A Fall from Grace

by Robert Barnard

  Somehow or other Charlie was going to have to step deeper and deeper into the picture of what had gone on in the last days of Rupert Coggenhoe’s inglorious existence.

  CHAPTER 15

  Life Stories

  It was beginning to look like being quite a night. Like most good parties its origins were obscured in the mists of alcohol. At some point and for some reason several inhabitants of Slepton Edge had decided to go over to the Duke of Kent’s in Shelf for a bit of a pre-Christmas piss-up. The Duke’s had an enviable reputation for food, so anyone who wanted to combine the piss-up with a nosh-up could easily do so. Then someone remembered that Desmond Pinkhurst would be home that Sunday, so the whole occasion swelled in size and became an impromptu welcome-home for Desmond, though The Wild Duck was continuing until Christmas, when its strong-minded social vision would be succeeded in Sheffield by Aladdin, His Cat and the Seven Dwarfs, a satiric pantomime dreamed up by some bright spark who had failed to sell the idea to the BBC.

  So there they all were—half the village, some with children, all with a healthy thirst that gladdened the sight of the landlord. Charlie, sitting with his pint in a corner with a good view (Felicity was driving—one of the advantages of a pregnant wife, in Charlie’s opinion), watched and listened and had to restrain himself from saying, “Shh! Go away,” when from time to time someone came up to talk to him. The only people lacking were the Carlsons, and Charlie missed them. They were making a joint appearance on local radio, a piece of disguised electioneering. But Charlie doubted anyway if this was the sort of occasion when Chris’s agony aunt gifts would have been put to use, except perhaps by the very drunk in the half hour before closing time.

  One voice predominated in the cacophony. Desmond Pinkhurst’s, being trained to carry, carried.

  “The really surprising thing is the offers I’ve been getting! Not a great wave or anything—not like that dreadful Far Eastern tidal wave with the name nobody can remember—but still a definite trickle, one after another, so that one can choose, which is a delicious feeling at my age.”

  “What do you think you will choose?” asked the voice of Harvey Buckworth.

  “Well, of course I don’t have to choose anything!” Desmond said happily. “I can return to Slepton and go on just as before. And I shall have a break, no doubt about that . . . But I think I’m most tempted by the thought of Old Gobbo and the Globe.”

  “Who in God’s name is Old Gobbo?” came the voice of Belle Costello.

  “Shakespeare, dear girl. The Merchant of Venice. A sheer comedy part, so in some ways a step backward for poor old Desmond. But the thought of performing at the Globe, in just the conditions of Shakespeare’s time, and so close to the audience you can see if they’re getting the jokes—so unlike television, where I made my name! But there are other possibilities too. Sir Anthony Absolute at Richmond, Captain Shotover at Hull, even King Lear at Colchester. But that offer was Colchester’s mistake, and I shan’t compound it by taking them up on it. Giggled at by Essex girls. I couldn’t bear it.”

  “Have there been any television offers?” came the question from the little knot of people around him. Charlie thought he recognized the voice of Anne Michaels.

  “Dear lady . . . dear young lady, I should say. People always want to know that. There are other means of dramatic expression than that horrible little box. I may sound ungrateful, but think how much attention is paid to those flickering images on the screen—or how little, I should say. Half the nation is slumped before it, three parts asleep. The other half is just waiting to press the zapper to see if the other twenty channels they have on offer will have something more likely to arouse a scintilla of interest in their tiny minds. No, I’m for real people on real seats looking at things happening on a good old stage. Just like they did at the Globe. Why do we always imitate the worst and not the best things in the American Way of Life?”

  The little group around him seemed to be shifting away as Desmond gave a battering to the cornerstone of the home and family existence. At least they didn’t pretend that they hardly ever watched it. Charlie noted Harvey Buckworth, previously on the edge of the group, now moving forward to have the chance of a word privately with the new Great Man. A minute or two later he pounced, sitting down tentatively beside Desmond.

  “I was wondering, Mr. Pinkhurst, whether you’d—well, I expect you know that we have a drama stream here, at Westowram High, I mean, and I wondered if, one day when you’re not too busy—”

  For a drama teacher Buckworth had very little facility in special pleading. Desmond Pinkhurst turned to him with a dangerous smile on his face.

  “Ah! A drama stream. A special course to teach the tiny tots and the teenage aspiring media darlings how to—”

  “We don’t have any tiny tots.”

  “—how to ‘make it’ in the world of soap operas, police dramas, reality TV—what can that mean?—and sitcoms. I speak as one who once sitcommed himself to professional extinction. I must say I fail to see why state education should be laying on special facilities—I presume you are a professional facility?—to prepare children for a life on the fringes of the acting trade. Is that kind? Is that realistic? Ask yourself what happened to the child stars of my youth. What is Hayley Mills doing these days? What became of John Howard Davis? The truth is that grown-up boy stars slide into something called management or do something with a high-falutin’ title on the outskirts of the pop industry. And the girls ‘dwindle’ into wives, as dear Millimant describes it in a play you won’t know.”

  “The Way of the World,” said Harvey Buckworth bravely.

  “Ah, you do know! Forgive me. But I pose the question: Is it kind to prepare children for a career in which there will be very little call for their tiny and specialized talents?”

  “You could ask the same about the drama schools.”

  “I could indeed. But there they would enjoy high-quality tuition and get career advice from professionals. But let me lay my cards on the table. This is not the reason why I am going to refuse the request that you have not yet made to come and talk to your ‘stream.’ I was an actor for thirty years before my twenty years of sabbatical leave from it. I love the profession, the atmosphere, even some of the people. I would never try to put off budding actors with talent and the necessary survival skills to enter it. I am refusing you because some time ago—last year, I think—I picked up something said by one of your star actresses, the young lady who a few minutes ago was in the group around me here. I picked it up with these ears trained in the distant past to catch the still, small voice of the prompter. And what she said to her friend was: ‘Pinkhurst? Oh, Harvey says he’s just a has-been. He says he’d only tell us things that are useless in today’s acting market.’ Now, if you’ll excuse me, dear boy, this has-been will wish the never-was good evening and good night.”

  And he got up, looking around, and perhaps regretting that Chris Carlson was not there to have a really good heart-to-heart with, he rambled over to talk to Ken Warburton and his wife, the victims of the drama group’s earlier attentions. Charlie sat for a moment admiring Desmond’s style. He wished he could say “dear boy” with that wonderful diminishing effect. For the second time in recent weeks he had a tiny twinge of regret that he had not tried for drama school. He told himself sternly that he had opted for real-life drama instead of the manufactured kind. He thought of the grotesque unreality of The Bill. But he had to admit that the thought of an audience applauding him would have been a fantastic experience.

  Then he heard his wife’s voice and he went over to where she was standing. He soon realized that the couple she was talking to were the Michaels.

  “Mrs. Peace, I think we owe you an apology,” said Mr. Michaels with a rather uncertain air, not quite knowing how to put what he wanted to say. “Well, not an apology exactly, but unfortunately we’ve found that some of the things we said when we talked before are not true, or at least not quite true.”

  “Oh dear,” said
Felicity with a straight face.

  “I mean, we’ve learned a lot about Anne since then, not all of it . . . what we’d wish to hear, to be perfectly frank. And, looking back, we think you must have known a bit about the things that we’ve just learned. You were . . . reserved-like, when we talked.”

  “I suppose I was. I heard her . . . and the little gang of children, not far from where we live, and I followed them.”

  “That is what we’ve discovered,” eagerly said Mrs. Michaels. “Of course she put a stop to it when she became friendly with your poor father, and that’s another thing we’ve got to be grateful for, but it sounds really horrible, what went on with those children, and them quite a bit younger than she was.”

  “I think it was horrible.”

  “Why didn’t the school put a stop to it? They were all children from the Westowram High.”

  “I think it was things they were doing at school that led to it.”

  “Well, it must have been,” said Mrs. Michaels, seizing on it. “I mean, we’re not prejudiced people. Live and let live, that’s our motto. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous if you couldn’t move from town to town just as you pleased? It would be like the old Iron Curtain countries. But now a lot of things fit into place—questions Anne used to ask us, where people came from, and that.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Like your husband here, I’m afraid.” Charlie nodded, with an appearance of amiability. “Whether he came from the West Indies or Africa. I said it was probably Brixton.”

  “Well done!” said Charlie. “You were spot on.”

  “Was I?” said Mrs. Michaels, reddening with pleasure. “Was I really? Well, it was just said to shut her up. Likewise when she asked whether Mr.—sorry, Inspector Costello came from Italy. I said all the Costellos I’d ever known or heard of came from Ireland. I must have sensed there was something there, some prejudice she’d picked up at school, and I was trying to say, ‘We’re all British.’ But now we know that Anne had started to terrorize people who only came from down south! Kids! You can’t get inside their minds, can you?”

  “I don’t think I’d want to,” said Felicity.

  “Well, no. It was so awful that she’d involved younger kids who wouldn’t know any better. I told her she should be ashamed. I blame that drama stream. That horrible play everyone’s talking about must have done it. Wouldn’t you think that Buckworth man would have had more sense than to pick a play where schoolkids terrorize a new master? He must have a screw loose.”

  “Didn’t you see it?”

  “Well, we did, of course, Anne being in it. But we didn’t understand it. Children murdering their teacher and blackmailing the one who took his place. It was above our heads. It just seemed too fantastic. If only we had understood, we could have stopped it then.”

  “Had her put back into an ordinary stream?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Michaels with an attempt at macho. “Not that there’s a chance now—not a hope in hell.”

  “I don’t think there was a chance then,” said Charlie.

  “Maybe not. The only real chance was your dad, Mrs. Peace. He could have set our Anne’s mind on a different track. On to writing, not acting. Oh, we are sorry for his death. So sorry. It was a heart attack, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s one of the possibilities,” said Felicity.

  The little knot of people began to split up to get more drinks. Charlie too drifted away. So his father-in-law was mourned by two people, even if neither of them had actually known him. And they mourned him for purely selfish reasons, not to say deluded ones: Rupert Coggenhoe was never likely to lead Anne Michaels along the path of creative writing. It didn’t have the possibilities for self-advertisement that acting had, for a start. Charlie knew from the conversation that the Michaels had been clued up on the children’s gang and the reasons behind their choice of victims, but he wasn’t clear whether they knew about the persecution of Ken Warburton and their daughter’s likely connection with it. Nor did he think that they had guessed that there lay behind Anne’s friendship with Rupert something other than admiration for his literary genius. A few minutes later he saw the Michaels talking to Ken Warburton, apparently without a trace of shame or embarrassment, and this seemed to confirm their ignorance of that strand in Anne’s activities. When he got up close to the three he found that the topic of the conversation was the dismal footballing fortunes of Leeds United.

  It was while he was fetching himself a second pint that he saw Ben Costello watching him from the other side of the bar. It was a suspicious, keep-off-my-patch sort of gaze. He hailed him cheerily and made a mental note (or rather underlined an earlier one) not to talk to anyone with the slightest connection with the Coggenhoe death. It wasn’t easy, but he had a pleasant talk with the vicar, then managed to have a prolonged swill at his beer and an equally spun-out wiping of the foam from his upper lip close to where Harvey Buckworth was talking to Ken Warburton. Neither of them seemed entirely relaxed.

  “There’s a lot of mutterings about the drama stream at the moment,” Harvey was saying. “I’m afraid it’s going to come up at the end-of-term staff meeting. I hope I’ll have your support.”

  There was a quaver in his voice, as if he knew he was on a sticky wicket.

  “You must be joking,” said Ken Warburton shortly.

  Harvey Buckworth spread out his hands theatrically.

  “But look—I know you’ve had a bad experience, and I’m sorry about that. But think of all the wonderful publicity we’ve had from children being in Corrie and Emmerdale, and think of some of the public performances we’ve put on. Magic! They’ve put the school on the map. Winding up the drama stream would be like cutting off our nose. You must see that.”

  “I’m sure you mean well, Harvey. And I know you’ve done a wonderful job stimulating the talented kids. But so far as I’m concerned you’ve been a lot less successful in reining in the genies you’ve released from the bottle.”

  “But you can’t blame me for—”

  “Oh yes, I can. For most—almost all—of these kids, you’ve dangled in front of them a fantasy world in which they’re going to be fabulously successful and become nationally recognized faces. And in the process you’ve split the school in two. One small section that’s horribly confident and full of themselves and their own brilliant prospects. And one very large section that is going nowhere and is bitterly resentful. It’s not healthy. It’s not what I came into education for.”

  Charlie raised his eyebrows and moved on. Good for Ken Warburton! Wasn’t it Harvey Buckworth who had described him as not the brightest firework in the box? Maybe not, but he sounded like a useful glowing coal in the grate. Harvey was going to learn that.

  Charlie came to rest beside Felicity and Belle Costello. There couldn’t be anything against him talking to them, could there? The conversation was about women’s things—juggling a child and a career, or in Felicity’s case two children and two careers. Charlie privately felt that women had it good compared to a policeman trying to work reasonable hours so that he had time to be with his daughter. But he never discussed it in those terms with Felicity.

  “I think when Little Fetus is born I’ll have to give up my Leeds University teaching,” his wife was saying.

  “Do you want to?”

  “No, I don’t. It’s not just the money, though it’s a lot more certain than money from a mainstream novel. I have no guarantee that they’ll want to take any further novels, after all. They’ll have an option on the next, which means all power and no commitment. Still, it’s really the contact with young people I’ll miss.”

  “You’ve got children. You’ll have contact with the young.”

  “I mean a bit older than four or five. One thing I’ve been conscious of with this Anne Michaels business is that young people have changed a lot since I was in school.”

  “Have they ever! I only hear the gossip—Ben never talks about his work—but it sounds to me as if this drama stuff in the sch
ool is producing a breed of teenager in the Westowram area quite out of the ordinary.”

  “You’re probably right. Do you work? I should know, but I don’t.”

  “Two days a week at the Citizens Advice Bureau. I love it. Fascinating. But if I was advising you on your problem I’d say what you need is a husband who gives up his demanding—physically and mentally demanding—job for something that brings in enough to live on, and both of you have time to do your own thing, something creative and satisfying. Like Alison and Chris Carlson.”

  “Hmm,” said Felicity. “I doubt Charlie’s watercolors would bring in much.”

  “You’ve never seen any of my watercolors,” protested Charlie.

  “That’s how I know they wouldn’t bring in much,” said Felicity.

  “I just meant something, anything, he’d enjoy doing. Fitness classes, maybe.”

  “I’ve worked in a gym,” said Charlie. “Never again. Narcissism in motion.”

  “But even if he were as good as Cotman or Turner,” said Felicity, “I know what you’re suggesting wouldn’t work. Nothing like that would give Charlie the buzz that police work gives him. I imagine Chris Carlson just meandered into ear, nose and throat work, and can just as well not do it. Charlie would be lost.”

  “Ben would too. Look at him—he’s a fish out of water even at a social event like this.”