Not long after the Eisteddfod, Cleo Hartley was weeding the flowerbeds
in her front garden one evening when she was surprised to see the vicar getting
off his bike in a terrible hurry.
“Oh Miss Hartley, Miss Hartley!” he wailed.
Mr Parsnip was obviously distressed. Cleo stopped what she was
doing and looked at him.
“I need your help.”
“You’d do better to say a prayer or two,” she advised him,
giving her rake a good shaking in his direction. “I’m not into church affairs.”
Ignoring the cynical note in Cleo’s reply, Mr Parsnip, now
even more upset in the face of what looked to him like an offensive weapon,
hastened to explain.
“It’s the donation box at the back of the church. It has gone.”
“Gone? Where to? Has it got legs?”
Cleo laid her Chicago drawl on thick.
“No, of course not, Miss Hartley. It has been stolen.”
“‘Maybe someone just borrowed it.”
Cleo stabbed at a patch of weeds. It was sure to be a storm in
a teacup. The vicar specialized in storms in teacups.
“Who would do that? No, it’s been forcibly removed.”
“Call the police!”
“I don’t want to do that.”
“Why not?”
Cleo was anxious to finish the weeding before it got dark.
Mr Parsnip lowered his voice conspiratorially. Omitting to
mention his pathological fear of upsetting the bishop by invoking a scandal, he
told her it was a matter of discretion. Anyone who stole the donation box must
be desperate. He would not want to make unnecessary trouble for them.
Cleo did not lower her voice.
“That’s ridiculous. Whoever stole that box was not
sleepwalking. You don’t break into somewhere and steal things in your sleep.”
“Shush! Someone might hear us.”
“Nonsense! There’s no one within earshot, and even if there
is, is that important?” said Cleo very loudly. “I don’t see how I can help you.
Go home and sleep on it. The box will turn up, I’m sure.”
With those words, Cleo bent almost double to turf out a
particularly unruly dandelion root and Mr Parsnip was left stranded and
wondering what to do next. He told himself that since Miss Hartley came from
the land of unlimited opportunities, she probably didn’t care about the little
joys and sorrows of his parish. But she was astute and he thought she would
have some good ideas on how to solve the mystery.
Presently, since the vicar was making no move to leave, Cleo
decided to play him up a bit. That, in her experience, was a good way of
dealing with people with problems. Churchy people were particularly good at visiting
without an invitation, especially if they were moaning about something like the
vicar, or collecting for some good cause or other. Cleo had learnt to deal with
all kinds of unsolicited visitors. In her view, you didn’t leave it to chance
whether they stayed or left. You asked questions until you hit on one that made
the intruder think better of hanging around. Apart from that, there was always a
chance that the vicar’s visit embraced a cunning reminder that she was not
contributing to that donation box.
“OK. So how much was in it?” Cleo asked. She did not think he
would know.
“Oh… just a few funny foreign coins as it happens.”
“Which currency?”
“Ah… Well, foreign…”
Mr Parsnip was vague when it came to anything foreign.
“I’ll give it some thought”’ Cleo conceded, believing the
theft story, but thinking that he was making a mountain out of a molehill if
there was nothing much in it. Mr Parsnip could not help feeling disappointed
that Cleo had not immediately offered a donation to make up for the one stolen,
but there was finality in her latest remark, so he got back on his bicycle
despondently and peddled, head down, brow furrowed, back to the vicarage.
Cleo gave the matter her undivided attention only after
finishing the weeding, cleaning the kitchen, enjoying a lotus-scented soak in
her bathtub and scolding herself for not jumping at the chance of real life
detection, however trivial the case.
Of all the books on the library shelves, apart from those on
local history and paranormal phenomena, the only ones that interested Cleo
sufficiently for her to read more than the dust covers were the whodunits. Her
favourite female detective was Miss Marple, who also lived in a village and was
truly imaginative when it came to solving crimes. After reading all the Miss
Marple stories, Cleo already viewed village events and incidents in quite a
different, more sinister light.
Miss Marple would have started looking for a corpse, she
decided. There was always at least one corpse in Agatha Christie’s books, and
if there wasn’t one in the first chapter, it never took very long for one to
turn up.
But Cleo supposed that Mr Parsnip would have mentioned it if
there had been a corpse. As it was, she would have to make do with theft. Time
would reveal just how significant that was. She would not lose any sleep over
the matter.
When Mr Parsnip got home that evening from his rather futile
call on Cleo, Edith was waiting for him on the doorstep.
“Well, Freddie, where have you been all this time? It’s long
past suppertime.”
“I had to call on Miss Hartley,” he told her.
“About the flowers? She brought me fresh ones a day or two ago.
They won’t need replacing till next week.”
Donating flowers was one of Cleo’s ways of getting the vicar
not to pester her to come to church.
“No, Edith. Someone has stolen the donation box and I wanted
to ask her advice.”
“Stolen? But…”
“Don’t you worry your head about it. I’m sure there’s a simple
explanation.”
“There is. You should have spoken to me about it first,” said
Edith.
“Miss Hartley will deal with it in the morning,” the vicar
insisted, hoping God would forgive him for telling a little white lie, since he
did not actually know what Miss Hartley would do about the box.
Faced with Edith’s disapproval of his visit to Miss Hartley,
the vicar thought he should change the subject. He was on tricky ground having
omitted to confide in his wife before involving an outsider. Changing the
subject was a tried and trusted strategy.
“Where are the boys?”
“In their rooms. You needn’t say good night.”
Edith was now feeling a bit vindictive. If that’s the way he
wanted it, so be it. Mr Parsnip was glad he did not have to bother with the
boys again that day. It was Edith who had wanted children. Now she could rear
them.
Albert, Bertram, Cecil, Daniel and Edmond were not in bed asleep.
They had been sent to their rooms after a scuffle. Albert was the eldest. He
was learning to play the piano, though Mrs Parsnip was not convinced that he
had any talent and Dorothy, who was still trying her best to teach him the
rudiments, was quite sure he had none. Bertram was two years younger. At nine
he was very talented at football, but congenitally disobedient and a born
practical joker. Cedric was eight and liked reading and playing the recorder
until it was confiscated, which never took long. The twins, Daniel and Edmond,
were nearly seven and just getting to grips with joined-up writing.
Albert was the undisputed leader of the pack, with Bertram a
close second. The younger boys were filled with admiration for their older
brothers and could be relied on never to spill the beans. The chance of any of
them ever owning up to anything was remote.
“Would you like your supper on a tray, Frederick?”
Edith Parsnip needed time to think, and she couldn’t do that
with her husband hovering and making a fuss.
“Oh yes, that would be nice. I want to start on my next sermon.”
Mr Parsnip was always starting on next sermons, most of which
he scrapped. It was a kind of occupational therapy that fought for supremacy
over his growing skill at sharpening pencils. He could forget his own troubles
and concentrate on solving the troubles of the world instead when composing
sermons. Sharpening pencils was a vaguely physical exercise and particularly
comforting when he was in a bad temper, or had run out of spiritual ideas. But
now the new sermon was taking priority. He would scribble ideas and cross them
out again until he had something fairly coherent.
The vicar plumped onto into his swivelling chair, swivelled it
round so that he was facing his desk, and started to make a list of things to
say about his deadly sin of the week: covetousness.
Covetousness was not really something Mr Parsnip experienced
himself, though he sometimes confessed to wishing that one or two of his sons
had turned out to be girls, if only so that they could help around the house,
which is what he thought girls were for.
The vicar decided that he could include the disappearance of
the donation box in his sermon quite easily. After all, donations were made to
help people in a more unfortunate situation than one’s own, so stealing a
donation box was the act of somebody who probably had very nearly nothing and
needed counselling rather than condemnation. That would not be covetousness,
but desperation, another glowingly rhetorical word. He could come back to
covetousness later. After all, there was a difference between taking something
you really didn’t need and taking something you did. He could say that stealing
someone’s wife if one had one of one’s own would be covetousness. If a woman
stole someone’s husband that would be a different kettle of fish in Mr
Parsnip’s view. He hoped no one would ask him how.
Could you covet a donation box? Not if you knew, as the vicar
did, that the latest donations had been removed shortly before the theft and the
modest amount of pounds and pence already invested in coffee and biscuits for the
next charitable coffee morning and pensioners’ bridge session. He would not
mention that or the foreign coins left in the box to make any donation jingle
as though it were one of many.
The theft of the donation box was God moving in a mysterious
way again, he conjectured. He’s giving me a chance to deliver a special
message. All he had to do was retrieve the donation box and produce it like a
conjuror would pull a rabbit out of a hat with the words… Well, he’d think of
some by Sunday. And if there were any loopholes in his argumentation, they could
never dampen the fervour of his message however garbled and misjudged it was,
as Edith had often observed.
Satisfied that he was on the right track to somewhere, Mr
Parsnip put down his biro, leant back in his chair, closed his eyes and
thought. Thinking was more soporific than sleeping pills or fresh air. By the
time Mrs Parsnip came into the study bearing his supper on a tray and with half
an apology on her lips, he was fast asleep.
***
Next morning, Cleo tried to work out how she herself would
break into a church, but decided she would be far too conspicuous to get away
with it. Nevertheless, she left the house earlier than usual and walked all the
way round St Peter’s looking for signs of forced entry and finding none.
The church was usually locked. Gone were the days when
churches provided a refuge day and night. People tended to seek refuge in
discos, pubs, shops and cinemas these days. So either the thief had crept in
and hidden until the church was locked up for the night and then crept out
again unnoticed, or he had had a key.
The mystery was deepening, but Cleo had to get to work, so she
would have to question the vicar later. She was starting to enjoy herself, so
much so that she missed her usual bus into Middlethumpton and only just about
managed to open the library doors on time.
It was a Saturday morning. Schoolchildren came in droves to
change their books. A few of them were already pushing and shoving for
positions and making a lot of noise. It occurred to Cleo that an assistant
would be useful at such times. She resolved to advertise for a volunteer. But
this morning she would just have to cope on her own, which entailed hectic
checking and stamping of books with barely a glance at the borrowers.
Tired of having to work out the fines for overdue books, an
unprofitable and time-wasting system since it guaranteed that some of the books
would never be seen again, Cleo had devised a system that more or less ensured
their safe return. Every junior borrower was issued with a card. Every time the
borrower returned the books on time and undamaged, a red stamp was added to the
card, and at the end of the year the cards were handed in for counting and the
borrower with the highest number of red stamps got a prize. If a book was
brought back too late or mutilated in any way, a black stamp was put over the
previous red one, cancelling it out.
It was a good system even though a few canny kids had
discovered that you could get a red stamp for every book brought back, so that
up to four trips home and back again would be made on a Saturday morning, four
being the upper limit on the number of books you could borrow at one time.
Having more red stamps increased your chances of winning the borrower prize of
the year, presented with media coverage at the library.
Running back and forth with books on a Saturday morning was
not the only way you could increase your collection of red stamps. If you
brought books back and borrowed new ones every day you could get hundreds, but
that had proved almost unworkable, since school sometimes finished after the
library closed and the stamps were not transferable, so prevented parents, to
whom the prize was also open, or any other relative or proxy from
returning on behalf of the borrower..
It was a good system, even if it didn’t guarantee that
borrowed books would actually be read, and was now in its second year, with the
added threat that a borrower could be asked what a book was about if he
borrowed books in quick succession and could not possibly have read them. That
was a useful deterrent. Cleo had not thought it would work, but it did.
When the last youthful bookworm had been ejected on the stroke
of noon, Cleo breathed a sigh of relief and set about the task of restoring
order. It was then that she noticed something shiny sticking out from under one
of the bookshelves. She picked it up and saw that it was a Euro.
It wasn’t the only one, either. A number of others had rolled
under the shelves and she had to sweep along the floor with a ruler to retrieve
them. Although a few adults had been to the library that morning, the majority
of borrowers had been children and anyway, an adult would surely have noticed
if he had dropped a fistful of coins.
No, it must have been one of the kids, Cleo decided. Some had
been scrapping and fooling around and the coins must have fallen out of a
pocket in the fray. What a kid was doing with Euros in a pocket at Middlethumpton
library was a matter for conjecture. If they were coins out of the donation box
stolen in Upper Grumpsfield it could have been (perish the thought) one of the
Parsnip boys. What a pity Mr Parsnip does not recognize a Euro when he sees
one.
Cleo did not know the Parsnip boys well enough to spot one of
them in a crowd, so one of them could have been at the library that morning.
She put the coins into her capacious handbag, switched the lights off, locked
the double door, and hurried to catch the next bus. She had no time to waste.
Thanks to her chequered life in the United States, Cleo was an
expert at doing what she called ‘changing hats’. By the time the bus had
staggered up Thumpton Hill to Upper Grumpsfield, she had donned her detective
hat and was reasoning the way Miss Marple would when faced with a conundrum.
There was no way of telling who had been in possession of the
coins immediately before they were dropped in the library, unless there was a
public inquiry, which would surely fall on stony ground if the coins really had
been stolen. For a start, there were too few of them for a big inquiry, and anyway,
she did not know if the coins were identical with those in the donation box.
Questioning Mr Parsnip might shed light on that issue, so it
was with lots of physical verve and mental determination that she scrunched her
way up the pebbled vicarage path and whacked the gargoyle knocker several times
against the carved oak front door.
***
Edith Parsnip, who had been looking out of the front room
window worrying about what she would do if summarily ejected from the vicarage for
theft and wondering when someone would
turn up for their toad-in-the-hole-and-mash Saturday lunch, darted to the door,
not sure if Cleo had been invited to join the repast. If so, Frederick had
forgotten to tell her.
She did not think Cleo would enjoy such a humble dish as
Yorkshire pudding with sausages in it if she had spent most of her life in that
part of the world reputed to have invented and live on fast food and T-bone
steaks, but she had made plenty of toads, so her welcome was genuine, even if
she had her doubts about the reaction to her humble cuisine.
Edith had had plenty of practice at consigning her own
problems to the back burner while she acted out the part of the perfect vicar’s
wife. Standing at the front door in her apron, traces of flour on her brow, she
was the epitome of contented domesticity.
“Come in, do, Cleo. What a nice surprise!”
“‘Oh! I was just …” began Cleo as it occurred to her that she
was probably barging in at a family lunchtime. “I’d better call back later.”
“Do you want to see Mr Parsnip?”
Edith Parsnip frequently referred to her husband as ‘Mr
Parsnip’. She disliked calling him by his first name to strangers and since Cleo
was not a member of St Peter’s, he wasn’t her vicar. Anyway, a vicar was a
person of authority and Edith was a bit old-fashioned about formality. Any
other mechanisms at work were entirely subconscious.
“Yes, but it can wait.”
“He isn’t back yet. Come in and have some lunch.”
Edith now realized that Cleo had not been invited, but she was
actually making a decision all by herself for a change instead of fulfilling someone’s
command or need.
“Well, I …”
“You must be hungry after working all morning.”
“Well, Mrs Parsnip, I …”
Mrs Parsnip, a petite, thin woman who ‘lived on her nerves’
according to anyone who knew her, was suddenly filled with compassion for this
rather large person. What if she had no one in the world? What if she never
heard her first name? She would be only one of many in that situation. Could
she perhaps help Cleo overcome her anonymity? Edith was glad to have something
to distract her from the donation box.
“Why don’t you call me Edith?” she blurted out.
“Why, that would be nice. I’m Cleopatra, but you can call me
Cleo if you like. My Mom used to call me Cleo.”
Cleo thought they had already been on first-name terms, but
she went along with Edith’s suggestion.
“OK, Cleo is a nice name,” lilted Edith, again charmed by Cleo’s
relapse into her American drawl. She supposed it was thinking of Cleo’s mom
that had done it. It was on the tip of Edith’s tongue to ask if ‘Mom’ was dead.
“Come this way, Cleo. We eat in the kitchen except on Sundays.
I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. Not at all.”
Cleo rolled her tongue around the ells in a way that made
Edith quite envious. Not for the first time, she vowed to practise this new way
of saying things. There was a world of difference between listening to American
accents on TV and hearing a real live one. All of a sudden, Edith felt quite
cosmopolitan.
Cleo hung her jacket on the bronze coat-stand in the hall and
followed Edith into the kitchen.
“Sit here, please!” Edith invited, pointing to her husband’s comfortably
wide carving chair. “The children can squeeze up a bit and Mr Parsnip can fetch
the piano stool if he comes before we’ve all finished.”
“Why, thanks!” drawled Cleo, and Edith drawled the phrase
under her breath.
One after another, the boys crashed in and sat down.
“Hands?” called Edith and five pairs of moderately clean hands
were held up for inspection.
“They’ll do.”
Edith took a steaming hot toad-in-the-hole out of the oven and
cut it into portions. Cleo, who had never seen anything like it before, got
hers first. Then the boys held their plates up for theirs. Admittedly, the
scene did look a bit Dickensian, but everyone got plenty and Edith went round
the table to dole out the mashed potatoes and ketchup individually.
Doling out the potatoes was a precautionary measure designed
to avoid a mash smash such as the one the previous week, when the bowl was put
on the table too soon and the boys had set about it with their pudding spoons.
Up till then Edith had not registered that spoons can be used as potato mash slings.
The smash had followed when Bertram let go of his spoon by mistake and it flew
like a guided missile straight through the (closed) kitchen window, which was
already cracked from an incident with a tennis ball.
The episode of the ketchup the previous Halloween, when Cedric
had been persuaded to play corpse in a particularly gruesome midnight lark, had
obliged Edith to keep the blood-red sauce and the boys well apart ever since. Living
with five sons is a mixed blessing.
Cleo felt quite at home in this domestic chaos, though the
boys were looking at her askance.
“Hey kids, did I spot some of you at the library this morning?”
she asked in a deliberately offhand way.
There was an almost imperceptible pause. Cleo thought she had
probably hit the nail on the head. She’s the fat lady from the library, they
stage-whispered to each other. What’s she doing eating our toad-in-the-hole in
our kitchen? The boys unanimously ignored her question.
When Mr Parsnip came in through the back door a few minutes later,
he could not help asking himself the same question. He could not have said why
the morning had been exhausting. It was probably the worry about the donation
box. Now the sight of his favourite Saturday lunch revived him a bit.
“Anything left for me?”
“Of course. I always make plenty,” slurred Edith in an accent
that made the vicar look at her aghast.
“These are Robert’s sausages, Cleo. Quite the best,” said
Edith.
“It is delicious,” said Cleo wondering why it was called
toad-in-the-dole when there were no holes at all and only sausages, not toads.
Not that she would have preferred toads.
Edith, who had spent an exhausting hour that morning teaching volunteers
to crochet pan holders for the next charitable event, had not had time to even
think about the donation box. She retrieved another casserole of golden
toad-in-the-hole from the oven and slid a large portion of it onto her
husband’s plate.
“You’d better get the piano stool, Frederick.”
Mr Parsnip toddled off obediently. Edith had long since
grasped that he must either be given something to do or left with the
impression that he was taking the initiative. Innuendos would only cause
confusion. A bit of a dig here and a prompt there, in plain English, such as ‘It
is your turn to dry the dishes, isn’t it?’ or ‘The person on the memo pad wants
you to phone him immediately!’ ensured smooth running of the Parsnip household.
“Mr Parsnip has been in church,” she explained to Cleo. “He
likes to practise his sermon on a Saturday morning.”
Cleo did not broach the subject of the donation box. While Mr
Parsnip was fetching the piano stool, Edith handed the boys a banana each and
told them they could leave the table and stack their stools in the corner so that
she could mop the floor under the table as she had to every time the boys had
eaten.
Mr Parsnip would be able to have his lunch in peace. He did
not begrudge Cleo the only comfortable chair in the kitchen. She was his guest
and would have been uncomfortable and probably not have fitted onto the round
piano stool or one of the boys’ three-legged stools. Edith ate her lunch in
dribs and drabs standing in front of the cooker. She always did that, which would explain why
she never knew how much she had eaten and usually did not eat enough, since the
demands at the table invariably distracted her from her own needs.
Thankfully, the boys did what they had been told. They pushed
each other out of the kitchen door for a game of football in the fresh air.
Edith switched the coffee maker on and produced an apple crumble from the oven.
She would have to investigate whether the coins were still on that window-sill
as soon as the coast was clear. In the meanwhile, she would brazen it out. A
show of weakness would be highly suspicious, even Edith knew that. And Cleo
knew that if one of the boys had stolen the donation box and its contents, he
would be unlikely to admit it.
“The boys can have their crumble for tea. I made two,” said Edith,
not wanting it to appear as if she were depriving her boys of anything.
“Why don’t you sit down with us and have some`?” Cleo asked.
“I suppose I could,” said Edith.
“Do you want to sit here, Edith?” Cleo offered.
“She can sit on one of the boys’ stools,” said the vicar.
Cleo was shocked, but determined not to judge Mr Parsnip’s
tactlessness. She had better things to do than think about the questionable
relationship between Edith and the vicar.
Mr Parsnip was ravenous, so he concentrated on his food until
it was finished, then he turned to Cleo and asked her if she had found anything
out yet.
Edith dithered.
“Is it private? Shall I leave you to it, Frederick?”
“You might be able to solve the mystery, Edith, so why not
stay?”
Edith did not ask what the mystery was. Instead, she cleared
the pudding dishes away and busied herself with the coffee. She was afraid she
might blush if looked at too closely. Guilt has a way of asserting itself.
Cleo opened her handbag and took the coins out.
“How about these, Mr Parsnip? Are they the foreign coins from
the donation box?”
Edith now felt terrible about not telling the vicar about her
role in the abduction of the donation box. One of the older boys must have
discovered the coins and pocketed them, but she could not possibly deal with
that side of the matter until the donation box had been safely returned.
Mr Parsnip picked the coins up and scrutinized them one by
one.
Fortunately for Edith, at that moment the phone rang. She
sidled out of the kitchen, her heart thumping so loud she thought it must be
audible to all. Why hadn’t she told the truth straightaway? After all, it
wasn’t that she had stolen anything. A quick look confirmed that most of the
coins she had hidden were no longer where she had put them, so it was on the
cards that the coins Cleo had shown were the ones from behind the net curtain
on the window-sill.
“‘I believe they could be, but I thought there were more. Where
did you find them?”
“On the floor at the library. Don’t ask me who dropped them
there!”
“Oh dear, how exasperating. If we knew that, we’d be a step
nearer finding the box.”
“If those aren’t all the coins, where are the others? I think
I’ll take a look inside the church, Mr Parsnip. Maybe I’ll come up with a
solution when I can feel the atmosphere.”
Cleo made for the hallway, bumping in to Edith on the way.
Edith did not say anything. Cleo only resorted to pseudo-esoteric methods when
she had no idea how to proceed. Miss Marple would have got out her knitting,
but Cleo was not into knitting and anyway, she would rather savour the
atmosphere at the scene of the crime even if she did not think it had any
purpose. Mr Parsnip led the way to St Peter’s and unlocked the main door with a
key that hung on a hook next to the vicarage front door.
“You can see where the donation box hung on its nail on that wall
over there,” he said, pointing to a pale patch on an otherwise grubby wall. “I
can open a little door on the side to get the donations out, so the box has
hung there for years.”
“Not very safe,” criticized Cleo. “I’m surprised it wasn’t
stolen before now.”
“This is God’s house,” protested Mr Parsnip. “Who would steal
from God?”
Cleo decided that Mr Parsnip must be very naive.
“Someone who doesn’t believe in God or does not think that God
can deliver the goods, Mr Parsnip.”
The vicar looked at her indignantly.
“But everyone believes in some sort of superior being, don’t
they?” he argued. His skirmishes with philosophy had left him puzzled and
insecure, whereas with religion you knew where you were most of the time.
Cleo did not want to enter into a discussion on beliefs.
“When did you first miss the box?” she asked instead.
“Well, I usually keep the main door locked and come in by the
side entrance, so I wouldn’t go past the column on a weekday.
“Where do you keep the key to the side door, Mr Parsnip?”
“It’s on my desk, but Mr Morgan has one so that he can get in
to practise. The other day I collected a few donations and the box was still
there then.”
“Someone must have got in with robbery in mind and not realized
that the box was almost empty,” said Cleo. “After all, the key you used just
now was very conspicuous and easy to get at.”
“I suppose so, but who would get in the church through the
main door?. I left the side door open to let some fresh air in, collected the
donations as usual and then I went into the vestry to wind the clock, so I was
out of sight of the side door for a few minutes.”
“When was that exactly?”
“Tuesday, I think. Yes, it must have been Tuesday because the
coffee morning was on Wednesday and bridge is always on a Thursday afternoon,
and biscuits are paid for with the donations.”
Cleo asked herself why a thief would take the whole box when
he could just take the contents. She reasoned that it must be a really stupid
thief who risked being caught carrying a conspicuous donation box.
“What about the hall behind the church? Aren’t they connected
by a door?”
“Yes, but the door is kept locked because the hall is also used
for smaller village events not connected to St Peter’s,” Mr Parsnip explained. “You
can’t get into the church from the church hall without unlocking the door.”
“Who else has a key of the side door and the church hall?”
“Only Mr Morgan, but he wouldn’t steal anything.”
Mr Parsnip thought Mr Morgan was a rather curious specimen of
humanity, but he did not think he was a thief.
“If he was practising the organ, he would not see anyone using
the side door, would he?” said Cleo.
Cleo was not at all sure that Mr Parsnip was a good judge of
human nature. Look at the way he more or less ignored Edith? She did not think that
was deliberate, but it was hurtful.
“Where does Mr Morgan
live?”
“He has a little flat above the newsagent's in Station Street,
I believe,” said the vicar.
Mr Parsnip knew full well where Mr Morgan lived, but he was
not keen on going there. Mr Davies, the newsagent, and someone from the vicar’s
school days in Middlethumpton, was not one of his favourite people and he did
not relish encountering him. He had never disclosed his reasons. After all,
things you do in your youth should not be held against you all your life, and
Mr Davies was one of those people who enjoy making people squirm. No. He had
been to school with Davies and would not offer to go to his shop to be reminded
of past failings.
“One thing still puzzles me,” Cleo said, and Mr Parsnip
winced. Had she read his innermost thoughts?
“If you don’t use the main door during the week, how did you
find out about the donation box?”
Mr Parsnip, relieved that Cleo could not read his mind, explained
that he had wanted to check the ceiling that morning because it had a damp
patch where the lead had been stolen and there had been a thunderstorm during
Thursday night, so the bathtub catching the leakage water would need emptying.
That made sense. Since it was now Saturday, so the box had disappeared before
then, probably sometime on Tuesday, after the donations had already been
collected.
“Can I make a suggestion?”
“By all means, dear Lady.”
“I need a couple of new
magazines, so I could go to the newsagent’s now and call on Mr Morgan. If he’s
at home I’ll ask him when he played the organ between Tuesday and Friday.”
“What a good idea. I’ll ask Mrs Parsnip if she’s got some
leftover cake for him. He loves cake…” and any kind of tipple to wash it down, Mr
Parsnip refrained from adding as he remembered how liberally Mr Morgan helped
himself to any alcoholic drink available.
Cleo doubted whether Mr Morgan could shed any light on the
theft, but actionism was always better than doing nothing at all, so after
thanking Edith for the simply awesome lunch and being handed a plastic
container full of simply awesome apple crumble for Mr Morgan’s tea, Cleo set
off for the newsagent’s at a brisk pace.
***
Ten minutes later Cleo was ringing the organist’s doorbell. Mr
Morgan was not expecting anyone. He rarely entertained at his pokey little flat
in Station Street. Coming from a village in South Wales to Upper Grumpsfield
had been like moving from the tropics to Siberia, emotionally speaking. It was
only his job as church organist, which he had been very lucky to get thanks to
Dorothy Price’s advert seeing as he wasn’t even church but chapel (he kept that
to himself) that made him stay. He was eternally grateful to Dorothy Price for
negotiating the job, but she was a different generation and he’d had enough of
a generation that included his mother.
Gareth Morgan’s move to Upper Grumpsfield had been mainly to
get away from Mrs Morgan. Regrettably, he had not managed to make any friends
like his old pals in Wales, so he spent most of his free hours doing crossword
puzzles or sitting in a nearby pub with a pint of bitter for company. Dorothy
was quite nice to him when their paths crossed, and Laura Finch was really
friendly, though she was basically buttering her own bread, as she needed him
every Tuesday evening to play for her chorus rehearsals in Lower Grumpsfield.
Mr Morgan had not yet discovered the computer, so some of his free time was
spent replying by hand to his mother’s letters, which arrived every weekday.
She also sent him garments from her mail order catalogue. Mr Morgan was inundated
with new clothes.
The vicar was very glad to have a regular organist because to
his knowledge Mr Morgan had only been engaged for a three month trial on a very
modest salary and it was thanks to Dorothy’s insistence they could now all look
back on hundreds of hymns and anthems, voluntaries and carols all played with
the stops full out and a fair dose of Welsh temperament.
Despite his isolation from home, Mr Morgan did not experience much
loneliness because an organist receives plenty of invitations to parishioners’
homes. He accepted them all in the hope that he would eventually hit on someone
willing to be his girlfriend. He overcame his innate shyness and fear of the
English by swallowing a stiff drink or two before making his way to whatever
tea table he was about to grace.
Unconscious of his entertainment value, the artificially
jovial Mr Morgan became the rousing Celtic soul of any gathering as soon as a
sufficient quantity of alcohol had numbed his self-consciousness, and even the
groups of ladies used to tea-partying on their own enjoyed the additional spice
Mr Morgan unwittingly bestowed on their afternoons.
Gareth Morgan’s own personal triumph had, of course, been the
sensational singing of his fortified chorus at the music festival. He was quite
sure everyone would remember his success forever and could hardly wait for the
next eisteddfod to be announced, by which time he fervently hoped there would
be a devoted little woman at his side.
A Welshman to the core, Mr Morgan was indifferent to most
English traditions. He had taken less trouble to become socially integrated
than Cleo had, so she was the last person he would have expected to ring his
doorbell on a Saturday afternoon or any other afternoon for that matter. Now if
it had been Edith Parsnip …
Cleo decided to come straight to the point. Having accepted
one end of the sofa, which appeared to be the only seating in his living-room,
she lost no time in explaining why she had come.
Mr Morgan was rather taken aback.
“You want to know when I practised, is it? Whatever for?”
“Well, Mr Morgan, unfortunately someone has stolen the donation
box from the main entrance.”
“It wasn’t me,” said Mr Morgan, getting up to make a fuss.
“Of course it wasn’t. We just thought.”
“Who’s we?”
Mr Morgan was alarmed. Was the police after him? His car
licence had expired. Was that a criminal offence? He was saving up for a new
one.
“Cool it, Mr Morgan. I’m talking about the vicar and me. Mr
Parsnip asked me to help him get it back.”
“Oh.”
“Did you notice anything strange at St Peter’s? Was anyone
there who shouldn’t have been?”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t see anyone except… No one at all. And
when I’m practising I never hear anything except the organ.”
“Did you have the doors closed?”
“No. When the weather is warm enough I leave the side door
open. The church gets musty.”
“So anyone could have got in and out.”
“I suppose so.”
If Mr Morgan had caught a glimpse of Edith, he wasn’t telling.
She would hardly have pilfered the donation box, and his secret admirer was one
of life’s treasures. Anyway, Cleo always came in by the main door.
Mr Morgan had convinced Cleo (who had known that all along) that
he was innocent. She decided to make a quick exit and start giving some
consideration to how else the donation box might have been taken.
“Oh, I nearly forgot. Here’s some apple cake from the vicarage,”
she said, retrieving the package from her handbag.
Mr Morgan’s eyes lit up.
“From Edith … I mean Mrs Parsnip?”
“She said you like cake and would enjoy it.”
“Oh I do – apple crumble, lovely - and I will. Thank you for
bringing it.”
If Edith Parsnip was the other reason Mr Morgan stayed in
Upper Grumpsfield, he would never admit it, even to himself. The mere mention
of her name sent little shivers up and down his spine. Of course, she should
not know about his admiration for her, since she was married and therefore
unobtainable, but he could not find anyone to compare with her, so he was
becoming resigned to being single in this foreign country, except on Tuesdays
at the chorus rehearsal, when he passed the time conjuring up visions of
himself and whichever choir lady he was targeting that week.
Cleo could never be a candidate for his affections, not least
because he was much shorter and slighter. He had seen nude photos of woman like
Cleo in glossy men’s magazines, but he did not seriously think he could cope
with such lusciousness. Her friend Delilah Browne, the only other female he
knew quite well who wasn’t at least as old as his mother, scared him to death
with her gushing personality, alarmingly exposing necklines and loud guffaw,
and to be honest, there wasn’t anyone suitable in Laura Finch’s ladies’ choir,
though it sported a cross-section of female humanity that attracted him simply
because it was there.
Cleo was glad to leave Mr Morgan’s flat. He hadn’t offered her
a drink, his sofa had been uncomfortably lumpy and the whole flat was shabby
and neglected. It didn’t take riches to make a place homely, but elbow grease
was a must and Mr Morgan seemed to lack it entirely. He should get himself a
wife, she thought. He would have agreed.
After stopping briefly at the news agent’s to argue with Mr
Davies about items on her bill that she had neither received nor even ordered,
Cleo bought a political magazine and chocolate and walked home with the firm
intention of phoning Mr Parsnip after tea.
***
At the vicarage, Edith Parsnip’s main concern was her desire
to straighten things out. She had experienced Mr Parsnip’s habit of jumping to
hasty conclusions and taking some kind of action without consulting her beforehand.
Having more or less come to terms with what life was offering her and telling herself
she was lucky to have married such a godly man, though money was tight, and erotic
moments a thing of the past. Domesticity was gradually consuming her. She could
not understand Mr Parsnip’s insistence on going it alone as regards the
donation box or confiding in strangers as if she didn’t exist whenever
something untoward arose.
To make things worse, the hole she was now in thanks to his
latest initiative was growing into a giant crater. She knew the vicar would never
understand why she let herself into St Peter’s. How could she possibly explain
that she was uplifted in a very special way by Mr Morgan’s organ playing when Mr
Parsnip’s sermons had the opposite effect on her? It was lovely to hear the
hymns without the singing, and sometimes Mr Morgan played rousing Welsh tunes
instead of the staid English ones or improvised on tunes she knew. The little
Welsh organist was, however, also a virtuoso. He could play really difficult
organ pieces she had never heard before. It uplifted her to eavesdrop on his
music-making and she did not want to forfeit that enjoyment.
On that fateful Tuesday, Edith Parsnip had been standing
quietly behind the arch dividing the nave from the entrance when she noticed
that the donation box was a bit crooked. Under cover of a particularly loud
helter-skelter of cadences, she had tried to straighten the box and it had come
away in her hands. What is more, the nail had come out of the wall in a shower
of dry putty.
Edith could tell from the weight that there wasn’t much in the
box, unless the congregation had suddenly taken to posting banknotes through
the slit, which she thought unlikely, but she couldn’t put it back up without
pushing the nail back in somehow. Even if that had worked, it was nowhere to be
seen, so she decided to take the box home rather than just leave it sitting
somewhere.
Back in the vicarage, she took the Euros out and put them out
of sight on the hall window-sill before giving the box a scrub and a polish and
putting it into her shopping bag together with a hammer and a shiny new nail,
intending to replace the coins and remount the box at the earliest opportunity.
Then something else claimed her attention and she forgot all about it until Mr
Parsnip came in upset and very late after his Friday bible class wailing that
the donation box had been stolen.
To Edith’s horror, the vicar revealed to Edith that he had
already enlisted Miss Hartley’s help in the search for the stolen object.
How could she own up when Cleo had already been commissioned
to investigate? It would make the vicar look silly, but more importantly, on no
account did she want her penchant for Mr Morgan’s organ-playing to be discovered.
What is more, she could hardly make a scene about the coins that disappeared from
the window-sill after she herself had hidden them there.
Edith was sure God would punish her for not owning up, though
she hadn’t done anything criminal, but it was all so involved that her courage had
failed her on Tuesday, seeing as the vicar was getting ready for his Tuesday
night meditation, and now it was too late.
How long would it be before she, Edith, was found out? Her
only hope was to restore the donation box before Cleo had time to dig deeper. Sending
the vicar on an important errand was her only chance of achieving that end.
Being a vicar’s wife is a non-stop sequence of trials and
tribulations.
Edith persuaded to vicar to call on his friend Dorothy on Saturday
afternoon. Cleo did not seem to have any ideas about the donation box. Mr
Parsnip should forget about it and be a friend to people who needed him. He
should comfort Dorothy who sorely missed her little dog.
Dorothy’s dog Minor had run
off into the main road and been fatally injured by a car. It was of little
comfort to her that the offending vehicle had subsequently skidded off the road
and had to be pulled out of a ditch by a tractor. The driver had been luckier
than poor Minor, who was now laid to rest in a shady corner of her garden.
“I will never have another dog,” she said frequently and
played only the slow movements of her Beethoven sonatas for weeks on end.
Even the Barkers felt sympathetic. Mrs Barker sent an armful
of roses to cheer Dorothy up and Mr Barker managed to say he was sorry without
crossing his fingers behind his back.
Laura Finch, having sympathized for a week or two, was getting
impatient with her friend. She herself had never liked dogs and avoided them
whenever possible. She had loathed Minor and the feeling had been mutual, so
she could not shed a single tear for him. When Laura suggested an outing,
Dorothy declined, saying she was not up to it. What was the point in going for
a walk if you didn’t have a dog? She would never again go for walks in Monkton
Woods, where she had found the animal injured and not wearing any
identification..
***
Dorothy was just making a cup of tea and slicing the bara
brith, a Welsh-style currant loaf she had baked for the weekend, when a
familiar face appeared at the kitchen window. It was Mr Parsnip, who had peered
into every window as he went round the cottage. Having got over her surprise, Dorothy
opened the kitchen door and let him in.
“Is there something wrong with your doorbell, Dorothy?”
“I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about Minor.”
“Oh yes, poor Minor. Nice dog, nice dog,” sympathised the
vicar, avoiding any mention of the chaos Minor had caused whenever he set foot
in the vicarage.
Dorothy thought Mr Parsnip must have a sixth sense, so frequently
did he turn up when she had just done some baking.
“Frederick, what brings you here on a Saturday afternoon? Shouldn’t
you be playing football with the boys?” Dorothy said, knowing that the vicar
would do anything to get out of that chore, but also hoping that the Parsnip
boys were all more talented at football than Albert was at playing the piano.
He had made an awful mess of his lesson only that morning.
“Very likely, Dorothy, but I thought it only right and proper
to visit my old friend in her hour of need.”
“I’m not in need, Frederick. Just a bit sad about Minor.”
“Well, you know what I mean. I wanted to tell you once again
how much we all miss that poor little animal.”
Though it was true that Edith had sent him to deliver this
message of sympathy, Mr Parsnip also had an axe of his own to grind. Dorothy
felt the tears welling up behind her eyes, but she was determined to keep a
stiff upper lip in front of the vicar.
“We all have to go one day.”
“But not before our time, I hope.”
Mr Parsnip was in no hurry to go anywhere, but as usual in
situations involving bereavement he was not coping very well. Finding the right
words was not something that came easily to him. He had begged Edith to come
along, but she had pleaded a headache caused a lunchtime by Cleo’s rather
exotic eau de cologne (Mr Parsnip had attributed the musky scent to damp wood
burning in the Aga) and declared that she would lie down on the sofa with a
cold compress to cool her brow.
“Well, now you’re here you might as well have a cup of tea,”
said Dorothy.
Her tone was rather less inviting than usual, but it was
nevertheless Mr Parsnip’s cue to remove his bicycle clips, sit down thankfully
at the kitchen table and ponder on what they could talk about without the tears
flowing, while Dorothy saw to the tea. As usual and as always without any prior
consultation with anybody, he soon found himself broaching a topic he was sure
would be dear to his friend’s heart. Admittedly, the idea had just occurred to
him, but he was in no doubt about its soundness.
Dorothy put a generous slice of heavily buttered currant loaf
on a plate and placed it before the vicar.
“Lovely, lovely,” he enthused. He liked nothing better than to
devote himself to the pleasurable task of wrapping himself round Dorothy’s home
baking, especially when it had come almost straight out of the oven.
“‘Well, spit it out, Frederick!”
Dorothy was sure he hadn’t got on his rusty old bicycle and
peddled half way round the village just to sympathize for 5 seconds about Minor
and eat her currant loaf.
“Oh no, Dorothy. This bread is heavenly!”
“I don’t mean the bread.”
“Oh, you mean my new idea, I suppose.”
In that brief gastronomic interlude, he had almost lost sight
of it. Now what had he been going to suggest? Dorothy had taken the wind out of
his sails as far as commiserations were concerned and Edith hadn’t given him
any other messages to deliver, so he was actually a free agent. He washed the
contents of his mouth down on half a cup of tea before standing up as if to
deliver a speech. He felt more confident standing.
“Well, after the success of our wonderful ice…”
“…eisteddfod,” Dorothy finished for him. Mr Parsnip was just
as unfamiliar with foreign words as he was with foreign coins.
“Sit down, Frederick. You’re not in church now,” said Dorothy,
replenishing the vicar’s tea-cup.
“Three lumps please,” said Mr Parsnip, sitting down
obediently.
“You can stir it yourself, Frederick!” said Dorothy. “It was a
nice day, wasn’t it, even if my scratch choir was a bit of a disappointment? We
should do something like that again, Frederick.”
“You have taken the words out of my mouth – out of my mouth,
Dorothy.”
True to character, Dorothy was about to take the initiative.
Should he allow her to? That would weaken his own position, the vicar mused.
Dorothy often felt she had to take over if people were taking
too long to get to the point. Mr Parsnip never got to the point without coercion
and some good ideas, of which he had alarmingly few.
“But not another choir festival, Frederick. It’s much too soon
after the last one.”
“I suppose it is,” the vicar agreed reluctantly.
“So how about…?” they started simultaneously, though Mr
Parsnip didn’t quite know what he was going to say next and Dorothy was
doubtful whether he would go along with her idea.
“Ladies first, Dorothy.”
“My idea is...”
“Spit it out, spit it out!” Mr Parsnip encouraged Dorothy in
her own words.
‘How about holding a talent contest?’
Mr Parsnip looked at Dorothy in horror. He could remember the
talent contests at the seaside when he was on holiday as a little boy. People
of all shapes and sizes would step onto the bandstand and make utter fools of
themselves. His parents had found it all entertaining, but it had acutely
embarrassed him to see grownups doing stupid things.
“Let me explain,” Dorothy continued.
“Do you think I could have another slice of that delicious
currant loaf first?” said Mr Parsnip, wondering if he could divert the
conversation to some other topic, such as his second idea, conjured up out of
nowhere, which was to hold a bible pub quiz in the church hall.
“Aren’t you listening, Frederick? Don’t you want to hear some
more about it?”
Dorothy buttered another slice of the loaf and slid it onto the
vicar’s plate.
“Of course. Carry on!”
As she described the seaside talent contests he had so hated
(but she had enjoyed), the professional auditions in the West End (worlds apart
from the vicar’s conception of show business), and the casting show they had
both seen on TV a few days ago (which convinced them that there were still enough
people prepared to make an exhibition of themselves), Mr Parsnip’s opposition
melted like the butter on his steaming hot bread.
“We could have all kinds of talent, from singing and dancing
to juggling and conjuring, and give prizes in different categories and age
groups, and we can vet all entries to make sure it doesn’t get too awful.”
Dorothy had thought it all through, seemingly in the twinkling
of an eye. It wasn’t going to be a jumble of squawky singers, excruciating
instrumentalists, fat-legged cancan dancers and unfunny comedians, after all.
“Well, I suppose we could!”
Mr Parsnip was now fairly confident that it would all be quite
different in Upper Grumpsfield.
“We still need more funds for the organ. The estimate is
double what we expected. I’ll hold a meeting and get it all settled,” he said,
now convinced.
“Very good, Frederick. Let’s waste no time! How about tomorrow
afternoon at four o’clock? Laura Finch is coming here to lunch, so I could
bring her along. I’m sure she’d love be in on the scheme.”
“Good. Mr Morgan can come and I’ll ask Cleo if she would be
interested. I think she’s warming to the idea of being part of my flock. She
even came to church last Sunday. And she’s very good at keeping lists and
writing letters and things.”
Mr Parsnip had not noticed the budding friendship between Cleo
and Robert the butcher. Dorothy was sure that was the reason for Miss Hartley’s
interest in church affairs, but she refrained from putting that idea into the vicar’s
head. Distraction from the matter in hand would not be helpful.
“That sounds perfect. Now, would you like the rest of the loaf
and some more tea?”
Mr Parsnip thought he would and it wasn’t until he was astride
his bicycle peddling down Monkton Way that it occurred to him that he would
have some explaining to do when he got home. But first, there were some urgent
phone calls to be made.
***
Hardly had Mr Parsnip left for his friendly visit to Dorothy
when Edith slipped out of the vicarage, her shopping bag clutched tightly under
her arm, gripping the key of St Peter’s front door and with a look of grim
determination on her face. She was not good at subterfuge and was extremely
nervous in case someone saw her and guessed what she was up to. Once inside St
Peter’s, she hammered the new nail just about the old hole in the wall and
replaced the donation box as fast as she could, then beat a hasty retreat.
There was no time to lose. Mr Parsnip could return at any moment.
But Frederick was taking his time. Edith was even able to
regain her composure by tidying up the kitchen and drinking a solitary pot of
tea, and when the vicar still had not returned, she even had time to put her
feet up and enjoy a gardening programme on TV.
Peddling through the village, Mr Parsnip felt quite guilty
about eating all Dorothy’s currant loaf and not making an effort to get home
for afternoon tea. He propped his up bicycle against the vicarage wall next to
the back door and let himself in. Now anxious to get his meeting organized, he
went straight into the hall and dialled Cleo’s number.
Moments later, Edith, who was still reclining on the sofa and
wishing she could stay there for the rest of the day, could hardly believe her
ears. Mr Parsnip was inviting Cleo to a meeting the following afternoon.
Brushing aside Cleo’s attempt to acquaint him with the details of her visit to
Mr Morgan, he told her the donation box would turn up in due course. He would
say prayers for its reappearance.
He asked Cleo if she had ever been in a talent contest. Since
she was eavesdropping, Edith could not very well intervene, so she just went on
listening. Cleo must have agreed to be involved, judging by the warmth in Mr
Parsnip’s thank you, though she had to point out that she had no show talent
and would only work behind the scenes.
The second phone call was to Mr Morgan, who was not told about
the meeting, but just invited to tea at four o’clock sharp. He was grateful to
be invited, mainly because any chance of breathing the same air as Edith and
eating her cake was under no circumstances to be missed, though he gave the vicar
no inkling of these sentiments, of course.
Finally, Mr Parsnip rang Dorothy to give her the all clear and
full speed ahead, by which time Edith was seething with indignation. She had
not sent him out of the house so that he could launch yet another of his harebrained
scheme. She had enough on her hands, what with the children and all the jobs a vicar’s
wife was expected to do. Dorothy will have put him up to it, she decided. There
was a determination about Dorothy Price that Edith both admired and feared.
After making his phone calls, Mr Parsnip made a move to go to
his study, where he fully intended to make a list for tomorrow’s meeting, but
Edith stopped him in his tracks.
“What was that you asked Cleo?” she queried, regardless of the
fact that she had been listening in.
“Who?” Mr Parsnip exclaimed in confusion. Edith had ears
everywhere, he mused.
“Cleo. Miss Hartley. What’s it all about, Frederick?”
Edith’s voice was very stern indeed and that always made him
cringe even if he was innocent of any misdemeanour. Now it occurred to him that
he had again failed to include Edith. In fact, he hadn’t even called out his
usual “I’m home”. That was very remiss of him. No wonder Edith was cross.
“Well, actually, Dorothy and I …” and there he trailed off
because he didn’t quite know how to say what he had to say without poisoning
the atmosphere even further.
“Are you planning a talent contest with that woman?”
Mr Parsnip, who still hadn’t registered that Edith had listened
in to the phone calls, thought his wife must be psychic.
Edith was beside herself for two main reasons. Firstly, she
had not been consulted and secondly, Dorothy had. Dorothy had a knack of
putting cats among pigeons and Edith mistrusted people who egged her husband on
to do things that would normally never have occurred to him and would
invariably involve her.
Mr Parsnip rubbed salt in the wound by declaring that it had
been Dorothy’s idea. God sent, too.
“God sent?”
Edith thought Dorothy’s ideas were invariably anything but God
sent, but nothing could shake her husband’s belief in her. Once he had
convinced himself that something was jolly good, her battle, Edith realized,
was lost even before it had begun.
“We’re having the meeting tomorrow and then we’ll decide,” he
told her in mollifying tones. No use putting her back up any further. Someone
would have to look after the victuals and that would have to be Edith.
“Well, you might have told me sooner.”
“But I didn’t know myself, did I?”
That did not surprise Edith. She didn’t think he kept things
from her deliberately, so forces beyond his control must have been at work.
They had been, in the guise of Dorothy and her talent for out-of-the-blue
solutions. Next time she wanted Frederick out of the house, Edith would send
him to feed the ducks on the village pond.
“And anyway, Dorothy Price and Laura Finch are friends again now,
so we should be all right.”
Edith wasn’t sure that would be the case. Her twin sister
Clare had phoned and said she would be arriving at Sunday teatime, which would
flummox everyone, especially Frederick. She decided to keep this piece of news
to herself. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
“You’ll have to manage on biscuits. I’m not doing any more baking
this week.”
“That’s all right, Edith. You do as you see fit,” Mr Parsnip
told her, knowing that she would never ever palm anyone off with biscuits out
of a packet.
“I could phone Dorothy and ask her to bring some of her nice
currant loaf,” he suggested.
Edith knew she would have to eat her words about the baking. She
was not willing to be outshone by Dorothy. Anyway, she could not very well have
Clare to tea and then not have any cake on the table. The only good part about
the whole situation was the knowledge that the donation box was safely back on
its nail.
Saturday evening passed uneventfully. Mr Parsnip wrote lists
and sharpened his pencils in his study. Dorothy confirmed that Laura would be
delighted to attend the meeting. Cleo Hartley phoned Edith and offered to make
some bagels and Edith accepted thankfully, though she did not know what bagels
were. After making one or two alterations to his sermon, the vicar searched
high and low for his jottings about the meeting that had launched the
eisteddfod, since his memo list was not taking shape any more than what he
planned to say about covetousness.
In the kitchen, five hyperactive lads ate the rest of the reheated
toad-in-the-hole left over from lunch, topped up with Welsh rarebit and tinned
peaches. Finally they finished off a whole dish of apple crumble to the last
crumb before storming up the stairs to watch Walt Disney cartoons on the TV in
their mother’s utility room.
Edith stretched out on the sofa with a crocheted blanket over
her legs for extra comfort and leafed through travel brochures, daydreaming
that she was on a train to Dover to catch a cruise ship to the Norwegian fjords.
She hadn’t been to Dover since her honeymoon, which had turned out to be a
visit to an evangelical conference and included some evangelical preaching by
Frederick. The idea of Norway sprang at her from the holiday brochure. On the
other hand, Edith conjectured that Dover would be far enough away to forget
Upper Grumpsfield. Edith would have liked to get on a boat and visit Calais, but
Mr Parsnip was too anxious about coping with foreign parts and did not fancy snails
for dinner.
Now, rearing five children on a vicar’s salary left nothing
over for luxuries. Even Dover seemed a world away. Edith thought of Clare and
wondered if she really would turn up. They hadn’t seen each other for ages.
Their personalities were as different as chalk and cheese, but they were
nevertheless very close and though they lived far apart, they still managed to
look uncannily alike.
Clare’s life was more complicated than her own, she reflected.
Her phone call had been a bit fraught, but she had refused to say what was
amiss. How Edith wished Clare would take a job nearby. Then she could live near
enough for them to spend time together. And how Frederick hoped that she would
refrain from doing so. He could only take small doses of Clare and he heartily
disapproved of her most of the time. His Saturday evening would have been
thoroughly spoilt had he known what was in store for him.
