A small man in a tweed suit and rimless glasses seemed disposed to clap but he restrained himself and there was a silence. Leslie sat back in his chair smiling. Some of the Committee smiled back. Lord Naboth seemed interested, and leant forward to speak. Leslie prepared himself to give his views on a balanced budget. Instead he heard, ‘Mr Titmuss, we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting your wife.’
‘Really? She’s your chairman’s daughter.’ Lord Naboth smiled and papered over what might have been seen as an appeal to nepotism.
‘I mean, we haven’t all had the opportunity of asking her how she feels about taking on the rather onerous constituency duties.’
The Association Secretary, who had been called out of the room during Leslie’s speech, came back quietly and whispered a message to Nicholas.
‘Well, Charlotte is a hundred per cent behind me, naturally.’ Leslie was showing as much conviction as possible.
‘It seems she’s here,’ Nicholas announced, as surprised as anyone. ‘Charlie is here apparently.’
‘Very well’ – to Lord Naboth it appeared perfectly simple – ‘why don’t we have her in?’
Nicholas whispered to the Secretary who went out. The Committee Members doodled, coughed or whispered together. Nicholas stared up at the ceiling as Leslie looked anxiously at the door. He saw the Secretary usher in his wife, set a chair for her and leave. He saw Charlie, but a Charlie transformed. She had had her hair done in Hartscombe. She was wearing a tweed jacket and skirt, sensible shoes and a hat. Had she been out of doors, she gave the impression she would have been wearing a headscarf.
Nicholas nodded to Lord Naboth who asked the question, ‘Mrs Titmuss, would you be prepared to appear on your husband’s platforms and undertake social engagements, fêtes, coffee mornings and so on? We do depend a good deal on our coffee mornings.’
‘Of course,’ Charlie started to say, ‘I’m a hundred per cent behind Leslie and…’
‘Oh, I don’t suppose Charlotte’ll be able to do too much of that,’ her husband interrupted her.
‘Why ever not?’ Lord Naboth frowned.
‘Well, you see, we’re doing what every other young couple with faith in Britain longs to do. We’re starting a family.’
There was a murmur of approval. Leslie looked pleased, proud and relaxed. There were certain people in the world, he thought to himself, whose prayers deserved to be answered.
22
That Christmas
‘I thought we might have a word about the case.’ Henry had called on his mother at her house in Sunday Street, about a year after his father’s death, and not long before the Probate Action about the validity of Simeon’s will was to come to court. ‘Our barrister wants the answers to certain questions. You see the other side, that is the toad Titmuss and his gang, will try and find some logical reason for father turning against his family. It’s most important that we shouldn’t give them the slightest encouragement.’
‘What an extraordinary device!’ It was just before Christmas again – Dorothy thought that Christmases seemed to come round far more often these days, and Henry had brought her a present wrapped in bright paper. ‘I’ll open it now,’ Dorothy had said. ‘I can’t have it standing about here for days with me wondering if I’m going to like it.’ To her surprise it seemed to be some sort of a machine. ‘What can it be, a bomb?’
‘It’s a Teasmade, Mother. Lonnie thought of it. It’ll wake you up and give you a cup of tea.’
‘But I can give myself a cup of tea when I wake up.’
‘This will wake you up at a certain time, Mother.’
‘But nowadays I don’t have to wake up at a certain time. What can Lonnie have been thinking of?’
‘What I was trying to say’ – Henry returned to the real object of his visit – ‘is that we don’t want to hand evidence to Titmuss on a plate. Obviously every family has misunderstandings, but there are certain incidents it would be better not to mention. Speaking of Christmas…’
‘It’s not yet you know, not for another week. Lonnie’s got her dates mixed up.’
‘There’s really no need,’ he told her firmly, ‘to mention that Christmas when we all came to stay, Mr Bugloss and everybody.’
‘Oh.’ Dorothy appeared to be re-wrapping her Christmas present. ‘You mean that Christmas.’
That Christmas, the Christmas of 1969, the year after Leslie Titmuss was selected as Hartscombe’s Conservative candidate, was certainly the most disastrous that Fred ever spent at the Rectory. It was one of those occasions in which a malign fate seemed to take a special interest. It began for Fred, shortly before the festivities, on the day he visited old Mrs Fawcett in her cottage in Rapstone. ‘I always took the work easy. Slow and steady, not like Bridget at the Manor. Bridget goes at her stair-rods like a hurricane, always has done. Yet it’s me that gets the heart, isn’t it?’ Maggie Fawcett complained.
‘We’re going to move you somewhere where you’ll be more comfortable.’
‘The Worsfield General?’
‘Well, yes.’
Maggie Fawcett lay, beached in bed, a huge and alarmed woman, who, ever since Fred could remember, had helped out at the Rectory. ‘We’ll get you a bit of treatment, and hope to have you back here.’
‘Before Christmas?’
‘Let’s say, before the spring.’
‘I don’t like to leave the old cottage. My Tina’s got her plans. She and her Gary. They’ve got their arrangements.’
Tina Fawcett was an overweight, broody and determined young woman. Fred found her and her boyfriend Gary Kitson, the younger brother of Den, the banjo and double bass of the Stompers, sitting at the table in the downstairs room drinking tea and smoking. Fred told them that he was going over to the pub to call an ambulance and they said they’d reckoned he’d be taking her away.
‘Gary’s going to do this old place up,’ Tina told him, ‘when we get married.’
‘Well. That’ll be something for your mother to look forward to, won’t it? When she gets back from hospital.’ It was not a thought that seemed to please either of them particularly, so Fred left to make his telephone call.
Ted Lawless was sticking holly up over the photographs of old aeroplanes in the Baptist’s Head. As he stood at the pay phone on the wall, Fred looked at the cold and dripping churchyard and was surprised to see his brother and Mr Bugloss appear from the west door and walk briskly towards the lychgate. By the time he had finished his call they were in the bar.
‘Quite typical!’ Henry greeted him. ‘While Ben and I are in church, you’re sozzling in the pub.’
‘I’m waiting for an ambulance.’
‘Feeling seedy? Three pints, Ted. Simcox Best Bitter.’
‘Your village church is going to make a great location for Pilgrims.’ To the film producer, Fred thought, it seemed as though Rapstone Church had found its destiny at last.
‘This is our country, Benny,’ Henry told him. ‘We were born here, among these hills. You need to get back to your roots occasionally.’
‘I guess so. I never felt all that longing to get back to Whitechapel, I must say,’ Mr Bugloss told Fred. ‘Your father has been very gracious. We have a Midnight Mass scene in Pilgrims, so the Rector has generously invited us to stay over on Christmas Eve to get the feel of the occasion.’
‘Invited us?’ Fred looked at him doubtfully. ‘You mean you and Henry?’
‘I mean me and a friend of mine.’ Mr Bugloss sounded modest. ‘Hey. Didn’t you once meet Mrs Wickstead?’
‘I’m putting her in the parrot room, and Mr Bugloss in Henry’s old room.’ Dorothy was trying to work the sleeping arrangements out on the back of an old envelope while Fred and Simeon decorated the Christmas tree. ‘There’s nothing of any sort between them is there?’
‘Oh I don’t think so,’ Fred told his mother. ‘Mrs Wickstead’s extremely respectable, she lives in Hampstead.’
‘Hampstead, eh?’ Simeon was threading coloured bells on to the
branches. ‘Do the sins of the flesh stop short at Hampstead?’
‘I just don’t want to dread going to the lavatory for fear of meeting them creeping about the corridor. However, she is called Mrs Wickstead, that sounds reassuring. Henry and Agnes can have the pink room. I’d put Mrs Wickstead there but she’s not used to the boiler.’ Dorothy consulted her envelope. ‘Francesca can go in the pink room too, on the camp bed.’
‘On the camp bed!’ Simeon approved. ‘She’ll be excited about that.’
There were four bedrooms on the first floor of the Rectory, two on each side of the corridor. At the front, looking out on the cemetery, were Simeon and Dorothy’s matrimonial bedroom and a room with wallpaper covered with parrots (known as the parrot room), in which Dorothy had planned that Mrs Wickstead should sleep. At the back there was a double bedroom with pink wallpaper (known as the pink room), in which Francesca’s camp bed had been set up and in which Henry and Agnes were to have the large bed. Also at the back was a small room where Henry used to sleep. This was to be awarded to Mr Bugloss. Fred’s old room, in which he was to stay over Christmas, was up a narrow staircase and once formed part of the servants’ quarters. He had been put there as a child so that Simeon could be removed as far as possible from the sound of his drums.
These carefully worked-out arrangements were challenged, when the guests arrived on Christmas Eve, by Francesca who immediately announced that she wanted to sleep with the parrots, that she loved the parrots on the wall, and that anyway she always had the parrot room at her granny’s house. Agnes was left upstairs trying to persuade her child of the many superior advantages of the pink room, while the other members of the party, except for Simeon who was writing his sermon, assembled in the sitting-room.
‘Mrs Wickstead’ – Dorothy came up to her smiling – ‘may I hang up your coat?’
‘Oh, please can’t I keep it on?’ Fred had been prepared for her coming, but not entirely for his suddenly urgent need of her as she stood clutching her coat about her, standing as near to the sullen fire as possible. It had been a bad year for their meetings. Mrs Wickstead had been away a lot, the practice had been extra busy and now the only present he wanted was to be with her in the anonymous flat in Notting Hill Gate. What he didn’t want was to be tormented by the sight of her unattainable across a stretch of cold carpet, surrounded by Henry, his mother and Mr Bugloss.
‘You find the Rectory a little fresh?’ Dorothy looked at the gently shivering object of Fred’s desire. ‘Simeon used to say that the only talent you need for a career in the Church is an ability to survive draughts. You’ve never dined with the Bishop of Worsfield?’
‘Can’t say I have.’
‘The water has been known to freeze in the fingerbowls. I’ve put you in the parrot room, it looks over the churchyard. I do hope you’ll be comfortable.’
In the end, Francesca was reconciled to the pink room and was looking at a book and waiting to be settled down for the night, her stocking on the end of her bed and a glass of sherry and a mince pie ready in the fireplace, when the door swung slowly open, and, not to her surprise, for she had seen such manifestations before, Simeon entered on his knees, one arm swinging like a trunk in front and the other like a tail behind him, trumpeting like an elephant. She laughed politely, and when he came to sit on her camp bed, he told her she should go straight to sleep, and, when she woke, she might find that a miracle had taken place.
After dinner the party were to walk through the churchyard to Midnight Mass. Tina Fawcett was bringing her boyfriend Gary Kitson in to babysit, although Dorothy said that if she were a child and had to choose between waking up alone next door to a churchyard or having Tina Fawcett looming over her she knew which she’d choose.
They were all assembled in the hall, wrapped up against the cold night and the colder church, except for Simeon who had already gone over. Dorothy pulled open the front door. Fred saw Mrs Wickstead shiver and Mr Bugloss take her arm. Then Henry said, ‘I’ll catch you up.’
‘Why?’ Agnes wanted to know.
‘Last chance of a pee before the sermon.’ When Henry was left alone he went to the telephone on the hall table, dialled a number and said, ‘Lonnie. Thank God you’re there!’ Although really it came as no surprise. ‘What are you doing? Tell me everything you’re doing!’ She sounded breathless, as though she had been waiting for the call for a long time, and then when he told her, she asked incredulously, ‘Not going to church?’
Halfway across the churchyard, Dorothy noticed that she had left her handbag containing her spectacles and money for the collection in the sitting-room. Agnes volunteered to go for it and turned, scrunching back along the gravel path. She opened the Rectory front door and saw her husband standing with the telephone to his ear.
‘It’s just that I probably won’t get a chance to ring you on Christmas Day, my darling. Well, family. Yes. Can’t get a moment to myself. I’ll be thinking of you at midnight. Thank you for being there.’
‘I’m always here,’ Agnes said, as Henry put the phone down and saw her. He said nothing. She went into the sitting-room, got Dorothy’s handbag and they walked in silence across to the church together. They prayed together and stood together to join in the final carol, ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’.
At about half past twelve they got back from church. Gary and Tina were interrupted in the middle of a snog, paid and departed. Dorothy went into the kitchen and returned with a tea-trolley on which she had set out coffee and sandwiches. Fred opened the bottle of whisky he had brought with him. He poured drinks and they wished each other a happy Christmas. Agnes was silent. Mrs Wickstead took her whisky neat, and kept her coat on. The telephone rang and Agnes went to answer it.
‘Who can it be at this time of night?’ Dorothy asked, handing round sandwiches. ‘It can’t be good news.’ Agnes came back from the hall to announce that Mr Bugloss was wanted. At the same time, Simeon came in in his belted cassock, having said Happy Christmas to the last of his congregation, and asked Mrs Wickstead if she’d enjoyed the service.
‘I’ve been a lot more bored in movies.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’ The Rector accepted a whisky and soda from Fred.
‘At Midnight Mass’ – Henry was frowning – ‘to celebrate the mysterious birth of Christ, do we really want a lecture about low-rent accommodation in the Rapstone Valley?’
‘I thought Christmas was a story about low-rent accommodation,’ Simeon smiled.
‘Oh, Henry’s very keen on mysteries nowadays.’ Agnes bit into a sandwich. ‘Mysterious trips, mysterious phone calls, he finds it terribly inconvenient to explain anything.’
Simeon sat beside Mrs Wickstead on the sofa. ‘I suppose it might have saved an awful lot of trouble if it had never happened,’ he suggested to her.
‘If what had never happened?’ Henry felt that he was being attacked from all sides.
‘Christmas!’ Simeon was still speaking confidentially to Mrs Wickstead. ‘I mean, before that, absolutely no one had to feel sorry for slaves. You could watch gladiators being killed as part of an afternoon’s entertainment. Wars were glorious and probably rather enjoyable. Nobody minded a bit about infant mortality or starving tribes in Asia Minor or the housing shortage south of the Tiber and all that sort of thing. If Christmas had never happened, it would have saved all those petitions, and appeals and letters to the Bishop and marches. Well, it would have saved a fortune in stamps, wouldn’t it?’
Fred was put out to see that Mrs Wickstead listened to his father with the same flattering attention she gave him. In the silence that followed Simeon’s views on Christmas, Mr Bugloss returned to them and announced that Jack Polefax had just flown in from the Coast and checked in to Claridges. He wanted a breakfast meeting on Pilgrims. Much as he regretted it, Benny would have to drive back to London, so that he could set out some figures to ‘lay on Jack’ in the morning.
‘Surely your Mr Polecat can have breakfast on his own?’ Dorothy was puzzled.
‘I’m afraid he’s not used to that. Anyway it’s all to the good of Henry’s project. Shall I drive you back, Mrs Wickstead?’
‘Oh, but surely you’ll stay?’ Dorothy turned to Mrs Wickstead who had greeted Mr Bugloss’s suggestion with a prodigious yawn.
‘It’s very kind of you. So sleepy.’
So Mr Bugloss wished them all a Happy Christmas and left. In a short while Simeon and Dorothy went up to bed and Mrs Wickstead, after a last drink, braved it up to the parrot room. Fred, who could feel that Agnes’s stormy silence was about to explode in thunder, pushed the trolley helpfully out into the kitchen, where he gave himself a final drink. He shut the door carefully behind him, cutting himself off from the scene which then took place.
‘It’s that girl, isn’t it?’ As she said it, Agnes was sickeningly conscious of all the wives, at all times, who had started a quarrel with the same form of words.
‘It’s what girl?’
‘I could tell when you poured the last of the whisky out for her. I could tell by the awful way she came oiling up to you and asked you to sign your book. “Oh, thanks ever so, Mr Simcox, I shall treasure that. Always.” ’
‘She didn’t say that!’
‘She didn’t say what?’
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