The Rectory

by Ivan B

  Eventually we calmed down and looked at the list. Yolande took the pen from me.

  “Let’s go over to plan B for a moment.”

  Plan B? What was she rabbiting about now?

  “Plan B – fall back to the essentials.” She elucidated.

  She started crossing out numbers.

  “Do without the Interior Designer, the posh floorboards and the painters.”

  She paused with pencil hovering above the list.

  “Why the builder?”

  “Kitchen re-fitting.”

  She crossed builder off the list. Her pencil hovered over ‘Plumber,’ “have you heard from Kevin?”

  “No.”

  She crossed him off the list.

  “According to dad he’s taken on the plumbing job for the re-furbished prison wing, you won’t see him in a month of Sundays.”

  My fancy list now just comprised of Electrician and Carpenter, “But what about the central heating and getting rid of the lead piping?”

  Yolande just grinned, it was infuriating.

  “Fancy taking a risk?”

  Minutes ago we had been laughing at the absurdity of me taking risks.

  “What sort of risk?”

  “When I was at the college last week I got talking to the lectures, seems at the end of the plumbing course, that’s the two year course by the way, they like to give their students a live project to finish on. They were going to install the plumbing in that new complex of flatlets for the disadvantaged, but the building is behind schedule.”

  She gave me that bird-charming smile of hers.

  So they are project-less and you have a very large house in need of plumbing.”

  I was all ears.

  What’s the deal?”

  “You pay for the materials and lunchtime sandwiches and as much tea as they can drink and they do the rest, except…”

  My suspicion antenna were on full alert.

  “Except what?”

  “Except they like something out of the ordinary.”

  I laughed.

  What can they possibly do here that’s out of the ordinary?”

  She chuckled.

  “How about a Jacuzzi in the first floor bathroom, a fully tiled wheelchair shower in the downstairs WC and some solar power panels on the roof.”

  My suspicions grew

  “You’ve been thinking about this in advance.”

  She shrugged.

  “Seemed such a good opportunity. Look, if you’re worried the whole thing will be overseen by the lectures and as the students final marks are dependant upon the project they will all work like stink.”

  I thought about my diminishing, bank account.

  OK.”

  Yolande grinned and made a phone call, when she put the phone down she gave me her winning smile.

  “Lecturers will come tomorrow to size up the project and the students arrive next Monday with and advance guard this Thursday.”

  “Can you keep working with them around?”

  “Of course, I’m used to working on building sites.”

  I kissed her on the cheek and she didn’t stop me. Little did I realise that it would be two weeks before I was once again alone in the rectory with her.

  By Friday I was wondering if I needed another cheque book. Part of the project was to get the best quality materials at the lowest prices, this resulted in pipes from one supplied and radiators from another and so on. All in all I wrote out no less that thirty-five cheques in two days, plus one, in advance, to a mobile sandwich van that promised to call at 11:30am every day; judging by the size of that cheque the owner expected the students to have healthy appetites.

  I had just written out my twenty-seventh cheque when my Julius Caesar vicar appeared, this time he seemed a happy chappie and his normal melancholic face was all smiles.

  “The Church Council had a special meeting yesterday and decided to accept your kind offer of the fields.”

  “Seem sense have they?”

  He coughed.

  “Both churchwardens and three members of the congregation sustained dents to their cars and one of our most vocal members of the congregation had to walk over half a mile through the snow from where he had to park.”

  “Well I hope they’re not thinking about sending me the bill.”

  He became all diplomatic.

  “Of course not, but they were wondering if you would possibly be kind enough to let them use the fields before the actual transfer takes place?”

  I wondered about rubbing their noses in it a bit more and decided that it wouldn’t be Christian.

  “Of course, you can use them from now and I’ll get my solicitors to get straight on with the transfer of land.”

  He stood up.

  “I didn’t mention your kind offer of organ maintenance as there was no need. Shall we leave that for now as an act of generosity to come?”

  He could have worked for the diplomatic service; what he meant we he didn’t have to use the idea as a lever to get the council to accept the fields.

  “Sounds a good idea to me.”

  Suddenly I had an inspiring thought.

  “Before you leave can I ask a favour?”

  He turned away from facing the door and raised an eyebrow. I tried for a tactful start.

  “I had a look in your graveyard the other day and I noticed that Mr Grant seemed to be occupying a rather large plot.”

  He became cautious.

  “I’m told that he bought a plot big enough for eight when he became Lay Chancellor.”

  “But he is the only occupant?”

  “Apart from a number of moles, yes.”

  “While looking round this place I found seven tin trunks in them is what I suspect were the clothes Mr Grant wanted to have his family buried in, however I believe that no bodies were ever recovered.”

  He gazed at me and I hoped he would make the connection; he didn’t.

  “So,” he asked.

  “So I’d like to have them buried in that grave.”

  He sighed.

  “To what point? Their remains are not in the trunks are they? He is not around to appreciate the act is he? So I don’t see the purpose.”

  Obviously my £199,768 for the chancel and the gift of two fields gave me no influence with him.

  “Should I just throw them on the tip?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’m sorry, but there would be no religious significance in their burial and in any case you can’t go burying any old junk in a graveyard.”

  He paused and said in an abstract manner.

  “Of course if such items were interred in a field before it became part of a consecrated graveyard I would recommend that they were not disturbed.”

  I decided that this vicar should definitely join the diplomatic corps.

  “So if I had them buried in my field before I give it to you there would not be a problem?”

  “Not for me.”

  I decided to push him a little.

  “And would you say a prayer over such an interment?”

  “I would be happy to pray for the souls of the departed.”

  He consulted a small electronic diary.

  “You may like to know that we have a burial in the graveyard on Tuesday and the churchwarden has hired a small digger to dig the grave as the ground is a little hard for hand digging. Would you like me to get him to test the digger in your field first?”

  “That would be fine.”

  He left and began to wonder about the other three fields and if there was there any way of raising money through them.

  The next ten days were sheer bedlam. No less than seventeen students and three lecturers turned up and started hammering, soldering and generally scattering themselves throughout the house. Just to add to the chaos once the radiators had been installed Yolande announced that they were too low to get a vacuum cleaner under and had then raised. The lecturers enjoyed the moment, but I rather fear that half the stu
dents could have torn her limb from limb. To compound the chaos four carpenters turned up with a lorry load of timber and solid period doors, I have a suspicion that they were lured by the prospect of free grub, nevertheless they were a welcome sight. It is almost impossible to describe the organised chaos that comprised that short period of time, but two events stand out in my memory. The first was Tuesday afternoon. It was bitterly cold, sleeting with a vengeance and the allotted time to bury the tin trunks. With Yolande’s help and the assistance of a gangly youth called Myron (Who on earth would name their child after a 5th century long forgotten sculptor?) we had managed to extract the trunks from the loft and take them to the field. The interment was a short affair lest we all die of hypothermia, but I was satisfied that I had done all I could to fulfill Mr Grant’s wishes. The other event was the first time I really took Yolande out on a date. Oh I know that we’d spent hours together in the rectory and three days in the Aldeburgh hotel, but the date sticks in my mind as our first real romantically inclined liaison. For a start I was surprised at my own nervousness as I drove the Rover to pick her up for the evening. I would rather have used Fiatimo, but common sense told me that the Rover was safer and of course it also had the equivalent of a bench seat with three cushions across the front rather than bucket seats. We had decided to go to the cinema and have a meal afterwards in a fairly exclusive restaurant. I honestly don’t remember the film at all except that it had something to do with pigeons and postmen. I do remember that I slipped my arm around Yolande’s shoulders feeling like a naughty schoolboy and that we had a tub of chocolate popcorn between us. However, it is the after-cinema meal that sticks in the mind.

  I had wanted to give Yolande something special so I had booked us a table at the Giselle French Restaurant that nestled at the end of Felixstowe High Street. It proved to be an episode of highs and lows. The first low was that as we approached the garçon to say that we had a booking he turned up his nose and stated, in a rather superior manner, that men had to wear ties. To be honest I was rather thrown off-guard, but Yolande was super-quick off the mark.

  “That’s rather sexist isn’t it?”

  The waiter, unused to being challenged so obtusely, merely raised his nose slightly higher.

  “Pardon madam?”

  “Do you expect woman to wear ties?”

  He showed slight surprise at the question.

  “Of course not.”

  “Then you can’t expect it of men, so where is our table please?”

  Fortunately it escaped his mind to retort that men didn’t have to wear a dress as he just decided to escort us to our table and took away, rather begrudgingly I thought, my dripping parka and Yolande’s soggy charity shop overcoat. We eventually ordered our starters and opted for mineral water instead of wine. The food turned out to be of a high standard and was exquisitely cooked, which I totally expected as believe me it was not the cheap sort. As we chatted about goodness knows what my nervousness retreated and I decided that, given the right conditions, Yolande could look stunning. But being Richard Holmes disaster is always a hairsbreadth away and my disaster came in two stages separated by a notable conversation. Just after the main course had been laid before us the glass of mineral water slipped out of my hand due to a combination of condensation and carelessness. On seeing the glass descending towards my crutch I did what any man would do, I lurched backwards and stood up. Unfortunately for me our superior waiter was passing behind me at the time with an armful of French onion soup. I shan’t describe the resulting mess except to say that due to inertia and Newton’s laws I did not get a single drop of soup on me, however the waiter and the customers at the table behind me did not fare so well. Once we had settled down and Yolande had regained her composure - I must say I did not see what was so funny - we got onto the subject of children, goodness knows how. Yolande picked at her fish omelette and after a few mouthfuls asked me if I’d ever wondered what sort of parent I would make. I remember being startled at the question as the subject had never crossed my mind.

  “Dunno, guess I’d have to be careful that I didn’t make the same mistakes as my parents.”

  “Which were?”

  She asked as she started to eat the omelette in earnest.

  “Not to favour one child over the other, not to treat them as object to be disposed of as soon as possible and not to fail to communicate with them.”

  She poised with flabby omelette between plate and lips.

  “Is that what happened to you?”

  I nodded.

  “Mark was always dad’s favourite until he brought Effie home, then it switched to Stella, my youngest step-sister. As for my step-mum she never spoke to me, we used to go for weeks without speaking. I kept a record once and managed nine weeks before she spoke to me at the dinner table and that was only because my father was away and she wanted the salt.”

  Yolande hadn’t moved.

  “That’s dreadful.”

  “That’s families. It’s all rather complicated, but I believe that she felt that Mark and I would inherit from dad and that she and the three girls would be left penniless.”

  Yolande finally ate the last piece of omelette.

  “Is that true?”

  “It’s what dad told her in an argument, never happened of course, when he died she got the lot, it was Mark and I that were left out in the cold. It’s the old old story, he married in haste as he wasn’t coping with two young boys and a job, and she married in error. I don’t think they loved one another and they certainly didn’t grow into love, in fact I doubt that they even respected each other.”

  I then proceeded to tell her all about my family and my childhood; tell her things that I had never told anyone else. By the time we had ordered our deserts I realised that I could be boring her to death.

  “What about you; what sort of parent do you think you’d make?”

  She didn’t answer instead she looked across the restaurant at a middle aged couple wordlessly eating their dinner.

  “I’d certainly want to talk to my children, I don’t mean about everyday things I mean communicate. My mums good at talking, but my dad finds it hard. He can talk about current-trips and fuse-boxes all right, but not about emotions or feelings. Do you know last week when he gave me the van it was the first time since David died that he told me he loved me. I knew he loved me of course, but it’s nice to be told.”

  I neatly folded my serviette into four and remembered a previous conversation.

  “Did you ever think otherwise?”

  She took on a bleak look and studied her glass, she said in almost a whisper.

  “When David was alive I did wonder sometimes. He was the wonder-boy and I was just the girl, but one day David told me that he felt unloved as well and I realised that it was just dad’s way.”

  “That doesn’t make it any easier.”

  She smiled a shy sort of smile.

  “David’s death brought us closer as a family; it could have blown us apart, but it made us closer. It’s about the only good thing to come out of his death.”

  She then talked about her family and as I listened to every word I began to realise that what was important to her was important to me and I knew that we were on the right track.. Then, as usual, the Holmes curse struck. I decided between desert and coffee to go to the toilet and found that the restaurant was ultra-modern and had a unisex toilet with separate cubicles. All went well until I tried to get out of the cubicle and snapped off the lock toggle in my hand by trying to turn it in the direction. Unlike most toilet cubicles I had met these had outward opening doors and hence the actual lock was on the outside under a robust plastic cover. I guess I should have waited for someone to come in and bleated my predicament to them, but I was impatient to get back to Yolande, at least that is my excuse. I stood on the WC bowl and peered over the top of the cubicle intending to climb out, but as I transferred my weight onto one foot it slipped off of the back of the WC bowl. The ultimate result was that I en
ded up flat on my back on the cubicle floor with my foot firmly trapped under WC bowl outlet; unbeknown to be I also opened up the wound in my skull that had been healing very nicely. Not only did I have to suffer the indignity of calling for help, I also had to suffer the indignity of being released by the fire brigade (they smashed the WC pan with a mallet) and the ultimate indignity of a trip to the A&E department. All in all what was turning out to be a smashing evening ended in total disaster. At least I did get a kiss from Yolande as I lay in the A&E waiting room trying not to bleed too much over their floor.

  Chapter 18

  Surprise Surprise

  By the time the plumbing crew left with a promise to return in the summer and install the solar heating I was able to hobble fairly well and my ankle was not keeping me awake at night. However, it had put paid to any romantic evenings out with Yolande and we had been confined to watching videos in my flat or just chatting. Now I never had been one for just chatting, but with Yolande I found that it had it’s virtues. Thus on the Sunday morning I was in the flat alone as I did not want to risk my healing ankle hobbling to church and Yolande’s choir had a choir-swap with St Thomas’.

  I was just considering hobbling up to the house to practice on the piano when I noticed a pair of women walking towards the flat from the house. They were wrapped up well in expensive overcoats and heading for my flat like a pair of guided missiles, albeit slow ones. I went down and opened the garage door not knowing what to expect. As soon as they entered I knew I had the totally unexpected. She was older now and the girl more mature, but there was no mistaking Mrs Grant and her eldest daughter. She smiled and displayed a set of expensively maintained teeth.

  “My my young man you’ve gone a nice shade of white,” she intoned in a sort of feminine cracked voice.

  I was surprised that I hadn’t passed out.

  “Mrs Grant?” I asked tentatively.

  She brushed the comment aside like swatting a fly.

  “Not any more, call me Mrs Du Pres.”

  I tried the young woman, “And are you Danielle?”