The Glimpses of the Moon (11 page)

The opener of the Fete was a short, slim, affable, loquacious Negro, educated at Winchester and New College, who lived twenty miles away, writing lucrative science fiction under the name of Dermot McCartney. (He had begun his writing career with delicate studies of coloured men teetering between two cultures, but these, though gratifying to the
Observer
and the
New Statesman,
had in addition to selling poorly proved to be too much like hard work, since the author had no recollection at all of what Negro culture was like and was obliged to look it all up in books.) ‘Count-down!' he shrilled into the microphone. ‘All systems “Go”! Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, Blast-Off!
Vroom!
I declare this Fete open!' At ‘Vroom' Father Hattrick, cheating, turned and ran, homing on the Jams Stall with his basket flapping against his thigh. Behind him, the Whirlybirds struck up with
Make the Scene, Do Your Thing.
The women made rapidly for the produce and garden stalls, and a sizeable proportion of the men made for the beer tent. The platform party descended, Dermot McCartney brandishing a well-filled wallet to signal awareness of the next stage in his responsibilities. J. G. Padmore, who had been standing at the front of the crowd appraising Dermot McCartney in an expert manner, headed for Fen. The Rector marched bandily away towards his fortune-telling tent. The fairground people, all of them well past their prime, could dimly be heard, through the Whirlybirds' amplified yowlings, crying their wares in cracked, senile voices.

‘Any luck?' Padmore asked eagerly.

‘Luck?' Fen was transiently bewildered; then he remembered. ‘Oh, you mean Youings. Yes, I did talk to him, briefly. And he's quite certain Hagberd wasn't at the Arms at 7.30 that evening.'

‘There, I knew it.'

‘So it's his word against Gobbo's.'

‘And not much doubt about which to choose,' said Padmore contentedly, his burden of apprehension slipping from him.

‘Did you see Gobbo again?'

‘No. When I got back to the pub, he'd gone. So then I had to change the wheel on that bloody car … All's well that ends well, then.'

‘One supposes so.'

‘What does one suppose, my dear chap?' This was the Major, who had limped across the coarse turf to join them. He was dapper in well-creased checks and a mulberry tie.

‘Gobbo,' Padmore explained: ‘he was talking nonsense. Damn it, I
knew
he was talking nonsense.'

‘H'm,' the Major said neutrally.

‘How's the background and local colour going?' Fen asked.

‘Not much so far,' Padmore admitted. ‘Still, I only arrived yesterday. It's early days yet.'

‘Well, I suppose we'd better get moving and spend some money,' said the Major.

‘I want to see the mermaid,' said Padmore. ‘I've never seen a mermaid. It's a dugong, I expect, a halicore. Still come to think of it, I've never seen a halicore, either.'

Since neither Fen nor the Major particularly wanted to look at the mermaid (the Major had in any case dutifully looked at it several times already at previous Fêtes), they let Padmore drift away on his own.

‘We circulate,' said the Major.

They circulated: a Books Stall, a Linen Stall, a Cakes Stall, pennies to be rolled down slotted wooden slopes on to a numbered board. Fen bought Lord Garnet Wolseley's
Narrative of the War with China in 1860,
two tea towels imprinted in red with the Houses of Parliament, a dozen drop-scones; the Major bought an Ouida, some rather yellowed cotton handkerchiefs with the initial A.K.G., a seed cake; neither of them had any success, even temporarily, with the pennies. At the Lucky Dip the Major got a small whistle, which he thought might possibly
amuse his dogs, and Fen got an apple. Next they came to where Broderick Thouless, the composer, at three balls for twenty-five pence, was persistently bowling for a pig; from what they saw of his performance it seemed very unlikely that he was going to win it.

‘Where
is
the pig, anyway?' Thouless said, straightening up, red in the face from his exertions. ‘My
back
… Surely the pig ought to be
here?'

But then suddenly it was. A young one, cleanly and wholesome, it arrived wriggling and snorting in the arms of big blond Youings, from whose farm it had presumably come. Apologizing to the woman in charge for his lateness, Youings deposited the pig in its pen, where it examined its surroundings with an air of refreshed surprise.

‘Now, you behave yourself, Bathsheba,' Youings told it.

His Amazonian wife Ortrud sauntered up. She wore an expensive but ill-fitting beige suit, and her pale hair gleamed glossy in the sunshine. The Major raised his green trilby hat, but she simply stared at him.
‘Komm' mit,'
she commanded her husband. Youings smiled flaccidly at Fen and shuffled away after her.

‘I presume,' said Fen, ‘that whoever wins the pig will have it slaughtered. Pity.'

‘No, that's all right,' said the Major. ‘Youings always manages to buy it back. People don't want the bother of it, don't you know. New Nivea, smooth moisture,' he sang, ‘right into your skin. Ergh.'

‘“Ergh”?'

‘It's a sort of noise they make at the end, I can't think why.'

‘I'm
going to win the pig,' said Thouless, fishing in his pocket for money. ‘Three more balls, please.' They left him still vainly trying to get a ball into one of the little doorways in the wooden trap.

A Treasure Hunt, the Jams Stall, a miniature rifle range, the platform for the legs competition, due at 4.30; this last had a wooden screen designed to occult the competitors from the groin upwards. Near it, the youth Scorer was talking tremulously to a middle-aged man - presumably the doctor - who was making soothing noises; Scorer kept turning his back on the
middle-aged man and pointing to his bottom. The Garden Stall, a coconut shy, a queue of children waiting for donkey rides (‘Serry your ranks, there,' said the Major amiably as they edged past). The Bottle Stall, where they found the Rector, still in drag, swigging Coca-Cola.

‘Business slow?' Fen asked.

‘On the contrary, I've got a queue,' said the Rector, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I have to come out every now and again, though, to keep an eye on things.' Fen noted with interest that he was carrying his cricket bag with him.

Their progress had by now brought them close to the west wing of the house, where the Botticelli tent was pegged down; for a tent housing nothing but a picture, it was unexpectedly large. At one side of the entrance flap, cash box on a little table in front of her, sat a stout elderly woman, presumably one of the Misses Bale. Opposite her, on a camp stool, sat P.C. Luckraft; he had taken off his crash helmet, revealing a bandage round his head, and was cradling the helmet on his knees. Less explicably, another stout elderly woman, presumably the second Miss Bale, could be glimpsed sitting on another camp stool at the back of the tent.

Fen said, ‘What's
she
doing there?'

‘All part of the security measures, my dear fellow,' said the Major. ‘Very hot on security, the Misses Bale are. The one at the back, Tatty, is there so that no one can push the Botticelli out under the canvas without being seen.'

‘But they can't really think it's valuable.'

‘They do, you know.'

‘And is that why Luckraft's there?'

‘Yes, he sometimes helps to mount guard, if he happens to be off duty. Makes them feel extra-safe. Good man, Luckraft, very patient. Wonder what he's done to his head?'

Fen began eating his apple. ‘Are you,' he said, ‘going to have a go at the coconuts?'

‘No, I'm not. I can hit them all right, don't you know, but I can never make them fall off. The fact of the matter is, they're wedged, or glued or something. Let's go and look at the Botticelli, get it over and done with.'

‘You can't look at the Botticelli now, because I'm going to,' said the Rector.

‘All right,' said the Major amenably, ‘you can go first.'

They strolled on, and in a few paces arrived in front of the Botticelli tent.

The Major stared.

In a choking voice, ‘My word!' he said. ‘That's new!'

One sign - a sheet of cardboard on an easel - said The Botticelli. Another, pinned to the tent, said No Smoking Another said All Containers Baskets Etc to be Left Outside. Yet another said Entry Fifty P.

But it was the fifth sign that had provoked the Major's reaction. It consisted of two outsize cardboard discs pinned together concentrically with a brass clip; in the outer disc a window had been cut, revealing the word Engaged painted on the inner.

‘My word!' said the Major again.

Father Hattrick came out of the tent, murmured something appreciative to Miss Bale, nodded to Luckcraft, picked up his jam-crammed basket from under Miss Bale's table, and trotted across to the Rector.

‘Now?' he said.

The Rector said, ‘Give me five minutes, Father, will you?'

‘Yes, surely. I'll stay somewhere around here, and then you'll be able to find me.' He ran off down the fairway, braking to a halt at the Garden Stall.

Miss Bale got to her feet. Momentarily rooted to the spot, Fen, the Major and the Rector watched in fascination as she went across to the new sign and rotated the inner disc, replacing the word Engaged with the word Vacant.

The Major said, ‘My word!' for the third time. Then abruptly he dropped all his purchases on to the turf and doubled up in a fit of helpless laughter. ‘B.V.M. assumpting in the jakes,' he spluttered.

The Rector glowered at him. ‘I don't approve of Christian mysticism,' he said, ‘but I don't approve of jokes about it, either.'

‘Lavater-y humour,' said Fen.

The Major made an effort and got himself under control again. He stooped and gathered up his whistle, book, cake,
handkerchiefs, narcissus bulbs and black-currant jelly. The Rector went across to Miss Bale, who was returning to her seat.

‘Afternoon, Titty,' he said. ‘Me next.' Handing Miss Bale five tenpenny pieces, he made for the tent flap.

‘Oh, but Rector,' squeaked Miss Bale.

‘Yes, Titty, what is it?'

‘Your cricket bag. You must leave it out here.'

‘Nonsense, Titty, of course I'm not going to leave it out here. You don't think I'
m
going to steal the Botticelli, do you? Anyway, I couldn't, it's too big. Even if I cut it out of its frame and rolled it up and doubled it over, it still wouldn't go in my cricket bag.'

‘Oh, but Rector.'

‘Go and sit down, Titty, and stop being such an old hen,' said the Rector, disappearing inside the tent.

‘That'll be all right, Miss Bale,' said Luckraft, his solid official face radiating reassurance.

‘Well, I don't know, I'm sure,' said Miss Bale disconsolately.

The Major said, ‘I'm going indoors to dump this stuff and fetch old Fred. Can't bring Sal, unfortunately, have to keep her shut up during these maffickings, otherwise she runs about biting everyone. See you later.' He hobbled off, threading his way among stalls, marquees and sideshows in the direction of the house's east wing, where his flatlet was. Fen went and joined Father Hattrick at the coconut shy.

After a strenuous five minutes, during which neither of them succeeded in dislodging a coconut, they saw the Rector emerge from the Botticelli tent. He looked about him, caught sight of Father Hattrick, waved and beckoned affirmatively, and vanished round the corner of the Fruit Stall. Father Hattrick waved back, threw his last ball at random, grabbed his basket, said good-bye to Fen and ran.

The stall-keeper, impressed by Fen's obstinacy if not by his skill, picked up a spare coconut and made him a present of it.

Fen went to the Garden Stall and bought himself a large brown paper carrier from the pile on sale there; into this he stuffed the unwieldy acervation of objects he had acquired. Then he decided to go and look at the Botticelli. Miss Bale took
his money and his carrier bag and graciously motioned him in, closing the flap behind him.

The tent was bisected widthways, he found, by an enormous piece of scuffed black velvet stretching from side to side, and from the roof to the ground. At its centre, hanging by chains from the roof-strut, was the Botticelli, illuminated by electricity from several judiciously-chosen angles; and the Botticelli, Fen saw at once, was an almost supernaturally talentless picture - a gargantuan female form, angel-conveyed, with flowing robes, a halo, a vapid smirk and downwards-pointing bare feet. The style was two dimensional, the composition monotonously symmetrical; the colours were mostly pastel blues, pinks and yellows; the halo was so pale that it looked as if it had developed a fault and was on the point of flickering out altogether. Fen went close up to the thing to see if there was a signature, but found none; the elaborate gilt frame, however, pointed fairly conclusively to some wealthy megalomaniac amateur, besotted with the pre-Raphaelites, round about 1870.

The only other object in this half of the tent was a spartan wooden chair without arms, set square in front of the picture.

Fen sat down on it, fixed his eyes on the Virgin's stubby toes and meditated - since this, after all, was what he was supposed to be doing - on religion.

On leaving the tent ten minutes later, he was surprised to find the man from Sweb hovering outside - small, tubby and neat in his grèy suit, grey overcoat and meticulously centred little grey hat; seemingly he was waiting to go in. ‘Hello,' said Fen.

‘Ah,' said the man from Sweb, weakly.

‘So you came after all.'

‘Yes, here I am.'

‘Enjoying it?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘Been to the fortune-teller?'

‘No. No, not yet.'