THE SPARROW Read online

  This morning, as he gazed from the window at the vicar’s car edging down Sloe Lane, he was more convinced than ever that plans to get rid of him were being formulated in the tall, red-brick house. He had been in the vicarage once or twice during the week and he had been aware of a new hostility towards himself. Mrs. Kimberley had even gone so far as to refuse to see him on one occasion, making some trivial excuse that she was preparing a room in the attic for a visitor.

  This talk of a visitor was, of course, a blind to disguise their real preoccupation. What was really in all their minds was the trouble over the church boiler. Spencer dipped a piece of toast in his tea and chewed it thoughtfully; his teeth were giving him trouble, as though things were not bad enough anyway. The boiler just would not do another winter and might not even last this one. He had broken this news to the vicar last Saturday evening during the sacred hour that the vicar set aside to prepare his sermon. The vicar had been uncharacteristically short-tempered and Spencer had emerged quite convinced that the shortcomings of the boiler were to be blamed on him. He supposed that now they would send for the engineer who had come last year and had had the impudence to suggest that it would last for many years ‘if it was stoked properly’.

  Spencer swallowed the last piece of toast and began to collect the breakfast things together. ‘The bloody thing won’t last out and that’s all there is to it,’ he protested mournfully as he carried the tray of crockery into the kitchen at the back of the cottage. The sink was already full of the accumulated crockery from yesterday’s lunch, tea, and supper. As he made room for the breakfast things, the thought crossed Spencer’s mind that he had better have a general tidy-up. It would never do if the vicar or one of the wardens, or the interfering Mrs. Thomas who ran the women’s work group, were to see the kitchen in this unsavoury condition. He was rather shocked himself. He had created a legend in which he at least firmly believed that he was meticulously careful about cleanliness and order. ‘It’s the army, you see,’ he would tell people. ‘Everything must be clean and tidy and in its proper place or I just can’t rest.’ The thought braced him and he rescued one dinner plate from the greasy water, rinsed it under the cold tap and wiped it on a sodden cloth. He was muttering aloud: ‘Discipline! There isn’t anything better for a man than discipline.’

  The trouble was that whenever he had a particularly outstanding worry, such as the boiler, discipline broke down and disorder spread around him. Now, he turned away from the sink, put the plate down on the dresser and went back to the front room, his resolution deserting him. He sat down at the table.

  The table stood near the window and Spencer spent a lot of his free time sitting at it observing the vicarage. He collected scraps of information and stored them away in his mind for such time as they might prove useful to him: a form of defence against a world for ever poised to attack him. So far, nothing much had happened this morning, but he had noted that the girl, Jill, had driven away in her uncle’s car just before seven. He had had to open the window to make sure about this because the fog was so bad that he had not been able to see who was driving. From the scraps of conversation he had overheard it had been apparent that the vicar was going out later to indulge in his nuclear disarmament tomfoolery. Spencer waited.

  The vicar went out soon after eight. That would mean that there would be just the child and Mrs. Kimberley in the house. And Spencer knew that the child usually went to play with a friend up the road on a Saturday morning. It was unlikely that there would be many callers at the vicarage on a morning like this, so with any luck Spencer would have the undivided attention of Mrs. Kimberley. He had been waiting for this opportunity all the week. He would exert all his charm to persuade her to intercede on his behalf. Once he had had considerable charm for women; but now, as he rose from the table and caught sight of himself in the mirror over the sideboard, his eyes swerved away from the leathery face the creases of which were ingrained with dirt. Perhaps cunning, rather than charm, was needed in dealing with a woman like Mrs. Kimberley who, for all her small, sprightly grace, was sharp as a tack. It was no use playing on her sympathy, he decided as he went up the stairs to make himself more presentable; she was not the pitying kind. But like all women she prided herself on being more practical than her husband. Spencer had noticed once or twice recently that she was not slow to give her opinion when it differed from the vicar’s. As he shaved, he rehearsed how he would infer that he had come to her because she was more capable of understanding things at a material level than the vicar who might know all about men’s souls but was a bit of a fool when it came to things like boilers.

  IV

  ‘If you just sit down here, I’ll fetch some coffee,’ Jill Hunter said to the young man. She glanced over her shoulder towards the counter. ‘There’s poached egg. And baked beans on toast. Which would you like?’

  The young man mumbled ‘poached egg’. The cleaner who was slapping a damp cloth over the next table thought that he didn’t look as though he really wanted to eat anything. One of the dark, brooding types. Mean, too, with that buttoned-up mouth and letting his girl pay for him. When the girl had gone over to the counter, the cleaner came and slapped the cloth around on his table. His face was a bit peaked and the cold must have got right into him because he was all of a tremble. She softened a little towards him.

  ‘Feeling poorly, love?’

  ‘No.’

  He did not even look at her. She reverted to her original opinion of him and moved away, pushing a trolley of dirty crockery in front of her. The young man sat hunched in his corner, nervous fingers pulling at his lower lip; he looked as though he wanted to bite his nails but was remembering not to. From time to time he glanced at the girl as she moved along the self-service counter; he regarded her warily, not with actual distrust, but as though he doubted whether she were real.

  She looked substantial enough; a sturdy young person with a square face whose features had been chiselled firmly, if a trifle bluntly. Once, she turned and smiled at the young man who seemed not to know what was expected of him in return.

  ‘Proper misery, isn’t he?’ the woman behind the counter said sympathetically, pushing forward a poached egg on toast. ‘Don’t know what’s the matter with young fellows these days. Mind the plate, dear, it’s hot.’

  The young man was looking out of the window now. A bus edged along close to the kerb and a few shadowy figures emerged from the shelter of a doorway and boarded it. The bus moved off and there was nothing but the fog.

  Jill Hunter moved up to the coffee section of the counter, her face momentarily crumpled in dismay. She had had no idea it would be so difficult. ‘He’ll talk and talk and talk,’ Ralph had warned her. ‘It’s a subject of absorbing interest to them and it’s best just to listen at first.’ Of course, Ralph had added, there were exceptions.

  ‘Two large coffees, please.’

  It was just her luck to have got hold of one of the exceptions; he had hardly spoken more than a dozen words since she picked him up in the car. It was a pity that Ralph had not told her a little more about this particular young man. But then Ralph was so busy with his work for the nuclear disarmers, and anyway, bless him, he was rather vague about people. It was really her own fault. She had been so exuberantly determined to spread light and joy that she had overwhelmed the poor lad and sent him scurrying back into himself, ‘0 out of 10 for this, Hunter,’ she said to herself as she paid the cashier.

  She walked towards him, frowning with the effort of balancing the things on the tray and the even greater effort of imposing discipline on her rebellious tongue. He stood up. The courtesy surprised her; he noted the surprise and colour flooded his face. At once, her wide mouth opened treacherously and words spilt out.

  ‘Goodness knows how long these things have been standing there—all night, I expect; it’s open all night, you know. The eggs look positively congealed, don’t they?’ She clattered the tray down, thrust two knives at him, snatched one back, pushed a fork across, a
nd gabbled: ‘At least the coffee should be good. I always think their coffee is good, don’t you? Salt? Pepper?’

  He fielded the salt with a hand that was not quite steady. He, too, had started the morning full of good intentions. And now . . . He felt sweat cold on his forehead. ‘I’m not going to be able to cope,’ he thought in panic. He bowed his head over his plate, but not before the girl had seen the misery in his face. For the first time since she became twenty it occurred to her that she was still rather young. She had been looking forward to this as a new experience and she had half-expected that he, too, would enjoy it. Which was unimaginative and even a little immature. The silence was becoming oppressive. There was nothing for it, she would just have to go on talking.

  ‘Ralph—that’s the Reverend Kimberley who came to see you. You remember him, of course?’

  ‘Yes. I remember him.’

  ‘He was terribly sorry he couldn’t meet you this morning. But he had to get to the Air Force base at Uxbridge. There’s to be a sit-down there today. You know all about that, I expect?’

  ‘Yes. We had some of them.’

  ‘You had some . . .? Oh, I see What you mean. Well, you’ll be able to talk to Ralph about it. He’s an absolutely wonderful person; you’ll find knowing him a tremendous experience.’

  Her square, candid face glowed as she talked about Ralph Kimberley, and as he watched her something of the glow was reflected in the young man’s face. She told him of the plans for the day, avoiding the bit about possible imprisonment as that might not be very tactful all things considered.

  The street door opened and two men came in; they wore dark suits and one of them carried a brief-case. They bought coffee and sat at a table near by.

  ‘Two of the kids from our office are off on this lark,’ one of them said, shoving forward a newspaper. ‘If you want them to stay five minutes late to finish a job of work there’s an awful shindy because they want to get off to the local jazz group; but they’ll give up a whole weekend to make ruddy nuisances of themselves and then the papers refer to them as “these dedicated people”!’

  The young man looked across at the girl who grinned and said good-humouredly:

  ‘That’s very true.’ She pushed her plate to one side. ‘But it takes all sorts . . .’ She looked at her watch. ‘Keith . . .’

  He flinched; it was difficult to tell whether he resented the familiarity.

  ‘I may call you Keith, mayn’t I?’

  ‘If you want to.’

  ‘And you must call me Jill.’

  No reply.

  ‘What I was going to say, Keith, was that I shall have to put you on the bus and leave you to get there yourself. I’m terribly sorry, but I have to go to work this morning and I’m late as it is.’

  ‘It’s very good of you to have done this much,’ he said stiflly.

  ‘It’s quite a simple journey.’ She resolutely ignored the yellow chaos beyond the door. ‘And if by any chance you do get lost you can always . . . Well, perhaps it would be best if I drew you a little plan.’

  He watched her sketching on a scrap of paper.

  ‘You get off at Shepherd’s Bush Green, you see, and then . . .’

  ‘And then, I can ask a policeman.’

  She looked up and they both laughed rather awkwardly. They went out into the fog.

  ‘You must explain to Myra that it took absolutely hours to crawl as far as Westminster. Tell her I’ll get the car back somehow this afternoon.’ She put out a hand to guide him and felt him shrink at her touch. ‘This is Parliament Street, believe it or not. You catch the bus the other side. I’ll wait until one comes.’ She thrust money into his hand. ‘I’d better give you the fare since I’ve been such an inefficient chauffeur.’

  After that they did not speak until the bus came.

  He clambered on the top because the fog, pressing inwards, had given him an attack of claustrophobia. The bus was half-empty. He sat in front as he had loved to do when he was a child. He was very lonely without the girl prattling away at his side. Now that she was gone he felt an almost hysterical surge of gratitude towards her, he told himself that he would never forget finding her there waiting, so frank and friendly, as though she were meeting a brother from boarding school. There were steps on the stairs; the conductor was coming. Exhilaration gave way to panic. He did not know the fare. It seemed shameful, although he would not, in fact, have known it in the normal way. When the conductor came and stood over him, he could hardly form the words.

  ‘I don’t know the fare.’

  The man looked down at him. ‘Well, suppose you tell me where you want to go and I’ll tell you the fare?’

  ‘Shepherd’s Bush Green.’

  ‘Shepherd’s Bush Green? That will cost you all of one shilling and two pence.’

  The conductor handed over the ticket and counted out change ponderously; then he plopped down on the opposite seat, gazing in disgust into the street.

  ‘This is almost as bad as Christmas Eve. Was you caught out in that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You was lucky then, mate. You was lucky.’

  It was absurd. The man was friendly, and, in any case, he would never see him again. What did it matter if he asked how he had spent Christmas Eve? And yet his heart was beginning to pound again and the sweat was forming on his forehead. He was so tired; his brain seemed to work very slowly so that his reactions were delayed. The scene with the girl had been incredibly difficult and now he felt he could not bear any more human intercourse.

  The bus had crawled into Trafalgar Square and was filling up. The conductor moved away and was replaced by a fat man who immediately opened his paper and turned purposefully to the crossword. Freed from the demands of companionship, Wilson looked out of the window again. This was one of the delights he had been promising himself over the last six months: a ride on the top of a bus.

  The fog was lifting now. The tall buildings on either side took shape, below the traffic moved as though on a great conveyor belt, but without the smooth efficiency—a machine that had got snarled up. There were people moving chaotically outside Swan and Edgar’s, fighting their way into, and out of, the entrances to the tube station, splaying into the road, shoving between the scarcely moving cars. He stared in horror at this chaos into which he would soon be hurled, feeling as though he must be torn to pieces in that tangled mesh. A craven longing to go back seized him.

  He hunched down in his seat and tried to sleep; if he went past the stop he would not worry. There was, however, no danger of passing the stop; all down Holland Park Avenue his stomach gave uneasy signals of the approach of Shepherd’s Bush Green.

  Once he had left the shelter of the bus, he found, on looking at the sketch, that he had to get to the far side of the triangular green. The two road crossings were among the most perilous enterprises of his life. He was glad to see, on consulting the sketch again, that he would soon turn away from the confusion and clamour of the main road. Sloe Lane was a turning off the Uxbridge Road. It didn’t look much like a lane now. He still made mental notes of his surroundings although he no longer thought of himself as a potential journalist. There was a supermarket on the corner, then came a laundry, a row of dingy, blackened cottages sandwiched between two coal depots, and another laundry. But after that the character of the area began to change. Solid, mid-Victorian houses looked across at a row of terraced houses the ground floors of which had been converted into small shops which still retained something of the individual appearance of a family concern. Beyond the shops there was a long brick wall which ended with a gate. The words ‘St. Gabriel’s Vicarage’ were painted unevenly on the gate.

  Wilson stopped, no longer the disinterested observer. The church stood to the right, well back from the road; just beyond it there was a small green. Wilson looked towards the green. One might have imagined that he was regretting the lost village of which this was the fragmentary remains. In fact, he was looking at the road which narrowed beyond the gr
een and twisted out of sight. He would have liked to follow the road, because by doing so he would put off the moment of readjustment.

  The moment was not made any easier by his memory of the vicar. He had met the Reverend Kimberley twice. Once when he gave a poetry reading for the prisoners and once at a private interview in the governor’s office. The poetry had been well above the heads of most of the vicar’s listeners and it had not been well- received. The vicar, however, had been unaware of any failure of communication and had finished with a rendering of ‘The Second Coming’ which had chilled even the warders. Wilson had admired the man’s ability to detach himself from his audience. Unfortunately, at their private interview the vicar had been equally detached. Wilson could not visualize what it would be like to live in the same house as the man.

  He inspected the vicarage warily, his mouth twisted in the sarcastic sneer which had become his standard defence. The house was tall and compact, it must have had considerable dignity at one time; but now the redbrick was dulled and the woodwork badly needed a coat of paint. There was a gravel path, not quite free of weeds. The house stood sideways to the road. He could see french windows leading to a terrace and rather worn stone steps leading from the terrace into the shaggy garden. There was a swing beneath the twisted apple tree in the centre of the lawn. Between the lawn and the brick wall there was an area which seemed to have resisted cultivation, full of brambles, thistles, and the despairing remnants of an attempt to create a rock garden. Wilson, who at one time would have enjoyed making something out of this image of clerical decay, felt depressed.