Trouble at the Little Village School (32 page)

‘You are being a trifle hard on the village,’ remarked the archdeacon, smiling somewhat uncomfortably. He certainly did not wish his new assistant to change her mind and ask the bishop for a move to somewhere more lively and interesting. Admittedly he had been surprised to find a young woman as the new curate, but she was proving most satisfactory, very satisfactory indeed.

‘You will find, Ashley,’ Mrs Atticus told the new curate, ignoring her husband’s comment, ‘that you will not be able to walk down the high street without a curtain twitching, say anything in the doctor’s surgery without it being broadcast around the whole neighbourhood, or purchase an item from the village shop without all and sundry knowing what you are having for tea. You will be waylaid by parishioners all the time, asking about church functions and services and what are we doing about the Harvest Festival and the summer fête and when is the next meeting of the Mothers’ Union. I have endured this since we moved here.’

‘It’s not been too bad for you, my dear, since you have started teaching at the school,’ observed the archdeacon. He tapped his knife against his plate in irritation. ‘Things have been a deal better for you, have they not, and you have been much happier in yourself?’

‘Yes, there is some truth in that,’ agreed Mrs Atticus. ‘Although I still get pestered – by parents now rather than parishioners – but I don’t mind as much. Still, I mustn’t grumble. I suppose it was good of the bishop to let us stay here so I could finish my training at the village school.’

‘Indeed it was very good of him,’ agreed her husband, turning to the new curate. ‘As I explained to Marcia, it is most unusual, indeed I believe unprecedented in this diocese, for an archdeacon to stay in the church where he has been the vicar. I am most grateful to his lordship for making an exception in my case. He has been most accommodating. Initially, he did suggest that we should move to Clayton, but Marcia wished to remain here and he very kindly assented.’

‘It was because of the travelling,’ Mrs Atticus explained. ‘I couldn’t possibly have remained at the village school if I had had to travel out here from Clayton to Barton. The buses are terribly unpredictable and in winter the roads are virtually impassable. And then there is all the equipment, books and materials I should have to carry. It was quite out of the question.’

‘And that is why we can remain here for the time being and we have Ashley to help,’ said Archdeacon Atticus.

‘And I shall be more than happy to be of help,’ said the new curate. ‘Perhaps I might organise the Harvest Festival and the summer fête and take on the Mothers’ Union that was mentioned. I can see how very busy you are, Marcia, with all the preparation you have to do as a teacher, and, after all, it is church business and not something people should expect you to take on.’

‘Well, that is kind of you,’ said Mrs Atticus. ‘It certainly would take a great deal off my shoulders. You are quite right, of course, everyone seems to assume that it is the job of the vicar’s wife to take on all these extra responsibilities to do with the church.’

‘And might I suggest something else?’ said the new curate.

‘Yes?’

‘Of course, you may not feel you wish to delegate it.’

‘Well, what is it?’ asked the archdeacon’s wife.

‘I should be more than happy to take on my share of the cooking. I really do not expect you to come home from school and start in the kitchen. Actually, cooking is a hobby of mine. I find it very therapeutic.’

‘Take on the cooking!’ exclaimed the archdeacon’s wife. ‘You mean you would prepare the meals?’

Archdeacon Atticus tried hard to contain his excitement at such a suggestion.

‘Of course you may not wish me—’ began the new curate.

‘I should be delighted if you did,’ trilled Mrs Atticus. ‘I hate the kitchen and I find cooking a terrible chore. Furthermore, I can’t claim to be very good at it.’ She smiled.

‘You are a trifle hard on yourself, my dear,’ said the archdeacon, thinking the very opposite. ‘However, I think Ashley’s suggestion is an excellent one and it will enable you to concentrate on your school work.’

He said a silent prayer, thanking the Lord that he would no longer have to endure his wife’s cooking.

‘And how did your first funeral service go?’ asked Mrs Atticus.

‘Very well, I think,’ replied the new curate. ‘It was a full church. It appeared that the whole of the village turned out. Mr Fish must have been a very well-loved man.’

‘Well, don’t expect such a large congregation at the Sunday services,’ observed Mrs Atticus. ‘I think most of them will have turned out to have a look at you. They are a most curious lot in the village and certainly don’t like to miss anything.’

‘That’s what Dr Stirling said,’ replied the new curate. ‘He gave a very moving address.’

‘Oh, you have met our local GP then?’ asked the archdeacon.

‘Yes, he seemed charming.’

Mrs Atticus raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, he’s a very pleasant man. Not a great deal to say for himself, but he is an excellent doctor.’

‘I was asking about the boy I met in the churchyard, young Danny, who has gone to live with his grandmother.’

‘Ah yes,’ said the archdeacon. ‘A very sad case. The child was terribly upset, as one might imagine, when he lost his grandfather and really didn’t know what would happen to him. Then Dr Stirling fostered him and he was all set to adopt the boy.’

‘And then his grandmother, a harridan of a woman, turned up like the proverbial bad penny,’ added Mrs Atticus, ‘and whisked him away. It amazes me that she was allowed to do it.’

‘I didn’t meet Dr Stirling’s wife at the funeral service,’ said the new curate.

‘No, he is a widower,’ explained the archdeacon. ‘His wife, a charming woman and a doctor herself, was tragically killed in a riding accident. Poor Dr Stirling went through a terrible time coming to terms with it, but time is great healer and he seems more himself these days.’

‘So he lives alone?’ asked the new curate.

‘No, he has a son, James.’

‘Perhaps we might invite him around for a meal some time,’ suggested the new curate. ‘I could try out one of my new recipes on him.’

The archdeacon’s wife exchanged a glance with her husband. Mrs Atticus had heard rumours, of course, that Dr Stirling and Elisabeth were, in common parlance, ‘an item’, but nothing seemed to be happening on that score. When they were together in school their relationship seemed to her to be strictly professional, even a little formal. Dr Stirling reminded her of her own husband when he was a young priest. He too was rather serious and intense, a man with a warm, attentive manner and kindly eyes, but shy. It was she who had made the first move in their relationship. Perhaps Elisabeth needs a bit of a push, she thought, and a bit of healthy competition in the form of the attractive curate might just do the trick.

‘Yes, I think that would be a splendid idea,’ she said with a small smile.

The three women, with suitably cheerless expressions, sat in the parlour at the rear of the village store.

‘Well, that’s another one gone,’ observed the shopkeeper, prior to taking a sip of tea and helping herself to a sliver of cake.

‘Sure doesn’t it come to us all, Mrs Sloughthwaite,’ observed Mrs O’Connor, sighing dramatically. ‘None of us can escape when the celestial trumpets sound and we shuffle off this mortal coil to be summoned to join the great majority on Time’s winged chariot. In darkness we come into this world and into darkness we return.’

The shopkeeper gave a quizzical smile. Mrs O’Connor, she thought, was not a woman to use one word when several would suffice.

‘No,’ agreed Mrs Pocock, helping herself to her third salmon-paste sandwich and taking a huge bite. ‘We all have to die. It’s a fact of life. It comes to all of us in the end.’

‘It does indeed,’ added Mrs O’Connor, nodding gravely. ‘Life is just a journey to death. As my grandmother used to say: “Make the most of every day, for life is short and wears away.”’

‘’Course, in this weather the old folk are dropping like flies,’ observed Mrs Pocock, ‘what with the cold and damp. I’ve never known it so bitter. You can hear your bones rattling.’

‘He was a good age, was Mr Fish,’ observed Mrs Sloughthwaite, ‘and of course he’d been on his last legs for a good few years.’

‘It was a godsend that he lasted out to see his granddaughter get wed,’ observed Mrs Pocock. ‘Nice sandwiches, these.’

‘I used to see him sitting on the bench on the village green looking like a lost soul,’ remarked Mrs O’Connor. ‘He certainly had the smell of clay upon him, God rest his soul.’

‘I thought that Chardonnay sang the hymns beautifully,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Who would have thought that such a big ungainly lass like that could have such a lovely voice?’

‘And the first hymn was very appropriate,’ added Mrs Pocock.

‘In what way?’ asked the doctor’s housekeeper.

‘Well, it was “Shall we Gather by the River”.’

‘And?’

‘River – Fish.’

‘Oh, I see,’ chuckled Mrs O’Connor.

‘I’ve never seen the church so packed out with people,’ observed Mrs Pocock.

‘Well, let’s be honest,’ said the shopkeeper, giving a faint snort, ‘they were all there to give the new curate a good once-over rather than being there for Albert Fish’s funeral. I don’t wish to be unkind, but it wasn’t as if he was that well known or indeed well liked.’

‘He was a grumpy old man at the best of times,’ added Mrs Pocock scathingly.

‘New curate!’ exclaimed Mrs O’Connor, with an expression of frowning surprise. ‘There’s a new curate at St Christopher’s?’

‘Just started,’ Mrs Sloughthwaite informed her. ‘Reverend Atticus has been given this fancy title of archdeacon and he’s now not a reverend but a venereal.’

‘Fancy,’ said Mrs O’Connor. ‘I don’t think we have venereals in the Catholic Church.’

‘He now works for that trendy happy-clappy bishop in Clayton,’ continued the shopkeeper. ‘The one who opened the church fête last July wearing that T-shirt with “JESUS SAVES!” on the front.’

‘And do you remember,’ said Mrs Pocock, ‘Malcolm Stubbins, cheeky monkey, going up to him and saying that Jesus ought to be put in goal if he was so good at saving.’

‘He’s better off behind a desk, is Mr Atticus,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘I mean he’s a nice enough man and never says a bad word about anybody but he could send an insomaniac to sleep with his sermons. He’s far too academical for St Christopher’s. Considering the new curate had never met Mr Fish, I thought what she had to say about him was very touching.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Mrs Pocock, ‘there were few wet eyes in the church. Mrs Fish looked gutted.’

Mrs Sloughthwaite raised an eyebrow.

‘Did you say “she”?’ asked Mrs O’Connor.

‘That’s right,’ said the shopkeeper, ‘the new curate is a woman and she seems very nice. She christened Bianca’s baby, and Mrs Lloyd who was godmother was in the shop the other day and she was telling me—’

‘A woman!’ interrupted Mrs O’Connor. ‘The new curate is a woman?’

‘They do have women priests now, Mrs O’Connor,’ the shopkeeper told her. ‘Your lot might not hold with having them but they’re taking over in the C. of E. and good luck to them, that’s what I say. Women give the best advice in my experience, they’re more sympathetic and they are better listeners and that’s what you need in a vicar.’

‘Well I never,’ said Mrs O’Connor, ‘a woman priest in Barton. And what is she like, this new curate?’

‘She seems very nice,’ replied the shopkeeper, shuffling into a more comfortable position. The chair creaked under her prodigious bulk. ‘Young, blonde, slim and very attractive.’ She smiled. ‘I would like to have seen the expression on Mrs Atticus’s face when she turned up on her doorstep like one of them models out of a glossy magazine. I bet she was expecting some doddery old clergyman well past his sell-by date.’

‘And did you see Fred Massey sitting there in the front pew with a face like a bag of rusty spanners ogling her?’ remarked Mrs Pocock. She gave a small cold laugh. ‘His eyeballs were out on stalks.’

‘To be honest, I couldn’t take my eyes off Miss Sowerbutts,’ said Mrs Sloughthwaite, ‘straight-backed and with a face like a death mask. They ought to hire her out for funerals, she looks that miserable – as grim as the corpse in the coffin.’

‘I don’t know why she was there anyway,’ scoffed Mrs Pocock, reaching for a slice of Battenberg cake. ‘She never sets foot in the church normally, not as far as I know.’

‘She was there,’ explained the shopkeeper, ‘because Mr Fish used to be the caretaker at the school before Mr Gribbon. He worked there for donkey’s years, until he fell off the ladder and broke his collarbone. Miss Sowerbutts was looking daggers at Dr Stirling when he got up to speak.’

‘Why should she be cross with Dr Stirling?’ asked Mrs O’Connor.

‘Because she fully expected to have been asked to do it herself, that’s why. She showed up at Joyce Fish’s cottage before the body was cold and said she’d be happy to say a few words at the funeral, but went away with a flea in her ear when the widow told her that it had all been arranged and she wasn’t required. Mrs Fish told me that herself when she came in to order the food for the funeral tea. They had a right old spread by all accounts – ham sandwiches, cheese straws, mushroom volivonts, sherry trifle and fruit cake, by the way. She was going to have sausages on sticks but she opted for black pudding, it being a funeral and all.’