Remembrance Day. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ car at home and walked to the Bluebell. It was four miles to Langham, but he preferred to walk both ways rather than drive after he had downed a few pints. His mood was cheerful. You generally had a laugh in the Bluebell. True, the company was not exactly out of the top drawer, but they often had good raunchy tales to tell. The incidence of adultery and grosser sexual offences must be higher in Norfolk than anywhere, if the tales they told were to be believed.

      As he came to the crossroads and turned right, he overtook old Charlie Craske hobbling in the same direction.

      ‘Rain’s holding off still,’ Tebbutt said.

      Charlie squinted up at him. ‘What you think about Tom Squire’s fruit-packing business failing, then?’ he asked, more in the way of a statement than a question. ‘It’s a bugger, ent it?’

      ‘What’s that then?’

      ‘Well, it’s a bugger, ent it?’

      Entering the Bluebell, where several drinkers had already gathered, Tebbutt found that the same state of gloom, and the same opinion that it was a bugger, prevailed. They were eager enough to divulge the bad news to Tebbutt, on the principle that there was always enough misery to be shared.

      Sir Thomas Squire at Hartisham had an orchard and a fruit-packing business on his grounds. It had rated as a small local success in the late seventies, to be written up in the local papers, shown on Anglian TV. Squire had extended the business and packed for a number of Norfolk fruit-growers. There was even a rumour at one time that he might build a private rail-link from Pippet Hall to Norwich Thorpe BR station. But imports of fruit from the European Community had cut into the trade. Local growers were undersold by the French, Spanish, and Italians.

      After losing money for two years, Squire had closed the enterprise down. Ten men had lost their jobs.

      A man named Burton, who sometimes brought tame ferrets to the pub, said, ‘That weren’t no reason for young Lamb to go and hang himself, to my mind. Blokes have been kicked out of jobs before this.’ He laughed. ‘It’s always happening to the likes of us.’

      ‘Very like being sacked crushed his hopes,’ someone remarked. ‘Don’t forget young Lamb were on the verge of matrimony.’

      ‘Which is a form of suicide,’ old Wilkes remarked slyly. Everyone laughed.

      ‘What’s this about suicide?’ Tebbutt asked, suddenly recalling Jean Linwood’s remark over the phone.

      ‘They say Tom Squire found him himself, barely cold, hanging there from a metal beam in the store, among all the crates. Just this morning, it was. A terrible thing to do to yourself, and this young girl he was about to marry from over North Walsham way.’

      They all put on solemn Sunday faces and shook their heads before taking another drink.

      The landlady, who had been polishing glasses and listening behind the bar, said in her smoky voice, ‘You gentlemen want to get your story straight. As I was told by someone who knows, Mr Billy Lamb did not kill himself because he lost his job. He didn’t even know he was to be declared redundant.’

      Her statement was immediately challenged, but she went on unperturbed, resting her fists on her counter as if prepared to take them all on in physical combat if necessary. ‘Reason he done what he did was because the girl, Margy Sulston, who once worked for my cousin at the Ostrich, threw him over. Margy’s quite a decent girl – no chicken, mind you – and as I understand it she couldn’t put up with some of Mr Lamb’s obnoxious habits.’

      ‘Such as?’ Craske asked.

      ‘I’m not one to gossip,’ said the landlady with finality, turning away to polish another glass.

      To ease himself into the company, which had not yet settled down properly, Tebbutt went over to the counter and bought everyone a round of bitter. They all drank it, except for old Craske, who was reckoned strange for sticking to cider, and Georgie Clenchwarden, who preferred ginger beer shandy.

      Swallowing their pints, the company cheered up and began to tell stories of the unfortunate Billy Lamb. The only man there who knew him at all was Pete Norton, a dark-complexioned brickie and plasterer in his forties who worked for a Fakenham builder. He was soon holding them spellbound with details of Lamb’s sex life.

      ‘There’s a girl works in Boots as I took out a time or two. She’d been with Billy Lamb when he was working in the DIY. She reckoned as he had a problem. Some problem it was too. Seemed Billy was keen enough to get it in but he couldn’t stand the sight of women.’

      They all roared with laughter, agreeing he certainly had a problem.

      ‘So what he done, he borrowed a sheet of hardboard out the DIY, and he’d stick that between them, so’s he could just see her legs and twot, and the rest of her was covered. Bit like screwing a fence, if you ask me.’

      This revelation caused much discussion, some debating how long a girl would put up with such treatment, others dismissing the story as a complete fabrication, though later agreeing that nothing to do with sex could be either believed or disbelieved. Only Georgie Clenchwarden, reputed lover of Pauline Yarker, said nothing, sitting back on his bench with his shandy, smiling and listening over the top of his glass.

      The Bluebell was a curious pub, with a collection of ornamental shoes on display upstairs. Tebbutt felt himself to be something of a curio in this company, displaced rather like the old shoes.

      He took a certain interest in the hollow-chested young Georgie Clenchwarden, whose reported exploits with Mrs Yarker had earned him the sack. This crestfallen lad, who squirmed when he caught Tebbutt’s eye on him, lived over in Saxlingham with a decrepit aunt.

      Tebbutt had wondered idly how so insignificant a youth as Georgie could bear a resonant name like Clenchwarden, guessing the family had come down in the world, much as he had himself; this he later found to be the case. In the eighteenth century, the Clenchwardens had owned a large house and estate the other side of Hartisham. Captain Toby Clenchwarden had been a compulsive gambler. One night, playing cards with a group of cronies that included a novelist and pamphleteer, he had staked his mansion on a hand at brag – and lost. The novelist won.

      After which, Clenchwarden had ridden his mare back to Hartisham at dawn and roused his wife – so it was reported – with the cheering words, ‘Get up, you sloven, it’s the poorhouse for you today!’

      The novelist had taken over on the following morning. The two men, so the story went, shook hands at the gates, one going, one coming.

      Since then, it seemed, the Clenchwardens had never lived more than a stone’s throw from the poorhouse.

      The company at the Bluebell was three or four pints along the way when in came Yarker with Pauline. Yarker had abandoned his Wellingtons for a pair of trainers – his way of smartening up. Pauline dressed in a common way, in a tight red satin dress which the men admired; as the men often agreed among themselves, she was welcome as the lone female in their group because she had good big tits on her. Pinned over these assets was a white carnation from the garden centre. She wore large bronze earrings made in an obscure country which rattled when she laughed.

      Yarker bought them all a round of beer and sat down next to Tebbutt. Clenchwarden sank back on his bench, unwilling to catch his ex-employee’s eye, and tried to drown himself in his shandy.

      ‘I done well this afternoon,’ Yarker told СКАЧАТЬ