Off With His Head

‘Yes, he did. Well – almost. I’m going down to the parlour. See you later.’

It had begun to snow again. As she shut her window she saw the headlights of a dogged little car turn into the yard.

A roundabout lady got out. Her head was encased in a scarf, her body in a mauve handicraft cape and her hands in flowery woollen gloves.

‘Darling, what a make-up!’ Camilla apostrophized under her breath. She ran downstairs.

The bar-parlour at the Green Man was in the oldest part of the pub. It lay at right angles to the Public which was partly visible and could be reached from it by means of a flap in the bar counter. It was a singularly unpretentious affair, lacking any display of horse-brasses, warming-pans or sporting prints. Indeed the only item of anything but utilitarian interest was a picture in a dark corner behind the door; a faded and discoloured photograph of a group of solemn-faced men with walrus moustaches. They had blackened faces and hands and were holding up, as if to display it, a kind of openwork frame built up from short swords. Through this frame a man in clownish dress stuck his head. In the background were three figures that might have been respectively a hobby-horse, a man in a voluminous petticoat and somebody with a fiddle.

Serving in the private bar was the publican’s daughter, Trixie Plowman, a fine ruddy young woman with a magnificent figure and bearing. When Camilla arrived there was nobody else in the Private, but in the Public beyond she again saw her uncle, Ernest Andersen. He grinned and shuffled his feet.

Camilla leant over the bar and looked into the Public. ‘Why don’t you come over here, Uncle Ernie?’ she called.

He muttered something about the Public being good enough for him. His dog, invisible to Camilla, whined.

‘Well, fancy!’ Trixie exclaimed. ‘When it’s your own niece after so long and speaking so nice.’

‘Never mind,’ Camilla said cheerfully. ‘I expect he’s forgotten he ever had a niece.’

Ernie could be heard to say that no doubt she was too upperty for the likes of them-all, anyhow.

‘No I’m not,’ Camilla ejaculated indignantly. ‘That’s just what I’m not. Oh dear!’

‘Never mind,’ Trixie said, and made the kind of face that alluded to weakness of intellect. Ernie smiled and mysteriously raised his eyebrows.

‘Though of course,’ Trixie conceded, ‘I must say it is a long time since we seen you,’ and she added with a countrywoman’s directness: ‘Not since your poor mum was brought back and laid to rest.’

‘Five years,’ said Camilla nodding.

‘That’s right.’

‘Ar,’ Ernie interjected loudly, ‘and no call for that if she’d bided homealong and wed one of her own. Too mighty our Bessie was, and brought so low’s dust as a consequence.’

‘That may be one way of looking at it,’ Trixie said loftily. ‘I must say it’s not mine. That dog of yours stinks,’ she added.

‘Same again,’ Ernie countered morosely.

‘She wasn’t brought as low as dust,’ Camilla objected indignantly. ‘She was happily married to my father who loved her like anything. He’s never really got over her death.’

Camilla, as brilliantly sad as she had been happy, looked at Trixie and said: ‘They were in love. They married for love.’

‘So they did, then, and a wonderful thing it was for her,’ Trixie said comfortably. She drew a half-pint and pointedly left Ernie alone with it.

‘Killed ’er, didn’t it?’ Ernie demanded of his boots. ‘For all ’is great ’ordes of pelf and unearthly pride, ’e showed ’er the path to the grave.’

‘No. Oh, don’t! How can you!’

‘Never you heed,’ Trixie said and beckoned Camilla with a jerk of her head to the far end of the Private bar. ‘He’s queer,’ she said. ‘Not soft, mind, but queer. Don’t let it upset you.’

‘I had a message from Grandfather saying I could come. I thought they wanted to be friendly.’

‘And maybe they do. Ernie’s different. What’ll you take, maid?’

‘Cider, please. Have one yourself, Trixie.’

There was a slight floundering noise on the stairs outside, followed by the entrance of Mrs Bünz. She had removed her cloak and all but one of her scarves and was cosy in Cotswold wool and wooden beads.

‘Good evening,’ she said pleasantly. ‘And what an evening! Snowing again!’

‘Good evening, ma’am,’ Trixie said, and Camilla, brightening up because she thought Mrs Bünz such a wonderful ‘character makeup’, said:

‘I know. Isn’t it too frightful!’

Mrs Bünz had arrived at the bar and Trixie said: ‘Will you take anything just now?’

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Bünz. ‘A noggin will buck me up. Am I right in thinking that I am in the Mead Country?’

Trixie caught Camilla’s eye and then, showing all her white teeth in the friendliest of grins, said: ‘Us don’t serve mead over the bar, ma’am, though it’s made hereabouts by them that fancies it.’

Mrs Bünz leant her elbow in an easy manner on the counter. ‘By the Old Guiser,’ she suggested, ‘for example?’

She was accustomed to the singular little pauses that followed her remarks. As she looked from one to the other of her hearers she blinked and smiled at them and her rosy cheeks bunched themselves up into shiny knobs. She was like an illustration to a tale by the brothers Grimm.

‘Would that be Mr William Andersen you mean, then?’ Trixie asked.

Mrs Bünz nodded waggishly.

Camilla started to say something and changed her mind. In the Public, Ernie cleared his throat.

‘I can’t serve you with anything then, ma’am?’ asked Trixie.

‘Indeed you can. I will take zider,’ decided Mrs Bünz, carefully regional. Camilla made an involuntary snuffling noise and, to cover it up, said: ‘William Andersen’s my grandfather. Do you know him?’

This was not comfortable for Mrs Bünz, but she smiled and smiled and nodded and, as she did so, she told herself that she would never never master the extraordinary vagaries of class in Great Britain.

‘I have had the pleasure to meet him,’ she said. ‘This evening. On my way. A beautiful old gentleman,’ she added firmly.

Camilla looked at her with astonishment.

‘Beautiful?’

‘Ach, yes. The spirit,’ Mrs Bünz explained, waving her paws, ‘the raciness, the élan!’

‘Oh,’ said Camilla dubiously. ‘I see.’ Mrs Bünz sipped her cider and presently took a letter from her bag and laid it on the bar. ‘I was asked to deliver this,’ she said, ‘to someone staying here. Perhaps you can help me?’

Trixie glanced at it. ‘It’s for you, dear,’ she said to Camilla. Camilla took it. Her cheeks flamed like poppies and she looked with wonder at Mrs Bünz.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but I don’t quite – I mean – are you –?’