7.2.16

34 - Laura's plight

Meetings at the vicarage had a tendency the bring out the worst in anyone who had an axe to grind, so it was with some trepidation that Edith laid out an appetizing selection of homemade cookies and cakes on the sideboard and instructed the five boys not to be a nuisance on pain of death. As usual, the vicar had stuffed himself at lunch and had to take an afternoon nap for it all to sink a bit. He was sorry he had allowed a meeting to take place. His digestion was uncomfortable. He would rather lie down and forget the world.
Gareth Morgan arrived first, as usual, strangely taciturn and asking for a glass of water for the first time in living memory. Shortly after four everyone was assembled around the dining table and as a way of opening the proceedings Mr Parsnip pointed out that there was sure to be lots to discuss, and would Dorothy like to say what was on her mind first?
Obliged to take the initiative while Mr Parsnip tried to get his dyspepsia under control with cups of hot water sipped slowly, Dorothy announced that the coming months were devoid of any events and that would have to be rectified. It was Laura’s Spring Serenade that was bothering her most. Why had Laura been so reticent about actually doing the concert after such enthusiasm earlier on?
All eyes were now on Laura Finch who was attending after the vicar had pleaded with her to come.
“Yes, what about the concert?” added Robert, who had been admitted to the meeting for the first time as an official delegate and was standing in for Cleo, who was nursing a nasty cold. With Clare absent and about to give birth and Karl dithering about whether he should call the midwife or pack their suitcases, there was no one much left to organize anything.
“There have been a few hitches,” Laura was forced to admit.
“Hitches?”
“We had a bit of a rebellion. Some of the ladies accused me of being high-handed.”
“Half of them left,” continued Mr Morgan, who was stone sober, so could not be accused of having lost control of his tongue.
“I just wanted them to smile a bit more and do a little choreography.”
“You should have seen their faces,” Mr Morgan said with an undue amount of triumph in his voice. “Phillis – that’s my new girlfriend – well she sings soprano and she was really upset about it.”
Dorothy stopped looking at Laura Finch and turned her gaze on Edith, who was listened wide-eyed to Mr Morgan. So he had finally found a girlfriend. Was that the reason for the sudden sobriety? Had he turned over a new leaf?
“Phillis put the other ladies up to it,” said Laura, giving Gareth Morgan accusing looks. ”Before the evening was over half of them had left.”
“But I persuaded them to come back, didn’t I?” said Gareth.
Was Mr Morgan going to be the hero of the day, the saviour in a sticky situation? It looked like it.
“I don’t think you persuaded them, Gareth. I think they realized that I was only acting in their best interests, so now we can go ahead with the concert after all.”
Laura would have preferred chorus politics not to have been aired in public, let alone at a meeting in Upper Grumpsfield. Things had gone badly wrong ever since she had been revealed as a neglectful mother. Jason Finch had shown her up for what she was and that had not been a pretty sight. Patching up her reputation had proved difficult despite Jason’s show of forgiveness. After a period of lying low, she was now anxious to reinstate herself in the superior position she claimed as hers.
“So have you got a date in mind, Laura?”
“Two weeks from now would be perfect,” purred Laura Finch in the vicar’s direction.
“So soon?” Dorothy said.
“Will that be inconvenient, Vicar?’ said Laura in velvety tones
Dorothy replied, her main motive being to get the concert over with.
“‘That will be fine, Laura. Won’t it, Frederick?’
Mr Parsnip nodded. He was not going to get mixed up in any discussions with those two ladies. Let them sort it out by themselves.
“This Miss Phillis,” said Edith, turning to Mr Morgan.
“Phillis Cartwright.”
Mr Morgan was acutely aware that all eyes were on him.
“It’s only platonic,” he felt bound to say. “Phillis is a nice girl.”
“Good boy, Gareth,” remarked Robert Jones. “Time you had someone to warm your bed.”
That was a remark he would not have made if Cleo been there. A platonic relationship was not an uncommon claim in the Welsh valleys, but in Robert Jones’s opinion, that claim was usually miles off the truth, as the widespread phenomenon of 6 month pregnancies followed by the premature birth of 8lb infants confirmed.
With perfect timing, Cleo Hartley rang the doorbell. Curiosity had got the better of her. It didn’t take her long to realize that Mr Morgan was going through some kind of trauma. She put her box of Kleenex on the table in front of her and accepted a glass of lemonade from Edith, who was heartily glad to see her and didn’t care how many bugs she brought into the house. With five boys to rear you were used to coping with bugs.
Mr Morgan’s confession had done little to quench the curiosity of at least one person at the table. Edith, who had been the subject of his admiration for so long, had a sinking feeling about this new situation. Was Mr Morgan in love with Phillis?
“Phillis Cartwright is not a nice girl,” Laura told him. “She has a passable singing voice, but she’d go after anything in trousers.”
Since that kind of talk was plainly out of place at a vicarage committee meeting, Dorothy felt bound to change the subject and move things along. Mr Morgan was offended. Laura was not willing to move on.
“Open your eyes, Gareth! All that rubbish about alcohol being devil’s brew is a load of baloney. It’s part of her tactics. She fancies your nice flat and once she’s got what she wants, she’ll throw you out. I’ve seen it all before. You’d better disentangle yourself before it’s too late.”
Though it was not clear how someone called Phillis could persuade someone with a drinking history like Gareth Morgan’s to become teetotal, the fact was that she had already done it, and he seemed none the worse for wear. Mr Parsnip’s offer of a nice long sherry had been spurned and even Edith’s rum flavoured muffins were not going down as well as usual. Was Phillis really only plotting to take over his flat?
Mr Morgan was red-faced and angry. His fists were clenched and before he could stop himself he was saying “I think you’d better find another accompanist, Mrs Finch.”
“Don’t take it personally, Gareth. If your mother were here, she’d say what I’m saying.”
Laura Finch’s mention of his mother was all Gareth needed. But he needed the small payment he received for accompanying the chorus so he had better be more careful about threatening to resign in future or he might really lose the job.
Before the row could escalate, Robert intervened.
“I decide who can have my old flat, Laura. Gareth boy, you’re safe with me. Just don’t listen to anyone. If you love Phillis, you just get on with it. I’ll make sure she doesn’t take over.”
Mr Morgan looked thankfully at Robert Jones. Cleo looked at him in astonishment. Was he hiding something?
He was. That self-same Phillis Cartwright had applied for the job of part-time butcher’s assistant and was on the shortlist for interviews the following week. Robert was sure Gareth Morgan did not know. He had not known about Mr Morgan’s claim that she was his girlfriend. Now Robert was in the picture, was he going to prevent her working for him if she proved to be the right one for the job? Whichever way he decided, he would be unpopular with someone. He wished he had stayed at home.
“So let’s move on, now, shall we?” said Dorothy, who was finding the drift of the conversation exasperating.
“Have you decided about the inauguration of the bells, Frederick? Those ringers been practising long enough and they’ve already rung on Sundays.”
“’Well, I...”
“How about next Sunday?’”
“Do you really think...?”
“Yes I do. So that’s settled. Who’s going to notify the press?”
Edith was so thankful that something constructive was happening that she volunteered to do that. Cleo said she would put up a notice in the library. Middlethumpton public library was now quite a popular venue, sporting an internet café and even a hot drinks machine.
“And phone Gordon Savage, will you? I’m sure he’ll be delighted.”
Gordon Savage had made progress in leaps and bounds with his team of bell-ringers. He was pleasantly surprised himself and planning a career as bell-ringing coach.
Edith might have her hands full, but she was delighted to be singled out for even the most boring extra missions. She smiled at Dorothy, whom she no longer viewed as a rival for her husband’s time, now it no longer really mattered what Frederick did with it, though she would not have actually admitted to feeling like that. It wasn’t losing her memory that had changed Edith’s personality; it was regaining it.
“I’ll do that, too,” said Edith. She liked Gordon Savage. He was always charming when she brought the coffee over for the rehearsal break while he was coaching the changes. And he was unhappy. He’d told her that. People like confiding in vicars’ wives, probably because they are used to bearing other people’s troubles. And there was something endearing about Edith, once you got beyond the exasperating bit. Gordon Savage thought she might be an explosion of passion, given the opportunity.
“If that’s all in the bag, I’ll get going now,” said Laura, getting up from her chair with a flourish. “Lots to do before the concert.” She propped herself up on the back of the chair and gave everyone a stern look. The sherry had gone to her legs. She was fine with gin and vodka, but sherry was too sweet.
Endearing was not an adjective likely to be used to describe Laura Finch. Dorothy was sure she was drunk now, the generous tumblers of sherry possibly helped by the slugs of vodka she had imbibed before attending the meeting.
“Shall I help you home, Laura?” Dorothy asked and earned herself a look that could kill. Laura and held on tightly to the back of her chair.
“What about some other events?” Dorothy said. “I don’t suppose you are interested, Laura.”
Mr Parsnip perked up.
Laura wound her way round her chair and sat down again.
“Do you think I could have some coffee, Edith?” she said.
“Can we have another pantomime Dorothy? A pantomime would round the year off nicely,” the vicar enthused.
“But not before the garden party, Frederick, and....”
Everyone looked expectantly in Dorothy’s direction.
“...the bell-ringing competition.”
Although it sounded like an event with long tradition, Dorothy had in fact just invented it.
“Let’s get the inauguration and my concert over first, shall we?” Laura remarked. Indignation had turned to petulance.
The royal ‘we’ did not escape Dorothy.
“I expect you’ll be busy in Lower Grumpsfield at the weekend, won’t you, Laura? I hear there’s going to be a poultry show. You won’t want to miss that.”
“I’m allergic to poultry,” said Laura. “And anyway, I’ll be busy packing. I’m moving house next week – to Upper Grumpsfield.”
That silenced everyone.
Dorothy remembered that the cottage on the corner of Lavender Drive, only two corners from her own cottage, had been empty for some time. Lately there had been rumours that someone with a large bosom and a loud voice was moving in, and there had been a lot of coming and going by electricians, decorators and the like. It had not occurred to Dorothy that the description matched Laura perfectly. How cunning of her to keep her new domicile a secret.
“Well, that is a surprise!”
Since Dorothy Price was usually well-informed about what went on in her neighbourhood, she could have kicked herself for not investigating the cottage’s new ownership.
“I never did like that draughty old house in Lower Grumpsfield,” Laura Finch explained. “After my next door neighbour opened a day nursery a few months ago, there’s no peace and quiet any more. Children should be seen and not heard.”
Dorothy thought that could also explain why she had been glad to farm Jason out to foster parents, but she didn’t say anything. The threatening look on Laura’s face forbade comments.
“And now the Nightingales are going to be a permanent part of cultural life here. Snapping up that nice bungalow in Lavender Drive was a very good idea. I have nice neighbours to. The Crightons, you know. Their son Betjeman plays the drums.”
Dorothy decided that the noise of drums was more musical to Laura’s ear than the proximity of small children playing.
“Oh, it was, it is,” agreed Mr Parsnip, who genuinely thought so and vowed to be a regular caller.
“My other neighbours had first refusal on my house, but they bought it. They’re going to enlarge their nursery and combine it with a care home, killing two birds with one stone, as it were. So if you’ll excuse me.”
With that, Laura bounced fast if a bit unsteadily out of the room and was heard to slam the front door behind her. Edith had not been fast enough to show her out.
There was quite a long pause for everyone to think through what having Laura Finch in the immediate neighbourhood would entail. Mr Parsnip broke the silence.
“Where were we?”
“I don’t know where you were, but I’m off home, Mr Parsnip. I’ve got the accounts to do before the new ordering,” said Robert, making a fast exit with Cleo close behind. She had been mainly silent at the meeting, but had a few questions of her own to ask Robert before he settled down to calculating how much profit, if any, he had made the previous week.
“We’d better have another meeting next week to sort out the rest of the year,” said Dorothy. Now only she, Edith, Gareth Morgan and the vicar were still gathered round the vicarage dining-table. Laura Finch had managed to rock the boat. And there was no chance of her not doing so again, now she was going to live two corners from Monkton Way. No point in warning the vicar to keep his distance since he seemed to have a penchant for large-bosomed, loud-mouthed women – though admittedly, Edith did not know if he knew any others apart from his sister Beatrice, and she didn’t count.
Dorothy could not get over Frederick saying Laura moving to Upper Grumpsfield was a good idea. Dorothy thought it was the last straw. The Finch Nightingales would practise in the church hall and hold regular concerts there. Soon Laura would dominate all the local entertainments and Dorothy would be left out in the cold. A dismal prospect. It took a fast walk home to her cottage for Dorothy to regain her composure.
Since there was nothing she could do to prevent Laura Finch from living virtually a stone’s throw away, she would have to be quite firm about her not popping in uninvited. She would tell Laura that it was because she often had to teach and didn’t like the lessons to be disturbed. Dorothy was determined not to let Laura encroach on her life.
One major decision she had reached reluctantly was to postpone her visit to the relatives in Wales. With the bell-ringing inauguration the following Sunday and the concert the Saturday after, it would look like she was shirking her duty to the organization of the parish music if she were to go away. The bell-ringers would miss her, and she would miss the goings-on of Laura Finch and her chorus unless she stayed home.
Dorothy phoned her niece Victoria to tell her of the decision. Far from being disappointed, Dorothy thought Victoria had sounded jubilant on the phone. But it didn’t take her two minutes to explain that figuratively speaking, if Mohammed wouldn’t come to the mountain, the mountain would come to Mohammed. Victoria would drive down to Upper Grumpsfield and spend a few days with Aunt Dorothy instead, but without Lucy, who was doing a tennis course and would not under any circumstances want to miss any of it. Victoria could arrive on Tuesday afternoon and Aunt Dorothy could tell her the details of why she had decided not to leave Upper Grumpsfield to its own devices.
Victoria’s decision to drive over also came as a surprise since she normally had to work during the week. Did she have an ulterior motive? She sounded full of beans. Dorothy was sure she was imagining things, but speculation would not get the little box room ready for a guest and it took her the rest of the day to sort things out.
Shopping was done hastily before Dorothy did some off-schedule baking followed by a pot of tea while she watched the muffins and chocolate cake rise to her satisfaction. Victoria would be bound to appreciate them.
Not only Victoria. The vicar paid her an impromptu visit, ostensibly to see if his friend was all right, since she had quite forgotten to phone the previous evening. As usual his time was impeccable, coinciding as it did with the muffins emerging from the oven.
“They’re for my niece,” Dorothy told him. “You can only have one.”
“That’s all right. Are you sure you can spare it?”
Dorothy thought that would have been sarcasm if anyone else had said it, but Frederick Parsnip was never sarcastic. In fact, he was sometimes a bit too humble. It made her want to shout at him. And Frederick was getting a paunch. Too much sitting around and too many cakes, she decided.
“One’s enough, Frederick,” she retorted. “You’re getting fat!”
Mr Parsnip was not a vain man, but even he had noticed that his profile was becoming less svelte and his waistline less defined.
“I’m going to run a marathon,” he announced.
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I’m serious, Dorothy. It’s for charity. We’ll have it in August.”
“Are you proposing an event, Frederick?”
Now he came to think of it, a marathon in Upper Grumpsfield wasn’t such a bad idea. What a pity he hadn’t mentioned it at the meeting. But then again, it had only just occurred to him.
“Make it a five mile walk instead,” she advised. “Down Thumpton hill, to Lower Grumpsfield the back way, up that awful hill between Lower Grumpsfield and here, past that dreadful new housing estate and back again.”
“If you say so.”
“I certainly do. You can’t possibly run a marathon, Frederick. You’re totally out of condition!”
“It’s all your delicious baking, Dorothy.”
“Don’t blame me, Frederick. Edith bakes beautiful cakes. Now please go home. I’m expecting my niece any minute.”
After accompanying the vicar to the garden gate and watching him meandering down Monkton Way on his beloved mountain-bike, she pondered on the wisdom of involving him in any kind of sporting event. Hardly had she cleared away the remains of his hasty snack than she heard a car draw up to the kerb and almost immediately Victoria’s voice calling to say they had arrived.
We? Had they all come? There was no way a whole family would fit into the cottage.
Her delight at seeing her sister Vera again was unbounded. They embraced over and over again.
“I can’t believe it. You look just the same as 10 years ago! When did you arrive?”
“A couple of days ago. You haven’t changed at all, either, Dorothy. Is it really 10 years since you came to visit me?’
“It must be. I was still living in London then.”
”Let’s go inside, Aunt Dorothy.”
“You didn’t let on, Victoria.”
“I thought you liked surprises.”
“Of course I like surprises. And this one is really a surprise to beat all others.”
Dorothy’s guests loved the fresh cakes still warm from the oven. She was glad she had restrained Frederick from eating everything in sight.
“Vera, you’d better share my big bed so that we can talk all night if we want to.” As children they had always doubled up when guests came. Now they were in what Dorothy liked to think of as advanced middle age, nothing had changed at all. Even being separated for most of their adult lives had made no difference.
“You don’t mind the little box room, do you Victoria? The bed’s comfortable.”
“I could sleep on the sofa, Aunt Dorothy.”
“I won’t hear of it. How long can you stay?”
“I’ll have to go home pretty soon or they’ll tell me I’m avoiding the renovations. But Mummy could stay here for a week or so.”
“That’s wonderful, Vera. When are you going back to the USA?’
“I’m not going back here, Dorothy. There’s no reason to go back to the States. I’ve sold everything that would not fit into the container and I’m going to live with Victoria in Frint-on-Sea.”
“That’s the whole point of the renovations, Aunt Dorothy. We’re turning the attic into an apartment for Bill and me and Mummy will have our bedroom as a bedsit. It’s all sorted out. By the time I fetch you and Mummy next week we’ll have finished most of the work.”
Dorothy had only one problem with these arrangements. She would not be able to get away for at least a fortnight.
“I can’t go away for at least two weeks, Victoria.”
‘That’s OK, Aunt Dorothy. Then it won’t be such a scramble renovating.”
“Vera can come to the inauguration of the bells next Sunday and Laura’s choral concert the Saturday after that. It’ll be nice not to have to sit through Laura Finch on my own.”
“Is it that bad?”
“I don’t think it’s good. But I’m spoilt after all those years in London. And Laura Finch is far too fond of the sound of her own voice.”
Talking about Laura Finch usually made Dorothy angry, but sitting up in bed telling Vera some of the anecdotes connected with that histrionic personage and all the other village characters made her see the funny side of it all, especially with Vera hooting with laughter at Dorothy’s solemnity.
Dorothy could not resist telling her sister the saga of the bells. They had decided to hold auditions for bell ringers. Laura Finch had been as good as her word, though her motives were, as usual, entirely selfish. In double quick time she had persuaded (or coerced) one of her chorus ladies, a shy woman named Betty who had never before emerged from behind the more pushy ‘Finch Nightingales’, into persuading her husband Gordon to take an interest in Saint Peter’s bells. Gordon was almost chief bell-ringer at Saint Joseph’s the other side of Middlethumpton. He had been sitting around at the Council Offices for donkey’s years hungry for any challenge that came his way, and was thankful to be offered one. Not waiting to be asked twice, Gordon had immediately consented to come to the auditions, though it was such short notice, and this news had duly been conveyed to Mr Parsnip, who had done triumphant pirouette in his swivelling chair (winding it up in the process) before composing the announcement of the venture he would proclaim from the pulpit the following Sunday and advertise in Bernie Browne’s Gazette.
“Your Mr Parsnip is a bit of a nut-case,” Vera said. “In fact, Upper Grumpsfield has more than its fair share of nut-cases.”
Although Laura Finch had pushed herself into the limelight, Mr Parsnip had begged Dorothy to come to the auditions of would-be bell-ringers as well because she would know immediately if they had a musical ear. To his credit, Mr Parsnip was never sure how much Laura Finch actually knew about music, so out of tune did her chorus sing, even to his undiscerning hearing. To Dorothy Price’s utter amazement, 20 hopefuls turned up, many of whom had been waylaid by Delilah Brown during karaoke sessions and urged to support the cause. Wednesday was a rest day at the Dog and Whistle, so Mitch, Joe and even Delilah turned up at St Peter’s, though Delilah protested that she did not really have the figure for bell-ringing and was only there out of curiosity. Mitch and Joe both proved to be talented, as did half a dozen others, all of whom had first been obliged by Dorothy to sing up and down a scale and perform the Big Ben chimes before even getting near a bell rope. This weeded out all those who either did not know what a scale was, didn’t remember the Big Ben chimes, or else lacked any musical ability whatsoever.
Once the singing was over and the unqualified or inept candidates dismissed, Gordon had taken over.
Cursed with the surname Savage, Gordon was about as meek as they come except when a bell rope was put into his hands. Then he was transformed into a steaming package of muscles able to stem the heaviest bell, though of course it isn’t weight that counts in the end, but timing. Before long you could hear the first tentative peals all over Upper Grumpsfield and before the evening was over, a respectable four bell change was being rung by Mitch, Joe, Gordon and Mr Smith, Dorothy Price’s postman, with astonishing accuracy and persistence.
Of course, that was only one change that would be repeated over and over again, as if you were repeating the first line of the Big Ben chimes, but Gordon was confident that they could add a new one each week until they had a really impressive choice to accompany whatever an occasion demanded. At the end of the rehearsal Gordon had rung a few majestic rhythmic peals with two bells, one rope in each hand. That mystified every one and they had all applauded vigorously and praised each other for getting it all going so fast.
Armed with this amount of background information, Vera was sure the inauguration of the bells would be a resounding success, at which pun she laughed so loudly that Victoria came in to see what the matter was.
Karl von Klippen, another of those Vera declared to be congenitally barmy, had had to miss the first call for bell-ringers, but joined the team the following week and would for sure take part in the event, provided it wasn’t the day he became a father.
“Just wait till you hear Karl’s quaint English, Vera. Don’t laugh at him,” Dorothy advised. “He’s such a nice man and it’s been a blessing for the vicar to have someone apart from me on whom to try out his convoluted sermons.”
The first crack of dawn was spreading across the sky when the anecdotes finally trailed off. It was Victoria bearing the morning tea who woke them up long after Dorothy would normally have been running around getting things done.
Victoria drove back to Wales safe in the knowledge that her two favourite senior citizens would probably amuse themselves non-stop when left to own devices. Victoria sometimes felt older than her mother, so well in her stride did her mother take even the biggest challenges she encountered, while she, Victoria, was a worrier.
Dorothy and Vera had always been as thick as thieves, not just sisters. Dorothy tended to take things seriously so it was up to Vera to jolly her along until they were both laughing at something or other, which tended to raise eyebrows in enclosed spaces. Vera’s hoots of laughter were startling. Some people thought you should have stopped laughing like that by the time you get to her age, but Vera had an irrepressible sense of humour. Dorothy, who was only a little older than her sister, had been finding things less and less funny lately and had not found much to laugh about. Having Vera to stay was nothing less than marvellous since having Vera back in her life, was putting things that bothered Dorothy back into proportion. At last she talk through her problems. Up until Edith’s disappearance, Frederick had often called and they had chatted away as good friends do, but the vicar was no longer himself. In fact, Dorothy was starting to think he might be heading for a nervous breakdown, or burnout, as modern therapists liked to call it.
The sisters had negotiated the bus and were window-shopping in Middlethumpton when Dorothy asked Vera if she had ever done karaoke.
“No. Should I have?”
‘That remains to be seen, Vera. On Friday there’s a karaoke competition at Delilah’s bistro.”
“In that little nest?” Since when has there been a bistro?’
“Since Delilah took over. Remember years ago going to the Dog and Whistle during one of your visits?”
“That old pub? Faintly. It wasn’t what you’d call salubrious.”
“Well, that plump little star-struck barmaid is now the proprietor and has turned the old pub into a really splendid place to eat, drink and be merry. You’ll love it, Vera.”
“Surprise me!”
The week flew by. Lunch at the vicarage was followed by recalling the nasty bishop saga that sounded like fiction to Vera. Dorothy had always had a vivid imagination and a passion for crime, but confirmation by Edith made Vera realize that Upper Grumpsfield really had been the object of that guy’s unscrupulous plans; Dorothy had not just read about it or seen it on TV. A splendid T-bone steak supper at Cleo’s cottage made Vera very nostalgic for her happy years in the U.S.A. Cleo and Robert consoled her with the promise that they would repeat this menu whenever Vera visited Upper Grumpsfield if she promised to bring along her slides and photos.
“No problem,” Vera told them. “Bill has scanned them all into my laptop.”
“Wow,” said Cleo, “I’m impressed, Vera!”
“But I never experienced karaoke, Cleo. Where I lived square-dance was still immensely popular. Will you be there on Friday evening?’”
“Robert has to be there anyway, Vera. He supplies all the meat and he usually deals with the grill.”
“That will make up for a tiresome afternoon,” sighed Dorothy, “and give us an excuse for curtailing it.”
“Is there something you haven’t told me, Dorothy?” Vera chipped in.
“To be honest, I only managed to avoid Laura Finch’s final rehearsal last night by promising that we’d visit her on Friday afternoon, though to be truthful, don’t know why she wants us there since we are not really friends anymore.”
“For heaven’s sake, Dodo, don’t look on the black side!”
“Dodo?” laughed Cleo. “Is that your nickname, Dorothy.”
“Don’t call me that on pain of death, Cleo!”
“Of course not. Kids usually have nicknames for each other. What did you call Vera?”
“She called me Soso, Cleo.”
“Soso?”
“My middle name is Sophia. And that was preferable to Vivi or worse still, Weewee.”
“Cleo’s mother calls me Bobby,” said Robert. “I feel like putting on a policeman’s helmet when she calls me that.”
“My full name is Cleopatra. I can’t think why my mom had to saddle me with that name. She started calling Robert Bobby the minute she clapped eyes on him. But he’s OK about it now, aren’t you, Robert?”
“No, I’m not! She’s an annoying woman altogether.”
“Mitch calls Delilah ‘Del” said Cleo. “But she says she prefers that to being called Delilah.”
“And who’s Mitch?”
“Delilah’s new knight in shining armour!” said Robert.
“Getting back to Laura Finch”, said Vera. “Why on earth do we have to visit her?”
“She moved in on Monday, despite the concert looming up. I’m curious otherwise I would have found an excuse not to go,” said Dorothy
“I’m not curious, but I suppose we’ll survive. I wonder what Laura’s ulterior motive is,” said Vera.
It was a tactical move by Dorothy, as she explained at some length. She was determined to avoid Laura popping in and out, so being invited to visit suited her fine. She would make it clear to Laura Finch that impromptu visits were quite out of the question. Lower Grumpsfield had been far enough away to make that unlikely, but with Laura living practically round the corner it was high time to establish rules of conduct.
***
Laura’s bungalow turned out to be in total chaos, with half emptied packing cases everywhere and the contents strewn around the rooms. Dorothy and Vera were shocked. Laura was unperturbed. She invited them to sit on plastic chairs on the dusty veranda and served instant coffee laced with rum out of plastic mugs at a rickety table covered with a grubby embroidered cloth.
“Do you need help with your unpacking, Laura?” Dorothy felt obliged to ask.
“We could get some of the stuff off the floor and into drawers and cupboards,” added Vera.
“That won’t be necessary,” replied Laura in such a snooty voice that the sisters were in no doubt that trying to help Laura was not worth the effort. In her mind, Laura seemed to be presiding over a luxury afternoon tea.
It didn’t take long for them to get up and announce that they had shopping to do. Once out of earshot they exchanged views on the situation. Dorothy was ashamed of Laura. Vera thought she was pathetically funny.
“I thought your Laura Finch would be a towering figure of strength, Dorothy,” said Vera. “But she’s really just a wreck and she’s drinking more than she should.”
“I think she’s been doing that for a long time. The chorus starting to rebel against her authority has knocked the wind out of her sails. I was shocked at all the junk, Vera. I knew she didn’t like the idea of being a housewife, but that really takes the biscuit. I’m not going there again if I can avoid it. Even having her dropping into my place is better than having to go to hers! And anyway, why did she insist on inviting us before she had established some kind of order?”
“I think she wanted to justify her move to you. She must realize that there is speculation and she’s obviously blind to the state the place is in.”
“Or indifferent. I wouldn’t put it past her. If she’s not sober most of the time, that would explain quite a lot, wouldn’t it?”
“But why move in such an unseemly hurry?” said Vera. “Was she thrown out of her old house?”
“You heard what she said the other evening, Vera, although she seems to have embroidered the story somewhat since I heard the bare bones. All she told me at the time was that she was bothered by what was going on next door after the neighbour decided to care for old people on a permanent basis and increase the revenue by caring for infants during the day. Too much noise all round. And she got a good price for her house.”
“She could have thrown out all the junk she seems to have furnished that nice little bungalow with.”
“I wonder what Jason thinks about it all. It was his family home, too, and some of that junk furnished it for donkey’s years” said Dorothy.
“I don’t suppose she can get used to having a son after hiding him away all his life,” said Vera.
“I suppose that is really the most awful part of the whole story. Fancy dumping your child on foster parents somewhere in the Caribbean so that you can carry on with your own glamorous life except that it was far from glamorous, I suspect! Jason’s nose gave him away, Vera. I don’t suppose she’d have admitted he’s her son if she had not been obliged to.”
“Poor Jason.”
“Now I think about it, I’m sure Laura has two lives: the make-believe one and the real one, and judging by her well-stocked cocktail bar, the one tidy part in the place, she’s using alcohol to bridge the gap,” said Dorothy. “I never thought of it that way before.”
“Do you think she’s an alcoholic?”
“I wonder? I expect alcohol flowed freely on those cruise ships, and she could probably drink as much as she wanted as a member of the crew. Old habits die hard. She could have turned to alcohol again after all the problems she had with Jason.”
“Vodka is a discrete tipple if you don’t want people to know about your addiction,” said Vera. “It must have been a shock to realize that everyone disapproved of her and that triggered off her latest drinking phase. “Are you going to help her, Dorothy?”
“What can I do about it? We never got on well, even during the fiasco with the ‘Tour of the Universe’. She was livid that she hadn’t realized what a swindle it was and even more livid that I had.”
“She might have shown a little more thanks, then,” said Vera.
“I confess that it’s almost gratifying to see her going to the dogs after her high and mighty attitude to me.”
“‘And if that’s her normal standard of hospitality, she’ll be lonely in that bungalow of hers, with or without the drinking. I wouldn’t miss her concert for anything.”
“You’ll probably wish you had, Vera.”
That evening the karaoke was a great success. Dorothy Price had seen it all before, but Vera hadn’t. She wished Victoria, or better still Bill and Victoria had been there. They would definitely have had a go. Some of those who did have a go should not have made such fools of themselves.
Dorothy pointed out that it was not a talent competition.
“Is Robert responsible for this marvellous steak?” Vera asked. “It’s just like being back in Austin.”
But Vera assured her that nothing could hold a candle to being back with the family.
***
A distressed phone-call from the vicar early on Saturday morning put an end to one of the plans for Sunday. The inauguration of the bells would have to be postponed until after Laura’s concert because Mr Savage, the bell-ringing expert without whom no performance could take place, was unfortunately ill.
The following week passed fairly uneventfully and despite pleas from Laura for Dorothy to attend the final rehearsal at the church hall, Dorothy was firm. She could not possibly leave Vera to her own devices and Vera would not want to spoil things by attending a rehearsal before the concert.
Laura had to make do with that explanation.
“Thank goodness for that,” said Vera. “Having experienced Laura as a down and out, I’m not curious enough to want to go through the experience twice of living through her as a half plastered choral conductor.”
“We’ll have to get to the church hall early on Saturday so that we can get seats where Laura won’t spot us when she does her announcing,” said Dorothy.
“I’m sure all the relatives of the singers will sit at the front, Dorothy. No doubt she’ll play to them.”
Half an hour before the concert started, Dorothy and Vera found themselves sitting next to Edith, who was also anxious not to be spotted and actually had other things on her mind than Laura’s Finch’s caterwauling chorus. She had begged Mr Parsnip to rethink the idea of letting Laura loose on a Saturday evening in the church hall, but he was standing by his word, saying that vicars had to set a shining example. To Edith’s horror, it was all going to happen just as Laura Finch wanted it to.
Fortunately for the church roof, which was benefitting from the concert, lots of people turned up. When the church hall was full to capacity, a hundred or so people would have paid to get in and the costs of whoever was performing would have been covered with something left over to boost not only the newly installed church roof fund, but add a little to the organ fund. Edith told Vera that the vicar was nervous about Laura. Had she been drinking to give her courage? Would she get through the concert without incident?
Shortly before 7:30 the mayor of Middlethumpton, Mr Cobblethwaite, accompanied by Mrs Cobblethwaite, who had gone to school with Laura, turned up. He was telling her and everyone within hearing distance that he didn’t like music and especially ladies’ choirs. She was telling him to shut up and sit down on the padded chairs reserved for them in the front row. Everyone else was telling them both to be quiet because the choir was emerging from behind a heavy black velvet curtain that served as a backdrop and did nothing for the acoustics. In their wake, Laura Finch marched on wearing a chiffon affair with a short train.
Gareth Morgan struck up with the first song, a boisterous rendering of “We’ll keep a welcome on the hillside”. This entirely unsuitable song had been forced on Laura by Mr Morgan, who was determined to have a bit of Wales in the programme. It was followed by familiar tunes from various TV shows and a number of evergreens hardly anyone knew.
But at least the first half went smoothly, and the finger food made available by the Finch Nightingales themselves and washed down with cider donated by a well-wisher served to put everyone in a good mood.
What Edith later described as merciful providence, since she could not stand any more of Laura’s performance, was in fact a terrible tragedy.
Laura had just raised her baton in true orchestral manner to give the cue for Mr Morgan to play the introduction to the first song after the pause when there was a terrific crash outside. It felt like an earthquake. The whole audience rose instantly to its feet and made for the exit in panic. The chorus ladies dived behind the velvet curtain. Laura just stood there, abandoned.
The bell tower, which had been added to the church much later and was a few yards away at the end of a path, was usually lit up by spotlights fixed to the wall of the church when there was an event at the church hall. Now they were shining on the remains of that tower. The top part had imploded and collapsed. Fortunately most of the bricks and stones had fallen into the tower as the walls crashed inwards.
Mr Parsnip's thought it was providence that 5 minutes earlier people would have been walking around or past it during the concert interval. But the collapse of a bell tower is anything but providential, especially with the mayor is present. Mr Cobblethwaite laughed heartily at the calamity and was dragged away unceremoniously by Mrs Cobblethwaite, who had not over-indulged on the cider and was covered with shame that her husband did not show any sympathy.
The bell tower was now a good deal shorter than it had been. It had collapsed exactly where the bells were fixed to the steel girders. The fire chief, who lived near enough to hear the crash and came immediately to see what had happened, explained that the steel girders were certain to be corroded and no longer able to stand the pressure of the bell-ringing. Had they had it inspected for safety before reinstalling the tradition? No? That would make getting compensation tricky.
The fire chief speculated that an earthquake could have brought the whole tower and even the old church down, which would have been even worse. He rang his colleagues in Middlethumpton and in no time at all a fire engine arrived to cordon off the tower and ascertain if anyone was inside. Mr Parsnip had moved from the idea of providence to the feeling of utter devastation. If he’d been burnt out before the catastrophe, that was nothing to how he felt now.
The fire brigade sent everyone home, much to Laura Finch’s indignation. She hadn’t finished the concert yet, she told them. The audience had paid to get in.
“Give them their money back, Lady” advised the fire chief. “We can’t have crowds hanging round before we’ve finished our work. And the police won’t want that either.”
“Police?”
“Of course. They’ll have to find out if it was sabotage.”
Mr Parsnip heard that last bit.
“Sabotage? Why would anyone want to sabotage my bell tower?”
“Only speculation, vicar. It was probably the strain put on the girders by the bell-ringing. You should have had them inspected.”
Mr Parsnip turned away so that no one would see the tears rolling down his cheeks. He almost wished the supermarket giants had got hold of the land. This new humiliation was going to last him a lifetime.
By Sunday morning, Mr Parsnip had regained his composure, but he was still hysterical inside. How was he going to explain things to the congregation, who were sure to turn up in droves after the calamity? He did his level best, but his sermon was dripping with grief and remorse, since it was to all intents and purposes his fault. If he had not revived the bell-ringing tradition, the tower would still be there in all its glory. No one was able to console him. He stood at the door of St Peter’s accepting a few commiserations and a great many rebukes and wished the earth would swallow him.
Later, when everyone had come to look at the ruined bell tower by daylight and gone home shaking their heads, Dorothy and Vera took the vicar aside and assured him that it was a tragedy waiting to happen and could have happened with the bell ringers inside, so in fact it was better this way. But Mr Parsnip didn’t believe that. In fact, he had stopped believing in anything at all. And Upper Grumpsfield was still bell-less.
Dorothy reminded him that he would have to cancel the inauguration of those bells. That, he told her, was rubbing salt in the wounds. That, she told him, was the result of not heeding safely precautions.
Someone in the parish who worked for Middlethumpton town council phoned and said the town surveyor of Middlethumpton, who had been extremely pleased that the fraudulent bishop had been rumbled and imprisoned, would be pleased to take a leading role in assessing the damage and would inspect the location on Monday, if the vicar agreed. Mr Parsnip started to feel better.
When Victoria arrived that afternoon to collect the two sisters, Dorothy saw them off for home without her, promising to catch a train to Wales as soon as things got better. She would have to stay and support the vicar. And she would have to try to sort out Laura Finch’s problems, too. If she didn’t, would anybody?