Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (7 page)

She paused, looking strangely at Professor Pforzheim. The Professor stood up deeply embarrassed.

'I'm not sure I have truly understood the meaning of Dr Lorimer's question. The interchange between the pagan and the Christian world, of course ...'

'I'm afraid, I don't speak at all well,' said Rose simply. 'I'm so familiar perhaps with these ideas, live with them so much, that ...' her voice tailed away. 'Well,' she said more brightly, 'I could give to you many examples. But to take our east coast of England, surely from the fifth century onwards an essential part of the trading world. What do you make of King Redwald's idols? What do you make of the implications of Bishop Eorpwald's tomb? These, I would remind you all, were the results of Rome's mission....'

Before Professor Pforzheim could answer, Arthur Clun was on his feet. 'Mr Chairman, I really must protest. The Association has business to do. I cannot conceive how the circumstances of Eorpwald's burial can possibly ...'

Rose Lorimer turned a bewildered, worried stare upon him. 'Perhaps Professor Clun thinks that we should not allow ourselves an imaginative leap beyond the strict barriers of fact?'

'I think,' said Professor Clun, 'that some people have made one imaginative leap too many and show little sign of being able to return to the realm of reason.'

Sir Edgar was about to protest, when Professor Pforzheim, whom years of courageous opposition to Nazi rule had made peculiarly susceptible to any sign of bullying, rose to his feet.

'I should like to speak something about this.' He looked down at the lectern and his long body pivoted uneasily from foot to foot. 'What I am going to say is an indiscretion. I had not intended to speak anything about it this evening. Indeed, I should perhaps correct that - I had intended most definitely
not
to speak anything about it. But Professor Clun's belittling of the importance of the Melpham tomb makes me feel that I
should
speak and, as the gentleman from the Press is no longer here, I hope that I can trust this great body of historians to allow my confidences to go no farther. As you know, we have been making excavations along the North Sea shores of Heligoland, an important centre of Saxon life and the scene of the conversion of King Eltheof by St Boniface's disciple Aldwin. Well, we have discovered Aldwin's tomb. The material is in very bad condition and anything I say must be regarded as very tentative. Nevertheless, there seems reason for us to think that the conditions of Aldwin's burial were the same as those of Eorpwald nearly one century earlier. There are fragments that suggest the same wooden pagan deity. I fear that most of what Dr Lorimer is saying goes beyond what I would call historical fact, but I think we should be careful before we dismiss the Melpham discovery so easily as an exceptional event.'

He sat down, with folded arms, his head buried in his waistcoat.

If for some of the audience it was Pforzheim's manner rather than what he said that was rousing, the many specialists were clearly in a state of great excitement. There was silence for some seconds, then a small clerical figure at the back of the hall rose to speak. Father Lavenham, the great Benedictine scholar, had a distinguished ascetic face which was yet strangely goat-like, his bleating voice equally had an unexpectedly diplomatic, soothing note.

'Mr Chairman,' he said, 'since Professor Pforzheim has been so good as to honour us with this remarkable confidence, I think we should repay him by refraining from discussion of it until greater certainty allows him and his distinguished colleagues to make public their more definite conclusions.'

He sat down with the air of having nipped some potentially insidious nonsense in the bud.

Once again there was silence. Rose Lorimer had the air of a martyr vindicated by a sign from Heaven which she did not quite understand; it was Professor Clun who now smiled vaguely as though there were no end to the childish folly of his colleagues. Clarissa alone had failed to realize the importance of Professor Pforzheim's statement. Holding her bag, her gloves, and her small felt cap in one hand, she rose to her feet.

'Mr Chairman,' she said, 'I don't know whether a mere visitor has any right...'

But her question remained unspoken. Sir Edgar had decided that the moment had come to put an end to the proceedings.

'I fear we have no more time for questions, and,' he added with a chuckle, for he had conceived a great dislike for Clarissa, 'little inclination to hear them, with all we have to think about.' He turned to Professor Pforzheim. 'Once again, thank you,' he said, and led the way through the door at the back of the dais to the accompaniment of the Association's applause.

CHAPTER
3

M
RS
S
ALAD
came each year to get her present from Gerald before luncheon on Christmas Eve. It was always the same present - a five-pound note and a large pink cyclamen in a gilded basket tied with pink ribbon. This year, Gerald had attempted a variation by presenting her with a scarlet poinsettia, but he knew at once that he was wrong.

'Oh, it's a lovely foreign thing. Bright as blood,' Mrs Salad said in her old, croaking tremolo, and she peered at it through the haze of mascara'd moisture that always clung to her eyelashes and stuck in little beads on her black net eye-veil. 'I dare say it'll draw the flies. But lovely for them that likes bright colours. Just like the stuff the girls put on their finger-nails now. Like a lot of old birds giving the glad in the Circus, or the York Road, Waterloo, more likely. Trollopy lot.'

And Mrs Salad's black-dyed curls and fur toque with eye-veil shook in disgust, though whether against the painted nails of the modern girl or the behaviour of prostitutes was not clear. In either case, it was righteous disgust, for, despite her scabrous imagination, Mrs Salad always boasted that she had kept her body clean 'as Our Lord had given it to her', and for make-up, although her face was liberally covered with rouge and mascara and enamel, she had never used nail-varnish.

'Now the cycerlermums,' she continued, 'is as delicate as my sister-in-law's skin. Her husband wouldn't have her wear a soiled garment not a day longer than was needed. Spurgin's Tabernacle they was,' she added. Many of Mrs Salad's images were drawn from the anatomy of her family. 'Well, there it is,' she said, giving the poinsettia a final survey. 'More of a leaf, really.' For all their cloudiness, Mrs Salad's eyes were very sharp.

It was not an auspicious beginning for the visit, and this year Mrs Salad seemed more frail than ever, her agile mind more random. Her shrunken little body in its black cloth coat with a bunch of artificial Parma violets was bent with arthritis and her match-stick legs trembled on her high-heeled patent-leather boots with grey kid uppers.

'I came from 'Endon by Underground,' she said, 'and a musty, high-smelling lot they are that go by it now. My son-in-law offered to bring me in his car. But Gladys wouldn't have it. Wanted it herself for a bit of la-di-da, I dare say. Lovely chap, he is. Used to be in the Navy. Often I've seen him of a morning when he's taking his tub, stripped to the waist. Better than any boxer. But it's all for Gladys. He's not the one to give it away to any little cheap bit that comes along.'

Gerald, who was well used to Mrs Salad's reminiscences, handed her the customary glass of sweet sherry and asked her how she liked living at her daughter's.

'Oh! it's a loverly residence,' Mrs Salad said, carrying her glass with shaky hand to her smudged scarlet lips. 'Gladys isn't equal to it,' she added with dignity, 'though she's my daughter. My son-in-law saw it at once. "Mother," he said to me, "you make the place like a palace and it fits you like a glove."' Mrs Salad here moulded one of her black kid gloves to her small, knotted hand to illustrate the point. Then she continued, 'And a beautiful class of neighbours too. Though it's a trashy lot next door. Makin' h'objections without call. My grandson Vin come at weekends and he likes to sun himself in the garden. He strips thin but very delicate, and a lovely choice of the trunks. Gold-and-white satin. They starts makin' h'objections. I didn't lose my dignity. I just said, "You filthy trollopy lot," I said. Well, you know me, dear. How's Mr John?'  she asked, giving Gerald a sharp glance. 'I seen him on the Tele. Very quick he was helping the lot that won't help themselves. Poor chap. Answering a lot of silly questions from the poorest of the poor. They won't thank him for it. Vin's met him often. A la-di-da lot they move with. It doesn't do any good to ask about it. We shouldn't understand it if we did. But there you are, it doesn't do to criticize, just because their larks aren't ours, does it?'  Gerald had no idea what Mrs Salad was driving at, but he agreed. 'I had a lovely powder-puff from Miss Dollie. She always remembers me. You goin' to her for Xmas?'

It was Gerald's turn to look sharply at the old woman. 'Now, Mrs Salad, you know very well that I haven't seen Mrs Stokesay for years.'

'No,' said Mrs Salad; 'more's the pity. You took what you wanted and passed on, as men will. Oh well, who can blame you?'  She shrugged it off with an
ancien régime
worldliness. 'Nobody wants to wear an old pair of shoes. But you had lovely larks while it lasted. And very nice to work for, you both were, sin or no sin.'

Mrs Salad looked round the walls and fixed her eyes on a John drawing of a woman putting on her stockings. She gave it an approving smile as though to illustrate her broadmindedness.

'That's the trouble with Gladys, doesn't know life,' she said. 'I was talkin' about the old days at His Majesty's the other night when we had company. After they'd gone she says to me, "Can't you find nothing to talk about but lavatories?" "I've met better class in the Cloakroom than you'll ever know," I said. "Programme girl seems more refined to me," she answered. Silly cow! I could have been programme girl over and over. But, no, thank you! Save your feet's my motto.'

Mrs Salad's dim old eyes took on a distant look and she brought out a small lace-edged handkerchief from her old black velvet vanity bag, filling the room with the scent of violets.

'Many's the time Sir Beerbohm Tree's stood outside the theatre,
and
Mr Lewis Waller too; lovely little body
he
had. "I'd strictly advise you," they'd say to their lady friends, "to use Mrs Salad's lavatory; it's on the left of the stalls going in." And they'd come, all the upper tens! I wouldn't have the trash - the demimondes and débutantes - I didn't want that filth. "There's a cloakroom on the other side," I'd say, and send them to old Mother Rogers. And now you want
your
present,' she said abruptly, as reminiscence and invention both gave out, and opening a brown paper bag, she produced a huge white silk handkerchief on which were embroidered a number of large orange flowers.

'Thank you,' said Gerald. 'I like that very much. I'm glad you're able to keep up your embroidery.'

'Art's in the bones or it isn't,' said Mrs Salad sententiously. 'I'm sorry it's marigolds, dear. I know you like the birds better, but I can't see to do their beaks now. The Mayor of Southtown,' she added rather vaguely, 'was looking into my eyes only the other day, "It seems against nature, Mrs Salad," he said, "to see those lovely little horbs dimmed." But there! Time takes and it gives, for all it's called the Great Healer. And so I tell Vin. "Your time's now," I tell him. Slim as a girl he is. But he don't seem to settle down now 'e's out. I don't see what good it's done him. Delicate made 'e is, and only a boy. Stands to reason 'e couldn't rough it with the others.'

'I shouldn't worry too much, Mrs Salad,' Gerald said. 'Of course, I loved soldiering. But National Service doesn't do any harm, even to those who don't.'

'National Service!' Mrs Salad repeated. She smiled to herself and then she looked sharply at Gerald, but she only said, 'H'm.'

Gerald laughed. 'You and John should get together,' he said. 'National Servicemen's problems. That's one of John's great specialities. He's been urging a reduction in the Services all this autumn in his articles.'

Once again Mrs Salad looked strangely at Gerald. 'Say toodle-oo to Mr John for me,' she said. 'You tell him from me there's some company that's not to be helped and it's better not to try. But there you are, life's no easy lottery, they say. As we've seen who've lived it.'

Her feelings about the poinsettia she made very clear, for she ostentatiously left it behind when she said goodbye.

Since Frank Rammage had grown fat, he liked to spend his time doing odd jobs indoors. With his short legs and his pot belly, he couldn't do much that required the use of a ladder, but he laboured hours painting shelves or fixing electric wires. It was easy to spend so much time on these small tasks with four houses to keep in repair, and in Frank two instincts were very strong - orderliness and economy. His innate inclination to keep things tidy had been developed into a mania by his years of service in the Navy; his passion for saving reinforced since he had become a property-owner. These two obsessions were always at war with a third - his philanthropy; he did not mind that a large number of his lodgers were petty crooks, drunkards, tricksters, and middle-class down-and-outs, indeed it was what he chiefly esteemed in them, but he hardly knew how to support their untidiness, their dirtiness, and their extravagance with light and gas. As he busied around putting up a new shelf in his large bed-sitting room, which was all the space he reserved for himself, he prepared to do battle with a lodger over the question of old pilchard tins.

'It's no good. I've told you twice about it and you've done nothing,' he said, gobbling like a Norfolk turkey and thrusting his fat, smooth, pink face at the girl before she had fully entered the room. 'You'll have to go duckie.' He called everyone duckie or dear.

'I'm sorry, Frank. I've been so tired coming back in the mornings,' she said plaintively. Her thin, white face, greasy with vanishing-cream above her dirty, roll-topped sweater and jeans, looked hungry rather than anxious.

'We all get tired,' said Frank, and his little rosebud mouth closed tightly with the moral air of a reproving hospital matron.