‘O that,’ Derek said. ‘Sad business.’

  ‘Very sad,’ said Hugh. ‘I’ve always had a soft spot for him, actually. Actually, I’ve always thought he looks a bit like your uncle Gerald. Though Gerald was much bigger, of course. Still: it was inevitable. We couldn’t have the king married to a divorcée. Not given that the king is head of the church of England.’

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ Derek said. ‘When a friend of mine said that, another friend of mine said the church of England wouldn’t have existed but for the fact that Henry VIII was a divorcé.’

  ‘That was quite different,’ said Hugh. ‘Still: your friend must be quick-witted to have thought of it.’

  13

/>   Charlie Snuck’s son Gerald (he hated his name, which, his grandmother told him just before she died, had been expressly wished on him by the father he couldn’t remember) went directly, and at the earliest permissible age, from grammar school into the regular air force.

  His reasons were that he couldn’t afford to stay on at school and that, unless he stayed on, he would have no hope of a decent job.

  He was fully trained by the time the war began and Derek Grimple-Tones joined up.

  By 1940 they were flying Hurricanes from the same base. Indeed, Gerry Snuck often flew as Derek’s wing man.

  Gerry Snuck was occasionally bothered by a ghostly feeling of having met the name Grimple-Tones somewhere before. Derek Grimple-Tones thought nothing about Gerry Snuck except that he was a reliable and brave wing man. Because they messed separately, they never talked intimately enough to discover that they came from the same part of England.

  In 1941 Gerry converted to night fighters. Derek did a tour as an instructor and then trained to become a controller.

  Derek left the air force when the war ended, as Wing Commander Grimple-Tones, D.F.C. and bar. Gerry left it two years later, as Sergeant Pilot Snuck, D.F.M. and bar.

  14

  The name Snuck meant nothing to Hugh Grimple-Tones, either. He had no notion that the man whose case he was considering was a war-time comrade of his son’s and had in fact served under Derek’s command. Had he known, Hugh would have honourably opted out of the case. He set great value on his impartiality and often pointed out that one of the justifications for maintaining a monied class in a democratic age was that certain important duties to society could be performed only by people who were immune to financial temptation.

  Looking at the extravagantly moustached and unfashionably short-haired man in front of him, Hugh reflected how much more neatly Derek had made the transition into middle age and the postwar world.