The Grace in Older Women

by Jonathan Gash

  'Fantastic, Lovejoy!' Hilda cried. They crowded round, talking excitedly. 'We'll be just in time!'

  'How long we got?' Vernon checked a fob watch. Lovely, old. That explained the vibes when we'd met.

  'One hour, Vernon. Let's go!' cried Hilda.

  Beatific, I smiled at Gwena. We left her fuming on the pavement.

  14

  They had a small coach, fifteen seater for four couples and two extra women. Age range oh, sixtyish down to thirties. Chatty, going for laughs as all Americans do when mobhanded. Hilda asked what I'd done to my mouth. I milked sympathy telling them I'd stumbled in the dark, which got us onto street lighting. They had strong views. As we pulled away from the fuming Gwena we were into suing town councils for street maintenance. God, but Yanks are litigious. They know their rights.

  We left town on the eastern trunk road to the estuaries. Then we swung north after a mile or two, coastward but more rural. All in all, a journey shortened by needling, quips, their mood of banter. But I was glad when we made it to the destination.

  Except I hated it.

  Dragonsdale's no place for me. Rural, bonny river, thatched cottages, fourteenth-century flintstone church, farms, a forest sulking black-green on the horizon, utterly countrified. I groaned miserably as we climbed down.

  'Oh, Lovejoy!' Hilda exclaimed, tears starting. 'Isn't this the most pretty, well, England you ever did see?'

  ‘Aye.' Enthusiasm has limits.

  'Don't be shy, Lovejoy, boo-oah,' said Vernon. 'That scene is straight out of the most famed landscape Old Masters.'

  'It's so. . .sweet,” cried Mahleen, a fortyish lady with gold, literally shiny gold, teeth, and gold pendant earrings that touched her shoulders. She wore a gold scarf and had, I assure you, gold-flecked hair on a gold pony tail bee. Her stockings had gold clocks, her heels shone gold. Her astrakhan coat had gold cuffs. She smiled gold lipstick. I thought her gorgeous, though her pals were critical. They made laughing comments. She gave as good as she got.

  'Glad you like it.' I wondered why the little lane we'd stopped in was familiar. Two cottages, a distant farmhouse, the church a furlong off. Not deserted by any means, but definitely rural.

  Mahleen called her Wilmore, a chubby Friar Tuck, always losing his spectacles so he couldn't see a damned thing. He loved golf, and more golf. That's all that can be said of any golfer, anywhere. He admired the countryside in smiling silence, mentally laying out yet more golflinks.

  'Brilliant country, Mahleen,' Wilmore said. Two eighteens, before my very eyes.'

  Then why not get on with it? I couldn't help thinking. A clubhouse, concrete car parks, lights and civilization out here instead of those silent watching trees, that lurking river, hedgerows shielding vast acres from encroaching mankind. Bring in the neon lights, let roads shove our boundaries out, eliminate Nature's unknown.

  'Now, where is it?' Hilda the Organizer demanded of the driver, a taciturn uniformed man hunched from years at his wheel.

  'End place, lady.'

  'This wayeeee!' cried Hilda, and we were off down the lane.

  We walked in the ruts. No vehicles this way evidently, except to make deliveries. Mahleen quizzed me, should she pay Jox to be made a dame or not? I said it was up to her, recalling meeting Hilda and Vern at Jox's daft fraud. I was beginning to work out whether I ought to start it up myself, actually, because Mahleen's friend Wilhelmina-same age, but blues, no gold - from New Jersey said she'd been seriously thinking of forking out for a ladyhood. The price Jox had quoted her set me coughing, especially as I was still owed for dressing up like a pillock.

  'Howdy!' Jox thundered, speak of the devil, emerging.

  The group enthused greetings. Jox shook hands. I'd never seen so much handshaking. Americans never stop.

  'And Lovejoy!' he said, abruptly less hearty.

  'Wotcher, Jox.'

  'I love that wotcher, Lovejoy.' That from Nadette, a slender business lady, always well groomed, from Ark-an-saw, 'not like this bunch.' It always got a laugh. 'We need Lovejoy along because he's a natural. Ain't that so, Jerry?'

  'Sure is.' Jerry, her husband, never smiled. He seemed gloomy, except for his plus fours, chequerboard shirt and yellow boater.

  'Good!' Jox's enthusiasm fell further. I wondered, natural? 'Mr. Hopestone is waiting where it actually happened.’

  That set them off speculating nineteen to the dozen. I hadn't a notion what we were going to see. Something rustic? As long as it wasn't gruesome, like a two-headed calf. I followed, Mahleen asking about my divvying gift.

  'It's nothing,' I said, wary lest I was dragged into something else. I had that silver ditchery to do for Sabrina, some partnership thing to arrange with the Misses Dewhurst, Beth to con out of her antique Bilston enamels, Tinker to find - where the hell was the old soak? -and discover who was going to steal Whistlejack. And see Juliana, see if she truly was a forger.

  'It sure is!' she insisted. 'You tell me, or I'll - '

  'I get a sick feeling from a genuine antique.'

  'See?' she breathed, but Wilmore was ogling the landscape with a developer's theodolite eyes. 'Lovejoy's real!’

  'This land for sale, Lovejoy?' Wilmore asked.

  'Hush up!' Mahleen spat in golden fury. 'This isn't speculator land, Wilmore! This is family land. History!'

  'That's so, Mahleen,' Jox said smoothly, grabbing her and whisking her to the front. 'The ancient lordships hereabouts . . .'His sales pitch. I followed on with Wilmore.

  'Our countryside is reverting to the wild,' I joked ruefully. 'Some villages . . . Well, young folk want a town, chance to dance, jobs other than ploughman, milkmaid.'

  'Same all over, Lovejoy.' Wilmore still had his speculator's brain in. 'But buy a few farms, set up a Grand Prix course. County championships, a real possibility.'

  Something clicked. Hadn't Jox said something about. . . ?'Somebody set up a wildlife scheme. Ancient deeds scuppered it. But give it a go. I'd rather see anything except a wilderness.'

  'We'll talk about it, Lovejoy.'

  A bloke was standing by a field gate. Jox introduced him all round. I stood back, eyeing him. Twenty-sevenish, thinning hair, sparse frame, a born smoker doomed to cough his life in bedsits eating baked beans. Jox was making an announcement.

  'Ladies and gentlemen.' He spoke in hushed tones. 'This is Mr. Hugo Hopestone, countryman born and bred. A churchgoer, he has something of serious consequence to report. First I'll give a little background to Mr. Hopestone's story. I think you'll agree it is epoch-shattering.'

  Jox avoided my gaze. Hugo was as much a countryman as me, which is nil, nought, big oh. This was another Jox-type plunge to zilch profit, no royalties and no repeat fees.

  'Let me first say that our fabled East Anglia of historic renown has a lurid past. Sinister stories abound. Eyewitness accounts, guaranteed reports, made in all good faith, prove these significant events.'

  He waxed eloquent, enlarging on local fables. It's sort of true. East Anglia has everything from headless cavaliers to grey nuns spooking the local boozer. I tried not to listen, but Jox's pathetic delivery drew me in. I'm not superstitious, oh no. Not me. I mean, who'd believe junk about ghosts, spirits, poltergeists? It's for kiddies and Hollywood, when real stories have dried up.

  'Now Hugo will tell you his tale.' Jox raised a hand, on oath. 'Hugo Hopestone, is your story made up?'

  Jox sounded truculent, glaring accusingly at Hopestone there in the gateway of a fallow field.

  'Every word is true, sir,' Hugo said. 'Absolutely.'

  Our crowd exhaled together, thrilled.

  'Go ahead, then.' Jox glared at us - still not me, though - in turn, then with gravity at his stooge.

  'I was walking through this field, ladies and gentlemen, in late autumn. I heard a humming noise. A great ball of light passed by. It settled in the field's centre.' He pointed. 'There.'

  'There? Right there?' some cried.

  'How big was it?' Wilmore demanded.

  'I was blinded
. It must have been six feet wide.'

  They began firing questions: was there wind, was it pitch dark, a moon, was he frightened, drunk?

  'I'd been at a friend's house in Dragonsdale. I left at nine thirty. When I woke, it was gone eleven. I was the other side of that wood, in afield.'

  'What had happened between those times?' Hilda asked, agog. ‘I was abducted by creatures I had never seen before, lady.' 'Abducted!' several shrilled. Mahleen turned, awed. 'You see, Lovejoy? This is for real.'

  'Nordic or a Grey?' I spoke up. 'Which were they, Hugo?"

  He looked at Jox, who cried, 'Let Hugo speak!'

  'The recollections came to me after a day or two.' Hugo gamely stuck to his phoney script. 'They were small, big dark eyes, a slit for a mouth. Pearly skins. So little I'd almost say dwarfs.'

  'Little People!' Vernon sighed. 'That phrase is so telling!'

  'Greys! They were Greys, then!' Mahleen exclaimed breathless. Wilmore caught my eye. He didn't believe any of this either. He judged the distance along some imagined fairway.

  'The question is,' Jox took over smoothly, with one foot on the gate for height, 'what these creatures were. I have the testimony of the local doctor, who examined Hugo the day after the abduction. Hugo had burns along his chest, exactly where the pads of some electrocardiograph would go!'

  'They stripped and examined me,' Hugo said. 'They took a sample of blood. Then I just woke.'

  'You hear them speak at all?' an intense man asked. He was our one stuffed shirt, forever taking notes and clicking a stop watch. He talked lovingly into a dictaphone.

  'Yes. Like a distant twittering. It was non-stop.'

  'Hugo,' I said. 'Did you read of the UFO conference at Sheffield? The Nordic extraterrestrials being gentle wizards, and the Greys being evil little trolls.' I tried not to sound cynical. 'Abducting humans for genetic experiments.'

  'I haven't heard.'

  Jox started up angrily, 'This is a genuine straightforward -'

  Then we were interrupted by a portly man in country tweeds. I'd last seen him lighting candles at St Edmund's in Fenstone. He limped forward, one leg trailing.

  'This gathering is illegal,' he pronounced in a deep baritone. 'William Geake, parish churchwarden.'

  That caused a stir. Americans are all lawyers, being born with law like we get Original Sin.

  'Nonsense!' Jox agitatedly tried to hold us.

  'Church demesne extends over this land,' the stout boomer said. 'Material use conflicts with religious aims.' But Yanks also know how to complain.

  'Outrageous!' Hilda said in a band saw voice. 'We've paid!’

  'Please, folks,' from Jox, knowing failure.

  That can't be,' I piped up. 'I have a friend in business here. He has a mobile, a Sex Museum, but the principle's the same.'

  He fixed me, unyielding. 'There are ancient charters that restrict . . .' et legal cetera.

  'Mr. Geake. You're in the wrong parish. Dragonsdale.'

  He smiled bleakly. That gate's the Fenstone-Dragonsdale line.'

  Rubbish, of course, but he carried it off, giving his spiel in portentous tones that would have scared a bishop. Another Jox loser. We dispersed, making for the coach. The one-sided argument, Jox versus pomp and circumstance, became heated. I caught up with Wilmore. I needed a sane ally, but a golfer would have to do.

  'You using those peripherally weighted golf clubs yet, what, Big Emma? Made a fortune for that Long Island schoolteacher, eh?'

  He grinned, pleased. 'Nearly right, Lovejoy. Sure. Great discovery. I never did like graphite heads. Perimeter weighting in metal-wood's all the rage now. Inner septums, o' course.'

  'Course,' I said airly, as if I knew what he was on about. I'd heard two golfers talking on the village bus. I've nothing against discoveries, though I'd rather they be rediscoveries, like Hector Berlioz's Solemn Mass lately. It gives human life a better sense of fitness. 'Need finance, Wilmore?'

  His grin slid into wariness. 'I got most. I just don't know the rules here, Lovejoy.'

  Who did? Talk again, Wilmore,' I said quietly. 'I know somebody who'll advise you, as a favour to me.'

  'What's in it for you?'

  I like Yanks. No inhibitions about gelt. If Wilmore'd been local, reaching here would have taken a year.

  'A woman friend,' I said, trying to look shamefaced.

  'I understand, Lovejoy. Talk again. We're at the George.'

  We ended with Jox wringing his hands, desperate not to give refunds. He appealed to me, God, the universe.

  'Look,' he said, anguished, 'please explain to Miss Priscilla. It wasn't my fault.'

  'Miss Priscilla who?' from me, suddenly alert.

  'Dewhurst. Arranges these astrology tours. They run a - '

  The driver closed the door on Jox. I ahemed as the disappointed group started chatting and grumbling. Complaints, refunds, rebellion was in the air.

  'Look, mate,' I told him quietly, 'you'll have a riot on your hands. How about taking them to, like, Whychwe Priory, down the estuary? I'll do the commentary . . .'

  With relief, he set off down the coast road. I made a shy announcement, got a round of applause when I told of the ghost who walks there.

  'Can't promise she'll show,' I told everybody blithely. 'But I hear she's gorgeous. Give me first chance, right?'

  That set them whooping. We bowled eastwards. Whychwe Priory was where Whistlejack's portrait was. I couldn't help glancing round the merry little group. So these were the Misses Dewhursts', and I the twindles' partner? I learn something new every day, especially about myself. And my mistakes.

  As we went, I told a few merry tales of this 'supernatural coast', as some writers call these sealands. There's nothing like East Anglia for phantoms. They do odd things.

  On the 'strood', the sea-track to Mersea Island, Roman legionaries stand guard, knee-deep in the North Sea's flowing tides. At Walberswick, the famous Whisperers sigh of an evening on the sea breeze, and the ghosts of the old man and little boy wait for the ferry but never get on, vanishing as the boat approaches the hard. At Cromer, it's the Hell Hound that puts the wind up you. You get enticed into the Wash's murky waters, near Snettisham, by their renowned Sirens, and you may never be seen again, for you'll be shown round their enthralling ocean caves for ever. But you'll never escape the terrible Sea Serpent of Kessingland, near Lowstoft, so don't go strolling their lovely beaches on your own.

  To scattered applause, I subsided and sat to watch us approach the low sealands. It's everywhere in East Anglia. The ghost of Cymbeline, Shakespeare's hero, mourns his lost kingdom in my very own village, where his earthwork ramparts loom in the loneliest wood in the world. And the Shining Boy, ten years old, stares ceaselessly of an evening at a house in my lane (not mine thank God; I don't believe in ghosts, and I mean that fervently). And the ghosts of two men fight with scythes, unceasing and murderous, by our old church -

  'Aaargh!' I yelped, striking out.

  'Lovejoy, honey! Wake up! We're here!'

  Hilda, grabbing my arm. I must have nodded off from all the excitement. I blotted my damp forehead and tried a smile.

  'Good. I'll take you round.' I came to. 'A lovely Old Master wants to see us . . .' I played it from there, getting them laughing as we alighted and herded through the arch.

  But something occurred. If East Anglia was riddled with supernatural phenomena, wasn't it odd that one particular patch was spared anything like that? Very peculiar, to say the least, that the parish of St Edmund's in Fenstone was blessed with yawnsome anonymity. More striking still, no matter whatever tried to happen there, nothing - nothing at all - ever did.

  The suspicion intrigued me, as we went between beautiful lawns where peacocks strolled. Whatever wanted to happen got stymied, stifled, closed down. Even the most innocent occurrence was kiboshed - like Hugo Hopestone's phoney tale of extraterrestrials, for instance, the UFO tales told all over the world, to entertain tourists for a few pence.

  Before, I'd only guessed, an
d not cared much. Now, I began to worry, and I mean really worry. Should I have mentioned the sex display trailer, implicated Tryer and Chemise? There was the celibate priest in St Edmund's, and the pretty Juliana's unshakable convictions -

  'Money, please,' the chap in the booth said. 'How many?'

  Action time, and not a second to think. 'Listen, mate.' I sprang to the fore. k Let us all in for half price, and my partners - they're big business ladies locally - promise to bring in ten more coachloads tomorrow. Okay?'

  He eyed me with suspicion. 'How can I be sure?'

  'Look.' I beamed, exuding honesty. ‘Let me explain . . .'

  15

  We had a whale of a time. I laughed like a drain during that visit. The Americans own the world, but they had me almost falling down at their joshing, leg-pulling, outright onslaughts. It took my breath away when Mahleen, golden she-god of our cavalcade, said with affability when Wilmore made a remark, 'Yeah, well, you can ignore Wilmore, Lovejoy. He's a slave-owning Republican, Sow-therrrrn States, honey chile,' which set everybody arguing heatedly. But it was all over in a trice, and they were back to their exclamations, admiring, pointing out features of Whychwe Priory, trying to get the peacocks to fan tails, doing battle over camera lenses, making us all pose by the roof tower.

  We had tea laid on - me the big organizer, the man in the booth my lifelong pal, owing to the backhander I'd promised him tomorrow. Incidentally, I'd agreed on thirty per cent, would you believe, which rankled. I should have beat him down to fifteen. It still narks. Okay, so it was all falsehood, but you have to keep faith, right? I sometimes forget what's made up and what's not.

  Maybe this caused me misgiving. But I put the feeling away and went round the priory's great rooms, the chapel (lovely ancient windows, but nicking them honestly never crossed my mind). And we ogled Whistlejack. Lovely great oil painting, beautifully lit. Animal paintings are the pits, but this almost made me like horses. It rears, profile view, colours alive and shining. Over the fireplace is a portrait of Stubbs himself, by his pal Ozias Humphrey. The room, sure enough, was lowered to take the massive oil, so two levels, with four gorgeous chairs by 'King' Chippendale. I had to sit down, while my friends worried and sent people for glasses of water and argued -God, Yanks argue. In the same few square feet, a Chippendale display cabinet. The William Vile (no kinder man, despite his name) chest of drawers proved enough to bring me round. I was off explaining, loving every minute.