Ellis Peters - George Felse 13 - Rainbow's End (3 page)

‘I shouldn’t, if I were you,’ said George benignly.

‘On the contrary,’ said Willie the Twig, ‘being you, of course you wouldn’t, but if you were me you certainly would.’ And without further waste of time he strode across the room, swerving only sufficiently to clear such persons and objects as got in his way, and made straight for Barbara. Who, George observed before he drifted towards his next encounter, was neither surprised nor displeased, but stood and waited, reeling in on the dark and glittering thread of her glance the only fish that had so far engaged her interest, in all these hundred or so milling about her.

‘Hullo!’ said Barbara. ‘I’ve been noticing you for some time, and nobody’s told me who you are. I was wondering when you’d work your way round to me.’

‘I don’t work my way round,’ said Willie the Twig. ‘I go straight across. And my name’s Will Swayne. Warden of Middlehope Forest. I don’t know if you like forests?’

‘I never really met one,’ said Barbara. Her voice was low, deliberate and thoughtful. ‘On closer acquaintance I think I might get to like them very much.’

By the time the musical interlude ended, George had reached a little group gathered at an open window. Courteously silent until that moment, they fell into easy conversation after Rainbow had received his due acclaim. Two of them George knew well, Robert Macsen-Martel from Mottisham Abbey, down the valley, and his wife Dinah. Their half-ruinous property was in process of renovation under the guidance of the National Trust, and archaeological interest in the new acquisition was proving unexpectedly lively.

‘I don’t think you’ve met Charles Goddard,’ said Robert, attenuated and lank and fair. ‘He’s advising on the work, we’ve been uncovering some rather good tiled floors.’ He was a little deprecating about saying ‘we’ now that he had agreed to surrender the place, but obviously he must be ploughing everything that was left of his family patrimony into endowing it, or the Trust would never have been able to accept the burden, however desirable. Robert worked in an estate office selling small new houses, in one of which he and his wife lived, and there was nothing left of the centuries of Macsen-Martels and their outworn glory except the decency and integrity contained within this desiccated and aloof exterior. Unless, perhaps, Dinah’s dress, loose from the shoulders, had been chosen for more reasons than fashion? Dinah was petite, rounded and dark, born into the ranks of honest toil, and with both small feet planted firmly on the ground, and what those two apparently incompatible and wildly devoted people would produce between them gave room for interested speculation. What was more, Dinah had already detected, the brief glance at her waistline, and was staring George out in sparkling silence, challenging him to ask or comment. Probably Bunty had already got all the answers.

Charles Goddard was large, impressive and grey, the silver of early distinction rather than encroaching age. He had the slightly waxen and heavy smoothness of the legal profession.

‘And here’s John Stubbs, who’s taken over as man-on-the-spot. Someone has to live on the premises, and John’s brave enough to inhabit the lodge alone, ghosts or no ghosts, and look after the whole place.’

This one was younger, dark, solid and taciturn, even dour. Perhaps partly because, while he murmured his perfunctory greeting, his real attention was concentrated upon a distant corner of the room, where Barbara Rainbow and Willie the Twig were perceptibly getting on rather well together. And now George realised that both these young men he was confronting had already caught his attention once this evening. They were the two who had been drawn half across the hall in bemused pursuit of Rainbow’s spectacular wife, like helpless sparks in the tail of a comet.

‘– and Colin Barron, who’s been an enormous help to me over a number of things I never realised were valuable assets until he briefed me. I owe Colin’s acquaintance to our host, as a matter of fact, and I’m grateful. I know absolutely nothing about the antiques market,’ owned Robert. ‘It’s salutary to discover that what you’ve been writing off as junk can realise a lot of money elsewhere, and be hailed as treasure.’

This was the fair one, who belonged on sight to Rainbow’s world. He was tall, and built like an athlete, but his features were urban and shrewd, his clothes, while tactfully unobtrusive, of the city and the fashion.

‘I’ve been a friend and rival of Arthur’s for a long time,’ he ‘said with an amiable but knowing smile, ’and learned a lot from him. Enough to know that any hare he starts is well worth coursing. When a chap like Arthur moves up into these parts, it pays to take a look at the territory and see what drew him there. I haven’t caught up with the real attraction yet, I suspect, but I did discover Mottisham Abbey. In time to be useful to Mr Macsen-Martel, maybe, but you may be sure it didn’t do me any harm, either. I like to be candid about it.’

‘I’m afraid we’ve been talking shop, even on this occasion,’ said Robert apologetically. ‘My fault, I don’t seem able to think of anything else at the moment. It really has become very interesting. Several schools and clubs have come into the act, and been doing splendid work, under Charles’s guidance. I never imagined there’d be so much enthusiasm. We’re being asked to allow party visits from so many bodies that we’re planning on beginning in a few weeks. Afternoons only, and while the work’s in progress they’ll have to be strictly guided tours, it would be too chaotic to have people straying everywhere among the plant and materials lying around there. You wouldn’t like to volunteer as a guide, would you, George? We’re open to offers!’

‘I doubt if I should be much of an asset,’ said George. ‘I could certainly improvise a stunning scenario for you, but the facts might cause less trouble. You seem to have recruited several competent candidates already. And there’s always Professor Joyce, if you can lure him away from his magnum opus.’

That was a joke strictly for local people, who were all well aware that Professor Emeritus Evan Joyce, happily retired at sixty-odd to a decrepit but spacious cottage up the valley with his books, was busily engaged in not writing his long-projected history of Goliard poets, and almost any distraction was enough to justify him in never getting it beyond the note stage.

‘I think he’d rather reserve his options at the moment,’ said Dinah, dimpling. ‘Haven’t you run into him tonight? He is here. Miss de la Pole has just told him she’s made up her mind to retire, and has broken the news to the vicar. We could lure him away from his Latin poets, all right, but we can’t compete with the organ and the choir, not a hope. He’s been waiting to get his hands on them for years.’

The Reverend Stephen Baines was young, earnest and good-looking, and as poor as his eighteenth-century predecessors here had been rich. He lived in a small bungalow, a bashful bachelor looked after by a widowed neighbour who cooked and cleaned, and nursed selective match-making plans for him, taking her time about both choice and tactics. He was as unaware of this as he was of many other practical proceedings that went on round him. He had some distressing proclivities, according to his parishioners, who were protectively fond of him none the less. He worried about the church’s image, and tended to try all sorts of new gimmicks to get nearer to people who felt, as it happened, very close indeed, the gimmicks notwithstanding. He was given to trying out new texts in the vernacular, and adopting attitudes which were hard work for him and a great trial to his long-suffering aides. Luckily he was sound on music, which he loved.

‘Isn’t it lucky,’ he said happily, ‘that there should be someone so able, just coming into our community at the very time when he’s needed? Providential, you might almost say. Indeed, I feel sure Mr Rainbow is going to prove a great asset in every way. We shall miss our dear de la Pole, how could we not? She’s such a stalwart, and has such a way with the boys. But they sometimes need a firm hand, you know, and then, Mr Rainbow is really an outstanding musician. I can hardly believe he’s really agreed to take over as organist and choirmaster. Do you know, he even volunteered? Such a busy chap, and yet willing to take on this further work in addition to everything else. And he’s offered his house and grounds for the harvest supper, too.’

‘Most generous!’ said George hollowly. What can you say. There was Evan Joyce across the room, talking to Bunty, unkempt, shaggy and endearing in his rusty black suit that must have served him for every formal occasion since his graduation, and here was this exasperating innocent who had just given away what Evan wanted most in this small chosen world of his, to a stranger, and one who showed signs of appropriating this, literally, in addition to everything else.

‘Isn’t it? He even intimated that he would be delighted to serve as churchwarden if there should be a vacancy. Willing workers are not so thick on the ground these days.’

This one, thought George resignedly as he moved on to confront the deprived professor and reclaim Bunty, shows every sign of being very thick on the ground indeed. A walking take-over bid for Middlehope, where he seemed to think there was a vacancy for a squire, if not a lord of the manor. He couldn’t be expected to know in advance that ‘squire’ was a dirty word in these tribal regions. But very, very soon someone would have to start instructing him.

They foregathered in the saloon bar of the ‘Gun Dog’ afterwards, for one social drink together before they scattered for home: George and Bunty, Evan Joyce, Sam and Toby Malcolm (Jenny having gone straight home to relieve Sylvia Thomas of her watch), Miss de la Pole, and Willie the Twig, who came late and was unusually thoughtful and quiet. They talked about the weather, and the harvest prospects, and the forthcoming Flower and Vegetable Show, and the sad fact that the ‘Gun Dog’ was not a home-brewed house, like the ‘Sitting Duck’ at Mottisham. But never a word about Rainbow. Not until Miss de la Pole drained her glass and rose to set a good example, drawing her black shawl round her shoulders.

‘He won’t do, you know,’ she said with inexorable gentleness; and having pronounced her oracle, as gently and decidedly withdrew, leaving them room either for comment or for silence.

As it turned out, no one had anything to object, or to add.

Sergeant Jack Moon lived one short remove from the village of Abbot’s Bale, down the valley, and had been the law in those parts for years, evading transfer and passing up promotion with the single-minded assurance of one who has found his métier for life. In Middlehope law had to adapt itself to special conditions, and walk hand in hand with custom, which provided the main system by which behaviour was regulated. One assault from an intruder, and the whole valley would clam up and present a united front of impenetrable ignorance, solid as a Roman shield-wall, in defence of its own people and its immemorial sanctity.

Moon was a large, calm, quiet man with a poker face, and hands as broad as spades, and could look phlegmatic, and even stupid, at will, but was neither. And there was nobody better qualified to dissect the situation in Middlehope, a month or so after Rainbow’s house-warming. He and George had both been in court during the morning, and were snatching a quiet lunch together in Comerbourne before returning to the rest of the work-load, which at the beginning of October was relatively light.

‘Well, how are things in your barony?’ asked George. ‘And how did the harvest supper go off?’

‘You’re informed that far, are you?’ said Moon thoughtfully. ‘What would you expect? The vicar’d accepted the offer of the chap’s house, folks couldn’t stay away without making the vicar miserable, so the turnout was much the same as usual. Down a bit, though, and the Rev. couldn’t help noticing, and anyhow, by then I doubt if he was much surprised. He does fall over himself to think the best of everybody, but he can learn. Too late, of course. The man’s got a strangle-hold on the choir now, it won’t be easy to get it off him again. The professor’s taken it philosophically, but it’s a blow, all the same. And the grounds are offered again for the hospital fête, and if you ask me they’re already arranging all the show pieces for sale, sending out invitations to customers all over the Midlands.’

‘To be fair,’ George pointed out, ‘the hospital may benefit by boosted takings, too.’

‘It
may
! He
will
! He hasn’t ploughed all that money into the place without expecting a handsome profit. He’s talking of opening the gardens to the public for charity next summer. There’ll be an invisible price-tag on most of those lead sirens of his, and quite a turnover in garden stoneware.’

‘Oh, so he’s talking in terms of next year now. Digging in, Jack! What’s the valley going to do about it? They usually manage to weed out the unwanted pretty effectively.’

‘Trouble is we’ve left it late, not wanting to throw out any man until we were sure. And then, the vicar being newish and not thoroughly clued up yet made his mistake, and now he’s stuck with it, and so are we.’

‘And what’s he really like as organist?’ asked George curiously. ‘From all I hear, he can play any keyboard instrument like nobody’s business. Obviously the Reverend thought he was getting a prize. Does that work out?’

‘George, if we’ve got a resistance movement in the general population, believe me, we’ve got seething revolution in the choir. You won’t hear a voluntary in our church now earlier than Durufle or Messiaen, or an anthem or a chant or a hymn-tune more than twenty years old. The things he’s asking those boys to sing you wouldn’t wish on a dog-pack! You should see young Bossie’s face, soaring to that high F of his and looking like it tastes vile. All new and fashionable and with-it, I’m sure, but with what? Not harmony, nor melody, that’s for certain. And what about all the rest of us, brought up on Welsh hwyl and classical form? Nothing to get our teeth in at all! Congregations are dropping off you know how frustrating it can be, coming all primed to sing your heart out, and very creditably, mind you, we know what’s what; and then to be baulked by a parcel of discords fighting out a life-or-death struggle! No, let him be as expert as he likes, he knows nothing and feels nothing about music. If he did, he’d know what he’s stirring up, and believe me, he hasn’t got a clue.’

George thought of Miss de la Pole, with her finger on the valley’s pulse like a family doctor, saying almost absently: ‘What a pity he isn’t in the least degree musical!’

‘You do seem to have acquired a king-sized headache,’ he said with sympathy. ‘You’ve frozen out tougher propositions before, though. What’s so special about this one?’

‘A hide like a rhinoceros,’ said Sergeant Moon succinctly, ‘and far better insulation. With the money he’s got he can isolate himself inside his own world, apart from actual functions at which he has to appear officially. He can bring in his own society, be independent of us and anything we may feel about him. Do you realise we’ve never had a rich man living among us since the eighteenth century? The mistake was ever to let him in. Now he’s in I’m damned if we know how to get at him.’

‘Somebody’ll find a way,’ said George, rather too lightly.

‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ agreed Sergeant Moon, not lightly at all.

‘As bad as that? Look, Middlehope has digested some pretty odd customers in its time, and turned them into part of the soil. Is Rainbow really impossible?’

‘Others,’ said Moon seriously, ‘have blundered in and fought it out with us on equal terms, we can appreciate that. They end up talking loftily about the next arrivals as incomers, and then go on to assimilate them. Nobody’s going to assimilate Rainbow, he isn’t fighting it out on equal or any terms. He came in and asserted his own terms, no question of adapting, no question of parleying or feeling his way, no acknowledgement that Middlehope has any identity of its own. Have you ever walked round with a twig of blackthorn stuck in your sock? He’s got to go! He’s something we can’t afford. He cripples us. So something’s got to be done. The hell of it is, everybody’s asking, what?’

And well they might, where the foreign body was fully provided with funds, society, interests of his own, independent of the community in which he had set up house. Even if they gradually froze him out of all the offices he had acquired – and that would take some doing! – he still had space and wealth enough, transport to where he was welcome, the means to import his own kind to fill any gaps left by the defection of the natives. He was the least vulnerable intruder with whom Middlehope had ever had to deal. What had begun almost as a joke began to look like a serious problem. You cannot drop a large foreign object into a still and mantled pool without starting dangerous and disruptive ripples.

‘What about his wife?’ George wondered. ‘How’re they making out with her? She could well be the last straw.’

‘Ah!’ said Sergeant Moon cryptically, and sat thinking for half a minute before he expressed any further opinion. ‘Now there we’re up against a different problem. How did he ever come by her, in the first place? And if you know what to make of her, you tell me, because
we
don’t! All that Estee Lauder and haute couture, and sports car and all, and she breezes into the shop and asks for Woodbines, and cheerfully, too. Or drops off when Charlie’s frying, just by the way when she smells the oil, and picks up a paper-full of fish and chips. Not when he’s with her, but then, he seldom is. And still looking like a million dollars, with all the aplomb in the world. I bet she does the lady of the manor as to the manor born – if you’ll pass over the pun. Out of the manor she looks the same but acts different. As if she’d bust out of school. And I tell you this, she fetches a few of her husband’s mates buzzing like bees round a flower – that big fair fellow who’s been advising on marketing some of the Mottisham Abbey stuff, for one – but there’s more than one local chap been risking his fingers round the fire, too. And I wouldn’t say but what she enjoys them just as much, if not more. Novelty, I reckon. Most people thought she’d be bored to hell, stuck up there in the hills at the back of beyond, but if you ask me, she’s not losing any sleep over being rusticated, the other way round, in fact. It’s been an eye-opener.’

‘I suppose he hasn’t got her into the Women’s Institute yet?’ said George, and had to smile at the idea.

‘No, he does the joining, she presides at home and looks handsome. And keeps his friends and rivals coming,’ said Moon with shrewd perception, ‘so he knows what they’re up to. But as far as public functions go, her job is just to be his consort. I don’t think public distinction for her was ever in the contract.’

At St Eata’s church in Abbot’s Bale it was the custom of the trebles, during the sermon, to amuse themselves with various ingenious games invented by themselves. The choir-stalls, part of the elaborate renovations perpetrated in the nineteenth century, were deep, and covered a multitude of sins. The boys on the
decani
side had to be wary, since a couple of the tenors behind them were tall enough to see down into the stall in front, even when seated, but happily they were also the two who were most likely to be dozing themselves. The Reverend Stephen’s sermons were painstaking and worthy, but not exciting. They also tended to end abruptly, which gave an added spice of danger to some of the games. Passing the chocolate orange, for instance (orange by courtesy of Toffee Bill, whose mother kept the village shop, and paid for by communal funds!), entailed slipping the orange from hand to hand all along the
cantoris
side to the altar end of the stalls, each boy detaching one section for himself, whereupon Ginger Gibbs, last in the line, had the hair-raising job of lobbing the remnant, precariously re-wrapped in its gold foil, across the intervening space to Bossie Jarvis on the
decani
side, so that the progress could continue along that stall, too. Nobody had yet thought of a way of getting the few remaining sections across the other end, in full view of the congregation. If any survived, the direction had to be reversed. Judging the right instant to throw required immense coolness and precision. Neither Ginger nor Bossie had ever yet been caught in the act.

There were other pursuits, of course. Those who still carried clean handkerchiefs sometimes tied them into animal shapes, and gave puppet-shows, mainly for their own stall, but sometimes, snatching the right moment, above the desktop for the line opposite. Consequences also had its days, with appropriate variations. Sometimes Bossie, at one end, started a paper slip with the invented name of the dear departed, and each boy after him added one line of the epitaph to appear on his tombstone. But on this particular Sunday it was a similar game played with lines extracted from hymns. This was too difficult to be taken beyond the quatrain, and the fourth participant, if stuck, was allowed to invent his line without being tied to actual hymns. The system had just produced the following: