Clutch of Constables

She began to wonder if it would be possible to make a very formalized drawing – dark and thronged with seated, lawgiving shapes. A puff of warm air moved the grass and the hair of her head and up the sloping field came Dr Natouche.

He was bareheaded and had changed his tweed jacket for a yellow sweater. When he saw Troy he checked and stood still, formidable because of his height and colour against the mild background of the waterways. Troy waved to him. ‘Come up,’ she called. ‘Here’s the wapentake.’

‘Thank you.’

He came up quickly, entered the hollow and looked about him. ‘I have read the excellent account in our little book,’ he said. ‘So here they sat, those old chaps.’ The colloquialism came oddly from him.

‘You sit here, too,’ Troy suggested, wanting to see his head and his torso, in its yellow sweater, against the moss and fern.

He did so, squaring himself and resting his hands on his knees. His teeth and the whites of his eyes were high accents in the picture he presented for Troy. ‘You ask for the illustration of an incongruity,’ he said.

‘You would be nice to paint. Do you really feel incongruous? I mean is this sort of thing quite foreign to you?’

‘Not altogether. No.’

They said nothing for a time and Troy did not think there was any awkwardness in their silence.

A lark sang madly overhead and the sound of quiet voices floated up from the lock. Above the embankment they could see the top of Zodiac’s wheelhouse. Now it began very slowly to sink. They heard Miss Rickerby-Carrick shout and laugh.

A motorcycle engine crescendoed out of the distance, clattered and exploded down the lane and then reduced its speed and noise and stopped.

‘One would think it was those two again,’ said Troy.

Dr Natouche rose. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘I can see them. Actually, it is those two. They are raising their hands.’

‘How extraordinary,’ she said idly. ‘Why should they turn up?’

‘They may be staying in the district. We haven’t come very far, you know.’

‘I keep forgetting. One’s values change on The River.’

Troy broke off a fern frond and turned it between her fingers. Dr Natouche sat down again.

‘My father was an Ethiopian,’ he said presently. ‘He came to this country with a Mission fifty years ago and married an Englishwoman. I was born and educated in England.’

‘Have you never been to your own country?’

‘Once. But I was alien there. And like my father, I married an Englishwoman. I am a widower. My wife died two months ago.’

‘Was that why you came on this cruise?’

‘We were to have come together.’

‘I see,’ Troy said.

‘She would have enjoyed it. It was something we could have done,’ he said.

‘Have you found many difficulties about being as you are? Black?’

‘Of course. How sensible of you to ask, Mrs Alleyn. One knows everybody thinks such questions.’

‘Well,’ Troy said, ‘I’m glad it was all right to ask.’

‘I am perfectly at ease with you,’ Dr Natouche stated rather, Troy felt, as he might have told a patient there was nothing the matter with her and really almost arousing a comparable pleasure. ‘Perfectly,’ he repeated after a pause: ‘I don’t think, Mrs Alleyn, you could ever say anything to me that would change that condition.’

Miss Rickerby-Carrick appeared at the top of the embankment. ‘Hoo-hoo!’ she shouted. ‘What’s it like up there?’

‘Very pleasant,’ Troy said.

‘Jolly good.’

She floundered up the field towards them, blowing her nose as she came. Troy was suddenly very sorry for her. Were there, she asked herself, in Birmingham, where Miss Rickerby-Carrick lived, people, apart from Mavis, who actually welcomed her company?

Dr Natouche fetched a sigh and stood up. ‘I see a gate over there into the lane,’ he said. ‘I think there is time to walk back that way if you would care to do so.’

‘You go,’ Troy muttered. ‘I’d better wait for her.’

‘Really? Very well.’

He stayed for a moment or two, politely greeted Miss Rickerby-Carrick and then strode away.

‘Isn’t he a dear?’ Miss Rickerby-Carrick panted. ‘Don’t you feel he’s somebody awfully special?’

‘He seems a nice man,’ Troy answered and try as she might, she couldn’t help flattening her voice.

‘I do think we all ought to make a special effort. I get awfully worked-up about it. When people go on like Mr Pollock, you know. I tackled Mr Pollock about his attitude. I do that, you know, I do tackle people. I said: “Just because he’s got another pigmentation,” I said, “why should you think he’s different.” They’re not different. You do agree, don’t you?’

‘No,’ Troy said. ‘I don’t. They are different. Profoundly.’

‘Oh! How can you say so?’

‘Because I think it’s true. They are different in depth from Anglo-Saxons. So are Slavs. So are Latins.’

‘Oh! If you mean like that,’ she said, and broke into ungainly laughter. ‘Oh, I see. Oh, yes. Then you do agree that we should make a special effort.’

‘Look, Miss Rickerby-Carrick –’

‘I say, do call me Hay.’

‘Yes – well – thank you. I was going to say that I don’t think Dr Natouche would enjoy special efforts. Really, I don’t.’

‘You seem to get on with him like a house on fire,’ Miss Rickerby-Carrick pointed out discontentedly.

‘Do I? Well, I find him an interesting man.’

‘There you are, you see!’ she cried, proclaiming some completely inscrutable triumph, and a longish silence ensued.

They heard the motorcycle start up and cross the bridge and listened to the diminishment of sound as it made off in the direction of Norminster.