21. A HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

Charles is in a dreadful condition and Ursula learns something important...

Squire Snootnose looked down at his son, and there was no sympathy, no respect, no love in his eyes as he said “Will somebody remove this disgusting lump of scum from the path over there because I want to walk that way without getting dirt on my patent leather shoes.”

“Pater...” oozed from the mouth of the wretched man who had collapsed onto his knees and had his elbows splayed out in front of him, half-supporting him as they jutted through a tear in his once elegant jacket.

“And in front of a shop-girl too,” rasped the Squire, “as if you couldn’t sink any lower, further down you go! Anyway, I don’t know why I’m bandying words with you, for you’re no son of mine.”

Then he turned round as if he’d been pivoted on a single heel and in an almost military way, marched off.

“He’s gone, so you can get up,” Ursula said to the younger man, but he couldn’t. He tried, she could tell that he was putting real effort into an attempt at standing rather than grovelling in the street, but he lacked the strength to do anything but fall backwards until he was sitting where he’d been kneeling.

The virtually inseparable Janet and John twins appeared in the shop doorway and stared at the scene on the street, at a somewhat puzzled Auntie Ursula (that’s what they’d started calling her, without being told), and the grovelling tramp-like Charles Snootnose.

“What’s wrong with that man?” asked John thoughtfully.

“I’ll bet he’s drunk,” said Janet, turning to look at her brother, “daddy used to get drunk, and he looked like that.”

“Until mummy bashed him,” added John.

“Hard,” agreed Janet, “she bashed him hard when he fell over like that.”

“Where’s pater gone...” wheezed Charles.

“He seems to have disowned you, and I think I can see why,” replied Ursula coldly, “I’ve never seen a man in such a mess in all my life, and the smell … did you know that you smell, Charles? Or are you so used to it you don’t notice it any more?”

Charles looked up from his lowly position on the pavement, and she could see there were tears in his eyes and trails of cleaner skin down his cheeks where they’d been dribbling.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“Why?” asked Ursula, “what have you done?”

“I thought it would be all right, going to my Uncle’s house while the war was on, taking refuge up there...”

“Just that?” asked Ursula, unable to find one smidgen of sympathy for the pathetic man and his tears. “What about the daughter you sired and the poor woman who’s got to spend the next goodness-knows how many years looking after her? Bringing her up? Feeding and clothing her? You ran away from them too. You know you did.”

“My father … pater … he doesn’t know me. So you can see I know how she feels, I really do.”

“No you don’t!” snapped Ursula, and even the twins shivered when they heard the tone of her voice. “How old are you? Thirty or there abouts? And you’ve had all the privileges that wealth and a posh family home can give you, an influential father with the county set and well known in the City, and look at you! You even went to a good school, one nobody else round here can afford for their kids to go to, and what did you do with that advantage? Got expelled! There are some who think you’ve got some talent, some skill at painting or drawing, but if you have, what do you do with it? Use it to seduce teenage girls, making dirty little images of them for smutty fun, and when you put them in the family way you cast them off and run away, like you did to Jane, and she’s got a lovely baby girl that you can’t even be bothered to acknowledge! Your own daughter, your own flesh and blood. You make me sick, you and your sort.”

“She’s a … w***e...” croaked the Squire’s son.

“She was nothing of the sort before you got your hands on her, and she’s nothing of the sort now,” rapped Ursula. “Now pick yourself up and if I were you I’d crawl back to the Manor, on your hands and knees if that’s the only way you can get about, and beg them for forgiveness, beg them to let you have a bath and a change of clothing, and then go to see that daughter of yours. And the infant’s mother. See her too, and apologise. But don’t you get it into your head that you’ll do the right thing and marry her because that’s not the right thing at all, not for her it isn’t, not with you.”

Somehow he stood up. He wobbled a bit, had to use the wall of the shop for support, nearly fell through the plate glass window behind which was a display of some of the things on offer, but eventually looked as if he might be safely supported by his own two legs.

“I will,” he said, nodding, “I will...”

Then he staggered off until he rounded a corner, moving painfully slowly, and was out of sight.

“I hope he takes good notice of that!” laughed the voice of Police Constable Peter Plodnose who pedalled round that same corner on his bicycle, but coming the other way, “I couldn’t have put it anywhere near as well myself, and I had to wait round there just to listen to what you had to say to the chump, so as not to throw you off your rhythm!”

“I thought you were after him?” asked Ursula.

“Nobody’s going to want him in that condition, but we’ll get him when he’s cleaned up and in his right mind. I’ve just come from the manor where I saw her Ladyship, and left her with the firm notion that him being like he is might do the family name all sorts of harm, even if the war ends next week and we all start talking in German! I said it might well ruin their reputation if such things as reputation still count when the blasted war’s over.”

Ursula shivered. “It won’t come to us speaking German,” she said. “Surely not?”

“Maybe not and maybe so. Who can tell? With wars there’s always a loser if there’s a winner. And if it was right certain from the start who was going to win and who was going to lose there’s be no point in starting in the first place, now would there?”

“I suppose not,” sighed Ursula.

“Anyway, I’ve popped round to tell you as I’ve had a message from that young man of yours. He’s coming this way tomorrow, and then he’s off to his posting somewhere in Lincolnshire. He don’t say where because walls have ears, and all that. But he’ll no doubt say all he’s allowed to when he sees you.”

“Tomorrow? Oh dear, so soon … but I’ll be ready,” sighed Ursula. “I’m scared, constable, really scared. For him, not for me. They say so many young pilots fall out of the skies...”

“I know, lass, I know. But I’ve a feeling about your young man. A good feeling, like he’s going to pull through and make it. You wait and see. And I’ll say it if I may, but my feelings rarely lead me astray.”

“I hope not this time,” breathed Ursula, “I really and truly hope not, I need, you know, I need a hope for the future...”

© Peter Rogerson 30.07.18