Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries)

by James Runcie

  ‘Then I’ll come. Yes, of course, why not?’ Hildegard answered. ‘We can go out for dinner afterwards. I have been told that there are many nice restaurants in Dover Street. Then I won’t have to cook.’

  ‘Thank you, my darling. I will make it happy for you, I promise. We will have a wonderful time.’

  ‘Then I look forward to it.’

  ‘Marvellous.’ Sidney leant over and kissed his wife on the lips.

  He had got away with it.

  The following morning he preached his sermon on a text taken from the first epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, Chapter 5 Verse 2: ‘For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.’ He was pleased with this as it was a special service for Scouts and Girl Guides (motto: ‘Be prepared’) and he could also double up on his thinking about death, opportunism and the end of days. He wondered if he should go and see Omari Baptiste again and check that he had not been blamed or made a scapegoat for the theft of the Sickert.

  After an agreeable lunch of roast lamb and sherry trifle, spent in the company of Leonard Graham and his good friend Neville Meldrum from Corpus, Sidney thought he really should call in on Keating. He was not at all sure that it was a good idea to keep his visit to London a secret. If the girl turned out to have no connection with the events in the Fitzwilliam then he would not have wasted any police time; but if she did then he knew that his friend would accuse him of going behind his back and, worse, of betraying him by being in cahoots with Helena Randall. There really was no way in which he could please everybody all of the time, or be what people wanted him to be.

  He decided to say nothing, hoping that it was the safer option, but he became more nervous as the day of the trip approached. It was hard to contain his anxiety, not least in the moments leading up to their departure. One of the parishioners had kindly offered the couple a lift to the railway station but Hildegard was still in her dressing gown when they should have been leaving. ‘I need to get ready,’ she said. ‘I will be ten minutes.’

  Sidney could tell that they were going to miss their train but he could not risk anything that might antagonise his wife or delay their departure.

  ‘We are going to be late,’ he could not resist saying.

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  Hildegard’s preparation time each morning, from the sounding of the alarm clock to departure by the front door, was an absolute minimum of one hour. Despite allowing for the morning cup of tea, a trip to the lavatory, and the transition from night-time drowsiness to daytime reality, it was physically impossible for his wife to move from dressing gown to departure in ten minutes. Even in a state of acknowledged urgency such as this, there would be the running of a bath, the checking of its temperature and the swearing about the failings of their heating system (a minimum of eight minutes). Then there would be the taking to the waters, the stepping out, the towelling dry, the application of talcum powder, and the cleaning of teeth (seven minutes). There could often be a further, unaccountable, two minutes after the bath and before the drying of hair. These first stages alone, therefore, constituted at least seventeen minutes, and they didn’t include any further delay that might be caused by his wife’s dreamy singing as she performed her ablutions.

  From this moment on, Sidney thought, Hildegard was already late and she wasn’t even dressed. There would then be the whole business of deciding what to wear, finding the right stockings and examining their colour against the light (at least four more minutes) before putting on bra, blouse and skirt (three minutes), checking herself in the mirror and adding a brooch (two). If Hildegard was convinced that she had the right look (if not, and a change was necessary, that would mean a further ten minutes) there was still the small matter of adjusting the hair, putting on make-up, choosing a matching handkerchief and making sure that all the things she needed were in her handbag (eight minutes). And then, just as Sidney was convinced that Hildegard had completed her toilette, and he had already opened the front door in anticipation of their departure, his wife would announce, ‘I just need to do my lipstick. I won’t be a minute.’

  You will be a minute, Sidney thought. In fact you will be two minutes and forty seconds. We will miss our train.

  ‘We need to hurry up,’ he answered. Thirty-seven minutes when you said ten.

  ‘Don’t fuss, Sidney. You know how it slows me down.’

  Hildegard was right. Any argument would make her stop putting on her lipstick, start speaking and cause further delay.

  Sidney was powerless. There really was no way of hurrying his wife along. ‘We are going to be late,’ he repeated.

  ‘You are often late,’ his wife answered. ‘People almost expect it. But it is interesting that you are always on time for church.’

  Sidney knew that, even though he had been extremely provoked, it was wisest to say nothing. He patted his pockets to make sure he had everything.

  Hildegard snapped her handbag shut and smiled. ‘Ready,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. Come on, then. What are you waiting for?’

  ‘I can’t find my keys.’

  ‘Well, I’m ready.’

  From an initial position of lateness and vulnerability, Hildegard had managed to take the moral high ground. After a fluster of panicky searching round the house, Hildegard walked calmly to the table in the hall and picked up the keys.

  ‘Here they are.’

  It was extraordinary that she could find lost objects in places where her husband was sure he had already looked.

  They managed to catch their intended train down to London with three minutes to spare (‘I told you not to make such a fuss, Sidney’) and took the underground to Piccadilly Circus. Amanda had promised them a cup of tea in the Ritz and met them there before the excitements of the exhibition. After they had caught up on each other’s news they then walked over to Dover Street for The Festival of Misfits.

  Sidney could see Helena Randall in the doorway of the ICA with the man that he assumed was her ‘lovely friend Basil’. Hildegard gave him a nudge. ‘I wonder if Inspector Keating is here after all.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ said Sidney. ‘His wife keeps him on a tight leash these days.’

  ‘Then aren’t you lucky to have me?’

  Basil turned out to be a dapper Glaswegian who felt that it was his sole responsibility, as one of the dandiest men in town, to make sure that he knew everyone. He was dressed in a maroon smoking jacket, pink shirt with matching cravat, Black Watch trousers and winkle-picker shoes. He had left his home town after directing a disastrous production of Goodnight Vienna in Paisley which, he told Helena, had gone down about as well as a production of Goodnight Paisley would have been received in Vienna.

  ‘You must be the famous detective who disguises himself as a clergyman,’ was his opening gambit.

  ‘It’s not as straightforward as that.’

  ‘I am sure it isn’t. I don’t go to church myself. Everyone’s so badly dressed. Have you noticed?’

  Helena giggled. ‘I don’t think that’s the point of going.’

  ‘I find it all so terribly ageing.’

  ‘There are young people who attend,’ Sidney answered in his defence. ‘And youth clubs. I’ve started a jazz night.’

  ‘Ah yes, very fifties. Helena tells me that you’ve got another string to your bow, or perhaps another reed to your saxophone? You can go in and out of jazz clubs almost unnoticed.’

  ‘I don’t aim to be noticed,’ Sidney smiled hesitantly.

  ‘Although he does like it when people recognise him,’ said Amanda. ‘There are very few clergyman who turn down attention.’

  ‘That is a little unfair,’ said Hildegard. ‘In Germany, the pastors . . .’

  ‘Oh, the Germans,’ said Basil, ‘they always like to put on a show. Think of Nuremberg.’

  ‘Perhaps I forgot to mention,’ Helena said quickly. ‘Sidney’s wife is originally from Leipzig.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure she’s got a sense of
humour,’ her friend replied. ‘Most of us are Saxon originally . . .’

  ‘Or even Norman,’ said Amanda, moving away to talk to a group of women she thought she knew from the National Gallery. They appeared to be wearing dresses made of newspaper.

  In Grantchester the villagers were tactful about Hildegard’s nationality and she was spared the hostility that was more common in a city such as London where she met more strangers and had to defend herself more frequently. Most people knew that her father had been killed as a communist protestor in the early 1930s and that her family had never been members of the Nazi party. It was partly why she still liked living there. She never had to explain herself. But Basil continued his national stereotyping unabashed.

  ‘The Germans have a stronger sense of the dramatic, don’t you think? It’s part of the Protestant tradition to go round smashing things up. All that Sturm und Drang. It’s one of the themes of the happening tonight: auto-destruction. It’s innately Teutonic.’ He looked at Hildegard. ‘Don’t tell anyone, but I love Wagner.’

  He began to hum the leitmotif of ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’. ‘Da-da-da DA da, da-da-da DA da . . .’

  Hildegard realised that she was in the presence of a man who had never been taught about tact. ‘I prefer Bach,’ she replied.

  ‘Well I’m afraid you won’t be getting any of that tonight. This is all very avant-garde, I can assure you. No humourless cantors here. Let me make sure you’ve got something to drink.’

  After they had been introduced to the artist Ben Vautier, whose main contribution was to live and sleep in the window of the gallery as some kind of human installation, they were shown into a fun-making machine shop where a man called Terry Riley was explaining his Ear Piece for Audience. Every person in the room was to take up an object such as a piece of paper, cardboard or piece of plastic and place it over an ear. The idea was to make a series of sounds by rubbing, scratching, tapping or tearing it or simply dragging the object across their ears, or just holding it so that it could be placed in counterpoint with the other sound sources.

  ‘This is John Cage all over again,’ said Amanda on her return to the conversation. ‘I’m all for percussion but I do think it’s best within an orchestra.’ She started to talk to Hildegard about the bass drum in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, the crash cymbals in Mozart’s Seraglio and the use of the xylophone in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

  ‘What about the girl?’ Helena asked Basil. ‘You promised she’d be here.’

  ‘We are moments away from seeing her. I only hope I’m right.’

  They walked through a labyrinthine blacked-out room to a large white space. Basil explained that the evening was a ‘monomorphic neo-haiku flux-event’. Around the gallery were contrary slogans framed on the wall:

  NOTHING EVERYTHING

  And then a triptych of words repeated

  WHITE NIGHT LIGHT

  Before

  NIGHT LIGHT WHITE

  ‘This is Quentin Reveille,’ Basil announced, producing the loquacious socialist from Leeds. He was dressed in a grey flannel suit with a black polo neck and prominent glasses, as if he were a cross between Yves Saint Laurent and Jean-Paul Sartre. The best art contained tension and opposition, he told Sidney. It was important to confound expectation, to lighten darkness and darken light.

  ‘I’m interested in paradox. You know the kind of thing. L’oeuvre d’art est bien une chose, chose amenée à sa finition, mais elle dit encore quelque chose d’autre que la chose qui n’est qu’une chose.’

  Sidney was impressed by Quentin’s fluent French, even if it was delivered with a Yorkshire accent.

  The artist then asked Sidney, Hildegard, Amanda, Helena and Basil to look through a ‘window into perception’, and take a glimpse from the doorway of Celine Bellecourt naked in a glass case and covered in apples. It was, according to Reveille, a memory of paradise, a meditation on the Garden of Eden. The audience, who had to view the piece standing in a curled line, was collectively the serpent, waiting to prey on innocent beauty.

  Sidney recognised the naked Celine immediately as Quentin explained the purpose of the installation. It was about encouraging people to look in different ways, to think about alternative methods of ‘framing reality’.

  ‘A naked woman, for example, becomes a nude in the presence of the artist,’ he told Hildegard.

  ‘And if the artist leaves the room does she become naked again?’

  ‘No, the artist has made his mark. The vision remains. It is about setting and context,’ Reveille continued. ‘Location is also important. A square foot of grass might look the same wherever it is but if it’s the area in front of the batsman on a cricket field it is crucial; then again, if you put it in an art gallery it becomes something else. I am interested in working with context and how it changes meaning.’

  Sidney thought how the figure of the Cross was resistant to this kind of distinction. It remained a crucifix wherever it was and this, perhaps, explained its potency as an image. ‘And how do you decide what to frame?’ he asked.

  ‘As the mood takes me. It’s like being a photographer. I pick my subject and then choose my frame. Sometimes, if I am lucky, the subject picks itself, and because I live with Celine I can always turn to her when I am stuck. She walks in beauty. She is, and will always be, a work of art. I am merely the person who shows the direction in which the viewer should look.’

  ‘And do you do your own framing, Mr Reveille?’

  ‘I trained as a carpenter, Canon Chambers. Like the good Lord.’

  ‘But you can’t do all that here, can you?’

  ‘I have a separate workshop where I keep my tools. It’s better to work with your hands, don’t you think? It’s important to touch, to know the material world. Although I suppose you’re more interested in things spiritual.’

  ‘What’s your favourite material?’

  ‘Wood.’

  ‘Mine too,’ Sidney replied. ‘I remember learning to whittle at school. I wanted to make my own cricket bat.’

  ‘That’s a very specialist skill. Even I couldn’t challenge the work of Mr Gray and Mr Nicolls.’

  Sidney was impressed that Reveille knew the name of the firm that made Britain’s best bats, but they were straying too far from the point of his inquiry. ‘Does your model perform in other shows?’ he asked.

  ‘She is a living work of art. We blur the line between performance and reality.’

  ‘I wonder if she has ever been to Cambridge?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I think she was there a few weeks ago. A painting was stolen on the same day. I think Miss Bellecourt provided the distraction. She was the naked girl who caused a bit of a commotion.’

  ‘The nude, you mean.’

  ‘Of course. Do you know anything about what happened that day?’

  ‘Celine never tells me where she is going. It’s her statement of freedom. But I have spent months installing this exhibition. You can ask anyone. I have even slept here. In any case, why would I steal a Sickert? He’s very old hat, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t say that the stolen painting was a Sickert.’

  ‘I do read the papers, Canon Chambers. I won’t be caught out. But Celine is perfectly innocent, I can assure you. I would have thought that a man in your position might appreciate the equation of nakedness with innocence?’

  Amanda interrupted their conversation with news of the next happening: Guitar Piece by Robin Page. Wearing a shining silver crash helmet and holding his guitar ready to play, the artist waited a few moments before flinging it on to the stage and kicking it into the audience, along the aisle and down the steps into Dover Street. This was destruction, and it was, Basil told Sidney, a comment on the helplessness of the individual and the threat to world peace caused by the Kennedy–Kruschev confrontation over Cuba.

  ‘I can’t see how kicking a guitar is going to benefit world peace,’ Amanda observed. ‘I don’t think that the leaders of the world are goin
g to lose any sleep about a man in an art gallery with a crash helmet.’

  After this last ‘happening’ Celine emerged from the back. She had got dressed but appeared to be wearing nothing except a man’s white shirt with silver cufflinks. The top three buttons were undone. Sidney presumed she was wearing underwear but didn’t dare look any closer.

  ‘I have seen you before,’ he said, ‘although we have not met.’

  ‘I am used to being seen,’ Celine replied. ‘It is how I live.’ She lit up a cigarette and let it rest on her thick lower lip. Sidney wondered if the gesture was practised. How much came naturally and how much rehearsal went into this girl’s public behaviour? Perhaps her French accent was put on and she wasn’t French at all. It seemed too clichéd, this art-gallery version of Brigitte Bardot.

  ‘Have you been in England long?’ he asked.

  ‘A few years.’

  ‘And do you like it here?’

  ‘It is not France,’ Celine replied.

  ‘I was just wondering,’ Sidney asked, ‘what you thought of Cambridge and if you had been to the Fitzwilliam Museum before?’

  ‘I remember you now. I saw you and thought you might be shocked but you were not.’

  ‘I have seen most things.’

  ‘I am sure you have. It was the war, perhaps.’

  ‘And more.’

  ‘My mother died in the war.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. Unless you killed her.’

  ‘Where was she?’

  ‘Dieppe.’

  Sidney made his credentials clear. ‘I was in the Normandy landings.’

  ‘Then you know the town?’

  ‘Is that where you are from?’

  ‘For a little while, yes. Then Paris. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You know there are paintings of Dieppe in the Fitzwilliam Museum?’

  ‘Are there?’ Celine asked.

  ‘Did you not know?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Why did you go to Cambridge?’

  ‘To see what it was like. Why do people go anywhere?’