The time between the talent contest and Christmas
was too short to organize a replica of the previous year’s pantomime that had
packed the old school hall to bursting point and been riotously entertaining.
As usual when faced with a dilemma, it wasn’t to Edith that Mr Parsnip turned
for advice, but to Dorothy, who could run rings round most people he knew.
The shortest route to Dorothy’s was past Cleo
Hartley’s cottage, so he decided to go there first and see how she was getting
on in her engagement to Mr Jones. After the public exchange of marriage promises
at the talent contest, they were looking forward to the real ceremony in the
not too distant future.
“Well hello, Mr Parsnip. Nice to see you. Come in,
won’t you? What can I do for you? You look frozen.”
“Well, it is rather cold.”
That understatement sent more shivers down his
spine and Cleo beckoned hastily to him to come in, not least because the warmth
inside the cottage was escaping rapidly.
Mr Parsnip trotted obediently into the cottage
beating his upper arms by crossing them in order to get the circulation going
again. A blazing fire invited him to warm himself. Since it was Wednesday
afternoon, the library was closed, as was Robert’s shop. Robert Jones, who had
now taken up residence at the cottage, vacated the armchair nearest the blazing
fire.
“Have some hot chocolate, Mr Parsnip! You look
frozen.”
The vicar was glad he had come. Fires at the vicarage
could not compete with this snugness. He accepted the offer of cocoa gratefully
and tried to think of something to say.
Mr Parsnip was usually the last one to hear
anything new. That phenomenon could be explained by arguing that he had a habit
of forgetting everything that was said to him, so telling him would be futile
in any case. But in truth he often hadn’t been listening, especially when in
the throes of composing a sermon. Since the vicar’s new sermons were uncannily
like some of the old ones, he might have spared himself the trouble, but he had
forgotten them himself, too.
When the conversation had been non-existent for
several minutes waiting for Mr Parsnip to have a reason for being there, Cleo
finally said
“I finally got a phone-call from the lawyer’s
office to confirm that my husband is dead, Mr Parsnip. When I told them after
my mother arrived, they didn’t believe me. They were still waiting for the
coroner’s office to send the autopsy report. They were quite sorry I didn’t
need a divorce. They said there had been funny business going on somewhere but
the identity problems now solved.”
“I understand,” nodded the vicar, who didn’t.
“You see, my deceased husband had a twin brother
and they shared their crimes as well as their parents,” Cleo continued, and
this time Robert was hearing something he had not heard before.
“But I will have the death certificate soon and I
can get married again if I want to.”
If Cleo was uncertain in retrospect about which brother
she had actually married and which one
was now dead, it was because Jay, who insisted he was her husband, and Ken, his
twin brother, had been known to swap identities. Ken had even made it to her
bed. That had shocked her, not least because she only knew she had been having
sex with Ken because Jay had returned from somewhere and thrown Ken out of
their bedroom.
Even now she experienced that shock and
embarrassment every time she remembered that she had not really ever known
which twin was her husband. Both had been passionate lovers, but it was Jay who
had kicked her in the stomach and Jay who had killed her unborn baby,
suspecting that it was a bastard sired by his brother.
It was good to know she was now a widow, thus free
of that horror once and for all. But was she? Would she ever know? It was just
as well that Robert was not a passionate lover. He was not really interested in
a physical union. At that moment she did not want that either. She did not want
an impatient, frantic lover, and certainly not one she could not even reliably
identify. She tried not to think about Gary, who had awakened in her all the
passion in her that she had thought was spent.
The vicar had heard about Cleo’s widowhood from Robert,
but was unable to decide the level of condolence that was expected of him. Now
he felt bound to say something.
“Aren’t you just a little sad about it all, Miss
Hartley?’”
“Should I be? I know I have darkish skin, but the
beatings he dealt out to me showed up beautifully in all colours of the
rainbow, Mr Parsnip. Do you know that I once spent three weeks in hospital
recovering from one of his violent attacks? He killed my unborn child, too.
Should I feel anything but loathing for that man?”
Mr Parsnip was shocked and dismayed, and regretted
having said anything.
“We should pray for his soul, Cleo.”
“I don’t think he had one,” Cleo retorted, clearly
unwilling to say another word on the topic.
Now feeling most uncomfortable, Mr Parsnip thanked Cleo
for putting him in the picture, emptied his cup hastily, sprang to his feet and
made for the door.
“Won’t you have another cocoa before you go, Mr
Parsnip?”
“No time today. I have to visit Dorothy now on
urgent business.”
Outside in the cold Mrs Parsnip thought he had had
a lucky escape, though he could not have defined what he was escaping from
except that he was shocked and afraid of the tale Cleo had told him about her
past.
Cleo and Robert reflected silently that they had
found friendship and sincere love, however you liked to define them.
***
Sometimes Dorothy thought she should have set up a
citizen’s advice bureau, so often was she consulted on matters great and small.
When she looked up from her Beethoven sonata and caught a glimpse of Mr Parsnip
propping his bike up against the garden wall, she knew it was on the cards that
he had a problem, though he usually bluffed and said he was just making sure
she was all right. That afternoon was no exception.
“You look a bit peaky, Dorothy,” was his opening
gambit.
“Do I? I expect it’s Beethoven again.”
“Beethoven? Is that’s your cat’s name?”
“No, of course not. I mean my sonata. The last
movement is so difficult. I’ve been practising the same page all day.”
As if on cue, a small cat strolled into Dorothy’s
parlour and sprang elegantly onto the arm of Mr Parsnip’s chair.
‘That’s Mimi, Frederick! Isn’t she beautiful?’
After the sad loss of her dog Minor, Dorothy had
resolved never to have another pet. Mimi was probably somebody else’s cat. When
she started calling on the cottage, it was only for short visits, but they got
longer and longer until the little animal finally came to stay. No one seemed
to miss her. Dorothy consulted her neighbour, Mrs Barker, about it. They phoned
the animal sanctuary in Middlethumpton, where Dorothy was told she could take
another fifty little cats home if she liked, and only reluctantly offered the
choice of bringing the cat along if it was a nuisance. Mrs Barker thought Mimi
was about six months old. She was lovable and friendly and Dorothy didn’t have
the heart to take her to Middlethumpton and leave her to her fate. And anyway,
Mimi was good company. She even liked scrambled egg and gravy. Indeed, Mrs
Barker had already scolded Dorothy for putting Mimi on a human diet and urged
her to buy decent cat food instead.
Very soon after Mimi moved in, Mr Barker was sent
by Mrs Barker to change the large dog flap for a small cat flap in Dorothy’s
back door so that Mimi could be independent if she felt like it. Since he was
an ardent do-it-yourselfer and over the moon that Dorothy had not replaced
Minor, with whom he had never been able to come to terms, he was more than
willing to undertake the task. In the end it involved installing a whole new
door, since you can only make holes bigger, not smaller, and patching it up
would have looked very unsightly. Dorothy didn’t mind at all. The old door had
been sliced in half horizontally like one in a western, and it was very
draughty through the crack halfway down. Now she would have a door in one piece
with a little window at the top and a little cat-flap at the bottom. After all,
Upper Grumpsfield does not have a Texan climate.
Mr Parsnip was nervous about cats. Priscilla, the
old vicarage tabby, got under everyone’s feet and brought in a stream of
headless birds and rigid mice that Edith assured the vicar were peace
offerings. He called it bribery. Priscilla always liked to be the centre of
attention, to sit on the most comfortable chair, pinch the cheese off his
bread, run between his feet until he stumbled, and get on his nerves by always
wanting to be on the other side of any door that was closed. Priscilla only
behaved like that with him. Edith told him that if he showed her a little
affection, she would stop annoying him. The vicar did not have a very Christian
attitude to Priscilla and the words he used to expel her from his presence were
more pagan than polite. Now he would be confronted by another such little
monster every time he went to see Dorothy.
Mr Parsnip took care not to show his aversion to
Mimi, but like any other cute feline, Mimi sensed it and fawned around him
trying to curry affection. Asked why he didn’t like pets in general and cats in
particular, Mr Parsnip would reply that the command ‘Love thy neighbour’ does
not continue ‘and thy neighbour’s pets’ and he refused point blank to enter
into a discussion about whether animals have souls. That, he declared, was unlikely
and therefore irrelevant. The Victorian slant on the vicar’s philosophy was
very evident in his attitude to animals.
“Some you eat, some you hate,” he would say if the
topic was mentioned.
Dorothy invited him to partake of tea and home-made
currant bread. Between gulps of this and mouthfuls of that, compliments on the
bread and thanks for allowing him to have 4 lumps of sugar in his tea, he
finally got round to broaching the topic that was bothering him.
“What are we doing for Christmas, Dorothy?” he
said.
“I’ll just take it quietly with Mimi, thanks. I
don’t go to Frint-on-Sea at Christmas. It’s too windy.”
“No, I mean, what can we do at the church hall for
Christmas?”
“Isn’t it a bit late to start anything new,
Frederick?”
Rather mendaciously, she told him that she had been
hoping the timing of the talent contest would not prevent a new show being
rehearsed, but everyone had been so busy getting their talents sorted out that the
result was....well, nothing at all.
“Can’t you think of anything, Dorothy? You usually
do.”
“Well...”
“I suppose we could invite the winners of the talent
contest to perform again,” proposed the vicar.
“Or we could have an impro theatre evening and do
some carol singing at the end, Frederick.”
Mr Parsnip was puzzled.
“Impro? What would that entail, Dorothy?”
“It’s quite simple, really, said Dorothy explaining
how the evening would be organized. Anyone who wanted to take part would
register. On the day they would all meet and be sorted into groups. They would
be given a situation and asked to act it out, making everything up as they went
along. The audience would decide which group had put on the best performance.
“The best part is that there won’t be any need for
rehearsals,” Dorothy concluded.
“It could all go wrong, Dorothy. Are you sure it’s
a good idea?”
“No, I’m not sure, but it’s worth a try.”
“Well, on your head be it! We’ll have a meeting on
Sunday.”
“Do you thing that is necessary, Frederick?” said
Dorothy, fearing that Laura would immediately put a spanner in the works.
“Of course it’s necessary. We must ask the committee
to help.”
“Help what?”
“This and that,” the vicar replied.
“We haven’t got a committee,” Dorothy was obliged
to remind the vicar. She would not ask him what this and that were because
Frederick would not know.
“Then we’ll have to form one.”
“But without Laura Finch.”
“Now now, Dorothy, don’t be mean-spirited!”
“She takes the biscuit for mean-spiritedness,
Frederick. Have you forgotten the lies she told us all?”
“No, but there’s no point in bearing a grudge. I’m
sure she’s really sorry....”
“...that she was found out, you mean, Frederick.”
Dorothy was as unforgiving about Laura Finch’s
scandalous past as Mr Parsnip was determined to rehabilitate her. Dorothy
finally gave in. She graciously consented to Laura being on the committee. Mr
Parsnip was relieved. Imagine she had been left out! She would have made
terrible scenes and perhaps even gone to the newspapers and given St Peter’s a
bad name. That would never do. Anything that could antagonize the bishop must
be avoided at all costs.
“But you can phone her, Frederick. I want nothing
to do with the formation of your committee and no social contact with Laura
Finch.”
“The main thing is that you will be on it, Dorothy.”
“Only if you insist.”
“I do,” said the vicar.
In truth, Dorothy was glad she would be on the
committee because Laura Finch would be sure to make absurd conditions or rules
for potential participants in the impro show. Dorothy was sure the vicar would
regret having the Finch woman on the committee at all, and an Impro Show was
her idea, after all.
Mr Parsnip felt uneasy. He had never known his good
friend Dorothy to be reluctant before, especially as the theatre evening was
all her idea. He peddled home against a strong east wind. It was nearly
December and he hadn’t even starting thinking about his own role in the seasonal
festivities. But he’d take time to soak in a steaming bathtub first before
starting to think, he decided.
By the time he’d thrown his bicycle onto the others
in the shed and told Edith she should find a new hobby, purely to distract her
from asking questions, he wondered if he had frostbite and had his toes fallen
off yet. They hadn’t, but it took him a good hour in the bathtub with several
hot water replenishments to get his temperature back to normal. Only then did
he start worrying about what Edith would have to say about yet another meeting
requiring refreshments.
Edith Parsnip was used to meetings at the vicarage and
usually showed willingness to cope with them. She actually took them in her stride
without letting on that they were a welcome change from normal Sunday
afternoons, even if the meetings were always attended by the same people and in
her view served no useful purpose. Mr Parsnip enjoyed expounding at length on what
he had in mind, always assuming that he could remember when the time came.
Edith supposed meeting were therapeutic. Phone calls would not be suitable for
the kind of message the vicar wanted to get across, but Edith decided that it was
just as well the committee members invariably took over once the meeting got
going.
This time it was going to be a different kettle of
fish for the vicar. He actually wanted someone to take over rather than sulking
because his prepared speech was not being given a satisfactory hearing. He did
not have the slightest idea how Dorothy and the others were going to solve the
problems involved with putting on anything theatrical at short notice. His
attempt to explain to Edith what the meeting was going to be about was so garbled
that Edith just shrugged her shoulders and hoped he knew what he was letting
himself in for. She had better things to do than waiting for Mr Parsnip to
become coherent.
“Don’t worry! I’m not going to act, Edith.”
“Don’t be so sure, Frederick. You know how
insistent Laura Finch and Dorothy Price can both be.”
It suddenly dawned on him that Dorothy could be
right about her pessimism concerning participation by Laura Finch, but it was
too late now. He had already phoned her and invited her to the meeting. Edith
had heard him.
“Don’t expect me to join in,” Edith told the vicar.
“I’ve got enough to do with the five boys and Christmas coming up with all
those dinners to organize for the various groups.”
Mr Parsnip wondered if the impro theatre idea would
be taken up at all. He rather wished it wouldn’t, but had no idea how to stop
the ball rolling.
After a difficult Sunday morning, made tedious by
an uninspired church service, due to the vicar’s insistence on lecturing rather
than preaching about doing things out of the goodness of one’s heart, and made indigestible to the point of
dyspepsia by a heavy lunch eaten far too hurriedly, Mr Parsnip was just getting
into his afternoon snooze when the doorbell rang and he heard Edith expressing
surprise at the sight of Mr Morgan.
“Why wasn’t I invited to the meeting?” he said. “I
always come to the meetings.”
“How do you know about it, Mr Morgan?”
“A little bird told me.”
“Oh, you mean Mrs Finch, I suppose.”
“Well…”
“I don’t know what she told you, Gareth. Come in
and ask Mr Parsnip about the meeting.”
“Don’t you know about it, Edith?”
“Sort of,” she replied.
Gareth Morgan was behaving strangely, she thought.
He normally hated being at meetings. She wondered if it had anything to do with
Clare since she could not fail to notice that he no longer gushed over her.
Mr Parsnip appeared in the hall, bleary-eyed after
being woken so rudely.
“You can go home. There won’t be any music, Mr
Morgan,” he said, turning to go back into his study.
“How do you know,” persisted Mr Morgan.
The vicar merely shrugged his shoulders and went
back to his study. He would leave Mr Morgan to Edith.
“There’s always music,” Gareth shouted after him. “And
if there isn’t, what am I doing here?’
“You weren’t actually invited, Gareth,” said Edith.
“That was an omission, Edith,” the organist
replied.
Mr Parsnip appeared in the doorway of his study. He
had made up his mind to deal with Mr Morgan himself.
“We are going to have an impro drama evening, not a
musical one, Mr Morgan, though I don’t yet know what it will entail.”
Mr Parsnip was still tired, but he realised that
the chance of him getting back to his nap were now nil. Yawning extensively, he
ushered Mr Morgan into the kitchen.
“It’s all Dorothy’s idea. Get Edith to give you a
cup of tea.”
Tea was not what Mr Morgan had in mind, but he nodded
compliantly. Edith Parsnip was arranging some rather nice muffins on a plate. In
the absence of a third party, Mr Morgan would now have had a chance to hint at
the admiration he felt for her and especially her sister, but he was
tongue-tied. Anyway, he still had not decided which of the two sisters he
preferred and was being side-tracked by the sight of the muffins.
“Do you still like muffins, Gareth?”
The organist nodded eagerly and helped himself to several.
Were they really on first name terms? In Gareth’s mind, that was an intimate
gesture.
Edith turned away so that he could not see her amusement.
Gareth Morgan was precocious, but she enjoyed watching him appreciate her
baking the way she appreciated his organ playing. Soon she would creep into the
church again and listen to him practising.
Mr Morgan wondered why she had stopped listening in
and would have liked to ask her. Edith did not know that he had been playing
especially for her or even that he knew when she was there listening. An
organist sees more than one might think. The mirror provides a panoramic view.
He knew when Edith was hiding behind a column. Anyway, it was always Edith.
Even if Clare had been there before she came, she would never listen to him
practising. That was a reason to prefer Edith. Clare did not bake delicious
cakes, either, as far as he knew.
One after another, the prospective members of the
committee arrived, exchanged small talk, took their seats and were soon treated
to Mr Parsnip’s lengthy preamble, which was as usual brought to an end by Dorothy
exhorting him to get to the point.
Clare was taking the minutes. She was not going to
join the committee, she declared. The more people there were on a committee,
the fewer decisions would be reached. And anyway, she was not going to be
around for a week or two. Edith had already counted herself out.
“I don’t really want to be on a committee, either,”
declared Robert, who was attending his very first meeting at the vicarage. He
was only there to represent Cleo because she was feeling under the weather. “Tell
me what to do and I’ll help out, but someone else must make the decisions. I
can’t decide things for Cleo.”
Mr Morgan counted the heads round the table.
‘That goes for me, too,” he said.
Mr Parsnip was sure that Mr Morgan was not a
suitable candidate for impro theatre, so it was a relief that the committee
would be spared his participation.
“Anyway, I want to be on the stage acting, don’t I?’
“Do you, Gareth?” said Laura. She was astonished. She had
thought the little Welshman was shy and modest.
“We used to play charades at Christmas. I always
got the best parts.”
“I’m not sure that’s quite the same thing,” said
Laura.
Dorothy was alarmed. What if he insisted on playing
a hero?
Cleo had changed her mind about attending the
meeting. She felt better and thought she might be able to prevent the worst
decisions being made. Edith let her in and she sat next to Robert, squeezing
his hand in thanks that he had wanted to save her the bother of coming.
“I think we should first decide what we are going
to get people to perform,” she said “But only if I’m on the committee, of
course. I don’t have to be.”
”Oh you are,” said Mr Parsnip, who relied on her to
keep the peace between Laura and Dorothy.
“I suggest that we play some scenes from
Shakespeare plays,” said Laura, who saw herself as any one of Shakespeare’s
heroines.
Mr Morgan was thrilled.
“Oh yes. Romeo and Juliette,” he cooed. “I’ve
always wanted to play Romeo.
“You must be joking, Gareth lad,” he said and
guffawed. He could just see Mr Morgan in knee breeches. “We’d have to change
the competition to one for knobbly knees if you step out in tights.”
“Shut up, Robert,” Cleo whispered, but was rewarded
with more gleeful laughter.
Dorothy did not want to see the meeting degraded to
a slanging match. Anyway, asking amateurs who had probably never read
Shakespeare to act in it was in her view ridiculous.
“I think we’d better stick to something everyone
knows,” she advised. “Fairy tales, for example. Everyone knows fairy tales and
there are parts suitable even for…..”
“…..the knobbliest knees,” finished Laura with a
snigger and a smirk in Robert’s direction.
Robert laughed heartily and was rewarded with a coy
smile from Laura Finch.
“That’s a very good idea,” applauded the vicar.
“My knees are not knobbly,” insisted Mr Morgan. “And
if you think I’m going to stay here to be insulted, you’ve got another thing
coming!”
Gareth Morgan banged several times on the table,
sprang out of his chair, sending it crashing backwards to the floor, and made
for the door.
“Stop him, Edith!” called the vicar, and Edith
obediently leapt up and dashed after him, which was what she wanted to do
anyway. Clare looked on. She was also amused. If Edith liked being stalked by
the offensive little man, she certainly did not.
“Don’t go, Mr Morgan,” pleaded Edith as she ran
after the organist. “I’m sure they’ll need music now they’ve decided to do fairy
tales.”
Mr Morgan allowed himself to be walked back to the
dining room. Edith had hooked her arm into his, removing it only as they entered
the room. Mr Morgan was mollified by the soft touch of Edith’s hand. He sat
down at the table vowing to pursue his newly re-inflamed preference for the
vicar’s wife.
Dorothy put on her most persuasive voice.
“We will need some music, after all, Mr Morgan. I
can’t play the piano all the time and look after what’s happening on the stage.
We’ll share the piano-playing so that you can do some acting, too.”
That seemed reasonable to Mr Morgan, who now felt
he had gone a bit over the top bragging about his thespian talents.
“Delilah Browne will be back from her current tour
in time to play some of the important parts,” said Cleo, glancing at Laura, who
merely snorted and told her to wait and see.
Dorothy was relieved that at least one of those on
stage would know the ropes.
“That’s good news. She’s very talented,” she said.
A scathing ‘Huh!’ was Laura’s next reaction. She perceived
herself to be in grave danger of being outshone.
Delilah Browne had been the barmaid of Upper
Grumpsfield’s own village pub, the Dog and Whistle, until it closed down.
Returning to the boards, as she called them, had been an economic necessity.
But her pub tour as a cabaret comedienne and vocalist had been a great success
and been extended for many weeks. She put that success down to nostalgia for
the old days of live entertainment. The karaoke machines could not compete with
old variety songs, especially when sung by someone as unashamedly voluptuous as
Delilah Browne.
The vicar hoped that Dorothy would have everything
under control, including Delilah Browne’s aggressive sex appeal, which
disturbed him in a way he would prefer not to.
Dorothy luckily had a fair idea of what was
involved after all those ballet evenings she had helped to put on over the
years. People tend to become unpredictable when they are nervous, so it would important
for someone to guide their steps, especially as the show could be reduced to farce
if Gareth Morgan and Laura got their way.
Clare was anxious to get the meeting over and done
with. She was leaving for Austria next day. Cleo would do any administrative
work needed and spread the word to people who might possibly have some acting
talent. There would be a shortage of men, Dorothy thought, and wondered about
the postman and that little man who had helped out. She was ready to ask anyone
she knew to take part. The more the merrier.
Gareth Morgan was of course light-years away from
ever being Prince Charming, even if he smartened himself up a bit, and Clare did
not think Jason would ever show his face again. Laura would be hard put to find
anyone to represent Lower Grumpsfield apart from herself.
Laura was already racking her brains. If her
village were to be part of the project at all, she would have to volunteer for several
parts. Dorothy thought that Laura would be good at acting a witch and a wicked
step-mother, but did not say so.
If Laura Finch was seeking to rehabilitated
herself, she was in for a surprise, however. Finding out that someone you know
is as awful as you first thought they were after a period of thinking you were
mistaken is a sobering experience. Dorothy was unlikely to fall for Laura’s
play-acting ever again and was determined to have as little to do with her as possible.
Her play-acting was to be strictly for the stage only. Dorothy found it
shameful that Laura had seemingly overcome her own shame and was a bumptious as
ever.
Dorothy could not help asking herself if the Impro
Show was going to be a success. Her spontaneous idea could turn out to be a
nightmare, she decided. Her second decision was to invite Mr Smith to do his
memorable trumpet playing clown act to liven things up. She would not tell
anyone beforehand. Laura might not approve, but the vicar would.
