We saw him through that little crisis, as he no doubt hoped we would, by running him over to Baxton ourselves on courting nights. There being a limit to what we’d do for Sidney, he had to make his own way back. There was one night, alas, when he didn’t even get there. A dear old lady who’d known him since childhood said she was going to Baxton – she for once, would take Sidney to his tryst – and when the silly old fool turned up, said Sidney next morning, she had a blooming great dog sitting in the passenger seat, he couldn’t get the rear door open, and to his astonishment, while he was still wrestling with it, she had suddenly said
‘Quite comfy, dear?’ and driven off.
She was deaf, so the fact that Sidney hadn’t answered didn’t register. She also drove with her nose glued to the windscreen – like ruddy Lot, said Sidney, getting quite incoherent when he thought about it – and it wasn’t until she rattled into the square at Baxton that she realised he 60
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was missing. Given her a terrible fright, she said it had, imagining poor Sidney having fallen out en route, which was nothing to what it gave Sidney when he imagined Mag waiting by the Baxton turnpike, him not turning up, and
– at this point in his ruminations the mower went straight into the paeonies – her perhaps going off with some other chap.
As a matter of fact she didn’t. Sidney had far more fatal charm than anybody realised. Eventually he married her, honeymooned triumphantly – the penal year being up – on a brand new motorbike, and became the father of twins.
Even that failed to cheer him up, however. He still worried about things. When the Rector caught him sawing logs for us one Sunday morning, for instance – Sidney hid in the woodshed when he saw him coming, and when in spite of this precaution the Rector looked round the door and asked him how the twins were he was terribly worried about that.
Bet th’old sky pilot had him down in his little black book now, he said, wrestling gloomily with his conscience after the event. It was no good our trying to comfort him, either, with an assurance that the Rector was broadminded – that he judged people by their principles and wouldn’t really mind. Sidney knew a parson’s duties, and he worried even more. Then he ought to mind, he said.
He worried when the twins kept him awake at night.
How long, he enquired – and some mornings, indeed his eyes looked exactly like a panda’s – could a bloke go without sleep? He worried when he thought he was losing his hair.
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arrived having flattened it down with water that morning, to see, he said, how he’d look when ’twas gone – we had to give him a glass of sherry to pull his nerves together What raised this particular incident to epic proportions was that unfortunately everybody, when they heard about Sidney’s hair, started giving him remedies. ‘Bay rum,’ said one – whereupon Sidney arrived smelling more pungently than the Rose and Crown. ‘Paraffin,’ said somebody who knew a travelling hardware man who always rubbed his head with his hands after serving oil and he had hair like a child – after which we had to be jolly careful not to strike matches when Sidney was around. ‘Goosegrease,’ advised somebody else – at which stage Sheba announced that she didn’t love Sidney any more and Solomon, going round the kitchen like a mine detector, said he reckoned we had dead mice in here.
It passed eventually, like all Sidney’s worries, but it was pretty trying while it lasted. His next one took a different turn altogether. Mag, he said, wanted a fur coat. Seen one in some magazine, she had – picture of some girl wearing one when she went shopping and she thought ’twould be nice when she went to town. Sidney, sweating at the thought, had already tried diplomatic tactics. Told her she’d look daft in one of they in the sidecar, for instance, which didn’t impress her a bit.
Left his newspaper with us on the days it carried those spectacular full-page fur advertisements – whereupon she went next door and borrowed the neighbour’s. What, he asked – absentmindedly eyeing the cats, whereupon Sheba took her fur coat up the garden in a hurry while it was still safe – did we think he ought to do now?
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He found the answer himself that time. We could hardly believe it when he zipped down the hill on his push-bike on the following Monday – whistling, his cap perched jauntily on the back of his head and his feet on the handlebars for good measure.
‘Got Mag her fur coat on Saturday,’ he announced, rubbing his hands triumphantly as he stamped into the kitchen for his cocoa. ‘Where?’ we asked in chorus, scarcely daring to think what the answer might be. ‘Jumble sale,’ he said, with a last man-of-the-world drag on his Woodbine before he flicked it through the kitchen door. ‘Got her a smasher for ten bob.’
Sidney wasn’t the only one who had problems. Father Adams, for instance, was in trouble with his wife over a faux pas about our cats. Very proper was Mrs Adams. Always out to do things right by village standards. Doileys under the cakes, doileys under the flower vases, smart chromium fruit spoons – to the annoyance of Father Adams who was apt to ask what the hell was this for and what was wrong with his teaspoon – when visitors came to tea. Always out to improve Father Adams, too, which was why she was so pleased when the hunting gentleman came by.
We were leaning on the gate at the time, lazily discussing with the Adamses the prospects for the harvest supper, and when the vision in hunting pink and fine white breeches came clopping down the lane and not only stopped but raised his top hat to us she was nearly beside herself with pride. He enquired after Solomon and Sheba. He had read about them, he said. He had seen them on television…
There was no need for further conversation. At the mention of their names Solomon and Sheba appeared as if by magic.
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Not obtrusively, seeing that we were all so busy talking.
Just side by side across the lane and – so that nobody could possibly think they were showing off – with their backs to us, their tails raised in concentration, intently studying something in the hedge.
‘Solomon and Sheba,’ indicated Charles, thinking the visitor might like to see them – as indeed he did. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said, gazing at their rear views in admiration.
‘Solomon and Sheba! The dear little chaps themselves!’
It was calling them little chaps that did it. Father Adams, seventy years a countryman, was astounded that a hunting man could show such ignorance. ‘Cassn’t thee tell even from this end?’ he said.
How, asked Father Adams miserably after the horseman had gone and Mrs Adams had stalked in prim dudgeon up the lane, were he going to put that right? I didn’t know. I had troubles of my own at the time. Charles was being a handyman again.
Inspired by an article in a do-it-yourself magazine he had started redecorating the kitchen. And half-way through redecorating the kitchen – leaving me with three pink walls, one dirty cream one and five cupboard doors which he’d taken off for painting and left propped against the wall for the cats to play tunnels through – he’d got inspired by another article and started paving the yard.