Life in the West

He and the girl were almost ashore. There were no waves, only the purest warm ripples of water which glided up the beach like liquefied sunlight.

‘The sea that most possesses the European imagination is the Mediterranean, the sea at the middle of the Earth. It’s the cradle of our culture, the home waters of Greece and Rome. This is not the Mediterranean but the North Sea. I love this stretch of the North Norfolk coast, and the docile summer North Sea, not only because it is much less crowded and despoiled than most of the Mediterranean coast, but because I happen to live within ten miles of this particular beach. As you see, the water in late June is entirely warm enough for our Sex Symbol to sport in.

‘If I mentioned the name of the beach, that advertisement would cause it to become crowded within a year.

‘Such is the power of advertising. Advertising in various media frequently makes use of the sea and, of course, of sex symbols such as this young lady by my side. If I mentioned her name, she would become a character, not a symbol; such is the power of names.

‘Her skin is really white, not brown, but she has applied suntan oil to satisfy tradition. The image of brown girl in blue water has proved strongly evocative ever since sea-bathing became fashionable last century.

‘You may believe that such images demean women. Perhaps you think they demean the Mediterranean or, in this case, the North Sea. I don’t. We are all symbols to each other as well as real people. The experience of the imagination gives life savour.

‘People have a down on advertising. Of course I can see why, just as I can see why they have a down on smoking. Yet people go on smoking and derive at least temporary pleasure from it. I derive a lot of temporary pleasure from advertising, and am practised at separating the commercial from the aesthetic side of it; it’s a trick I learnt from my children, who are connoisseurs of TV advertising. Adult moral disapproval of advertising spoils our enjoyment, just as the Victorians found that moral approval of a painting enhanced their enjoyment of it.’

He and the girl were heading up the beach, splashing through a shallow lagoon. In the water lay a large beach ball with the word ‘NIVEA’ on it. Squire kicked the ball out of the way. Taking the towel wrapped like a scarf round his neck, he put it round the damp shoulders of the girl, talking cheerfully at the same time.

‘Some enemies of advertising claim that advertisements show a too perfect, too happy world against which reality can never compete. I disagree. George Bernard Shaw said that perfection was only achieved on paper; utopia is only achieved in adverts. We need to be reminded that it exists even if it is attainable only by purchasing Domestos or Horlicks. Enemies are, in any case, blind, and have not noticed how often adverts on television show things going wrong; catastrophe has become a new sales gimmick. Here’s a current advert for Andrex toilet paper or, as they put it more refinedly, toilet tissue.’

Squire broke off and the cameras stopped. He and the Sex Symbol sat down abruptly on the hard sand. They looked at each other and laughed.

‘Just fine that time, Tom,’ Grahame Ash said, coming up from behind the cameras and removing his ear plug. ‘You must be exhausted. And you, Laura. Good day’s work, both of you. At that point we cut in the ad with the little dog running into the garden with the toilet roll in its mouth. Great. Thanks very much, everyone.’ The director waved his hands above his head. The crew moved nearer and doled out cigarettes.

His PA, Jenny Binns, called, ‘Remember, nine o’clock tomorrow at Mr Squire’s house, without fail everyone, okay?’

‘We’re all going over to Blakeney to a hotel for posh nosh this evening,’ Ash reminded them.

‘Count me out of that, Grahame,’ Laura said. She scrambled to her feet and clutched her arms, rubbing them and shivering. ‘Ooh, this isn’t quite Singapore. I’ve gone all goosey.’

Squire put an arm round her shoulder and kissed her ear.

The men were talking about the good filming conditions as they gathered their gear together. Hartisham Bay stretched to either side of them, punctuated to the west by a low headland on which the window of a parked car glinted in the sun. To the east, the sand seemed to extend for ever. Some distance out to sea, a cluster of what looked like rocks were visible now the tide was low. It was the remains of Old Hartisham Priory, which had been overtaken by coastal erosion in the Middle Ages.

‘Let’s go,’ Ash said. ‘Forward march. Jenny, did you book us a table for this evening?’

‘Of course, Grahame,’ said his assistant, sweetly. ‘Haven’t I been booking you tables all round the world?’

There was still half a mile between them and the path through the dunes. Squire and Laura Nye trudged along together, she gripping the crossed ends of his towel, still wrapped round her neck. The others straggled along behind, exchanging insults and laughing. They fell silent on reaching dry sand above tide level, where the going immediately became harder. The cameras were dragged on sledges. The equipment van, the generators, and their cars were parked on the other side of the dunes, in the shelter of some pines.

As Laura went with the wardrobe girl to the caravan that served her as dressing-room, Squire stopped and waited for Ash. The four other members of the team streamed past them. Summer sun made their movements dazzle.

‘That all seemed to go well. All those hours splashing about in the water, and we never even took a dip. Amazing weather for June.’

Ash smiled and shook his head. ‘You can keep your dips. I would never swim in the North Sea, never. My health is precious to me.’ He looked mock-solemn. Ash was a small round man, his fringe of long grey untidy hair sprouting round a freckled bald patch giving him a monkish air. By contrast, and possibly to prove he was a dedicated media man, he wore a gaudy flowered shirt that recalled Hawaii and British Home Stores, although Squire had been with him when he bought the garment in Orchard Road, Singapore, to the derision of the camera crew.

On their many trips to locations at home and abroad, Grahame Ash had shown himself to understand perfectly Squire’s material, and had made contributions they had incorporated in the script. In particular, he had proved himself visually inventive. He was a north countryman, his soft-spoken vowels adding to a general impression of comfortable command.

‘It’s supine, Grahame, supine, that sea, a reformed teddy bear sea, promising never to play rough again.’

‘I never swim with teddy bears.’ He emptied sand from his canvas shoes. ‘It must be tea-time. I need a drink.’

‘What’s next in the script?’

‘A word about advertising supporting newspapers, television companies, colour supplements, sport, pointing out its virtues in a capitalist society.’

Ash climbed into the Peugeot and pulled the script of the episode of ‘Frankenstein Among the Arts’ they were filming from the crammed glove compartment. Squire went to the sheltered side of the vehicle and pulled an old pair of slacks over his swimming trunks.

‘Okay. Perhaps we should scrap that as a bit didactic and say instead that advertising – like the Andrex ad – reinforces a rather dangerous Western obsession with cleanliness.’

‘My father served three years in the mud and trenches in World War I and was never the same afterwards, at least according to mother. Perhaps in reaction against the mud, his devotion to cleanliness spilled over into pacifism.’

‘Interesting,’ said Squire. He climbed into the passenger seat beside Ash. ‘How much is the unpreparedness of the West due to fear of war, how much to advertisements with perpetual stress on avoidance of dirt – meaning death as well as excreta.’

‘Bit difficult to avoid either if you ask me.’

‘Yes, but you can avoid thinking about them.’ It was seven months since his mother died, yet the loss was still with him. ‘I mean, do we see the shiny packaging of purchasable objects as guardians against evil, like Chinese temple dogs? Why is packaging so often of more durable material than the object being packaged?’

Ash backed the car out onto the road. ‘That would fit more appropriately into Episode Twenty, “Shiny Surfaces”, where we’re dealing with Jasper Johns, Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, and the pop artists’ interest in commercial packaging.’

Laura Nye came over to them. She had changed into a frilled blue shirt and jeans. The blond wig had gone, to reveal her own neat crop of chestnut hair.

‘Are you going to go to the pub?’ Squire asked. She was staying at The Lion in Hartisham, like most of the crew, for the four days they were working here.

‘No, darling, not tonight. I’ve got to dash to London. See you tomorrow, okay?’

Her smile echoed the note of interrogation in her voice.

He squinted against the sun in order to study her expression, shielding his eyes in an instinctive attempt to conceal his alarm.

‘You’ve got a hell of a drive from here all the way to London. Can’t it wait? We’ll be back in the Smoke in a couple of days.’

She glanced unnecessarily at her wrist watch.

‘I’ll be in town by seven, no bother. I’m looking forward to the drive. I must go. Sorry.’

‘Are you going to see Peter?’

‘I must, Tom. Besides, you’re going to see Teresa.’

She smiled soberly across at Ash. ‘I’ll be back for work on time tomorrow, Gray.’

The two men watched her retreating behind in silence. Sunlight glinted through the characteristic female crutch gap.

‘Let’s go,’ Squire said, with a sigh. ‘Pippet Hall.’

Ash said nothing. He drove.

The Norfolk coast road from Hunstanton meanders eastwards towards Sheringham and Cromer. On its way, it calls at a number of small towns which are never quite on the sea, whatever their intentions. Blakeney, for instance, gazes placidly across tidal river and marshes to its distant head, with scarcely a glimpse of the real sea. It once held fairs which were among the excitements of the Middle Ages; Muscovite ships visited it, with cargoes of silver, sable, caviar and bear grease. Three stout ships sailed from Blakeney against the Spanish Armada.

Only at Wells-next-Sea is there still clear sight of the open waters leading on to Norway, the Arctic, or Ostend. At Wells tourists can walk with their ice creams and fish’n’chips straight across the road, to view little Egyptian freighters or the modern, hammer-and-sickle-flying descendants of the Muscovites who reached Blakeney, all moored peaceably against the quayside.

Take one of the minor roads which turn southwards off the coast road between Wells and Blakeney. After a few miles’ drive, you will arrive at the pretty village of Hartisham. Hartisham is set half on a small eminence, half in a small valley, through which the small River Guymell runs. The higher village contains a manor house, a vicarage, and a fine church, dedicated to St Swithun, and refaced with knapped flint in the eighteen-eighties. The lower part contains most of the village, its dwellings (mainly cottages, built blind side to the street), a few shops, and Pippet Hall, through the modest grounds of which the River Guymell flows.

The countryside is undulating hereabouts, rather than flat. It is very fertile, and must once have abounded in the deer for which the village is named. Pippet Hall estate consists of under one hundred acres since the Squire family had to sell land off to meet death duties. The modest farmhouse, now occupied by the manager of the estate, lies in a bend of the Guymell. The manager frequently eats trout for his supper. The Hall itself stands on a slight eminence. It is mentioned and often pictured in all the guide books of the area, and also in Nikolaus Pevsner’s architectural guides. It was named after the meadow pipits which used to nest abundantly hereabouts.

The house is visible from the front gate, but to reach the front porch the drive curves elegantly and crosses an ornamental stone bridge over a small lake which was created by a Squire ancestor with advice from Thomas Repton. The cedars Repton planted, the blue cedars of Lebanon, still stand in a noble group of four on the north side of the lake. It is tradition that, when the weather is cold enough and the ice will hold, the local population enters the grounds of Pippet Hall and skates or slides on the frozen lake.

‘I love this place,’ Ash said, as he braked the Peugeot in the drive outside the porch. ‘I’ll buy it off you.’

A dog barked somewhere in an offhand manner.

‘Let’s see if Teresa’s at home.’

The house was early Georgian, built of brick cornered with stone. It replaced a smaller building on the same site which had been destroyed by fire. It owed its existence to an earlier Squire, the vigorous Matthew, born in Norfolk in 1689, in the reign of King James II.

Matthew Squire bought himself a commission in Marlborough’s army and served as liaison officer between Marlborough and Prince Eugene at the battle of Oudenarde in 1708, in which the French were defeated. Matthew’s bravery, his dash, and his command of the German tongue, commended him to Eugene.

The bravery must have been inborn; the command of German was acquired from young Matthew’s mistress, Caroline, the illegitimate daughter of a Westphalian captain of dragoons. With Caroline following behind, Matthew joined Eugene’s army to fight at Peterwardein in 1716. There the Turks were defeated for the last time on European soil.

As victory bells pealed throughout Christendom, Matthew found he had lost a finger and gained a reputation. He was decorated and rewarded by Eugene. He acquired a substantial train of Ottoman booty. Whereupon he retired with his beloved Caroline to his native village, Hartisham. There in the seventeen-thirties he had the present house built and, it is claimed, was the first man to introduce coffee to North Norfolk. Despite lavish expenditures, he ensured the modest fortunes of the Squire family for the next two and a half centuries.

Caroline’s sturdy Westphalian loins provided for the continuance of Matthew’s line. She outlived her husband. He died, a slightly dotty old man with a cork finger, in his seventy-first year, and was buried in St Swithun’s churchyard at almost the same time as Horatio Nelson was entering the world, only a few miles away across the Norfolk meadows.

As the two men climbed from Ash’s Peugeot, a Dalmatian bitch came bounding from the rear of the house and flung herself at Squire.

At the same time, a female voice was heard calling, in hopeless tones, ‘Nellie, Nellie, good girl!’

A plump white-haired lady appeared, carrying a trug in one hand. She paused, then came up smiling, saying, ‘Tom, your dog is quite uncontrollable.’

Squire introduced her to Ash as Mrs Davies, his mother-in-law. She was recently widowed.

‘Where’s Teresa?’ he asked her, patting Nellie’s back.

‘This sunny spell we’re having is beautiful, and yet you know I get so hot,’ she told Ash, with the confidence of one who has regularly enjoyed the attention of men. ‘I never used to get so hot. I mustn’t do any more, but I couldn’t resist pottering. All the poor plants need water. Tess feels the heat too, and I would not be surprised if she hasn’t retired to her own room for a shower and rest. You must have found filming on the beach intolerably hot today, Mr Ash.’

‘Don’t forget that Mr Squire and I were filming in Singapore three months ago,’ said Ash, smiling. ‘It was really warm there.’

They paused on the lower step of the house, Ash slouching, smiling in his flamboyant shirt, hands in his pockets, Mrs Davies shortish but erect, her white hair carefully tended, talking but keeping an eye on Squire, who stood square-based, legs apart, twiddling his bunch of keys. The dog disappeared into the cool of the house.

The symmetry of Pippet Hall was emphasized by its red brick and its white paint, with the plum-coloured door centrally placed. The complete entablature of the doorcase, with a pediment over it, in turn emphasized the sensible centrality of this feature. It was a three-storeyed house, the four sashed windows of the ground floor running almost from floor to ceiling, but diminishing in height floor by floor. A brick parapet ornamented with recessed panels rose above the second-floor windows, half-concealing the truncated pyramid of roof. The chimneys were grouped at either end of the roof, emphasizing the symmetry of the whole.

Five shallow steps rose from the level of the drive to the front step (for the meek Guymell had been known to rise up and flood). Squire led the way up the steps to the panelled door.

‘My husband flew out to Singapore,’ Mrs Davies was telling Ash, ‘by air in the thirties, in a seaplane. I went too. It was very comfortable and we slept on board. I wouldn’t care to go now. Flights are so terribly crowded nowadays, I don’t know how people can bear it. Yet I saw in The Times just yesterday that they’re planning even bigger airliners. Where it will all end I don’t know.’

Squire was edging his friend into the hall. He waited while Mrs Davies talked to Ash. The interior was cool, and silent, apart from the click of the Dalmatian’s claws on the stone tiles as it circled him. This hall was Pippet Hall’s grandest feature, designed to make an immediate impression on guests before they were led to the relatively cramped reception rooms. Stairs led to the upper floor in a graceful double curve; portraits of Matthew and Caroline hung in heavy gilt frames on the half-landing.

‘Where are Ann and Jane?’ he asked sharply.

‘The girls have gone over to Norwich with Grace and their Aunt Deirdre. They’ll be back later,’ said Mrs Davies. ‘They’re wearing their jeans. I told them that dresses were more suitable for Norwich but, no, they would go in their jeans. Ugly things. Do you have children, Mr Ash?’

‘I think I’ll get Grahame a drink, Mother,’ said Squire. ‘Would you like one, too?’

‘I could make you some tea if you liked, and there are some doughnuts from the Crooked Apron. Do you like doughnuts, Mr Ash? They’re terribly fattening …’

Squire manoeuvred Ash and his mother-in-law into the living room and poured both Ash and himself large vodkas-on-the-rocks. Leaving Ash to his conversation, he went off in search of his wife. The dog sat at the bottom of the stairs, watching him mournfully, knowing well that Dalmatians were not allowed upstairs.

Music sounded faintly along the upper corridor. Teresa had taken over the room at the south-east corner of the house. Squire tapped lightly at the door and went in.

The room was shaded. The curtain at the long south-facing window had been drawn to keep out the sun; but a thin beam, shining through the window set in the other wall, painted a line of gold across the white-and-green carpet, as if to emphasize the shadow into which the rest of the room had been plunged.

Teresa had furnished the room with rattan chairs and sofas, each with a white cushion, and all recently purchased from an artistic shop in Fakenham. There were several large plants, two monstera delicosa reaching almost to the ceiling, a rubber plant, and an aspidistra. The general effect was that an attempt had been made to recreate a Malayan environment, but the sofa had been pushed aside to make room for a white formica desk and a work table at which Teresa now sat.

The table was littered with rolls of plastic and wire and a cluttered miscellany of paint pots on a tray. Beneath the table were boxes and litter. On the walls hung the results of Teresa’s labours, fantastic insects of all sorts, beetles with amazing horns, moths with wings of gold, butterflies with eyes in their wings. These exotic creatures of wire and plastic glowed with the light from the floor, the unusual angle of illumination giving them an unexpected and even sinister aspect.

‘Tess! Are you all right?’

She had been sitting looking through the window, holding a paint brush in one hand. Although she turned to look at Squire, the end of the brush remained between her teeth, slightly wrinkling her upper lip.

‘Hello, Tom, I didn’t expect you back yet.’ As if making a decision, she dropped the brush abruptly and stood up. Teresa was a plump, soft-looking woman of under medium height. Now in her mid-forties, she had lines under the large doe eyes which were such a striking feature of her face. Her hair was piled neatly on her head and dyed with gold tints. She had taken recently to wearing plenty of make-up and false eyelashes. Her smock was stained with plastic paints; beneath it she wore crimson slacks. Crimson-nailed toes peeped from golden sandals.

Squire moved forward, clutched her, patted her chubby bottom.

‘We’ve finished filming for the day. Grahame’s here. Come down and have a drink with us.’

‘Where are the rest of them?’ In her regard was the slight suggestion of squint which he had once found so attractive.

‘Of the company? They’re mostly putting up at The Lion. Is anything the matter, Tess?’

She looked hard at him and said, ‘No, no, nothing’s the matter.’ With one sandalled foot she moved a cardboard carton out of the way.

‘Good. Come on down then.’

‘I’ll be there in a minute. I can’t come downstairs looking like this.’

‘Of course you can. You look lovely. Grahame won’t mind.’

She frowned, as if concentrating on resolving the contradiction in what he said.

‘If you go down, I’ll join you, if you really want me.’

‘Naturally we want you. Mother tells me the girls are in Norwich with Deirdre. I thought we might all go over and have supper in Blakeney with the film crew. It would be fun and the hotel cuisine’s not bad this season.’

With a lack-lustre air far from her normal manner, Teresa turned away, saying, ‘You go if you wish. I don’t feel like going out this evening.’

‘There is something the matter, isn’t there? Have you got business troubles?’

‘Not at all. On the contrary.’ She waved her hand over the cluttered table. ‘Vernon Jarvis is convinced I can make a great commercial success with fantasy insects. He says I shouldn’t bother to sell in England. He can get massive orders from Germany and New York which will pay much better. He thinks we should start an export company.’

‘Who’s Vernon Jarvis?’

‘A young man with flair and very good business connections. You met him before you went to Singapore but I daresay you were too busy to take any notice.’

‘I think I do remember now. Funny side-whiskers? Well, if all’s going well, don’t be gloomy, come down and have a drink.’

Going back to his vodka downstairs, Squire found Ash still in the conversational embrace of Mrs Davies, who was showing the director photographs of the three children, John – now grown-up and living in the murkier reaches of Manchester – Ann, and Jane. Prising Ash away, Squire took him into the study, where separate scripts and story-boards of each episode of ‘Frankenstein Among the Arts’ were arrayed on a trestle-table brought in for the purpose.

As Ash strolled with his drink to look out of the french windows at the sweep of lawn and meadow beyond, Squire said, ‘I’d better warn you that Teresa is in rather a peculiar mood. Probably her horoscope upset her this morning.’

‘Mine always upsets me. “Chance of financial advantage …” – and a tax form arrives with the postman. Never fear, I’ll be at my jolliest tonight.’

They switched on the video-cassette machine and flipped through a few items which might yet be fitted into the series. One showed a collection of hundreds of pepper-and-salt cellars, all different.

Both men laughed. ‘One function, diversity of forms. Condimental evolution,’ Ash said.

‘This array tells you a lot about the imagination of mankind. I think it should go in, if we can fit it in.’

‘It would have to go in Four, “Animals from Machines”. I’ll see what can be done.’

When Teresa appeared, she had changed into a summery blue dress which set off the artificial gold of her hair. She sailed into the study smiling, her mother and Nellie the Dalmatian trailing her. Greeting Ash warmly, she demanded a gin-and-tonic from her husband, and then chatted to the director. He invited her to join the party at the Blakeney Hotel.