by Ashly Graham
His confidence about this was shaken when, over the weekend, he spotted two of his boon companions on the Street, and crossing over to greet them, readied himself for a hearty exchange of badinage. With any luck he would be treated to some juicy piece of gossip. But to his puzzlement and dismay, the pair looked offended, as if he were a stranger or down-and-out who was going to ask for a jump-start to his vehicle or beg for money. Then their faces set and they marched off.
Really, thought the demon manservant, to one such as himself the human condition was quite unfathomable.
*
In the pub, one of many such centres
Of the universe, the volunteer staff
Of Mission Control, on indefinite break,
Discuss the failings of their friends and kin.
Others within this Strangers’ Gallery
Go on to solve the world’s problems
And deplore the snafus that caused them.
But regarding a nearby town:
“Don’t know no one there no more,”
“Haven’t visited it for years,” and
“Wouldn’t know my way around.”
Taking my face inside
I leave it at the bar, feeding on nuts and beer
And chatting to the locals, while I admire
The shepherds’ crooks against the chimney breast
And drink and warm myself before the fire.
Through the window, stars and the coronet
Of the moon adorn the brow of the downs.
As I sit and mull and noodle
On the mind-piano, robins of flame
Dance in the grate, and prawn-eyed embers
Glow with slowly ashing secrets.
When I came back to the bar to collect my face,
It jumps up like a terrier and licks my ear
And says, “You can take me home now, gorgeous!”
Chapter Sixteen
‘’Ods bodikins!’ cried Effie, blowing through the kitchen door of the cottage and falling into a chair at the table, bosom heaving. ‘Faugh! Fegs!’ This was her normal manner of entrance and Ophelia did not look round. Had Effie crept in, she would have been worried. Inarticulate noises like the phonetics described at the front of dictionaries: sibilants, spirants, palatals, gutturals, plosives, fricatives, affricates, liquids, dentals and nasals, were common about the house.
Washing dough off her hands at the sink, Ophelia said, ‘That’s the ticket, take a load off.’ She knew the importance of giving Effie a moment to settle down after one of her ballistic entrances.
Whenever Effie was out Ophelia took over duty in the kitchen. It was the engine-room of the house, and one had to ensure that there was sufficient solid fuel in the stove cooker for the stream of products that it spewed from the torrid maw of its roasting, baking, and simmering ovens. The air was permeated with the aroma of spices. At present Ophelia was removing a wholemeal loaf from the baking oven with arm-length gloves so thick that she could hardly bend her fingers. The bread, she was glad to see, had baked to an even shade of medium brown. Removing it from the tray, she set it on a rack to cool and replaced it with a dozen rock cakes that she had just mixed.
Effie, when she was not dashing from point to point around the village, spent her days kneading, stirring, talking on the telephone, and receiving casual visitors. Something was always being brought to a boil, scrambled, seared, baked, roasted, fried, simmered, steamed, tossed, thickened, liquefied, sieved, peeled, chopped, sliced, iced, or glazed. A natural multi-tasker, she could only think properly when she had utensils in hand and the phone cradled under her chin. What bowl or pan or jug she selected and which measuring-cup, ladle, spoon, knife, whisk or rolling-pin, depended upon the mood she was in, and her state of mind was evident from how furiously or steadily she was wielding her implements.
Awaiting the raw products of her dynamism was the cooking range, a ferrous dragon with an insatiable belly of fire. At night as it slumbered it slow oven-cooked porridge for the morning while the Argus-eyed peacock feathers in the terracotta pot in the corner kept watch. During the day, when its cast-iron fire or oven doors were opened, a magmatic heat that might have been vented from the core of the earth poured into the room.
To placate it, the beast had to be stoked at intervals throughout the day with small logs and coke and kindling and household rubbish, and the fire riddled for ash as if one was scratching the stomach of a pet to rid it of fleas. Meat bones and the gristly remains of mealtime sacrifices, fruit and vegetable peelings, newspapers, circulars, rejected opinions, unwanted advice: all were physically or virtually incinerated or cremated. The range gave the impression that it would have consumed people too, given the opportunity: tradesmen, meter-readers, travelling salesmen, burglars...no one would be safe who stepped indoors while the occupants were out; for the cottage was never locked.
A step up away from the stove and preparation and washing-up areas were pine cupboards, a dresser, and an oak farmhouse table where the women took their meals, talked, read and informally entertained. They even took naps there with head on folded arms. The formal dining room and the equally ignored living room were very rarely used socially, and for the most part housed storage boxes and floor to ceiling bookcases of the hundreds of paperback crime thrillers that Effie devoured as avidly as she did cake, and the many cookbooks that she was given as presents and never consulted.
From her command centre in the kitchen Effie remained in touch with the outside world via a black Edwardian Bakelite rotary telephone, which she activated by inserting a well-chewed pencil into the dough-encrusted circles of the dial. The flex of the frayed cord that issued from the horn-shaped mouthpiece had been curlicued into pigtails by Effie’s carrying the phone around with her as she talked and twirling the handset while trying to do too many things at once. Visitors wondered whether her megaphone voice had need of the phone to reach her communicants.
Her words were accompanied by a jungle-beat of wooden spoons on copper vessels, the clatter and crash of saucepans and skillets on the boiling-plate and simmering-plate hobs with their insulated lids, the crack of eggs on the edges of enamelled bowls, whir of beaters, growl of grinders, slap of batter in basins, springing of scales; and the occasional scream of the timer that was wound for short temporal regulations other than the boiling of eggs, which was a judgement call. Flour settled like snow on snow on every surface, and following some of her lengthier conversations Effie might find that she had baked a batch of something unawares.
Today, to assist her friend in recovering from whatever it was that had upset her, and which she would shortly be hearing about, Ophelia poured Effie a cup of tea from the double-handled Brown Betty that was sitting on the hotplate, eased a piece of chocolate sponge onto a side-plate from a platter decorated with flowers and wavy edges of faded gilt, and slid it across the table to her.
When she was sufficiently restored Effie was ready to describe her experience. ‘That man Dark is the worst. Except for his boss-lady, who is the worst of the worst. Though for worseness there’s little to tell between them. They’re a sort of combination of worsity, worse luck.’ She paused for a gulp of tea as she awaited Ophelia’s,
‘Why, whatever has happened?’
‘I bumped into Diemen and Dark on the Street. Literally bumped, because I gave Dark a shove towards a pile of horse dung he was stepping around, and some of it got on his shoe. Diemen said to me, “Just so you know, Effie, the days of Lady Liberal and Father Nice Guy are over.” And Dark echoed, “Our patience has run out. Our tolerance is at an end. Enough is enough. Prepare ye the way of the lady.” And I said, quick as a flash and witty too—what was it I said? Oh yes, “I couldn’t agree more, your days are indeed over. Prepare ye to meet your baker.” That was rather fine, on the spurt of the moment, wasn’t it? Prepare to meet your baker!’
‘Very good, dear.’
‘Anyway, Diemen said you should expect a letter.’
Ophelia reached for the open env
elope on the table and passed it over with a sigh and a piece of shortbread. ‘It was in the box when I went out to pick some herbs. There’s no stamp, so I assume her servant hand-delivered it.’
As Effie put on her reading glasses and scrutinized the letter her eyes bulged and face empurpled. The address was formal and commenced with reference to “a most unsatisfactory meeting,” and “failure of compliance”; and it went on to make mention of “egregious” this’s and “irregular” that’s, and there were assertions of “in the strongest possible terms”, “be in no doubt as to our determination to…”, and “you leave us with no alternative but…”.
‘This really takes the biscuit,’ blustered Effie; and her hand hovered over another plate as she tried to decide between Bourbon, Garibaldi, gingersnap, and ladyfinger. She plumped for more shortbread.
‘I’m a little offended myself,’ Ophelia ventured, not wishing to compound Effie’s outrage. ‘Mrs Diemen seems determined to find an excuse to sink her teeth into us.’
Effie bit into the shortbread. ‘It’s hardly surprising,’ she said, spraying crumbs; ‘we’re dealing with a woman who has an arrow-tipped tail.’ She finished her tea and Ophelia topped up her cup. ‘But we are made of sterner stuff that either of them think, aren’t we?’ Brandishing the half-eaten shortbread, ‘“Aux armes, citoyens!” Plenty of people have responded to my appeal for them to write letters to the Bishop, and the only reason we haven’t heard anything back yet is that he’s on holiday. Mrs Barstow’s cousin, as you know, is a friend of the Bishop’s secretary and she told her he was in Torremolinos.’
‘It would seem that he’ll have plenty on his plate when he gets back.’
Effie reached for a Garibaldi. ‘Strange place, Torremolinos, for our bishop to go on a bargain break, don’t you think? Aren’t they all Roman Candles there?’ She dabbed up a loose raisin and verified that it was fruit rather than insect before popping it into her mouth.
Ophelia pursed her lips. ‘Spain is predominantly a Catholic country. I hope the plan doesn’t backfire. You usually say it’s to our advantage, the Bishop ignoring us. Being only a bishop suffragan, and ambitious, he’s hoping for promotion. Until that happens he’s stuck with three-hundred-odd parishes in Harrumphshire of which ours is the smallest. I also got it from Mrs Barstow a while back that our file is the fattest of all of them, and not just because of everything you had to do on my behalf to get me appointed here. If you stir things up too much, Effie, outside of the kitchen, the Bishop might make an official Visitation, and that could as easily be the end of me as Mrs Diemen.’
‘Oh, that was yonks ago, and as to the other stuff…well, d’you remember the dirty pictures of the Archdeacon I used to get you appointed, the ones I bought off the madam in Helmston of him prancing around in his underwear with that girl…what was her name?’
Ophelia’s jaw tightened. ‘That’s not quite how…I would like to think that…I don’t…you assured me that you’d burned those pictures.’
‘I did, reluctantly. But I may be getting more.’
‘More? What more?’
‘Of the Bishop this time. The Helmston madam was in touch last week, business still going strong, she’s mostly turned it over to her daughter to run now…anyway, she asked if I was interested. I…’
‘Effie!’
‘I told her I’d think about it. Him being a bishop makes them a deal more expensive, and it’s been an inflationary market.’
‘Effie! No!’
‘Tiffanie, that was her name.’
‘Whose name?’
‘The Archdeacon’s bit of fluff. The Bishop favours a girl called Jody, takes her to restaurants, tells people she’s his niece. For all I know Jody’s on the Costa del Sol with him right now.’
‘Oh!’
Effie frowned at a compilation of brownies and reduced the assembly by one. ‘It could be a good investment. There’s the fluorescent lighting at the church that Mrs Bulbuss agreed to pay for. Church House nixed that. And there is the still unfinished business of the toilet block, for which we’re flush with funds thanks to Mrs Isor, which I want built where that tumbledown gardener’s shed was that finally tumbled down without assistance from the wind. Church House stalled on the toilets too, said we would need a Faculty, or official permission, which won’t be granted because a few illegible gravestones would have to be moved so the bog can be connected to the sewer.’
‘Effie, really…’
Effie picked up a ladyfinger and wagged it at her. ‘All I’m saying, Ophelia, is that if the cake cuts both ways into halves, and we have the evidence before us that it does, there’s no reason why one can’t have it and eat it too. Given the right incentive, namely the return of those photographs and his usual table for two at the Curry Mahal, the Bishop can knock Church House on the head and tell it to approve everything we want if I come down on him hard enough.’ Effie popped the ladyfinger into her mouth.
‘Everything you want. Those gravestones, Effie, may I remind you, include those of our Victorian benefactor Dr Brough, the gentleman who is responsible for our one and only stained-glass window, and his extended family. His will had a provision in it that the fund he created, the one that pays for maintenance of the churchyard, is to be given to a rest home for donkeys in the event we don’t use it for the designated purpose.’
‘There’s more’n a few asses I know’ll be happy to know that.’
I don’t think building toilets over the Broughs’ final resting place complies with the spirit of the bequest.’
‘There are no Broughs alive around here now that I know of to do anything about it, and none deceased that comes to church. So far as I’m aware all the Broughs are still comfortably tucked up six feet under...mostly, there’s a femur poked up last year, little Suzy was playing with it until I told her to go home and get her beach bucket and spade and bury it again.’
Ophelia felt a headache coming on.
Effie swallowed the last of the brownie, and used a finger to prise loose a morsel from behind a molar. ‘Actually, I’ve figured out a way we can bodge the toilet block design and get around the problem by only cutting Jack Boniface’s head off. I’ve spoken to Jack and he said that’s OK with him because he’s had no use for his head since 1851, and it’ll be good for a laugh in church and a terrific bride-scarer. It’ll mean a rather modernist, more angular, elevation and involve stealing a yard, perhaps four feet, closer to the porch, and losing the view of the downs from the Ladies’, but it’s doable.
‘You know, it’s a complete mystery to me how people’ve managed without toilets at churches over the centuries, ’specially in the days when women dressed up more. Maybe they wore nappies instead of corsets, or ran catheters down their legs into glass bottles tied round their ankles. These days half the congregation has its legs crossed by the end of Service and some don’t stay for coffee because they’re bursting. I miss out on gallons of gossip from the teeny-weeny bladder club as a result.’
Ophelia looked grim. ‘Can we change the subject? You seem still to be eating…’—Effie was evening up the chocolate sponge—‘…and the only thing that really matters right now is this letter and what to do about it. You’re supposed to be responsible for my correspondence, it was a condition of my being appointed on the strength of dirty pictures.’
‘Well, for starters we’re not going to answer the letter, it doesn’t come from any authority we recognize. What we have to do is act. We absolutely have to find a way ASAP of sending Mrs Diemen packing with that tail of hers firmly between her legs. Question is how, and I haven’t had time to think properly yet. Of course she thinks we don’t stand the ghost of a chance against her. But chins up, never say die, that’s my motto, and…Eureka!’
Ophelia’s headache arrived just as Effie’s fist thumped the table hard enough to make the plates and what was left on them jump. ‘What is it, Effie?’
‘That’s it! Diemen and Dark don’t know about them yet!’
Ophelia
felt a frisson of foreboding. ‘Who is them?’
‘The ghosts, of course. We must mobilize the ghosts. It’s high time they made themselves useful, and there’s a ton of pent-up energy there.’
‘Effie, no!’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I forbid it.’
‘Well, we’ll see, shall we? Anyhoo, ease up for a bit on encouraging them to trickle up to the Light, Ophelia, will you? Please?’
Chapter Seventeen
The devil lady was depressed.
As a symptom, it seemed, of her state of mind, the black hell cats that had appeared and disappeared during the remodelling of the Rectory were back. She came across them all over the house, and under the furniture, and during the daytime she often found several of them curled on her bed where they shed so much hair on the counterpane that the DL, who was allergic to cats, kept waking up at night itching and sneezing uncontrollably and having to go to the bathroom to put drops in her eyes that were as red as those of the intruders. Wherever she was about the house they sought her out and rubbed up against her even though with their sixth sense they must have known that she did not like them. They gave birth under the stairs and in dark corners, and had the facility to open and unlock doors with the rough pads on their paws and prehensile tails.
The smell of smoked salmon, kippers and anchovies drove the cats to ecstasies of distraction, and although the manservant was under orders to chase them out of the house with a broomstick before serving breakfast and tea, there were always one who eluded him by hiding and let the others back in.
Another annoyance was the manservant himself: ever since his pioneering expedition to the pub, he was strutting about Hell’s half-acre with his nose in the air and neglecting those of his duties that he considered beneath him, such as vacuuming and dusting.
