Trouble in the Village (Tales from Turnham Malpas) (5 page)
Read Trouble in the Village (Tales from Turnham Malpas) Online
Authors: Rebecca Shaw
Jimmy stared into the distance. ‘Not much from where I’m sitting, but then you’ve only been on your own a matter of weeks. Tell you what, you’ve lost weight and look better for it.’
Don looked down at the gap between his big stomach and the edge of the table. ‘You could be right. By the way, they tell me Tom’s put up the charges something ridiculous for the church hall. The Flower Club are, as Sheila Bissett put it, “outraged”. Doubled, she says, but pay early and you get a discount.’
‘Who says?’
‘Tom. He’s warning people before the notices go out.’
‘Speak of the devil. He’s just come in.’
Tom took off his tweed cap as he entered and waved it in general at whoever cared to acknowledge him. ‘Evening, Jimmy, evening, Tom.’ Jimmy, looking forward to a bit of sport at Tom’s expense, called out, ‘Come and sit with us, Tom. Two lonely bachelors, we’re in need of cheering up.’
Tom chatted up Georgie while she got his order and then came across to them carrying a tray with his own lager and a drink each for Don and Jimmy.
‘Here we are then, lads. Drinks all round. One thing, you don’t cost much, Don. Orange juice!’
Don nodded his thanks. ‘Evie not with yer?’
Tom took a sip of his lager after he’d toasted the two of
them, placed his glass neatly on the beer mat in front of him and said, ‘Evie doesn’t take to life in a bar. She always says –’
‘Nice woman, your Evie, you’re lucky to have her.’
‘I am. What about you then, Don? Not got Vera back yet?’
‘There’s no yet about it, she won’t be back, and as I’m not going to live in that tarty flat of hers, that’s how matters stand. Married all these years and she’s marched off without so much as a backward glance. Women!’
‘Nothing quite like a woman to cuddle up to on a cold night though. Evie always –’
‘What’s this about putting up the charges for hiring the church hall. Whose idea was it?’ Jimmy asked, before Tom could tell them what Evie always did or said.
‘The Rector’s.’
‘The Rector’s! Doubling ’em! It doesn’t sound like the Rector.’
Tom leaned across the table and tapped a thin finger on it several times. ‘Do you know when the prices last went up? Five years ago. Time they were increased, with costs as they are.’
‘But double!’
‘Double. But discount for cash and early payment.’
‘That doesn’t sound like the Rector either.’
Tom had the grace to blush. ‘No, that’s Tom Nicholls bringing the church into the twenty-first century.’
Don sniggered. ‘It’s hardly into the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first. Doesn’t seem right somehow.’
Jimmy looked straight into Tom’s eyes and said, ‘Don’t look now but Sheila Bissett’s just come in with Ron. From the looks of her she’s got the light of battle in her eyes. Too
late, she’s spotted yer. She’s ordered Ron to get the drinks. ’Ope you’ve got some good reasons ’andy … Yer going to need ’em.’
Tom stood up, the only one of the three to do so. ‘Good evening, Sheila. Let me get you a chair.’ He went to another table and asked permission to remove their spare chair. ‘Here you are. I’ll put it on this end where there’s more room. Ron won’t mind the settle, will he? Move up, young Don, make room for Ron. I’m a poet and didn’t know it!’ He beamed at Sheila, patted her shoulder and seated himself again.
She wagged her finger at him. ‘I’m glad you’re in here tonight, it gives me a chance to put my case. Don’t think playing the gentleman will undo the harm you have done, because it won’t.’
Tom looked shocked. ‘
Playing
the gentleman. I
am
a gentleman.’
Sheila snorted. ‘You might appear to be one but how can you be when the moment you take charge the price of booking the hall doubles? I shall have to put up our membership fee for the Flower Club and it’s going to be hard for some of them to find the money.’
‘It isn’t my responsibility, putting it up. The Rector came up with the idea and he’s waiting for confirmation from the committee.’
Taken aback Sheila said, ‘Oh, I see. The Rector.’
‘So I’m not to blame. I’m only the poor geezer in the firing line.’
‘Yes, but I bet it was you who sowed the seed. Yes, I can just see it, all comfy over a cuppa and … Thank you, Ron.’
Jimmy greeted him with ‘Your Sheila’s getting stuck in about the charges for the hall.’
‘I’ve told her it’s only reasonable but she won’t listen.’
‘I do listen, Ron, I do, but I don’t have to agree with you, do I?’
Tom said vehemently, ‘The church can’t afford to subsidise everybody.’
‘No, but I bet you’ve had a hike in salary. I bet my bottom dollar you’re getting more than Willie did.’
‘Now, Sheila …’
‘“Now, Sheila” nothing, Ron, I bet he is. Go on, deny it.’
Tom spilt his drink and made a bother of wiping his jacket and the pool of lager on the table. ‘Just look at that. What a mess. Evie will have something to say about this. “Just back from the cleaners,” she’ll say. I’ll get a cloth from Georgie.’ He got up and went to the bar, leaving Jimmy and Don laughing quietly.
Ron said, ‘You nearly nailed ’im there, Sheila, but he’s too quick even for you.’
‘I’m right, though, aren’t I? Otherwise he’d have denied it.’
Tom came back and made a fuss of wiping up the lager. ‘How clumsy of me, what a mess! Evie says I’m –’
‘Never mind, don’t make such a fuss. I jogged yer elbow, didn’t I?’ Jimmy said slyly.
‘You didn’t do it on purpose, though, did you?’
‘Oh, no.’
‘Well, then.’ Tom took the cloth back to Georgie and stopped for a chat. ‘Where’s Dicky tonight?’
‘Everyone knows and so should you. It’s Scout night.’
‘Of course! Grand job he does, you know. A grand job. The two of you no nearer being able to marry?’
‘No. We still haven’t tracked down that husband of mine. He’s probably dancing the night away under some southern sun with that disgusting Electra clinging to him. If only he knew the heartache he’s causing.’
Tom placed a sympathetic hand on hers as it rested on the bar. ‘Never mind, one day he’ll turn up and you’ll be able to get him sorted out. Dicky’s the sort of chap who’s worth waiting for. And wait he will, with you as his prize.’
Georgie blushed. ‘Now, Tom!’
‘In fact if I wasn’t well and truly married I’d be elbowing him out!’
‘Would you indeed!’
‘I would! You’re a gorgeous woman, Georgie. A fitting tribute to womanhood!’
‘Get away!’
Tom laughed and went back to his table. While he’d been away the others had been silent.
On Tom’s return Jimmy said, ‘Now Willie Biggs isn’t verger I’m hoping for some inside information from you. Never uttered a word about any secrets he learned as verger, played his cards too close to his chest for my liking. People, including himself, got married on the quiet and he never let slip a word. At funerals, and we all know the bother they can cause, all sorts ’appened and he never let on.’
‘What can happen at a funeral, for goodness’ sake?’ Tom asked.
‘Sounds as if I shall be having an interesting time.’
‘We shall gather here on a night waiting for any snippets of gossip.’ Jimmy winked at Don who, keeping a poker face and quite unable to see what was funny in Jimmy’s stories, said, ‘Remember that time when the Rector, this one, that is, was conducting a wedding? Great big do it was with a carriage and horses for the bride and groom and the church full and a big reception at the George in Culworth. Top ’at and tails. Church bells ringing. You name it, money no object, and when the Rector got to the bit about any just impediment why these two should not be joined in matrimony someone stood up at the back and shouted, “I’m the impediment, me and my four kids,” and she turned out to be the bridegroom’s first wife and they weren’t divorced. She marched the kids down the aisle and presented ’em to the hopeful bride. “Now”, she said, “what are you going to do about this lot?” The father caught the bride just as she
fainted. They’ad to call an ambulance for the bride’s mother. Had a heart-attack she did, right there in the front pew. ’Bout six months ago it was, maybe a year.’
Jimmy drew a little closer to Tom and whispered, ‘For a start what do you know about the Rector?’
‘Being on holiday, you mean?’
Jimmy scoffed at Tom’s comment. ‘Holiday! Holiday! That’s a laugh. You see? You’ve started being secretive already and you’ve not been in the job scarcely a month.’
‘Honestly! God’s truth, that’s all I know.’
‘Is it indeed! You know and I know and we all know he’s left home.’
‘Never! No, no, he’s not. He’s taking a break.’
‘Well, keep your ears and eyes open and let us know. He’s our rector and we’ve a right to know what’s going on, and we can’t ask Sylvia ’cos she’d die first before tell us.’
‘He went unexpected, I can say that.’
‘Exactly! Usually he has it all planned out, meetings postponed, clergy from Culworth to take the services, and that, but not this time. So don’t you keep your mouth buttoned like Willie did.
We want to know
.’
‘I have promised not to divulge –’
‘Well, I ’ope yer ’ad your fingers crossed behind your back.’ Jimmy looked him straight in the eye. ‘Nothing, and I repeat
nothing
, goes on in this village without someone finding out. Eventually. That includes any tales about you, Tom Nicholls, and any tales about anyone at all, so you might as well tell all as not. Got the message?’
From the understairs cupboard she got out her neat wooden box, which Ralph had made especially for her; she loved the old dark wood he’d made it from and best of all the curved handle to hold it by. Before leaving the house she checked she had all she needed. Spotlessly clean yellow
dusters, her pieces of old towel cut into neat squares for putting on the polish, the old toothbrush for the wiggly corners the duster couldn’t reach into, her household gloves to protect her hands, yes, they were all there.
As Muriel was about to shut the front door she remembered. The brass polish! How silly could she get? The new tin stood on the kitchen worktop. She went back in, picked it up and put it in her box, but not before she’d taken a glance around her kitchen and admired it for the umpteenth time. Despite Ralph’s opposition she’d been right to insist on this deep gold colour for the walls above the tiling. It gave that added warmth and provided a good background for those icon things she’d bought at the craft fair. Artistically they deserved only four out of ten but she loved them. Muriel paused to recollect where Ralph was. Good heavens, he was in the study and she hadn’t told him she was going out.
Muriel opened the door and said, ‘I’m going now, Ralph dear, back for lunch. Don’t work too hard.’
Ralph looked up from the post he was opening. Muriel’s heart flipped. He was so good-looking. How did he manage to keep his looks? Those frank, intelligent dark brown eyes, that proud forehead, the snow-white well-barbered hair, and that aristocratic nose! She wondered sometimes if that was the real reason she’d married him: her attraction to his arrestingly handsome nose combined as it was with his well-tanned fresh complexion.
‘Enjoy!’
It was his voice too. So deep but not rumblingly deep, and his top-drawer accent, now that really could set her heart-strings vibrating and no mistake. Muriel rushed across
the study carpet on winged feet and planted a kiss on his cheek.
Ralph laid his hand on hers as she rested it on his desk. ‘My dear!’
‘I love you so. So very much!’ She gave him another kiss on the top of his head and fled. Having slammed the front door behind her she found she’d left the brass-cleaning box on the hall chair and had to go back in to pick it up. After such a disastrous start would she ever get the brass cleaned?
This morning she decided she would begin with the cross on the altar. She spread a clean duster on an altar chair and stood on it so she could reach. Now which hymn should she hum while she polished? ‘Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam’? The rhythm fitted just right. As she hummed she paused to wonder how long the cross had been standing on the altar. One of her favourite phrases was ‘time immemorial’ but she didn’t think that applied to the cross, not like it did to the tombs, especially the Templeton tomb at the back of the church, or the stone flags of the church floor or the old uncomfortable pews. No, she rather felt it was much younger than that.
Having brought the cross to a fine high glow Muriel stepped down from the chair and stood back to judge if she was satisfied. Yes, she was. Now for the lectern. She replaced the chair, removing the duster from its tapestry seat and carried the box to the lectern. This eagle holding the Bible she had never really liked, she watched birds-of-prey programmes on the television and tried hard to like eagles but she couldn’t. Nevertheless it had to be cleaned. The eagle’s beak was slightly open and she had to be careful not to leave brass polish in it. Muriel turned to pick up the
toothbrush and heard a sound. It wasn’t the sound of the heavy outside door opening nor the sound of a footstep, just the old building creaking. She expected she’d creak too if she was as old. The wind under the tiles perhaps. Or Willie in the vestry. Oh! but it wasn’t Willie now, was it? It was Tom. At the thought of his name Muriel smiled. He really was a delightful man. Rough diamond, true, but always so polite and considerate and very amusing.
Just as she had grudgingly polished the eagle’s outspread wings and attended to his feet Muriel heard the noise again. A rustling kind of noise. Not mice. Oh, no! Not that! She stopped to listen. There it was again. ‘Tom! Is that you? Tom!’ But there was no reply. The sound stopped. Muriel gave herself a talking-to. ‘Get on with the job, Muriel, and don’t be so pathetic. If Ralph had been here you wouldn’t even have noticed there was a sound.’
Now for the brass plates on the altar: one depicting the risen Christ, the other His ascension into heaven. She noticed that there was old brass polish in the folds and creases of the moulding of the plates. Oh dear! Sheila Bissett had slipped up last week. Working away, absorbed in thought, Muriel missed the second spate of creaking and rustling but not the third: this time they were so loud they made her jump. She dropped the tin of brass polish and a great splash of it ran down the side of the altar. It trickled steadily down the oak wood like a great putty-coloured tear. Quickly Muriel grabbed a duster and rubbed it away. Concerned about staining the wood she rubbed furiously and didn’t notice until she’d finished that it was her polishing cloth she was using and not the putting-on cloth.
There came a creak and muffled rustlings and all thoughts of the ruined duster went from Muriel’s mind. ‘Now, see here! Who is it? Is it you, Tom? Tom!’
But the only reply was the familiar deep silence of the church.
I really must pull myself together. I’ll finish the polishing then straight away I’ll find Tom and tell him. It must be mice. Those scamps of angelic choir-boys will have left crisps and things in some corner and a mouse has crept in and decided to make a home in here. That’ll be it. If I get Tom to put out traps, by the time it’s my turn again to polish they should be caught and the traps gone, then I shan’t come across them by mistake.
Muriel put ‘risen’ and ‘ascension’ back on the altar and then she went to the rear of the church to polish the brass decoration on the font. She loved the stone bits of the font and the two angels which decorated it, but the Victorian addition of the brass with its pompous inscription rather annoyed her, but who was she to … there was that noise again but this time much closer. Then there came a loud bang, as though something had been dropped. From the Templeton tomb not three yards from where she stood.
Her flesh crept, goose pimples rose on her skin, her scalp prickled and her knees went to jelly.
The church was ice cold and so too was she.
Her hands chilled to the marrow. And trembling.
Her mouth bone dry.
The silence now was almost worse than the noise.
Who moved and then didn’t?
Who wouldn’t reply to her calls?
Was it haunted like Willie had always said?
But one of Ralph’s ancestors? Surely not.
Her ears caught a slight scratching sound.
Dear God!
Muriel lifted the heavy handle of the main door and escaped out into the sunshine, running, running for the safety of Ralph and his sane no-nonsense world.
She croaked, ‘Ralph! Oh, Ralph!’ as she shut her front door behind her.
Startled, Ralph stood up and went out into the hall to find Muriel sitting on the chair, breathless, speechless and shaking.
‘My dear! Whatever is it?’
Muriel tried to speak but couldn’t.
Ralph put his arms about her, and hugged her. ‘You’re safe now, my dear, but whatever’s happened? Tell me!’
Muriel pointed to her mouth.
‘Glass of water?’
She nodded.
She drank half the water and then gave a great shudder.
‘Tell me, Muriel.
Please
!’
‘Oh, Ralph! I’ve been so frightened.’
‘By whom?’
Muriel shook her head. ‘By mice. It must be. But they couldn’t make a big bang, could they?’
‘You’re not making sense.’
She explained what had happened, ending with ‘And I’ve left all my polishing stuff there and I’ve got to go back to get it and I daren’t.’
‘If it’s not?’
‘Well, if it’s not … it could be a tramp gone in there for the night out of the rain. Or … Muriel’s vivid imagination?’ He looked gently into her face and she felt both foolish and indignant.
‘I’m not in my dotage, Ralph. I heard those noises. I’ll finish this water and then we’ll go and we’ll sit quietly in a pew by the tomb and we’ll listen together. If you’ll hold my hand that is and I put my feet up on a hassock just in case.’
‘Gladly.’
Ralph pushed open the heavy door and there was Tom in his bright orange overalls busy dusting round the heads of the statues with Willie’s special long-handled feather duster. Everything so ordinary and commonplace it was alarming in itself.
‘Good morning, Sir Ralph, Lady Templeton! Lovely morning. If you’re wanting a quiet moment I can come back later.’
Tom’s cheerful greeting flinging her pell-mell back into normality somehow worsened Muriel’s fear. Ralph, clasping her hand firmly in his, found she’d started trembling again. ‘That’s all right, Tom, you carry on. We’ve come for Muriel’s brass-polishing box. She thinks she left it by the font.’
‘She did. I’ve put everything back in it, Lady Templeton. You’d dropped it.’ Tom sounded slightly puzzled but was too polite to ask why she’d obviously run away in haste. He went up to the font, picked up her box and took it across to
her. ‘There we are. If you feel it’s getting more than you can fit in I’ll gladly take over and do the polishing myself.’ Tom’s smile was so kind, Muriel felt quite restored.
‘That’s very kind of you, Tom, but I do enjoy my polishing. There’s not much I can do for the church but this is something within my capabilities and I should hate to give it up. Thank you all the same.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘Have you been in here all the morning?’
‘No, I came in about five minutes ago. Before that I was clearing the weeds away from the old gate at the back that leads to the Big House.’ He went to the main door and opened it for them.
Ralph carried the box in one hand and held Muriel’s hand with the other. She was gripping his fingers so tightly he had no circulation in them.
When they were safely out on the path she whispered, ‘I wish he wouldn’t wear those orange overalls. They make him look like some kind of malevolent insect, made huge by a mad scientist in a laboratory somewhere and released to take over the world. Do you think there are more of them?’
‘Muriel!’
‘It’s true, they do. But you see I
was
in there by myself and I did hear those noises, but we couldn’t very well sit there to listen for them with Tom working, could we?’
‘No. Are you sure you heard noises?’
‘You have never doubted my word before, Ralph, so why do you doubt it now?’
‘I’m sorry, my dear. I’ll go back and ask Tom to put down some traps just in case. We have had mice in before, some years ago, so you could be right.’
‘Thank you. I’ll go home and get the lunch.’
Muriel went into the Village Store after lunch to collect the video of
Shakespeare in Love
which Jimbo had ordered especially for her.
‘Jimbo rang me yesterday and said it was in, Bel.’
‘Right, Lady Templeton. I expect he’s put it in the back office. I won’t be a moment.’ Bel trotted away into the back, leaving Muriel with Linda behind the Post Office grille doing her accounts and Sheila Bissett occupied with choosing a birthday card.
‘Good afternoon, Sheila.’
‘Good afternoon, Muriel. I was hoping to see you, Is it possible you could do my brass cleaning next week and I’ll do the next two weeks instead? Ron-ald is going up to London for a few days to some union meetings and I’d love to go with him, shopping and things, you know.’
Somewhat disconcerted, Muriel hesitated before she replied. Sheila, who easily took offence, said, ‘If it’s not convenient …’
‘It’s not that. I’ve been polishing today and I was sure I heard mice in the church moving about, you know, and I hate mice or … rats and such and I’ve not really got over it.’ She trembled again at the thought. ‘But I’ll get Ralph to sit with me and read or something just in case. Tom’s going to put traps down and I hate them too, but there’s no other way is there?’
Sheila drew her confidentially to one side. ‘I don’t think he’s doing all that good a job, actually.’
‘You don’t?’
