Mrs Fytton's Country Life (25 page)

'Only a suggestion
’
she said. 'Probably quite wrong. You'll know best.' And Wanda, nodding furiously again, began pedalling off. 'I'm not sure of the proportions
’
called Angela. 'Of the yarrow, witch hazel and willow
...'
In her billowing clouds of tie-dyed muslin, Wanda looked like a large concentration of vapour, speeding away. 'For the tonic?' said Angela. 'Thirds
’
called Wanda over her shoulder. 'And take it in water three times a day.'

Angela was surprised. Very surprised. According to Maria Brydges, it was supposed to be a health-giving rinse for the hair.

Witchcraft was tempting. If she could only get into Tally-Ho Cottage for more than ten seconds, she would ask Wanda outright for a potion to dribble into Ian's tea. Or an amulet to slip beneath the pillow. Perhaps she'd ask Dave about it now. He'd know when it was the right time to call.

'I've been trying to see Wanda for weeks now
’
she said to the hovering Dave. 'I tried to catch her in Boots, and in the lane, but she always flying, isn't she?'

Dave nodded. 'Busy little bee, my Wanda
’
he said.

'And how is her finger?' asked Angela.

'Ah
’
said Dave. He looked at his watch. 'Got to get back for the oven
’
he said. 'My biscuits.'

‘I
can give you some interesting old recipes for biscuits
’
she called after him, but he was off, speeding down her mossy path in a welter of patchy yellow and hairy thigh.

He gave her the thumbs-up from the gate and was gone. Only the warm, inviting smell of new bread remained. Clearly, in the matter of getting to know her neighbours, she must be the one to break the social ice. Her party could not come a moment too soon.

Angela had not yet called upon the Tichborne residence. Whenever she saw the benign old doctor out with his binoculars, he smiled at her kindly, and she smiled back and said something polite about bird-watching before passing on. It was unsurprising that they socialized so little, his wife being, so she had heard, something of an invalid. Mrs Tichborne scarcely ventured out and looked so proper when she did that Angela felt it wise to wait to be introduced. She did, however, surprise herself and begin to attend church. Evensong. It just seemed the appropriate thing to do, given that her new home was so bound into the tradition. She liked to study the pew ends while the vicar did his stuff. All part of being in the country and being good, she thought. Looking away from the devils quickly.

To fill up the uncomfortable time between entering the church and the beginning of the service, Angela strove to -look as if she knew what she was doing. Just like everyone else, she wished to appear able to have long, private, interesting chats with the Almighty while on her knees and to look as if the Almighty were answering her back. Because He or She was certainly answering all the other assembled kneelers back in earnest. You could tell, she thought, by the rapt look on their faces that they'd got a hot line to heaven. All except her. 'Listen, God,' she said. 'If you are up there and offended, I apologize. You know I don't really believe in you, but - well - here I am and there you are. And when in Rome - well, no, not in Rome any more, not since Henry VIII and little Edward, but when in the country you do as the other country dwellers do, so I'm here as part of my social duty. You do not have to say anything

God duly didn't.

She attended Evensong because she had tried the morning family service only once and once was quite enough. At the family service, the vicar played his guitar, exhorting everyone - Lucy Elliott, her new Dutch au pair and her three fidgeting children; Mrs Dorkin and the Dorkin girl (who were surprisingly pious and sometimes attended Evensong as well); two very spotty youths in plastic biker jackets who stared, silent throughout, at the Dorkin girl's striking frontage; Dr Tichborne
alone in the Devereux pew; and
Wanda, who, with her stage skills, kept them all in tune - to clap their hands and join in and sing! After which you had to kiss everyone.

And as if that was not embarrassing enough, at the exhortation to kiss everybody, she watched the extraordinary spectacle of the Dorkin girl practically elbowing a very speedy Dr Tichborne out of the way to reach the vicar, while the two spotty youths followed in hot pursuit of the Dorkin girl and appeared to think that church-kissing was just a longer version of the word 'grope'.

Evensong was an altogether calmer experience. Both the Tichbornes attended, and there was absolutely no kissing, hand-clapping, 'Wow!', 'God!' or hymn-singing of anything but a traditional nature. This service brought in Sammy and St Hilary's ex-incumbent, the Reverend Bertrand Stokes, who was driven there and back in a taxi paid for by Mrs Dorothea Tichborne. The sight of St Hilary's ex-incumbent attempting to genuflect to both the Holy Host and his aristocratic one was painful to behold, despite his being held in firm support by the taxi driver. Lucy Elliott came alone, keeping her eyes closed throughout, even when standing for the hymns, and Angela sat at the back feeling more sinner than celebrant. The Rudges would have come, but they always had to head off back to Bristol on a Sunday evening to avoid the traffic.

Daphne Blunt never came to services. As soon as the doors were flung open ready to welcome the sinners in, she slipped out of the side door and away. 'Too much bad done in the name of religion for my liking,' she told Angela.
‘I’ll
care for the fabric. The witness can take care of itself.'

On this particular September Sunday after Evensong, the great and the good, in the person of Dorothea Tichborne, finally condescended to be introduced. For some reason best known to himself, Dr Tichborne was under the mistaken apprehension that Mrs Angela Fytton of Church Ale House in the county of Somerset was a recent widow. And for some reason he seemed to find this quite cheering. He beamed at her as they approached. 'Death is but a tavern on the way
’
he said, as if he were wishing her a happy birthday. 'Time heals. Very quickly. Quite often.' He turned to his wife.

'And prayer
’
added Mrs Tichborne. To which the bright-haired young vicar, hovering behind them by the church porch, said a very cheerful 'Amen'.

Dr Tichborne, showing more of the mettle that Angela had last seen fending off the Dorkin girl on the altar steps, then responded surprisingly by repeating the words 'Time' and 'Amen' with such passion, and such a look of fire directed at the vicar, that she thought he might have gone Shaker. Particularly as the vicar's apparent response was indeed to shake, before suddenly hurtling off in the opposite direction, his cassock flapping above his jeans and cowboy boots, looking over his shoulder and down the path towards the gateway, fearful as if the devil himself were after him. Old Dr Tichborne eyed him very sadly. Angela felt sorry for him. There was, despite its joyous rural undertow, some oddly unfriendly behaviour in the country.

'There now
’
said Mrs Dorkin disappointedly, as she and daughter Dorkin, and daughter Dorkin's considerable chest, leaned over the lych-gate. 'Never any time, that one.' She gave the girl a little dig in the back with her knuckles and, accordingly, the girl puffed herself out even further in the manner of a very well-fed pouter pigeon. Mrs Dorkin winked at her and said very loudly, 'Well, it's time my girl was baptized at any rate.' She gave Dr Tichborne a cocksure look. 'Can't get married in church without
...
now can you?'

Dr Tichborne took one look at the female swellings of his young servant girl nestling among the lichen and the ivy, and ck)sed his eyes.

Mrs Dorkin looked upon the gesture and saw it as reward for all her efforts. She knew that look. It was unbridled passion, as the books would have it, unbridled passion if ever she saw it. One day daughter Dorkin would not only have made her bed, but also be invited, urgently, to lie in it. Like the Lord, who governed over all of St Hilary's and Staithe, Mrs Dorkin looked upon her handiwork and was pleased.
Well
pleased.

Smiling beneficently upon the world and those rosy breasts in which she invested much hope, she tucked her daughter's arm into her own and gave it a yank. The nestling pair, so rudely pulled from their bed of lichen, bobbled about a bit uncertainly and then returned to their rightful place, before their owner and her mother made their way down the lane. From behind they were like a pair of ships in full sail, with their petticoats fluttering, their hips rolling, their dazzling golden curls flying in the summer breeze. Mrs Tichborne looked and saw the devil walking beside them and clutched at her crucifix.

‘I
am settling in very well,' said Angela. 'Thank you.'

'Good, good, good,' said Dorothea Tichborne. But her mind was on saving her servant's soul. Baptism, she thought, was the answer. A good deed to lighten the darkness.
‘I
must speak to the vicar about Sandra's baptism,' she said, with unaccustomed vigour. And with surprising agility she shot off in search of the fleeing cassock.

As, it must be said, did Dr Tichborne.

Thus an invitation for Mrs Angela Fytton, putative widow, to the ancient Devereux, now Tichborne, seat was not forthcoming.

After her customary Sunday evening stroll up one side of the Mump and down the other, Angela returned home. Once back in her own garden, on the other side of the yews, she found the vicar taking a tremendous interest in the faint stars that were beginning to appear in the evening sky. 'God's jewel casket,' she said.

The Reverend Crispin Archer looked strained. He was staring up at the stars for guidance but all he could think about was quite the wrong kind of heavenly body. There was a faint chill in the air, a hint of autumn.

'Would you -' She hesitated.
^‘
W
ould you care to slip through the hedge and come in for a glass of mulberry wine?'

She had never seen such gratitude. At least the vicar was socially inclined.

In the gloaming, Sandra Dorkin leaned on the vicar's front fence and waited and dreamed. He must return to the manse at some time and she wanted to thank him, in the warmest way possible, for agreeing to baptize her. As her employer pointed out, a girl of nineteen, be she ever so pure, must have sinned a little on the way.

Angela faced the vicar across her kitchen table. She sipped the red liquor very slowly, determined to like it. The vicar appeared to like his very much indeed. The first one went down without, apparently, touching the sides.

'An adult baptism is interesting,' she said.

'Yes,' he said miserably. 'Our esteemed benefactor thinks I should give a full submersion, on account of all the sins accumulated. She's very taken with the idea.'

'That seems logical,' said Angela, forcing down another sip of the red stuff.

‘I
favour just a little trickle on the forehead,' he said mournfully.

'You're the vicar.'

Odd how the irrefutable seemed to cut no ice. He nodded, still mournful.

'Cheer up,' said Angela. 'After the ceremony you can play your guitar and we can all hug and kiss.' She gave a gesture of solidarity. 'Mix the old with the new. Like your sermon this evening. You could use the water from my well - if there is any. We can dress it,' she added vaguely.

Dress it. Undress it. He winced. Full baptism. He winced again.

She refilled the vicar's glass but not her own, which she pushed to one side. 'Do you know,' she said, 'I can't go on pretending any more.'

The vicar looked at her. If another one was about to declare herself he would take himself off to a mission hut. 'What?' he said cautiously.

'This wine
’
she said. 'It's horrible. And I'm not going to make any more of it. It really
does
taste of worms. I should be making church ale instead. And selling it to raise money for St Hilary's.'

If she had wanted encouragement, she received none. 'Like in the olden days?'

But the vicar merely remained looking distracted.

'Have some more
’
she said, and poured out the remains of bottle number one. 'It really is filthy.'

The vicar could not agree. Indeed, he felt it had just the right poke to it. When he slipped back through the yews later, he clutched the two remaining bottles. I will donate them to the jumble, he said to the silvery night, before stumbling through his back door and undressing, rather awkwardly, in the dark. Though there was no need, for the Dorkin girl had grown bored with waiting and, when the two youths in plastic biker jackets came along, she went for a walk with them up over the hill and down among the pig huts. But he put the bottles in his own cupboard all the same.