by Gardam, Jane
‘Go on, go on,’ cried Dulcie. ‘You got it up I think,’ and thought, I believe I said something rather risqué just then, and giggled.
‘This is quite serious, Dulcie. Don’t laugh. Go over there and pull the blue one.’
And so they toiled, and after what seemed to be hours they both heard the sad boom of a bell.
‘I think it was only the church clock striking seven,’ she said.
‘We must go on trying.’
But she couldn’t and made for the chancel again and possible candles on the altar for heat. He followed, but the candles looked like greasy ice and all the little night-lights people light for memorials to the dead were brownish and dry and there were no matches. Dulcie’s lips were turning blue now. ‘This,’ she said, not crossly, ‘will be the death of me. We have no warm clothing and between us we are nearly two hundred years old. My mother stayed in bed all the time after eighty. There was nothing wrong with her but everyone cherished her.’
Through a door they found a vestry and a wall full of modern pine cupboards, ‘Bequeathed,’ said a plaque, ‘by Elizabeth Feathers’. ‘I wish she’d bequeathed an electric fire,’ said Dulcie.
Inside, the cupboards were crammed full of choirboys’ black woollen cassocks, and Fiscal-Smith and Dulcie somehow scrambled into one each. Dulcie said they were damp. But then, over in the priests’ vestry nearby, there was treasure. Albs, cottas, chasubles and a great golden embroidered cope beneath a linen cover.
‘Wrap it round you,’ ordered Fiscal-Smith.
‘It’s reserved for Easter only,’ said Dulcie. ‘It’s for the Bishop and it’s too big. It could go round us both.’
So they both stood inside it, their faces looking out from it side-by-side. ‘My neck is still very cold,’ said Dulcie. ‘Look, there is the ceremonial mitre and the St. Ague stoll. This church! This church you know was once High. And very well-endowed.’
‘I can’t remember what High is. I’m a Roman Catholic,’ said Fiscal-Smith, ‘but I’m in favour if High turns up the heat. Remember Hong Kong. No copes there. Too hot. This is very curious head-gear, Dulcie. We are becoming ridiculous.’
‘I wish this was a monastery,’ she said. ‘There’d be a supply of hoods.’
‘That was because of the tonsures.’
‘I’m not surprised. I had terrible tonsils as a girl. Before penicillin and I wasn’t a monk. Wonderful penicillin.’
‘I’m lost,’ said Fiscal-Smith.
‘It was God’s reward for us winning the war, penicillin.’ (‘She’s bats.’) ‘Willy used to say that every nation that has ever achieved a great empire blazes up for a moment in its dying fire. Penicillin. I wouldn’t have missed our Finest Hour, would you, Fiscal-Smith?’
‘I bloody would,’ he said. Then after a silence, ‘Look here, Dulcie. Where do they keep the Communion wine?’
* * *
It was later that there came a loud knocking on the vestry door into the churchyard. ‘Are you in there? An answer please. Are you there? Who are you?’
‘Yes, we are locked into the church. Accidentally. Dulcie is not well. It is very cold. This is Sir Frederick Fiscal-Smith speaking.’
‘Have you tried to open the door?’
‘Of course we’ve tried the bloody door.’
‘I mean this door. The vestry door. It is beside you. There is an inside bolt.’
Fiscal-Smith leaned from his princely garment, considered the unobtrusive little modern door, slid open a silken brass bolt and revealed the misty morning. There, in running shorts among the graves, stood the family man.
Out through the doorway, laced across with trails of young ivy, a door which, like Christ’s in Holman-Hunt’s Light of the World in St. Paul’s Cathedral, only opened from within, stepped a pair of ancient Siamese twins in cloth of gold, one of them wearing a papal headdress and both of them blue to the gills.
Away down past the churchyard at the foot of the steep stepped path sped old Chloe on her bicycle bearing on the handlebars a jam sponge and in her other hand the ancient church key. She called a greeting and waved.
‘Just wondered if I’d remembered to unlock. So glad I had,’ and pressed on.
In the village shop, she said, ‘There’s something going on in the church. I think it’s a pageant.’
CHAPTER 5
Dulcie had been put to bed by Susan. Fiscal-Smith, with his overnight case beside him on the terrace, was awaiting transport.
‘You might call me a taxi.’
Susan said, ‘There are no taxis. I’ll drive you to the station. Do you want to say goodbye to Dulcie?’
‘Oh, no thank you.’
‘She will not be pleased.’
‘Whatever I say or do makes not the least difference to her. I make no difference to anyone.’
‘Oh, I’m sure—.’
‘All the years we have all known each other, do you know, Susan, I’ve never actually been invited anywhere. And I was present when Betty saw Veneering for the first time. Party. Filth was like Hyperion. Betty looked like the captain of the school hockey team. Gorgeous Betjeman girl. Stalwart but not joyful.’
‘You don’t have to tell me this—.’
‘As she came in to the party she saw Veneering across the room. Hell-raising, blond-yellow hair falling over his face, already half drunk (and with a case starting against Eddie next morning) and I saw him get hold of a pillar. White and gold. Fluted. His face became very still and serious. Yes. I saw the beginning of it. The disgraceful love affair.’
‘We have five minutes to get to the station. You may catch it but you know, you’re very welcome—.’
‘No I am not.’
* * *
In the train he stood inside the doors on the high step and looked down on Susan. ‘No. I am not welcome. But thank you for the lift. Edward and Betty never invited me to stay either. At that lunch at Dulcie’s I had to walk in from Salisbury. Seven miles.’
‘Oh, Fiscal-Smith,’ she said, ‘until yesterday you were one of the last friends. Her last and best.’
‘I wonder if she remembers,’ he said. ‘That I was Edward’s best man?’
The doors clashed together, clapping their hands a couple of times. There were some fizzing and knocking sounds and then a long sigh. Then the train clattered off, and Susan stood staring at its disappearing rump, wondering why the ridiculous man cared so much about these people who were dead and hadn’t liked him anyway. He’d said in the car that Veneering was the best of them. That Veneering could have invited him down here. That he’d known him from boyhood.
‘But couldn’t you have invited them to you anyway? To stay with you up in the North?’
‘Not possible,’ he had said. ‘Anyway, I am the only one who knows Veneering’s secrets.’
‘Did you never have a wife, Fiscal-Smith?’
‘Certainly not,’ he had said.
God, thought Susan, these old fruits are boring.
CHAPTER 6
Anna, the young wife of the poet from the house that had been Veneering’s, had been at the village shop that morning at the same time as Chloe, buying bread and milk for breakfast, and she had heard the words ‘pageant’ and ‘church’.
She was interested in the church, and the unlikely Saint Ague, and had been allowed to do something about the vestry. She loved robes and the clergy. She came from a vicarage family and wasn’t usual. She was the reason why the brass plates in memory of Betty Feathers shone so bright. What a homely name! Some old villager! Then someone else corrected her and told her about wonderful dead Betty, very distinguished woman, and she thought, Oh Lord, another old dear. And it was Anna now, the family woman who put the Cope in clean sacking and starched the choir boys’ surplices so that they looked like preening swans. Sadly there were only three choir boys now and seldom visible. Or audible.
Soon, the old guard predicted this woman (Anna) would be in Charge of Altar Frontals, then Communion Silver and Candle-sticks (already rumoured to be in her attic). Not, of course, Flowers. Only Betty Feathers had dared take Flowers unasked. Betty Feathers had not had much to do with churches except in Hong Kong but she was unbeatable on flowers. During her mature years at St. Ague with her perfect husband Sir Edward (Filth) Feathers, vicars of the parish had been grateful for such a conventional and pleasant woman and nothing churchy about her. You would never guess she might take over. And here most exceptionally, for most of St. Ague was fashionably atheist now, was another. This Anna. ‘Labourers,’ said the village elders, ‘do still seem to keep the vineyard going even late in the day. And for no pay.’ Anna had been a god-send at the last harvest festival and for the first time in years there had been more than tins of baked beans round the lectern.
There had been a bit of a fuss about Anna surrounding the Easter pulpit with bramble bushes. Not only had she taken them up by the roots (she put them back down her drive-way, where they thrived) but they had damaged several small children who had come with chocolate eggs and rabbits.
Mothers—one or two—enquired if she was interested in the cleaning rota and she said, ‘I don’t want to push in but if you like we’ve got a power hose and we could cover the Saxon frieze of The Wounds of St. Ague in bubble-wrap.’ ‘Or Elastoplast,’ said her husband, the poet, the family man.
In the end they let Anna fix up only the vestry. Just for the present.
‘I do not care for “fixing up”,’ said one of the ex-flower committee, now confined, like her twin sister, to a wheel chair. They lived with a Carer up the lane and went to church on separate weeks, as the Carer could take only one at a time.
The Vicar tearing past to the next of his string of churches each Sunday, gave thanks for Anna (whoever she was), prayed for new hassocks and fungicides and matches.
‘It will take a hundred grand to deal with the vestry. Half a million to save the church,’ said Anna. ‘We’ll have a go with the power hose.’
St. Ague’s became Anna’s secret passion, her plan for life to supersede (or kill) Chloe. Her heart had gone cold with dread when Chloe, that morning, had said the word ‘pageant’.
* * *
‘Oh yes,’ Chloe had said. ‘Scarlet and gold. Robes. Pushing out through that little narrow door. Very queer. Something double-headed. Like black magic. We’re wondering if it was art? Your husband seemed to be in charge, Anna. Is he a film director?’
‘In charge!’ she cried. ‘I left him in bed.’
‘Well he was in running shorts. And he was either on his mobile or directing, like in a play. His arms going up and down.’
Anna said that she had better get home, but instead launched off her car with the breakfast in it towards Privilege House which seemed to be empty except for Herman who was standing in the kitchen eating fish-fingers on his own. He was staring out at the now heavily falling rain. ‘Can I come round to you, Anna? To play? I mean music. We’re going back to America tomorrow.’
‘Where’s your grandmother?’
Anna turned to ice when she saw the gold and crimson vestments gleaming around the Aga, a mitre contracting on one hot plate, and Dulcie’s yesterday’s funeral hat on the other.
‘They put her back in bed I think.’
‘And you didn’t even go up to see,’ said Anna. ‘You are rubbish, Herman.’
* * *
Dulcie was sitting up in bed, her hair fallen into extraordinary Napoleonic cork-screws, her eyes immense, and downing a double Famous Grouse. ‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘He didn’t say goodbye.’ She wept.
‘Who?’ Anna took her in her arms and rocked her.
‘No need for that,’ said Dulcie. ‘Fiscal-Smith of course. I’ve known him over 60 years. My oldest living friend. I can’t believe it. I am mortified.’
‘But Dulcie, you didn’t want him. You didn’t invite him. He drives you mad. And to be truthful you deserve better. Dulcie?’
‘Yes. Well, no. You see, he’s never been known to leave anywhere early unless, of course, he’s been kicked out. I’m afraid that does happen. He was never exactly one of us. Not important to us. We didn’t know much about him. Though I believe that somehow Veneering did. Somewhere long ago, I was never close to him, he was so boring. But you see, this morning I was locked in the church with him. We had to wrap ourselves up together in the golden Cope.’
‘Oh, Dulcie! He’ll get over it. He’s used to being ignored.’
‘Oh, the vestments!’
‘Dulcie, I’ll see to them. Now get up, I’ll find you some clothes and you can come over to us. I’ve sent Herman over already. I’ll make the kids cook the lunch. Where’s your daughter?’
‘Susan’s driving him to the station.’ Dulcie began to cry. ‘He’s so ashamed. He was always frightened of being shamed. It is the Yorkshire accent. And—he never said goodbye.’
‘Come on. Get this jersey on.’
‘He won’t come back. He’s a terrible bore. I don’t like him, but Willy said he was a very good lawyer. Incorruptible.’
‘Like Veneering then?’
‘No,’ she said, her mind at last at work. ‘No. Not like Veneering. Simpler than Veneering. But he’s the last link. The last friend.’
‘Coat,’ said Anna, ‘Gloves. Head-scarf, it’s still raining. Put your feet in these boots.’
As Anna’s car, Dulcie in the head-scarf beside her, hardly up to her shoulder, passed Old Filth’s house in the dell Anna looked down at its front door and saw a window slightly open. The five-barred gate was padlocked but something very queer and large had appeared behind it wrapped in a tarpaulin. There came a sudden insolent puff of smoke from Old Filth’s medieval chimney.
Better say nothing, thought Anna. Enough for one day. And it’s only nine in the morning.
CHAPTER 7
Susan, clamp-jawed, had not looked towards Old Filth’s house as she took Fiscal-Smith to the station, nor did she alone, on the way back. She was taken up with thoughts about her mother, who was obviously going down-hill fast.
Not fit to be left alone. These new people are a god-send, but you can’t expect—. And Herman and I go back to America tomorrow. I wonder when I ought to tell her that I’m not married anymore? Herman hasn’t told her. Well I can’t tell her. It would be all over the village.
And as to what she’s done now! Not so much this senile episode in the church. It’s what she’s done to poor little Fiscal-Smith. She’s bloody hurt him. She can hurt. She does. She used to hurt poor old Dad but she doesn’t remember. He had to find new books to read all the time and work for the Thomas Hardy Society, which got him only as far as Dorchester. He asked me to look after her but she’s so silly. He knew she was silly. I don’t think he ever spotted that she’s also rather nasty. Got me off from Hong Kong soon as I was out of the pram to a boarding school in England—her old school of course. I hated Hong Kong. I hate all that last lot who came home, with their permed hair, thinking they’re like the Last Debutantes curtseying in the court of heaven. Hate, hate, hate—.
‘My mother,’ she told the passing trees along the lanes towards St. Ague, ‘let everyone call me Sulky Sue from the beginning. I guess she was the one who invented it. She’s hard, my mother. She’s not altogether the fool she makes herself out to be: the fool who is very sweet. She’s neither foolish nor sweet, really. She’s manipulative, cunning and works at seeming thick as a brick. And nasty.’
Through tears, on Privilege Hill Susan braked as a woman passed in front of the car. It was the tall old woman who was at the do in London yesterday. In pink. Silk. Long coat. She’s still in it! It’s Isobel. She’s got Betty Feathers’ pink umbrella. Lovely-looking person. Wish she was my mother.
At least there’s plenty of money. She’s not a burden to me. But we must think ab
out death-duties one day soon. She won’t like it, but we must.
And Fiscal-Smith. Ancient little Fiscal-Smith. Ma’s really hurt him this time. Deep—twisted in the knife. Whatever has she said to him? Oh God—I wish I had a mother I could love. I wonder if she’s beginning to like him, or something.
I must go and see these new people to say goodbye.
PART TWO
Teesside
CHAPTER 8
Florrie Benson—that’s to say she was Florrie Benson before she married the man from Odessa in Herringfleet, Teesside, England ten years back in 1927 and became Florrie Venetski or Venski or some such name—Florrie Benson walked every day of the school term with her son to see him on to the school train. The son was ten, the place the cold east coast, the time 7.30 in the morning and the year 1937.
The boy, Terence, did not walk beside her. He never had, from being five. He disappeared ahead of her the minute they were over the front doorstep.
It was not that he was in any way ashamed at being seen with his mother. He never had been. It was just that life was an urgent affair of haste and action and nothing in it should be missed.
He was a big, blond, good-looking, lanky, athletic sort of child, in top-gear from the start, his mother plodding behind him. By the time she had caught up with him on the station platform he had disappeared into the raucous mob of local children, his flash of white blond hair running among them like a light.
Florrie never even turned her head to look for him. Never had. She arranged herself against the low rails by the ticket-office her kind, big hands hanging down over it, her smiling brown eyes gazing at the cluster of girls—always girls—who rushed to her like chickens expecting grain. All she seemed to do was smile. What the girls talked to her about goodness knows, but they never stopped until the train came.