The Naylors (25 page)

He also looked up at the heavens. From these there came no voice, such as Hooker seemed almost disposed to expect, saying something like ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant’. What did come was the noise of a helicopter. And there a helicopter was. It wasn’t (what George understood to be the common occasion of such appearances) scurrying across country from A to B, conveying a hard-pressed industrial magnate from the scene of one important activity to another. It was simply cruising around – either that or hovering, and hovering low. In fact it was behaving rather as that police car had behaved.

‘So I think it might be proper to pay a call. That it would be the graceful thing.’

‘Proper to
what
? George realised that he had been woolgathering.

‘To call on Dr Scattergood, my dear Naylor. I gathered that he has his living-quarters within the curtilage of the Institute.’

‘I see.’ George wasn’t enthusiastic. He was chiefly conscious that ‘curtilage’ was another instance of Hooker’s peculiar notions of colloquial English. ‘But don’t you think he’s probably a fairly busy chap?’

‘Undoubtedly. Indeed, he had to intimate as much when he was unable to accept that invitation to the Park. He may well be unable to be at home to us. But the courtesy call will have been made. And we can leave cards.’

‘So we can.’ George was now almost dazed. A ‘courtesy call’ made within a few hours of what had occasioned it was surely on the excessive side of things. Diplomats and similar distinguished persons undoubtedly ‘paid’ such calls, but at a different tempo. Even the most extravagant Victorian manual of etiquette would frown on such brisk despatch. George reflected, however, on the small and yellowed scrap of pasteboard he had thought to produce for the Admissions lady at the Bodleian. No doubt it was still on his person. But he didn’t at all relish the idea of leaving it on a species of in-tray at an Institute of Animal Genetics. ‘I think,’ he said disingenuously, ‘it would be more becoming if you paid this visit by yourself. It flows from Scattergood’s having turned up to hear you preach, and that’s something I didn’t manage myself. So there would be a kind of awkwardness, would there not?’

It was George’s hope that he had here hit upon a consideration likely to have weight with Hooker, a man to be described as owning a flair for punctilios. But it turned out not to be particularly successful.

‘Let us be guided by circumstances,’ Father Hooker said.

‘Well, yes—by all means. And there is already a circumstance which I think I ought to mention to you. It looks very much as if, this afternoon, there is to be some sort of demonstration outside this rather mysterious Institute. Just what it is about isn’t clear to me, and I realise the implausibility of supposing the place to have anything to do with the production of nuclear weapons. But I do have evidence that the local police are concerned about something, and it seems reasonable to conclude that Scattergood and his colleagues are also on the alert. If so, I think our paying a social call might be distinctly inopportune.’

This was surely a succinct and sensible speech, but Father Hooker’s response to it was not quite what George had hoped for.

‘My dear Naylor, I should have been inattentive to much that has been in the air were I to be altogether surprised by what you say. May I hope that you are yourself without any intimate anxiety in the matter? Your charming niece is not, by any chance, involved?’

‘Hilda?’ George was a little startled by this question. ‘I can’t be sure she isn’t at least interested. But a person who may indeed be involved – and even perhaps a moving spirit in the design – is Prowse’s nephew, Simon.’

‘The young man who came to tennis the other day?’

‘Yes. There has been a good deal that is unaccountable in his behaviour while at the vicarage.’

‘Again, I am not altogether surprised. His tennis, it seems, was extremely good. But is he also intelligent?’

‘Very definitely so. He has been pretending to be in need of help with elementary Latin – while being in fact a strong candidate for a Fellowship at All Souls.’

‘Then we must think again.’ Father Hooker had come to a halt, and George had only to glance at him to see that he was, in fact, thinking quite hard. He was not a man under whose feet – metaphorically speaking – the ground could readily be seen to shift. Nevertheless, something of the sort was happening now. Conceivably because he owned an exaggerated regard for academic distinction in the University of Oxford, what he had just heard about the promising career of Simon Prowse had considerably shaken him. He was, in fact, in process of a volte-face.

‘Dear me!’ he said. ‘I have been inclined, as you know, to regard the entire notion of this Institute’s being in any way significantly involved with modern warfare as no more than so much frying eggs by moonshine.’

‘As
what
?’

‘A common phrase, my dear Naylor, which I borrow from the simpler classes. Nonsense, in other words. An absurd misapprehension which I was passingly concerned to refute in my sermon this morning. But now we have something quite remote from idle chatter in pubs. An able and highly educated young man, participating in, or even instigating, a demonstration of the kind you describe! Such a one is surely unlikely to have gone wildly astray. It must be within his knowledge that this Institute, contrary to my own persuasion, is indeed engaged in activities which, if only in some tangential fashion, connect with the kind of nuclear technology which so frequently nowadays generates mass protest of one sort or another. Do I carry you along with me, Naylor?’ And Father Hooker, having achieved this very characteristic piece of expository syntax, paused for a reply.

‘Well, yes—you do. And I may say that Hilda has been pretty sure about it for some time.’

‘Your niece, in my opinion, has a very clear head. As for myself, I confess to having been dogmatic in reiterating, almost until this very moment, that the idea is absurd. But the truth is now apparent to me. And it is apparent, too, that we must press forward. We have a duty.’

‘A duty?’ George repeated – detectably to a feebler effect than he at all cared for.

‘Certainly. The main burden of my sermon this morning – and I deeply regret that I had not the privilege of submitting it to your judgement – was the extreme difficulty of accommodating the concept of the Just War to the possibility of nuclear holocaust. All those exercised with the problem, whatever their convictions about it, one way or another, merit our respect. And guidance. We must afford it as we can.’ Father Hooker paused, and looked quite sternly at George. ‘And by “we” I mean the Church.’

Nether Plumley now lay immediately before them. It was not at all an inspiriting hamlet. Whatever small consequence it had once owned seemed long ago to have been ploughed deep into the soil. If it had contracted, it must have been while sullenly effecting a kind of scorched-earth policy; cottages that had decayed and given up appeared to have carried their foundations away with them, so that only here and there an oblong of ground showing an extra luxuriance of nettle and thistle marked the minute demesnes of a vanished peasantry; Plumley Ducis itself must have seemed the abode of a vigorous and affluent community to such inhabitants as Nether Plumley quite mysteriously supported still. Bill and Bess, no doubt at the beckoning of scents unknown, had scampered hopefully ahead to explore the scene. But they were now returning in plain dejection, like the scouts of some nomad tribe with no good report of water or shade ahead. There hadn’t been in evidence even a child to chuck a stone at these four-footed foreigners, and in the small scattering of cottages along the lane the few senior citizens of the place were presumably asleep. They hadn’t been to church, since there wasn’t one; they weren’t looking forward to the pub, because there was no pub either; they weren’t even sucking peppermints, because there was no village shop.

Before this spectacle, or lack of it, Father Hooker came to a halt, and George saw that he was about to make a pronouncement. When it came it was surprisingly without the portentous quality one had come to expect from him.

‘Surely it’s a little puzzling?’ Hooker asked. ‘English agriculture is said to be doing quite well – which can scarcely be said of almost anything else. Why a depressing scene like this?’

‘It certainly isn’t at all cheerful.’ George felt thoroughly apologetic on the part of poor Nether Plumley. ‘Long ago, I believe, it was a fairly thriving village, and then it lost heart and decided to turn dismal. After that, cars and motor-bikes finished the job, here as in similar places. Agricultural labourers have become more mobile, and tend to clump where one thing and another is laid on – as in Plumley itself, for instance. And landowners and farmers quite approve, and increasingly have their tied cottages and so forth in the larger villages. So here and there you get such run-down spots as Nether Plumley. My brother says it’s of very little economic significance.’

Father Hooker received George’s explanations – rather oddly – with one of his little bows, perhaps as indicating that he was open to, and perhaps grateful for, being thus clued up on secular affairs.

‘All the same,’ he said, ‘the only thing I can see to be thankful for in Nether Plumley is that from it one can lift up one’s eyes unto the hills.’

‘From whence doth come our aid.’ George was delighted with this. ‘Yes, indeed. I always find myself turning that way.’

Both men had, in fact, turned round – and naturally the dogs did so as well, so that all four visitors were facing the line of the downs.

‘It is rather fine, isn’t it?’ George asked. ‘It’s surprising that so gently undulating a skyline can create such an effect. Wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Hooker’s head indicated grave assent. ‘I like that little spinney just breasting the crest. And there, just to the left of it: is that some sort of tumulus?’

‘Yes, it’s rather an impressive chambered tomb, now called Tim’s Tump, and well worth a visit. It’s curious how unfrequented all that stretch of the ancient trackway is. There’s probably not a soul up there now.’

They moved on, and the Institute of Animal Genetics came into view. Perhaps because seeming so deliberately pitched in depressing surroundings, it suggested at a first glance a large receptacle for the indigent aged – a high incidence of senile dementia among whom might explain the necessity of its being enclosed within a perimeter-fence some ten feet high. In such establishments it may often be remarked that facilities for mass-incineration have for some reason constituted a high priority in the design, and it was so here, Crowning the Institute there was a chimney-stack of surprising height, and from this arose into the sky a faintly quivering column of oily black smoke. Nothing else moved. It seemed clear that the Institute rested from its endeavours (whatever those endeavours were) at the week-end with an absoluteness that was reassuringly British. Through the fence before which Father Hooker and a misdoubting George now stood were to be viewed lawns and flower-beds of the unimaginative and by-the-yard sort purveyed by contractors. Partly concealed behind a corner of the main building was a large asphalted area on which were parked several modest cars, including a couple of police panda cars without occupants. At one point on the grass three thrushes, immobile and hopefully listening for worms that weren’t in fact at home, might have been viewed as inadequately standing in for birds of ill omen. All in all, it was a slightly dreary but entirely peaceful scene.

‘It is clear,’ Father Hooker said, ‘that casual intrusion is unwelcome, and not easy to effect.’ He tapped the wire mesh in front of his nose with a walking-stick which could almost have been described as of clerical appearance in itself. ‘The demonstrators will not make much of this. But demonstrators, my dear Naylor, are there to be? It is difficult to believe in them amid this decent Sabbath repose. Perhaps, after all, we have too readily come to believe in a piece of nonsense. Your vicar’s nephew may be no more than the perpetrator of some foolish hoax. Or do I vacillate?’

George judged that he did, but refrained from saying so.

‘As we’re here,’ he suggested, ‘hadn’t we better push ahead, and see if this fellow Scattergood is around? I’m quite sure about the police, you know. They took my photograph, as a matter of fact, from a passing car much like one of those parked over there.’

‘Naylor, you astound me!’

‘I confess I was a little shaken myself. It may just be, of course, that this Institute is so hush-hush an affair that there are routine precautions of the sort seven days a week. But it’s most unlikely, isn’t it? If it were so, my family and everybody else would be aware of it. The odds remain with some kind of emergency. There must be a gate somewhere in this fence. Let’s go on and find it.’

So they went on. Bill and Bess, however, did so with marked reluctance. With the irritating ability of certain species of the brute creation to put on a turn suggesting a startling command of extra-sensory perception, the dogs were making panicky noises, tucking their tails beneath their bellies, and dragging all eight of their feet. George, who had brought with him the kind of leash adapted to controlling two animals at a time, was obliged to bring this device into operation, and the party, thus impeded, made a huddled progress along the fence. Round its first corner, however, they did come on a gate.

It was quite an imposing gate, and apparently the main entrance to the large compound within which the Institute stood. In addition to the gate proper, the two halves of which stood half open and as if ready to be closed at any time, there was an affair like the barrier at a level crossing, and this seemed to be mechanically operated from inside a kind of capacious sentry-box constructed of some glass-like material. There was a man – presumably a porter or commissionaire – inside the box. Lounging at ease, he was improving his mind with
The News of the World.
This journal he now momentarily lowered for the purpose of inspecting the postulants before his portal. Having done this, he very composedly fell to reading again. Not unnaturally, Father Hooker was incensed.