Will you take the set meal, Mr. Pulling?
I dont think I can manage the plum pudding.
Nancy has made some smashing mince pies. Perhaps one, I said, because its Christmas.
Miss Truman rolled away with a Tom Bowling stride and I turned to Major Charge. You were saying?[213]
Im going away for the New Year. To a study group at Chesham. Ive got to board my fish. Cant trust them with the daily. I thought of Peter but shes a woman too, in a way. You can see how she feeds us. Any excuse to pile it on. She would probably do the same with the little buggers.
You want me to look after your fish?
I looked after your dahlias.
And starved them of water, I thought, but I had to say, Yes, of course, I will.
Ill bring you the food. Just one teaspoonful once a day. Dont pay any attention if they come guzzling at the glass. They dont know whats good for them.
Ill harden my heart, I said. I waved away the turtle soup it was overfamiliar. Too often I had opened a bottle of it when I had no appetite even for eggs. I asked, What kind of a study group?
The problems of empire, he replied, staring at me with eyes enlarged and angry as though I had already made some foolish or unsympathetic reply.
I thought we had got rid of all those.
A temporary failure of nerve, he snapped and bayoneted his turkey.
I would certainly have preferred him as a client to Curran. He would never have bothered me about overdrafts: he lived carefully within the limits of his pension: he was an honest man, even if I found his ideas repulsive, and then I thought of Mr. Visconti dancing with my aunt in the reception room of the brothel behind the Messaggero after swindling the Vatican and the King of Saudi Arabia and leaving a wide trail of damage behind him in the banks of Italy. Was the secret of lasting youth known only to the criminal mind?
A mans been looking for you, Major Charge said after a long silence. The admiral got up from his table and made unsteadily for the door. He was still wearing his paper crown, but when his fingers were already on the handle, he remembered it and scrunched it into a ball.
What man?
Youd gone to the post office or so I imagine. At any rate you turned right not left at the bottom of Southwood Road.
What did he want?
He didnt tell me. He rang and knocked and rang and knocked, making the hell of a din. Even the fish were scared, poor little buggers. There were two of them. I thought I ought to speak to them before they disturbed the whole street.
I dont know why, but I thought at that moment of Wordsworth, a possible message from my aunt
Was he black? I asked.
Black? What an extraordinary question. Of course he wasnt.
He didnt give a name?
Neither of them did. He asked where he could find you, but I had no idea you were planning to come here. You werent here last year or the year before. I dont think Ive ever seen you here before. All I could tell him was that I knew you went to the carol service at Saint Johns.
I wonder who it could be, I said.
I had a deep conviction that I was about to find myself again in Aunt Augustas world, and my pulse beat with an irrational sense of pleasure. When Miss Truman brought me two mince pies I accepted them both as though I needed them to sustain me for a long voyage. I even helped myself liberally to brandy butter.
I used real Rémy Martin, Miss Truman said. You havent pulled your cracker.
Pull it with me, Peter, I said with daring. She had a strong wrist, but I got the winning end, and a small plastic object rolled on to the floor. I was glad to see that it was not a hat. Major Charge leapt at it and gave a snort of laughter as merciless as a nose-blowing. He put it to his mouth and breathed hard, making a sound like a raspberry. Then I saw that it was shaped like a tiny po with a whistle in the handle.
Lower-deck humour[214], Miss Truman said in a kindly way.
Its the festive season, Major Charge said. He blew another raspberry. Hark! the herald-angels sing, he said in a tone of savagery, as though he were taking some kind of revenge on Christmas Eve and all its impedimenta of holy families and mangers and wise men, a revenge on love, a revenge for some deep disappointment.
I arrived at St. Johns Church by a quarter past eleven. The service always began at half past eleven so as to distinguish it from the Roman Catholic Midnight Mass. I had begun to attend when I first became the bank manager, for it gave me a stable family air if I were seen at the service, and though, unlike Aunt Augusta, I have no religious convictions, I could be there without hypocrisy since I have always enjoyed the more poetic aspects of Christianity. Christmas, it seems to me, is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.
For years now I have always sat in the same pew below a stained-glass window which was dedicated in 1887 to the memory of Councillor Trumbull[215]. It shows Christ surrounded by children as he sits in the shade of a very green tree the text, of course, is Suffer little children. Councillor Trumbull was responsible for building the square red-brick block with barred windows in Cranmer Road, which, once an orphanage, is now a detention centre for juvenile delinquents[216].
The carol service began with a gentler version than Major Charges of Hark! the Herald-Angels Sing, and then we proceeded to the old favourite, Good King Wenceslas.
Deep and crisp and even, the high female voices sang from the gallery it has always seemed to me a very beautiful line, conveying the landscape of a small country England with no crowds, no traffic, to soil the snow, when even the royal palace stood among the silent and untrodden fields.
No white Christmas[217], sir, this year, a voice whispered in my ear from the pew behind, and turning, I saw Detective-Sergeant Sparrow.
What on earth are you doing here?
If you can spare me a moment after the service, sir, he replied, and raising his prayer-book, he sang in a very fine baritone voice:
Though the frost was cru-el,
When a poor man hove in sight
(perhaps Detective-Sergeant Sparrow, like Miss Truman, had once been in the Navy)
Gathering winter fu-u-el.
I looked back at his companion. He was smartly dressed with a lean legal face. He wore a dark grey overcoat and carried an umbrella crooked for safety over his arm I wondered what he would do with it or with the sharp crease to his trousers when the time came for him to kneel. He didnt seem as much at home in the church as Detective-Sergeant Sparrow. He was not singing and I doubt whether he was praying.
Mark my footsteps, good my page,
the sergeant sang lustily,
Tread thou in them boldly,
and the voices in the gallery rose ardently to the unexpected competition from below.
At last the proper service began, and I was glad when the Athanasian Creed, which they invariably inflict on us at Christmas, was safely over. As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated: but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible. (Sergeant Sparrow coughed several times in the course of it.)
I intended it is always my custom at Christmas to go to Communion[218]. The Anglican Church is not exclusive: Communion is a commemoration service, and I had as much right to commemorate a beautiful legend as any true believer has. The vicar was saying clearly, while the congregation buzzed ambiguously to disguise the fact that they had forgotten the words: We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed I noticed that the detective-sergeant, perhaps from professional prudence, did not join in this plea of guilty. We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings I had never before noticed how the prayer sounded like the words of an old lag addressing the Bench[219] with a plea for mercy. The presence of Detective-Sergeant Sparrow seemed to alter the whole tone of the service. When I stepped into the nave to go up to the altar I heard an outburst of argumentative whispers in the pew behind me and the words, You, Sparrow, spoken very forcibly, so that I was not surprised when I saw that it was Detective-Sergeant Sparrow who knelt as my neighbour at the Communion rail. Perhaps they had been uncertain whether I might not take advantage of the Communion to escape through a side-door.
When his turn with the chalice came Detective-Sergeant Sparrow took a very long swig, and I noticed afterwards that more wine had to be fetched before the Communion was finished. When I returned to my seat, the detective-sergeant trod on my heels, and in the pew behind me the whispers broke out again. My throats like a grater, I heard the sergeant say. I suppose he was apologizing for his performance with the chalice.
At the end of the service they stood and waited for me at the church door, and Sergeant Sparrow introduced his companion. Detective-Inspector Woodrow, he said, Mr. Pulling. He added with awe in a lower voice, Inspector Woodrow belongs to the Special Branch.
I shook hands after a little hesitation on both sides.
We were wondering, sir, if you would mind assisting us again, Sergeant Sparrow said. I told Inspector Woodrow how helpful you had been once before over that jar of pot.
I suppose you are referring to my mothers urn, I replied with as much coldness as I could muster on Christmas morning.
The congregation poured out on either side. I saw the admiral go by. In his breast-pocket he had a patch of scarlet, which I suppose was the paper cap serving as a handkerchief.
They told us at the Crown and Anchor, Inspector Woodrow said to me in a stiff unfriendly tone, that you have your aunts keys.
We like to do things nicely, Sergeant Sparrow explained, with the free consent of all parties concerned. It goes down so much better in court.
What exactly do you want? I asked.
A happy Christmas, Mr. Pulling. The vicar put his hand on my shoulder. Have I the pleasure of meeting two new parishioners?
Mr. Sparrow, Mr. Woodrow, the vicar, I said.
I hope you all enjoyed our carol service.
Indeed I did, Sergeant Sparrow said heartily. If theres one thing I like its a good tune with words I can understand.
Just a moment while I find copies of our parish magazine. Quite a bumper Christmas number. The vicar dived back into the dark church looking like a ghost in his surplice.