Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries) (14 page)

From this moment on, Sidney thought, Hildegard was already late and she wasn’t even dressed. There would then be the whole business of deciding what to wear, finding the right stockings and examining their colour against the light (at least four more minutes) before putting on bra, blouse and skirt (three minutes), checking herself in the mirror and adding a brooch (two). If Hildegard was convinced that she had the right look (if not, and a change was necessary, that would mean a further ten minutes) there was still the small matter of adjusting the hair, putting on make-up, choosing a matching handkerchief and making sure that all the things she needed were in her handbag (eight minutes). And then, just as Sidney was convinced that Hildegard had completed her toilette, and he had already opened the front door in anticipation of their departure, his wife would announce, ‘I just need to do my lipstick. I won’t be a minute.’

You will be a minute
, Sidney thought.
In fact you will be two minutes and forty seconds. We will miss our train
.

‘We need to hurry up,’ he answered.
Thirty-seven minutes when you said ten
.

‘Don’t fuss, Sidney. You know how it slows me down.’

Hildegard was right. Any argument would make her stop putting on her lipstick, start speaking and cause further delay.

Sidney was powerless. There really was no way of hurrying his wife along. ‘We are going to be late,’ he repeated.

‘You are often late,’ his wife answered. ‘People almost expect it. But it is interesting that you are always on time for church.’

Sidney knew that, even though he had been
extremely provoked
, it was wisest to say nothing. He patted his pockets to make sure he had everything.

Hildegard snapped her handbag shut and smiled. ‘Ready,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. Come on, then. What are you waiting for?’

‘I can’t find my keys.’

‘Well, I’m ready.’

From an initial position of lateness and vulnerability, Hildegard had managed to take the moral high ground. After a fluster of panicky searching round the house, Hildegard walked calmly to the table in the hall and picked up the keys.

‘Here they are.’

It was extraordinary that she could find lost objects in places where her husband was sure he had already looked.

They managed to catch their intended train down to London with three minutes to spare (‘I told you not to make such a fuss, Sidney’) and took the underground to Piccadilly Circus. Amanda had promised them a cup of tea in the Ritz and met them there before the excitements of the exhibition. After they had caught up on each other’s news they then walked over to Dover Street for
The Festival of Misfits
.

Sidney could see Helena Randall in the doorway of the ICA with the man that he assumed was her ‘lovely friend Basil’. Hildegard gave him a nudge. ‘I wonder if Inspector Keating is here after all.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ said Sidney. ‘His wife keeps him on a tight leash these days.’

‘Then aren’t you lucky to have me?’

Basil turned out to be a dapper Glaswegian who felt that it was his sole responsibility, as one of the dandiest men in town, to make sure that he knew everyone. He was dressed in a maroon smoking jacket, pink shirt with matching cravat, Black Watch trousers and winkle-picker shoes. He had left his home town after directing a disastrous production of
Goodnight Vienna
in Paisley which, he told Helena, had gone down about as well as a production of
Goodnight Paisley
would have been received in Vienna.

‘You must be the famous detective who disguises himself as a clergyman,’ was his opening gambit.

‘It’s not as straightforward as that.’

‘I am sure it isn’t. I don’t go to church myself. Everyone’s so badly dressed. Have you noticed?’

Helena giggled. ‘I don’t think that’s the point of going.’

‘I find it all so terribly ageing.’

‘There are young people who attend,’ Sidney answered in his defence. ‘And youth clubs. I’ve started a jazz night.’

‘Ah yes, very fifties. Helena tells me that you’ve got another string to your bow, or perhaps another reed to your saxophone? You can go in and out of jazz clubs almost unnoticed.’

‘I don’t aim to be noticed,’ Sidney smiled hesitantly.

‘Although he
does
like it when people recognise him,’ said Amanda. ‘There are very few clergyman who turn down attention.’

‘That is a little unfair,’ said Hildegard. ‘In Germany, the pastors
.
.
.’

‘Oh,
the Germans
,’ said Basil, ‘they always like to put on a show. Think of Nuremberg.’

‘Perhaps I forgot to mention,’ Helena said quickly. ‘Sidney’s wife is originally from Leipzig.’

‘Well, I’m sure she’s got a sense of humour,’ her friend replied. ‘Most of us are Saxon originally
.
.
.’

‘Or even Norman,’ said Amanda, moving away to talk to a group of women she thought she knew from the National Gallery. They appeared to be wearing dresses made of newspaper.

In Grantchester the villagers were tactful about Hildegard’s nationality and she was spared the hostility that was more common in a city such as London where she met more strangers and had to defend herself more frequently. Most people knew that her father had been killed as a communist protestor in the early 1930s and that her family had never been members of the Nazi party. It was partly why she still liked living there. She never had to explain herself. But Basil continued his national stereotyping unabashed.

‘The Germans have a stronger sense of the dramatic, don’t you think? It’s part of the Protestant tradition to go round smashing things up. All that
Sturm und Drang
. It’s one of the themes of the happening tonight: auto-destruction. It’s innately Teutonic.’ He looked at Hildegard. ‘Don’t tell anyone, but I love Wagner.’

He began to hum the leitmotif of ‘
The
Ride of the Valkyries
’. ‘Da-da-da
DA
da, da-da-da
DA
da
.
.
.’

Hildegard realised that she was in the presence of a man who had never been taught about tact. ‘I prefer Bach,’ she replied.

‘Well I’m afraid you won’t be getting any of that tonight. This is all very avant-garde, I can assure you. No humourless
cantors
here. Let me make sure you’ve got something to drink.’

After they had been introduced to the artist Ben Vautier, whose main contribution was to live and sleep in the window of the gallery as some kind of human installation, they were shown into a fun-making machine shop where a man called Terry Riley was explaining his
Ear Piece for Audience
. Every person in the room was to take up an object such as a piece of paper, cardboard or piece of plastic and place it over an ear. The idea was to make a series of sounds by rubbing, scratching, tapping or tearing it or simply dragging the object across their ears, or just holding it so that it could be placed in counterpoint with the other sound sources.

‘This is John Cage all over again,’ said Amanda on her return to the conversation. ‘I’m all for percussion but I do think it’s best within an orchestra.’ She started to talk to Hildegard about the bass drum in Stravinsky’s
The Rite of Spring
, the crash cymbals in Mozart’s
Seraglio
and the use of the xylophone in Gershwin’s
Porgy and Bess
.

‘What about the girl?’ Helena asked Basil. ‘You promised she’d be here.’

‘We are moments away from seeing her. I only hope I’m right.’

They walked through a labyrinthine blacked-out room to a large white space. Basil explained that the evening was a ‘monomorphic neo-haiku flux-event’. Around the gallery were contrary slogans framed on the wall:

NOTHING               EVERYTHING

And then a triptych of words repeated

WHITE               NIGHT               LIGHT

Before

NIGHT               LIGHT               WHITE

‘This is Quentin Reveille,’ Basil announced, producing the loquacious socialist from Leeds. He was dressed in a grey flannel suit with a black polo neck and prominent glasses, as if he were a cross between Yves Saint Laurent and Jean-Paul Sartre. The best art contained tension and opposition, he told Sidney. It was important to confound expectation, to lighten darkness and darken light.

‘I’m interested in paradox. You know the kind of thing.
L’oeuvre d’art est bien une chose, chose amenée à sa finition, mais elle dit encore quelque chose d’autre que la chose qui n’est qu’une chose
.’

Sidney was impressed by Quentin’s fluent French, even if it was delivered with a Yorkshire accent.

The artist then asked Sidney, Hildegard, Amanda, Helena and Basil to look through a ‘window into perception’, and take a glimpse from the doorway of Celine Bellecourt naked in a glass case and covered in apples. It was, according to Reveille, a memory of paradise, a meditation on the Garden of Eden. The audience, who had to view the piece standing in a curled line, was collectively the serpent, waiting to prey on innocent beauty.

Sidney recognised the naked Celine immediately as Quentin explained the purpose of the installation. It was about encouraging people to look in different ways, to think about alternative methods of ‘framing reality’.

‘A naked woman, for example, becomes a nude in the presence of the artist,’ he told Hildegard.

‘And if the artist leaves the room does she become naked again?’

‘No, the artist has made his mark. The vision remains. It is about setting and context,’ Reveille continued. ‘Location is also important. A square foot of grass might look the same wherever it is but if it’s the area in front of the batsman on a cricket field it is crucial; then again, if you put it in an art gallery it becomes something else. I am interested in working with context and how it changes meaning.’

Sidney thought how the figure of the Cross was resistant to this kind of distinction. It remained a crucifix wherever it was and this, perhaps, explained its potency as an image. ‘And how do you decide what to frame?’ he asked.

‘As the mood takes me. It’s like being a photographer. I pick my subject and then choose my frame. Sometimes, if I am lucky, the subject picks itself, and because I live with Celine I can always turn to her when I am stuck. She walks in beauty. She is, and will always be, a work of art. I am merely the person who shows the direction in which the viewer should look.’

‘And do you do your own framing, Mr Reveille?’

‘I trained as a carpenter, Canon Chambers. Like the good Lord.’

‘But you can’t do all that here, can you?’

‘I have a separate workshop where I keep my tools. It’s better to work with your hands, don’t you think? It’s important to touch, to know the material world. Although I suppose you’re more interested in things spiritual.’

‘What’s your favourite material?’

‘Wood.’

‘Mine too,’ Sidney replied. ‘I remember learning to whittle at school. I wanted to make my own cricket bat.’

‘That’s a very specialist skill. Even I couldn’t challenge the work of Mr Gray and Mr Nicolls.’

Sidney was impressed that Reveille knew the name of the firm that made Britain’s best bats, but they were straying too far from the point of his inquiry. ‘Does your model perform in other shows?’ he asked.

‘She is a living work of art. We blur the line between performance and reality.’

‘I wonder if she has ever been to Cambridge?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘I think she was there a few weeks ago. A painting was stolen on the same day. I think Miss Bellecourt provided the distraction. She was the naked girl who caused a bit of a commotion.’

‘The nude, you mean.’

‘Of course. Do you know anything about what happened that day?’

‘Celine never tells me where she is going. It’s her statement of freedom. But I have spent months installing this exhibition. You can ask anyone. I have even slept here. In any case, why would I steal a Sickert? He’s very old hat, you know.’

‘I didn’t say that the stolen painting was a Sickert.’

‘I do read the papers, Canon Chambers. I won’t be caught out. But Celine is perfectly innocent, I can assure you. I would have thought that a man in your position might appreciate the equation of nakedness with innocence?’

Amanda interrupted their conversation with news of the next happening:
Guitar Piece
by Robin Page. Wearing a shining silver crash helmet and holding his guitar ready to play, the artist waited a few moments before flinging it on to the stage and kicking it into the audience, along the aisle and down the steps into Dover Street. This was destruction, and it was, Basil told Sidney, a comment on the helplessness of the individual and the threat to world peace caused by the Kennedy–Kruschev confrontation over Cuba.