[Churchminster #3] Wild Things

by Jo Carnegie

‘It’s the least I can do. Now, where would you like me to start?’

  Clementine looked at the dead plants and flowers lying strewn about. ‘They all need picking up, the bin bags are over there.’

  She thought Frances might turn her nose up, but she nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Righty-ho, I’ll get started.’ And with the offer of a pair of smelly old gardening gloves from Brenda Briggs, Frances got on with it.

  A few hours later all the new flowers had been planted and Jack had re-fixed the hanging baskets to their hooks, from which they’d been ripped down earlier.

  They all retired into the pub for much-needed refreshment.

  ‘That looks a lot better!’ declared Angie, but Clementine knew she was only being kind. Where they’d once had flourishing flowerbeds, there were still large patches of brown earth. It would take months for everything to grow properly, and they only had three weeks.

  She took a gloomy sip of her tonic water and contemplated the dire state of affairs. It was like two steps forward, six blasted steps back.

  Unfortunately, it was about to get a lot, lot worse.

  The judging day for Britain’s Best Village loomed ever closer. Clementine had gone into full organization mode and stepped up the Garden Party meetings to every evening, where the committee would report back on what they had been doing. She had a checklist as long as her arm and slowly but surely everyone had been working their way through it.

  On the Monday before however, Clementine was concerned to see Joyce Bellows absent from the meeting. Reverend Bellows did nothing to ease her state of mind when Clementine asked after Joyce.

  ‘Is she ill?’

  Reverend Bellows squirmed, telling untruths weren’t in his repertoire.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  Clementine frowned. ‘Then what?’

  Reverend Bellows flushed under his beard. ‘I’m not sure, to be completely honest with you. Joyce has been acting awfully strange all day, and when I went to get her to come along tonight, she’d locked herself in our bedroom and told me to go away.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like Joyce,’ said Clementine.

  ‘I know. I’m quite worried about her.’ The Reverend looked pained. ‘I hope it isn’t something I’ve done, I did use a curse word in front of her the other day.’

  Clementine wondered if it was unkind to think that if Joyce was having some kind of breakdown, she couldn’t have picked a worst time to do it.

  The next morning the residents of Churchminster woke up to the most shocking revelations. Clementine had just returned from taking Errol Flynn for his morning work, when Brenda Briggs turned up at the back door. She was red-faced and gasping for breath, a rolled-up newspaper in her hands.

  ‘My dear woman, are you all right?’ Clementine asked.

  ‘Just run from the shop,’ Brenda puffed. ‘I ’ad to show you. Have you see the Daily Mercy?’ The newspaper was Brenda’s favourite read.

  ‘Certainly not! I don’t read that rag.’

  Brenda brandished the paper at her. At first Clementine stared uncomprehendingly at the headline across the tabloid’s front page.

  ‘VICAR’S WIFE IN PORN SHAME!’ shrieked the headline.

  ‘Why are you showing me this?’ Clementine asked tartly. ‘I’m really not interested in any of the tawdry tales this paper is obsessed with printing.’

  Brenda jabbed her finger at the photograph accompanying the headline. ‘Just look.’

  Clementine did, and then her eyes almost popped out of her head. The picture was slightly fuzzy, the permed hairstyle on the naked young woman out of date, but there was no mistaking who it was. ‘Good grief, it’s Joyce Bellows!’ she gasped.

  ‘I couldn’t bloody believe my eyes when I saw it, but it is her! Listen.’ Brenda started reading aloud excitedly.

  As one of the finalists for Britain’s Best Village, the sleepy Cotswolds village of Churchminster has been working hard to ensure they grab the coveted trophy. But any chance of getting their hands on the £750,000 prize money has come under threat as we sensationally reveal that 38-year-old Joyce Bellows, wife of the village’s resident vicar Brian Bellows, hides a shameful past as a porn star! Joyce, who used to work under the name Jade Ferrari, appeared in a number of low-rent men’s magazines in the 1980s.

  Brenda opened the paper and her eyes goggled.

  ‘Blimey, you should see what she’s doing in ’ere with a banana!’

  Clementine put her head in her hands and groaned. This was all they needed.

  By the time she’d got round to the rectory, Angie was already there at the kitchen table, her arm round a hysterically sobbing Joyce. Joyce’s thick-rimmed glasses were lying upended on the table like a dead insect.

  ‘I’ve only just persuaded her to come out of the downstairs loo,’ Angie said quietly over Joyce’s head. ‘Apparently she’s been in there, hysterical all morning. The Reverend called me, he didn’t know what to do.’ A white-faced Reverend Bellows sat perfectly still on a chair in the corner, gazing into space. Clementine guessed his wife hadn’t told him about her racy past.

  ‘I can never show my face again!’ wailed Joyce, her eyes so puffy they were almost shut.

  Clementine pulled out a chair and sat opposite. ‘Oh, Joyce,’ she said, not quite sure what else to say.

  ‘It’s not as though you killed someone, darling,’ Angie said kindly. ‘I’m sure lots of people have done much worse things.’

  ‘That’s not what they’ll think,’ gulped Joyce. ‘I’m the vicar’s wife! I’ve worked so hard to get where I am, and now I’ve ruined it all.’ Her voice rose an octave. ‘Poor Brian, what will people say?’ Joyce flung her head into her arms and started sobbing afresh.

  Angie and Clementine looked at each other.

  ‘So it is true?’ Clementine asked eventually.

  Joyce looked up, cheeks wet. ‘Yes, but not in the horrible way they’ve made out. Oh, I’ve been so stupid!’

  Punctuated by sobs, it all came out. How Joyce, then living in Southampton, had been persuaded to pose for raunchy pictures by an ex-boyfriend who’d been an amateur photographer. How she had been facing eviction from her bedsit for not paying the rent, and when he’d told her she could start making good money, Joyce had gone along with it.

  ‘I didn’t do it for long,’ she sobbed, ‘and it was never really hardcore stuff.’ She looked at them both beseechingly. ‘I needed the money! I was going to be thrown out on the street again and I couldn’t go back to that.’

  ‘You were homeless?’ Angie gasped.

  Joyce nodded dolefully. ‘For six months. I’d never got on with my mother and when I turned sixteen she threw me out.’

  ‘Oh, Joyce!’ Angie said.

  ‘She wasn’t a nice woman, my mother. Last thing I heard she was running an illegal betting ring out of a flat in Portsmouth. We haven’t spoken for years.’

  Clementine was appalled. ‘My dear, what about your father? Couldn’t he have helped?’

  Joyce flushed shamefully. ‘I don’t know who he is. My mum refused to tell me, told me he was scum she had no intention of wasting her breath on.’

  ‘You told me you were an orphan! You said your father was a m-m-missionary who’d died in Africa.’ Reverend Bellows had wrenched his eyes away from the kitchen wall and was staring at his wife.

  Joyce’s top lip trembled. ‘I know I shouldn’t have lied to you, Brian, but I was so ashamed of my past! I knew from the moment I met you what a kind and lovely man you were and that I wanted to be with you, but would you have felt the same if you knew what I had come from?’

  He said nothing. Tears filled Joyce’s eyes. She looked back at Angie and Clementine. ‘Brian saved me! When I walked past his church that day, I had no intention of going in. I’d never been religious; all my mum believed in was where her next drink and cigarette were coming from. But something made me go in, and there was Brian, putting out the hymn books for evening service.’ She gave a weak little smile at the me
mory. ‘Suddenly it all fell into place and I knew I wanted to make a better person of myself. And I have Brian!’ She looked pleadingly over at him. ‘I’m so happy with you and our life with the Church. It’s all I ever wanted.’

  He remained silent.

  Joyce sprang up and went over to him, sinking to her knees. ‘Please Brian,’ she sobbed. ‘Don’t make me go, I can’t live without you.’

  Very slowly, he looked down at her. A solitary tear rolled down his cheek and disappeared into his beard. ‘J-Joyce Geraldine Shanice Bellows, I’m proud to call you my wife. You’ve made me a better person since we’ve met. You’ve taught me that you can be a servant of God and still laugh at the lighter things in life. Every morning when I wake up and look forward to the day ahead, it’s b-b-because you’re in it.’

  Angie felt her eyes brim momentarily, she had had no idea the Reverend could be so romantic!

  ‘Oh, Brian!’ Joyce collapsed into fresh sobs, but this time ones of happiness.

  Brian leant down and stroked her dowdy, fuzzy hair. ‘I understand why you did what you did. And I don’t care what people might think. G-God will judge you in his own way, Joyce, and I’ve an inkling he’ll feel the same as me.’

  Angie and Clementine made their excuses and left the Bellows to it. Outside, they stood at the rectory gate and looked at each other.

  ‘Can you believe it!’ exclaimed Angie.

  ‘No, my dear, I cannot,’ replied Clementine. ‘But who knows what each of us hold in our pasts?’

  Angie laughed. ‘Rest assured I haven’t got any skeletons in my closet, unless you count the time I flashed my boobs at Henley one year. It was the eighties, wild times.’

  Clementine smiled. ‘How on earth did the Daily Mercy find out, though? It seems so bizarre.’

  ‘Ah, I think I know that one.’ Angie said. ‘Joyce told me that a private investigator had been sniffing around, said if she didn’t go to the newspapers herself, he’d sell the story. Aren’t some people perfectly horrible?’

  ‘So that was why Joyce hadn’t come to the Garden Party meeting,’ Clementine said. ‘The poor woman must have been in turmoil.’

  ‘Who on earth would put a private investigator on to Joyce?’ Angie asked. ‘Unless it was her mother, it sounds like there’s no love lost there. But what would she gain from it?’

  Clementine had a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. ‘I know exactly who would do such a thing. Veronica Stockard-Manning. She’d do anything to try and smear us in the run-up to judging day.’

  ‘The woman from Maplethorpe?’ gasped Angie. ‘Surely not.’

  ‘That woman will stop at nothing to get what she wants, and will happily wreck people’s lives in the process,’ said Clementine hollowly. ‘I’ve had first-hand experience.’

  Was it Angie’s imagination or did a tear glimmer in the corner of Clementine’s eye? ‘Well, I’d better get home,’ she said. ‘Or Freddie will start to think Joyce has killed herself or something.’

  ‘Poor Joyce,’ said Clementine, briskness restored. ‘The gossips round here are going to have a field day.’

  Fifteen minutes later Clementine was back at Fairoaks, sitting by the bureau in the hallway. She pulled one of the drawers open and got her old address book out, slowly starting to flick through the pages as if she was putting off reaching the number. Once upon a time, she had known it off by heart. She reached the page, and grim-faced, picked up the phone and dialled it.

  It was picked up after a few rings. ‘The Stockard-Manning residence.’

  Clementine gripped the receiver. ‘It’s Clementine.’

  ‘Oh, hello, dear!’ exclaimed Veronica. ‘What a surprise to hear from you, I didn’t know you still had my number. Everything coming along well for Britain’s Best Village?’

  Clementine gritted her teeth. ‘Why did you put a private investigator on to Joyce Bellows?’

  Veronica’s tone was neutral. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. Why?’

  Veronica tittered and Clementine could imagine her fat body rippling maliciously. ‘If you want scandal, always start with the vicar’s wife! Everyone knows that.’

  ‘You dreadful creature! What has Joyce ever done to you?’

  Veronica’s tone was suddenly deadly. ‘She lives in Churchminster, that’s enough. And before you start scurrying around trying to prove it, don’t bother. I’ve covered my tracks.’

  ‘You’ve done this sort of thing before!’ gasped Clementine.

  ‘As you of all people should know, one will do anything to keep one’s village at the top. I’ve worked hard over the years to make Maplethorpe the best, and I have no intention of some scrubby little Cotswolds town usurping me.’

  ‘You are a disgusting human being,’ Clementine told her.

  Veronica laughed nastily. ‘You Standington-Fulthropes! You think you’re better than everyone else, don’t you? Why, that’s precisely the reason I—’

  Clementine stopped her, voice shaking with anger. ‘Stay away from us, stay away from our village. If you ever step foot in Churchminster again, I’ll personally set my dog on you. Do you understand?’

  ‘Perfectly, dear,’ sang Veronica Stockard-Manning.

  Chapter 42

  DESPITE JOYCE’S FEARS about what they’d think, most people were very supportive. The leggy Danish wife of the vicar in Bedlington even rang up to say she thought it was a good thing.

  ‘It sexes up the church, darlink,’ she said, in her clipped tones. ‘I’m sick of people thinking vicars’ wives are old and boring. It shows prostitutes can be decent people, too.’

  ‘I wasn’t a prostitute!’ Joyce exclaimed in alarm.

  ‘Whatever, darlink.’

  Calypso was similarly unfazed. ‘I always thought Joyce Bellows was a bit of a dark horse,’ she declared to her grandmother.

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ Clementine asked. ‘Joyce Bellows was the last person I’d ever have suspected of hiding a secret.’

  Calypso wrinkled up her nose dismissively. ‘She was always too much of a cliché, you know? All that beige and home-baking. It was like she’d picked up a How to Dress Like a Vicar’s Wife handbook and studied it to the letter.’

  She cast a mischievous glance at her grandmother, in her tweed skirt and twinset. ‘People might look at you, after this, and suspect you were a part-time pole dancer!’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Clementine retorted. Sometimes her granddaughter was too much.

  But although she and the rest of the Garden Party were rallying around the Bellows, Clementine was secretly worried about the effect it would have on Churchminster’s competition chances. Especially when she read a profile piece in the Daily Telegraph about the head judge, Marjorie Majors, who sounded like a cross between Mary Whitehouse and Ann Widdecombe. Clementine couldn’t imagine that Mrs Majors hadn’t heard about the scandal, and she assumed she wouldn’t be impressed, and would think it lowered the tone of the competition. Clementine made a mental note to keep Joyce out of the way on judging day. She wouldn’t put it past Joyce to fling herself prostrate at the judges’ feet, begging forgiveness.

  Aside from Angie, Clementine hadn’t told anyone Veronica Stockard-Manning was behind the story. The Bellows wanted to put it behind them – even though Joyce was in fact enjoying a surge in popularity – and Clementine didn’t want to distract anyone from the task they had in hand. But it had made her realize, once again, that underneath her waxed jacket, Veronica was a very dangerous woman.

  Chapter 43

  ‘ARE YOU GOING to go and talk to him, then?’

  Calypso eyed her sister over the marmalade. It was the next morning, and she’d made breakfast for them both, but Camilla hadn’t been able to eat a thing.

  ‘I don’t know, darling,’ said Camilla wearily. She’d cried so many tears in the night she didn’t think she had any left to give. Now she just felt hollow, listless.

  ‘Come on, you can’t just gi
ve up!’ urged Calypso. ‘If there is something going on with him and Slutty Sophia, then you bloody well need to know!’

  ‘I keep asking him, he keeps saying no. What else am I supposed to do – put a private detective on to him?’

  ‘No, you need to get yourself up there and sort it out once and for all. Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘That’s very sweet, but don’t worry,’ said Camilla hastily. She knew how protective her younger sister could be.

  Calypso looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Aren’t you going to work?’

  Camilla rubbed her hands over her face. ‘I’ve called in sick. I barely slept a wink. Mr Fitzgerald wasn’t too happy, but I don’t care.’

  Calypso smiled, reassuring her sister. ‘Why don’t I go and run you a bath? You can have a nice soak and then go up there to see him.’ She repeated herself. ‘You need to sort this out, Camilla.’

  ‘I know,’ Camilla sighed. ‘I know.’

  By ten thirty Camilla was driving the familiar route to Clanfield Hall, feeling more sick and nervous than she had in her entire life. It was so weird: the one person in the world she was meant to be the closest to, was the one she was the most awkward around, right now. Jed had become like a stranger to her, and in a few minutes she was about to find out what kind of man he really was. Had he been brazen enough to conduct an affair with Sophia right under her nose? All the warning signs were there, it was a classic textbook affair. Camilla gulped down another wave of nausea.

  She’d expected to find Jed in his office, or off on the estate somewhere, but as she turned left into Clanfield Hall, another vehicle coming from the opposite direction was turning in as well. As Camilla and Jed’s eyes met through the windscreens, both their mouths dropped open; Camilla’s in astonishment, Jed’s in what looked like blind panic. He was driving Mrs Bantry’s neat little Peugeot and was wearing, she noted with even greater surprise, a suit and collar. She hadn’t even known he owned one!

  Jed gestured to her to pull in at Gate Cottage and she did so, his car following closely behind. Even before she had cut the engine, he was at her window. He was freshly shaved, his black hair tamed by gel.