“The chairs…” she began.
“Oh, yes,” said Awena. “I’ll see it’s all in order on the day. Don’t you worry.”
“That’s as may well be, but I did want a word.”
Awena, feeling the first twinges of foreboding, said, softly, “Oh?” Her mouth puckered into a frozen little circle of feigned interest.
“Do you feel it is in the best interests of the WI—such a noble institution!—for there to be outright dissension in the ranks such as we had the other day? After all, morale among the troops is paramount to a successful outcome this Saturday.”
“Morale among the troops?” repeated Awena, blankly, but sensing where this was going. Next, she thought, she’ll be reminding me that an army marches on its stomach. True enough, and totally beside the point.
“The failings of one sniveling idiot,” said Wanda, “cannot be allowed to derail the whole process.” Awena, knowing with certainty that the sniveling idiot Wanda referred to was Lily Iverson, was immediately incensed on Lily’s behalf.
“Look,” Awena said, trying and failing to keep an edge from her voice, “it is simply Harvest Fayre, not Napoleon’s march on Moscow. It’s a time of fun, and of quiet reflection. A time to enjoy and celebrate life. It is not time to come down on a bunch of willing, hardworking, and unpaid volunteers like a ton of bricks. Keep it up and you’ll lose them for certain. There won’t be a Fayre next year if this keeps up.”
Something in this had sunk into the deep recesses of Wanda’s mind, something that told her the unqualified flattery she desired—nay, craved—was not forthcoming from this quarter. Her face blotched with the effort to control her considerable anger, she said, “I see.” The words dripped with ice, but Awena could almost have sworn she saw flames burning behind the gray eyes. Her imagination added tiny martyrs chained to a stake. The clumsily applied eyeliner may have contributed to the effect—Wanda was not given to wearing makeup beyond the aforementioned eyebrow pencil and occasional dark lipstick.
“I really think you need to back off of Lily. She’s got a bigger cross to bear than most of us, keeping the farm and her business going.”
“Cross to bear? An odd choice of words for a pagan,” replied Wanda. Her voice had resumed its superior and unperturbed modulation. This was somehow always more aggravating than Wanda unhinged.
“I’m not a pagan. I am—” Awena broke off. She was not going to waste her breath trying to explain the finer points of her beliefs, which encompassed most religions, so long as they were stripped of any tinges of self-righteous bigotry. Admittedly, Awena’s good-hearted embrace of any positive creed led her into some muddled thinking; fortunately, she had an enormous capacity for the embrace of ambiguity.
By this point, though, Awena was nearly snarling. It didn’t help that she realized she had no one but herself to blame for her temper: she had plunged, as it were, directly into the polluted waters of Wanda’s World.
Before she turned, preparatory to flouncing out of the shop, Wanda said, “You needn’t think you’ll be needed to sell your gimcrack rubbish again at the Fayre after this year.”
It was again the complacent, satisfied set to her lips that set Awena off. Wanda was always happiest when provoking a reaction. Now she waved a hand dismissively, the wave encompassing the entire inventory of Goddessspell: tapes and CDs of the sounds of the rain forest or the wind or ocean waves; jars of herbs and honey and all manner of folk remedies—St. John’s wort for happiness and Mugwort for dreams; packets of seed to plant in the spring; stones for hot rock massage; massage and aromatherapy oils; dozens of teas; bunches of dried flowers, suspended from hooks in the beams of the low ceiling; charms and jewelry and other things of beauty, items that rested the mind just by a person’s gazing on them, or holding them, or smelling them. Goddessspell, it was said, was like a small corner of Glastonbury brought to Nether Monkslip.
Then there were the courses and classes run by Awena and a coterie of like-minded men and women of the village. She had just moments before finished her midmorning meditation session, an exercise meant to connect her mind with the energy of the reproductive regions of her lower abdomen. She did not feel this effort had been entirely successful, which may have been why Wanda had so easily been able to provoke a reaction.
“Rubbish, is it?” shouted Awena at the departing back, resisting the ignoble impulse to run after Wanda, fist raised, and chase her down the High. “Rubbish! Well, I may just not be there this year, and I wouldn’t care either way!” This was quite a false declaration, for Awena made a tidy profit out of her stall at the Fayre each year, despite the percentages siphoned off for charity, and it served as wonderful advertising for the store in the ramp-up to the winter holidays—herbs and candles and wreaths being in great demand. Moreover, she thoroughly enjoyed herself in the process. It was a simple pleasure, Harvest Fayre, and she knew as soon as she said the words she wouldn’t miss it for anything. But Wanda was gone, and the perfectly devastating parting shot had in any event not risen into Awena’s mind.
As Wanda steamed away, Tara Raine emerged, barefoot, toned, tanned, and flat-bellied, from the back of the shop, where she rented space for her yoga and Pilates classes from Awena. She had been setting up the room for her noontime yoga session. She looked with concern at the normally placid and unruffled countenance of her friend—she who was now puffing like a dragon struggling to catch its breath.
“I heard it all,” Tara said. “Couldn’t help it. Frightful old cow.”
Awena, a true believer in karma, in speaking no ill, in “what goes round,” completely lost cosmic control. It made it worse that it was Mabon, the autumn equinox, a time of reflection and Thanksgiving and peace in Awena’s calendar. For Wanda to choose today of all days …
“Some day,” she said, her melodious voice throbbing with emotion, “someone is going to give Wanda what’s due her.”
“A right bollocking, you mean?”
“Actually,” said Awena slowly, her rosy cheeks flushed red with anger, “I had in mind something more permanent.”
Lily Iverson, who had just come in through the back door of Goddessspell, on a mission to retrieve chairs for the Fayre (the Fayre Chairs as they were now being called), stood hidden by the beaded curtain to the back room. She was still trying to let the words “sniveling idiot” run off her back like water. The effort having failed, she turned and quietly retreated the way she had come. The curtain clicked softly in the breeze created by her swift departure.
She was ashamed of this visceral, cowardly reaction, but was helpless against such a primitive instinct for self-protection. She felt a surge of another reaction so foreign to her normally placid, timid small self that it was a moment before she could find a name for the emotion. And that name was hate.
Lily, quite simply, hated Wanda.
It was, at least momentarily, freeing to realize this—to be able to put a name to the roiling emotion at last.
CHAPTER 6
Help Us
As soon as Wanda’s back had safely disappeared over the horizon, Awena threw on her cape and headed for the vicarage, asking Tara to mind the shop while she went for “a fireside chat,” saying that it was time—possibly too late—to ask “our tousled vicar” to intervene.
She sailed along, preoccupied, something in her aspect brooking no interference from anyone she chanced to meet. Why Max Tudor had been her first thought as someone likely to be able to deal with Wanda, she couldn’t have said for certain. But she held the Vicar in the highest regard, despite what she saw as the difference in their approaches: her practicality and earthiness versus his good-hearted otherworldliness. It was not that she thought him useless, by any means (an opinion she reserved for his predecessor), but while Max would comfort the dying, she was one of those he would call to make sure the afflicted had someone to come in to clean and visit the shops for them. This unofficial arrangement had somehow sorted itself in the early days following his arrival.
She w
ould have been amazed to know that Max, in his turn, considered Awena to be bighearted but hopelessly impractical, her head always in the spiritual clouds.
* * *
Max had just returned to the vicarage from the church, where he’d gone to meet with a contractor following Morning Prayer. The man had submitted a bid that only made sense if he were planning to repair St. Edwold’s roof using melted-down gold and rare pearls. Max had been hoping to talk him down. To no avail: it became stunningly clear the bid was honest. What was less clear to Max was where to find the money to pay for the repairs. How many more times could he hit up his parishioners before they completely tuned him out?
There at least had been a satisfying crowd at Morning Prayer. On the “if you build it” principle, Max had begun promoting weekday attendance at the service. Saying Morning Prayer was part of his duties as a priest, in any event, although there was nothing to require that he do this outside his study. For the first week or two of the experiment he had recited the words in splendid isolation, but he carried on, regardless.
From those early isolated days, the celebration now had grown steadily in attendance, due in no small part to the coffee service afterwards—Max had come to an agreement with Elka Garth that benefited both her tearoom and the church. People now seemed not only to recognize the frame the service gave to their day, but to welcome the sense of community engendered by this simple daily commitment to themselves and others. In some cases, it provided a much-needed excuse simply to get out of the house, away from the telly, and among people—to get out of the house slippers, to see and be seen. It helped that Max encouraged the few young mothers in the parish to bring their babies with them. He had no illusions that he was making permanent inroads in the “hatch, match, and dispatch” Anglican mind-set, but it was a start in bringing people together. Social cohesiveness was as good as any other kind in creating a safety net for those who might otherwise feel they were on the fringe of village life. He made it clear at all times that all were welcome.
Attendance, having grown, had held steady. In a small village, any absence was so much more noticed than in a town or city—the exponential power of peer pressure could never be underestimated. Besides, much of the social life of the village either emanated from the church or overlapped with its activities. Even the few holdouts who seldom attended viewed St. Edwold’s as “theirs,” so much was it a part of the historic fabric of the village.
Max tried, in subtle ways, to present his parishioners with an ethical worldview, asking them to assess their lives in ways meaningful to them. In studying for the priesthood at Oxford, he had found it at times too easy to get caught up in ritual, in chapter and verse. The trappings of his MI5 days had not entirely left him, he imagined. The Security Service was, after all, an organization much like a monkhood—a closed brotherhood with its own esoteric knowledge, its own secrets.
He further understood one could never underestimate the power of a charismatic priest. He had no illusions about the part his personal appeal played in the success of St. Edwold’s as a center of village life; in the wrong hands, this influence could be a force for ill, as Max well knew. He viewed his role in the village with an awed and humble respect.
* * *
Mrs. Hooser announced their visitor in her usual garbled way.
“It’s that one that sells them herbs and candles and suchlike.”
This might have been several people in the village, but Max guessed correctly that she meant Awena, proprietress of Goddessspell and maven of all things New Age.
Awena was shown in. Not one to stand on ceremony, Mrs. Hooser said simply, “She’s here,” which was evident, and then shut the door loudly on Awena’s back. Thea, poised for her usual rapturous leap at the sight of a visitor, remembered her training just in time: she sat hard, tail wagging so thunderously that its hip-shaking momentum threatened to topple her over. Awena paused, bending over to scratch Thea’s ears.
Awena didn’t appear to walk so much as swim toward him. She was given to wearing long, flowing, drapey, often heavily embroidered robes that made her look like an icon carried on a float during a religious festival. Today it was a claret, belted robe in a silhouette made famous by the Empress Josephine. The color somehow accentuated the almost purplish blue of her eyes under dark, arched eyebrows—eyes that generally held such a faraway look her real target might have been Alpha Centauri. They were of an otherworldly paleness Max associated with much colder climes—Iceland, the Scandinavian countries—clear as ice, and enhanced by the contrast with the black sheen of her hair with its dramatic white streak. The eyes of a seer, if ever there were such a thing.
But today her youthful face was flushed; he thought he might have imagined that the brows were more arched than usual, the gaze wider with alarm or concern, but he was soon proven right.
“It’s Wanda,” she said, without preliminary. “Max, you have got to help us.”
* * *
“It’s been nonstop, you see,” Awena told him. They had settled in over coffee and biscuits, brought in with much ado and clatter and near wreckage by Mrs. Hooser. “Every day we’ve had a ring-around over something, to the point where I’m avoiding the telephone altogether. It’s worse than when Wanda wanted to establish a civil defense early warning system using the bell ringers. Drove them all mad, and by the time she was through ‘rehearsing’ them, they sounded like scrap metal being dumped down a steel silo. This time it’s far worse. And I have a business to run—Goddessspell doesn’t run on hope and prayer, no more than your church, if I may put it that way.”
“I admit her techniques are a bit … draconian, at times.”
“May the gods defend us,” said Awena solemnly, “from the energetic ‘do-gooder.’” She shook out a fold in her skirt; the light caught the sparkle of gold thread in the weave. “If she’d confine it to the constant nagging and wheedling, I could cope,” she added. “What I cannot abide is when wheedling is abandoned in favor of more direct devices, like threats, intimidation, and humiliation.”
“Under what conditions, one wonders, and in what kind of home, was the woman raised?”
“I would wonder that, if I had time, and a shred of compassion left. You are too forgiving, Vicar.”
“I’m not, as a matter of fact,” he said, thinking fleetingly of his days undercover when he had ruthlessly tamped down any such dangerous emotion, “but remember that it’s in the job description—forgiveness.”
She looked at him levelly: at the attractive crinkle of lines around his slightly downturned eyes, at the normally good-humored curve of his mouth with its lopsided, roguish grin. It was the roguishness of the grin that nearly did for the women of the village, she reflected.
“There hasn’t been such a kerfuffle,” said Awena, giving up on Mrs. Hooser’s boiled coffee and putting the cup well aside, “since Ben Standon’s goat ran amok during the Blessing of the Animals five years ago. It’s been the talk over at the Cavalier for weeks now. Wanda, I mean.”
Max thought of the Cavalier as the start of many a barium meal—an MI5 expression for starting a false rumor so its path could be traced. But in this case the rumors were probably based in fact. Wanda could be a handful.
“You really must have a word with her,” Awena continued. “I think she’d listen to you. You may be the only one she’d listen to.”
He considered inviting Wanda to the vicarage for a chat, a prospect that held all the appeal of being coated with honey and tied to an anthill. He acknowledged his own cowardice without an inward blush. He had faced down drug-addled criminals bent on revenge, or simply high on their own malevolence, but a representative from the Women’s Institute in full flood was more terrifying, particularly this representative. He thought over what little he knew of Wanda, what leverage there might be in personal data. He really only knew the gossip: she and her husband the Major had one son to whom they routinely sent money, whether as a bribe to stay away or an incentive to return home was not clear. In
any event, the son was said to have made no appearance in the village since his eighteenth birthday—close to fifteen years hence. This was somehow tied up in Max’s mind with Elka Garth and her son, but he couldn’t have said why.
Apart from his personal feelings of inability to deal with this particular crisis was the practical question of how to get Wanda inside the vicarage undetected. Mrs. Hooser had conceived a violent dislike of her, and on the occasion of Wanda’s last visit (a complaint about the sermon) had made such a commotion in the kitchen with the pots and pans he daren’t, he felt, repeat the experiment. Although Mrs. Hooser was a diabolical cook and slapdash cleaner at best, it was not as if he were spoiled for choice in the village. Well-trained daily help was courted assiduously and, once won over, shamelessly coddled by the homeowners of Nether Monkslip. He paid Mrs. Hooser what little he could afford, and tipped her even when some days it seemed to him the financial arrangement should be reversed.
“Don’t you have some magic potion or other you can spray on her?” he asked, goaded into uncharacteristic exasperation. “Some ritual you can perform?”
“Don’t you?”
“I mean, why me? I hardly am holding the whip hand here.”
Max found that, as so often happened, he was being catapulted into the role of diplomat, mediator, and pourer of oil on troubled waters. As much as he wanted to take sides, he knew that in what was essentially an unimportant clashing of egos (or so he told himself at the time), he would be unwise in the extreme to be seen to intervene or to support one side over the other. In a case of moral certainty, he felt later, he would have known that intervention was the only choice. But this seemed trivial—one of those instances where his focusing attention on it would give it more importance than it was due. Best to let it blow over. He said this last aloud.
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