Sidney Chambers and The Dangers of Temptation

by James Runcie

  The Return

  It was a Tuesday in early September 1968, and Mrs Maguire had summoned Sidney to Grantchester. Rather than meeting at her house, she had requested a rendezvous at the Orchard Tea Rooms. This was odd, as she always disapproved of spending money on something that she could do perfectly well herself, and she hated waste. She also looked smarter than usual and, having been complimented on her appearance, she explained that she was wearing the woollen navy Windsmoor jacket her sister had left her. She had to look her best because something dramatic had happened.

  ‘It’s my Ronnie,’ she said. ‘He’s come home.’

  This was news indeed. Mrs Maguire’s husband had disappeared during the war. Everyone presumed that he had been ‘missing, presumed dead’ but his ‘widow’ was so hazy on the details that Sidney always had the slight suspicion that Ronnie Maguire was still alive. Perhaps he had found a girl in Singapore or South Africa (he had fought with the Cambridgeshire Regiment in the Far East) or he had returned to a mistress and second family back in England? A detailed conversation about the matter had never been encouraged.

  ‘It’s been twenty-five years. More than the time we were together. I don’t know what to think. I thought he was dead. He just arrived on my doorstep with a suitcase.’

  ‘Have you asked him where he’s been?’

  ‘He’s a bit cagey about all that. Tells me he can’t remember everything but hopes it will all come out in time. He says it’s taken him all these years to find a way home. I’m not sure I believe him.’

  ‘And he’s staying with you?’

  ‘I’ve put him in my sister’s room. Even though it’s been two years since she died, I’ve only just got used to being alone. It’s very confusing to have a man about the house mucking it all up again.’

  ‘Is there anything you’d like me to do?’

  Mrs Maguire was almost afraid to ask. ‘Could you pay us a visit? I’m not sure Ronnie’s quite himself.’

  ‘Do you mean that you’re not sure it’s really him?’

  ‘He’s filled out. I suppose we all have. And he’s redder and fuller around the face than he used to be. Breathless too. He was always such a fit man.’

  ‘I suppose it’s age. None of us are getting any younger, Mrs M.’

  ‘I know that. But he used to be so handsome. I think he must have let himself go. But there’s more . . .’

  ‘Something alarming?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He didn’t recognise the brooch he gave me when we were courting. You know the one? I’ve told you about it.’

  It was eleven cultured pearls on a sprig of silver leaves. Mrs Maguire wore it on her best blouses.

  ‘He also talked about a dance we went to in Great Yarmouth. I’ve never been there in my life. Do you think he might be confusing me with someone else?’

  ‘That’s possible. Memory can be fickle. But he is definitely your husband?’ Sidney repeated.

  ‘I’d like to think so,’ Mrs Maguire replied. ‘I do know my Ronnie. He’s just not the man I’m used to. I don’t know whether I’m angry or glad. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to behave.’

  ‘I suppose it might be a question of how much you’re prepared to forgive,’ said Sidney. ‘When would you like me to come?’

  Over a second pint in the Eagle that Thursday evening, Sidney asked Geordie how much he knew about the original disappearance. If Ronnie Maguire had been ‘missing, presumed dead’ then the War Office would have written formally and his widow would be receiving a pension. However, if he were leading a double life somewhere, wouldn’t the police get involved? Bigamy, as far as Sidney knew, was still illegal.

  ‘But living in sin is not,’ said Geordie.

  ‘And that’s what he’s been doing?’

  ‘Sounds like it.’

  ‘He’s also claiming to have lost a part of his memory.’

  ‘The convenient bit of his brain that means he doesn’t have to face the music. Once a chancer, always a chancer.’

  ‘On the other hand, perhaps he had to forget things. I think he was a prisoner of war in Japan. People never like to talk about that.’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t the only one, Sidney. Do you know what he does for a living?’

  ‘I think he worked as an accountant. Mrs M once told me he was good with numbers. She never liked to go into details.’

  ‘Perhaps she knew all along that he wasn’t dead? That might have been easier to tell people rather than the fact that he’d done a runner. Saves face.’

  ‘I wondered if you could look into the records for me; see if he has any convictions?’

  ‘The criminal thing he’s done is to leave his wife. Mrs Maguire’s been unhappy for years, hasn’t she?’

  ‘She’s a good woman, Geordie. She certainly looked after Leonard and me very well.’

  ‘Only saw one of you married.’

  ‘Well, Leonard’s not the marrying kind.’

  ‘Sometimes I don’t think Leonard’s anything at all.’

  ‘He doesn’t think about that kind of thing.’

  ‘Perhaps he makes up for those who think about it all the time.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, Geordie.’

  ‘I don’t mean me. I’m beyond all that carry-on. And so, presumably, is Ronnie Maguire. What do you think he’s after? Has his missus got any money? That’s the usual line.’

  ‘Whatever it is, it’s unsettled his wife. She’s spent so long remembering him that I think she’s built him up into a different person altogether.’

  Geordie finished his pint. ‘People change over twenty-five years. I know I have.’

  Sidney still had a half left. ‘Do you think Cathy would marry you if she met you now?’ he asked.

  ‘I doubt it. I’d marry her, though. Shall I get a top-up?’

  ‘I’d better not. I should be getting back.’

  ‘What about you and Hildegard then?’

  ‘I’d marry her today.’

  ‘You don’t ever wonder what it would have been like if you hadn’t met?’

  Sidney pushed over his glass. ‘All right. Put another half in that.’ As Geordie stood up, he added: ‘Amanda would never have married me, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘I wasn’t. You mentioned her name.’

  ‘You know that it was never on the cards. You were there at the time.’

  ‘Do you think she recognises that she made an almighty mistake?’

  ‘Henry seemed a decent enough fellow before we realised how evasive he had been about his past. But we’ve all got history.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. I mean not marrying you when she had the chance.’

  ‘Perhaps I wouldn’t have married her.’

  ‘Give over, man. Everyone knew you were made for each other.’

  ‘But it hasn’t turned out like that. And I’m very happy with what I’ve got, thank you very much.’

  Geordie went to the bar, paid for the round and returned with the conversation still in his mind. ‘Hildegard’s a good woman, Sidney. No one else would have put up with you. I can’t imagine any old wife letting her husband swan off to Scotland. She must either have complete faith in you or given up on you altogether.’

  ‘I hope it’s the former. But I wasn’t “swanning”, I’ll have you know. I was persuading a friend to return to her husband.’

  ‘And did you succeed?’

  ‘I fear not. Amanda wants a clean break and a new life. She has petitioned for divorce.’

  ‘At least that’s easier to do these days. I suppose even if she had married you the same thing might have happened.’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘That is only my opinion, mind.’

  ‘Fortunately that situation never arose. In any case, the present circumstances are entirely different; although one has to admit that Amanda’s husband had a secret past just like Ronnie Maguire. We’ve talked about this before, Geordie. If you’re determined not to tell people things, then you have no control ov
er the moment of revelation when it comes. Or the consequences.’

  ‘Things seldom stay private for ever. I’ll give you that.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why Ronnie’s come back? To spit it all out.’

  ‘I’ve always been interested in the urge to confess, especially towards the end of a life.’ Geordie pulled one of Benson & Hedges’s finest from its packet and lit up. ‘It must happen with you too . . .’

  ‘People feel the need to make amends; to tidy things up before they go.’

  ‘But do you think, Sidney, that sometimes they do it because they feel that they haven’t been given enough attention? They’re almost annoyed no one has worked out what’s been going on and they just want to show what they’ve done?’

  ‘The confession as a type of vanity, you mean?’

  ‘In criminal cases, yes. People like an audience, the interest taken in them. They are getting the limelight that they previously lacked. They’re also intrigued by police procedure. If we get involved then it all becomes a show in which they are the star.’

  ‘Even if they are the villain. Like Milton’s devil getting all the best lines or the baddie in a panto?’

  ‘I suppose it is different with you.’

  ‘When people tell me things?’ Sidney looked at his pint of beer as if it might provide the answer, took a hearty swig that drained the glass, and gave his reply. ‘I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and hope they are just wanting to put things right. It’s dealing with your own shame. But that too can be a kind of selfishness.’

  ‘And do you think that’s what Ronnie Maguire is doing?’

  ‘I’ll just have to ask him.’

  ‘You’ve got yourself involved?’

  ‘It’s Mrs Maguire, Geordie. When I think of all that she has done for me, I can hardly stand aside. I don’t want to see her hurt. She’s a proud woman; and although she has a confident look to the world, she’s as scared as the rest of us underneath it all.’

  ‘You don’t have to do it.’

  ‘She asked me. It’s absolutely my duty, Geordie. If I don’t help her, if I don’t sit with her and alongside her when she has asked for my assistance, then what kind of Christian am I?’

  Mrs Maguire thought it best if Sidney first met Ronnie over tea. She would bake both scones and one of her walnut specials; a cake that he had had to wait nearly two years to sample when she was working for him in the vicarage at Grantchester. Perhaps, Sidney wondered, the woman for whom Ronnie had left his wife was a terrible cook and now that her physical charms were waning he had resorted to Wife Number One for culinary comfort?

  The tidiness of the thatched house, the aroma of baking, the Michaelmas daisies in the cottage garden at the front and the welcoming atmosphere would have made any Cambridge estate agent gasp. Sidney complimented his former employee on all that she had done and was greeted with the matter-of-fact reply: ‘I am not prejudiced, but I think cleanliness should come naturally.’

  Ronnie was waiting in the sitting room. Although fuller in the figure and prone to breathlessness, he had once been a handsome man and still possessed a firm handshake and a twinkle of mischief about the eyes. His thick grey hair and well-maintained beard made him look a little like a Van Dyck painting. He was not tall but carried himself with an air of assurance that was good for another two or three inches. He had also made an effort with his appearance: a navy-blue blazer with a crimson pocket handkerchief, grey flannel trousers and a Cromer Golf Club tie. Sidney noticed that his cufflinks matched his blazer buttons.

  Mrs Maguire busied herself in the kitchen; setting out the scones and insisting that the tea take five minutes to brew properly. It gave the men time to introduce themselves. Sidney ventured that he was glad to meet a man he had heard so much about.

  ‘I’m staying in her sister Gladys’s old room while she works out what to do with me,’ Ronnie began.

  ‘I think she will be quite cautious. She’s always been careful of her reputation.’

  ‘Sylvia’s frightened of people thinking badly of her. I remember how she always used to worry if she’d done something wrong.’

  ‘She likes to know what the rules are so she can follow them,’ said Sidney. ‘And she expects everyone else to do the same.’

  ‘She hated it at school if the teacher told her off for anything. We were in the same class when we started. It was 1906. Can you believe that? Things were so different when we were young.’

  ‘We used to buy sweets at Percy Noble’s hut,’ said Mrs Maguire, coming in with the tea tray. ‘It was a tiny shop that sold newspapers, magazines, sweets, cigarettes and minerals, and, Saturday afternoons, cups of tea. Across the road was Smith’s, the local carpenter’s that doubled up as the undertaker; they still had the village stocks in a shed at the back.’

  ‘There was this one hot summer,’ Ronnie continued, ‘and a rick of clover and lucerne was set up in the field. It had been damp when they stacked it, but then it gradually heated up inside and burst into flame. It smelled like sweet coffee. I always used to feel sad at the end of summer because I had to go back to school, but as I got older I liked the misty autumn mornings, the flat-racing season, the smell of woodsmoke and beer by the fire. Do you remember, Sylvia, when we first went to the races? We played truant from school.’

  Mrs Maguire poured out the tea and handed round the scones. She did not need to ask either man whether he took milk or sugar. ‘It must have been a Saturday,’ she answered. ‘I never missed a day except when I had mumps.’

  ‘It was a Thursday, in fact, just before the Great War. We were twelve or thirteen. I remember it was after the suffragette threw herself under the king’s horse, a couple of years before they switched the Derby to Newmarket. It must have been October. At any rate it was cold; I remember that. You had a new red scarf, Sylvia. We got the bus with my elder brother, looked at horses in the Birdcage and watched by the Ditch Mile in the Nursery. You remember?’

  ‘Can’t say I do.’

  ‘My brother teased you because one of the horses was called Greedy Girl. You liked White Star. Frank put money on Radway. He was dead two years later. I think it must have been the last time he went to the races.’

  ‘You must have gone with someone else, Ronnie.’

  ‘It was with you, Sylvia, I promise.’

  ‘I think you must have been with Nancy Spooner.’

  ‘I didn’t. I promise. It was you.’

  Mrs Maguire checked that no one needed more tea. ‘Nancy Spooner. I had trouble seeing that one off, Sidney, I can tell you. I remember the dance when she made a play for you, Ronnie.’

  ‘Which one was that?’

  ‘The one where she kicked me on the back of the leg in the middle of the Gay Gordons and you didn’t believe me.’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘I had to have words with her after. You didn’t even notice.’

  ‘I didn’t need to if you took care of it, Sylvie.’

  ‘Sylvia. Don’t you Sylvie me, Ronnie Maguire. You’re supposed to be on your best behaviour.’

  ‘I seem to remember you didn’t mind when I wasn’t.’

  ‘Not in front of the vicar . . .’

  ‘He’s not a vicar any more. He’s an archdeacon; a very venerable man. That’s his title, you know. The Venerable Sidney Chambers, Archdeacon of Ely.’

  ‘It really doesn’t matter . . .’ Sidney interrupted.

  ‘All the more reason for you to mind your ps and qs, Ronnie Maguire.’

  Despite the confusion over their respective memories, Sidney was reassured that the couple were sufficiently reunited to tease and argue, even if there was much to sort out.

  ‘You mentioned the flat-racing season, Mr Maguire,’ he said. ‘Do you know, in all my time as a priest in East Anglia, I’ve never been to the racecourse at Newmarket?’

  ‘Then you must go.’

  ‘I always seem too busy; and I’ve never quite known who to ask.’

  ‘Why do
n’t you ask me? I’m there all the time.’

  ‘What are you doing, Sidney?’ Mrs Maguire complained. ‘Are you planning on taking my husband away from me as soon as he’s got home?’

  ‘You could always come with us,’ said Ronnie.

  ‘I’ve never been a gambler.’

  ‘Never too late to start, Sylvia.’

  ‘I’ve taken a big enough gamble letting you back into my house, Ronnie Maguire. Don’t expect me to do any more.’

  As soon as he had gathered up speed on his bicycle and was racing away from Grantchester, in top gear and glad to be returning home at last, Sidney was dismayed to be flagged down by Barbara Wilkinson as she approached her own house with a large bag of shopping. ‘I see you’ve no time to visit me these days,’ she said.

  Sidney dismounted. ‘I am sorry, Mrs Wilkinson, but I am no longer of this parish.’

  ‘Out of sight, out of mind, eh? I see you only turn up when there’s trouble.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Nothing so mundane as visiting a scarlet woman whose son is in prison.’

  Danny Wilkinson was just beginning the second year of his life sentence; an appeal on the grounds of temporary insanity had been rejected. ‘You can imagine that my family would take a dim view of that.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell them.’

  ‘You are a very dangerous woman.’

  ‘As soon as the show’s over, you’re off quicker than Ronnie Maguire. I’m surprised you’re back so fast. He’s left it twenty-five years.’

  ‘The situation is altogether different. They are married to each other. We are acquaintances.’

  ‘I will tell you something for nothing. That is not the man I remember as Ronnie Maguire.’

  ‘People change over time.’

  ‘Not as much as that. He’s smaller, he’s redder and he’s much rounder.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s shrunk with age?’

  ‘If it is him, he’s done something very peculiar; although I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s as crooked as a bag of fish-hooks, that one.’

  Sidney didn’t want to prolong the conversation or point out that this was quite a statement from the mother of a murderer with a wayward sense of the law, and it made him wonder whether those who were quick to judgement (Mrs Maguire inter alia) only did so in order to prevent an attack on themselves. They were like unfancied boxers aiming for a first-round knockout because they didn’t have any defence.