The New Rector (Tales from Turnham Malpas)

by Shaw, Rebecca

  Scott wriggled free of Peter’s restraining hand.

  ‘He says I’ve to apologise. And I will, but I didn’t do the cat, Miss Hipkin – that wasn’t me. I like cats. But I did the other things, and I’m sorry I made you poorly.’

  ‘Well, thank you, Scott.’ Muriel held back the tears and turned away, hoping Peter would take him away.

  ‘Good afternoon then, Miss Hipkin. Say good afternoon, Scott, please.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Hipkin.’ They both went out and Peter closed the door quietly behind them.

  A day or two later there was another knock at the door.

  ‘Why, come in, Mr Charter-Plackett! I intended coming into the shop to thank you for your kindness in filling my kitchen with food. I can never thank you enough, and also thank you for my birthday cake. Do you know, it was the first birthday cake I’d ever had?’

  ‘Only too glad to see you back home again. We’ve all missed you very much. Can I sit down for a moment?’

  ‘Of course, how remiss of me. Here, sit in this chair, it’s the most comfortable.’

  ‘I’ve come because I’m in a bit of a dilemma.’

  ‘Oh dear, how can I help?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’ve got the restaurant opened now. We’ve called it Henderson’s.’

  ‘After Phyllis? What a lovely idea!’

  ‘That’s right, yes. Well, it’s kind of two restaurants in one. There’s Harriet’s Tearoom which sells light snacks and coffees and teas and the like, which opens at ten o’clock and closes at five o’clock, and we also have what Flick calls the “posh bit” – which is a proper restaurant for dinners, open in the evening from seven until eleven. I’ve got waiters and waitresses and chefs, et cetera, but what I haven’t got for the tearoom is someone whom I can rely on to take the money every day. No matter how careful we are with our accountancy, there’s always a way of stealing money if one’s employees try hard enough. I’ve found someone I can trust for four days a week, but I need someone for the other two days. It would be Wednesday and Friday. What I wondered was, well, would you like the idea? If I’ve given offence, please forgive me. It is a very genteel tearoom, not all taped music and the like – a kind of thirties-style tearoom, you know.’

  ‘Why is it called Harriet’s Tearoom?’

  ‘Because I had hoped to get her interested in it, but she refuses. I went about it in completely the wrong way and she’s taken her bat home and refuses to have anything to do with it.’

  ‘Oh dear. I thought you were cleverer than that.’

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘I don’t know if I feel confident enough yet to help out. It would mean being sure about how much change I was handing out, wouldn’t it? I’ll give it serious thought and let you know tomorrow.’

  Jimbo went off home, well satisfied with his morning’s work. Out and about she needed to be, and this ruse might do the trick. Besides which, he really did need someone. Harriet could be extremely difficult sometimes. Even the sugared almonds hadn’t worked their usual miracle this time. She needed a holiday. That was it – a holiday. He’d get Sadie to organise something. He amazed himself sometimes with his fertile mind …

  Jimbo had left Muriel all in a dither. Three years at home without much challenge and no need to keep to someone else’s timetable, had lessened her capacity to cope. But she could see herself sitting at the seat of custom like Matthew in the Bible, except she wouldn’t be collecting taxes. It would be fun, though, because everyone in there would have gone to enjoy themselves. Maybe she’d have one of those tills which went Ping! when she opened the drawer. On the other hand, knowing Jimbo, he’d have one of those electric things with lots of buttons to push and flashing lights. Even so, the money she would earn would be very useful. She could always come home in the lunch-hour to take Pericles out, and not starting till ten o’clock would mean she could do her little jobs about the house and take him out before she went. Yes, why not? Was it a comedown for a solicitor’s secretary? – a bit beneath her? No. If Jimbo could serve in a shop when he’d had a good post in the City in a merchant bank, why should she quibble about serving behind the till? ‘Two toasted teacakes and a pot of tea.’ ‘Scrambled egg, pot of tea and a cream cake.’ Oh yes, she could manage that, and there’d be plenty of people to talk to.

  Next day, Muriel hastened into the shop on her way out with Pericles. Harriet greeted her like a long-lost friend.

  ‘How lovely to see you, Muriel. I’m so glad you’re home, we have missed you. You are looking well. I love your hair, it does suit you.’ And then she kissed her on both cheeks.

  ‘Thank you, Harriet, and thank you also for all the food in my kitchen. Your kindness will not go unnoticed in the Book of Good Deeds. Jimbo called to see me yesterday and I promised him I would give him an answer today.’

  ‘An answer? To what?’

  ‘Well, something he asked me to do. Is he about?’

  ‘Can you tell me and I’ll pass on the message?’

  Muriel shuffled about a bit, checked on Pericles tied up outside and then said, ‘Well, the answer is yes.’

  ‘Yes to what? What’s all the mystery about?’

  ‘Isn’t he in?’

  ‘No, he’s out on business.’

  ‘Don’t be annoyed with me will you, Harriet? I couldn’t bear that.’

  ‘Of course I shan’t be annoyed, but if you don’t explain soon I shall be thinking you and Jimbo are having clandestine meetings.’

  Muriel blushed. ‘Oh, Harriet, it’s nothing like that! You’re teasing me, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, he’s asked me to take the money in the tearoom he named after you, two days a week. You’re not angry, are you?’

  Harriet burst out laughing. ‘Of course not. He urgently needs someone. I don’t mind at all.’

  ‘You know, Harriet, you should support him. Husbands need support. He’s very upset.’

  ‘Muriel, leave Jimbo to me, I know what I’m doing. I won’t have him riding roughshod over me and that’s what he did with this tearoom business. He thought he’d bring me round by naming it after me, but I know his little game. I’ll come round in my own good time, never fear.’

  Pericles yapped out his boredom at the long delay.

  ‘I must be off. I’ll call in later when Jimbo gets back,’ Muriel said hastily.

  She began work the following Wednesday. Once she’d mastered the till and how to check the little bills, Muriel found herself enjoying her new role. Handing out menus and showing people to suitable tables and passing the time of day with them, she was in her element. Jimbo paid her £25 a day – riches indeed. One day’s pay went into the savings bank and the other for living expenses. If she was careful she might manage a holiday next year. The continent, maybe?

  Chapter 11

  The following Saturday morning Muriel was taking her turn cleaning the brasses in the church, listening while she worked to Peter playing the organ. Sometimes when she heard him she wished he was the organist instead of Mrs Peel. Mrs Peel played competently but Peter played competently and with his heart and soul, which made such a difference to the beauty of it. He finished playing, switched off the organ, went to the altar rail and said a few words of prayer and then came across to speak to Muriel.

  ‘God bless you, Muriel. What the Church would do without its women I do not know.’

  ‘Good morning, Peter. In that case, why can’t we be ordained priests? I’m not clever enough to be one, but there are plenty of women who would be and could do good service to the Church.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were a militant parshioner?’

  ‘I’m not, but I do get annoyed about the whole subject sometimes. I expect we’ll win in the end, women usually do. Have you got out Mr Furbank’s costume for Stocks Day? I’ll give it a good clean and a mend for you if you like.’

  ‘Stocks Day – what’s that?’

  ‘Surely Mr Furbank must have left
notes about it? We’ve been celebrating Stocks Day for centuries. The whole village joins in a procession and we all wear costumes and someone dresses as the Grim Reaper and someone else as an Angel. After dark the night before, the verger has to dress the stocks with dead or dying flowers. Then the next afternoon, always the last Saturday in June, we all walk twice round the green. The first time we carry sticks and we all beat the stocks when we pass them and knock off the old flowers, and the second time round we carry white flowers and lay them all on the stocks and cover it completely if we can. Mr Palmer knows someone who plays the flute and they come and lead the procession, like as if it was medieval times. Then, weather permitting, we all sit down to a big tea on the green. Some say we’ve been doing it since 1066, some say since before history began – but I think that’s a bit fanciful – and some say since the plague. According to the church records, Turnham Malpas was badly hit by the plague in 1349 so I think that’s more likely, don’t you?’

  ‘What part do I play in this?’

  ‘Oh, you’re the Devil.’

  She turned away to collect her cleaning cloths and move on to the altar vases. Peter stood appalled. ‘The Devil?’ He followed her to the altar.

  ‘Yes, you wear your marriage cassock underneath your costume and when you reach the stocks for the second time you take off your Devil’s costume and then you bless the stocks. You’re all in white like the flowers, you see. Purity or cleansing or something, I think. The whole village loves the celebration. They used to hold games and competitions on the green after the tea, but since about 1895 there’s been a fair on the spare land behind the Methodist Chapel. So, when the tea is finished, the tables are all cleared away and everyone goes to the fair for the evening. It’s a wonderful day.’

  Muriel didn’t notice the effect on Peter of what she had said. She busily rubbed away at the twiddly bits on the altar vases, remembering processions from her childhood and how much she had enjoyed seeing the transformation of the Rector from a nasty horned Devil to a charming harmless figure dressed all in white.

  ‘The Press always come and take photographs and there’s always a piece in the paper about it and lots of people come to watch – to see the villagers playing at being quaint, I suppose. There’s an old painting of it on the wall in the corner behind that tomb that Willie Biggs says is haunted – you know, the one with the knight resting his ankles on his little dog. I don’t know which rector it is but he’s there for all to see.’

  Peter beat a retreat to the rear of the church and stood gazing at the painting. The gold frame was old and in need of a good clean and so was the painting, but it was possible to discern a rector of indeterminate century dropping his Devil’s mask and costume onto the grass and standing there holding up his hand in blessing. Close by him were an angel and a figure he assumed was someone’s idea of the Grim Reaper. Pagan. Definitely pagan. Nothing to do with Christianity at all.

  Peter called to Muriel: ‘Surely we usually dress a well, not the stocks.’

  Muriel came up the church to speak to him.

  ‘Well yes, most villages do, but the only well still in existence is that one in Jimmy Glover’s garden and that is foul. Over the years he’s been throwing all his rubbish down it. It certainly wouldn’t be any good blessing that. Besides, which, he wouldn’t let you. Something of a recluse is Jimmy and a smelly one at that. Oh, and there’s another one in Thelma and Valda Senior’s garden too. I’d forgotten that one.’

  ‘I have grave doubts as to whether I can perform this blessing.’

  ‘Oh dear. Mr Furbank never gave it a thought – he loved getting dressed up. We had the procession right through the war. Whatever’s going on in the world, the ceremony always takes place.’

  Neither of them realised that they were being overheard. The news about Peter’s misgivings was all round the village and the outlying farms before he had finished his soup that evening.

  As Peter entered the church the next morning he noticed an increase, in fact a substantial increase, in the size of the congregation. For a split second he wondered if he had forgotten it was some kind of special day but knew he hadn’t. The difference he did notice was that only the choir was singing. The congregation stood mute to a man. When he announced the first hymn, scarcely a hymnbook rustled. Mrs Peel played the first two lines and everyone stood. From his position on the altar steps Peter could see that Caroline, Muriel and Jimbo and Harriet had got their hymnbooks out, but none of the real villagers had done so.

  He conducted the entire service in his normal joyous uplifting manner but by the end the strain was beginning to tell. When Peter stood at the church door to wish the congregation ‘Good morning’ he found that apart from those same four people, no one appeared to shake his hand. They had all gone out through the vestry door.

  Willie Biggs supplied the answer.

  ‘They’ve all taken their bats home, sir. Heard you were none too pleased about playing the Devil in the procession on Stocks Day and they is very upset. They’ve sent you to Coventry till you change your mind.’

  ‘Does it mean so much to them, then? Why can’t someone else play the part? Jimbo would do a good job, wouldn’t you, Jimbo?’

  ‘No, Peter, indeed I wouldn’t. If they gave me the same cold shoulder they’ve given you this morning, I’d be bankrupt in a week and with a wife and three children to support, I simply can’t afford it. It’s you they want, Peter. I’d be no substitute, believe me.’

  ‘But it’s a pagan ritual.’

  Caroline took his arm. ‘Let’s go home and have a think, darling.’

  ‘Can’t you persuade him to do it, Caroline?’ Harriet asked as they made their way down the church path.

  ‘I never try to influence Peter where his conscience is concerned. He is the rector, not me. Sorry, Harriet.’

  Caroline went straight to the kitchen and began making sandwiches for their lunch, leaving Peter to wrestle with his own conscience. She knew he’d have to fall in with it in the end, but he needed to come to that conclusion himself. This Stocks Day was evidently part of the fabric of village life and sometimes modern theological thinking had to give way when such stout opposition was voiced. She’d been mortified during the whole of the service and had felt desperately sorry for Peter. At one stage she had nearly stood up and told them what she thought about them all, and then she remembered that he was the rector, not she, and that this was a battle he must fight.

  During the afternoon she began altering a dress she’d worn in a play at the hospital. It was drab and loose and torn, but just right for a medieval peasant woman taking part in a village ritual.

  ‘Surely to goodness that isn’t a dress you intend wearing, is it? It’s not your colour at all,’ Peter protested as he brought in an afternoon cup of tea as a means of regaining Caroline’s favour.

  ‘Yes it is. I’m playing the part of a medieval peasant woman fearful of the plague and trying hard to forget that I’ve lost my mother, my father, two sisters and three of my children with the dreaded pestilence.’

  ‘Caroline, is this some kind of joke?’

  ‘No, thanks for the tea, no, that’s what it’s for.’

  ‘Are you joining in the procession, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even though I don’t approve?’

  ‘I am not trying to persuade you to change your mind, so you mustn’t try to change mine. We agreed on that before we married.’

  ‘But this is something where I need your support.’

  ‘I can’t support you when these good people have so vehemently shown you their disapproval. They must feel very deeply about the issue or they wouldn’t have been as unkind and rude as they were this morning. It’s not in their nature.’

  ‘But this has nothing to do with Christianity. It’s a relic of some pagan ceremony, I’m sure it is. The Devil, indeed! There’s no such thing, only the evil within ourselves.’

  ‘Who are you trying to persuade now? Yourself or me?’ She
slipped off her dress and tried on the costume. ‘All I need now is to make my hair all drab and disgusting and I shall look a treat. I’ve got that old pair of Jesus sandals you don’t like – they’ll come in handy. It’s ages since I had my tea on a village green. You’ll have to get your own tea that day. I’ll leave something in the fridge for you.’

  Caroline went into the hall and stood looking at herself in the long mirror. Peter came up behind her and put his arms round her.

  ‘What if I asked you not to join in?’

  ‘It wouldn’t work, Peter. I’m part of the village and I must join in. They know it has to be done or things won’t be right for them. I look like a too-well-fed peasant, don’t I? I’ll have to put some shadow on my cheeks and make them seem hollow.’

  Peter had a bitter week following his declaration about Stocks Day. Those who did speak to him looked sorrowfully at him; even Muriel was icily polite when he dropped into Harriet’s Tearoom for a coffee.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Harris. Would you like a table outside in the garden or do you prefer inside?’

  ‘Inside, Muriel, then we can talk.’

  The YTS girl brought his coffee and Muriel sat at the till trying to look busy with her bookwork. Her natural politeness prevented her from being rude but secretly she was very distressed by Peter’s attitude.

  He chattered on about the playgroup starting and one thing and another of parish interest, and then eventually she could stand it no longer.

  ‘It’s no good, Mr Harris. You’ve got to face up to it, you know.’

  ‘Face up to what?’

  ‘Stocks Day. I knew the village would be upset but I’d no idea feeling would run so high. The ceremony has a great deal of significance for them, you know. It’s right there in their bones and they won’t feel right if they don’t have the rector doing what he should. They’ll all be quite convinced that terrible things will happen to the village if they don’t keep faith with the past.’

  ‘I’ve heard what you say, Muriel, but what about my conscience?’

  ‘Pshaw! What’s your conscience worth if you lose everyone’s trust?’