I thought about this when I met Phyll in the chemist a few days later.
“How’s everything going?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s fine,” she said. “It’s almost as though Rachel’s never been away.”
“Rachel told us about the kitchen roster,” I said tentatively. “Is it working out all right?”
She laughed. “Well, it needs a bit of give-and-take and I suppose I do most of the giving. But it must be very difficult for Rache, after all those years of running her own home, and I don’t mind if it makes her happy. No, we’re settling in really well and it’s lovely to have her here.” She paused for a moment and said, “I was very down after Father died. I missed him so much. People in the village were kind and sympathetic, but I felt very alone. Friends are all very well, but there’s nothing like your own family—so now it’s perfect.”
As I drove home I thought how fortunate it was that Phyll had such an affectionate and accommodating nature. Perhaps we’d been too pessimistic and things would work out happily after all.
Chapter Four
After putting it off and finding many plausible reasons for not doing anything about it, I decided I really must get down to the research I had to do for the Book. As a way of easing myself into it gently, I rang Father William and asked if I could come and look at the church records.
“Oh, do,” he said enthusiastically. “Come over right away. Tuesday is always such a dismal day, don’t you think? It will be so cheering to have a nice chat.”
The rectory at Mere Barton, a fine early Victorian building, has long since been secularized and sold off (to a film producer who lives in it for only a few months of the year), so Father William now lives in a new bungalow built on what used to be the vegetable garden of the old house.
He greeted me effusively and ushered me into a large room with bookshelves covering every wall.
“Do come into the study,” he said. “I’m tempted to call it the library, but that would be too pretentious, don’t you think?”
“It’s a charming room,” I said. And, indeed, it was. The bookshelves were painted white so the general effect wasn’t at all oppressive. Indeed, the brightly colored jackets on some of the books (no solemn leather-bound sermons here) gave the room a positively lively feel. There were a couple of armchairs and several small antique tables and, facing the window, a handsome mahogany desk with an expensive reading lamp. A large flower arrangement stood on a Pembroke table and there was a screen worked in gros point in the empty hearth of a proper fireplace. Over the fireplace hung a large oil painting of a gentleman in eighteenth-century dress leaning elegantly against a column in a formal landscape, and I wondered if he was an ancestor or merely “bought-in.”
“How sweet of you to say so. One does one’s best, but it’s hard to achieve any sort of elegance in a
bungalow.
” His voice sharpened as he pronounced the word. “How one regrets the old rectory—such vandalism!”
“It does seem a shame,” I said.
“I was tempted by the vicarage at Higher Barton,” he said. “You know I have three parishes (so exhausting), but it was appalling. The former incumbent lived there and he had four children (imagine!). So, of course, everything was in a dreadful state. And the church commissioners refused to do more than the absolute
minimum,
so it was quite impossible. Besides, Mere Barton is quite the most sympathetic of the three villages.”
I didn’t know the two other villages in question and wondered idly what special qualities in Mere Barton and its inhabitants he found so sympathetic.
“Well,” I said brightly, “I’m sure everyone is delighted that you chose to live here, even if it is,” I added unkindly, “in a bungalow.”
“I know—that was unworthy, wasn’t it. But I do feel it’s easier to live a good life in pleasant surroundings.”
“What does Gilbert say in
Iolanthe
?
‘
Hearts just as true and fair/May live in Belgrave Square/As in the lowly air of Seven Dials.’ ”
He gave me one of his charming smiles. “Now you’re laughing at me, and quite right too. But it would be so nice to have been one of those clergymen like Kilvert or Parson Woodford (all that lovely food!) or Sidney Smith—just down the road at Combe Florey—writing splendid letters or keeping a wonderful literary journal.”
“Well,” I said, “you have your radio talks. I suppose that’s the modern equivalent.”
“Oh, do you think so? What a delightful thought. And I suppose I do take a lot of my material from the village, as they did. But, dear me, what must you think of me, chattering away—I’ll just go and get the coffee.”
He went out of the room and I took the opportunity of going over to examine a photograph on the narrow mantelpiece above the fireplace. It was of a strikingly handsome man in army uniform—I thought a colonel, but I’m never sure about crowns and things. He looked very stern and unbending and his piercing gaze seemed to accuse me of prying, so I averted my eyes and was innocently admiring the eighteenth-century gentleman in his rural setting when Father William returned with a tray.
“What a splendid picture,” I said. “He looks very grand. I love his waistcoat, such a lovely color and all that gorgeous embroidery.”
“Very becoming, but I wouldn’t fancy the wig; I believe they quickly became very unsanitary.” So not an ancestor, then, since I was sure he would certainly have told me if it was. He put the tray on the desk and continued. “Do sit down, and I’ll pour the coffee. There are some of Phyllis’s delicious shortbread biscuits that she kindly brought for me the other day.”
“How lovely. She’s a marvelous cook, and Rachel’s very good too. I gather they’ve divided the domestic duties between them.”
“Yes, Rachel has settled nicely and they do seem to get on very well—
not
always the case where relatives are concerned.”
I wondered whether the stern military figure was a relative.
“Oh, they’ve always been very devoted,” I said, “ever since they were children.”
“Of course, you were all at school together—how I envy you that. I never seemed to stay in one school long enough to make any friends—a sort of peripatetic life.”
“Really?” I said inquiringly, hoping for some sort of personal history, but he put a cup of coffee on the little table beside me and changed the subject.
“So, you’re going to be writing this splendid book,” he said.
“Not actually writing it,” I said hastily. “Just helping Annie with some of the research.”
“Don’t you believe it—once Annie’s got you involved you’ll be doing more than just helping. Annie’s absolutely brilliant at
organizing
. Need I say more?”
“Oh dear.” I sighed. “That’s what everyone says. I really can’t spare the time to do the whole thing.”
“Well”—he looked at me quizzically—“if you feel up to telling Annie that . . .”
I laughed reluctantly. “I see what you mean. Oh well, I’ll just have to do the best I can. So what about the church records?”
“Ah well, most of the important ones—the really old, historical ones—have gone to the County Records Office, but you are very welcome to see what we still have. Most churches have given up their parish registers and only have photocopies, but I felt it was important to keep ours in the village—something tangible, as it were, for the villagers to see and handle if they wished. Meanwhile”—he got to his feet and went over to the desk and took something out of one of the drawers—“you may conceivably find something useful in this.” He handed me an elegantly printed little booklet. “It’s a short history of the church. A poor thing but mine own.”
“But this is absolutely splendid,” I said, turning the pages. “Lovely old engravings too. Goodness, it must have been very expensive to produce something like this!”
“Well,” he said, “it was rather beyond the means of the parish council.”
“So you paid for it yourself?”
He shrugged. “Having spent some time on it, I felt it deserved a slightly better presentation than a photocopied typescript. And we do have quite a few visitors—people who rather want to see the church I’ve mentioned in my broadcasts.” He smiled the charming smile again. “Such is the result of even minor media attention. But you will know all about that—your splendid radio talk about Mrs. Gaskell must, I’m sure, have reached a wide audience.”
He inclined his head slightly, as if to include me in that small circle of “celebrities.”
I put my coffee cup down on the table and got to my feet. “Well, if you have a moment, perhaps we could go up to the church and have a look at the records you have there.”
As we walked through the churchyard he pointed out things of interest—the ancient yew tree, the remains of the old preaching cross, a gravestone recording that, in 1865, Joshua Minns died from a wall falling on him. As I watched his tall, cassocked figure moving among the graves, I felt how absolutely right such a figure looks in such a place.
The church struck chill. “No heating except for services,” he said. “Strict economy is our rule—
faute de mieux,
I’m afraid.”
“It seems suitable somehow,” I said, “that the inside of a church should be a different temperature from the world outside.” I instinctively lowered my voice, not being, like Trollope’s Lily Dale, one accustomed to speaking conversationally in church.
“No tombs,” he said regretfully. “No recumbent Elizabethan figures surrounded by kneeling deceased children. Still, we do have a remarkably fine screen and the font is fifteenth century.”
He led the way into the vestry, unlocked a cupboard and produced some parish registers, saying, “I think these will be the most useful things I can provide. They go back a fair way.”
I opened one of the heavy volumes and glanced through the pages.
“These will be splendid, but I think I’d like to come and spend some time looking at them properly and making notes.”
He nodded. “Of course; just let me know when. Oh, and do bring your laptop if you want to—we welcome the new technology!”
I left him in the vestry and made my way out of the church. As I was going towards the rectory to collect my car, I was hailed from behind. It was Annie Roberts.
“Oh, Sheila, just the person—can you just pop in and have a look at some old letters I think you really ought to include?”
“Oh, well . . .” I began.
“It won’t take a moment.”
Obviously it was impossible to refuse, so I followed her up the village street and into her cottage.
“Do you always leave your door unlocked?” I asked curiously.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, is it safe?”
She laughed. “I was only going up to the shop,” she said, “and there’s always someone about in the street. It’s not like in a town, now, is it?”
We went into her sitting room and she sat me down at the large round table and laid several bundles of letters before me.
“I saw you going into the rectory earlier,” she said, “so I reckoned you’d be up at the church sometime. Looking at the parish registers, were you? Well now, see what you think of these. They’re letters I found in an old suitcase of my mother’s—a lot of stuff there. These are ones my grandfather wrote when he was in France in the First World War. Now, what do you say about that?”
I picked up one of the bundles and touched it gently. The paper was stiff and brown at the edges, the ink faded.
It was, somehow, a very emotional moment, and I suddenly felt I couldn’t examine them with Annie’s eyes upon me.
“I wonder,” I said, “would you mind if I took them away and had photocopies made so that I can work on them at home? Then I can return the originals; they must be very precious to you.”
She seemed disconcerted and I wondered if she’d expected us to read them together, something I didn’t think I could bear to do.
“Well, yes, I suppose . . .” she began.
“I’ll take great care of them,” I said, “and let you have them back in a few days. If you have a bag or something I could put them in?”
“I think so. Come into the kitchen and I’ll see what I can find.”
I followed her along the narrow hallway into a surprisingly roomy kitchen with a stone sink and an old Aga range (both original, not part of a trendy makeover), high cupboards all round and a large table taking up most of the space in the middle. Annie had obviously been preparing a meal; there was a wooden board with chopped-up carrots and onions, a pot half filled with meat and a basket of mushrooms. Though, when I looked more closely, they weren’t mushrooms, but a variety of fungi.
“Good gracious,” I said, picking up the basket, “are you going to cook with these? Aren’t they dangerous?”
She looked up from the drawer in the table where she’d been looking for a bag and laughed.
“Dangerous? Bless you, no! Not if you know what you’re doing. We’ve always used them—much better than field mushrooms, more flavor. My mother, now, she was a proper countrywoman. She taught us all about things like that—not just these, but herbs and remedies. They used to say in the village she was better than any doctor and, before the war, cheaper too!”
“Do you ever make up remedies?” I asked.
“Well, no, it wouldn’t have been proper, seeing as I was a health service practitioner, as you might say. Though I suppose it’s what you’d call alternative medicine now—better than some of that stuff you get in health shops. But I do occasionally make up something for colds and suchlike, just for myself and people who ask me.”
“How splendid,” I said. “I’ll know where to come next time I have a cold!”
“I always said,” Rosemary declared, when I told her about it, “that Annie is a witch.”
“A sort of wise woman,” I suggested.
“Well, I don’t know about wise. But fancy all that going on at Mere Barton nowadays! Are you going to put it in the Book?”