7.2.16

33 - Life goes on

After a hung over Thursday and Gloria’s departure on Friday morning, things were, in Dorothy Price’s opinion, about to get back to normal for most people who had been involved in any way. She was sure that Cleo and Robert would get married eventually. For a moment she had thought Cleo was going to walk out on the proceedings in the vestry, but she had eventually come round to believing that things were exactly as Rita had said they were.
Cleo was angry that Robert had kept his marriage to Rita a secret, despite having had at least one ideal opportunity to be open about his past life. They were not as close after months of going out together and weeks actually living together as she and Gary after one embrace. She would phone Gary as soon as possible and tell him what had transpired. He was as anxious for Cleo not to get married to Robert as Robert was anxious to marry her.
Laura Finch had been keeping herself to herself so entirely that Dorothy thought she was trying to get out of doing the concert at the Church Hall. Mr Parsnip, knowing full well that Dorothy was not easy to talk to on that subject, had not mentioned it to her, but since he did not have anything new to report, that was of no consequence. The only person to be in regular contact with the Finch Nightingales was Mr Morgan, who replied to Mr Parsnip’s routine inquiries with yes, they are practising and no, they are not going to cancel the concert. Mr Parsnip decided to give it one more week. It hadn’t been his idea to have the Finch choir singing at the church hall, and Dorothy had warned him off to no avail.
At the moment he couldn’t be bothered with the Finch woman. He couldn’t be bothered with anything, if the truth be known. Even the run up to and then the hiatus in the wedding had only temporally released him from his lethargy and by Friday, his depression having been exacerbated by the disaster of Cleo and Robert’s wedding ceremony, he was starting to think it was all his fault, like everything else that went wrong in the village.
On Saturday morning, Dorothy decided it was high time to find out what was the matter with her friend. Frederick Parsnip was behaving more and more strangely, at least some of this theory being based on his unfriendliness to her and everyone else. After breakfast and teaching two piano lessons she could well have done without, she walked briskly to the vicarage to sort things out, once and for all.
“It’s time to think about your parishioners, Frederick, instead of just thinking about yourself,” she told him in a sharp voice, as soon as he had let her in. This brought Edith hurrying out of the kitchen and Mr Parsnip scurrying back into his study with a big frown on his face, leaving Dorothy standing in the hall shaking her head.
Edith, who had often resented Dorothy Price’s interference in the past, was now pleased to see her. She thought her husband had fallen further down his deep hole. He had spent nearly all day Thursday sharpening pencils, she told Dorothy. On Friday morning he had got on his mountain bike and wandering off for several hours, only returning in time to have supper with the boys, during which he said not a single word. Then he retired to his study, where he stayed doing she knew not what until long after she had gone to bed. He didn’t even say thank you for his cocoa, and this morning she discovered that he hadn’t drunk it, so things must be desperate.
“It’s as if he’s burnt out,” said Edith. “Ever since that problem with the bishop, he has changed, Dorothy. I can’t shake him out of it.”
In fact, Edith was no longer sure she wanted to bother trying. She herself had changed. She no longer wanted any physical contact with her husband, though that condition had been forced on her by the vicar as he wanted to be quite sure she did not have any more children. But Edith was loyal. Neither of them would have dreamt of being unfaithful, so they existed side by side in a frigid atmosphere of their own making.
“Perhaps he needs professional help,” said Dorothy. “Shall I talk to him about it?”
“Would you? He never listens to me.”
Dorothy felt quite sorry for Edith. It wasn’t easy being married to Frederick, she was sure. The happy years seemed to be at an end and Edith, who had always wanted a big family, found herself coping alone, not just with five strenuous boys, but with almost every aspect of life at the old vicarage. It wasn’t as if Frederick Parsnip was that much older, let alone too old to be bothered. He just seemed to have lost the plot.
Dorothy remembered how Frederick had reacted to Edith’s disappearance a few months previously. He had almost been relieved and hadn’t seemed in any hurry to find her. What is more, Edith forgetting her family altogether for days on end was surely another sign that things were going badly wrong. She thought they had patched things up again, but now she realized that Edith was just as unhappy as she had been then, and Frederick was unaware of anything outside himself.
Fortunately, you don’t deal with the mothers of talent-free little girls yearning to be ballet dancers without learning tact and diplomacy and quite a bit about parent psychology. Dorothy took her own and the vicar’s steaming hot coffee that Edith had made for them and went into the study without knocking, to find Frederick Parsnip gazing out of the window, pencil in one hand, craft knife in the other. No wonder he needs a constant supply of pencils, she thought. I expect he’s chopped a few thousand into little bits by now.
If the vicar found Dorothy’s company a nuisance, he didn’t let on. She was one of the few people he found helpful even if she was irritating at times. Now he instinctively knew that she wanted to help him.
Dorothy had already thought out a strategy for getting things moving.
“We’ll have to have a meeting, Frederick,” she told him.
“Meeting? What for?”
“Well, for a start there’s the bell ringers to inaugurate. They’ve been practising hard, but you haven’t officially given them your blessing, have you?”
“Haven’t I?
“And there’s Laura Finch’s concert.”
“Is there?”
“Come on Frederick. Snap out of it for a minute!”
Frederick Parsnip was not even sure he could manage to write a sermon for the following day, let alone hold a meeting. It took tongues of angels for Dorothy to get him to take an interest in what she was saying.
“I expect you’ve written your sermon, haven’t you, Frederick.”
“I’ve made a start,” he said, holding up a sheet of paper with untidily scribbled notes on it. “I thought I’d do the poem from the wedding again.”
His face lit up as he quoted it: This is the first day of the rest of our lives. Let the sun shine on.
“That’s very nice, Frederick, but is it suitable or even tactful?”
“When I write a sermon on a cheerful theme it cheers me up, Dorothy.”
We could write a new poem, Frederick. Something more appropriate.
“I can’t write poetry.”
“But I can. What about this?”
Life is a big wheel
turning around and around.
We are only the passengers.
Frederick admitted that it was quite nice and he would try to make something of it, though he did not think it was Japanese poetry.
Dorothy resisted the temptation to scold him for such pettiness, and for criticizing her poetry when she was trying to help him. She had not even been trying to write a Japanese poem.
Mr Parsnip put the craft knife back in its box and hid it on a high shelf where he thought none of the boys could reach it.
Dorothy decided things couldn’t be that bad if he’d thought of the danger of leaving sharp knives where his boys could get at them.
“I’d better get cracking,” he said, with a sudden and totally unexpected surge of energy.
“That’s more like it. Can we have a meeting tomorrow?”
“Yes, if you can sort it out, Dorothy.”
“No problem, Frederick. Feeling better now?”
“I don’t know what gets into me, Dorothy.”
“It’s probably just a passing phase, Frederick, but you could get some help to conquer whatever demon possesses you now and again.”
“Not a demon, Dorothy. I don’t need exorcising!”
“That’s not quite what I meant, but let’s leave it for now, shall we? The main thing is that you get through the service tomorrow morning and the meeting tomorrow afternoon. It’s Onward Christian Soldiers from now on.”
To Dorothy’s astonishment Frederick burst into song and Edith hurried in. She had definitely been eavesdropping, but Dorothy thought she probably needed to in order to keep abreast of situations. Frederick was quite a liability, when all is said and done.
“If you make a new list of possible events for the rest of the year, I’ll phone around and make sure that everyone comes tomorrow, Frederick. I’ll let you know how I get on.”
She assured Edith that things would be better now and told her about the forthcoming meeting.
“Can you do some baking, Edith, my dear?” Frederick wanted to know.
Edith beamed. He hadn’t been so affectionate for ages. It was a good sign. She saw Dorothy Price to the door then hurried to the pantry to see if all the ingredients were in good supply. Dorothy hurried home and phoned everyone on the committee. They all said they would be glad to come, especially Gareth Morgan, who looked forward to an hour or two in the presence of Edith, who was now undeniably the main object of his affections and a nonpareil as far as he could judge after his various disappointing encounters with other members of the gentler sex.
Dorothy organized the meeting to her own satisfaction before cooking herself something nice for supper.
***
It was a good thing that Delilah’s forthcoming bistro opening was only days after the luckless wedding ceremony. She was able to disguise the wedding feast as the general rehearsal for the opening, which gave the Karaoke a kick-start and made everyone laugh and forget the ill-fated marriage ceremony.
With the help of Mitch’s timely arrival and unflagging energy, Delilah had earmarked Saturday evening for her grand opening. The press had been informed and a full page spread with photos had appeared in the local newspapers in good time for people to plan their weekend around the event.
Joe, a distant relative of Mitch’s (if you can believe that) and a first class pizza cook whose real name of Jaruslav was a bit too exotic to call out in an English pub, had decided on his menu for the opening night and was going to lead a crusade of his own to convince the English that pub food did not have to consist of stale pork pies and potato crisps. The Dog and Whistle would be famous for its cuisine, if not for its singing.
Hosting the wedding celebrations had been a bit of a scramble with only four days' notice, but since it also served as an impromptu dry run to make sure everything worked, especially the karaoke equipment, it had taken the first night pressure off everyone. Much to the amusement of the wedding guests, Joe had twirled some pizza pastry and thrown it up in the air, inspiring everyone to order a pizza loaded with their favourite extras. Mrs Barker, Dorothy Price’s soft-hearted next-door neighbour, who had sat weeping in the church long after the marriage ceremony had been abandoned, was spotted by Delilah and taken along to the pub. Delilah even rang Mr Barker on her mobile phone, but he was reluctant to leave his vegetable patch, so Mrs Barker sat with Dorothy commiserating about what it took to make marriages fall apart, which was not a topic dear to Dorothy’s heart in the light of that afternoon’s events.
Having indulged herself in that spot of catharsis, Mrs Barker had later proved invaluable to Mitch, as she was prepared to sing along for ages with quite a passable alto voice while he adjusted various components on his karaoke machine, and she had promised to come again on Saturday and bring Mr Barker, who could do a good tenor after a beer or two. She would also remember to bring her TV glasses so that she could sing more of the lyrics and not have to resort to tralala.
Mr Bontemps had also turned up on the pretext of delivering some more ingredients for Joe’s menu, including a slab of Parmesan cheese that had only just been flown in (or so he said) Being curious by nature, stayed to see how the wedding party was going. The truth is that he had heard about the party from Mr Barker, who had turned up at the shop to get himself a TV dinner, since Mrs Barker was not going to be there to cook his supper. Mr Bontemps made a show of surprise at the ongoing jollity but he fooled no one. The cheese could certainly have waited until the following day. Delilah rather hoped that he would not want to try the karaoke machine, but he did, which, however, gave Mitch a chance to see what happened if the machine broke down suddenly for any reason such as a vocal catastrophe that had to be brought to a hasty end without actually insulting the perpetrator.
But Mr Bontemps had to leave anyway, he said. Had he heard the groans at the excruciating noises he was making? Delilah knew he was thick skinned and would turn up again at the opening. She warned Mitch not to give him another French chanson to murder. Mr Bontemps was convinced that bearing a French name qualified him for anything Gallic. But no one had known that he was practically tone deaf until that karaoke trial. Delilah vowed to have a word with him, but Mr Bontemps was unlikely to listen.
On Saturday afternoon Dorothy, who was quite nervous after her morning sorting out the vicar and phoning around to persuade everyone to turn up for the impromptu meeting, played the piano for a long time while she decided whether to go to the pub for the opening. Wednesday had been quite enjoyable apart from Mr Bontemps, but she was not sure she could take another dose of karaoke so soon, even if Mr Bontemps was prevented from performing. On the other hand, she was curious about who else would come, and hoped that Laura Finch would think better of it. There was nothing much she wanted to watch on TV, so when the Barkers rang her doorbell at half past seven, she was ready to walk down to the Dog and Whistle with them and even willing to hazard a guess about what Cleo and Robert were going to do now the wedding was off.
Laura Finch had arrived early and already ordered a large ham and anchovy pizza. Dorothy could not avoid greeting her, but fortunately, having arrived with the Barkers, she had an excuse to share their table, which was rather disconcerting for Laura Finch, who was desperate to let bygones be bygones with Dorothy.
Delilah’s opening had attracted more guests than she could cope with. They spilled out onto the forecourt. Fortunately it wasn’t raining. The crowd from the Thumpton Hill pub that had closed only weeks earlier took their pizzas and pastas outside and sat on a low wall to eat them. To Delilah’s amazement they even ordered Chianti poured out of traditional bottles in wicker baskets to wash the food down. Dorothy had never seen such a huge amount of food on her own plate before, except that it wasn’t a plate at all, but a round wooden platter, which was apparently better suited to sawing through the pizza base. At the party the previous Wednesday she hadn’t been able to eat anything much because she was so upset. Mr Parsnip and Edith were sharing her table, and his pizza looked even larger tonight. Edith, who on Wednesday had only managed to rescue one small sliver of what the vicar had insisted he would go halves with, gratefully accepted Dorothy’s offer of half of hers.
When the old grandfather clock, a remnant from the old days, struck nine, it was time for the karaoke to get going, and it was unsurprisingly Laura Finch who took the floor as soon as Delilah had done her boisterous demonstration of how it all worked. Having come to the opening, Laura was obviously determined to outsing the hostess, but was thwarted by the technology and the fact that her voice production was not well-suited to the close scrutiny of a microphone, which proceeded to retaliate with supersonic electronic wailing that Mitch explained as protest at the onslaught. Booed out by anyone who was not familiar with either Laura’s musical background nor her petulance and wouldn’t have cared anyway, and indeed by some who were glad to have a chance to show her what they thought of her, Laura soon retired defeated to the back of the saloon and went home soon after, unnoticed except by Dorothy, who was confident that a repeat performance of Laura’s one-time vocal prowess would not be forthcoming.
Delilah’s dream had come true. Mitch and Joe stayed on to help run the enterprise and vie for her affections. When the karaoke machine wasn’t running, Joe would entertain everyone with sad Russian ballads and arias and eventually owned up to his origins. Delilah was flattered and touched by their attentions and played them off against one another shamelessly with the skills gained during her stint in operetta and elsewhere. And if there was speculation about who was with whom and why, she didn’t care.