Trouble at the Little Village School (13 page)

‘Well, perhaps that is a little too strong a word to use,’ said the vicar. ‘Let me rephrase it. You have been at great pains to point out to me on many occasions how I have been, as you term it, “passed over” for preferment within the Church, that I have remained a mere country parson while others have climbed the ecclesiastical ladder leaving me, as it were, on the bottom rung.’

‘Really Charles, you do tend to go around the houses,’ said his wife. ‘What exactly are you trying to say?’

‘Many has been the time, Marcia,’ continued the vicar, ‘when you have reminded me of the fact that I have not been promoted, although deserving of it, and that your late and revered father, the former Bishop of Clayton, was an archdeacon by the time he reached thirty-five and a bishop when he was forty-six.’

‘Well, that is true,’ agreed the vicar’s wife. ‘Furthermore—’

The vicar held up his hand. ‘My dear, if I may be allowed to continue. I have given what I am about to tell you some considerable thought. If I might proceed . . .’

His wife raised an eyebrow and the corners of her mouth twitched. She was about to say something sharp by way of reply but held her tongue.

The vicar pressed on with barely a pause between words. ‘As I have said, you have frequently mentioned to me how you hoped I might get preferment within the Church and become a dean or an archdeacon, and maybe a bishop like your esteemed father, how you were unhappy as a country parson’s wife, that you have no privacy and people tend to put upon your good nature. You have told me many times how you constantly get stopped by my parishioners asking about church functions and services, and that you are always the vicar’s wife and not a person in your own right.’

‘Well, that is very true,’ began his wife.

‘Furthermore,’ continued the Reverend Atticus, ‘you have told me how you hoped that one day we might live in the cathedral precinct and be at the centre of the city, meet different and interesting people and have something of a life.’

‘I’m sorry, Charles!’ snapped his wife, at last managing to get in a word, ‘but this is becoming wearisome. It sounds like one of your sermons. Will you stop beating about the bush and tell me exactly what is on your mind? You have been—’

‘Please, Marcia,’ interrupted the vicar, ‘do allow me to finish.’

Mrs Atticus gave a great heaving sigh, pursed her lips and shook her head. The vicar could sense her irritation but was determined to complete what he wished to say.

‘As I have said, I know how unhappy you have been in Barton-in-the-Dale.’ He took a deep breath. ‘So, when I was offered the position of Archdeacon of Clayton—’

His wife gasped. ‘Offered the post of archdeacon!’ she exclaimed.

‘So when I was offered the post of archdeacon by the bishop before Christmas,’ her husband continued, ‘I naturally assumed you would be delighted.’

‘But that was before I started to train as a teacher and—’

‘And so I accepted,’ the vicar told her bluntly.

‘You did what?’ gasped his wife.

‘I accepted the position,’ said the vicar. ‘I told the bishop I should be honoured to accept.’

‘Without discussing it with me?’

‘I assumed you would be very pleased.’

‘Well, I am not pleased, Charles. In fact, I am very displeased. It will mean moving to Clayton and I do not wish to move to Clayton. It is true that I did want you to be promoted and I did consider it was very short-sighted of the Church to pass you over for the dean’s position in favour of that sanctimonious little Dr Peacock with the wire-rimmed spectacles and the strident voice, but that was before I started going in to help out with the art in the school. I felt liberated, valued and more fulfilled, a person in my own right and not just the wife of the vicar. Then when I gained a place at St John’s College to train as a teacher and could do my teaching practice here at the village school—’

‘I know that, Marcia,’ said her husband quietly. He briefly closed his eyes.

‘I love teaching and I think I’m very good at it,’ she told him.

‘Of course you are, my dear,’ sighed the vicar.

‘I also realised,’ she continued, ‘that being a country parson is your vocation and it is something at which you are very good. You’re a people person, Charles. You would be like a fish out of water as archdeacon, dealing with all the tiresome administration and with disputes about one thing and another.’

‘One of the required qualities of an archdeacon, my dear, is that he needs to be a people person,’ said the vicar, ‘and I do feel—’

‘I remember how the pressures and tensions of being the archdeacon took their toll on my poor father,’ continued his wife, not listening. ‘He had to implement all these unpalatable diocesan policies, sort out the buildings, inspect the churches and deal with all the problems the bishop pushed his way. It was most stressful for him.’

This was the first occasion his wife had raised the matter of her father’s pressures and tensions. She had always held him up as the very model of a senior cleric. ‘Well, I am not so sure I couldn’t make a success of it,’ her husband told her. ‘The role does involve the welfare of the clergy and as
oculus episcope
—’

‘As what?’

‘Being the bishop’s eye,’ explained the vicar, ‘I feel I could be very useful.’

‘I see,’ said his wife coldly, her lips pressed together.

‘So having given the matter some considerable thought,’ continued her husband, ‘I feel I could rise to the challenge and be influential as archdeacon and, without sounding arrogant, bring something positive to the position. The more I have thought about it the more it has appealed to me.’

‘Well, you seem to have made up your mind,’ said Mrs Atticus, ‘so there is really little more to discuss.’

‘Nothing precludes you from training at the college in Clayton and doing your teaching practice in a school near there,’ said the vicar patiently.

His wife shook her head. ‘That is not a possibility. As you are well aware, I have just started at the village school on the graduate training programme. I am happy there, I get on well with the teachers and head teacher, the children know me and the school is a stone’s throw from the rectory. I really do not wish to train at some new school with colleagues I have never met.’

‘Well, perhaps you could stay at Barton-in-the-Dale school?’ suggested the vicar.

‘What, and travel out here from Clayton every day? You know how unpredictable the buses are, and what about in winter when the roads are virtually impassable?’

‘But next winter, my dear,’ said the Reverend Atticus, ‘your teaching practice will presumably be over.’

‘Yes, I am aware of that,’ replied his wife, ‘but I have every hope that I will be offered a post at the village school when I qualify. Anyway, while I am on teaching practice there I would have all the books and materials and equipment to carry. It is out of the question.’

‘Perhaps you could learn to drive?’ suggested her husband, ‘and we could get a small car.’

‘Oh, Charles, this is just too much to take in.’ Her voice quavered with emotion and tears welled in her eyes. ‘Too much,’ she repeated. ‘If you will excuse me, I shall have to have a lie-down. I can feel a migraine coming on.’

‘Marcia,’ said the vicar, rising from the table. ‘I little appreciated how much working at the school meant to you.’

‘Well, it does, Charles,’ she replied, her eyes blurred with tears. ‘It means a great deal to me.’

‘Then I shall speak to the bishop,’ her husband told her.

‘And?’ asked his wife, dabbing away her tears.

‘And tell him I have changed my mind,’ he replied, giving her a small resigned smile.

Mrs Sloughthwaite, the fount of all village information and gossip, folded her dimpled arms under her substantial bosom.

‘It’s not often we see you in here, vicar,’ she said, watching the Reverend Atticus as he ran a long finger along the canned goods on the shelf.

‘No, Mrs Sloughthwaite,’ he replied, ‘and I have to say it’s not often I see you in St Christopher’s. I was delighted to see you there yesterday.’

‘I don’t like to miss a wedding, vicar,’ she told him. Mrs Sloughthwaite didn’t like to miss anything that occurred in Barton-in-the-Dale. She had closed the village store especially to attend.

‘Well, maybe I will see more of you in future.’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘That must be the last of Joyce Fish’s granddaughters to get wed then?’

‘I believe so. She’s a pleasant young woman, is Tracey.’

‘She was a bit of a handful at school, by all accounts, and I reckon her new husband will have his hands full as well.’ Then she added under her breath, ‘In more ways than one.’

The vicar gave a weak smile and turned his attention back to the tinned goods on the shelf.

‘I thought she looked a picture,’ remarked the shopkeeper, ‘though I did think for somebody with her build she’d have been better off not wearing such a tight-fitting gown. Mind you, all the Fish family are big-boned. I was told that they had to have a special coffin made for her great-grandmother when she passed on. Took eight men to carry her.’

The vicar looked at the formidable bulk of the shopkeeper but said nothing.

‘She must have been frozen to death, the bride, in that low-cut dress, and as I said to Mrs Lloyd, the bridesmaids were blue with cold, shivering down the aisle.’

‘It was indeed a rather bitter day,’ said the vicar, examining a tin of stewed steak.

‘I’ve never seen such multicoloured outfits in all my life,’ the shopkeeper rattled on. ‘Every colour under the rainbow but not a hat in sight. They were all wearing those fornicators, or whatever they’re called.’

‘I believe they are called fascinators,’ corrected the vicar amiably.

‘Well, they don’t fascinate me – a couple of coloured feathers glued to an Alice band. I wouldn’t give them house room.’

The vicar selected a tin of beans with pork sausages and an individual fruit pie from the shelf and placed them on the counter.

‘I should have thought you’ve have been sitting down to roast beef and Yorkshire pudding this Sunday lunchtime, Reverend,’ she observed, placing the items in a plastic bag.

Chance would be a fine thing, thought the vicar. ‘No, I have been left to my own devices today.’ Marcia had informed him that morning that she had far too much preparation and lesson planning to do for the coming week and that she hadn’t the time to make him any lunch. The vicar was not unduly perturbed. Beans on toast would be a welcome change from the usual unappetising fare his wife served up.

‘And how is she liking it at the village school?’ asked the shopkeeper.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Mrs Atticus. How is she getting on at the village school?’

‘Oh, very well indeed,’ replied the vicar. ‘She has taken to teaching like a duck to water.’

‘I hear from Mrs Pocock that she’s a dab hand with a paintbrush.’

‘Indeed,’ said the vicar. ‘How much do I owe you for the—’

‘She was telling me that her Ernest had come on by leaps and bounds in Mrs Atticus’s art class. Very artificated, she said he is.’

‘Yes, I believe so.’

‘She’s not a proper teacher, is she?’

‘Pardon?

‘Your wife, she’s not fully matriculated?’

‘No, she’s training at the school,’ the vicar told her. ‘She has been very fortunate to have a placement there. It’s a new scheme called graduate training.’

‘On the job.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘She’s learning how to do it on the job.’

‘Quite.’

‘Well, I take my hat off to teachers having to cope with some of the youngsters these days. They don’t know what discipline is, some of them. And as for morals. You’ve no doubt heard about that Bianca?’

The vicar hadn’t heard about Bianca but decided not to give the shopkeeper the prompt to relate one of her long accounts, so he just smiled.

Mrs Sloughthwaite shook her head. ‘They leave a lot to be desired, young people these days. He can be a difficult lad, can Ernest Pocock. I hope your wife doesn’t have trouble with him.’ Mrs Sloughthwaite left the door open for the vicar to comment. She was adept at that.

The Reverend Atticus smiled again but remained silent, knowing that any comments he might make would be relayed around the village in quick time. His cheeks were beginning to ache with the set expression.

The shopkeeper was not one to give up. ‘So the lad’s no trouble?’ she asked.

‘No,’ replied the vicar, ‘the young man seems biddable enough.’ He could have revealed that his wife found the sullen-faced boy a bit of a handful at times but she recognised he had a talent and, from what she had been told, he was certainly better behaved than he had been in the past, when he spent a deal of his time standing outside Miss Sowerbutts’s room. ‘How much do I owe you for the beans and the pie?’ he asked, desirous of escaping from the grilling.

‘The beans are on special offer,’ he was told. ‘Three tins for the price of two.’

‘I’ll just have the one tin, thank you,’ said the vicar. ‘One can have a surfeit of beans.’