Fete Fatale (3 page)

She looked around in irritation at the counter, where Mr Hussein was patiently holding out his hand.

‘No, Mrs Nielson, three pounds forty. Here is only three twenty. That's right now. Who is next, please?'

‘Me,' bellowed Franchita. ‘Howard—how much are the tinned mussels?' I had not realized till then that, lurking in the shadows in
the corner, was Howard Culpepper. ‘Seventy-five? No—put them back. They're cheaper at Goodfayre. Right now, Mr Hussein, I'll just have four ounces of the Bel Paese. Oh, Oscar,
naughties!'

Oscar, bored, had bopped down in the middle of the linoleum floor and let forth a stream of primrose liquid.

‘Oh, Mr Hussein, do you think Mrs Hussein could—? Splendid! How much is the Bel Paese? Sixty-three? Christ, what a price! Well, here you are. Come along, Howard!'

And Franchita Culpepper charged out of the shop, leaving behind sixty-three pence and a pool of dog pee. Mr Hussein's smile gained a certain accretion of steel: thus must the merchants of Pankot have smiled at the English memsahibs at the approach of Independence Day, nineteen forty-seven.

A flustered-looking Mrs Nielson had retreated from the counter, and had accosted me. She was a once-handsome woman in her fifties, who also ignored the notice about dogs, but at least had the grace to carry her poodle, Gustave, in her arms. We gazed at the firm set of Franchita's shoulders as she departed, followed by Oscar on an actual lead and Howard on a symbolic one.

‘Oh dear,' said Mrs Nielson, ‘Mrs Culpepper does seem to be spoiling for a fight.'

‘She always sounds like that, even if she's just complaining that the wrong newspaper's been pushed through her door,' I explained. And I added, because I thought it was true: ‘It's mostly noise. She's not an ill-natured woman.'

‘Oh, I'm sure . . . I wasn't suggesting . . . I'm so new here, I don't really catch the
nuances
,' explained Mrs Nielson.

‘Mrs Culpepper keeps a hat shop and a husband,' I informed her. ‘The hatshop doesn't make any money, I don't suppose, but it gives her an interest. We all buy hats there now and then, probably because we think that Franchita with an interest is a lot more bearable than she would be without one. Hexton-on-Weir must be one of the few places left that can support a hat shop. There are certain occasions when a hat is
de rigueur
here.'

‘And the husband?'

‘I believe he was retired early from a university somewhere or other. I think they simply stopped doing whatever it was he taught. He says “Yes” and “No” very prettily, and that's about all I know about him. He has a pension, and she has a bit of private
money, so they manage quite nicely. But her enthusiasm in this new vicar business is quite spurious. She hardly ever comes to church—and
never
in the winter, which according to Marcus is the real test.'

‘I'm only an occasional attender myself,' Mrs Nielson said, and added in a rush of confession: ‘More to get to know people than anything else. That's rather terrible, isn't it—
using
religion like that. Actually, I happened to be there for the last sermon of the previous priest—the Reverend Primp, wasn't that his name? I suppose it wasn't a fair test, he being so close to his heart attack, but he wasn't very exciting.'

‘He never was. Dull as ditchwater. That's what they want here: someone who'll confirm all their existing ideas. An exciting man would never fit in, not in Hexton. Perhaps that's what they're afraid of with Father Battersby. Maybe they think his celibacy would make him exciting.'

By now Mrs Hussein had brought a newspaper and a bucket and cloth, and evidence of Oscar's visit had been removed. I went up to the counter to make my purchases, and I put the matter out of my mind.

Nobody else did, though. I was aware, wherever I went during that week, that nobody was talking about anything else. Buzz-buzz it went, in the off-licence, the draper's, the Mary Rose Tea Shop and over the privet hedges. So that when Mrs Culpepper rang me up to ask us round for drinks on Good Friday, I knew it was to thrash about in the subject yet again—though, adept at killing two birds with one stone, she barked, ‘And tell Marcus to bring the stuff for Oscar's last injection,' before she banged down the phone.

When we got there, Franchita Culpepper was celebrating the crucifixion of Our Lord with a gin and tonic. Howard, her husband, seemed to have something beery tucked away somewhere, but he could only get to it in the intervals of being barman for everyone else. True, his services were not much called for by the Mipchins—she a dowdy, sharp-eyed creature of Scottish extraction, who ostentatiously demanded an orange squash, he a retired tax inspector with a Crippen moustache and a sense of humour, who was allowed to clutch at a single sherry that must have got warmer and warmer every time he took his occasional sips. Mrs
and Colonel Weston, on the other hand, knocked it back cheerfully, the Colonel in particular, and so, I noticed, did Marcus, when he came in from the kitchen where he had been giving Oscar his jab. Both, of course, were getting up Dutch courage—something warming before the enemy attacked, a good solid breakfast before being hanged. We all settled down in the Culpeppers' drawing-room, stacked with the 'thirties memorabilia which they collected, and waited for the attack.

‘You've been to see Mary?' barked Mrs Culpepper genially at Marcus. I rather liked Franchita Culpepper: she must have been a funny, sexy lady in her prime, and much of her bossiness now came from being bored. ‘I hope she won you over?'

‘Ah—you ladies! Always trying to win us over!' said Colonel Weston, in as feeble an attempt at gallantry as ever I heard. Mrs Culpepper shot him a glance of friendly contempt.

‘Which means, I suppose, that you're intending to do damn-all about it?'

‘I let Mary talk the thing through,' said Marcus, in his slow, comfortable way, which was his method of defusing a situation. It worked better, I always thought, with the animals of Hexton than with the human beings. ‘I hope that she feels better about it now. I expect she was taking things a little too much to heart, after the death of her mother.'

‘Poppycock,' said Franchita Culpepper.

‘You seem to forget,' said Elspeth Mipchin (née MacIntyre) in her prim, still faintly Edinburgh tones, ‘that there are matters of principle at stake.'

‘Do you think so?' asked Marcus, puffing a veil of smoke around his face, perhaps to hide his expression. ‘Surely we buried all that High Church-Low Church rivalry long ago, didn't we? I hope so, because it did us a great deal of harm. We're all Anglicans together now, eh, Colonel?'

‘Eh? Oh yes, yes. All Christians too, what?'

There was a brief silence, as we sipped and considered this.

‘I never did go much for this ecumenical spirit,' Franchita Culpepper said, at last. ‘It always savoured of mushiness, you know. Everyone who went on about it always sounded so wet. The good old “Onward, Christian soldiers” spirit has always meant fighting
other Christians, hasn't it? Give me a good fight any day of the week, rather than a warmed-up basin of ecumenicalism.'

‘Blurring around the edges,' pronounced Mrs Mipchin, ‘is positively dangerous, when there are matters of faith involved.'

‘And are you hoping,' asked Franchita with heavy irony, ‘that Mary is just going to let the subject drop?'

‘I certainly hope that when she's thought things over a bit, and when she can get out of the house more, take up her old interests, she'll see that this isn't worth making such a fuss about,' said Marcus.

Franchita Culpepper's comment was a whoop of laughter.

‘Hope springs eternal,' she said.

‘What I cannot understand,' said Elspeth Mipchin, fixing the Colonel with firing-squad eyes, ‘is why the position here was not made clear to the Bishop
in the early stages.'

‘Oh, Frank did his best,' loyally put in Nancy Weston, a fleshy lady with social pretensions, who made unwise attempts at a fluffy prettiness. ‘After all, the Bishop is his CO, in a manner of speaking, so there are limits to what he could do. The Bishop's the one that in the last resort is going to lay it on the line . . . ' She spoilt this spasm of marital solidarity by adding: ‘Anyway, I never knew Frank convince anyone of anything.'

Colonel Weston held his peace. He had early on in his retirement to Hexton found out that if he spoke he put his foot in it, and I had rarely heard him say an unnecessary word in company. As a matter of fact, I knew through Marcus that what Colonel Weston had said to the Bishop was: ‘Whatever you do, don't upset the women.' If the Bishop had consciously gone against this, it was no doubt for reasons of his own, and with the thought that it was up to the Colonel and the other lay dignitaries to fight their own battles with the women. Little did he know that they had long ago raised the white flag.

‘And so,' summed up Franchita, ‘due to the spinelessness of our menfolk—' she shoved forward her glass hand—‘refill me, Howard—we are to be landed with a celibate vicar. My God!'

‘I never knew,' I said, to lighten the atmosphere, ‘that sexual prowess was a criterion for promotion in the Church of England.'

Only Marcus laughed.

‘The thing is,' explained Nancy Weston, ‘that he's celibate
on principle.
That's what nobody quite likes.'

‘Do you mean that nobody would object if he were merely celibate in practice?'

‘Well, it would make it a damn sight more difficult to have a fight over it,' said Franchita, with that genial honesty that often endeared her to me.

‘What I thought,' said Marcus, in his slow, country way, ‘was that I would suggest to the Bishop that he send Father Battersby over to pay us a visit.'

There was an immediate pricking up of ears. Thus must the Bacchae have pricked up their ears when they heard that Pentheus was in the vicinity.

‘I thought that if he came here,' went on Marcus comfortably, ‘and people could see he wasn't such a
rara avis
, and he could get to know us—well, then half the battle would be over.'

Dear, optimistic Marcus! But he had successfully defused the situation, I had to give him that—the situation, I mean, in Franchita Culpepper's drawing-room. The trouble with Marcus was that he believed that his defusings were longer-term than they really were, and that he had made the problem go away for good, when in reality it was merely quiescent, and waiting to erupt again with redoubled fury. For the moment, though, the combatants were silent, to consider their future conduct, and the men actually got in a few words together about the problems of the Yorkshire Cricket Club.

As a matter of fact, we drove over to Ripon on Easter Sunday, and after the service in the Cathedral Marcus went and had a word with the Bishop. I had taught ancient languages at a girls' school in Ripon, and I found plenty of friends to chat to after the service. So it was only that evening, after a substantial high tea, that I remembered why we had gone.

‘What did the Bishop say about Father Battersby?' I asked.

‘
Chariots of Fire
on television tonight,' said Marcus, leafing through the
Radio Times.

‘Oh God—high-minded athletes. Don't change the subject. What did the Bishop say about Battersby?'

‘He said he'd heard that feeling among our ladies was running high . . . The Bishop knows our ladies.'

‘Who doesn't?'

‘He said he'd be happy to organize a visit to us by him . . . and he said he'd rely on me to see Battersby suffered no discourtesy while he was here. He said I was to make sure he wasn't victimized.'

‘Ha! And how do you propose to do that?'

‘I said if necessary I'd form a human phalanx round him of the churchwardens and sidesmen.'

‘Ho-ho. A lot of chance you men would have if Mary and Franchita wanted to get at him. If they take against him, there's nothing on earth the Hexton males can do about it. They'll murder him.'

Later that evening, in bed, and on the verge of sleep, I drowsily said to Marcus:

‘What
was
that book . . . by Ira Levin . . . about the community where the men had all their wives wiped out and lifelike dummies put in their places, who never contradicted, or made demands, or anything?'

‘The Stepford Wives.
I didn't think you liked the book at the time. Why?'

‘It seems to me that what we have here is the Stepford husbands,' I said, going off to sleep.

It was three weeks before Father Battersby could get away from his parish duties in Sheffield to pay us a visit. Marcus said that that would give us time to organize his reception, to make sure it was civil and accommodating. Ever the optimist, Marcus ignored the fact that it would give the ladies of Hexton time to organize as well, and that, good as he was at relaxing tensions, they were even better at screwing them up again—especially since Mary Morse had emerged from her mortuary purdah, and was organizing her campaign as if it were some sort of personal by-election.

I had had from the moment she first raised the issue misgivings about the new Mary that was emerging. The weeks leading up to
Father Battersby's visit fully confirmed them. Dressed consistently in colours drab and dun (though of course she had never been a Mary Quant figure at the best of times), Mary scurried hither and thither around the town, assuming alternately an expression of brave bearing-up when anyone commiserated with her on her recent bereavement, and one of eager-beaver determination when she was discussing the question of the vicar-to-be. Wherever one went shopping, at every social event or meeting, there she was to be seen, bearing down on some unsuspecting member of the Anglican congregation (sometimes so unsuspecting that they were hardly aware that they
were
members of the Anglican congregation). She was, as they say, tireless—and how one hates people who are that! They are always, whether intentionally or not, mischief-makers, be they charity workers, schoolteachers or politicians. Mary was certainly a mischief-maker, and she was it intentionally.