Eleven Pipers Piping (5 page)

Will had departed the vicarage first. Victor had lingered a time, the stoical mask slipping around the edges as he touched on life at the home front: Molly lashing out at Harry’s school for its ill vigilance against bullying, at various children for various cruelties, and at him, mostly him, Victor, for pushing their son into sport when it held only terrors for him and pulling away from the boy’s genuine passions. All of which he denied to Tom with rising indignation and sprinkled asides about Molly’s coddling her elder child and not the younger. Tom interjected with an earnest offer, rebuffed in the days after Harry’s death, to pay a pastoral visit on Molly, or meet with both of them, or do anything he could really, to help deliver them from this hell. But Victor drew in his shoulders and shook his head. No point, he said with ill grace as he tugged on his jacket and turned to leave. Tom watched him make his long-legged stride down the path to the gate to Poynton Shute, worried. If Molly and Victor didn’t soon join together to address their problems, assuage their grief—and forgive each other their trespasses—walls would rise around their hearts and shut out love. He knew this. He had once gathered a few foundation stones himself in his own marriage.

“A penny for ’em, Vicar.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. I was just … ruminating.”

Tom glanced to the left, towards the village hall, the windows of which were black and lifeless. “Looks like film night’s cancelled,” he remarked as Roger’s mobile tinkled out “Ode to Joy” once more.
Singin’ in the Rain
had been scheduled for seven thirty. As Burns himself attested, the best-laid schemes gang aft agley, though fickle weather may not have been uppermost in the great poet’s mind. If the Burns Supper had been scheduled at the Thorn Court Hotel for January 25, Burns’s actual birthday, then Roger’s mobile might be less harrying. But as Will had explained to him, many of the Thistle But Mostly Rose hired themselves out to entertain at other Burns Suppers nearer the date, obliging the band to schedule its own celebratory meal well before or after.

“Another cancellation?”

“No, that was Mother, wondering if I’d arrived safely. Apparently they interrupted some programme she was watching with a weather bulletin.”

Tom could see a frown forming on Roger’s face, illuminated by a pale light over the sign that announced their destination. Pennycross Road curved to the right forty feet or so beyond Tilly’s cottage and then ascended sharply around a high stone wall that defined the western boundary of Thorn Court Country Hotel’s expansive grounds. Cut into the wall at the base of the small hill that the hotel crowned was a gate of filigreed wrought iron adorned with the letter
S
.

“It can’t be good if they’re interrupting TV.”

“The snow’s heavy.” Tom pocketed his torch and pushed at the gate. “Goodness, perhaps this gate’s iced up somehow. Here …” He handed the box of pastries to Roger, dug his shoulder into the curlicued metal, and heaved. With a reluctant shriek along its hinge, the gate budged a few inches, creating a nascent fan shape in the fallen snow.

“Bless!” Roger remarked. “Perhaps we should go round to the upper entrance.”

“Wait! I’ll get it.”

Tom pushed harder against the resistant metal, finally gaining sufficient room to slip through. “There!” he said with some satisfaction, turning to Roger, who was calculating his belly width against the gap’s.

“Tom, I think I’ll have to get in the other way.”

“Oh, don’t. I’m sure we can get this bloody thing to move. Caroline drove the girls down to the vicarage earlier and said it was quite slippery. She likely meant the stretch up the hill.”

As if to confirm this, at that very moment the sweeping oval headlights of car flared against the wall opposite, followed by a black bullet shape that careened around the corner and roared towards the heart of the village.

“Bless!” Roger gasped, backing against the wall.

“He might have taken out the side of the village hall at that speed! How irresponsible! Did you see who it was?”

“Too dark, I’m afraid. A sports model of some nature, I think.”

“Well, you’re not going up that hill. Here …” Tom grasped two of the gate’s bars and immediately regretted not wearing gloves. The cold metal seared his skin. “… now that I’m on this side I can pull. If you put your things down, you can push.”

But before Roger could divest himself of his burdens, the gate gave way with a sickening snap and Tom found himself tossed onto a low box hedge.

“Tom! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Tom croaked. “Just a little wind knocked out of me. Give me a minute.”

The denuded branches stabbed at his backside and thighs while his head brushed against a mound of wet snow on the other side of the hedge. He was afforded, however, a view of the starless heavens through mediations of falling flakes.

“Good thing I’m not wearing a kilt,” he remarked between breaths, feeling pinpricks of snow tickle his skin. “Otherwise—”

Roger interrupted him with a noisy sigh. “Bless, Vicar, I hope you’re not going to do what’s-up-your-kilt jokes this evening. We’ve heard them all.”

“Sorry.”

“May I give you a hand?”

“Another minute.”

“You remind me a bit of the time Will fell over Mrs. Dimbleby’s hedge.”

“When was this?”

“In the autumn. At the Race for the Roof. I was minding the water station halfway and held out a paper cup to him as he was going by and somehow he lost his footing when he was reaching for it and fell over the hedge. He was quite shirty about it, blamed me.”

“I thought Will looked put out at the finish line. I think he came in fourth.”

Tom allowed his body to slide off the hedge, a task made easier by the slippery surface along his waxed jacket. He landed in a heap in what in better weather would be a bed of roses, but was now a quilt of snow.

“Still,” he continued, scrambling up and brushing damp clumps from his sleeves, “Will raised a very good sum for the church roof repairs. The Race for the Roof was a splendid idea and he was willing to organise the entire event, as you know.”

“Perhaps that’s why …”

“Perhaps that’s why what?”

“Why Will has become so snappish of late. He takes too much on. He manages this hotel with Caroline.” Roger pointed up the steep path through the marshalling of cypress trees towards Thorn Court, as sinister as a sorcerer’s castle behind the veil of snow but for the redeeming glow from the ground-floor windows. “He rehearses twice a month with us pipers. He plays cricket
and
coaches the Under-fifteens—well, used to coach. He’s a member of the amateur dramatic society and been in all the plays, except the last one.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, Harry’s death, I think. Didn’t want to be too much in the public eye, though he was marvellous the year before in
Abigail’s Party
as the henpecked husband.” Roger handed Tom the box of pastries. “And Will sits on the parish council, though … I expect there’s a bit of self-interest there.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Will is anti.”

“Vivisectionist?”

“No, development.”

“Of course, yes, I did know that.”

Indeed, at lunch on Sunday, Will had been agitated about Moorgate Properties, developers based in Newton Abbot, making discreet enquiries into available parcels adjacent to Thornford on which to build new homes—forty or fifty of them, all with white masonry and slate roofs, all identical, all as sore on the eyes—Will declared in his Australian twang—as a rank of sheep pens. Thornford’s frail network of narrow lanes would be flooded with more cars, a hazard to children and horse-riders, and a swath of fields designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty would be spoiled. Will didn’t say, but seemed to suggest, that such a development threatened to devalue the village as a holiday destination, no hotelier’s wish, and his every gesture and twitch seemed intended to solicit Tom’s agreement.

Tom, however, thought the fence a fine place to perch that afternoon. Yes, despoiling the English countryside was an idea with little merit; he could understand that—he loved his walks in the countryside with Bumble. But, he said, rising to open the wine, mightn’t there be an argument for new housing? He meant, of course, affordable housing, of which there was little in the village. Marg Farrant, one of the steadfast and true of the Flower Guild, had remarked to him only the other day how desperately her daughter and her husband
wanted to live in Thornford to be near her, but found themselves priced out of the market. From the corner of his eye, as he poured the wine, he had seen Will rapping his knuckles in random jumps along the edge of the dining table until Caroline’s slim hand slipped across and squeezed her husband’s larger, sinewy one, not wholly successfully, into submission. Tom barely had time to register surprise at Will’s agitation—and acknowledge his own yearning for such a tender wifely touch—because it was that moment in which Madrun sounded her grief over the Yorkshire pudding. Afterwards, the subject was forgotten. Will was, if anything, subdued through the meal. They talked about the weather, a political scandal that was the lead story in
The Sunday Times
, the vagaries of fund-raising for a country church, and the controversy over national curriculum tests—tacitly avoiding parish council news, food failures, and cricket.

“What are your views?” Tom asked Roger as they stepped up the sloping path. By their feet, solar garden lights, tiny perfect circles illuminating the unblemished snow, guided the way through the darkness towards the hotel’s front door.

“Of a new housing development? Bless, I don’t know. I must say I could use the trade. It’s all very well everyone wanting me to be open at seven in the morning if they run out of milk, or open at eight at night if they’ve run out of fags, but then they go off and do their main shopping at Totnes or Paignton.”

“Well, here we are.” Tom heard Roger grunt when they had reached the hotel’s forecourt. Here the snow, glimmering in the soft golden glow of the coach lamps on either side of the entrance, was blemished by a splodge of footprints. Narrow trails of tyre tracks disappeared into the darkness. “Good, we’re not the first.” Roger shone his torch down the forecourt towards the old stable block, converted to a hotel garage. “Not many cars, though,” he observed.

“I expect the weather is slowing people down.” Tom glanced up
through the tumbling flakes of snow to Thorn Court’s belvedere tower, his attention caught by the upper window’s sudden illumination. “I wonder who’s gone up there at this time of the evening?”

Roger followed his glance. “Whatever
would
one do with it, I wonder?”

“With what?”

“The tower. Oh, sorry, Tom. I was reflecting on a conversation I overheard in the shop before Christmas. Two men were discussing this property, Thorn Court … for development.” He turned his beam onto the garden they’d passed through moments earlier, now a hummocky white blanket spreading down to Pennycross Road below. “Bless, you could put ten cottages here, I expect. More.”

“Oh,” Tom exclaimed, startled by the idea of the hotel’s grounds, ravishing in the spring and summer with vivid tangles of flowers, vanishing into slate and mortar. “Do you know who the two were?”

“I’ve not seen them before. Moorgate Properties types, I shouldn’t wonder. Funny what you hear standing in a shop all day. People think you’re invisible. Anyway, they were saying the hotel could be converted into flats, then speculated about what to do with the tower.”

“But wasn’t Thorn Court designed by some notable nineteenth-century architect?”

“I think so.”

“It must be at least Grade II listed. They’d have to leave the tower, but more to the point,” Tom continued, “Caroline and Will can’t possibly be thinking of selling. He spoke so strongly against development last Sunday lunch, and, of course, they’re going to all the expense of renovating and upgrading.”

“Bless! Caroline would never sell. Except for the period between her father selling it and her buying it back, her family has held this property for nearly two hundred years. I’m not sure there’s anything she loves more.”

T
om, I don’t believe you’ve met my brother-in-law, Nick Stanhope.” Will motioned to his right. “Caroline’s brother,” he added unnecessarily.

“Half brother.” Nick shifted his whisky glass to his left hand, took Tom’s in his right, and shot him a taunting smile. His grip was firm, crushing, as if testing Tom’s mettle while his eyes, blue, bright, and sharp, held Tom in an ironic thrall. Tom glanced from them to Will’s, which were similarly blue, but clouded, opaque, as if he had something else on his mind. Only a slight twitch of Will’s eyebrows, so light and blond as to be almost invisible, suggested irritation with Nick’s gratuitous explanation.

“We share a father. Or shared, rather. But sod that.” Nick took a draining gulp from his glass. “More to the point, Vicar, are you ready for a night of debauchery?”

“I think Tom has an early call in the morning,” Will interjected in a weary tone.

“Old Giles used to crawl up the pulpit Sunday morning after, I hear.”