The Embroidered Sunset

by Joan Aiken

  The church, which had an apse at one end and Norman arches, was undoubtedly old, but, somehow, rather ugly; Lucy scanned it uncertainly. It had the air of an elderly, dentured lady who knows that nobody is going to admire her and keeps her ironic gaze fixed on distance. The Victorian vicarage beside it, though hideous, looked well-found and inhabited. Lucy pressed the bell-push. After an immensely long wait she banged the brass knocker and the door instantly flew open.

  A short, red-faced man stood in front of her. He was certainly not the vicar; his shirt was hanging half out of wrinkled, very dirty trousers, his fly-buttons were undone; he wore no tie, the cuffs of his tweed jacket were fringed with age, and his white hair bristled in an aureole.

  “Yes?” he said sharply. At first Lucy thought he was smiling, then she saw this was a rictus of impatience, or perhaps deafness; he leaned slightly forward, inclining his head to one side.

  “I’m very sorry to bother you, but can you tell me where Miss Culpepper lives?” she said slowly and clearly.

  “Eh? What’s that? Speak up, can’t you!”

  Deafness, then.

  “Can you tell me where Miss Culpepper lives?”

  No answer. She repeated her question a third time, even louder.

  “Oh, go to hell!” he exclaimed suddenly and savagely. She had just time to snatch her fingers from the jamb before he slammed the front door with violence.

  Retreating, somewhat discomfited, to the footpath, Lucy surveyed the solitary cottage that lay twenty yards higher up, past the vicarage, perched on the steep bank above the tumbling stream and approached by a footbridge. High Beck? It could be. But at a nearer view from the bridge, the cottage was plainly deserted; two of its windows gaped, glassless, and the little front garden was rank with weeds. A gaunt tabby cat eyed her alertly from a bramble-covert and whisked out of sight when she snapped her fingers. No point in going on. She returned to the village green, stopped at the first cottage—it was one of those with its small front garden bounded by a wall—pushed open the gate, walked up a stone-paved path, and knocked.

  A suspicious voice called out, “Who’s that?”

  Since it was pointless to give her name, Lucy merely knocked again. After a moment the door opened slowly. Lucy found herself being scrutinised by a tall girl who might be four or five years older than herself. It was hard to be sure; the girl was in the last stages of pregnancy. Her face was pale, haggard, and dirty; her uncombed hair had been stuffed indifferently into an elastic band; she wore slippers on bare feet and a grease-spotted, sagging brown jersey dress which dangled irregularly round her bulging figure. She seemed quite unconcerned about her own appearance, but studied Lucy with composed hostility.

  “Well?” she said. “Which department sent you? What do you want?”

  Her accent was not, as might have been expected, broad Yorkshire. It was not broad anything. Lucy had not suffered for six years at the Cadwallader without becoming tenderly familiar with the upper-crust accents of almost every country in the world; in the tones of this slattern she recognised what had long been recorded in her mental notebook as P.B.A., Pure British Aristocracy.

  “Keep your skin on, pal,” she therefore replied with equal composure, peering up at the girl through her fringe. “I’m not from the welfare. I’m a stranger here—just called for some information. Can you tell me where in the village I can find an old lady called Miss Fennel Culpepper?”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t the remotest idea,” the girl said coldly. “The village is full of old ladies.”

  “This one lives in a cottage called High Beck.”

  “Sorry; can’t help.”

  She was retreating, about to shut the door in Lucy’s face, when they were interrupted from the gate by a delivery van driver with a bit of paper in his hand, who called,

  “Can you tell me where Mr. Carados lives?”

  Plainly irritated and put out, the girl hesitated and at last said, “Here. Why?”

  “One baby’s cot, one pram, one baby’s bath. Right? Strewth, had a job to find this place. I’ll just bring the van a bit nearer.”

  The van which Lucy had vaguely noticed cruising up and down the village street as if searching for some elusive goal, was now parked two houses away. On its side it bore a severely plain sign: RAMPADGES, LONDON. The driver presently extracted three enormous objects, anonymous under layers of expensive packing.

  “Oh God; leave them here. I’ll take them in presently,” Mrs. Carados said, looking at them with dislike.

  “You didn’t ought to be carrying weights, matey, pardon me, not in your condition,” said the van driver. “You just tell me where you want them put, I daresay this young lady won’t mind giving me a hand.”

  “Of course,” agreed Lucy, poker-faced, concealing her amusement. “I’ll tell you what, too,” she went on calmly. “Why don’t we take off all these wrappings out here, you won’t want them cluttering up the place indoors. Can you spare another five minutes?” she said to the driver.

  “Blimey, yes, considering how long it took me to get here! I’m not supposed to, but I’ll take the packaging away too, if you like; bet you don’t have dustbin collections more’n every month of Sundays in a frontier post like this.”

  He produced a knife and slashed with rapid dexterity; in a short time an amazingly opulent bassinet came to view; it was tucked and rucked, squabbed and frilled, lavish with satin and lace, the sort of article one might expect to see in a ducal nursery. Again Lucy repressed a grin.

  “Best get it indoors, mum,” the driver said. “Still spitting with rain. Where’ll we put it?”

  “Oh, anywhere upstairs,” Mrs. Carados said impatiently, hardly glancing at it.

  “Sure you can manage?” the driver asked Lucy.

  “Good heavens, yes.”

  The cottage stairway, facing the front door, led straight up; Lucy, going backwards with her end of the bassinet, snatched a quick glance into the rooms on either side, one an indescribably cluttered kitchen, the other a glum living room. The two rooms upstairs were almost equally untidy, but as one was almost entirely filled by an unmade double bed it seemed best to put the cradle in the other. In due course a pink and gilt bath was added.

  “What about the pram, missus? Where’ll you have that?”

  The pram was about four feet high and four long, sprung like a perch-phaeton, glossy as a battleship.

  “Oh Christ—I don’t know. Stick it in the coal shed,” Mrs. Carados said, eyeing it with loathing. Lucy wondered if she should remind Mrs. Carados that the man ought to be tipped. It was not delicate feeling that held her back, but reluctance to part with her own scanty cash if Mrs. Carados had none.

  “Are you going to offer him a cup of tea after all his trouble?” she finally suggested.

  “God, no. Here—” The girl fished an elegant suede wallet from under a crumpled heap of newspapers and took out a pound note. She gave it to the driver as he returned from the coal shed. He hesitated, looked as if he might refuse, finally shrugged and accepted.

  “Tata, then,” he said, and drove off.

  “Can you tell me,” said Lucy, just before she was shut out for the second time, “where you got the picture hanging over the fireplace in your living room?”

  “Picture?” The girl looked at her vacantly.

  “Picture,” Lucy repeated with patience. “Adam and Eve and the serpent. Half embroidered, half painted.”

  “Oh, that funny old thing.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “God knows. I suppose Ro—my husband picked it up somewhere. I really couldn’t tell you, I’m afraid.”

  It was plain that she could hardly wait to be rid of Lucy. Why? Just natural antipathy?

  “Oh well, thanks.” Lucy shrugged, and was retreating to the gate when a car pulled up outside with a screech of brakes. It was a white
Mini. A man leapt out of it, exclaiming, “Fiona, sweetie, I’m terribly sorry I couldn’t make it sooner—”

  “Oh, hullo,” said the pregnant girl, unsmiling. She submitted to his kiss. He was in his forties, short, fair, with pale-blue eyes and a bright blue suit. He cast an inquiring glance then at Lucy, who was standing her ground.

  “Yes?” he said civilly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—? Is there anything—?”

  “Only if you can tell me whereabouts in the village old Miss Culpepper lives.”

  “Terribly sorry, we’re strangers here ourselves,” he said quickly.

  “Or where you got the picture you have hanging over your mantelpiece?”

  “It’s rather divine, isn’t it? I’ve no idea who did it, I’m afraid; part of the furnishings that came with the house. Local produce, I suppose. Well, we mustn’t keep you—” He gave Lucy a rapid, meaningless smile and hurried his wife indoors, shutting the door briskly behind him.

  Dear Max Benovek: I had a little trouble locating Aunt Fennel. English villages aren’t the cosy welcoming places full of smiling dairymaids and joking yokels that they are represented to be in the tourist literature.

  Rejoining her original course, Lucy proceeded along the village green. The sky was still dark and thunder grumbled somewhere; the red pantiled roofs shone wet. She went up to the next cottage with a light in its window and knocked. Nobody answered, so, after repeated bangs, deciding she could not make herself more conspicuous than she already felt, Lucy peered through the window, since this was one of the houses that fronted directly on to the footpath.

  She was looking into a tiny, dim front room, lit only by a log fire. A dark, clotted-pattern wallpaper absorbed most of what illumination there was, but Lucy gained a vague impression of tight-packed furniture, brass oil-lamps with fluted shades, and a lot of little pictures in oval gilt frames. Over the hearth hung a larger picture cast into shade by the shelf below it. When a log broke with a splutter of flame, light, reflected from the ceiling, suddenly threw into relief a large indigo whale, springing out of a sequinned ocean in which every wave was as regular as the tiles on the roof above.

  “In fact one can see where she got the idea,” muttered Lucy. “Lord, has she given pictures to the whole village?”

  Moving on, she heard a regular creak and rattle; some human activity must be taking place.

  Round the corner of the next cottage she found an elderly man drawing a bucket of water from a well.

  “Good afternoon,” Lucy said. “I wonder can you tell me where Miss Culpepper lives?”

  “Eh?” He straightened. “Speak oop, I canna hear you.”

  Is everybody deaf in this village, Lucy wondered, putting her question again two tones higher.

  “Miss Culpepper!”

  “Miss who? Niver ‘eard o’ her.”

  “Miss Fennel Culpepper.”

  “Oh, her. Why didn’t you say so first off?” He repeated the name pronouncing it quite differently. “T’owd lady, eh? There was two on ‘em, two owd bodies lived together oop at High Beck. One on ‘em died, t’other moved away.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, I don’t call to mind; last year, year before, ‘appen. They kept themselves to themselves, I keep myself to myself; folk round this way don’t bother each other wi’ nosey-parkering.”

  “Which of them died and which moved away?”

  “Oh, ah, I dunno. Two on ‘em there was, like as two peas in a pod. An’ which was which, who’s to say?”

  Was the old boy a bit simple, Lucy wondered. He tipped his cap forward, scratched at his gingery stubble-hair, and gazed past her with abstracted blue eyes.

  “Well, can you tell me where the one who moved away went?”

  “Eh?”

  “The one who didn’t die—where did she go? What is her address now?”

  “‘Ow should I know? She dunnot write to me!”

  “Well, can you tell me anyone who would know?”

  “Reckon Mrs. Thwaite at t’post office ‘ud be able to tell ‘ee; aye, she’d be the one to ask.” He picked up his bucket.

  “But the post office is shut.”

  “Oh, aye, Mary Thwaite’ll be down visiting her daughter-in-law at Kirby. You’ll have to wait till tomorrow, then, lass.”

  “Isn’t there anybody else who might know?” Lucy asked crossly, reflecting that for somebody who kept himself to himself he seemed well primed as to Mrs. Thwaite’s movements.

  “Nay, I dunno. Folk here keep—”

  “—Themselves to themselves. So you said.”

  “Tell tha what!” he said triumphantly. “Why dunna you go and ask t’matron oop at t’owd folk’s home? ‘Appen she’d know. A right busybody she is, allus poking her nose in things what’s no affair of hers, asking about folk’s jobs an’ who’s kin to who. You do that, she’ll put you on t’right road.” He stumped off with his bucket, muttering, “An’ if she don’t, it’s all t’same to me.”

  “Well, where is the old folk’s home?” Lucy called after him.

  “Oop at top o’ village, o’ course! T’owd hall . . .”

  Rain was setting in harder again. Lucy ran back to her car. If she was going to visit Appleby Old Hall she might as well do it in style. Then a hopeful thought struck her. If the Old Hall was now an old folk’s home, perhaps Aunt Fennel was actually in it; had decided to leave her lonely cottage for the comfort of expert care, and company . . .

  Something failed to ring true about this theory though, she decided, pulling the starter. Individualists like the embroiderer of that whale do not take readily to institutional life; besides, if Great-aunt Fennel had moved no farther than Appleby Old Folk’s home, surely the man would have known about it?

  But still, there would be no harm in asking.

  On her way down the village she made a needful stop at the red-brick public convenience. This was a cheerless, functional structure, embellished inside with the usual graffiti. “I love Sam Crossley.” “Where was Lenny Thorpe on Friday night?” “Ellen Dean is a bad girl.” “What happened up at High Beck?”

  Well, what did happen? Lucy wondered, escaping from the damp and ill-equipped place with relief. On her way out she noticed a newly-painted sign: THIS CONVENIENCE NOT TO BE USED AFTER DUSK. BY ORDER. CLERK TO THE PARISH COUNCIL.

  Why not? Was the place being used for marijuana parties? For orgies? It seemed highly improbable, but no other suggestion came to mind.

  Dear Max Benovek, do you suppose there is an active local coven at Appleby-under-Scar? Shall I have to join before I get news of Great-aunt Fennel?

  The Hall lay at a suitably seigneurial distance west of the village along a single-track but metalled road. Lucy took this at a cautious pace and it was as well she did for, rounding a bend, she was signalled to a halt by a black-cassocked figure waving at her urgently from the middle of the road.

  She braked hard, then saw with dismay that what appeared to be a corpse lay on the tarmac beyond the man who had stopped her.

  She got out of the car. The black-cassocked man grabbed her arm.

  “Do you know anything about first aid?” he demanded. “They’ve gone for help, but we should do something—I’m sure we should do something—one feels so wretchedly inadequate on occasions such as this—but surely there must be something, something we can do for the poor fellow? Oh, these drivers—I know you are one yourself but really—to knock the miserable man off his bicycle and go on without stopping is utterly inexcusable, utterly monstrous—oh, my goodness, here I stand talking while we should be attending to poor Clough, but I’m so upset I hardly know what I am saying! Do, do look at him and tell me what you think should be done!”

  He delivered all this at speed in a high-pitched nervous voice; he was an extremely thin, elderly man, very pale, obviously in the grip of shock. Lucy gently detached herself and moved o
n towards the seeming corpse, trying to suppress a feeling of terrified inadequacy.

  To her relief she realised that the prone man was not dead, though certainly unconscious. Nor could she see any blood or obvious sign of injury apart from a swelling on his bald head. He lay on his back, a few feet away from a battered bicycle. He was a weather-beaten, gnarled-looking individual; his clothes and his hands were stained with earth and he gave off a powerful reek of chemical fertiliser.

  “Poor, poor Clough,” twittered the cassocked man. “The most harmless, innocent fellow—such a thing to happen! Such a sudden way to go!”

  “Well, he hasn’t gone yet,” said Lucy. “His heart’s still beating. You say someone has sent for help?”

  “Yes, yes! They are telephoning for Dr. Adnan. But should we not do something in the meantime—undo his garments?”

  “I don’t think we ought to move him,” Lucy said doubtfully. “They always say better not, in case of internal injuries. I’ve an old blanket in my car—we could cover him up.”

  She did so, muffling the injured man up to his chin, while the priest anxiously dithered about, getting in the way.

  “Did you see who knocked him off his bicycle?” Lucy asked.

  “Alas, no! These wretched automobiles go at such a pace! I heard the motor, saw a flash of something white, but arrived too late—ah, thank goodness, here come reinforcements.”

  Lucy was somewhat taken aback by the reinforcements, which consisted of half a dozen more aged priests, who came flocking out from a gate on the right like a covey of rusty old crows. One of them hastily knelt down by the recumbent man, anointed him with something pungent and sticky from a small gold receptacle, and exclaimed in a loud voice,

  “Absolve, we beseech thee, O Lord, the soul of thy servant Samuel Ebenezer Clough from every bond of sin, that being raised in the glory of the Resurrection he may be refreshed among thy saints. Grant, O Lord, that while we lament the departure of thy servant we may always remember that we are most certainly to follow him! Give us grace to prepare for that last hour, that we may not be taken unprepared by sudden death, but may be ever on the watch . . .”