“Yes, as long as it can be understood,” the grocer said.
It occurred to Frampton suddenly that he had seen this man behind the counter of a big and prosperous store in Stubbington.
“Sir,” Frampton said, “if the Queen were to come into your store and ask to taste some biscuits, would you ask her which biscuits she understood, and then try whether she understood them properly? You wouldn’t do anything of the sort. You’d get the most expensive biscuits in your store, the ones you yourself long to be always eating but which only millionaires can really afford, wouldn’t you now?”
There was a laugh at this; the grocer laughed, too.
“In the long run, that is the only thing that survives, the very best,” Frampton said. “It is the only thing that can move all people all the time. You ask the curator of any gallery or museum what exhibitions are successful; he will tell you, the best exhibitions, the shows of the masters. You here, in Stubbington, want a work of art. A work of art proceeds from the mind of a rare type of man; not from a business firm of men, however experienced, or however practical. The artist may be thirty years ahead of his time; his work may seem strange indeed to one not accustomed to the play and the leap of intellect. This town has had no work of art added to it for two hundred and forty years, when you put up your Corn Exchange. You must be prepared for a bit of a shock, after so long an abstinence. There seems to be unanimity here, that you want a work of art. But am I right about that? Is that decided? Is there no question of a water supply or a playing-field?”
Lady Susan Drachm, who had been watching him with disfavour, put in here, with:
“I didn’t hear that we had decided against a water supply or a playing field. It wasn’t put to the vote.”
“I’m sorry to have mistaken,” Frampton said.
“It hasn’t been put to the vote,” the Rector said, “but I will gladly put it to the meeting, that the field of enquiry may be limited. After all, we have invited Mr. Mansell here to advise us about matters of art, and he must, therefore, have assumed that the field of enquiry had already been limited. Shall I put it?”
“It ought not to be put with so many of the Committee away,” Lady Susan objected. “Not all the people likely to be in favour of the playing field are here yet.”
“They ought to be here,” Mr. Harold said. “We’re the Committee; we’re more than the necessary quorum; we have every right to decide. They’ve all been called to the meeting and haven’t come to it.”
“I quite agree,” several voices said. “We’re the Committee, as we are.”
“I move that we take the vote on it,” Mr. Ock said.
“I second Mr. Ock,” Mr. Edge said.
The Rector looked round the room, put it to the vote of the meeting, that the Memorial should take the form of a work of art, not a water-supply, nor a playing-field. The motion was carried.
“That clears the air a bit,” the builder said. “That’s the first practical thing that’s been done on this Committee since it first sat, along about 1919.”
Lady Susan said nothing, but sat with a hardened face, surveying, now one, now another of the company with dislike.
The door opened; two men came in together, a little, wizened, stooping figure, with keen, darting eyes and shaggy eyebrows, and an elderly man in clerical dress, whose face reminded Frampton of a grizzled lion. The old man flung off his overcoat; he was wearing a dinner-jacket.
“Sorry to be late, Rector,” he said. “Carry on; how far have you got?”
“We’ve just decided to have a work of art, not a water supply or playground.”
“I knew you’d get into trouble without me,” the old man said. “Now you’re for it. A work of art, eh? Poor old Stubbington, condemned to a work of art. Who is going to do the said work? Who’ve you got there? Tom, I suppose. Tom? Why the devil Tom? He knows nothing about it; do you, Tom? Tom’s wife and daughter do all Tom’s work, that’s well known.”
As Tom did not seem to mind, Frampton saw that the old man was a favoured being there. He put him down as a naval officer.
“Who are these newcomers?” he whispered to Harold.
“Admiral Sir Topsle Cringle,” the man whispered, “eighty-four. The other is Reverend Mr. Holyport, retired clergyman.”
“Well, come on, come on,” the Admiral said. “I’m not going to leave Tom in charge of the ship; not if I know it. Who else is here? Why isn’t Budd here? Where’s Bynd? Oh, his leg’s still game. Captain Tocque-Roger said he was coming. I don’t know half the people here and I know all the rest a lot too well.”
“I propose the Admiral should submit a design,” Miss Pauntley said.
“You propose to me?” the Admiral said. “By George, that’s something at my time of life.”
There was a general laugh. Frampton remembered now that he had heard of a very brave thing done by the Admiral as a young lieutenant, while at sea in a squadron in the North Atlantic. He had taken charge of a boat in very wild weather at nightfall, and gone off after a man who had fallen from aloft; had picked him up and had then, with great difficulty, contrived to save the boat. It had been long talked of in the Navy as one of the best bits of work ever done, in the kind of sea then running. The Admiral had sent for him next day and complimented him before the Flagship’s company.
“Now,” the Rector said, “we’ve decided that the Memorial is to be a work of art. Shall we now try to decide where it is to be? When we have decided that, it may be easier to decide what form the work of art should take.”
There was a lull, while people looked from face to face, or drew figures on the paper in front of them.
A man rose, and said that there were many in Stubbington who said that the Memorial ought to be in the parish church. He was sure that many there thought the same, but he hoped he would not be considered slighting to the Church, when he said that many of the men commemorated were not members of the Church. There were many dissenters of different congregations in Stubbington, as well as a good many Roman Catholics. He dared say that half the men serving from Stubbington had not been Churchmen, and that, therefore, a Memorial in the church would be resented by the non-Church members. He was not a Churchman himself, and hoped that the church would not be insisted on.
Mr. Harold said, that in a census of congregations undertaken by his newspaper the year before, it had been shown that rather more people attended the various chapels in the town than the parish church. This quite bore out the statement of the last speaker.
Lady Susan said that the Church was the centre of the community, however much some had strayed from it, and that a window in the church was certainly to most people the most fitting Memorial that could be devised. It might even lead back some of those that had strayed; but it would at least teach them that the Church is established by law and stands for England.
The Admiral said that the only windows in Stubbington church not already stained, were the two in the Lady Chapel, which would never be seen, or hardly ever. The Rector said that there was that great objection. He hesitated a little and added that the late incumbent had at his own expense put up a stone to the memory of communicants who had fallen. This could be seen in the north transept. He felt that the main Memorial should not be in the church.
The grocer said that the best possible site in all Stubbington was the triangular piece at the junction of the roads, the island-site, as it was called. Mr. Ock said that that was the best site. Lady Susan said that it was not so good a site as the Market Square, which was much bigger, clearer, and in all ways better for something that had to be looked at. Mr. Ock replied that the Market Square was too small already on market days for its original purpose as a market. Mr. Edge said that even on other days it was much too small for the numbers of cars that parked there. Any further encroachment on it would be a disaster.