Lantana Lane (17 page)

Now Bruce had already noted the depression in one corner of his rack, traced the leakage through both holes to the ground, and recognised the work of rats; but there was ample evidence to indicate that their depredations had been extended by some human agency, and the effort of disbelieving the clearly demonstrable was causing him much mental anguish. Therefore, when all was revealed to him, his relief was so great that only urgent protests from Dick and Tim prevented him from treating the culprits with most unwise and jovial indulgence. He yielded, however, to their muttered exhortations, and stood beside them wearing an expression of awful severity while Dick made a solemn and very moral little speech, in which he explained to his awestruck audience the extreme impropriety of ullaging, and sternly commanded Joy to make full restitution.

Painful as this prospect was to Joy, she perceived that it was necessary for the restoration of her virtue. But she was still a business woman, and she wanted a clear understanding on the matter.

“Will I be a good girl then?” she enquired searchingly.

Dick, Tim and Bruce all answered emphatically in the affirmative; and that ended what we are proud to say is the only case of ullaging in the Lane's history.

T
HIS TALE
will require careful handling. A single yeasty character leavens the lump of normal, human dough from which all tales are basically compounded; two make it froth a bit; three create an almost unmanageable ferment; but when you find yourself committed to a narrative containing no less than four, it is impossible not to feel that the whole thing may blow up in your face, obliterating your literary style, and playing havoc with your efforts to create a serious and shapely work of art.

However, the inescapable fact is that we have four barmy characters to deal with—namely, Aunt Isabelle, Ken Mulliner, Jake and Kelly. We do not hesitate to include Jake and Kelly, for barminess is by no means restricted to humans. Animals can be quite screwy. So can plants—lantana being, perhaps, the outstanding example. So can inanimate objects, many of which are undoubtedly animated by something which makes people stare, blink, and suffer sharp misgivings as to their own sanity.

In this last category cars now take first place, having supplanted houses owing to their additional advantage of mobility. For a house is, by definition, a stay-at-home affair, and may absorb only those experiences which come to it; but a car gets around. In both, personality reaches its full flowering with old age, but whereas a house is commonly mellowed by the years, a car becomes, quite invariably, a tough rapscallion, a buccaneer, a cynical adventurer who has been everywhere, seen everything, and knows all there is to be known about mankind. This is, of course, the reason why those whose own personalities have never ripened, buy new ones so frequently; no one likes being made to feel adolescent by a bit of machinery.

Ken is still quite a young fellow, but his personality is ripe beyond his years, and there can be no doubt that this is largely attributable to his association with Kelly—though he would be quite effervescent enough even without the influence of his barmy vehicle. This Thing (for, like Mrs. Jackson, we can find no other word for it), already had a long, long history when Ken first acquired it for thirty quid just after the war. It must once have been of some identifiable make, but he was still in short pants when it shed the last emblem, legend or bauble which proclaimed it a This, That or The Other, and since then its internal arrangements have been so swopped, modified, removed, replaced, repaired, rebored, recharged and generally readjusted that possibly even he does not now remember what make it was. To this day he is always buying parts out of other jalopies and incorporating them into Kelly as its own parts give up, or fall out, but these operations seem to enhance, rather than diminish its rich and aggressive personality.

These two in combination afflict the beholder with an uneasy sensation of impending crisis. They cannot even go in to the store together without turning the trip into a hair-raising adventure, and on their meat-day the Lane finds itself listening tensely for the racket which announces that they have successfully accomplished their errand. We swear each time that we shall not view this everyday expedition as if it were a commando raid; nevertheless, the air is electric with excitement, to which Ken adds by his dramatic manner of delivering our meat. “We made it!” he yells jubilantly, thrusting Biddy's roast and chops into her hands. “We made it!” he shouts, dumping steak and dog's meat into the Griffiths' box. And all the way down the Lane we may follow his victorious progress by the appalling noise of Kelly's brakes and gears, and the sound of his voice exultantly proclaiming : “We made it! We made it!”

It has been said that modern life consists of tedium enlivened by disaster, but Ken does not subscribe to this view. He argues that tedium cannot sneak up on you; there is plenty of time to see it coming, and take suitable action. When he perceives that a job is about to become boring, he stops doing it, and when he becomes tired of a place, he leaves it; but as a rule he finds any job interesting simply because he is doing it, and any place seething with drama simply because he is there. As for disaster, he recognises it only in one form. It is a disaster to be dead. But even this, as he points out, cannot be regarded as unmixed disaster, for it lends a peculiarly zestful enjoyment to all the time when you are not dead.

Such, then, are two of our characters. We have already glanced in passing at Jake, and mentioned that among the adult members of the Griffith family there is a tendency to disown him. Any time you visit there, you are likely to find Henry swearing, or Sue tearing her hair over the latest iniquity committed by that awful dog of Aunt Isabelle's, and Aunt Isabelle fiercely asseverating that her responsibility for the animal came to an end when she delivered him into Tony's arms. But you will also find that he has his loyal champion, for it is precisely in such moments of tension that Tony makes no bones about admitting that Jake is exclusively his, and will be defended by him against all slanders and revilements, because the poor old boy didn't understand, and never meant to do it.

This is perfectly true. Jake possesses some admirable qualities, but not even Tony has ever claimed that intellectual prowess is one of them. When he first appeared among us he was only a puppy, and it was charitably hoped that he would get more sense as he grew older. He is now nearly as big as a calf, but this hope has not been realised. Life has always puzzled him, but he never despairs of finding out what it is all about, and when he stands gazing at anything, with his head on one side and his forehead seamed by a thousand wrinkles of perplexity, it is a safe bet that he will presently launch himself at the mystifying object in order to subject it to a close, and usually destructive examination. His coat is smooth, and golden-brown, but it is a little too large for him, so when he shakes himself (which he does very frequently, as if he could thereby free himself from the manifold problems which bedevil his existence), its loose folds flap like sheets in the wind, and such mud, water, manure or nameless offal as happens to be adhering to them, is scattered far and wide. He is an indefatigable rummager in the lantana, where he collects old boots, rotting fragments of rag, decaying corpses of birds or bandicoots, snake skins, tattered remnants of sacks smelling to high heaven of blood-and-bone, and many other loathsome matters; these he brings home, and lays upon Tony's bed. His pendulous cheeks, his bulldog nose and his bloodshot eyes combine with his bulk to lend him an intimidating appearance, but his disposition is so friendly that unless you see him coming, and brace yourself for the shock, his ecstatic leaps of greeting are apt to land you flat on your back. As he grows bigger and bigger, his inspired clumsiness naturally has more and more dog-power behind it, and this excessive bonhomie has become one of the major hazards of life in the Lane. In the circumstances, it surely speaks volumes for his beautiful nature that we all love him dearly.

With Aunt Isabelle we are already pretty well acquainted. Her abrupt and totally unheralded appearance in our midst would have dumbfounded Sue and Henry even if she had made her entrance alone, and in a more orthodox manner; for it was barely a month since they had received one of her very long letters, posted in Paris, and containing no suggestion that she ever proposed to leave that city, where she lived a busy life doing nothing in particular, but doing it with so much verve that it seemed to herself, and everyone else, tremendously exciting. As it was, there were aspects of her arrival which might have made them doubt the evidence of their eyes, had there not been other witnesses. These were Dick Arnold (who was helping Henry put a new stump under the tank-stand), Marge Kennedy (who was returning a mincer she had borrowed from Sue), and Dave Hawkins (who was playing with Tony). Ken was less a witness than a
deus ex machina,
for the vehicle from which Aunt Isabelle alighted, clad in a boiler-suit, a fur coat and hob-nailed boots, and clasping the squirming Jake in her arms, was Kelly. It will readily be seen that a combination of these four is strong medicine, and one wonders that Providence should ever have allowed them to come together, especially on a Sunday.

But there they were, and for some moments—what with Aunt Isabelle's cries of greeting, Jake's yelps, Tony's enraptured exclamations and the clamorous questionings of Sue and Henry—the situation was extremely confused, and . . .

But things are getting out of hand already, and we are telling the end first. We feel rather despairingly that even if we attempt, by scrupulously observing a chronological sequence, to lend this account the majestic, step-by-step inevitability of Greek drama, the chances are that it will come out in a form (or perhaps we should say a formlessness), more reminiscent of the brothers Marx. Nevertheless, we must explain how Aunt Isabelle came to possess Jake, how they made the acquaintance of Ken Mulliner, and how Kelly brought them all to Lantana Lane. We shall do this methodically if it kills us.

It must first of all be understood that although Aunt Isabelle frequently declares herself to be a realist, she is a romantic as well. Contrary to general belief, this is quite possible. A little mental agility is required, but she has plenty of that, and finds no more difficulty in switching briskly from romance to realism, and back again, than she would find in removing one dress in order to put on another.

For the romantic adventure of emigrating, she cast herself as a pioneer—having eagerly read two books, written in 1849 and 1857, upon life in the Antipodes. But her realism compelled her to recognise that facilities for making perilous, six-months' voyages in sailing ships, and subsisting upon weevily biscuits and a daily pannikin of water, no longer exist, so she philosophically allowed herself to be whisked through the air in perfect comfort, cheering herself with the thought that every hour was bringing her closer to The Bushes, where interesting privations surely awaited her. And although she descended from the plane clad in everything that was suitable and
soignée
for an elderly Parisienne upon her travels, she had her boots and her boilersuit readily accessible against the moment when pioneering should begin.

She was somewhat dashed to learn that it was now quite a long time since the coaches of
Cobb et Cie
had ceased their picturesque operations, and that she must perform the next stage of her journey by train. But once more, as a good realist, she accepted the inevitable with composure, and engaged a taxi to convey her straight from the airport to the railway station; for she was resolved not to lose a moment in coming to grips with her new life. However, as she explained to the taxi-driver, she wished to purchase a little gift for the son of her niece, and would therefore be obliged if he would take her,
en route,
to some appropriate shop. To this he replied that it was Saturday afternoon, and all the shops were shut; but he must have been a quick thinker, for he immediately added that he had kids himself, and if she asked him, he'd say there was nothing a little boy liked better than a dog. Now it so happened (he continued) that he had an exceptionally fine Boxer pup which was worth fifteen quid any day, but which—since he didn't like to see a lady disappointed—he would let her have for five. Aunt Isabelle was delighted, and requested him to take her at once to inspect this animal, which he willingly did.

Just as they were walking up the side path towards the backyard, and the taxi-driver was explaining that it was necessary to keep a valuable, pedigreed dog shut up because it might get pinched, his third youngest child at last succeeded, after many attempts, in opening the door of the shed where Jake was incarcerated, and Jake, thus released, bounded out and knocked down a clothes-prop which supported a line of washing. The taxi-driver, shouting vituperations, gave chase, but was impeded by the fact that he did not like to trample all over the washing, and Jake (who had no such inhibition), always managed to be on the side where he was not. The third youngest child at first tried to help, but his father—rightly regarding him as the author of this contretemps—fetched him a clip on the ear in passing, which enraged him so much that he retired to the coal-heap, threw coals at everyone, and screamed. The fourth youngest child now appeared from somewhere, carrying the youngest child whom she set down on her father's best nylon shirt so that she might take part in the pursuit; but at this moment, most unfortunately, the second youngest child emerged from the house with a kitten in her arms, and joined the youngest child on the nylon shirt, where it was very contentedly pushing coal into the pocket. In order to assist with this, the second youngest child put the kitten down, and the kitten wisely decided to withdraw from a scene of so much uproar; but alas, Jake had seen it, and as it whizzed through the kitchen door he was practically on its tail, and the taxi-driver, the children and Aunt Isabelle were practically on his.

Inside the kitchen, Jake lost no time in overturning a small table upon which was set a tray of cups and saucers, and the taxi-driver, in a lunge to avert this catastrophe, upset a bucket of water. The kitten leapt on to the window-sill, and Jake tried to follow it, but his legs became entangled with each other, and he fell heavily, bearing down with him the second youngest child, who was trying to rescue the kitten, and now raised her voice in such piercing sounds of distress that the third eldest child, who had been peacefully reading on the front verandah, dropped his comic, and hastened in to see what was happening. The kitten had by now taken refuge on the sink where the washing-up was piled, and as there was a chair adjacent, Jake managed to get up there too; but of course the kitten was immediately on the floor again, and Jake, in a rash attempt to emulate its graceful, feline leap, skidded on the draining-board, and fell into a greasy frying-pan.