by Jane Anstey
Both of them favoured decorative excess over good taste, and soon the tree was smothered in an array of brightly coloured tinsel and baubles of all descriptions. Clive, she knew, would not appreciate their efforts. He preferred a much simpler style of decoration, using two or three different colours at most, and a restrained use of tinsel and baubles, and left to himself would probably have done without a tree altogether. But Rose found she didn’t care. The tree was for Robert’s enjoyment, and it was lovely to see him entering into the spirit of decorating it as he normally did. Suddenly he was a different boy from the sulky whiner she had taken to the garden centre yesterday. Perhaps it would be possible to enjoy Christmas after all.
She wondered what Simon would be doing at the festive season.
~ * ~
Simon had not, in fact, missed service ringing that morning because he was away from home. Too much whisky and too many unhappy reflections on Saturday night had simply caused him to oversleep on Sunday. As he lived in Two Marks, three miles from the sound of the St Martin’s bells, he had slept on undisturbed until a quarter to ten, by which time it was far too late to join the others.
In the last few days, he had fallen into a kind of numb resignation about Rose, shot through with the occasional intense spurt of desperation. He had walked like a zombie through the end-of-term Christmas festivities at the college and refused point blank to attend the staff Christmas party on the Friday evening––never one of his favourite events in any case. Instead, when school finished for the term on the Friday afternoon he had taken himself home to his cottage and locked the door.
But even at home in the quiet, he couldn’t settle, and by the time he woke on Sunday his mind was full of doubts and questions, which he flung away from him angrily. Had Rose really come to love him, he asked himself, or had it all been a fantasy? The relationship had developed so fast and so unexpectedly, beginning with the dance after the St Martin’s fete back in November, where he had suddenly seen her in a new and exciting light, that he had had no time to assess it then. But before it had progressed very far, events in the village had intervened, forcing her attention back onto her family and particularly young Robert. He had understood that and played his part in helping Robert out of his silence and trauma. But now he was back on the treadmill he had walked all this week, hoping against hope that she really had loved him, even if it had not been enough to prise her from her family, and then cursing himself for wishing more misery and confusion on her in the midst of her other difficulties.
He could not forget their last meeting, or her white face dominated by dark-ringed unhappy eyes, her short curly hair all wild and tangled in the windy damp of the churchyard. Whatever happened, even if she refused ever to see him again, he loved her more than he had ever loved anyone and could not imagine returning to his former heart-free state. But that didn’t help him to cope with the thought of seeing her, ringing bells with her, meeting her casually at unexpected moments. The wound was still too raw.
The bottle of malt whisky on his sideboard was half-empty by Saturday night, and the temptation to drown his sorrows further had been hard to resist. You were a fool to take that route, he said to himself with bitter resignation as he sat by the cold hearth with his head in his hands that Sunday morning. What good did it do except help you to wallow in self-pity? You aren’t the first man to lose a woman before you’ve even had her, and you won’t be the last, for God’s sake.
He went to the wardrobe and got out a heavy sweater to wear over his pyjamas. In the coldest part of the winter, with no central heating in his stone cottage, he usually made an effort to keep the wood burner going all night, but he had failed to bank it up before he went to bed, and now the ash was cold. He drank his glass of water and filled it up again. Coffee and some toast next, he promised himself. And a plan of campaign to stop him from spending Christmas in a drink-sodden stupor.
A holiday, he thought. That was what he needed. He turned on the computer and began to search the internet for last-minute holiday deals without any clear idea where he wanted to go, only a strong desire to get away from Hampshire and the vicinity of Rose Althorpe. He sometimes went skiing in France during the Christmas holidays, but it didn’t appeal to him as a solo activity this year, even though the snow would be good on the Alpine slopes. He had a cousin who lived in Scotland, but he didn’t keep in close contact with her, and they had never had the kind of relationship which would allow him just to ring up and invite himself for Christmas. In the end, he settled for the Cairngorms. He could ski if he liked, if the snow was good enough, and Scottish hospitality was legendary. He would stay for a fortnight, visit his cousin if she happened to invite him, and see the New Year in, Hogmanay-style. Something whispered to him that it would be all too easy to drink too much whisky in Scotland, too, but he brushed the thought aside. Celebrating the New Year in a crowd would be better than solitary drinking.
One of the late-booking websites found him a single room in a mountain hotel. Something to look forward to, he told himself as he reviewed what he would put in his suitcase. But the pain in his heart told him that it was an attempt at escape, pure and simple, and one doomed to failure.
Four
The Swansons preserved Sunday afternoons at the rectory whenever they could for what Liz called “civilised family time,” when the adults and teenagers arranged themselves companionably around the rectory drawing room, Liz with her knitting, Mike and Lorna reading or studying, and Jeremy dozing before evensong. The twins, being considered still incapable of civilised recreation, were banished to play out of earshot in the attic playroom. But that Sunday, not too unusually, their cherished peace was interrupted by a ring on the doorbell.
Liz made to put the needles through her ball of wool to stop the stitches from dropping, but Mike got up quietly so as not to disturb his father and made gestures indicating that he would deal with whoever it was. Liz hesitated, since the caller might be on parish business, which Mike shouldn’t really be expected to handle, then settled back into her chair. At fifteen, Mike was growing up, and it did him no harm to be involved in the bread-and-butter work of the rectory. He would come and fetch her or Jeremy if necessary.
Mike pulled open the heavy front door and found Mrs Cartwright, the sexton’s wife, on the doorstep.
“Hallo, Mrs Cartwright,” he said politely, hoping the visit betokened no new chapter in the sorry saga of her elderly husband’s chest and its ailments. “Can I help? Or should I fetch Dad? Is it Mr Cartwright?”
“Nay,” said the old lady, her soft Cornish burr in evidence as usual. “’Tis you I wanted to see.”
“Me?” asked Mike, puzzled.
“Aye.” She produced a carrier bag, and Mike was suddenly enlightened.
“The Book?” he asked, with excitement. “Is it The Book?”
“Well,” she answered cautiously, “’tis certainly a book.”
Mike could hardly contain himself. He took the carrier bag from her and delved inside.
“The teacher at the Fayre,” she began to explain, “she sold me some books.”
“Yes,” said Mike, feeling the leather cover of the book beneath his fingers. “She gave you this carrier bag for the books you bought, I think.”
“That’s so,” Mrs Cartwright agreed. “I took ’e home, and opened ’e up. And there ’twas. An extra, like. ’Tis an old book,” she added comfortably. “I bought they books for Ben, t’keep ’e from fretting when ’e can’t get out these winter days. Give ’e summat to read, see, and he’m happy.”
“Yes,” said Mike, struggling to disentangle the last part of this speech, but mindful of the need to be courteous to rectory visitors. “I’ll give this back to Miss Barnard, shall I?”
“’Twas given to college for the Fayre, ’tis clear,” said Mrs Cartwright. “’Twouldn’t be right for me to have un, now would it? ’Sides, like I says, ’tisn’t as though it be something Ben nor I would be reading. Stories about the War be what ’e do like, see
?”
“Yes,” said Mike, stemming the flow. “Thank you very much for returning it, Mrs Cartwright. The Fayre organisers will be relieved to have it back, I know. It might be valuable, you see.”
Mrs Cartwright nodded. “Can’t understand what un were doing inside that bag, anyway. Stands to reason, my lover, nobody couldn’t buy un when t’were stashed away under table like that.”
“That’s true,” replied Mike, hugely enjoying Mrs Cartwright’s Cornish turn of phrase but trying not to show it. “It is rather odd.” He didn’t think any further explanation would prove worth the effort, but at the same time he didn’t want to be rude to the old girl. After all, she had brought the book back. Otherwise they might never have known what had happened to it.
“Well, then,” she said, beaming at him with the satisfaction born of a good deed successfully accomplished. “I’ll be on my way.”
“Goodbye, Mrs Cartwright. Thank you again, very much.”
“’Tis never any trouble,” she told him sententiously, “t’do what’s right.”
Mike smiled at her departing back and shut the door behind her, hugging the carrier bag with its precious contents to him with delight. What a bit of luck that it was Mrs Cartwright whose books had been put in the carrier bag. Not everyone would have been so honest, or so innocent. Or so prompt. He skipped slightly as he went back to the drawing room.
His father had opened one eye and saw the skip. “Someone interesting?” he asked. “I thought you must be coming to summon me to my pastoral duties.”
Mike shook his head. “It was Mrs Cartwright. You know the book I told you about yesterday––the one that went missing from the Fayre stall?”
“I do indeed,” nodded Jeremy. “Don’t tell me that Mrs Cartwright had it?”
It wasn’t easy, Mike reflected, to surprise his father. But the deduction was simple enough, he supposed. “As we thought, Miss Barnard gave her the carrier bag to take her books home in. Though it must have made the bag awfully heavy, I’d have thought.”
Jeremy held out a hand. “Let’s have a look, then.”
Mike gave it to him and pulled one of the small cane chairs closer to his father’s big armchair.
Jeremy handled the leather cover of the book carefully, even reverently, before opening it. “Wow!”
“That’s what I thought, too,” said Mike, grinning. “But what is it, Dad? What are those strange letters? It’s almost English, but not quite.”
“I’m not an expert,” Jeremy admitted. “But I think this is Middle English––the kind Chaucer wrote.”
“Miss Barnard said we should show it to Mr Hellyer,” Mike remembered.
“That’s a good idea. I couldn’t start to read this properly, or to translate it, but I expect Simon would be able to.”
Mike took his phone out of his pocket. “Do you know his home number?” he asked. “Let’s call him straight away. Otherwise I won’t see him until next term. I can’t wait that long, Dad. I simply can’t.”
“The number’s in my study,” said Jeremy. “I’ll find it for you in a minute. Bear in mind, though, Mike, that it’s the Christmas vacation, and Mr Hellyer may be busy with other things or even away on holiday.”
“He’ll want to see this,” said Mike confidently. “Let’s phone him now, before he can go away anywhere.”
Jeremy looked at his watch. “Send him a text,” he advised, getting to his feet to find the phone number. “That way he can think about it and contact you when he wants to. Teachers don’t always want to be contacted by their pupils out of term time, you know.”
“He’ll want to see this,” Mike insisted. “But if it’ll make you happy, Dad, I’ll send him a text.”
Jeremy grinned. The text was sent, and the rector and his son sat down again to look through the book more carefully.
“Remind me who donated it. Was it the Abbey?”
“That’s right,” Mike confirmed. “There were quite a few books like the ones they usually give us, and then this was right at the bottom of the box.”
“I think this word here,” Jeremy said, pointing to the text, “is ‘Whitehill.’”
Mike looked carefully. “Yes! I think it is. Do you think the book is about the Abbey?”
“It’s possible,” answered his father. “Maybe they didn’t mean to donate it. They have quite a valuable library up there, you know. It could be that this book should never have gone to the Fayre at all.”
“OMG.” Mike felt the situation called for an expletive, but knew better than to utter outright blasphemy in front of his father. “What the…I mean, what on earth do we do now?”
“First thing tomorrow morning,” Jeremy answered. “I’ll ring the abbot and check.”
~ * ~
Simon, feeling allergic to social contact over the weekend, had switched his phone off; and as term was over and his time was his own, it was nearly Monday lunchtime before he switched it on again and found, among many missed calls and unwanted texts, the message from Mike.
“Have exciting book from Fayre 4 u 2 c. Please phone asap. Mike.”
Simon blinked. The abbreviations were a bit much in his present state of mind, but after a few moments he worked it out. He thought for a while before responding. Could he be bothered with a book just at the moment, however exciting? It would be much easier to ignore this text, or send Mike a reply indicating that he would look at the book when he got back in a fortnight or so. But that wouldn’t leave much time before the beginning of the school term, and in any case it might not be any more convenient then than it was now.
He sighed. He was aware of Mike’s hero worship, but it had always stopped short of being a nuisance. Mike wouldn’t have texted him unless he thought the matter important, or that this book was something Simon would really like to see. Besides, packing to go away wouldn’t occupy much time over the next few days. What else did he have to do at the moment but brood? A little counter-irritant in the form of a mysterious book might be a welcome alternative.
He replied to the text saying he could come over later that day. Monday was Jeremy’s day off, he remembered, which might mean that he would be in on this matter of Mike’s book, but in many ways that was a positive rather than a negative consideration. Simon had enjoyed helping Jeremy solve the mystery of November’s homicide in the village, and he respected and liked the rector––even though there were many matters (religion, for one) on which he knew they would never agree.
He rang the rectory doorbell just after two o’clock, and Mike opened it so quickly he knew the boy must have been watching out for him.
“Can I take your coat, sir?” he asked.
“I’ll keep it, thanks.” Simon was wearing a lined sheepskin jacket, remembering earlier experiences of the Victorian rectory’s lack of adequate heating.
“Dad said we could use his study,” Mike told him as he led the way. “He’s going to join us in a minute when he’s finished fixing some plumbing for Mum.”
Simon raised his eyebrows. He had not up till then thought of the rector as a practical man with DIY skills. Needs must, I suppose, he thought.
The study, he was glad to find, was warmed by an electric radiator under one window, and even though the fireplace was empty of coals, the temperature was less glacial than the hall and passage he had traversed on the way.
“We try to keep this room warm for parishioners who visit Dad,” Mike explained, seeing his reaction. “I’ll go and fetch the coffee. The Book is on Dad’s desk if you want to look.”
Simon chose one of the deep armchairs near the fireplace. He remembered the ambience of the room from previous conferences with Jeremy, and the way in which it somehow invited relaxation and the sharing of confidences. The books that covered almost every spare inch of wall––a varied collection of volumes on subjects ranging from literature, theology and science to detective fiction––added to the quiet seclusion he sensed the room might represent for Jeremy in the midst of the demands of a hec
tic parish calendar and a lively family. Unconsciously, he leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs in front of him.
“Good afternoon, Simon,” said Jeremy from the doorway. “Good to see you.”
Simon got to his feet, smiling, unexpectedly warmed by the greeting. He hadn’t been sure, when he and Jeremy had finished solving the village mystery a couple of weeks ago, whether the friendship that seemed to have sprung up between them would continue to develop. At the time, he had suspected his budding relationship with Rose might have stood in the way, for one thing, since the rector was clearly unhappy about that. He wondered whether Rose had told Jeremy that she had put an end to any romantic involvement between them. If so, he would never give any indication of it. Confidences are safe with him, he thought.
Mike’s arrival with the tray of coffee turned his mind back towards the purpose of their meeting.
“Thanks,” he said, accepting a mug. “Where did you say this book is?”
Mike handed it to him. “Dad says it’s very old, and Miss Barnard thought you should see it. Whitehill Abbey donated it to the Fayre on Saturday, but we didn’t like to sell it without showing it to you first.”
He decided not to explain about the book’s subsequent adventures and its return by Mrs Cartwright. Instead he sat down on the floor with his mug of coffee and waited with anticipation for his teacher’s opinion.
Simon turned the book over in his hands before opening it.
“I phoned Whitehill this morning,” Jeremy put in. “The abbot was busy but they promised he’d phone back. I think perhaps they didn’t intend to donate it to the Fayre, as we suspected.”