He had got as far as “My knee is still a better weather-forecaster than the Met used to be” (and was wondering whether it was quite fair to Polly to mention his knee at all) when he was aware of Miss Pargetter standing at his side with her notebook held out in that helpless and appealing attitude which she adopted when she was Stuck.
“Polly-something,” said Miss Pargetter abruptly. “I can’t remember whether it ends with us or os.”
“Polycarpos,” said Stephen, spelling it again.
“Yes, Mr. Tasker.”
“It means ‘many-seeded,’” added Stephen. “What a funny name.”
“Yes; but apt. By the way,” said Stephen, “I don’t suppose you sold any books?”
“I’m afraid there was only one customer all the afternoon.”
“That’s above the average,” said Stephen.
“He wanted something to read in a bus. I sold him these.” Miss Pargetter stared for a long time at her notebook. “I put down the titles in shorthand for practice,” she said. “The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry—and, oh, yes, I’ve got it, Meditations on Death and Eternity.”
“If you sold those books,” said Stephen, “you could sell anything.”
“Yes, but—I’m afraid I knocked sixpence off Death and Eternity” Miss Pargetter still looked as solemn as an owl. “I felt sure you wouldn’t mind. He was a Scottish Minister,” she said, “and rather poor.”
I
There Was a long sultry spell, as May melted into June ; the close sticky nights were shot with sheet-lightning, and black thunderstorms punctuated the scorching days. The Vicar announced that his promised fine-weather system was building up slowly. Nevertheless, some of the storms were heavy, and in one twenty-four-hour period he had the satisfaction of registering no less than .62 inches of rain on his gauge. The Vicar always did record more rain than any other observer within a hundred miles; and on the charts at the Air Ministry the neighbourhood was shown as a pocket of exceptional rainfall and pointed out to students as a remarkable phenomenon, due perhaps to the effect of the nearby hills. But it is possible that the true cause was to be sought in the mischief of the choir boys who under cover of darkness would play an exceedingly naughty trick as they went home through the Vicar’s garden after a late practice.
The thundery and electric atmosphere got on everybody’s nerves, and as the days went by Stephen had a sense of mounting tension. Disaster was in the air, and its premonitory rumblings were as plain to him as those of the circumambient storms. The first rehearsal had been a ludicrous failure, for owing to a typing mistake in Miss Pargetter’s circular to the performers—she had put “Thursday” instead of “Tuesday”—half the company failed to turn up. The rehearsal therefore became a sort of Tactical Exercise Without Troops; but even so tenuous an affair resulted in five separate and distinct quarrels among the leading actors. In addition, Odo and Dodo, complaining perhaps with reason that their parts were not sufficiently spectacular, had resigned from the company; they would be knights or nothing, and there were not enough horses to go round. A savage rainstorm had finally drenched everybody before they went home.
Stephen had other troubles too. Lance’s choruses had turned out to be incomprehensible to anybody but their author, and in order to persuade him to rewrite them it had been necessary to apply the ultimate sanction to which, alas, young poets are singularly vulnerable: the Committee had withheld his fee. The Wardrobe Mistress threatened to throw her hand in because she couldn’t; understand Robin’s designs. The men who were building the grandstand went on strike. Mr. Gurney and Councillor Noakes were like two old tomcats snarling at each other in dreadful undertones every time they met. And the Beauty Queens, it was rumoured, had had a row in public at a local dance.
On the first of June, according to plan, a pink nettlerash of posters had broken out all over the town. Designed by Robin, they were somewhat impressionistic, and seemed to represent a crowd of knights and ladies in a blurry snow-storm of red and white roses—pretty enough when you looked at them closely, but on the hoardings they might have been advertisements for strawberry ice-cream. During the night following their appearance somebody plastered a second lot of posters side by side with them. These declared in bold scarlet lettering:
WE DON’T WANT FESTIVALS WE WANT HOUSES, WORK AND WAGES
and were generally attributed to the machinations of Miss Foulkes.
All that morning Stephen’s inadequate office in the back shop was overcrowded with Councillors and members of the Committee who had looked in to discuss this atrocity. He now had two telephones, which went continually as well-meaning people rang up to tell him about the posters or to ask him what he was going to do about them. Councillor Noakes, fleshy and perspiring, fussed around as usual, got in everybody’s way, and frequently and unnecessarily patted Miss Pargetter on the shoulder, who in her summer dress was the only cool and placid person in the room.
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