Read A Village Dilemna (Turnham Malpas 09) Online
Authors: Rebecca Shaw
A Village Dilemna (Turnham Malpas 09) (8 page)
Jimmy stood stock still. Sykes, who by now had caught up with him, bristled and growled and, when he saw Jimmy looking as though he intended to walk forward towards Gilbert, he flattened himself to the ground
showing his teeth in a nasty snarl and then, apparently overcome by terror, fled under the gate into the churchyard and disappeared.
‘You’re not thinking of digging?’
‘We might, if we decide it’s the right place.’
‘You’d better not, all hell’ll be let loose.’
Gilbert smiled and the students sniggered, hiding their laughter behind their clipboards.
‘You can laugh. No one goes in that copse. See my dog? He gives that copse a wide berth every time we come past. I couldn’t
drag
’im in there even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Take my advice and leave well alone. We all do, that’s why it’s so overgrown. The groundsmen never touch it.’
‘Come on, you know more than you’re saying. Tell all.’
It was the long pause before Jimmy answered that made the students want to laugh out loud. Gilbert repeated, ‘Tell all.’
‘Old people around here,
if
they mention it at all, call it … Deadman’s Dell.’
The students shouted, ‘We’re right, that’ll be it.’ They almost danced a jig at the prospect.
Gilbert raised an eyebrow. ‘Deadman’s Dell? Really? That sounds hopeful.’
Jimmy backed off. ‘You’re not thinking of … like … digging there, are you?’
‘We very well might.’
‘It’s not right, it’s irreverent, that is, digging for bones. Didn’t them poor devils suffer enough before they died, never mind digging ’em up now? Them could be ancestors of folk who still live hereabouts. It’s not right. No, grave robbing’s not right.’
Jimmy backed off a little further. ‘It’ll be safer if you do nothing at all. We don’t want that copse digging up; tempting fate, that is, tempting fate.’ Jimmy wagged his finger at them. ‘It’s already started. What do yer think that storm was about? It was a warning, that’s what. Leave well alone, do you hear me? Serve yer bloody right if you all get the plague yerselves.’ He walked off towards the little gate, put his hand on it, briefly turned back to look at them, wagged his finger again, and shouted, ‘Take heed! You’ll be cursed!’ Then he went through and disappeared from sight.
The students at first doubled up with laughter and then fell silent, suddenly feeling concerned.
‘Cursed?’
‘Where have we come? I mean, don’t they know in this village that it’s the twenty-first century. We haven’t gone into a time warp, have we?’
Gilbert assured them that no, they hadn’t, and that Jimmy was being incredibly naïve and of course they weren’t cursed; there was no such thing as being cursed and with Mr Fitch’s permission they’d investigate. Mr Fitch, he knew, would give the go-ahead without hesitation, because he was a practical, down-to-earth man who would love nothing better than …
‘But should we be disturbing ancient bones? After all, they’ve been buried there more than six hundred years. What would we gain when all’s said and done?’
Gilbert placed a finger on his temple. ‘Knowledge. A paper published. Progress.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘To appease everyone we’d have the bones interred in the churchyard with a headstone or a plaque, and we’ll have a funeral service, which they wouldn’t have had at the time of the plague. No priest, no time.’
‘Gilbert, be honest, you must be feeling a bit of concern because you used the word “appease”.’
‘Only because these people are superstitious beyond belief. They’ll imagine all kinds of terrible things will happen, which could have happened anyway even without us opening up that pit. Right? I’ll see the Rector, too, on Sunday and make it right with him.’
Jimmy had expected to find Sykes waiting for him outside his cottage door, but he wasn’t there. Eventually he went looking for him in the church, it being Sykes’s second home, and found him shivering and afraid, hiding under a pew in the very darkest corner. Jimmy knelt down and peered under the seat. ‘Come on, Sykes, old chap. Jimmy’ll take you home. Come on, now.’ But Sykes wouldn’t come and had to be dragged out by his scruff, and carried home because he refused to walk. Sykes cowered in his bed for the rest of the morning and only came out when Jimmy, in desperation, offered him a saucer of warm milk sweetened with a spoonful of honey which, in Sykes’s opinion, came a very close second to Dicky’s home-brewed ale.
Vince Jones, now doorstop manufacturer and picture framer to Charter-Plackett Enterprises, scratched his head and said a little scornfully, ‘I reckon you’re making too much of this thunderstorm business. It wasn’t that bad.’
‘You should have been out in it. I was. I know.’
‘It was pure coincidence, that’s what. Wasn’t it, Willie?’
Willie, who had experienced funny coincidences in the past with a tomb in the church, didn’t dismiss Jimmy’s argument quite so decisively. ‘He could have a point. There’s some funny things happen because of the past. But what’s the use of digging up old bones, what would they do with ’em when they’d got ’em? Nothing. Rector won’t agree anyway, believe me.’
Jimmy looked towards Sylvia and asked her what she thought.
‘It’s not on holy ground, though, so it’s got nothing to do with ’im. If anyone can protest it’s old Fitch, it’s on his land.’
Mrs Jones piped up, ‘I reckon Willie is right, what does it matter anyway? There’s more important things than a few old bones, Jimmy.’
‘Not much more important if it brings destruction down on the village. It doesn’t do to interfere with the past. Just think, Vince, they might be ancestors of yours.’ Certain he’d thought up a reason which would bring Vince out in support, Jimmy had another long drink of his ale and waited for Vince’s reaction.
‘You’ve backed the wrong horse there, Jimmy. My great-grandfather came from the Rhondda Valley way back, but definitely not as far back as them bones. So they’re not my relatives.’
‘No, Vince, but they could be mine.’ Mrs Jones suddenly discovered a deep empathy with those bones in Deadman’s Dell. ‘There’s been Flatmans in the parish records for years. I think I might have a right to a say what happens to ’em.’
Vince snorted his disdain at her fanciful idea. ‘Get on, yer daft beggar, what the hell does it matter?’
Willie, brought abruptly to life by Sylvia’s championing of the bones burial question, demanded, ‘You mean you’d go against me?’
‘Well, yes, I think I would. They’ve a right to Christian burial, they have.’ Sylvia shuddered as though she were being asked to be buried in unholy ground. Sensing a row brewing, however, she said, ‘Anyways, they could dig and
find nothing at all, so I’m not going to worry myself about it till it happens, if it ever does. Willie, go get the drinks in. Will you join us Mrs Jones, Vince?’
They’d just got themselves nicely settled with their drinks at Jimmy’s table when in came Bryn Fields. Jimmy debated as to whether or not Bryn would support him and decided that he didn’t want him on his side anyway, so he’d keep quiet. But he hadn’t bargained for Alan Crimble having overheard their conversation while he’d been going round collecting empty glasses.
Alan served Bryn his drink and then, leaning confidentially on the bar counter while Bryn downed his first whisky of the day, he confided what he’d heard.
Bryn listened with great concentration, wondering how he could turn this to his advantage. Of course! Willie could show the tourists the site of the plague pit and make the point about bones interred there being those of ancestors of people still living in the village. It all fitted in beautifully. Maybe they could put up a plaque, ‘Here lie victims of the Black Death’, in old-fashioned writing. My word! Things were coming together better than he could ever have hoped. ‘Thanks, Alan. That might come in useful.’
‘O’ course, Jimmy’s convinced that storm was caused by them students poking about in the Dell. Reckons we’ll be in right trouble.’
Bryn pushed his glass across the counter and intimated he wanted a refill. That storm. He still felt distinctly iffy about it. Could Jimmy be right? God! This place was getting to him. He’d got a turnip for a head if he thought like that. By the time he’d drunk his second whisky he’d got things under control. This was a real gift, oh, yes! An
absolute gift. Well, he’d bide his time and play the long game. Talk about a stroke of luck. By Jove! Things couldn’t be better.
The question of Deadman’s Dell became the main topic of conversation in the bar. It spread to the dining room to people wholly unconnected with the village, people who only saw it as a quaint place to eat on a summer’s evening, but they also had opinions on the matter. Roughly, had there been a head count, they were divided fifty-fifty as to whether or not the Dell should be the subject of an archaeological dig.
Gilbert Johns, in the choir vestry the following morning organising his collection of choirboys into an angelic chorus, remembered that he had to speak to Peter after the service about the Dell, as he chastised one boy for his crumpled surplice, another for his unruly hair, held out a tissue to a third, demanding he remove his chewing gum, reminded the youngest member not to rustle sweet papers during prayers and asked for silence.
Twenty pairs of eyes looked up at him and Gilbert said, as he always did, ‘Good morning, chaps. We’ll run through our exercises, get ourselves in trim. Ready?’ He raised his hand, gave them their note and started them off on a pattern of chords and scales they could have done in their sleep. They’d sung in cathedrals and won choir competitions under his tutelage, and next to archaeology the choir was his passion. Gilbert was so proud of them all, and they in their turn worshipped him. He had the knack of treating them as equals, yet keeping control, of bringing out the best in them but not demanding more than they had to give. This September two of them would be going
to cathedral choir schools, and there weren’t many village church choirs could boast of that. All in all they were a brilliant bunch and what was so encouraging was the list of boys waiting their turn to join. They came from Turnham Malpas, Penny Fawcett and Little Derehams, and even from as far away as Culworth.
Gilbert checked his watch: nine fifty-nine precisely. He cocked an ear for Mrs Peel’s final trill before … there it was. ‘Ready. Quiet now. Here we go.’ He snapped a thumb and finger twice, his signal for them to adopt what he called their ‘church face’, and opened the door. Whether it was the ruffs around their necks or the glowing red of the choirboys’ cassocks or their shining morning faces, the hearts of the congregation always lifted when the choir appeared and quite a few female hearts fluttered at the sight of Gilbert processing down the aisle. He had his choirmaster face on and didn’t even see his Louise, freed from their three little ones by the crèche to sit for an hour in comparative peace.
Once the service was over and he had dismissed the choir he went in search of Peter. He found him in his vestry removing his surplice. ‘There you are.’
Peter said, ‘I am. I expect you’ve come to see me about the Dell?’
‘You know, then.’
‘I do. They’re all talking about it and expecting me to stop you doing it. Shall I?’
‘Do you want to?’
Peter sat on the edge of the table, folded his arms and asked ‘Do you want me to?’
‘In fact, you can’t, because if we’re right it isn’t on church land.’
‘As opposed to rumours and counter-rumours.’
‘That’s right.’
‘We think there’s a pit, dug at the time of the plague, where they buried people because they had no priest to hold services and they were dying so fast they’d no one to dig proper graves so they did the next best thing: dug a big hole outside church land and bunged them all in. If we are proved right, which we can only do by digging, we shall examine the remains, find out what we can. Then what I propose, with your approval, obviously, is to hold a service and bury them in the churchyard. That way they’ll have had a funeral service and be buried on consecrated ground even though it’s … what? … six hundred and more years late.’
Peter sat thinking for a moment, head down, staring at a worn patch in the vestry carpet. ‘No doubt I shall be harangued from Little Derehams to Penny Fawcett for agreeing but yes, I think you should, mainly because I prefer the idea of them being buried in consecrated ground and only for that reason, and you can tell everyone I shall conduct the funeral service.’
‘Thanks. You know we’ll deal with everything with the greatest respect.’
‘Of course. I wouldn’t expect anything other. Mr Fitch will be delighted, he loves anything like this. I hope you’ll make sure for his sake that it gets into the papers.’ He grinned at Gilbert who raised a finger in acknowledgement of Peter’s understanding of the workings of Mr Fitch’s mind.
‘Your brood OK?’
‘Fine, thanks.’
‘Good. Doesn’t get easier the older they get.’
‘Thanks for the warning. Talking of warnings, there’s going to be a lot of opposition. Apparently that storm we had was solely a warning to me for poking about in the Dell and worse is about to fall if we continue. Just thought I’d say.’
‘I can see what they mean, though.’
They both laughed.
Gilbert left, then came back and, putting his head round the vestry door, said, ‘By the way, thanks. Grateful for your support.’
As he went to gather up Louise and the children he met Bryn who had paid one of his rare visits to church that morning. He was lurking by the lych-gate clumsily clutching the baby, while Louise was playing a complicated chasing game between the gravestones with the two older ones. Bryn handed the baby to him saying, ‘Here, this is yours. I was waiting for a word.’
‘Be my guest.’
‘I want you to know you have my full support over the Dell. I’ve been thinking, if you find what you think you’ll find, how about a plaque, say, on the church wall by the little gate explaining all about it?’
‘Where my hunches are concerned, I’ve learned to wait and see until I’m proved right. Everything points to us
being right but one never knows. However, it would be Peter who would have to give permission for that.’
‘Well, I just wanted you to know that at least you have
my
full support. We should know about these things, it’s important to the village’s history.’
Rather sourly, for him, Gilbert replied, ‘To say nothing of your tourist scheme, eh?’ The baby began to stir fretfully. ‘This baby is about to scream for his food and my mother-in-law will be frothing at the mouth; she’s expecting us for lunch. Will you excuse us?’
Bryn opened his mouth to protest that he was only thinking of the good of the village, but Gilbert shouted, ‘Louise! Come!’ and she did, scooping up the two gravestone chasers as she came, so before he could explain himself properly to Gilbert they were already crossing the green.
By Saturday a fire was burning near Deadman’s Dell. The students had arrived that morning in a dilapidated old car equipped with rakes, billhooks and thick gloves to clear the undergrowth before commencing their dig.
A small group of onlookers had gathered, among them Alex and Beth from the Rectory, having spied the activity from the attic window, Bryn who tried to pretend he hadn’t a vested interest in their success but seriously failing to do so, going so far as to offer to supervise the bonfire, Willie leaning on the church wall, Fran and Flick who’d had a phone call from Beth in case they were at a loose end, and Mrs Jones who’d walked up to the village to go to a coffee morning in the church hall but couldn’t resist taking a peek, having no doubts that numerous Flatman ancestors were about to see the light of day.
Beth spied the bag immediately. ‘Sylvia! Are those sweets for Willie?’
‘They were, but I dare say he’s kind enough to share.’
They were assorted sweets from the pick’n’mix in Tesco’s, and Beth loved the Turkish delights. With her mouth full of chocolate and Turkish delight, Beth asked Sylvia if she thought she might have ancestors in the pit.
‘I doubt it. My great-grandmother came from far, far away.’
‘How far?’
‘Scotland.’
‘That’s a long way. What about your great-grandfather?’
‘Same. Came to work on Nightingale Farm.’
Beth considered this for a while, watching the great piles of brushwood the students were heaping on the fire, and helping herself to another sweet from Sylvia’s bag. ‘Just think, if we’d got seven children in our house like the Nightingales …’
