Portrait of Elmbury (24 page)

It was rather depressing, talking to Mr. Rendcombe, for it made one realise how much, apparently, one had missed. Our annual Mop
¹
Fair, for instance, which always seemed to me sufficiently rough and riotous, was nowadays in Mr. Rendcombe's view more like a Mother's Meeting than a real Mop. “Have I been to the Fair?” he'd say. “Yes, I have taken a walk down the street; but I don't call it a
Fair
. What did I see? I saw a few stalls selling brandysnaps—but they don't taste like the brandysnaps used to—and a few young men who looked like nancy-boys lobbing balls at coconuts. If you hit a coconut when I was a boy you were expected to smash it; for it'd never fall off its stand unless it were smashed What else? A few giggling wenches on the swings. (
We'd
have given 'em something to giggle about!) A few mangy animals in cages; and a couple of booths which promise you all kinds of sights to tickle up your appetite, only when you get inside it's nothing but a couple of girls in tights. Our appetites didn't need that sort of stimulus.” And Mr. Rendcombe would sadly shake his head.

Goodness knows what the Mop must have been like in his youth; for it was pretty orgiastic even in 1930. It shocked the parsons even then, and caused astonishment to visitors from the cities who didn't understand Elmbury. We were a pretty highly civilised community really; and we were homogeneous. We could be trusted with a degree of liberty, even of licence, which would have turned the heads of a younger and more mixed people. At least, I think that was the explanation of the fact that our Mop, which happened every year on October 10th, never did us much harm, although it was the occasion for more drinking, fighting, and love-making than you'd see elsewhere in a month of Saturday nights. Such an affair as Elmbury Mop could not, I think, have taken place anywhere but in an English country
town; it would have been ugly in Wales and it would have been murderous in Scotland. (In the former they daren't even hold village dances for fear of the devil which broods over their savage hills; in the latter they have to shut the pubs on every possible occasion lest the whole population drink itself into homicidal frenzy.) But Elmbury was grown-up. We'd been doing this sort of thing since the fifteenth century. We were old enough to be trusted with fire; and the Mop was a veritable bonfire of morals at which once a year we warmed, but did not burn, our hands.

Local politics, it seemed, had lost, like the Mop and the weather, the rough turbulence and hardihood they once had. Politics to-day, according to Mr. Rendcombe, were wishy-washy. There were too many doubters on both sides; men lacked the fierce and flaming convictions they used to possess, which would lead them to bash one another on the nose for what they believed to be right. Council elections in the 1890's were rough-and-tumble affairs; and there were always a few black eyes next day and sometimes a few broken scalps. Political colours meant something in those times; a Liberal's red rosette was, to a Tory, literally a red rag to a bull. Men played practical jokes on their opponents, jokes carried out on a huge and majestic scale, as when the houses of all the prominent Liberals were painted bright blue in a night by dozens of painters employed by the Conservatives.

“Your uncle played a part in that prank,” said Mr. Rendcombe, looking at me. I couldn't imagine my gentle and courteous old uncle doing anything of the kind; but if Mr. Rendcombe said so it must be true. He went on:

“Yes, that was the first year he got into the Council, in 1892. I well remember old Fred Pullin—he was young Fred Pullin then—going into the Anchor with a bagful of half-crowns and jingling them while he called out as bold as brass: “Who's going to vote for Mr. Moore?”

“Tory graft!” grunted the cobbler.

I was scandalised.

“But do you mean,” I said, “that
my uncle
had given him the half-crowns?”

“Lord bless you, yes. They all did it, in those days: the Radicals and the Conservatives. It was the accepted thing. Your uncle is an upright and honest man and always was; but he gave the half-crowns because it was the proper and traditional thing to do. 'Twas all fair and above board. The candidates would go into the bank quite openly the day before the election and draw out ten pounds, all in half-crowns. I've seen some of the older ones nearly bent double carrying it away.”

The cobbler groaned. “And they call it Democracy.” Mr. Rendcombe fixed him with a stern eye.

“And so it was democracy,” he said. “Do you think that a man who was capable of voting against his own convictions for half a crown would be content with
one
half-crown? He'd take half-crowns from everybody, see; and then he'd vote according to his conscience, though most likely he'd be so drunk that he'd forget to vote at all. But the stalwart fellows who were already determined to vote for Mr. Moore, well, they took his half-crown just to drink his health and wish him luck. And a very good practice it was, to my mind. It made many a poor man merry on Election Day.”

He laughed, and added for my benefit:

“You can look shocked, all of you; but if Mr. Moore is bold enough to ask his uncle one day, he'll be able to tell you I'm speaking the truth. I'll tell you another thing. Have you ever heard of the Booth Vote?”

We said we hadn't.

“I don't mean a voting booth,” said Mr. Rendcombe, “if you'll pardon the pun. I mean the voting power of the Booth family, which used to be, and probably still is, about 200 strong. There are Booths, as you know, in every alley in Elmbury; they breed like rabbits. They're a very clannish family and they all vote the same way; it's said that they leave the decision to the head of the family, whoever he is, the patriarch Booth, and vote
for whoever he tells 'em to. Now the Booth vote is pretty important; I think I'm right in saying, Mr. Mayor, that it can swing an election?”

The Mayor nodded.

“Well, you can imagine that old grandfather Booth, who could bring 200 votes along with him, was worth more than half a crown. He certainly thought so. He stuck out for ten bob; and regularly every year on the first of November he got his ten bob from each of the candidates. In a good year it totted up to at least a fiver; and you ought to have seen old Booth that evening. Drunk? I should say so! Most years they took him to the police-station; but once or twice he had to go to the hospital.”

“And did the Booths vote as he told them?” I asked.

“To a man. A very well-disciplined family; they've got gipsy blood in them, and they live according to the patriarchal idea. They fear neither God nor devil but they fear the head of the family very much. They vote in a solid block, all for the same candidate. I think they vote for you, Mr. Mayor, each time you come up for election?”

“I'm told so,” said the Mayor cautiously.

“Of course,” added Mr. Rendcombe mischievously, “I'm not suggesting that the—er—practice I have described still goes on.”

The Mayor looked uncomfortable and Mr. Rendcombe hastened to add: “Times have changed, of course; and we are inclined to think that bribery and corruption are very wicked now. All the same I'd rather see the traditional half-crowns handed out in the pubs on Election Day on behalf of honest men who want to get on the Council with the idea of serving their town than hear the plausible lying vote-catching speeches which some of our candidates make to-day. If I were a poor man I'd rather take half a crown for my vote than a promise which the candidate knows he'll break as soon as he gets elected. And I'd rather see the kind of graft going on which means a few pints of beer to whet a poor man's throat, than the kind which consists of sly understandings over ten thousand pound contracts and generally results in the poor man losing his shirt. And that's flat,” said Mr.
Rendcombe, glaring fiercely round the company; for there had been a scandal in the council about housing contracts and the
Weekly Intelligencer
was on the warpath. Mr. Rendcombe's leader last week had been deliberately libellous. He could print things which
The Times
would not have dared to print; for he knew that nobody would have the courage to bring an action against him. His defence would have been to repeat the libel in court and produce the evidence. He was the Man Who Knew Too Much.

A lot of secrets would be buried for ever when Mr. Rendcombe went to his grave; for he knew a great deal more than he could print, courageous though he was. It was from him, one night in the Swan, that I heard the full story of my two cousins, Clem and Fred—although cousins they were born twenty years before me —who had vanished out of my ken when I was an inquisitive little boy spending my days in the window seat of the Tudor House nursery. “Railways trains,” you will remember, were somehow connected with their disappearance—or rather their disappearances, for the two events had happened at different times; and my family was obviously ashamed of the whole business, for I could discover nothing more by asking questions than this vague sinister hint of “railway trains.” As I grew up, of course, I picked up fragments of the two stories; but it wasn't until I sat late one night with Mr. Rendcombe and with Johnnie Johnson the fat lawyer that I learned all. At least I learned as much as anybody knows; because nobody knows the end of Fred's story, and it is unlikely that anybody ever will.

Clem's story comes first, chronologically; and it belongs especially to the Swan bar because most of it happened in the Swan bar.

Clem, you may recollect, was the clever member of our family. He was indeed the only clever one; and he was brilliant. While he was still very young he made a name for himself as a barrister, practising in a provincial city, but travelling to and fro every day by train. He had great charm, wit, and an acute and restless mind: he was to the rest of the family as champagne is to madeira. A wonderful future was prophesied for him: a K.C. then politics or the Bench. Our part of the world, people said, would soon be too small to hold him. He'd have to go to London. …

One morning Clem missed his train.

Now thanks to that purblind generation of Elmburians who thought that the railway would interfere with their amenities, the journey to our county town was extremely complicated. As the crow flies, the distance was fifteen miles; as the train crawled, it was about thirty. You had to change twice; and the connections were bad. So if you missed the morning train, it was hardly worth while going at all. It would be time to start back as soon as you got there.

Accepting this with mild annoyance, Clem shrugged his shoulders and resigned himself to a day's enforced holiday. He walked back from the station, and having nothing better to do he decided to drop in at the Swan for a glass of beer. It was still quite early—about nine o'clock; but the pubs opened at seven in those days.

Clem enjoyed his holiday morning. One by one his friends came in for their “elevenses.” Soon there was much the same company as I have described as typical of the Swan's regulars. The Colonel was surely there; and Mr. Benjamin; and Johnnie Johnson, who remembers talking business with Clem and offering him a brief; and Mr. Rendcombe. There was good talk of fishing and shooting and cricket and boats. For his part, Clem enlivened the bar with his incomparable wit. It wasn't often that the Swan heard such talk. Lucky for us, said the cronies, that young Clem missed his train. They hoped he'd miss it again.

Next day he didn't feel very well. He told himself that since he'd taken one day's holiday he might as well take another while
he was about it. He'd been overworking lately. … He'd got no very pressing business on hand. … Those two briefs could wait. …

He decided he wouldn't catch the 8.30 train that morning.

He never caught it again
.

The Decline and Fall of Clem was slow and majestic. Morning after morning, night after night, his brilliance gradually burned itself out in the Swan Hotel. Leaning against the bar, a Triton among minnows, he held forth upon every subject under the sun, Science, Art, Law, Poetry, Philosophy and Religion, so bemusing his listeners that often they forgot to go home to their dinners. The world was Clem's oyster. While he was talking, the small cramped bar seemed to grow, to expand, to become gaily cosmopolitan. Hushed and attentive, the company ceased to be conscious of Time and Space. Clem's wise and witty talk ranged here and there over the whole earth, Africa, America, Asia, Australia; though, in fact, he had never set foot in any continent but Europe. His rhetoric, thriving on whisky, became more flowery and more fantastical; and his notions grew wilder and stranger to match it. Indeed, one morning he announced with certainty that beneath Brockeridge Common, two miles from Elmbury, lay a rich seam of coal. He had incontrovertible proof of it, he said; and with a finger moistened in whisky he drew geological maps of the strata on the bar counter. Not one of his listeners doubted that he was right, for Clem could make juries believe whatever he told them, and men in a pub are made of the same stuff as a jury. So even to this day there are people in Elmbury who want to dig up Brockeridge Common to look for coal, although any geologist could tell them that in its Inferior Oolite they'd find nothing more valuable than the bones of an ichthyosaurus.

Clem died, said the stolid respectable Moores, through being too clever. It endears them to me that they would never use his sad story as an example of the Evils of Drink; but simply as an example of the Evils of Cleverness. His terribly restless mind, they declared, had needed whisky to quieten it. Restless minds were dangerous; cleverness was dangerous; the thing to do
was to jog along quietly and then you wouldn't come to a bad end.

It was left to Cousin Fred to demonstrate that this maxim didn't always work. Fred was not in the least clever; Fred was not in the least eccentric; but he succeeded in doing the most eccentric thing that any man in his situation could do. Fred jogged along very nicely and quietly for years; and yet he came to a bad end. At least he came to a very mysterious end; and I suppose you might call him the skeleton in the family cupboard, if anybody had the faintest idea where his skeleton lay.