Fete Fatale

by Robert Barnard

  She was a woman totally devoid of humour. She made Mrs Thatcher sound like a stand-up comic. Rigid, narrow-minded and dull, she walked all her days veiled in the dreariest garb of propriety and respectability. So totally incapable was she of detecting irony that I found I could drop into the conversation suggestions for the most outrageous courses of action for the anti-Battersby party. Provided these were not reported to Franchita (and Franchita was busy for much of the time, hallooing up hill and down dale, lassooing in helpers and netting home produce of all kinds), these suggestions might get straight back to Mary or Thyrza Primp, who were similarly devoid of humour, and then be seriously canvassed. I would say, ‘I’m surprised Mary doesn’t get up a petition to British Rail to reopen the station for a Sunday service to Shipford.’ Or: ‘Of course the Archbishop of Canterbury is the ultimate court of appeal.’ The fact that Mary and her committee could so gravely discuss such absurd ideas resulted in a great deal of rough bucolic scoffing, and did great harm to their cause.

  I was enlisting myself, you notice, into the Battersby cause. I suppose I did so for Marcus’s sake, and because I so detested Mary Morse and Thyrza Primp. I had certainly liked Father Battersby (though in general I prefer a more comfortable sort of man), but I had a suspicion that he would not thank anyone for organizing support for him. I rather thought he felt he could carry off things perfectly well on his own account when he took up the living.

  So that was the position as the day of the fête approached. On the one hand stood Mary, Thyrza, Franchita, Mrs Mipchin, and a band of like-minded souls, well- or ill-meaning. I would not want you to think that the tide was turning against Mary. Hexton was a town afflicted with a kind of mental sciatica, and most of its inhabitants were always two or three steps behind everyone else. Change of any kind being suspect, they were not likely to welcome the new ways and views that Father Battersby represented. Nor were they any too bright: I came to believe that the word ‘celibate’ conjured up for them all sorts of steamy but ill-defined images that made them wonder how he could have managed hitherto to keep out of the Sunday papers.

  On the other side stood Marcus, Colonel Weston, and a large, amorphous group of people who had no particular feelings about ceremonial versus evangelical plainness, or indeed about celibacy, but who resented being dictated to by a middle-aged, middle-class woman who arrogated to herself the right to set the tone for Hexton. This group, as I say, was amorphous, but they looked into each other’s eyes and recognized their fellowship. Marcus did as little as possible overt recruiting, but the Blatchleys, with whom Father Battersby was staying for the fête, were more shamelessly drumming up support, so that experts were predicting that Father Battersby’s first service would have the largest congregation seen in Hexton for years, and the most working-class. It was all mildly exciting, as well as decidedly amusing.

  One day in late May, a week or so before the fête, I was walking Jasper on the path around the castle. Hexton Castle is in ruins, or nearly so, and of course it looks much better that way. The path is high and shady, with precipitous descents down to the weir, and a fine view of the meadows. The descents meant that I had to keep a sharp eye on Jasper, which I have to do in any case: he is a dog of quite undiscriminating sexuality, who is liable to throw himself on top of dog, bitch, squirrel or fox. He is a lovable black mongrel, an RSPCA £10 Special Offer. Marcus never said so openly, but he was upset by the cruelty involved in a lot of dog-breeding. Anyway, mongrels are healthier, and he said he was damned if he was going to spend his home time physicking his own dog.

  The first person I met on Castle Walk this particular day was Mr Mipchin—he of the Crippen moustache and the much-suppressed sense of humour. It was nice to think he had emerged from his career as a tax man with no manic passion about Clause 94, subsection 23A (iv), and that there might lurk a real and quirky person somewhere there, if only he were allowed out. On this occasion, he actually nudged me in the ribs.

  ‘I suspect you’re being naughty, Mrs K,’ he said, his moustaches bobbing up and down like walrus leaping for fish.

  ‘Why, Mr Mipchin,’ I replied, in traditional style, ‘whatever can you mean?’

  ‘Having my good lady on is what I mean. And all the other good ladies too.’

  ‘I don’t think I know any good ladies,’ I said.

  ‘ “Unco, guid”, as my wife’s fellow-countryman once said. I suspect you’re leading them on! Well, I must say, I like a good blowup. All adds a touch of spice to life, eh? eh?’

  And he toddled off round the curve, chuckling asthmatically. Another secret sympathizer, I thought; another member of the underground resistance, terrified into apparent submission by Hexton’s SS.

  Amusing myself with the thought of how much secret support Father Battersby would have by the time he arrived in Hexton, and wondering whether any of it could be harnessed into action, I walked on from the precipitous paths around the north wall of the castle, and down the pleasanter slopes back towards town. And the next person I bumped into was Marcus—standing near the steps down to Castle Wynd, and talking to my partner-to-be on the junk stall, Mr Horsforth.

  I knew Mr Horsforth quite well, because I am on the County’s list of supply teachers, and I quite often have had spells filling in at the Hexton Grammar School (as we still called it, though the powers-that-be had altered it to something more democratic-sounding). Mr Horsforth was tall, bony, authoritarian and fond of the sound of his own voice. He gave the rest of the world the feeling that they would have trouble living up to his standards. ‘Silly little boy’ was his favourite expression of rebuke to his pupils, and he gave teachers the impression that he would like to say something similar to them. As I said, Timothy—he of the fair hair and the long, loving fox-trot around Hexton with Fiona Weston—was his son, and on the infrequent occasions when I felt charitable, I had to admit that the role could not have been an easy one. He had had a wife, thin, wispy and self-effacing, but she had slipped out of the world apologetically some five or six years before.

  I let Jasper off the lead to romp around the castle slopes with Smokey, Mr Horsforth’s humorous Old English sheepdog, who, like Jasper, was a dog of rampant sexuality. I watched them for a moment, like a voyeur, then I joined the men.

  No prizes for guessing what they were discussing.

  ‘She is being incredibly childish,’ said Mr Horsforth, in his thin, precise voice. ‘Stirring up trouble, driving the town into opposing camps, and generally behaving like someone in a Victorian novel. Somebody should tell her.’

  ‘I have,’ said Marcus. ‘You could try doing the same, if you liked. It’s like banging your head against the Tower of London.’

  ‘I’m afraid she wouldn’t acknowledge my having any right to lay down the law for her,’ said Mr Horsforth, his voice regretful of human perversity. ‘I suppose the only one who might have done that was Walter Primp.’

  ‘And he was too weak to try,’ I put in. ‘Mary and Franchita and Co. get away with murder because nobody stands up to them.’ I looked up towards the castle walls, where Jasper was giving a new meaning to the song. ‘On Top of Old Smokey’. ‘Oh, Jasper—really!’

  ‘Smokey! Here! At once! Heel! Heel, boy!’

  Mr Horsforth, having demonstrated his authority over his dog, in default of being able to do it over Mary, smiled thinly at me and went on:

  ‘I’m not sure there is a great deal I can do for you, Marcus. As you know, I’m rather an occasional churchgoer—’ (That was true. Mr Horsforth came three or four times a year, and sat through the service with an air of believing that religion was an excellent thing for the troops, but it mustn’t be thought that he believed such nonsense.) ‘Insofar as I am a member of the congregation, I’m against all this sectarian silliness, so I’m entirely with you there. Beyond that . . . ’

  ‘One thing you can do, on the day of the fête, is help me ensure that he’s given a courteous reception. But beyond that, I hoped you could find one or two interested boys to introduce
to him. You know that the Lads’ Brigade and the Youth Club and all that sort of thing fell away long ago—Walter wasn’t an inspirer, poor man, especially of the young—and I know Father Battersby is hoping to revive them. Young people, I imagine, are likely to find Mary and her antics wildly old-hat and ridiculous, and if you could say a few words, perhaps at assembly, about the dangers of bigotry and intolerance (not tying them in in any way with the current situation, of course), and if you could get together a nucleus of the sort of lad that you think might be interested, and might give a hand to Father Battersby, then I think the ground would be properly prepared for him, and all this opposition seen in its true perspective.’

  ‘I could perhaps do that. There is a type of lad who is predisposed to the religious thing.’ (This last was said as from a great height, and certainly put Marcus in his place.) ‘And I can detail my boy to give a hand with anything this Battersby starts up. There’s bound to be a good turn-out of boys to the fête, and I can get Timothy to round up a few of the more presentable ones and take them along to him. I’ll take him round and introduce him to a few people, if needs be. In the intervals, of course, of peddling near-antiques with your good lady.’

  ‘Thyrza’s junk,’ I said. ‘Stuff too awful to be taken to Harrogate. I think we’ll work on a system that as soon as either of us has sold five items of Thyrza’s junk, we’ve earned fifteen minutes off.’

  Mr Horsforth smiled thinly, his bow towards a sense of humour.

  ‘Well, good day to you, Marcus. Good day, Helen.’

  And he allowed Smokey one last roll with Jasper, and then they proceeded in an orderly manner up the path.

  ‘I’m not sure Mr Horsforth is someone I’d choose as an ally,’ I said, watching him go.

  ‘He’s not someone I’d care to go out for a drink with, that’s for sure. Still, he’s a useful man in some ways.’ Marcus took my arm, and we went back towards town. ‘And give him his due: he’s too sensible to go along with any of this bigotry that Mary is peddling around the town.’

  ‘What makes you think,’ I said suddenly, ‘that Father Battersby is any less bigoted than Mary?’

  ‘Oh, surely not, surely not. Anyway, if he is, we’ll face that problem when we come to it.’

  That was Marcus—a great one for facing problems when he came to them.

  CHAPTER 5

  WATERY BIER

  The day of the fête dawned bright and clear, as they say in children’s books where it always does. Hexton-on-Weir was seldom so lucky, though it would have been wrong to blame entirely for the dismal atmosphere the drizzle or squally showers with which the town was usually favoured. People had a lot to do with it too. This year, though, the sky was pure blue from early morning, and the sun played on laburnums and lilacs and early roses in the Hexton gardens.

  ‘No one could make trouble on a day like this,’ said Marcus, tucking into a hearty plateful of bacon and eggs that was designed to make him forget food for eight or nine hours.

  I marvelled at his optimism, particularly in view of the fact that he’d been warned. Thyrza Primp had been along to the surgery two days before with Patch. She wanted Marcus to give him a general check-up, apparently to see if he could stand the excitements of Harrogate. When Marcus tried to give her his little lecture on charity, tolerance and open-mindedness, she said that in her view (and in that of poor Walter) the Church had been a good deal too open in recent years, and it was time to remember that we were not Methodists or Romans but Anglicans, with our own ways. She regretted the necessity of making it clear to Father Battersby that he was not wanted in this parish, but she felt that the need to impress this on him fell to her, in view of her position in the parish, and she did not intend to shirk it. He would be left in no doubt of the feelings of the town towards him. ‘We shall do it in the politest possible way,’ she added ominously.

  By the morning of the fête Father Battersby had been in Hexton for about twelve hours, and I hoped he had suffered nothing worse than a snub from Thyrza or Mary. He had stayed overnight at the Blatchleys’, and in fact was to stay there until Thyrza moved out of the vicarage on the following Saturday. Marcus was sufficiently involved with the fête to have arranged no special meeting with him, beyond saying that he would meet him there. We both, in fact, were busy enough, in all conscience, from early in the morning. Marcus was helping set up the outdoor games and trials of strength, in preparation for the opening, which was set for eleven o’clock. I was organizing the vast array of junk we had collected for display on our stall, which was carefully situated in one of the best and most central positions in the marquee (good, it must be said, for chatting to people, as well as selling things). I say ‘our’ stall, but I had collected the stuff, and now I was being allowed to set it out—Mr Horsforth merely standing by and saying ‘You do it so well.’ The implication that this was ‘woman’s work’ seemed to hang unspoken in the atmosphere.

  If there is anything I loathe, it’s being watched while I’m working. I said: ‘I hope you’ve organized a few presentable boys to meet Father Battersby?’

  ‘Heavens above, it quite slipped my mind,’ he fussed. ‘Timothy! Timothy!’

  Across the chaos of preparation in the marquee a fair head turned readily in the direction of the call. Mr Horsforth fussed off, and I saw him giving lengthy and peremptory instructions to his son. I wondered, idly, how many young men of twenty-three or -four would like being summoned and instructed in that manner by their father in a public place.

  I turned my attention to the junk. I call it junk because the majority of the stuff was Thyrza’s. I had, in fact, been able to pick up one or two good pieces of this and that from other people, but Thyrza’s junk surrounded me in cartons: whereas she would have had to pay the garbage men to come and cart it away, I not only had to collect it myself, but also to feign gratitude as well. And Thyrza would throw a fit of bad temper when she saw that not all of it was displayed. That was out of the question, however. I devoted one end of the stall to a selection of the stuff: souvenirs of depressing holiday-resorts, a stone hot-water bottle, a monstrous collection of hatpins, odd shoe-trees, moth-eaten tablemats, a broken brass fender and a Britannia metal inkwell and penholder. Still in the cartons was a bedpan. I thought of labelling that end of the stall Souvenirs of Thyrza Primp, but I did not think that her popularity with the public at large was such that they would want any keepsake of her after she had taken herself into her chilly retirement. The better things were given a better display at the other end of the stall, and I had a few of those in reserve, too, as soon as any of them should go. I priced them high. On Thyrza’s things I was ready to negotiate a give-away.

  Across the aisle I noticed that Mrs Nielson had priced all her homemade jams and chutneys at 40p.

  ‘Too cheap,’ I shouted.

  ‘No it’s not,’ she shouted back, patting Gustave, who was tied up under the table. ‘It’s rubbish, most of it. Why should people pay the same price as for good commercial jams, or more? I tell everyone that of course theirs was lovely, but not everyone’s was, and I couldn’t cause ill-feeling by setting different prices . . . ’

  Mrs Nielson seemed to be getting Hexton’s measure (though she was wrongly dressed: her powder-blue suit and hat were that bit too formal and old-fashioned for the fête, since that is the day when Hexton women celebrate the coming of summer in flowery skirts and cotton blouses—if it’s not raincoats and wellies weather).

  It was getting close to eleven o’clock, and soon it would be time for the raging mob to be let in. A brief trip outside the marquee (to get away from the babble, which was o’ertopped by the constant loud-hailing of Franchita, who was at her most bossy and unreasonable, and might have been masterminding D-Day) suggested that today there would indeed be a crowd. The sun had brought them out, and old and young were beginning to congregate in the meadows, casually dressed, good-humoured and flirtatious. Just the crowd to be indulgently disposed towards the home produce stall, the candy-floss bar,
the knitwear stall, the Bingo drives, the Test the Power of Your Grip machine, the tea and coffee stall (with exorbitant prices) and the home handicrafts display. Just the crowd, too, to listen indulgently to the efforts of the Hexton choir, which was even now assembling outside to present its first musical offering of the day. The Hexton choir existed to sing Messiah at Christmas, and to try, if possessed by an adventurous mood, to put together a performance of The Creation or Elijah at some other point of the year. The only time they had attempted a modern work, they had made Belshazzar’s Feast sound like Belshazzar’s tea-party. Now they launched themselves, with that predictability that characterizes local do’s of this kind, into ‘Sumer is icumen in’. I stood in the sun, looking up to the winding town, to the castle and to Castle Walk, and thought that Hexton was not such a bad place to live in after all. Thus does Hexton woo one, delusively, from time to time. I saw Marcus getting his substantial bulk behind a hefty mallet, and trying to ring the bell on the Test Your Strength machine (he very nearly made it, as he very nearly made it each year). Then I saw Father Battersby arriving.

  He was coming with the Blatchley family, from the direction of Chapel Wynd, where they lived. There were three Blatchley children, noisy and energetic, and ranging in age from five to fourteen. Each of them had gathered around them a little knot of friends, and the parents, pleasant, popular people, had also accumulated acquaintances as they walked. So, though they did little in the way of formal introduction, Father Battersby had already a little circle round him, and he shook hands with some, exchanged words with others, and I saw no sign that his—what shall I call it?—his slightly abstract sympathy, his difficulty of seeing things in purely human terms, had resulted in any of those unlucky coolnesses that I had seen on his previous visit. Probably he was better when he felt at home. It was all pleasant, informal, appropriate, and it gave me some inkling of another Hexton that I wished I knew better.