Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries) (20 page)

Both dog and owner settled on a gentle amble across the grass, a look at the river, and a quiet return home so that Sidney could concentrate on his Easter sermon. His mood began to lift as he thought of his dog’s exemplary companionship and how much his canine friend had taught him over the last ten years.

As the morning progressed the film crew began to take over the village. Sidney had been told that it was a low-budget affair, but the presence of camera crew, designers, costumiers, wig-makers, make-up artists, drivers and no fewer than three assistant directors made the film look far from cheap. Every spare room in the village had been commandeered, with the stars staying in a range of Cambridge hotels and the crew over-nighting in Grantchester. Mrs Maguire had even been persuaded to take in one of the dressers. The village school became the production office, and most of the High Street was made impassably narrow by the presence of camera and sound vans, three different lighting trucks, as well as caravans for design, costume, make-up and special effects: not to mention an enormous catering vehicle that was dispensing bacon rolls and cups of tea to the crew.

Nigel Binns had an authority on set that he had never enjoyed in the army. He wore a range of eccentric hats, and had a preference for pin-striped suits, colourful socks, brogues, braces and tiepins, and he carried a silver-topped cane. He also sported an oddly styled beard which tufted outwards from the chin.

Nigel had originally said ‘you won’t notice we’re there’, but as Sidney watched the growing encampment of people he realised that this perhaps was only the first of the many evasive exaggerations that film people go in for. The unit was staying for three weeks.

Sidney was first introduced to the three main actors with whom he was to play the majority of his scenes. Roger de la Tour, a former matinée idol with luxuriant hair and a romantic history that was as chequered as his trousers, had been cast as Lord Peter Wimsey, while Melvyn Robertson was his manservant Bunter, a pale, bald man with a beard and a prominent mouth-shaped wrinkle across his brow which made him look as if his head had been put on upside down.

Sidney was more than intrigued by the actress who was to play his wife. This was Veronica Manners, an ageing red-haired woman in a cerise shot-silk dressing gown who knew how to make herself look considerably younger than she was. Only her smoker’s mouth gave her age away. Veronica began by complaining that her glory days were behind her and that she would soon have to age-up rather than down and go for parts normally taken by character actors if she wanted the work. There were so few decent roles for women between the ages of Juliet and her Nurse, she added, and most of them involved crying. At least she wouldn’t have to do so in this film but, as far as she was concerned, a small part as the vicar’s wife was the thin end of the wedge. Sidney asked her why she had accepted the role.

‘The money, darling; and Robert wanted a bit of company.’

‘Robert?’

‘My husband. Surely you know him? He was the Hamlet of his generation and the toast of the Old Vic; but you’re probably too young to have seen it.’

‘I don’t get to the theatre as often as I should.’

‘Busy working, I suppose. You’re lucky.’

‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

‘Robert’s confidence has taken a knock recently and he’s not getting the work he should. Nigel’s cast him as a favour, I think. He’s got a tiny part as the sluice-keeper. It’s only a couple of scenes but it involves drowning, so at least he’s got something to do.’

‘Do you often act together?’

‘We were in rep at Bristol Old Vic for centuries: Chekhov one week, Rattigan the next, and a panto at Christmas. You know the kind of thing. I prefer being apart because it’s so exhausting to work together. Robert doesn’t. He likes our companionship and says we need each other but that’s not always easy in the business, as I’m sure you know. Other actors are uncomfortable around married couples. They don’t feel they can say anything and that you’re in a little exclusive club of your own.’

‘Have you been married long?’

‘Nearly thirty years. That gives my age away but I’m past caring. The days of wine and roses will soon be over. Is your wife in the biz?’

‘No. She’s a musician.’

‘I don’t think we’ve worked together before, have we?’ Veronica continued. ‘You weren’t in
The Seagull
at the Theatre Royal in Bath a few years ago? You have a hint of Trigorin about you.’

‘Alas not.’

‘So what have you been in recently?’

Sidney could not think how to reply. ‘Church, mostly.’

The penny dropped. ‘You’re not a bloody parson in real life, are you?’

Sidney admitted that this was, indeed, the case.

Veronica was appalled. ‘I thought there was something iffy about you. There are moments, no, I mean weeks on end in point of fact, when Nigel really does
prenez la biscuite
. He keeps going on about all this documentary realism and the need to be “authentic”, whatever that means, but any drama has to be a
story
. It’s all
made up.
It involves
acting
. That’s why we’re called
actors
. Real life is
boring
. That’s why no one puts it on the stage. People need
entertainment
. They want a bit of a show. The last thing we require is bloody amateurs who think they can get by in the biz by being “authentic”. There aren’t enough parts for us actors as it is without pulling in the parsons to make up the numbers. I don’t know how Nigel’s swung it with Equity.’

Sidney began to plan his escape. ‘I’m sorry if I offend you.’

Veronica shook her red curls emphatically. ‘It’s not your fault, darling.’

‘Perhaps I should step down?’ Sidney looked hopeful.

‘Please don’t. It’s almost amusing. But I would ask, if we have any of these little tête-à-têtes in the future, that we stick to the subject of
acting
. It’s the only thing I know about and it will confuse me if you want to talk about religion instead. Please don’t think you can get round me on the sly and ask what I think about Christianity. Since I am hardly the shiniest decoration on the Christmas tree I would also be grateful if you didn’t ask me about my sins.’

‘I can’t imagine there are many of those.’

‘They are
legion
, darling. If we started on them we’d be here for
weeks
.’

‘I thought you
were
here for weeks,’ Sidney replied rather glumly.

The rest of the cast were sitting around reading the papers and playing cards, as if they were waiting for the departure of a delayed train. Sidney was lost. Everyone appeared to know what they were doing except him. After his second cup of tea, the third assistant director told him that it was time for make-up.

Sidney did not think that he would need much, particularly as he was due to play an extended version of himself, and he was not anticipating anything too exciting when he entered the relevant truck.

He was wrong.

The make-up artist was a small blonde woman in a sleeveless white dress, and even with a beehive hairdo she was scarcely five feet tall. She had piercing sapphire eyes, long dark eyelashes, high cheekbones and delicate earlobes, which contained two perfect pearls.

‘Just pop your bum on my magic chair and we’ll see what we can do with you, darling,’ she began.

Daisy Playfair spoke in a husky voice that sounded like a sore throat, and with her tongue forward in the mouth, as if she was about to offer an all-too-alluring kiss. Her lipstick was glossily pink, her skin was tanned and her cleavage was pleasingly visible. Sidney tried not to stare and composed himself by looking down to the floor and concentrating on her white slingbacks; only to discover that Daisy also possessed the most erotic feet he had ever seen.

‘You’re more handsome than I expected, Vicar. We’ll have a challenge making you look old.’

‘What do you mean?’ Sidney squeaked.

‘You’re supposed to be in your sixties,’ Daisy said firmly.

‘I thought I could be myself.’

‘Not with Veronica Manners as your wife. She’s twenty years older than you if she’s a day. One of our best-known character actresses.’

‘I understood she was a leading lady?’

‘No such luck,’ Daisy answered as she busied herself before fluffing up Sidney’s hair, touching his cheek and deciding what make-up to use. ‘She never got that far. Now it’s too late. You can look ten years younger on stage but once you’re on film there’s only so much a girl like me can do. She’s a difficult woman.’

‘I’ve noticed.’

Daisy put both her hands on her client’s shoulders. ‘You can’t look younger than her or she’ll go mad, my darling.’ She winked and put a finger to her lips.

‘So I’m to be an old duffer?’ Sidney asked.

‘That’s what’s in the script.’

‘But Nigel said
.
.
.’

‘I wouldn’t take any notice of him,’ Daisy interrupted as she set out the necessary make-up. ‘He’ll say anything to get his way. Now let me powder you down. At least your hair’s quite thin. It shouldn’t take too long to grey that up. There’s quite a bit of fade in there already.’

Sidney felt ten years older and it wasn’t even lunchtime. Was it too late to back out? he wondered.

Daisy chatted away. She had seen everything in the business, she said, even though she was only twenty-five. Actors came in to make-up and started confessing all sorts of things. It was a bit like being a clergyman, she imagined, people coming out with stuff whether she asked for it or not.

‘Yes, I can imagine people wanting to tell you all about themselves.’

Daisy picked up a brush and enquired if Sidney had used foundation before. He remembered the hymn, ‘The Church’s One Foundation’ and thought he would try and make a joke about it. He could use it the next time he saw the local doctor, a man who was always pleased with a pun. (As it was, the title of the novel on which the film was based,
The Nine Tailors
, was also a play on words. The largest bell in the story was ‘Tailor Paul’, a letter crucial to the plot was addressed to ‘Paul Taylor’, and Dorothy L. Sayers had used a man called ‘Taylor’ as her ecclesiastical adviser during her research.)

Daisy’s ministrations were completed all too soon. ‘There, that’s you done.’

‘I could stay here for ever,’ Sidney replied, surprising her and indeed himself by saying this out loud, when he had intended only to think it.

‘No, no, no, Vicar. No chance of that! We’ve all got work to do. You get on that set. And remember your lines!’

Despite the vast number of people around when Sidney emerged from the consoling reverie of Daisy Playfair’s attentions, nothing much seemed to be happening. He asked what everyone was holding out for and was told that it was ‘the light’. Nigel Binns explained that most of his life was spent waiting: for transport, crew, actors, design, costume, make-up, but mainly for good light.

‘You know it’s called “waiting for God?”’ he remarked. ‘However, in this case it’s a bit different. Now we want bad weather. I’m after dark brooding clouds.’ He held an eclipse glass up to the sun to look at the movement of the greying skies. ‘So it’s the opposite of cricket,’ he joked. ‘Rain
starts
play.’

It was just as well that Sidney had brought his copy of
The Times
. He settled down to read near the catering truck but found that he could not relax. He was worried about his performance and why he had agreed to all this. He should really be doing something less frivolous and more consistent with the needs of the Church and he felt guilty that he had not joined the Aldermaston march his brother had asked him to go on. Plenty of clergy were taking part, Matt had told him.

Sidney had not been sure. After the terrors of war, he now believed in deterrence. He was not at all convinced that the clergy on such a march, despite their good intentions, really knew about the horrors of conflict and in any case, he had told his brother, there were the duties of Easter to attend to. The clergy should be in church not marching up and down the country in duffel coats trying to be ‘relevant’.

As he leafed through the pages of the newspaper he became increasingly disenchanted by the members of his profession. There was a murder trial in London, for example, at which the evidence of Father Keogh at the Court of Criminal Appeal had been deemed ‘wholly inadmissible’. The Reverend Edward Ronald Broadbent, age thirty-nine, vicar of St Mark’s, Bradbury, Cheshire had been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for several charges of indecent assault on three boys, aged eleven to thirteen; and the Archbishop of York was proposing the removal of the word ‘hell’ from the prayer book psalter; presumably because it scared people.

That was, of course, the point, Sidney thought irritably.

There was also a review of the Bishop of Woolwich’s new book
Honest to God
. According to the anonymous critic, John A.T. Robinson had undermined the very idea of an omniscient and benevolent creator. Instead of being a supernatural Being or Person with whom men can nevertheless be in relationship, God had become, for the Bishop, something he referred to as ‘ultimate reality’ which was only revealed in the life of Christ. He had then argued that the doctrine of the Incarnation was mythological rather than literal; and he had dismissed the traditional understanding of the divine presence, fatally, Sidney thought, as ‘God dressed up  like Father Christmas’. According to the Bishop and his critic, it appeared that Our Father was not in heaven, there were no angels or archangels, and eternity was empty of inhabitants.