Gentleman's Relish

by Patrick Gale

  Corey was losing his temper. He had a child’s inability to deal with stress and so had designed his life along lines of dull simplicity. His back-to-basics philosophy masked a fear of confrontation and unexpected challenges. He had made a big effort, she knew, coming out tonight, sitting restlessly through a concert of what he called her music but the effort was worthless for being so paraded. An evening of his reluctantly given was small recompense for the tedious hours she had spent driving him back and forth from the lay-by where he peddled the crude wooden mushrooms he ‘carved’ with a chainsaw. Even so, he was going to make her pay.

  ‘Why’d you stop pushing?’ he asked.

  ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘It’s sinking. You’ll only make it worse.’

  ‘This was a stupid idea, parking in here.’

  ‘There was nowhere else to park.’

  ‘You knew we’d get stuck. If those chickens are dead…’

  ‘I’ll buy you some new ones.’

  ‘Oh yes. Money solves everything. Wave your wand and spend your father’s precious money.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Gretel turned her back to flag down the last four-wheel-drive as it began to pull out. Grinning, actually grinning, the driver wound down his window.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Daren’t stop or we’ll get stuck too.’

  ‘Good luck,’ the woman beside him called and they purred away.

  As Gretel stood aside to let them pass, the mud sucked off one of her inappropriate shoes. She groped in the dark for it but her fingers found only ooze and she nearly lost her balance.

  ‘Oh. God, I’m so sorry.’

  It was the young man in the dinner jacket who had waved them in. She had spotted him later, in the chorus, cheeks pink with effort, eyes shining with emotion. His white shirtfront glowed bluish in the light of the moon. He shone a torch across them then politely dropped its beam.

  ‘Can I help push?’

  ‘Better not,’ she said. ‘We might sink even further.’

  ‘I should never have let you park here. Come on. I’ll shove too.’

  So they pushed again while Corey revved again and the van sank up to its rear axle. Uncomplaining, the young man now wore mud on his shirtfront like a penance.

  ‘I could ring the AA or something,’ he suggested, shining a torch into the liquefied mire.

  ‘We’re not members,’ she said and it felt as though she were confessing to not being members of society. ‘I normally fix the van myself.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I’d offer to pull you out myself but I’ve only got a 2CV. Erm. Tell you what, the chairwoman’s got a Land Rover.’

  ‘Oh goodie,’ Corey said, mimicking his accent. ‘And where’s she?’

  ‘She’ll be up at the pub, I expect. I’ll drive up there now and see if I can find her. If I do, I’ll send her right back with a tow-rope. Or I’ll send someone else. It won’t be more than half an hour max.’

  ‘Oh brill,’ Corey said and swore.

  ‘I feel awful about this,’ the young man went on. ‘You’ll never want to come again.’

  ‘No no,’ Gretel said.

  ‘Quite right,’ said Corey.

  ‘There’ll be two free seats for you on the last night. I’ll have them left on the door for you. I’m sorry there’s not much more I can do.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. Honestly,’ she said. ‘Thanks for everything.’

  He found her missing shoe before he left and handed it over with further apologies then he disappeared into the lane. Moments later they heard his 2CV gunning uncertainly and pulling away. There was no one left besides them. The night enveloped them, as did Corey’s filthy mood.

  Gretel tried turning on the radio to lighten the atmosphere but he told her not to waste the battery. She said she wished she’d known to bring a picnic like everyone else, then they might have had leftover sandwiches to enjoy. Which of course made things worse because now he was hungry as well as stranded.

  Suddenly he was getting out.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

  ‘Home,’ he said.

  ‘But he said it would only be half an hour.’

  ‘So? They could all be dead by now. Anyway, what makes you think he was telling the truth? He’ll be in the pub with his mates. He’ll be drinking. No one’ll come. I’m off.’

  ‘But how…?’

  ‘I’ll hitch,’ he said. ‘Your van. Your mess. You wait.’

  ‘Don’t go,’ she said. ‘Don’t be like that. This is silly. You’ll never find a lift.’

  But he did, almost immediately. A Beetle stopped, a new one, and when the light came on inside she saw the young woman driving it, blonde, sporty-looking, a surfing type. She heard him say, quite distinctly as he got in, ‘Oh, she’ll be all right,’ and he sped away without a backward glance.

  Alone at last, unhurried and with no headlamps to spoil the clarity, she found herself in the perfect situation to admire the comet. It was the first she had seen. Until now she had always assumed they were swift blazes in the night sky, like shooting stars. Or perhaps shooting stars were simply other planets’ comets? Her grasp of astronomy was vague but she had always wondered how the superstitious, the Three Wise Men, the invaded Saxons on the Bayeux Tapestry, could have built such significance on something one might blink and miss. Instead, she now saw, comets were like frozen things, speeding, maybe, but at such a distance they barely seemed to move.

  She’ll be all right. She repeated his words in her head like a mantra. The Brahms had stirred her up, brought her repeatedly close to tears with its grand talk of death, of mourning, of last things and grasslike flesh. It left her exposed and childlike, in need of the kind of hugs Corey only offered when drunk and unhelpfully sentimental but the comet at once belittled and calmed her. Nothing matters, it said and Everything is possible.

  Gretel removed her second shoe, so as not to lose it, then walked barefoot to the back of the van. The squelching mattered less without shoes on. It was only mud. It would wash off. She turned on the light and closed the door behind her. There was water in the flask and gas in the canister. She set the kettle on to boil. There were some Garibaldi biscuits in the tin beside the teabag jar, softened with age but still quite palatable. Munching while she waited for her tea, she checked the cupboards. The tools were there, naturally, and the jack – one drove a van this old nowhere without them – but so were the van’s original picnic set, the road atlas, her duffel coat and a good thick jersey she had given up for lost. The mud would not have done anything to the blanket a launderette could not undo. Her wallet was empty of notes but it held the card only she could use, the Card of Power as she thought of it. Her driving licence, stowed behind the sun visor, seemed suddenly the official recognition of some much deeper ability than mere self-transport. She dunked her teabag and made a mental list of all she would be leaving behind if she failed to follow Corey. A heap of old clothes, old paperbacks, her clumsy attempts at pottery and an attractive, straggle-haired hitch-hiker she had once rescued from a downpour on Salisbury Plain. Nothing she could not replace, should the need arise.

  The festival chairwoman arrived with Land Rover, tow-rope and a tactful lack of expressed surprise at finding one person where she had been led to expect two. She pulled the van back out to tarmac then paused, after unhitching the rope which, miraculously, had not pulled off its bumper. Her manner was bracing in a good, old-fashioned way that instilled confidence rather than terror.

  ‘Are you positive you’ll be all right?’ she asked as though on the verge of offering a warming mustard bath and a serviceable change of clothes.

  Gretel felt the mud crack on her cheek so she must have been smiling.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Honestly.’

  THE EXCURSION

  The idea was to make a full day of it rather than have the demonstration as the be-all and end-all. The minibus collected them from outside the church at ten-thirty. Gwen and Bernie bagged three seats at the back so she could s
it with them.

  They were like that, Eileen had realized. Forceful.

  People who escaped from inside aeroplanes seconds before they turned to fireballs did so because for a few moments something in their genetic make-up enabled them to override all inculcated sense of decency to trample on the hands and faces of other passengers in a single-minded rush for life. Afterwards they would say how guilty they felt and people assumed this reflected a becoming sense of un-worthiness at being spared. Actually what they spoke of was uncomplicated guilt at their memories of elbowing an air steward in the face or punching a dithering child aside from the escape chute.

  Gwen and Bernie were such people and Eileen was not. They bagged her a seat because they wanted her with them but if the minibus were balanced on a cliff, they’d jump out without a backward glance at her.

  They were big-boned, wet-lipped, hot-palmed meat-eaters; more like brother and sister than husband and wife. She preferred not to imagine them naked.

  It was not far. A forty-minute run on the motorway then half that again dawdling in queues through the city’s outskirts and system of roundabouts. Someone had a daughter-in-law in the police who had tipped them off so they knew exactly where to meet up and when. There were two hours to kill so they tried on shoes in Marks – Gwen was a martyr to corns, apparently – before enjoying a sort of package-deal OAP lunch in the café at the top of Dingles.

  She had not known them long. They had met through church. Eileen had attended the same church most of her life. She believed in Father and Son and – if not pressed for specifics – Holy Ghost. She accepted the probable truth of much of the Bible and found a recital of the Lord’s Prayer a great comfort at times of stress. She disengaged her intellect when joining in the Creed but she would unhesitatingly have ticked any box marked Christian. She worshipped at the church her mother had preferred, which embraced an undemonstrative, tasteful brand of Anglicanism, a church for women like herself who were happy enough to lend a hand at a fundraising bazaar but preferred their religion undiscussed and uninvolving.

  At least she thought that was the sort of woman she was. Then Gwen and Bernie turned up in the congregation one Sunday – the numbers were never spectacular so one could always spot new faces – and sat beside her. It was one of the few churches in the diocese that persisted in holding out against doing the Peace but they startled her by clasping her hands in theirs at the moment in the service where other priests might have intoned let us offer one another a sign of peace and murmuring, ‘Peace be with you,’ with such urgency she spent the rest of the service worried that hers was not so tranquil a soul as she had thought.

  They sought her out during coffee and biscuits afterwards and introduced themselves.

  ‘We can tell you’re not happy here,’ Gwen said. ‘Can’t we, Bernie? I mean, it’s not right. Not right for you. I’m sure he’s a lovely man but you have to go back to first principles, sometimes.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Eileen said, confused.

  By way of explanation, Bernie nodded towards Reverend Girouard, who had not long been with them. ‘Homosexual,’ he hissed.

  ‘Shame,’ said Gwen. ‘It’s a lovely church otherwise. Old.’

  ‘He even wants to bless their unions,’ Bernie added. ‘He asked the bishop.’

  Eileen had already gathered from the flower arrangers that there was no likelihood of a Mrs Girouard and that Mr Clancy, who had been giving organ recitals for a while now, was possibly rather more than a lodger at the vicarage. The two men were exceptionally polite and good-looking and, after her initial surprise, she had begun to decide that their domestic arrangement made a pleasant change from the previous incumbent who had one of those resentful, difficult wives who seemed almost standard C of E issue these days and played Divide and Rule with the ladies on the flower rota. She had not analysed her response very deeply but a small part of her pleasure stemmed from the sense that she was not reacting as her parents would have done. Her unvoiced welcome of the two men was a timid rebellion against the norm. Now she found she lacked the courage to give it voice, however, and felt shamed into agreeing with Gwen and Bernie.

  ‘I know,’ she heard herself sigh. ‘It probably isn’t right. I mean, not ideal. But what can one do? We’re lucky to have a priest at all, as far as I can see.’

  ‘One that’s white, you mean,’ sighed Bernie.

  ‘That’s not what I…’ Eileen began.

  ‘Vote with your feet,’ Gwen cut in. ‘Next week you’re coming to us at St Mungo’s.’

  She could have laid low, perhaps, pleaded sickness or lain out of sight on the kitchen floor when Gwen came tapping on the window with her wedding ring. She had gone with them, however, meek as a lamb.

  St Mungo’s was not at all the sort of church her mother would have liked, so initially there was a tacit satisfaction in changing allegiances. The hymns were happy and unfamiliar, their words projected onto a big screen so that everyone’s hands were left unencumbered for waving in the air or clapping. The priest was a muscular, short-haired man – like a soldier or PE instructor – who wore a plain suit instead of robes and kept walking among them and making eye contact so that everything in the service felt tremendously personal. The Peace was no mere embarrassed handshake but a heartfelt festival of greeting in which people actually left their pews to meet strangers across the aisle. The priest tracked her down. There was no escaping him. Offset by his short silver hair, his eyes were chips of sapphire.

  ‘I’m Paul,’ he said, offering a hand both large and warm.

  ‘Eileen,’ she told him. ‘I’m Eileen Roberts.’

  ‘Peace be with you, Eileen,’ he said, bringing his other hand into play so that both of hers were trapped. ‘Welcome to St Mungo’s. I mean that. Truly.’

  And she felt so hot behind her eyes she thought she might faint.

  His handshake was so firm and his welcome so compelling that she proved unswervingly disloyal and came back to St Mungo’s week after week. Reverend Girouard was undoubtedly better bred but there was no denying that his twinkly charm was effete by comparison, weak even, and she reminded herself – and her mother’s disapproving shade – that some of the disciples had been rough-edged working men, men her father would have dismissed as common.

  Gwen and Bernie did not come every week. She soon realized this was because they worked as covert missionaries, targeting churches where the priests were unmarried or unorthodox, to lure away to St Mungo’s discontented worshippers who might otherwise have left the church entirely.

  ‘I suppose it’s all the same God, though,’ Eileen let slip in a weak moment and Bernie corrected her.

  ‘Yes, but some vessels are unworthy, Eileen. You wouldn’t serve your guest on unclean china.’

  She had since seen Reverend Girouard’s good-looking friend Mr Clancy on the High Street a couple of times and crossed the street quickly to avoid any awkwardness. Reverend Girouard himself had come round once and actually called her name through the letterbox when she failed to answer the bell. She hid from him in the broom cupboard in case he peered through a window and saw her. She felt ill afterwards from the excitement and had to lie down.

  There was already a small crowd outside the law courts but, tipped off by the policewoman daughter-in-law, they knew to stand in a less obvious position down a side street where the authorities thought the van could emerge unimpeded.

  They had all enjoyed a glass of wine with lunch and, as they waited, Gwen expounded on the accused’s crimes with something approaching relish. Eileen did not take a newspaper as a rule because the photographs upset and haunted her. She preferred the radio, whose rare horrors one could always switch off. But Gwen talked horrors now, how the victims had been young men, little more than boys really, how they had been drugged and sexually preyed upon, how there were signs for those who knew how to read them that his purposes had been Satanic. He had shown no remorse and had even laughed to himself as the judge read out the charges.

  What
they told her fired her up with disgusted indignation but still she was not the sort of woman to make a spectacle of herself in public. As the time grew ever nearer she became increasingly tense, not wanting to be singled out for holding back, but not wanting either to behave in a way that was extreme. But just as the gate was swinging open and the unmarked van emerging, Gwen thrust a box of eggs into her hand from the collection she had picked up cheaply in Poundstretcher.

  ‘He laughed to himself as the judge read out the charges,’ she said. ‘Just think of that. He laughed, Eileen!’

  The crowd surged out into the road and Eileen was swept along with it. She knew she’d have to join in, she knew she’d have to throw an egg at least if only to do what was expected of her. But as the van drew near and the people around her started to shout, ‘Filth! Filth!’, and to throw things she shouted the first thing that came into her head.

  ‘Satan!’ she shouted. ‘Murdering Satan!’

  A sort of heat rose up behind her eyes, as rapidly as boiling-over milk, and her head was suddenly full of the poor boys, of lads she had known who might have been the killer’s victims.

  The rear of the van was blanked out, of course, and she found she directed all her uprush of hate at the startled man who was driving, not quite hidden by the grilles over the van’s windows. She fancied there was fear in the look he gave her before the police came to his rescue and made the crowd stand back to let him pass.

  It was over in seconds. She felt her cheeks on fire and found she was laughing, almost hysterical with embarrassment, by the time the van was rounding the corner. Bernie looked at her with respect.

  ‘It’s the Spirit,’ he said. ‘The Spirit is on you!’

  But it wasn’t, she knew. Gwen knew it too, glancing at her with a woman’s sharper instinct. Eileen had tasted something more like ecstasy and her flesh was alight in a way that made her want to hide herself. She was disgusted with herself too. She had only meant to join in a little. It was quite unlike her to be so carried away and hatred was an emotion of which she had little experience.