It was as if Karl von Klippen had smelled a rat.
No one had set eyes on him for years, but the week Clare
started working at Middlethumpton library was also the week he decided it was
time to make another effort at persuading her to return to the respectable life
she had left a decade or so ago.
On discovering that Clare was no longer at the school, Karl drove
to Upper Grumpsfield, hoping to find her there. He arrived just in time for elevenses
with Edith, except that in his panic to find Clare he could have sworn it was
her only pretending to be Edith.
“I am Edith, you know, Karl. You should not be telling me all
this,” she said, when she could get a word in edgeways.
Karl von Klippen was mortified that he had been unable to
discern that Edith was not Clare. She had pointed it out very belatedly, he
thought. A punishment to suit the crime of mistaken identity. Not exactly
British fair play.
Far from being annoyed at Karl’s reappearance, Mr Parsnip welcomed
him as a long lost friend. His ulterior motive soon became clear. He needed a test
listener to his deadly sin of the week sermon, which was all about sloth. He
invited Karl into his study and commanded Edith to bring morning coffee and some
of the crumbly biscuits he had enjoyed the previous day.
Sloth, Mr Parsnip was presently telling his captive audience,
affects us all. Avoiding the washing up (which the vicar usually did) is
slothful. Refusing to do the garden (which he invariably did) is slothful. In
fact, he could think of a number of things he himself tried to avoid that would
qualify him for that attribute. He had devised a little survey to test other people
for their slothfulness, hoping they would prove even more slothful than he was
as it would ameliorate his own sinfulness. He did not tell Karl that, but he
would practise his questionnaire on his brother-in-law.
“Do you avoid exercise?” Mr Parsnip asked him without
forewarning.
“Vat do you mean? The exercise?”
It’s wasn’t just that Karl didn’t fully understand the
question. Since he wasn’t aware that he was participating in a survey, he was
startled to be asked.
“Riding a bicycle, or jogging.”
“Ach, zat is vat you mean.”
Karl thought carefully before continuing.
“Vell, in Alps there is too many mountains for a riding wheel,”
Karl told the vicar, who winced at the bad grammar and curious definition Karl
had used.
“Riding wheel?” he asked
“Fahrrad,” said Karl “Fahrendes Rad, riding wheel,” he
explained.
“Oh yes, of course,” said Mr Parsnip, whose smattering of school
German did not serve him very well. “Bi-cycle,” he explained. “Two wheels.”
Quite apart from shortcomings in vocabulary, a complaint that
did not only affect foreigners, Mr Parsnip was always going on about bad
grammar to the boys and now here was a grown-up guilty of it. He hoped the boys
wouldn’t notice. He could hardly correct a foreign guest without appearing ill-mannered.
“Ah yes. The Alps.”
“And zee jogging is not good there, too, not good at all.”
“But you can go climbing in the mountains, and that is good
exercise, Mr von Klippen.”
Mr Parsnip could not remember if they were on first name
terms.
“You can call me Karl for zat is my name.”
“Climbers are not slothful, Karl.” Mr Parsnip went on, taking up
Karl’s offer with relief because the surname was a bit of a mouthful.
“Ah, but zee how do you call him civil servant must not do a
dangerous thing. How do we say? Zee sport is zee murder. Makes you dead.”
And that seemed to be the end of that.
Mr Parsnip gave that idea some of his attention before
continuing with his survey.
“Do you dig the garden, Karl?”
Mr Parsnip felt the need to persevere, though communication
was rather frustrating.
“I not have a garden, Freddie, my old man.”
The over-familiar way Karl had now addressed him was not at
all to Mr Parsnip’s liking.
“We not have zee gardens in my street. We have zee balcons.”
“Zee Balcons?”
“Yes, yes. Outside, upstairs.”
“Ah. I see. You mean balconies.”
“Yes, yes. Zee balcons.”
Fortunately for Mr Parsnip’s blood pressure, Edith came in at
that moment bearing a tray of coffee and the biscuits. Unfortunately for mutual
understanding, Edith caught Karl’s last utterance and immediately jumped to
conclusions.
“Have you been visiting the Balkans, Karl? How exciting. You
must tell me all about it.”
“Vell, I...”
“Not now, Edith.”
“Tell me at lunch, Karl. I’ll look forward to that.”
Puzzled by the idea that his balcony could be of interest to
anyone but himself, Karl accepted Freddie-old-man’s invitation to inspect St
Peter’s and be shown where the lead had gone from the roof. They returned to a
pile of open sandwiches and some soup for lunch, washed down with several glasses
of cider.
The cider went straight to Mr Parsnip’s legs and Karl found
the beverage he fondly believed to be pure apple juice extremely intoxicating. Mr
Parsnip wondered how he could escape from his role as host to take a nap before
the boys came home from school, but he needn’t have worried.
When Edith showed Karl to the guest room, which had been re-organized
quickly and robbed Edith of her utility room, her last sanctuary in times of
extreme stress, he declared in blurred tones that he was tired and would have ‘zee
rest’.
“The rest of what?” inquired Edith, thinking Karl had had
enough cider for one day.
„Zee rest. Zee
siesta. Zee 50 winks.“
Edith liked Karl’s quaint Austro-English, but she didn’t
admire it as much as she admired Cleo Hartley’s American twang, so she
fortunately did not try to emulate it.
“Oh, yes, I understand, Karl,” she drawled Chicago style, much
to his and her surprise. “You go ahead and have your 50 winks and I’ll get on
with the dinner. We don’t want to go hungry tonight, do we?”
What a good job the old vicarage had so many nooks and
crannies. Clare was sleeping in the spare room at the back of the house and
Edith had a niggling feeling that things might get more difficult when the
estranged couple were confronted with one another. But the utility room usually
kept free for improvised over-night stays and Edith’s forays into the world of
sewing and other handicrafts was at the front, so there was a certain amount of
strategic distance between the estranged couple. Not that Edith would stand in
the way of a reconciliation. Anything was better than the current state of
affairs with Clara homeless and being admired by Mr Morgan..
At three fifteen the three younger boys, Cecil, Daniel and
Edmond arrived home from the village school, dumped their satchels on the
kitchen floor, gulped down some orange juice, grabbed their football and went
out on the front lawn for a kick-around.
Shortly after four Albert and Bertram got off the school bus
that had delivered them home from Middlethumpton Comprehensive and dashed
upstairs to get their favourite toy, a bow and arrows. With admirable aforethought,
it had been decided to go for the kind of arrows with suckers rather than
points. No need to invite a catastrophe.
On bad days, the boys stayed inside and practised shooting at
the bedroom door. On good days they went outside and used the front door as a
target. Windows were out of bounds.
Of course, Albert did not know that someone had moved into the
utility room. The window was wide open and Bertram bet that he could shoot his
arrow straight through it. The main thing was that there was no glass to break.
As Albert was taking careful aim, Karl was approaching the
window to get a breath of fresh air. It is hard to say who was more startled.
Karl, for getting the arrow stuck firmly onto his brow or the boy for shooting at
a total stranger who happened to appear at the window.
Since Albert had moistened its sucker with spit, the arrow refused
to be prized painlessly from its target. Albert was still looking up at the
window aghast when Karl stepped out of the front door shouting “Vat is it zat
you do to me, boy?”
Bertram felt terrible about getting Albert to shoot through the
open window. The two boys pushed past Karl into the house and up the stairs.
They had a fair idea of what the consequences of their escapade would be.
The three younger boys abandoned their football game to gasp
at Karl’s arrowed forehead. They didn’t know who he was, either, but even if
they had known, it would not have made any difference. Shooting arrows – even
ones without points - at people was not allowed. They ran after their brothers.
At moments like this, they were all in it together.
Edith was busy cooking a monster beef casserole and a
king-size rice pudding. The little boys were sent to get a packet of biscuits
secretly from one of the low kitchen cupboards. Edith heard them.
“Have you washed your hands?” she said and the little boys, who
were keeping faithfully to their vow of all for one and one for all, dived back
up the stairs to the safety of their room. Edith was still shaking her head in
wonderment at the unusual show of obedience when Karl swept into the kitchen,
the arrow still firmly stuck to his brow.
“I have been attacked by an arrow,” he lamented.
Edith rushed to Karl and removed the offensive weapon with one
swift movement. It went ‘plop’ and left a tell-tale circle of reddened skin and
the beginnings of a fine bruise on Karl’s forehead.
“How did you do that?” asked Edith, trying not to think what
could have happened.
“I did not do it. A horrible boy with a Robin Hood shooter did
it. If I catch that boy it will be the worst of worstness for him.”
Edith swallowed twice. It was bound to be one of the older
boys, but they would never own up so she would have to do some detective work.
“How tall was he?”
“I don’t know. He was on the ground and I was at the window of
my sleeping room.”
“Did he have red hair?”
“No. His hair was black. Like his soul.”
“I think that must have been Albert. I’m so sorry. I’m sure he
didn’t mean to shoot at you.””
“‘It is too late to be sorry. I have the headache.”
“I’ll fetch Albert so that he can apologize.”
“Don’t bother. I go back to bed with my head.”
Edith took a fresh tea towel out of a drawer and some ice out
of the freezer to make a poultice.
“Here you are,” she said. “This will take the swelling out.”
