Mr Vogel Read online

  The presents intended for our wedding on March 1, 1916, delivered to our hands and now deposited in the attic of my abode, shall be given in their whole to the first couple to be married at St Bride’s Church after the publication of this statement.

  Since I have no heir or living relative, I wish the remainder of my property, in its entirety, to be given as the prize in a competition which has already taken place. It remains only for my solicitor to name the winner.

  Here the old man’s solicitor looked at the small public deputation which had been allowed into his fusty office and re-arranged the documents on his desk. He loosened his collar and allowed the meeting a moment of dignity.

  ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘You may remember that some time ago a rather mysterious competition took place in this town. There were to be 366 competitors. Everyone in the town could enter by lodging their name, address and date of birth with a solicitor. The prize was not specified. The winner would be named in due course.’

  I remembered the competition quite clearly, since I had entered it myself. I had wondered what the prize could be. It was rumoured to be substantial. There was a crazy scramble as all the residents of the town lodged their names and details with the solicitor, then double checked that all their children were also entered, and their servants (many of whom were allowed to enter only if they promised to share their win with their masters). One child was so determined to enter the names of her two pet mice that she refused food until her parents pretended to relent, but only humans were eligible.

  I stood up at the meeting. ‘But surely,’ I said, ‘the attorney named in that competition was none other that yourself.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the solicitor dryly. ‘I was just coming to that. As the attorney empowered to declare the winner of the competition I will do so now. First, I would like to state that the winner was the person whose birthday fell on the same date as the old man’s death. As you know, that occurred on February 29th.

  ‘There is only one condition: that the winner shall use part of the monies to keep the estate intact and in good order, and that the pagoda must never, under any circumstances, be demolished.’

  The meeting fell quiet. The solicitor held up an official, printed statement.

  ‘This will be pinned to the door of the town hall as soon as this meeting is over,’ he said. ‘It announces the name of the winner.’

  We craned forwards. And then came a collective groan.

  THE RECORDS

  THERE WAS a new mood in the Blue Angel today, jaunty and light. People are happy and excited: the great drama of spring is about to begin.

  Flocks of sheep are being steered up the slopes, towards the upland pastures, like fallen clouds moving silently over the landscape. The mountain walls are newly-hatched millipedes, drying in the sun. Spring is unfurling: there is new hope in the air. That old horse chestnut in the churchyard is feathering: it’s a colossal, newly-fledged chick, swaying drunkenly as it tries to stay upright. It’s the first tree into leaf every year. Old eyes scan its branches keenly every day as though watching a magician; when it swirls its emerald cape the rooks shout a great da-ra! in the sky. And then our humours are restored, for it seems possible that we have survived another dunking in winter’s cold bath of mortality.

  The sun’s course is changing subtly day by day. All winter it has stayed close to the silhouette of the southern hills, like a novice swimmer clinging nervously to the edge of a big swimming pool, afraid to move towards the centre. But its confidence grows daily as it floats towards its summer zenith. For me, fettered to my bar at the Blue Angel, with the universe whirring and gliding around me inexplicably, confirmation of Spring comes suddenly, when the sun changes course just enough to appear over the rim of the hills before noon: and when it comes I give thanks, I rejoice as it pours hot butter on the chimney pots above my head. This happens on the first day of March every year, if the sky is clear, and I light a celebratory fire using aromatic wood which gives off white smoke; people collect in snowdrop clumps outside my windows and point to the chimney, and they joke about it, saying that either a new pope has been elected or the old barman at the Blue Angel is sending smoke signals to Apollo again. I gashed a finger on a shard of broken glass whilst clearing up this morning. My blood spread slowly through the washing-up water, and I was reminded of nature’s forces at work under the surface of the earth.

  Mr John ‘Nosy’ Parker, as I have already told you, was reasonably accurate, though vain. He cared a little too much for embellishment, but he did try to stick to the facts.

  At the Blue Angel we are given many ‘facts’. We must then winnow the wheat from the chaff, but how am I, in my stifled and airless bar, to divide the wheat from the chaff, and furthermore, does not the chaff remain beautiful after the winnowing, whilst the wheat, pounded and baked, chewed and digested, becomes a revolting mess?

  If Parker is fluted and scrolled in a sickly pastiche, the testimony of the boy Luther suffers from the opposite complaint. Can nothing be straightforward? Must we scrabble for the truth always? Luther is sparse. No-one will get fat at Luther’s lexical table. I give you an example – and what better example than this:

  My name is Luther Williams. I am twelve. I have always got a cold and sores. My bones are funny the doctor said. I have been to the school but I don’t go there any more. My father is dead. My mother is Mary and I have a sister and brother. They are younger than me. We live on the Paternoster Hill next door to Mr Vogel. This is how I know him. He asked me to write this story in case he died, for people to remember our journey round the island, which we started in his invalid carriage, it was green with three wheels. I sat by him on an egg box and I could see the road through a hole. He asked my mother for me to go with him because he could not walk well and he wanted me to do errands on the journey and do things for him.

  I know his name is not really Mr Vogel. This is how he got his name, he told me in the carij [carriage] one day. He got very lonely and he read in a newspaper that bad boys like me ring up people with funny names in the telephone book to upset them and say rude things, they like to call somebody with a silly name. So he said his name was Vogel so he could get calls from naughty children.

  We were all intrigued to discover how Vogel got his peculiar name. And Luther sheds light on another matter. Most of us believed, wrongly, that he started his journey in the camper van which he bought with Doctor Robert’s money, but after reading Luther’s account I now remember seeing him drive that old invalid carriage down the hill every Saturday morning with Luther crammed by his side, peeking out of the side-window like a little owl. Must have been a strange view for the boy. Vogel had poor health, as do many cripples because of their lack of proper exercise – and he had a form of dermatitis characterised by blotched, waxy skin and terrible dandruff. He also exuded that slightly musky, goosy smell of immobile people. So this was Luther’s weekend world – a vista of dandruff on a worn black jacket with its frayed collar; a balding, oily crown, and a vibrating road as Vogel’s jalopy clanged along. It was as old as the hills and spluttered dreadfully, spitting gobs of oily smoke when he started it.

  Humboldt surprised us with two new words today: apparently khonsay means to pick up an object with great care, knowing it to be rare or scarce, and onsra is to love for the last time. Don Quixote also surprised us with a pearl of wisdom. The Don is watchful and ‘deep’ – which is why he knows every morsel of the town’s gossip; he is the only man I’ve met who can listen to three conversations at the same time and glean every scrap of information. Mostly he keeps his own company in a quiet corner of the bar, observing his pint of mild as if it were a work of art, though he has a soft spot for Mr Vogel and chats to him whenever he’s in. The Don worked in the quarry for a few years in his early manhood but a combination of events halted his walks up the inclines to the wind-gutted huts high above the town.

  The long hard winter of ’47 had been gruelling. There had been no forewarning in January, normally th
e Doberman of months, as the men cut out granite cobs with hands so cold that they were devoid of feeling – numbed so completely that chisel wounds went unnoticed until thick red blood started to ooze from the cuts during the half hour allowed for dinner in a shed warmed by a cast iron pot-bellied stove. Then, in early February, there was a gale of immense ferocity. A ship was driven up on the shore and its foreign crew could be seen in a row like penguins on the stern, looking at their uncharted destination in silent disbelief.

  For weeks it snowed or drifted; every day the quarrymen toiled up the inclines, only to be turned back after an hour, payless. The shopkeepers gave tick for a while, but then had to shrug apologetically; all relinquishable chattels were sold or pawned, and the men spent their afternoons combing the fields and woods for firewood and food, forced by now to gnaw turnips in the snow-hardened fields. Then came the worst blow of all. In late February Don Quixote’s younger brother was killed by a hawser which snapped on the first full day of work after the thaw. It was his birthday.

  Don Quixote turned his back on the scene and descended down the inclines, never to walk on them again. He said so little afterwards that most of the townspeople think he’s mute: this impression is erroneous, because if you stir him Don Quixote can talk passionately on any number of subjects. Nowadays he makes a living of sorts by gardening and bits and bobs of building work. But by night he reads voraciously, so that he has accumulated a huge store of knowledge. He is as hairy as a baboon and keeps a huge unruly dog. Between them they could fill a large sack with the hair they discard every day.

  After work he calls in for a pint, silent and contemplative in the grey-blue haze of cigarette smoke, unastonished in his little sanctuary, chipping-in only occasionally. Sometimes Sancho Panza comes in with him, and he too studies his pint as if it were the Venus de Milo.

  Earlier I mentioned The Don’s pearls of wisdom – for he is a great observer, and drinks in more than best mild.

  ‘Lonely,’ he said one evening as we discussed the saga. ‘That makes sense all right. Mr Vogel is lonely for sure.’

  All eyes rested steadily on The Don. Everyone knew he was about to deliver.

  Gazing into the depths of his pint, he continued slowly: ‘Tell you something you all saw but probably never noticed.’ Here he drew on his roll-up and thumbed the air behind him, in the direction of Paternoster Hill. ‘Old Vogel, he leaves his car lights on when he goes in for the night. Sometimes he even comes out at dusk to put them on.’

  Silence, then a murmur rippled along the bar. Come to think of it, one or two had noticed something in that general direction.

  ‘Leaves them on, he does,’ continued The Don meditatively, ‘so people will knock on his door and tell him he needs to turn them off. Then he moiders them. That’s the way I got to know him, actually. Stopped the van, went and told him. Next think I was in the kitchen having a brew with him.’

  The Don winked slowly when he said ‘brew’. It was well known that Mr Vogel went down early every morning to do his shopping, and that this invariably included a bottle of cheap blended whisky. Mr Vogel built up a small coterie of callers who brought their own supplies. This is corroborated by the boy Luther:

  Some days we would phone Mr Vogel. Then we would hide by the window waiting for something to happen. We thought we would get into trouble like the police calling but nothing happened though we waited for a long time. Some nights Mr Vogel was stupid and left his lights on and we went and told him and he asked us in and gave us sweets. Sometimes men would call at his house on the way home from the pub with bags and bottles in them.

  There is further evidence of Mr Vogel’s rather endearing little ploy to get attention. Edwin the carpenter told us an anecdote about old Vogel.

  ‘Make that the last one, Edwin,’ I whispered in his ear late during the evening. I didn’t want to embarrass him – though he didn’t come in often, he was a great fellow, never had a bad word for anyone and he was full of silly jokes. He was over fifty but he smoked the weed, which made him a star man among the younger crew. He wasn’t particularly big, but no-one would lay a finger on Edwin because he was untouchable – there are certain people who are never harmed. God knows what signal they emit, but it works. Tonight he was squiffy and getting boisterous, so I had a quiet word with him.

  ‘Drunk?’ he said to the whole bar, his arms wide open in appeal, cigar in one hand, slopping pint in the other. ‘Think I’m sloshed, you lot?’ They looked at him indulgently. ‘Christ, you should see drunk,’ he said to me through his blurred blue eyes, ‘you should have seen old Vogel last night.’ Here Edwin parked himself on a high chair and shook his head, chuckling to himself. ‘I’ll say he was drunk.’

  Edwin had been sitting in his van on the hill, waiting for his mother-in-law to come out of her home. He took her shopping every Friday night.

  ‘He came out with only one stick and he looked bloody ridiculous because he’d already changed into his ’jamas with that dirty green cardigan hanging on him like a scarecrow and those stupid tartan slippers with eyes like teddy bears.’

  Edwin regaled them with the story of poor old Mr Vogel swaying from his front door to the invalid carriage. ‘Don’t know how he managed to get there in that state, but he bloody well did,’ said Edwin. ‘Saw him fiddling about inside that rust bucket of his, then he set off for the house again, but he lost his footing suddenly and went flying. Poor sod was spread-eagled in the road like a dying fly, with his arms and legs wriggling about like he was having a fit.’

  Edwin mimicked a convulsion, spilt his drink on his trousers, swore, then continued:

  ‘The woman next door, that idiot Luther’s mother, came out and tried to help him, then Luther ran into the house to get his other stick, but he fell again before they got him to the pavement. Eventually they had to pin him up against the wall. Never seen anything so funny in my life. Vogel must have hurt himself because he had a hell of a job getting back up those steps. The mother-in-law watched it all with me and nearly died laughing. “Serves him right,” she said. “Won’t get any pity from me. Leaves those lights on to get sympathy. Fell for it myself once. Offered me a cup of tea but the place is filthy. Took him a lifetime to make it then the mug was black and smelt of whisky. Poured it into a plant.” ’

  The boy Luther reveals somewhere in his version that he and the other children in their hovel on Paternoster Hill had stopped making their nuisance calls when their mother caught them.

  She hadn’t caught them outright. They usually made the calls on Sunday evenings after their communal bath, when she was cleaning the bathroom. One night when she came down she noticed water on the telephone table and became suspicious, wanting to know who they’d phoned. They never told her, but they didn’t do it again.

  Nothing much going for that poor woman. Husband dies and she has to drag up three children on her own. No wonder she was glad to see the boy off her hands every Saturday. At first she questioned him about his jaunts, but she gave up once she’d established there was nothing untoward going on, and knew that Luther was usefully occupied. The pound which Mr Vogel paid her was useful too. The priest had asked her why her son accompanied Vogel to the island.

  ‘I don’t know the full story,’ she’d answered. Her only real interest was to know that Luther was safe, and she didn’t take much notice after that. ‘All he told me was that Mr Vogel wanted to find out something,’ she said to the priest. ‘It’s to do with a cure for his condition, though God knows, we all think it’s a wild goose chase, since his poor little legs have been bent like bows since he was born, and his arms are pretty useless too.’

  She added, lamely: ‘Old Vogel can’t do the legwork himself, pardon the expression, so he wants Luther to be his fetch-and-carry boy, knocking on doors to ask questions, nipping into pubs for directions. One day he spent quite a lot of time in a graveyard looking at headstones because Mr Vogel wanted to find someone, but don’t ask me who, Luther might be able to help you.’

  I
often caught a glimpse of Luther’s mother standing in her window as I looked up from the Blue Angel. Always she was gazing out to the island, as if trying to catch a glimpse of the little invalid carriage with its two strange occupants on its rickety journey around the shoreline, phut-phutting up and down the little lanes which were used so seldom that they all had a ribbon of grass, strewn with daisies and buttercups, along the centre of the road. Luther could see the flowers flash by him through a hole in the floor of the carriage between his feet, and he could smell a mixture of hot oil and wafts of countryside smells – blossom, moist earthiness, mossy verdure and freshly-made cowpats. Or perhaps, as she looked out to sea, she wasn’t thinking of the island at all, perhaps a land much further away, full of biblical milk and honey, for she had heard the Word soon after her husband’s death. Her face was pasty, disfigured by margarine, crusts and lovelessness (for widowed women with three children live, often, in a garrison town, cut off from emotional supplies, preyed upon by scalping males, and consigned to long hours of waiting for deliverance).

  Yesterday I came across a passage in one of my bar-room books which made me think of Mr Vogel on his strange quest around the island. It described the Russian dramatist Chekhov, dying from tuberculosis, travelling through Siberia to the prison colony of Sakhalin in a vehicle ‘resembling a little wicker basket’ pulled by a pair of horses.

  ‘You sit in the basket, and look out upon God’s earth like a bird in a cage, without a thought on your mind,’ said Chekhov.

  Travelling when you’re unwell is a miserable experience, I’m told. But Chekhov still held his head up, looking around as road signs flashed by, ponds, little birch groves. He passed a group of new settlers, a file of prisoners, and tramps with pots on their backs. ‘These gentlemen promenade all over the Siberian plain without hindrance. On occasion they will murder a poor old woman to obtain her skirt for leg puttees,’ said Chekhov. ‘Another time they will bash in the head of a passing beggar or knock out the eyes of one of their own banished brotherhood, but they won’t touch people in vehicles. On the whole, as far as robbery is concerned, travelling hereabouts is absolutely safe.’