by L. C. Tyler
‘Not enough sea air where you are?’
‘I’m seeking divine inspiration,’ I said.
‘It was kind of you to see me,’ I said. ‘Especially at such short notice.’
‘I’ve always enjoyed your books,’ said the vicar – ‘Father Thomas’ as the noticeboard outside the church invited us to address him.
‘The J. R. Elliot ones or the Peter Fielding series?’ I asked.
‘Amanda Collins,’ he said. ‘Just the thing when you can’t get to sleep.’
‘A lot of people tell me that,’ I said.
‘Two or three pages does it for me,’ he said. ‘Never fails. So, how can I help you? You said you were researching one of my predecessors?’
‘Sabine Barclay-Wood,’ I said.
‘Ah, yes, composer of “God of Sunshine, God of Love”.’ Father Thomas hummed a few bars experimentally. ‘I can’t really remember all the words, of course – nobody sings that hymn much now. But I do recall it from primary school. It fell out of favour for some reason – I think it wasn’t terribly politically correct – some feminists objected very strongly indeed. And the Commission for Racial Equality. And the Royal National Institute for Blind People. And the verse about the all-consuming fires of hell was quite disturbing for small children. Traumatic, actually. Even when I was young, they’d stopped singing that bit. Still, that’s the hymn he’s mainly remembered for. Nice tune, of course.’
‘He also wrote a couple of books,’ I said. ‘Curious Tales of Old Sussex and the Happy Recollections of a Sussex Clergyman.’
‘The one that led to that protracted libel action?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Oh, that was him, too, was it? Yes, of course, so it was. There’s a copy of the book in the study. My predecessor left it behind. As his predecessor did. It’s not a book you’d necessarily want to take with you. It may have been Barclay-Wood’s own copy. Old Mrs Hardcastle once told me that he left quite a collection of papers when he finally died.’
‘Do you still have any of them?’
‘Not that I know of. There was a big clear-out some years ago – probably when the old vicarage was sold off. I’m surprised that those two books survived it, to be quite honest. Now I’m responsible for three churches, we’ve had to cut down on old files. They don’t have much relevance to the Church today. Dusty old ledgers and minute books. The important stuff is now safely in the National Archives, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through or steal. You can also view it online, so I’m told. Moths can’t get at it there either.’
‘Barclay-Wood did a lot of archaeological work over at Sidlesham,’ I said.
‘Really? I didn’t know that.’
‘He wouldn’t have left anything from the Abbey here …?’
‘If he had, it would have gone with everything else,’ he said, smiling. ‘Thirty years ago, at least. But I’m sure they wouldn’t have thrown out anything that was at all valuable. There’s a museum at Sidlesham. It would almost certainly have been sent there. You could enquire with the chair of the committee that runs it – a Mr Poldark, I think.’
‘Polgreen,’ I said.
‘You already seem to know him, then. We’re a church, not a museum, as I was saying to Old Mrs Hardcastle only the other day.’
‘That’s the same Old Mrs Hardcastle who told you about the Barclay-Wood papers?’
‘Yes, indeed. Constantly.’
‘How old is Old Mrs Hardcastle?’ I asked.
‘Oh, gosh – we celebrated her ninetieth birthday just after I arrived here. So that would make her ninety-two … maybe ninety-three. She’s very good for her age. Dear, dear Mrs Hardcastle. What would we do without her?’
‘She’d remember Sabine Barclay-Wood personally?’
‘Only too well. And most of my other predecessors. She has a bottomless fund of stories about them. And their wives. And their children. And their dogs. And their cats. So very many fascinating stories.’
‘So where could I find her?’
‘She’s in the church now arranging flowers. She said she might drop by for a chat when she’s done. I’m expecting her any moment.’
‘Could I perhaps go and talk to her in the church for half an hour or so?’
A look of relief flooded Father Thomas’s face. ‘Would you really?’ he said. ‘That would be immensely kind of you. I can’t say how grateful I am.’
The church was vast and late Victorian. On a warm summer’s day, it felt like a mislaid piece of January. The harsh red-brick arches, which soared up to the roof, showed many patches of powdery white, where the damp had penetrated the ageing, but not yet ancient, structure. The window over the altar showed St Augustine preaching to what appeared to be a group of Victorians in fancy dress, perhaps about to take part in a re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings. A scroll with the words ‘Non Angli sed Angeli’ hovered over them ominously, though they had not yet noticed it. One’s eyes needed to drop some way before they encountered the twenty-first century, in the form of pictures of Palestine, executed in crayon by children of the local primary school and pinned haphazardly to a board. Most were set in biblical times, and were replete with yellow flat-roofed houses, green palm trees, brown camels and grey asses. But, in one, an Israeli soldier was pictured mowing down a crowd of Arab protesters with a machine gun that fired red tracer bullets in a strangely curved trajectory. The artwork had been graded by the class teacher. Most pupils had received full marks, regardless of any questions of artistic merit, but the massacre was for some reason accorded only eight out of ten.
Mrs Hardcastle was fighting with some tall and rather top-heavy blooms on the altar itself. They seemed a little too large for the vases and much too large for her. Gardening parishioners had probably donated surplus flowers to the church without dwelling too much on their suitability. For somebody of her age and size she wasn’t doing a bad job. She rammed a final lupin into place amongst some hollyhocks and ferns, swore at the flowers with remarkable fluency and turned to face me.
‘What?’ she demanded.
‘Sorry, are you Mrs Hardcastle?’ I asked, being careful not to condescendingly address her as ‘Old’.
‘I’m called Old Mrs Hardcastle, ducky,’ she said. ‘I usually do the flowers on Saturdays. My daughter-in-law, who does the flowers for special occasions, is called Young Mrs Hardcastle. Her daughter-in-law is called Amanda, but she doesn’t do flowers on account of having joined a satanic cult in Eastbourne. Which of us did you want, dear?’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I should have made myself clearer. Father Thomas said to look for Old Mrs Hardcastle.’
‘Did he? Condescending little prick. He’s not that young himself. Well, you’ve found me, ducky. What do you want? I haven’t got all day and I’m ready to go home. The last thing I want is to find, when my time comes, that I’ve dropped dead in this bloody place, just because some idiot kept me talking.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Father Thomas told me that you might be able to assist. He said that you knew the Reverend Sabine Barclay-Wood.’
‘You from the police?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘It’s just that they’re digging up all sorts of cold cases these days.’
‘That’s not why I’m here,’ I said.
‘Good, because I’d have told you to piss off if you were.’
‘I just wondered if you knew anything about his archaeological work.’
‘Not really. Was that Sidlesham Abbey?’
‘Yes.’
She shook her head. ‘He’d stopped that some time before I first met him. He had one or two bits and pieces in his study, though – a ring from an old Abbot and some bones. He reckoned they were some dead bishop’s fingers, but they could have been sweet-and-sour spare ribs for all I knew. He used them to clean out his pipe.’
‘What happened to his stuff?’
‘Thrown away, about thirty or forty years ago. For a long time, you
see, the priests here were all bachelors. The house was enormous – it’s half a dozen flats now – but it wasn’t very nice. You could call it a gothic monstrosity. Always chilly and never-ending cleaning and dusting. They tried to get married men to take it, but the wives looked at it and told their husbands to find a job elsewhere or find another woman willing to run the village fete and have their children. But some years ago, we did get a married couple. The first thing they did was to clear all of the accumulated junk out of the unused bedrooms and repaint from top to bottom. Mrs Roberts – yes, that was their name, Roberts – declined to dust all of the old books either, so they went, too.’
‘So, where did this so-called junk go?’
‘I don’t know, dear – there was probably a man come and took most of it. I couldn’t tell you who. Not now. And they had a bonfire of the rest. I do remember that. It was a very nice blaze and the kiddies all got to throw stuff on, though one did get hospitalised. Still, the others had a good time, which was the main thing. And I have to say the house looked much better for it.’
‘You knew him well?’
‘Well, everyone knows “God of Sunshine, God of Love”, don’t they? Or they used to. It’s banned in thirty-one countries now, according to the Guinness Book of Records. He was the vicar here when I was a little girl. I’ve always lived here in Selsey, except when I was away during the war – I was a Wren. Had a ball. You baby-boomers think you invented sex, but you don’t know the half of it. There’s nothing you did in the ’60s and ’70s that I hadn’t done twice by 1943. As for the Reverend, he died about the time I came back. He was, you might have said, a broken man by then. Bloody bishops. But he was fun before the war. He’d put bits of the Daily Herald editorials in his sermons and claim it came from St Paul’s Epistles. Sometimes he’d wink at me during prayers, because I was the only one who’d got it. “Blessed is the union of those who labour,” he’d say. And he’d watch as the Daily Mail readers muttered, “Amen”. He was a card, that one. I’m so glad the police never caught up with him.’
‘So, were you always involved in the church?’
‘No choice. My father was churchwarden for years and years. He and the vicar had a real ding-dong about saints’ images. The church was full of them when Barclay-Wood arrived, and my father wanted to keep them. The vicar wanted them gone.’
‘And they all went?’
‘My father was eventually allowed to keep two. Horrible things. John the Baptist and St Mary Magdalene, according to the vicar, but they all looked the same to me in the gloomy corner they were stuck in. Could have been Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.’
‘Gold and encrusted with gems?’ I asked, optimistically.
She laughed. ‘No, they were cheap things – white stone – what do you call it?’
‘Alabaster,’ I said.
‘That’s it. My memory isn’t what it was. A sort of dirty white – like bad emulsion. I suggested once that a lick of paint might actually improve them. Now I think about it, that’s what he did. By the time I joined the Wrens they were matt black. It made them worse, if anything – the black showed up every fault. You could see just how cheap they were. Not life-like at all. Sort of stretched out and very stiff. He really hated those statues, did the Reverend. But then he hated all statues of saints, bless him. Said they were the spawn of Satan and could drag you down to hell by the tits. Nobody ever forgot that sermon.’
‘Are they still around?’
‘Haven’t seen them for years, my love. He probably smashed them up, around the time my father died – Dad went to London, you see, to be a firefighter during the Blitz and he never came back. The Reverend might have thought that was his best chance – before they appointed a successor. If it wasn’t then, they probably went at the same time as all of the Reverend’s papers. I used to clean the church, so I’d remember if they’d been around lately. Haven’t seen them for years and years. Haven’t missed them, but they were rubbish, like I say.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Sorry – I didn’t really introduce myself – I’m Ethelred Tressider.’ I handed her one of my cards.
‘Betty Hardcastle,’ she said, stuffing the card in an apron pocket. ‘Betty Cornwallis in the days I knew the Reverend. He’d have married me and Stan if he’d lived another year, but he died just before the war ended. I always thought him and Stan would have got on well. Stan was an awkward bastard too. I miss them both.’
We belatedly shook hands.
‘I’d better go and see the vicar now,’ she said, ‘and tell him a few anecdotes. He’s heard them all, of course, but I like to pretend I don’t remember I’ve done them before, then I can watch him trying to be interested. It’s the closest you can get to fun at my age. That and trolling on Twitter. I’ve been suspended twice, but you can always set up under a new name. Or sometimes even under the old one. It’s surprising what you can get away with.’
It was a couple of days later that a small package arrived for me. The covering letter was in spidery handwriting, that sloped across the page. It was from Old Mrs Hardcastle.
After you’d gone, she wrote, I remembered I’d got some old papers of Dad’s. He left them behind when he went to London. I found this lot. I’d always wondered where the statues went. Looks like the Reverend sold them. Can’t trust anyone these days, can you? No idea how Dad got the enclosed, but I can see why he might have wanted to keep it if he fancied a bit of blackmail. And who doesn’t, eh? Love and kisses, ‘Old Mrs Hardcastle’
‘The enclosed’ was a yellowed envelope, addressed to the Reverend S. Barclay-Wood at the vicarage. It was postmarked 3rd July 1940, but the letters it contained were of various dates from 1938 onwards. They were all from an auction house in Bond Street.
Dear Reverend Barclay-Wood,
Thank you for your letter of the third inst. Let me say at once what a pleasure it was to receive a communication from the author of ‘God of Sunshine, God of Love’, one of my favourite hymns at school, though for some reason less sung now than of old.
I should warn you that the market for jewellery of all sorts is not as it once was. The photograph that you sent me of the ring is, however, most interesting. It is, I would have said, thirteenth-century English and a very fine specimen – the sort of ring that a Bishop or Abbot might have worn. You are most fortunate to have been left it by your aunt. If you were willing to let us sell it for you, I would place a reserve of £250 on it, and would hope that it might fetch as much as £500, even in the present depressed market.
I do understand that wills can cause unpleasantness within families, if certain members who had hoped for a bequest do not receive one. We would, of course, be happy to avoid adding to your embarrassment and will just say that the current owner is a gentleman living in Northumberland, if that is still how you wish us to describe you.
Please let me know in due course what you would like me to do and, if you wish to commission us to sell it, then please send the ring by registered post in a small cardboard tube.
I beg to remain, sir, your most humble servant.
J. Partington (Partner)
Dear Reverend Barclay-Wood,
Thank you for the picture of the second ring. It is, if anything, finer than the first, though a little later in date. I think that it might fetch rather more than the £600 that we obtained for your aunt’s other ring. Your aunt must have been a most knowledgeable collector. I wish any of my own aunts had her good taste! I do wonder, however, if we would be wise putting it on the market quite so soon after the first, which excited a certain amount of interest and speculation, bearing as it did the arms of Sidlesham Abbey. I would suggest that you send it to us, and we will put it in one of our sales early next year and perhaps under a different name to avoid any mistaken impression of impropriety.
I beg to remain etc. etc.
J. Partington (Partner)
Dear Reverend Barclay-Wood,
We are in receipt of your letter of the 29th ul
t. and the very curious photograph of the statue that you say is St James the Less. I would hate to contradict a clergyman, but are you sure that it is not intended as a figure of Christ? There is a distinct circlet round his head, which seems to be a crown of thorns. Whatever the subject, however, it is most certainly in a Byzantine style – and, if original, then of the eighth or ninth century. You say that it is painted black, making me think that it is more likely to be a modern copy, though a very good one. Your final question puzzles me a little: you ask, hypothetically, what its value would be if, under the paint, it was in fact solid gold, studded with gems. It is not clear why you think this might be the case. I have consulted my partners who agree that, if you could bring it to London for our inspection, we would be very interested to see it and perhaps, if you permit it, remove a little of the paint. My partners have asked me to point out, however, that, should it prove to be as you suggest, then we could not sell it without carrying out some enquiries into its provenance, beginning perhaps with the Dean in Chichester. I said that I was sure that you would raise no objection to this, but I shall take no further action until I hear from you.
This final letter was signed Acting Lance Corporal Partington (Partner), the war having broken out the year before and many men too old to join the army having volunteered for what would later become the Home Guard. There were no letters after that one, though that didn’t mean he hadn’t concocted a convincing story for the acting lance corporal or indeed tried another, less suspicious auction house.
So, in 1940, he had at least tried to sell the statue of Christ, which tended to confirm, if further proof were needed, that he had indeed found both statues in 1902. The place of safety for them, referred to in the journal, appeared, however, to have been inside his own church, disguised with black paint. So how, then, had the Madonna got to the Priory in time for Iris’s grandfather to find it there in 1959? Barclay-Wood could, of course, have visited it during the war, long after the visit noted with a bookmark by Joyner. But it did not clear up the mystery of why he should want to do that. Even by Barclay-Wood’s standards, this tale was … well, becoming Byzantine in its twists and turns. There had to be a simpler explanation that would fit all of the facts.
