E-Book, Englisch, 222 Seiten
Fremlin The Echoing Stones
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-31273-3
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 222 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-571-31273-3
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Celia Fremlin (1914-2009) was born in Kent and spent her childhood in Hertfordshire, before studying at Oxford (whilst working as a charwoman). During World War Two, she served as an air-raid warden before becoming involved with the Mass Observation Project, collaborating on a study of women workers, War Factory. In 1942 she married Elia Goller, moved to Hampstead and had three children. In 1968, their youngest daughter committed suicide aged 19; a month later, her husband also killed himself. In the wake of these tragedies, Fremlin briefly relocated to Geneva. In 1985, she married Leslie Minchin, with whom she lived until his death in 1999. Over four decades, Fremlin wrote sixteen celebrated novels - including the classic summer holiday seaside mystery Uncle Paul (1959) - one book of poetry and three story collections. Her debut The Hours Before Dawnwon the Edgar Award in 1960.
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“Gentleman, aged 61, retired. Hates theatres, holidays, travel …”
Not quite the stuff to get them queuing up at your door, Arnold reflected glumly, re-reading what he had written. Sucking his pencil – a habit acquired during moments of stress at Primary School, and never quite lost – he continued writing:
“Amiable disposition, adaptable, seeks widow or similar …”
Was that quite the way to put it? What he meant, of course, was a woman past her first youth (well, what else could he expect?) and who had had a reasonable amount of experience of the vicissitudes of married life (or of co-habiting, or whatever) and therefore wouldn’t expect miracles of the man in her life. Arnold was no miracle man, never had been, and wasn’t going to become one. It sounded tiring.
And then, what about that “adaptable”? Hesitantly, he crossed the word out: changed his mind and wrote it in again. It was difficult. Because, really, the important thing was that she should be adaptable. It was Mildred’s failure to adapt that had split their marriage wide open only a few months after his retirement. “It’s not fair!” she’d sobbed, slamming the coffee-pot down so hard that coffee slopped all over the table-cloth and even into the marmalade. “First you take early retirement – I told you it was crazy – and now you’re trying to drag me off to this God-forsaken hole at the back of beyond, where it’ll be work, work work from dawn to dusk! Retirement indeed! Slavery more like it! On the slave-plantations they at least had a bit of fun! Old Man River and things. Sing-songs …”
Arnold sighed, remembering it all. Then he raised his eyes from his script with all its crossings-out, and looked out through the mullioned window at the glorious vista of lawn and park-land; somewhat parched now under the late summer sun, but still beautiful. To the right – beyond his range of vision from where he now sat – the gardens began. In his mind’s eye he could see them in all their glory; the blazing red of geraniums, dauntless in the heat, undefeated by the long drought. The dahlias, too, coming out in variegeted brilliance alongside the blue of the larkspurs, the golden fire of the tiger-lilies …
Beautiful! And all his!
Well, in a manner of speaking. Actually he was merely the caretaker and part-time tourist guide – that was how the job had been advertised – but with what a sense of ownership this rôle endowed him! “Caretaker.” The one who cares. Surely the one who cares is, in a profound sense, the one who truly owns? The actual owners – the Commission for the Preservation of Historic Buildings – seemed remote as a dream. They never set foot in the place – not since Arnold’s time, anyway. In what sense do you own a place in which you take no interest, no joy?
Well, there’s money, of course. After four decades of working in the Accounts Department of the local government offices, dealing almost exclusively with money, albeit other people’s money, Arnold was certainly not the man to belittle the stuff, but all the same …
Arnold smiled, got up from the desk and walked to the window to get a wider view of his domain. Overseeing the grounds was no part of his official job – he was definitely indoor staff – but all the same, he liked to keep an eye on what they were up to – or not up to, more often. Now that the hose-pipe ban had been lifted, surely the sprinklers should be out, reviving the parched lawhs? That was Norris’ department, supervising the lawns and gardens, and Arnold had learned very early on that even the lightest word of advice from him – even the most tentative suggstion – would be taken by Hugh Norris as gross interference and insupportable presumption.
Like the earwigs. All Arnold had done was casually to mention having noticed an increasing number of the creatures among the dahlias and Hugh Norris’ face had straightway blazed crimson with rage, right up into his balding scalp with its pale fringe of once gingery hair. He had actually shouted, within hearing of the tourists picnicking by the lake, and Arnold had duly cowered and cringed and apologised. See no earwigs, think no earwigs, mention no earwigs. So be it. Well, he didn’t want Norris complaining of him to Them, did he? He might lose his job.
Appalling thought. That he had ever been accepted for the job still seemed to him a kind of a miracle, even after all these months. At his age and with no qualifications other than a lifelong interest in English history, nourished by the intensive perusal of the biographies of colourful characters scattered through the centuries, he had expected to find himself in hopeless competition for the job with younger, smarter, properly qualified candidates. People with history degrees, two languages, Intourist training. But he had been calculating, he realised now, without reference to the salary, which was miniscule. “Ludicrous!” had been Mildred’s word for it, when at last he’d nerved himself to tell her about it. Ludicrous, indeed, had the whole project seemed to her and there had been moments, he remembered, when he’d wondered uneasily if she might not be right?
After he’d been accepted for the job, that is. Before that, sustained by an unacknowledged certainty that he’d never get it, he had allowed himself to revel in the prospect as in an ecstatic dream. And indeed there was a dream-like quality in the way the whole thing had come about – the strokes of luck involved, the bizarre coincidences.
If they were coincidences? Or was it, rather, that something deep inside him had for many a long day been watching, watching, for just such a chance as this? Had been scanning the Situations Vacant pages of the evening paper, not idly, as he had supposed, and for lack of anything better to read as he stood crushed against the other commuters on the District Line, but with set purpose; his whole soul secretly poised to pounce on something – anything – which spelt OUT.
It was coincidence, though, by any calculation, that the Stately Home advertising for a caretaker should be Emmerton Hall itself, a Tudor mansion situated not three miles away from the village where Arnold had been brought up. He knew it well. It had been in private hands then and going to rack and ruin for lack of money. The overgrown kitchen garden had been a Mecca for the small boys of the neighbourhood. The high wall of ancient red brick, warm and rough against your bare knees as you scrambled up and over it, all came back to him as he swayed rhythmically in the tube train as it trundled its way towards Wembley Park: the plump, rosy peaches which somehow still managed to ripen among the all-embracing bindweed: the purple, half-split plums littering the ground: the murmur of the wasps: and how the most wasp-ridden specimens were always the best and the sweetest. Oh, the taste of them! The hot, sweet scent, and the juice that trickled down your chin!
By the time he reached home, his whole being was lit by a sort of joyous madness which he hadn’t experienced in years. Well, ever, as a matter of fact.
*
“Had a good day, dear?”
“Yes, thank you, dear, not too bad.”
As this was the sum total of their usual conservation on his return from work, it was no wonder that Mildred didn’t notice anything special about it: had no inkling of how good a day it had been, and did not bother to wonder why, having hung up his coat, he hurried straight to his desk and started to write a letter instead of switching on the T.V.
At this stage, there was no need to tell Mildred anything. Well, why have a row when nothing was going to come of it anyway?
But something did come of it; and from then on, decisions crowded in upon him thick and fast. It was when the question of early retirement from his present job came up that things were brought to a head. The new job at Emmerton Hall was to start in April, in time for the tourist season. His old job, in the Accounts Department of the Town Hall, which in the ordinary course of events would have continued for another four years, must now be jettisoned with almost indecent haste: no golden handshake for him, and certainly a much reduced pension. Mildred must be put in the picture and fast. It was only fair.
“You see, dear,” he explained, “it’ll mean a drop in income, obviously, but with the free accommodation and our own home-grown vegetables …”
At first, she didn’t seem to be taking it in.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “You don’t retire for another four years …”
He sighed: started again: and this time, after a while, it did get through.
“You mean retire?” she shrieked. “Retire now!” and he could see the panic in her eyes. That well-known panic which the word “retire” is apt to arouse in even the most contented of wives. Home for lunch. Home for tea. Home for mid-morning coffee. Round my feet all day, bored, restless, resenting my friends when they drop in for a chat.
He hastened to allay these archetypal fears as best he could.
“I’ll be tremendously busy,” he reassured her, “all day long. There’ll be a lot to see to, looking after the exhibits … the house … and I suppose the paper-work, too. There’s always a lot of paper-work to any job. And then I’ll be taking the visitors round – guided tours – all that sort of thing. And it’ll be your job, too, Mildred. It’s not just for me, we’ll be in it together. They particularly wanted a married couple...
