Fete Fatale (7 page)

‘I'm not sure there is a
great
deal I can do for you, Marcus. As you know, I'm rather an occasional churchgoer—' (That was true. Mr
Horsforth came three or four times a year, and sat through the service with an air of believing that religion was an excellent thing for the troops, but it mustn't be thought that
he
believed such nonsense.) ‘Insofar as I
am
a member of the congregation, I'm against all this sectarian silliness, so I'm entirely with you there. Beyond that . . . '

‘One thing you can do, on the day of the fête, is help me ensure that he's given a courteous reception. But beyond that, I hoped you could find one or two interested boys to introduce to him. You know that the Lads' Brigade and the Youth Club and all that sort of thing fell away long ago—Walter
wasn't
an inspirer, poor man, especially of the young—and I know Father Battersby is hoping to revive them. Young people, I imagine, are likely to find Mary and her antics wildly old-hat and ridiculous, and if you could say a few words, perhaps at assembly, about the dangers of bigotry and intolerance (not tying them in in any way with the current situation, of course), and if you could get together a nucleus of the sort of lad that you think might be interested, and might give a hand to Father Battersby, then I think the ground would be properly prepared for him, and all this opposition seen in its true perspective.'

‘I could perhaps do that. There
is
a type of lad who is predisposed to the religious thing.' (This last was said as from a great height, and certainly put Marcus in his place.) ‘And I can detail my boy to give a hand with anything this Battersby starts up. There's bound to be a good turn-out of boys to the fête, and I can get Timothy to round up a few of the more presentable ones and take them along to him. I'll take him round and introduce him to a few people, if needs be. In the intervals, of course, of peddling near-antiques with your good lady.'

‘Thyrza's junk,' I said. ‘Stuff too awful to be taken to Harrogate. I think we'll work on a system that as soon as either of us has sold five items of Thyrza's junk, we've earned fifteen minutes off.'

Mr Horsforth smiled thinly, his bow towards a sense of humour.

‘Well, good day to you, Marcus. Good day, Helen.'

And he allowed Smokey one last roll with Jasper, and then they proceeded in an orderly manner up the path.

‘I'm not sure Mr Horsforth is someone I'd choose as an ally,' I said, watching him go.

‘He's not someone I'd care to go out for a drink with, that's for
sure. Still, he's a useful man in some ways.' Marcus took my arm, and we went back towards town. ‘And give him his due: he's too sensible to go along with any of this bigotry that Mary is peddling around the town.'

‘What makes you think,' I said suddenly, ‘that Father Battersby is any less bigoted than Mary?'

‘Oh, surely not, surely not. Anyway, if he is, we'll face that problem when we come to it.'

That was Marcus—a great one for facing problems when he came to them.

The day of the fête dawned bright and clear, as they say in children's books where it always does. Hexton-on-Weir was seldom so lucky, though it would have been wrong to blame entirely for the dismal atmosphere the drizzle or squally showers with which the town was usually favoured. People had a lot to do with it too. This year, though, the sky was pure blue from early morning, and the sun played on laburnums and lilacs and early roses in the Hexton gardens.

‘No one could make trouble on a day like this,' said Marcus, tucking into a hearty plateful of bacon and eggs that was designed to make him forget food for eight or nine hours.

I marvelled at his optimism, particularly in view of the fact that he'd been warned. Thyrza Primp had been along to the surgery two days before with Patch. She wanted Marcus to give him a general check-up, apparently to see if he could stand the excitements of Harrogate. When Marcus tried to give her his little lecture on charity, tolerance and open-mindedness, she said that in her view (and in that of poor Walter) the Church had been a good deal too open in recent years, and it was time to remember that we were not Methodists or Romans but Anglicans, with our own ways. She regretted the necessity of making it clear to Father Battersby that he was not wanted in this parish, but she felt that the need to impress this on him fell to her, in view of her position
in the parish, and she did not intend to shirk it. He would be left in no doubt of the feelings of the town towards him. ‘We shall do it in the politest possible way,' she added ominously.

By the morning of the fête Father Battersby had been in Hexton for about twelve hours, and I hoped he had suffered nothing worse than a snub from Thyrza or Mary. He had stayed overnight at the Blatchleys', and in fact was to stay there until Thyrza moved out of the vicarage on the following Saturday. Marcus was sufficiently involved with the fête to have arranged no special meeting with him, beyond saying that he would meet him there. We both, in fact, were busy enough, in all conscience, from early in the morning. Marcus was helping set up the outdoor games and trials of strength, in preparation for the opening, which was set for eleven o'clock. I was organizing the vast array of junk we had collected for display on our stall, which was carefully situated in one of the best and most central positions in the marquee (good, it must be said, for chatting to people, as well as selling things). I say ‘our' stall, but I had collected the stuff, and now I was being allowed to set it out—Mr Horsforth merely standing by and saying ‘You do it so well.' The implication that this was ‘woman's work' seemed to hang unspoken in the atmosphere.

If there is anything I loathe, it's being watched while I'm working. I said: ‘I hope you've organized a few presentable boys to meet Father Battersby?'

‘Heavens above, it quite slipped my mind,' he fussed. ‘Timothy! Timothy!'

Across the chaos of preparation in the marquee a fair head turned readily in the direction of the call. Mr Horsforth fussed off, and I saw him giving lengthy and peremptory instructions to his son. I wondered, idly, how many young men of twenty-three or -four would like being summoned and instructed in that manner by their father in a public place.

I turned my attention to the junk. I call it junk because the majority of the stuff was Thyrza's. I had, in fact, been able to pick up one or two good pieces of this and that from other people, but Thyrza's junk surrounded me in cartons: whereas she would have had to pay the garbage men to come and cart it away, I not only had to collect it myself, but also to feign gratitude as well.
And
Thyrza would throw a fit of bad temper when she saw that not all
of it was displayed. That was out of the question, however. I devoted one end of the stall to a selection of the stuff: souvenirs of depressing holiday-resorts, a stone hot-water bottle, a monstrous collection of hatpins, odd shoe-trees, moth-eaten tablemats, a broken brass fender and a Britannia metal inkwell and penholder. Still in the cartons was a bedpan. I thought of labelling that end of the stall
Souvenirs of Thyrza Primp
, but I did not think that her popularity with the public at large was such that they would want any keepsake of her after she had taken herself into her chilly retirement. The better things were given a better display at the other end of the stall, and I had a few of those in reserve, too, as soon as any of them should go. I priced them high. On Thyrza's things I was ready to negotiate a give-away.

Across the aisle I noticed that Mrs Nielson had priced all her homemade jams and chutneys at 40p.

‘Too cheap,' I shouted.

‘No it's not,' she shouted back, patting Gustave, who was tied up under the table. ‘It's rubbish, most of it. Why should people pay the same price as for good commercial jams, or more? I tell everyone that of course
theirs
was lovely, but not everyone's was, and I couldn't cause ill-feeling by setting different prices . . . '

Mrs Nielson seemed to be getting Hexton's measure (though she was wrongly dressed: her powder-blue suit and hat were that bit too formal and old-fashioned for the fête, since that is the day when Hexton women celebrate the coming of summer in flowery skirts and cotton blouses—if it's not raincoats and wellies weather).

It was getting close to eleven o'clock, and soon it would be time for the raging mob to be let in. A brief trip outside the marquee (to get away from the babble, which was o'ertopped by the constant loud-hailing of Franchita, who was at her most bossy and unreasonable, and might have been masterminding D-Day) suggested that today there would indeed be a crowd. The sun had brought them out, and old and young were beginning to congregate in the meadows, casually dressed, good-humoured and flirtatious. Just the crowd to be indulgently disposed towards the home produce stall, the candy-floss bar, the knitwear stall, the Bingo drives, the Test the Power of Your Grip machine, the tea and coffee stall (with exorbitant prices) and the home handicrafts display. Just the crowd, too, to listen indulgently to the efforts of the Hexton choir,
which was even now assembling outside to present its first musical offering of the day. The Hexton choir existed to sing
Messiah
at Christmas, and to try, if possessed by an adventurous mood, to put together a performance of
The Creation
or
Elijah
at some other point of the year. The only time they had attempted a modern work, they had made
Belshazzar's Feast
sound like Belshazzar's tea-party. Now they launched themselves, with that predictability that characterizes local do's of this kind, into ‘Sumer is icumen in'. I stood in the sun, looking up to the winding town, to the castle and to Castle Walk, and thought that Hexton was not such a bad place to live in after all. Thus does Hexton woo one, delusively, from time to time. I saw Marcus getting his substantial bulk behind a hefty mallet, and trying to ring the bell on the Test Your Strength machine (he very nearly made it, as he very nearly made it each year). Then I saw Father Battersby arriving.

He was coming with the Blatchley family, from the direction of Chapel Wynd, where they lived. There were three Blatchley children, noisy and energetic, and ranging in age from five to fourteen. Each of them had gathered around them a little knot of friends, and the parents, pleasant, popular people, had also accumulated acquaintances as they walked. So, though they did little in the way of formal introduction, Father Battersby had already a little circle round him, and he shook hands with some, exchanged words with others, and I saw no sign that his—what shall I call it?—his slightly abstract sympathy, his difficulty of seeing things in purely human terms, had resulted in any of those unlucky coolnesses that I had seen on his previous visit. Probably he was better when he felt at home. It was all pleasant, informal, appropriate, and it gave me some inkling of another Hexton that I wished I knew better.

‘Failed to hit that damned bell again.' It was Marcus, coming up behind me. ‘Still, I was no further off than last year. I say, that's Father Battersby, isn't it?'

‘I can't imagine there's likely to be anyone else at the fête wearing that gear.'

‘Perhaps I'd better go and welcome him.'

‘Don't. Let it happen naturally. It's all quite spontaneous and informal at the moment, and I think it's better that way.'

As I spoke, the Blatchley and Battersby party were approaching
the marquee, and the town clock over the square struck eleven. As if by magic, the substantial figure of Franchita appeared through the flap in the marquee.

‘Roll up! Roll up!' she shouted with fearsome gaiety, as she pushed back the flap. When she noticed the approach of the Battersby party her jollity stopped dead in its tracks: one could almost see contending in her face the duty of inflicting a snub, and the desire not to mar the beginning of ‘her' fête with unpleasantness. In the end, what I like to think of as her good nature won out, and she stepped forward to meet the party, her hand outstretched.

‘Welcome to Hexton-on-Weir . . . Father.'

Father Battersby smiled, nodded, shook hands, and passed in. I slipped through the flap and raced to my stall. Mr Horsforth, naturally, was nowhere to be seen, though I could hear his voice through a mêlée of helpers. The Blatchley party came in, in the wake of the new vicar, then a mere trickle of others, then more and more. The Annual Hexton Church Fête had begun.

The first hours of a fête are usually the busiest, and this one was no exception. The fête worked up to a kind of climax around lunch-time and drooped rather thereafter. I certainly had my hands full, because Mr Horsforth's appearances behind the stall were so spasmodic as to be almost token. He irritated me a great deal and had I not been to some extent dependent on his goodwill, being a possible supply teacher, I would have said something sharp, never finding it difficult to find something sharp to say. I was quite willing to believe that a headmaster had more duties to fulfil and more people to have a word with than the wife of a vet, but in that case why volunteer for duty at all? Meanwhile it was I, on my own, who had to cope with the rush of customers.

Mr Mipchin was one of my early buyers, and one with a good eye. Among the better things that I had accumulated or wheedled out of people was a charming mid-Victorian tea-caddy, which he took a fancy to. I pushed him up to a good price, and insisted that he take something from Thyrza's stuff as well. He chose a little model of a lady in Welsh national costume, holding a broom, and in her dusty and decrepit state looking tolerably like a witch.

‘Something to remember her by,' he said, and I could swear there was a malicious little smile playing around somewhere underneath the walrus moustaches.