The Witch of Exmoor by Margaret Drabble

programmes, archaeology, stand-up comics–it’s all excrement. You wouldn’t have got away with it in the old days. Talk about violence guidelines, it’s guidelines on shit that we need these days. What, Patsy? Patsy agrees, don’t you, Patsy?’
    (But Patsy is indoors, carving the joints of the bacon, arranging the slices of pink meat and white fat on the meat dish, licking her fingers, picking out a clove, miles and miles away.)
    â€˜So what did you do?’ asks Daniel politely. He enjoys Partington’s performances and is glad that his career prospects do not oblige him to take them seriously.
    â€˜Oh, I slammed on the injunction,’ says the merry judge, helping himself to a fistful of cashew nuts. ‘Said it was in breach. Nothing
but
breaches, I told them. Can’t do that to people. Can’t show their bums without asking them. They’re not all senile. And guess what? Dick Champer rings me up from the BBC. Direct from the BBC, to complain. Says it’s outside my prerogative. Says he’ll appeal. He was in a right stew. Fizzing and boiling. Spluttering and choking. Midnight, this was.’
    â€˜And the injunction holds?’
    â€˜Of course it holds,’ says Partington, munching away, his teeth spattered with a white spew of chewed wet nut. ‘I’ll fix them. I was at Magdalen with Champer. I’ll teach him about human dignity. Dick, I said, I challenge you, you show your bare bum on TV, and we’ll let it run. You do a bum shot to introduce it, and I’ll see what I can do for you. Fair’s fair, I said. Do unto others. I’ve
seen
his bum, and I can tell you it’s not a pretty sight.’
    â€˜So what will happen?’
    â€˜We’ll see on Monday,’ says Bill Partington, grinning broadly and reaching out his paw for more nuts, but at that moment Patsy appears at a window, a cordless telephone in her hand, and calls, ‘Bill! Bill! It’s for you.’
    He heaves himself up, stumps across the paving stones, leans across the flowerbed, grabs the phone. He yells into it. All of them hear every word. ‘Eh? What? The I BA? The High Court? The Minister? What the fuck are you talking about, you arsehole? Ah, come off it, you bum. Fair’s fair. You wait, lover boy. You wait. I’ve known Reggie since I was a boy. You’ll get no change out of him. Eh? What?’
    As his unseen interlocutor manages to arrest the flow, Bill paces expansively along the terrace, groaning loudly, and listening with pantomime impatience. He starts to tear at the ragged remains of what had once been a fair crop of brown curls. Then he breaks in again with, ‘You swine! You bum!’
    Celia, her long brown legs neatly crossed at the ankles beneath her pretty soft hemline, rolls her eyes to the almost cloudless sky, and sighs in disassociation. Daniel smiles with undisguised delight. Nathan too is much pleased. Rosemary pretends to be reading a Sunday colour supplement, David buries his head in his hands, and Gogo rises to her feet and disappears into the house. Tennis guest Julian tries to start up a conversation with Daniel, but Daniel does not even notice: Julian is not bad at tennis but his views on anything other than opera are simply not worth listening to, and he wants to hear the end of Bill’s tirade.
    It comes abruptly, as the outraged dignitary yells a final oath of defiance, and presses the off button. He slams the phone down on the inner window-ledge (thereby dislodging, though he does not notice this, a small vase of sweet peas). He returns to his chair, gleaming with the heat of battle, slumps down again, and says, ‘Hope you enjoyed the cabaret!’ Then he appears to fall into a sullen reverie, from which Daniel as host feels, after a moment or two, obliged to rescue him.
    â€˜Trouble, eh?’ he suggests delicately. Bill Partington surfaces, blowing like a sea monster, and re-engages. He tries to