A Fall from Grace

by Robert Barnard

  “No, I could see that from the letter. But perhaps your not wanting to go into details has meant that I’ve been more anxious than I’ve needed to be. For example, I don’t know what to look out for, so I look out for every little thing. Of course I know my father very well in many ways, but I did get away—I mean move away from home—quite a long time ago now. People change, situations change. That’s why I feel I need to know precisely what it was that happened down there, what the trouble was, and why he moved away so quickly, pretending he had made a quick sale of his cottage.”

  Mrs. Easton once again seemed to think over her response. She had probably half expected a phone call immediately after sending the letter, but the expectations had faded.

  “Yes, I can see that you need to know. And after all, the talk is all over Coombe Barton.”

  “I thought it probably was. Please don’t worry about upsetting me. My father and I have never been very close. You may have guessed that, from our not visiting. I never cared about him because he never cared about me. It’s just a question of knowing, of having some idea what I should be trying to nip in the bud. That is, if there is the slightest possibility of that, with my dad.”

  “Yes, I can see he won’t be easy to persuade . . . Well, it all started with the death of your mother.”

  “I had a pretty good idea that would be when it started.”

  “We all liked your mother. She was very supportive of your father, and so she should have been. She could smooth down any rough edges—because you know he has a high opinion of himself, and what is due to him.”

  “I know it.”

  “So when she died we all rallied round, one helping with this, another with that—shopping, cleaning, cooking, even gardening—just until he found his feet, you know.”

  “I know. Only he never found them.”

  “Well, that’s right . . . One or two of us had to say eventually: ‘It’s time you learned to do this for yourself.’ ”

  “Did it work?”

  Mrs. Easton gave a little nervous laugh.

  “Well, it had to, if we weren’t willing to go on being his sl—servants. But there were some who weren’t strong-minded enough to simply stop helping. And they tended to get . . . put upon still more. I’m being brutally frank.”

  “Understating things, I’d be willing to bet.”

  “Yes, well . . . There was—is—one lady, Dora Catchpole, who’d done most of his cleaning for him since your mother’s death.”

  “Unpaid?”

  “Oh yes, of course! None of us would have thought of accepting payment.” There was shock in her voice. It was obviously a very important class matter for Mrs. Easton. Only, the lack of payment made it more difficult to hand in your notice. “Anyway, Dora took on not just the scrubbing and vacuuming—he likes things just so, doesn’t he, your dad?—but bits of shopping and laundry. Those two items I sent,” even now she couldn’t bring herself to specify their nature, “came from her. And it was a lot for her to do, being a widow with a part-time job, and so sometimes she took along her granddaughter, just to give a hand like, at the start.”

  Eventually Felicity had to say the word “And,” just to break the silence.

  “Well, Kylie’s a nice girl, nearly fifteen, always got her nose in a book, no close friends, rather plain—lovely eyes, but the lads don’t bother much with eyes, do they? And she went along to the cottage to do bits and bobs to help her granny, but also because she was over the moon at getting to know a real writer. She read everything in the library by him, looked up to him, all breathless. Embarrassing to think of, isn’t it, the sort of things we did at that age? I had a thing about clergymen. But of course your father should have tried to cool things down. Everyone thought that.”

  “But instead he accepted all the adoration?”

  “Yes. Called her ‘my little princess’ and ‘my muse,’ read her what he was writing at the moment, used her name in the book for a fascinating young woman character. There’s not many girls of that age wouldn’t let that sort of thing go to their heads.”

  “No, I can see that. It should never have been offered to her in the first place.”

  “It shouldn’t. That’s what Dora Catchpole thought, though she kept it to herself at first. She went on with the work, but she got very unhappy about Kylie’s emotional state, and she had a few words with her daughter and son-in-law, playing it down a little. But the question kept nagging her: What was it going to lead to? Any mother or relative would have been uneasy.”

  “I can see that.”

  “So of course she stopped bringing the girl, and he’d ask, ‘Where’s Kylie?’ and she’d say she had a lot of homework, or a school project or was taking swimming lessons. Eventually she realized she would have to tell him the truth. It was a day when she’d spent several hours giving the house a good going over, to salve her conscience, I expect. She was just off for home, and in the hallway he stopped her and said, ‘Be sure to bring Kylie next time.’ She expected it, because he was saying it all the time. She took a deep breath and said the parents weren’t happy about the situation—which they weren’t, but it was really herself she was talking about. She said with children that age relationships could get a bit more serious than was intended. It was a crucial time, with her exams coming up, and her parents thought it was time for her to stop coming up to the cottage with her granny and knuckle down to real work with her friends (though as I say she hadn’t got any what you’d call friends, which was part of the problem).”

  “What did he say?”

  “It wasn’t what he said, it was what he did.”

  Felicity’s heart missed a beat.

  “Tell me.”

  “He hit her . . . what you might call a cuff. A heavy cuff across the head. Then he swore at her. Poor Dora ran for her life.”

  * * *

  “So you’ve decided you want to enter the real workforce again,” said Charlie to Chris.

  “Decided? No, we haven’t decided, have we, darling?”

  He pushed the computer screen away and turned to his wife.

  “Not decided,” said Alison. “Life is too pleasant as it is.”

  “It’s useful too, in its way, isn’t it?” asked Charlie.

  “Maybe, in its little way,” said Chris. “Listening to tales of illness, mostly imaginary, trying to sift through and find the real ones that could need treatment. Persuading Desmond Pinkhurst that his whole life as an actor has been a preparation for taking the part of Old Ekdal in The Wild Duck.”

  “I was told he went off to Sheffield for the rehearsals as happy as a sandboy.”

  Chris shrugged.

  “But I’m a doctor. I could sense the pit of fear in his stomach. I’ve had a postcard saying he’s enjoying rehearsals immensely. But I can’t judge postcards, only people.”

  “The point is,” said Alison, “that we’re waiting for the birth of the son and heir, and when that’s past us and we’ve breathed a sigh of relief, then we’ll start thinking.”

  Charlie put on his experienced-family-man look.

  “The birth of a first child is just the time when a demanding job seems least inviting. I used to begrudge the time spent on the most exciting and interesting cases.”

  “Then we’ll put off the decision for a year or two. There’s always a demand for doctors,” said Chris confidently, “and we could go to Haiti or Mozambique or wherever—really poor places—if we wanted to do a useful job.”

  “Meanwhile you’re the eyes and ears of Slepton Edge,” said Charlie, “and its conscience as well. Have you learned anything more about that gang of children who’ve been terrorizing the retired couple in Willow Crescent?”

  “No, not really,” said Chris, rubbing his chin. “I wouldn’t have thought they were active any longer. Haven’t heard that rather aggressive song they sing. But then, we’re a fair way away from Willow Crescent.”

  “What about Forsythia Avenue?”

  “Fors—? Oh—wher
e Felicity’s dad lives. Why—?”

  “Just an idea,” said Charlie hurriedly. “I came home tired, only wanting to sleep. I heard the song, or imagined I did, but definitely not from the Hatton Homes estate, where Willow Crescent is. I had the idea at the time that it was roughly from the Forsythia Avenue area.”

  “That’s only two or three streets away from here. We could have been out, or in with the television or radio on. We wouldn’t necessarily have heard it . . . Alison, doesn’t that cop who takes the self-defense classes you go to live in Forsythia Avenue? Ben Costello?”

  “I can’t remember. Or Luddenden Avenue possibly. Up there somewhere.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought the kids would start in on anyone if they knew there was a policeman living nearby.”

  Charlie laughed out loud.

  “You want to bet? You must be still living in the thirties. When I went to talk to Harvey Buckworth’s drama class, one of the girls referred to me as a ‘thick black cop’ in my hearing. And she intended me to hear, I could tell that.”

  “That’s a bit different. Often the school environment makes them feel safer, whereas gang behavior on the streets takes a lot more chutzpah. And Ben Costello is a tough-style cop.”

  “Well, I’ll take your word for it. I didn’t want to think that the gang had turned its attention on Rupert, to add to all his and our problems. But he is an incomer, from the bottom end of the country like the Nortons, he’s made himself conspicuous, and he’s quite incapable of making himself liked.”

  “So your visit to the drama class didn’t go too well, then?” asked Chris.

  “Oh, I think I got the message across. And one thing Buckworth and the kids care about is if the drama stream is threatened. All those child-star jobs onstage and on TV gone for a burton. He cares, they care. I think they’ll all be a bit more careful from now on.”

  * * *

  “So what happened next?” asked Felicity, after a pause to let the sinking feeling in her stomach disappear.

  “What you’d expect in a little place like this. Dora Catchpole was very upset: she’d been screwing herself up to say what she did say, but the last thing she thought could happen was violence. She’d thought there might be a fit of self-righteousness, or a huff, something like that. When she ran from the house she was crying, and very embarrassed, so on the way home—more as a sort of refuge, a way of hiding herself for a bit so she could pull herself together—she dropped in on one of her friends.”

  “And she happened to be the biggest gossip in Coombe Barton,” hazarded Felicity.

  “Well, something like that. There’s competition for the title. But Dora poured out her heart, felt much better for it, vowed she’d never go back to the cottage—”

  “I should have thought that went without saying.”

  “Yes, it should. But some people are very silly about things like that, and everyone was very pleased she wasn’t being. Anyway, the upshot was she went home feeling much better, and within the hour the story started to spread through the village.”

  “I can imagine. How did Dad react?”

  Mrs. Easton gave a bitter little laugh.

  “How could he? He had to start doing his shopping, and all he got was the cold shoulder. Even shopkeepers were pretty tight-lipped. In the pub no one would talk to him—to tell you the truth, that was no great hardship, because most people thought he was a tremendous bore. So he had to face the fact that his cleaning, cooking, gardening and the rest were only going to get done if he did them himself.”

  “So they all took Mrs. Catchpole’s side?”

  “What other side was there to take?”

  “Of course—I wasn’t meaning to imply sympathy for my dad. I don’t think I’ve ever had that in my life. All I was thinking of was that when he decided to move up north, in with or close to us, he was running away from being the Coombe Barton pariah. And he told us he’d made a quick sale and had to get out of the cottage at once.”

  “That wasn’t true. Oh, you had a lucky escape he didn’t decide to move in with you.”

  “He didn’t decide that. We did. Charlie and I knew that would be the ultimate disaster. Even as it is Charlie was just saying I’m reverting to the pathetic and mixed-up kid I was when he and I first met. Not in those words, but that’s what he meant.”

  “Oh dear. I hope his moving there hasn’t caused trouble in your marriage.”

  “Not yet it hasn’t, but who knows what may happen later? I was quite pleased when he started getting a little circle of ladies around him, but now the thought terrifies me.”

  “Not the same thing over again? Doing everything for him?”

  “Not quite the same. There wasn’t the same spur of having known Mum, and realizing how hopeless he would be without her to look after him. And Yorkshire women are very independent. But if they have a spare hour or two they sometimes go up and see if he’s got anything that needs doing. And they give him their company, go to the tearooms or the pub with him, hear him pretend to be the world’s greatest writer, the world’s greatest grandfather, the world’s greatest expert on the nature and needs of women.”

  “You don’t like him much, do you, Felicity?”

  “I don’t like him at all. Why didn’t we say when he first wrote that we wanted nothing to do with him, and certainly didn’t want him living near us? I suppose because we welcomed the financial help to buy this house . . . and also because, well, you don’t simply repudiate a parent unless you have a whopping good reason for doing it. Usually something in the past. If I ever thought he’d done to my mother what he did to Mrs. Catchpole—”

  “I never heard anything to suggest that,” said Mrs. Easton.

  “No. But you wouldn’t have. She’d never have told anyone. And from one point of view that’s the saddest thing of all. She was just the old-fashioned, complete skivvy and slave, unquestioning, admiring, a real ‘yes-sir-no-sir’ wife.”

  “He won’t find another of those very easily.”

  “I hope not!” said Felicity.

  “I’m afraid telling you what happened here will have upset you. And it won’t have solved your problem.”

  “How could it? But it’s told me what my problem is.”

  * * *

  In the half hour before Charlie and Carola came back from the Carlsons’, Felicity pottered around the house doing everything and nothing and pondering the new situation which her conversation with Mrs. Easton had brought about. Part of her regretted her closing remark. She now knew what the problem was, but why had she said that it was her problem? It was her father’s problem and no one else’s.

  Because who could do anything about it other than him? There was never any question of his being influenced by her. If she showed him that she knew what had happened in Coombe Barton he would be incandescent with rage, but it would have no effect: in his mind he had no doubt rearranged the incident so that blame was put on the shoulders of all the ladies in the village, ganging up against him.

  She could of course warn the ladies of Slepton Edge. If he found out, that would have a similar result—a paddy, with fireworks. But did they need warning? She had a feeling they didn’t. All the ladies who offered the occasional meed of help to her father struck her as knowing what they were doing, and as basically canny types who had him summed up. Or was this a hope rather than an assessment?

  When Charlie and Carola got home there was bedtime for Carola, a story from her, and then, eventually, blessedly, a late-night drink with Charlie and the chance to tell him everything Mrs. Easton had revealed about why her father had fled to Yorkshire.

  “ ‘Dark Deeds at Coombe Barton,’ ” said Charlie when she had finished. “A good title for Rupert when he is in a Gothic mood.”

  “You’re not taking it seriously,” Felicity protested.

  “Oh, I am, but I’m not taking it too seriously. Him hitting a woman is bad, but he’d be let off with a caution if she had reported him. Attaching an impressionable teena
ger to him is a bit off, potentially serious. But there’s no evidence that anything was done, or even on the cards. As you say, all his women here seem pretty sensible. I bet most of them have got his measure and have talked it through among themselves. And as a consequence they’ll be too worldly-wise about dangers to take children or grandchildren with them when they go up to Rupert’s. Let’s face it: Dora Catchpole was a fool to do it. We’ve heard nothing like that up here to date, and no hint that in general he’s attached to little girlies. Let’s stop making a mountain about what is basically a molehill.”

  As a consequence Felicity let him lead her on to talking about where in Halifax they’d take Carola over the weekend, and she went to bed much happier. In a fool’s paradise, but happier.

  CHAPTER 6

  Adeste Fidelis

  The carol service at St. Wilfrid’s, Slepton’s parish church, took place on the first Saturday in December. It was the first in a series of Christmas events, and by far the most popular. The church was just off the village square, and it had late-medieval bits to which had been added some fairly appropriate Victorian bits. Few members of the congregation were entirely sure which bits were which, and nobody really cared: by now all of it was “old.” By tradition (a strong power in Slepton Edge) the first half of the carol service was held outside, and if the weather was anything like appropriate there was mulled wine and nonalcoholic hot drinks served in the winter cold, before everyone went into the church for the second part. “What you spend on the mulled wine you save on heating,” said the vicar cheerfully, his annual joke, expected and responded to as an old friend.

  Felicity and Charlie were intending to go if possible: they tried to be at every village “thing,” as part of the integration process, one that they liked and that everyone else joined in with spirit. In any case, they had no choice because Carola insisted on going: two little girls from her nursery school were going to be Christmas tree fairies, and Carola was determined to cast a critical eye on their dresses, wands and general demeanor.