Fete Fatale

by Robert Barnard

  When the buffet was set out I summoned everybody to take a plate and a fork and to help themselves to whatever they liked. Marcus meanwhile attended to their alcoholic needs from bottles which he had most dishonestly filled from wine-boxes. Mrs Nielson enthusiastically heaped her plate with hot and cold this-and-thats, and then, thinking that she had monopolized Father Battersby enough, she got herself into a corner with the Westons. The rest of the party were less sure what to do: ‘awfully pleasant and informal,’ said Mary, with the clear implication that something a little more starchy would have been more considerate to her bereaved state. They all took little bits of one thing, and kept having to come back for more. It was difficult to marshal them into sympathetic groupings, and in the end I realized that Mary had landed up with Father Battersby. Well, it had to happen during the evening at some stage. Mary, I saw, was leading the conversation with an expression of sweet forbearance on her face. I was sure that she was demonstrating to Marcus that there was nothing personal in all this. I was also sure that this was a mere overture, before she got down to the nitty-gritty.

  I, for my sins, went to do my duty by Thyrza Primp. That was weak of me, for I should have let Marcus stew in his own juice. Thyrza had procured for herself the boniest available piece of duck and a small spoonful of rice salad, and she sat picking at it with an air of martyrdom, the handbag still perched on the cliffedge of her knees. I squatted on a stool beside her, and attempted to keep the conversation clean. To no avail.

  ‘Have you noticed,’ said Thyrza Primp, after suffering a bare minimum of my polite inanities, ‘what that young man is wearing?’

  Since long black robes are not normal social wear in this day and age, one could hardly help noticing.

  ‘Probably awfully convenient,’ I said brightly.

  ‘Walter, naturally, would never have had any truck with suchlike nonsense, but it’s called a soutane.’ She lowered her voice to a menacing hiss. ‘And I think you’d find, if you counted, that the buttons down the front number thirty-nine!’

  ‘Would I?’

  ‘Symbolical.’

  ‘Really? What of? The steps?’

  ‘The Articles!’ Thyrza snapped open her handbag—Primp!—and sniffed at her handkerchief, a sniff that managed to unite in condemnation both Father Battersby and me. When she snapped her bag shut I jumped, as if my nose had been caught in it.

  ‘I call it blatant superstition,’ Thyrza resumed. ‘Childish and trivial. I must say—’ with a significant sigh—‘I begin to be eager to remove myself to Harrogate.’

  ‘I’m sure you must be,’ I said in my bright, neutral voice.

  ‘Harrogate, I believe, has many churches, so that one can choose the sort of service that suits one. And good congregations, too.’

  (Those dying generations, I thought.)

  ‘To have remained here, to have seen Romish practices imported, to have seen all Walter’s wonderful work go for nothing—it would have been too painful!’

  ‘I suppose one always does feel like that when there are changes,’ I said, feeling a right little Pollyanna.

  Over by the fireplace, Mary and Father Battersby seemed to have got to the nitty-gritty. There was definitely something in the nature of an inquisition going on. Happily Mary could hardly broach the subject of Father Battersby’s disinclination for intercourse, but I did hear words like ‘incense’, ‘chasuble’ and ‘surplice’, and Mary’s expression had changed to that of one discharging a burdensome but necessary social duty. I was interested to see the manner of Father Battersby’s response: he replied directly, in friendly way, but totally without apology or any attempt at ingratiation. I suspected, too, that there was not a hint of compromise. I caught Marcus’s eye, smiled at him brilliantly, and shifted my eyes fractionally in the direction of the fireplace. What hostessly perfection! Marcus got up and went over to the fireplace, to make it a threesome.

  After a time the groupings began to loosen up. People went back to the table for more food and drink; some of them began eating it standing up, so they could circulate and find pleasanter or at any rate different company. Some even went into the garden to talk to our dog Jasper, who is a genial soul who welcomes any company, and to feed him scraps. Howard Culpepper was getting on very well with Mrs Nielson and eating voraciously of everything on offer (surely Franchita didn’t keep him hungry?). Mrs Weston was flirting fluffily with Marcus, who was becoming quite avuncular (Marcus had the bulk and geniality for avuncularity, and with a few extra years would have made a good Prime Minister in the Callaghan mould, or a good telly performer when vets came back into fashion). As the evening wore on, Father Battersby spoke to everyone in one or other of the groups, and to most of them singly, for long periods or short. I began to think that the opposition was not going to have it all their own way. His directness and patent honesty were winning people over. For example, I thought that Mrs Weston might be won over to support her husband more vigorously, and to side with the choice of the ecclesiastical powers-that-be. Her daughter Fiona also seemed very taken with him, and this meant that Timothy volunteered the opinion that he seemed a ‘jolly nice chap’. Mrs Nielson had been disposed to like him in any case—on the same grounds that I had: that he seemed likely to relieve the monotony. What line Howard Culpepper would have taken had he retained a mind of his own and the right to form opinions I do not know, but he kept mum, merely skipping friskily from group to group, uttering inanities and enjoying his temporary freedom.

  It was inevitable that at some time in the evening Father Battersby would have to have ‘a good talk’ with Thyrza Primp. Typically, he had had no thought of giving her precedence, but by ten-fifteen he had realized that the thing had become urgent. He moved over to the armchair in which she had sat throughout the evening, like Queen Victoria in widowhood reluctantly holding a levée at Windsor. Mrs Nielson was the present recipient of her graciousness, if that was the word (for she was being glared at for lighting up a cigarette), and he joined them quite naturally. But from the beginning he showed that he was determined (having suffered one inquisition) to keep the chat on neutral lines.

  ‘It’s certainly a fascinating, beautiful town,’ I heard (by dint of moving nearer) him say. ‘Just walking round it today with Helen and Marcus has been an eye-opener. You could say it has cast a spell over me. Is that what the “hex” in Hexton means, I wonder—a benevolent spell?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Nielson, eager to keep the conversation friendly. ‘I believe it’s a Scandinavian or German word for “witch”—the town of the witches.’

  As soon as she’d said it she blushed and looked confused. As well she might. I moved a step or two away to hide my laughter. What a perfectly apt name: the town of the witches!

  ‘Well, burning witches is one old custom I’ve no desire to see revived,’ said Father Battersby, determinedly pleasant. ‘I think bazaars and fêtes provide a much more healthy form of entertainment in a parish. By the way, I’ve accepted Marcus’s invitation to come here a week earlier than I intended, so that I can attend the church fête in June. I’m looking forward to it.’

  ‘You have decided, then,’ enunciated Thyrza Primp, in a voice like a trumpeter warming up for the Last Trump, ‘to accept the appointment?’

  Father Battersby turned to her, with ingenuously open eyes.

  ‘Oh yes, Mrs Primp. I never was in any doubt about accepting.’

  ‘I see,’ said Thyrza. She drew in a deep breath, and I realized that she was about to launch into a sort of credo. ‘My husband,’ she pronounced, as if launching into a funeral eulogy, ‘believed in moderation. In trying to avoid giving offence. He saw the dangers in strife in a parish, and he looked for the middle way and then took it. Undeviatingly.’

  ‘I’m sure he did an excellent job,’ said Father Battersby. I noticed that soothing nothings sounded unconvincing from his lips, and I’m sure Thyrza noticed too.

  ‘It was so with the services as well. Walter didn’t try to be controversial in
his sermons, like so many of these modern clergymen. Nor to bring in a lot of heathen pageantry. We had a sober, reverent, decent form of service here, with nothing extreme, because that was what suited the people of Hexton.’

  ‘I’m sure you did,’ said Father Battersby. ‘You must not take any changes I make as in any way a criticism of my predecessor.’

  ‘Changes! I don’t think you’ll find people want any changes. We don’t go in for fads and novelties here! Walter suited Hexton because he knew the people don’t run after change. They know the value of moderation. How often I remember Walter saying it, in the pulpit and out: “Moderation in all things.” ’

  ‘Don’t you think moderation in all things might in itself be a sort of excess?’ asked Father Battersby.

  Primp! went the handbag. Out came the handkerchief. Sniff! This was an outraged sniff, combined with a wounded sniff. It was a crisis point, and Thyrza pushed her long nose forward into the hanky for a second sniff before she returned it—Primp!—to her bag. She set her lips, fixed her eyes to drill needle-thin holes in the wall opposite, and said not one word more. Mrs Nielson covered up, Father Battersby played along, but Thyrza Primp squatted on there, silent, grim, implacable.

  ‘Well, time we were on our way to the station,’ said Marcus, a good ten minutes before it was necessary. Father Battersby nodded goodbye to Mrs Primp, tolerably certain that a proffered hand would be refused. Then he went round to farewell all the other guests. Mary was extremely polite, almost gracious. The Westons asked him to stay when he came for the fête, but he said he was going to stay with the Blatchleys (an interesting decision that, almost a political one: the Blatchleys were not social leaders in Hexton, he being a mere bus driver). Howard Culpepper said they’d have to get together for a drink some time. Timothy and Fiona were found to have made their excuses to Marcus earlier in the evening and gone. Marcus got him out of the front gate, into the car, and drove him away—thankfully, I have no doubt, and promising himself a stiff whisky when he’d done the duty driving.

  Inside, the rest of the party began to show signs of breaking up. Mrs Nielson was in the hall, and shouting ‘Coming now, boy’ to Gustave, which set Patch off into a machine-gun rattle of barks, which in its turn set Jasper off on the back lawn. The Westons collected their coats, but Howard Culpepper said he’d just have one for the road, if I’d join him. He seemed to be savouring every moment of freedom. I smiled and said I fancied a last drink myself, and we turned into the living-room.

  ‘Boycott!’ came Mary Morse’s voice, firm, and quite lacking in the social softness which it had had during the foregoing evening. ‘It’s the only way. An organized boycott of the church as long as he is the minister there!’

  She was standing by Thyrza Primp’s armchair, and over their heads I seemed to see fluttering in a breeze a garish ensign of war.

  CHAPTER 4

  BATTLE LINES

  I never did have that talk with Howard, to find out if he existed. Or rather, we had the talk, but I gave it only half my mind, because over on the other side of the room a plan of battle was being drawn up. When the two of them left, they had prim little smiles of anticipation on their faces. Howard Culpepper muttered, ‘Looks as if we’re in for some rough weather,’ and scuttled in their wake. I think he’d taken one look at my face and seen I was in no mood for the harmless flirtations of the elderly that I suspect he went in for when he was allowed out on his own.

  I told Marcus when he returned, and he did something that he very seldom did: he totally lost his cool. He is one of those very quiet people who on a handful of occasions in their lives simply blow up. I suspect if Mary had been to hand he would have blasted her up hill and down dale, and reduced her—yes, even Mary—to tears and submission. As it was, he put on a pretty impressive performance in vacuo for my benefit, so that I didn’t even rub it in that it was he who had insisted on inviting Thyrza Primp. The level on our bottle of Johnnie Walker plummeted like the falling pound, and Marcus finished the evening, as he so often did when something had whipped up his comfortable surface, by playing Beethoven’s Pastoral (in his normal moods he said it presented an intolerably prettified view of the countryside). Even when, long afterwards, he went to sleep, it was a disturbed and unhappy sleep.

  I often said to Marcus that his religion was inherited. This was quite unfair, for his religion was deep-rooted and sincere. It was his busy-ness in Church matters that was inherited. His father was a schoolteacher and churchwarden who, to his family’s surprise, took orders late in life and died in a small parish in the Midlands. Marcus had spent all his life, from choirboy days on, doing things in and for the Church. It was impossible for him now to wash his hands and say that things would have to take their course; that Father Battersby was the Bishop’s appointee, that he, Marcus, had done all he could to make the appointment acceptable to Hexton-on-Weir, and that now they’d just have to see how things worked out. It just wasn’t in Marcus to do that. The next morning, after surgery, he went to have it out with Mary.

  I heard about the interview in a somewhat fragmented fashion. By chance I met during the morning an old colleague from the High School in Ripon, and we arranged to have lunch in the Chinese Restaurant. We were deep in the menu, and Mr Li was bending over us and indulging in his ‘You like sweet-sour plawns?’ talk (outside the restaurant he spoke broad Australian English, but he claimed it disconcerted the tourists if he did it at his place of business, so he maintained a cheerfully split personality); and thus we did not notice when Mary and Thyrza Primp came in and took the table next to ours. The restaurant, by the way, was quite half empty. When I looked up I’m sure my face revealed my displeasure. I’m equally sure that this pleased Mary, who felt she had somehow made a point. She leaned across to me, with a brave smile that was adapted from the one that was part of her funeral mien.

  ‘Your Marcus has been most unkind to me today,’ she said. ‘He accused me of making a great fuss about trivialities. I wish you could make him see that matters of faith are not to be characterized as trivial. Especially by one who is a churchwarden.’

  I smiled in steely fashion, and turned back to my friend without a word. I’d had Mary Morse. Mary and Thyrza, ostentatiously not lowering their voices, began talking about hiring a bus every Sunday to ferry the orthodox to St Mary’s, in Shipford. This project, which became known to the amorphous opposition to Mary’s doings as the ‘God bus’ or the ‘Godmobile’ later became the subject of much ridicule, I’m pleased to say.

  Marcus told me a little more that evening.

  ‘I told her that she’d got too little to do, and she was filling up her time by making a great fuss about nothing . . . I think I also said she was a bit of a trouble-maker, and that she should stop thinking of herself as the keeper of the town’s conscience.’

  ‘Not bad,’ I said, ‘though erring on the side of mildness, as usual with you. Did you actually lose your temper?’

  ‘I didn’t explode in a great fuss-fumble, if that’s what you mean,’ said Marcus, with a grin. ‘I lost it enough to give her a piece of my mind.’

  ‘I saw her later, so I won’t bother to ask if it had any effect.’

  ‘I did extract a promise that when Father Battersby came for the fête, he would be courteously received.’

  ‘A fat lot of good such a promise will be,’ I said dismissively. ‘Courtesy comes in a variety of temperatures, particularly for Thyrza. She lowers her temperature automatically for Methodists. For Father Battersby it’s going to feel like solitary confinement in Siberia. You realize that in the Chinese restaurant today they were discussing laying on a bus to Shipford every Sunday?’

  ‘Damn those women!’ shouted Marcus, banging his pipe down on the fireplace so hard that he broke the stem. ‘If Mary wants a fight, I’ll fight her! I’m going to make sure the man is properly received, and has a congregation to come to!’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I said. ‘I should start organizing one of those armed bodyguards American presidents ha
ve if you want the man to see sunset on the day of the fête.’

  The fête, you notice, was now beginning to loom large in the calendar of Hexton’s Anglicans. It was always the big event in June, held in a marquee on the meadows beneath the castle. Marcus had suggested that this year I might organize it, but I had jibbed. I am not a pillar of the Church of England, merely a minor buttress. Thyrza Primp could not do it, being occupied with moving her snuffy odds and ends to the happy haven of Harrogate. Mary, in her bereaved state, could not, since a fête was essentially festive (though remembering some of the earlier Hexton fêtes I had been to, I felt this argument had very little weight to it). Thus the job fell to Franchita Culpepper and Mrs Mipchin. Franchita returned from her visit to the dentist like a giant refreshed, and repolished. She threw herself into organizing the event with a ferocious energy that was quite terrifying, and would have been excessive if she had been arranging the Edinburgh Tattoo. Wheedling, cajoling, threatening, bullying, everything was done in a tremendous whirl, and up and down the wynds of Hexton people began to shrink inside the doorways of their old stone houses when they saw Franchita coming. Mrs Mipchin burrowed along industriously in her wake.

  I was beginning, in fact, to find Mrs Mipchin useful. I, inevitably, was involved in a minor way with the fête. I call it a fête, but it is really a mixture of bazaar, bring-and-buy sale, and fairground. There are outdoor games and indoor games, to provide for both kinds of weather, and stalls selling all imaginable kinds of things, from baby clothes to homemade coconut ice. The aim of the sensible attender was to get rid of a lot of his own unwanted rubbish, without acquiring any of somebody else’s, but you had to be really strong of mind or short of purse to manage that. The outdoor games were mostly macho affairs of the trial-of-strength kind, by which the local boys and the lads from the army camp vied with each other to impress the local girls. The indoor ones were more varied. Last year I had run a roulette-type game that had brought a faintly wicked whiff of the casino to Hexton. This year, so as not to associate the pro-Battersby party with even the faintest suspicion of moral laxity, I opted to run the ‘Antiques and Nearly’ stall with Mr Horsforth, the Grammar School headmaster, father of the ineffable Timothy. This was, of course, the junk stall, and as everyone said, ‘It was surprising what you could pick up’ (if you weren’t careful). Anyway, in the run-up to the fête, I was on occasion thrown into the company of Mrs Mipchin, and, as I say, she proved useful.