Death at the Bar

‘I assist you?’

‘Yes. If you’ll stretch your hand out flat on the board I’ll outline it with darts.’

‘Really? You ought to be in the sawdust ring. No I don’t think I trust you enough for that, you know. One would need a little more of Mr Pomeroy’s Treble Extra.’

He stretched out his hand and looked at it.

‘And yet, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see you do it. Some other time. You know, Mr Legge, as a good Conservative, I feel I should deplore your gesture. Against whom is your fighting fund directed?’

But before Legge could speak, Will answered quickly, ‘Against the capitalist, Mr Watchman, and all his side.’

‘Really? So Mr Legge is also an ardent proletarian fan?’

‘Secretary and treasurer for the Coombe Left Movement.’

‘Secretary and treasurer,’ repeated Watchman. ‘Responsible jobs, aren’t they?’

‘Aye,’ said Will, ‘and it’s a responsible chap that’s taken ’em on for us.’

Legge turned away and moved into the ingle-nook. Watchman looked after him. Cubitt noticed that Watchman’s good humour seemed to be restored. Any one would have thought that he had won the bet and that it had been for a much larger sum. And for no reason in the world Cubitt felt that there had been a passage of arms between Legge and Watchman, and that Watchman had scored a hit.

‘What about you, Abel?’ Watchman asked abruptly. ‘Are you going to paint the Feathers red?’

‘Me sir? No. I don’t hold with Will’s revolutionary ideas and he knows it, but us’ve agreed to differ. Does no harm, I reckon, for these young chaps to meet every Friday and make believe they’re hashing up the laws and serving ’em out topsy-turvy – game in servants’ hall and prunes and rice for gentry. Our Will was always a great hand for make-believe from the time he learned to talk. Used to strut about taproom giving orders to the furniture. “I be as good as Squire, now,” he’d say in his little lad’s voice and I reckon he’s saying it yet.’

‘You’re blind to reason, father,’ said Will. ‘Blind-stupid and hidebound. Either you can’t see or you won’t. Us chaps are working for the good of all, not for ourselves.’

‘Right enough, sonny. A fine noble ideal, I don’t doubt, and when you’ve got us all toeing the line with no handicaps and nothing to run for –’

‘The good of the State to run for. Each man equal –’

‘And all coming in first. Damn’ queer sort of race.’

‘The old argument,’ said Legge from the fireplace, ‘and based as usual on a false analogy.’

‘Is it a false analogy?’ asked Watchman. ‘You propose to kill private enterprise –’

‘A chap,’ said Will Pomeroy, ‘will be as ambitious for the public good as he will for his own selfish aims. Give him the chance – that’s all. Teach him to think. The people –’

‘The people!’ interrupted Watchman, looking at Legge’s back. ‘What do you mean by the people? I suppose you mean that vast collection of individuals whose wages are below a certain sum and who are capable of being led by the nose when the right sort of humbug comes along.’

‘That’s no argument,’ began Will angrily. ‘That’s no more than a string of silly opinions.’

‘That’ll do, sonny,’ said Abel.

‘It’s all right, Abel,’ said Watchman, still looking at Legge. ‘I invited the discussion. No offence, I should like to hear what Mr Legge has to say about private enterprise. As treasurer –’

‘Wait a bit, Bob,’ said Will as Legge turned from the fireplace. ‘I don’t like the way you said that, Mr Watchman. Bob Legge here is well-respected in the Coombe. He’s not been long in these parts, ten months isn’t it, Bob? But we’ve learned to know him and we’ve learned to like him. Reckon we’ve showed we trust him, too, seeing the position we’ve given him.’

‘My dear Will,’ said Watchman delicately, ‘I don’t dispute it for a moment. I think Mr Legge has done remarkably well for himself, in ten months.’

Will’s face was scarlet under his thatch of fox-coloured hair. He moved forward and confronted Watchman, his tankard clenched in a great ham of a fist, his feet planted apart.

‘Shut up, now, Luke,’ said Sebastian Parish softly, and Cubitt murmured, ‘don’t heckle, Luke, you’re on a holiday.’

‘See here, Mr Watchman,’ said Will, ‘you can afford to sneer, can’t you, but I’d like to know –’

‘Will!’ Old Abel slapped the bar with an open hand. ‘That’s enough. You’m a grown chap, not a lad, and what’s more, the son of this house. Seems like I ought to give’ee light draught and lemonade till you learn to take a man’s pint like a man. If you can’t talk politics and hold your temper then you’ll not talk politics at all. ‘Be a job for you in Public here. ’Tend it.’

‘I’m sorry, Will,’ said Watchman. ‘Mr Legge is fortunate in his friend.’

Will Pomeroy stood and looked under his brows from Watchman to Legge. Legge shrugged his shoulders, muttered something about moving into the public bar, and went out. Will turned on Watchman.

‘There’s something behind all this,’ he said. ‘I want to know what the game is, Mr Watchman, and damme, I’m going to find out.’

‘Did I hear something about a game?’ said a woman’s voice. They all turned to look at the doorway. There they saw a short fat figure clad in a purple tweed skirt and a green jersey.

‘May I come in?’ asked the Hon. Violet Darragh.

III

Miss Darragh’s entrance broke up the scene. Will Pomeroy turned, ducked under the flap of the private bar, and leant over the counter into the Public. Watchman stood up. The others turned to Miss Darragh with an air of relief, and Abel Pomeroy, with his innkeeper’s heartiness, intensified perhaps by a feeling of genuine relief, said loudly, ‘Come in then, Miss, company’s waiting for you and you’m in time for a drink, with the house.’

‘Not Treble Extra, Mr Pomeroy, if you don’t mind. Sherry for me, if you please.’

She waddled over to the bar, placed her hands on the counter, and with an agility that astonished Watchman, made a neat little vault on to one of the tall stools. There she sat beaming upon the company.

She was a woman of perhaps fifty, but it would have been difficult to guess at her age since time had added to her countenance and figure merely layer after layer of firm wholesome fat. She was roundabout and compact. Her face was babyish, and this impression was heightened by the tight grey curls that covered her head. In repose she seemed to pout, and it was not until she spoke that her good humour appeared in her eyes, and was magnified by her spectacles. All fat people wear a look of inscrutability, and Violet Darragh was not unlike a jolly sort of sphinx.

Abel served her and she took the glass delicately in her small white paws.

‘Well, now,’ she said, ‘is everybody having fun?’ and then caught sight of Watchman. ‘Is this your cousin, Mr Parish?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Parish hurriedly. ‘Mr Watchman, Miss Darragh.’

‘How d’ye do?’ said Miss Darragh.

Like many Irishwomen of her class she spoke with such a marked brogue that one wondered whether it was inspired by a kind of jocularity that had turned into a habit.

‘I’ve heard about you, of course, and read about you in the papers, for I dearly love a good murder and if I can’t have me murder I’m all for arson. That was a fine murder case you defended last year, now, Mr Watchman. Before you took silk, ’twas you did your best for the poor scoundrel.’

Watchman expanded.

‘I didn’t get him off, Miss Darragh.’

‘Ah well, and a good job you didn’t, for we’d none of us have been safe in our beds. And there’s Mr Cubitt come from his painting down by the jetty, in mortal terror, poor man, lest I plague him with me perspective.’

‘Not at all,’ said Cubitt, turning rather pink.