A Fall from Grace

by Robert Barnard

  “Must you go? I’m enjoying this conversation.”

  “And I’m on duty. I’ll have to disguise this break by pretending I was investigating whether there is a British National Party presence at this election.”

  “There isn’t. They probably don’t think the job of mayor is one of sufficient power to justify their muscling in on it. And of course in this country it isn’t.”

  “Why are you standing then?”

  “Shall we say for a bit of fun? Though that’s only part of the truth. I do feel that the party system has stifled genuine debate, polarized opinions in a totally unhelpful way and led to the sort of yah-boo politics that gets us nowhere. It is time for a change. We need a solid block of true independents who look at every issue in a clear-eyed way.”

  “Well, I’ll wish you good luck,” said Charlie, shaking his hand. “And I really will be following your progress with interest.”

  In the event, that turned out to be more easily said than done.

  When he got home he found that his father-in-law had dumped himself on them, having sold his cottage, hollyhocks and all, to a buyer who wanted to move in immediately. He became cagey when he was asked why he hadn’t even given them a phone call to warn them. Clearly he had feared excuses, lodgings found for him, obdurate refusals of hospitality. So speed was now of the essence. The next evening Charlie and Felicity viewed the three properties in Slepton Edge, along with the smaller ones, and chose two. The one they chose for themselves was a stone house dating from the 1880s with three rooms downstairs and four bedrooms upstairs, one of them marked as a study for Felicity, who followed the parental example in one thing only: the urge to write fiction. There was a little scrap of garden at the front and a larger one at the back, clearly destined to be a playing area for two, which Charlie decided on the spot would be nothing but grass. Mowing he could enjoy; planting, tending, weeding and pruning he didn’t have time for, and wouldn’t until he reached retirement age.

  The bungalow they chose for Rupert Coggenhoe was five minutes away, gently uphill and on the edge of the inhabited part of the village, with nature metaphorically speaking on its doorstep. Felicity’s dad had said that he relied entirely on their judgment, which would give him unlimited opportunities for whingeing once he had moved in.

  The choice having been made, it was time for the lawyers, surveyors, solicitors and removalists to take over, and on Charlie and Felicity’s part a constant and successful effort to get the transaction finalized and the move made as soon as possible. At work, reading the Yorkshire papers during a quiet spell, Charlie learned that the election for mayor of Halifax had been won by the Labour candidate Archie Skelton, a party stalwart in his sixties, but that Dr. Christopher Carlson had come a respectable and surprising second, having been beaten by only 267 votes.

  And that was the situation when, on the thirteenth of November, Charlie and Felicity, accompanied by Carola and the fetus, moved to 15 Walsh Street, Slepton Edge. Mr. Rupert Coggenhoe, accompanied only by his half-finished manuscript novel Georgiana Cavendish, came with them in the car and had his first sight of his fifties bungalow, 23 Forsythia Avenue, Slepton Edge. From Charlie and Felicity’s point of view it was near enough for help to be on hand, but not quite far enough for comfort. As for Coggenhoe, he sighed, as if it wasn’t really his sort of place at all and they should have known that, but allowed himself to be led out of the car and shown around.

  CHAPTER 2

  Settling In

  The process of the Peace family getting themselves settled into the new house in Slepton Edge took three days, days which Charlie took off from work, to toil but also to enjoy. They took Carola with them on those days but not Felicity’s father, counting on Carola as being less trouble. Not only was she that, but she was also an excellent talking point with neighbors, shopkeepers and people met casually in streets and in pubs. On the fourth day Charlie returned to work in Leeds, and Felicity supervised her father’s move from Leeds to Slepton.

  In itself it went perfectly well. All the furniture which had been in storage since her father had moved from the hollyhocked cottage arrived on the morning of the move, fitted well into the new bungalow, and by evening all was so settled and convenient that he was able to sleep the night in his own bed in his own house. Whether that was what he wanted was another matter. He claimed that he had not eaten since they had left him alone in Leeds, and when Felicity pointed out that there were plenty of good cafés, restaurants and pubs nearby, he sighed and said he couldn’t splash out money intended for them when he was Gone (the capital letter was his). He also said that things in Slepton (of which he had seen almost nothing) were Not What He Was Used To, but at least, he said, he would be near to them.

  That, Felicity thought, was not a comfort, but the principal fly in the ointment.

  Still, the situation admitted of several hopeful factors. On the trips she and Rupert took around Slepton to introduce him to shopkeepers, pub landlords and café proprietors, several people recognized them and stopped. “You must be the author,” several said. Or, even better: “You must be Rupert Coggenhoe, the author. I’ve read several of your books.”

  Chris Carlson had been doing a propaganda job. They had been at his house a couple of times in the middle of the moving process, and had liked both him and his wife. They had told him more about Felicity’s father, and the problems and dangers he presented, and he had obviously taken measures in his usual quiet but efficient way.

  This recognition of her father, however artificially induced, seemed after a few days to be paying off. The arrival of Coggenhoe, the author, was generating in sleepy Slepton the sort of interest that in such places passes for excitement. Slepton Edge had a great many retired people among its inhabitants, as well as some, like Dr. Carlson, who were redesigning their lives. New stimuli, new topics of conversation, were just what was needed in such an environment, and during his first weeks in the village Rupert Coggenhoe enjoyed something very close to popularity. Most of his new readers were women, but there was the odd male one too, and by being sociable in the tearoom and in one or other of the two pubs, he gathered around himself something that could be called a circle.

  “Things are going much better than I thought they would,” said Charlie, when they went into the Black Heiffer one night a few days later, after leaving Carola in the children’s play area, and saw Rupert already surrounded by an admiring group near the bar.

  “He’s even doing some of his own shopping,” agreed Felicity. “So as to meet his admirers. Let’s just hope it lasts.”

  Their own company that evening was a recent acquaintance, Desmond Pinkhurst, who ambled over to their table, looking around the large bar apparently in quest of someone, before sinking disappointed into a chair beside Felicity. Desmond had been a mildly celebrated young actor forty years before, best known for his “silly ass” roles in British comedy films, as well as occasional similar roles in sitcoms and British musicals, at a time when they were mainly Noel-Coward-and-water. Now, after twenty years of retirement on a share portfolio that was the greatest emotional interest in his life, he was—on the surface—bumbling, well-intentioned, accident-prone and in love with his own anxieties.

  “I wondered if . . . ,” he began, his eyes still going everywhere. “But never mind. How are you both? And how is your distinguished father, my dear?”

  “We are fine. We are settled in, we no longer trip over the furniture because it’s in different places and we’re enjoying Slepton and its people,” said Charlie.

  “And as to my father, I think most of that applies to him too. It’s a big wrench, at his age, moving, uprooting himself. But he’s survived, and he’s been made very welcome.”

  “So I see,” said Desmond. “All the fairer sex fluttering around him.”

  “Are you jealous?” asked Felicity. “Or perhaps grateful to him for getting them off your back?”

  “I see you’ve been listening to local gossip,” said Desmond archly.


  “Gossip?”

  Desmond leaned forward, in confiding mode.

  “To the effect that I’m gay. Don’t you believe it. I’m not gay at all. Just not particularly heterosexual.”

  He looked round triumphantly, as if that explained everything.

  “I see,” said Felicity.

  “In places like this they say that about anyone who hasn’t been married,” Desmond went on. “And I sometimes have male friends from the profession staying with me, and some of those are.”

  “But you’re not?”

  “Oh dear no! Just not all that interested, as I say.”

  He grinned at them both. Charlie had the sense of having old jokes and old obfuscations tried out on him, as a newcomer. He noticed that as the man sent his grin around the table, the questing glance went too.

  “Are you waiting for someone?” Charlie asked him. Desmond nodded.

  “Oh, just for Chris. I want to ask his advice. It’s rather a shock, and I don’t quite know . . .”

  “What’s rather a shock?”

  Desmond settled, hunched over the table.

  “Well, I’ve just had the offer of a job. A stage job. It’s years since that happened. And the poor old stock portfolio has been down a bit these last few months, and so—well, I’m tempted. It’s not as if I’m in need, but still . . .”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “It’s in Sheffield. Too far to drive to rehearsals and performances. Much too far for me. Even Halifax is an adventure. I shouldn’t be allowed on the road. And then, it’s such a strange thing to offer me. I mean, Ibsen. I’ve hardly ever done anything really serious, let alone something so—you know. Intellectually challenging—that’s really what I mean. And there’s already talk of a transfer to London.”

  So there it was. The Great Norwegian, intimidating as usual, his British reputation for unrelieved doom and gloom sending shivers down Desmond Pinkhurst’s spine for fear he should spoil things by letting cheerfulness break in. Charlie, who was very much a get-up-and-do-it sort of person, played down the Ibsen side and concentrated on the joy and stimulus of working again, of performing before an audience. Desmond remained congenitally uncertain.

  “I don’t know, really I don’t . . . There is pathos in the character, and some humor. It’s Old Ekdal in The Wild Duck. It’s not often been done in recent years because there’s a fairly large cast—lots of small parts. They prefer the later plays with a tiny cast. It’s all money these days, isn’t it?”

  “But the money would come in handy, I suppose?” Charlie asked.

  “Oh, it would. But learning the part, and the nerves—I’m a bag of nerves, particularly with stage roles. I was always a film and television man.” He thought. “I once had a small part in Coronation Street. One of Rita Fairclough’s boyfriends. But of course that’s a quite different matter from Ibsen. Ibsen! The very thought makes me shiver! I really don’t know . . . Oh, there he is.”

  And there Chris was. He was buying himself a pint of bitter and swapping greetings with Sid the landlord, but already positioned by his right arm was a stout elderly lady, her eyes on his face, waiting for any sign of an end to the conversation, when she would wade in to get reassurance about a twinge or an ache or a tic. The expression on her face spoke of something close to adoration. And behind the two of them, now, was Desmond, who had got across the expanse of the saloon bar in a surprisingly nippy manner, glass in hand, and was now waiting his turn. Charlie looked at Felicity.

  “I don’t know how Chris does it,” he said. “Advice to an old dear on cutting down on the chocolates, and to an old thespian on whether or not to take a part in a play.”

  Felicity looked at Chris with the assessing eye of someone who herself wrote (as yet unpublished) novels, and liked things she could make use of.

  “He is so immensely likeable,” she said. “I suppose people find that they can just talk away to him and he understands, and just by the process of talking they sort things out in their minds in a way that solitary thinking, and having all the options crowding in on you without any sorting or classifying, doesn’t do.”

  “I expect you’re right,” said Charlie. “Though I’m not sure I would want that sort of responsibility myself.”

  “Responsibility? How does he have responsibility?”

  “Because even if all he does, most of the time, is listen, they’ll associate him in their minds with whatever decision they take.”

  “They could, I suppose,” said Felicity thoughtfully. “Especially if they’re not logical thinkers.”

  “Do you see poor old Desmond as a clear-minded thinker? Oh hell—watch it. Here comes our own personal problem figure.”

  It was Felicity’s father, steaming over with a female in tow. Charlie and Felicity had agreed when speculating on Rupert’s future that what was most likely was that he would try to find a substitute for his dead wife. This would not be, or not primarily, to receive her conjugal pleasures, but the other things, including household help, laundry, shopping and cooking, above all ego-boosting. Felicity had already observed him returning to his bungalow with a variety of women after morning coffee, pub lunches or weekly shopping. When he now introduced Nancy Stoppard, Felicity remembered that she had already been mentioned by Chris Carlson as “a pleasant widow with a bit of money.” Jackpot!

  “Nancy, this is my daughter, whom you’ve heard me mention, Felicity, and her husband who everyone calls Charlie for no good reason that I can see, and outside playing on the slide is little Carola, the light of my life, my only grandchild until the little one there decides to make his entrance into this wicked world.”

  Coggenhoe had a unique ability to make everything he said grate on his daughter. It had been explained to him many times why Dexter Peace had popularly become Charlie (and it didn’t need a mastermind to work it out), and he had in fact paid remarkably little attention to his granddaughter Carola since he’d come north, partly because she was too young to be useful to him, and perhaps partly because she was a child with a strong will of her own. Not the sort of female that Rupert tried to attract.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Nancy, shaking hands. “Rupert has talked so much about you.”

  As she said this Charlie saw an expression waft quickly across her face as she realized that her wholly conventional words were not in this case true: Rupert Coggenhoe had talked very little about his family.

  “When is the baby due?” she asked, sticking to convention.

  “May,” said Felicity. “Carola’s was a fairly easy birth, and I’m hoping this will be the same.”

  “But until then we have to take good care of her, instead of her taking good care of us,” said her father. Grate, grate.

  “You have always taken very good care of yourself, Dad.”

  “And she won’t have much time to take care of anyone except herself and the babe for a long time after the birth,” said Nancy. “Even Charlie and Carola will miss out.”

  “I’m used to it,” said Charlie. “Carola will create blue murder.”

  “Then you must stop spoiling her from now on,” said Nancy. “Restrict all your care to talking, sympathizing and advising.”

  Felicity laughed.

  “We’ve just been talking about that. I don’t think there’s any need in Slepton Edge for that sort of service.”

  “Yes, we do have our regular shoulder to cry on,” said Nancy, looking to the other end of the bar, where Desmond had got his place in the sun and was talking earnestly to Chris. His hands sometimes made actorish gestures, but from him they seemed deeply, anguishedly in earnest.

  “Desmond’s been offered a stage part,” said Charlie. “In The Wild Duck. He’s not sure he’s up to it, not sure he wants the bother. But I think the money would come in useful.”

  “He should take it,” said Felicity. “It’s a lovely part—funny, but tender and pathetic as well.”

  “I hear that he’s never done anything except Silly-Billy parts,�
� said Rupert, nakedly contemptuous of his rival celebrity. “Not much of a preparation for Ibsen.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Nancy. “You sometimes get these comedians and soap stars who suddenly get a chance of a really meaty role and they make a wonderful success of it. He could be at the start of a whole new career. He should go for it.”

  She looked studiously away from Rupert Coggenhoe’s sneering face. Charlie thought she was an intelligent woman, if only because she agreed with him. If he was right she would not last long as Coggenhoe’s favored aide and helpmeet. He leaned forward and picked up glasses.

  “Same again, everyone, or a change of tipple?”

  At the bar he found himself next to Chris Carlson.

  “How’s the surgery going?” he asked.

  “Quite well,” said Chris, a tiny wafting of irritation crossing his face. “But you’re being mischievous as usual. You know I don’t do medical advice. The most I do is pass them on to someone who will, if I think there’s anything that needs checking over.”

  “I’m sure you act impeccably, and I’m sure you save the local GPs from a lot of fruitless surgery sessions. But I meant a sort of emotional surgery. Advice for the sorely tried and bewildered.”

  “Ah, poor old Desmond,” said Chris sagely. “Well, I just let him talk the thing through. I can’t advise him, but I can listen. I think underneath he desperately wants to experience again the excitement of being onstage, and all the backstage gossip and bitchery.”

  “I expect you’re right, though the fear at the top isn’t going to go away, and it will be worse at his age. But I’m sure you help them to think things through for themselves.”

  “I try to. But you have your doubts, don’t you?”

  “Do I? I suppose my face is easily read . . . I’m not sure I can put the doubts into words. There seems to me a danger of you becoming necessary to people here—someone who anything of any importance has to be discussed with.”