Corduroy Mansions

76. Lennie Marchbanks Calls

It was at three o’clock in the afternoon that the doorbell rang. Berthea was sitting in the small morning room at the back of the house - the sunny side - reading a rather slow-moving autobiography when she heard the bell. She laid the book on the table with some relief and decided, at that moment, that she would pick it up again only to replace it on the shelf in her brother’s study. Terence’s house was replete with books but very few of them were to her taste. She had seized on the autobiography - which was by a minor literary figure of the nineteen-thirties - hoping that the claim on the back cover would prove true. ‘A gripping account of a life of passionate involvement,’ the publisher enthused, ‘a life lived to the full in turbulent and trying times.’

The book, unfortunately, failed to live up to this promise. After eighty pages, the author had done nothing more exciting than contemplate going to Spain to visit a friend who was cooking for the Republican forces. However, he had developed a heavy cold and had cancelled his passage on grounds of ill health. That was the high point of a narrative that was otherwise mostly concerned with the minutiae of a very modest existence, that of an assistant editor of a literary magazine. Names were bandied about, of course, but it seemed that the author had never had any conversations with the well-known writers of the day, although MacNeice wrote to him once and he spoke to Spender on the telephone when the poet called the magazine office. The call, however, had been a mistake. Spender had been given the wrong number and had really wanted to speak to somebody else. Nonetheless, he had commented on the weather before hanging up, and the author had made a note of the exact words he used, observing that the sentence in question was undeniably an iambic pentameter.

‘That’s a frightfully exciting book,’ Terence had said when he saw his sister reading it. ‘I must say they had a jolly lively time, those writers of the thirties. I wouldn’t have minded being alive then.’

Berthea looked doubtful. ‘Nothing much seems to have happened so far,’ she said. ‘He’s just got to Oxford and had a letter from a friend in Florence.’

‘Jolly exciting,’ said Terence. ‘I remember that bit - I think. Does he write back?’

Berthea ran an eye down the page she was reading. ‘He doesn’t say.’

‘Well, I bet he did,’ said Terence. ‘They were good correspondents in those days, always writing letters to one another, full of interesting observations on the world. You wait until you get to the bit where he’s turned down for the Navy during the war and goes to teach in Bristol.’

And now, of course, she would never get to that part, since she was abandoning the book altogether. How narcissistic these people were, she thought as she went to answer the doorbell. How special they thought themselves to be. Whereas in reality they led rather uneventful lives - much like everybody else. Nothing really remarkable happened to most of us, she thought; we grew up, we got a job, we fell in love - if we were lucky - and then we went into decline and eventually disappeared. And at the end of the day, what did we achieve? Well, perhaps it was an achievement just to get through life without any conspicuous disasters. If we did that, then we were pulling off at least something.

It was Lennie Marchbanks at the door. She had met him once or twice before and rather liked him; mechanics struck her as being such easy, agreeable people. And, she noticed, as a psychotherapist, one never had a mechanic for a patient. Why was that? Were they invariably balanced people, free of the neuroses that afflicted non-mechanically-minded others?

Lennie smiled at Berthea. She noticed that he had false teeth and that they were not a very natural colour, being rather too white; ill-fitting, too.

‘Is your brother in?’ asked Lennie.

Berthea went to fetch Terence, who had been taking an afternoon nap in his room upstairs.

‘That electricity has done me no good at all,’ he said as he sat up and rubbed his eyes. ‘It’s got all my ions going in the wrong direction. I can tell, you know. I need to be re-polarised.’

The mention of Lennie Marchbanks seemed to cheer him up though, and he was very talkative as they made their way downstairs. ‘I suspect he’s found me that new car,’ said Terence. ‘If he has, then we could go for a spin later on. That is, if you’d like to. I don’t believe in forcing people to do things they don’t want to, you know. There’s far too much coercion in the world today. They should just leave us to get on with our lives rather than telling us to do all sorts of things. Have you seen those signs, Berthy? Those signs on the road? They have big messages in lights telling you to put on your safety belt and do this and do that and not do the other thing. It’s really very, very cross-making. These government people sit there in their offices and think up things they can tell us to do. Did you see that they actually issued a code of practice on how to look after your cat? What a cheek.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Berthea.

‘And there’s another thing . . .’ Terence continued. But he did not finish because they had arrived in the front hall, where Lennie was waiting.

‘Afternoon, Mr Moongrove,’ said the mechanic. ‘I hope that you’re fully recovered.’

Terence nodded. ‘Thank you, Mr Marchbanks. I expect I shall be fine - in due course.’ He looked past the mechanic through the open front door. ‘You haven’t . . .’

‘Yes, I have. Your new car. Or, rather, one that I reckon you might like. You can take a look at it and see what you think.’

Terence rubbed his hands together gleefully. ‘One of those small cars we talked about?’

Lennie nodded. ‘The very one.’ He glanced anxiously at Berthea as he spoke.

‘It’s all right,’ Terence reassured him. ‘My sister knows about this car and gives it her blessing.’