The New Rector (Tales from Turnham Malpas) (8 page)
Read The New Rector (Tales from Turnham Malpas) Online
Authors: Rebecca Shaw
Muriel, having waved them goodbye, unlocked her door and found Pericles looking worried. She hurriedly popped him into the back garden and left him there while she made herself a cup of Ovaltine to help her sleep. What a wonderful evening she had had. The food, the company, the wine, the kindness, everything. She’d never forget it. She opened the drawer to get a teaspoon out and found the cutlery in disarray. The knives were where the forks usually were, and the spoons where the knives ought to be, and the forks where she kept the spoons. How
ridiculous! She must have been so excited about the party that she’d mixed them all up. It left an odd feeling in a corner of her mind.
‘Failing, that’s what she is. Never seen such a change in a person. One minute as fit as a lop, bit too prim and proper, mind, but still fit as a lop – and now what is she like? I reckon she’s got that disease Asmizler yer read about in the papers. This Tuesday she couldn’t play a right note to save her life. Mr Palmer looked real fed up.’
Her neighbour Vera Wright nodded in agreement. ‘She was in the store the other day and couldn’t remember what she’d come in for – and I’ll tell you another thing. I think she’s neglecting herself.’
‘Neglecting herself? What do you mean?’
Their heads drew closer over the fence. ‘Haven’t yer noticed she’s losing weight?’
‘No I hadn’t, but come to mention it you could be right.’
‘She’s never been the same since that Jimbo’s party you and I didn’t get invited to. Good customers we are as well.’
‘That dog of hers needs putting down. He’s getting old and smelly. Mucky things, dogs. Perhaps she’s got a disease off ’im. No self-respecting dog would want to be called
Prickles or whatever his name is. Going round The Royal Oak tonight?’
‘Might. See how the money stretches when I’ve done me shopping. Our Rhett’s eating me out of house and home. Must be ’aving a growing spell. Yer bring yer own up and then get landed with bringing yer grandchildren up as well. It’s not right. Our Brenda was sex-mad and look what that got her – our Rhett.’
Mrs Duckett locked her back door and went off to put the hall to rights for school dinners.
Muriel was just finishing putting the music away.
‘Got yer keys have you, Miss Hipkin?’
‘Oh yes, thank you, Mrs Duckett. I’m much more careful than I was. Now, where’s my cardigan? Oh, here it is.’
‘Tell yer what, Miss Hipkin, I don’t think you’re looking too good. Aren’t you well?’
‘Oh yes, I’m quite well, thank you. Yes, quite well.’
But she wasn’t and Muriel knew it. And she knew why. It was the worry that her memory was going. It had started with little things, but they were a matter for concern. First there was the cutlery. Then another time she’d put a cake out to cool on the rack and when she came back home it had gone. She blamed poor Pericles but she knew he couldn’t have reached it. Then she always made her bed when she went upstairs to clean her teeth after breakfast. One morning she came back from school and the sheets and blankets were all pulled back as if she’d just got out of it. Another time she came home and her ornaments had been changed round. Mother’s delicate china figures were all back to front and her own little cottages, lovingly collected these last three years, had been arranged along the edge of the hearth instead of being on the shelves she’d bought specially for them.
Muriel went to church and prayed about it. Peter had been playing the organ when she got in there, so she’d let his lovely sad music carry her along. Eventually, he switched it off and came to sit beside her. He took her hand and said, ‘God bless you, Muriel. Are you happy to be by yourself or would you like some company?’
‘I’d like you to stay and talk if you would.’
‘I have the feeling that things are not right at the moment. I was so glad when you agreed to give Mrs Meadows—’
‘We all call her Suzy.’
‘—Suzy, help with the playgroup. It doesn’t do not to be busy, you know.’
‘I know that, Peter, and I am busy with one thing and another, but just lately things haven’t been right for me.’
‘Can you tell me about it?’
‘It’s all silly, just women’s talk. I’ll be off now.’
She picked up her bag and fled from the church. Willie Biggs, cutting the grass in the churchyard, watched her escape. Something funny there, he thought, something funny. Peter emerged from the church and made his way down the path to the Rectory.
‘Rector, I got some nice geraniums. What do you say I make a flowerbed hereabouts and put ’em in? They’re all pink-coloured. Can’t abide them bright red things – go against nature, they do.’
‘Sounds wonderful, Willie. How’s the back?’
‘Fine, sir, thank you. Fine. That stuff Dr Harris recommended is grand. Will you thank her for it? I’m not troubled
at all now – which is more than I can say for that Muriel Hipkin. What’s up with her, do you reckon?’
‘Don’t know, Willie, and she won’t tell me.’
‘We went to school together, yer know. We were in the Infants. Her father was head gardener at the Big House. Married above himself, and Muriel was the result. Used to play with Sir Tristan’s boys when she were young. Pretty little thing she was. Now she’s all spinsterish and that. Pity, really. So, geraniums it is, sir, then?’
‘Yes, please. Could I buy some from you for the Rectory garden as well? My wife thinks it’s time I made inroads into the weeds.’
‘If you’re in need of help there, Rector, we might be able to come to some arrangement the two of us?’
‘I’d be very glad if you could spare the time, Willie. I’m getting much too involved with the parish to find time to do it. Some amicable agreement could be reached, I’m sure. By the way, that shed in the graveyard needs clearing out. Could you put it on your list?’
‘Anything for you, sir. Top of the list it will be. Morning to you.’
‘Good morning, Willie.’
Come Saturday afternoon, Willie began clearing out the shed. It was surprising what had collected there. Gardening tools that would have done well on the ‘Antiques Roadshow’. Old buckets, old vases, string, old wrapping paper from flowers and – surprise surprise – a plastic container from supermarket sandwiches. Who in their right mind would want to have a picnic in this old shed? There were also two Coke tins and two empty crisp packets. ‘Well I never, what next?’ muttered Willie. By the time he’d finished there were two full bags of rubbish for the bin men. He stood them out on the path, straightened his back and then noticed
Mr Palmer from the school filling his vase at the tap.
‘Afternoon, Mr Palmer. Don’t usually see you here on a Saturday.’
The headmaster looked up, startled. ‘No, you’re right, Willie. I thought I’d come earlier this week.’
‘Sunday as regular as clockwork you are, sir. Wish some others would care for the graves like you do. It’s a pleasure to look at your wife’s. Three years it is now, Mr Palmer. She’d have wanted you to find someone else, you know.’
‘That’s as maybe. Good afternoon, Willie.’
After he’d gone Willie perched himself on the edge of a tombstone and lit his pipe. He rested his elbows on his knees like he did when he was going to have a good think. Three years. He remembered the fuss there’d been. It was the Saturday of the Village Show. Boiling hot day it’d been. Sun beating down, one of the best attended for years. The flowers in the marquee had been wilting with the heat. Lady Bissett had upset all the flower arrangers by taking it upon herself to spray their arrangements with a secret concoction of her own to freshen them up. There’d been some very unpleasant things said that afternoon. Tempers got even more frayed when the ice cream ran out and the little steam train they’d hired had blown up – something to do with the pressure gauge. And it wasn’t only the pressure gauge on the train that had got steamed up. Revd Furbank had had the money from the coconut shy stolen from under his very nose. Nice gentle old chap, but he didn’t know what made the world tick nowadays. Can’t leave a thing about, not even in old Turnham Malpas. Willie blamed the boys from the Big House. A leopard won’t ever change its spots.
The late Mrs Palmer had been in charge of the maypole dancing. She’d brought a group over from her school in Culworth, as the village school couldn’t muster enough
children. Muriel Hipkin had seated herself at the piano which the men had dragged out of the school and into the field, right job that was. She was warming up with a few of her jolliest tunes, the maypole was in place, the children were all ready in their costumes, and the crowds awaited the start. Muriel played a few more tunes, and still Mrs Palmer hadn’t appeared to set the ball rolling. The children were getting restless. All apologetic, Mr Palmer went home to see if he could find his wife – and he’d found her, all right. Hanging from the big beam in the school hall. If Stella Palmer had set out to cause a sensation she couldn’t have chosen a better moment. And nobody ever found out why. He was a decent enough chap, Michael Palmer. Mightn’t set the world on fire, but you can’t have everything. He was kind. Maybe that was it – he was
too
kind.
Willie saw Muriel come out into her garden. He went and leaned over the church wall.
‘Them daffodils is finished now, Muriel. They wants tying up.’
‘Thank you, Willie, that’s my next job.’
‘You’ll never guess who I met in Culworth the other day.’
‘Oh?’
‘You know where the Market Square just bends a bit and there’s that dentist’s surgery right on the corner? Well, I’d been ’aving another fitting for me new teeth and who should I bump into on me way out, but Sir Ralph Templeton.’
Muriel perked up a little at this. ‘Really? How on earth did you recognise him?’
‘He recognised me. Said I ’adn’t changed a bit, but since it must be more than forty years since he last saw me I must be wearing well. He’s still got all that thick bushy hair ’cept it’s
snow-white now. Tanned he is, been out in the Far East for years and now he’s retired and come back to live in England. In all those years he’s never married. Remember that time he put a jumping cracker inside Miss’s boots when she’d put ’em by the stove to dry out? He were a lad, he was. Didn’t we laugh!’
‘What was he doing in Culworth?’
‘Visiting some friends, he said. Wanted me to go for a drink but I knew I’d miss me bus if I did. I’ve been clearing out the shed – amazing what yer find in there. Rector wanted it doing. He’s a grand chap, he is. Yer know where yer are with ’im. Mr Furbank couldn’t talk to yer, somehow – he never had that touch. Rector’s worried about you, Muriel. He reckons yer not yerself at all these days.’
Willie left a pause but got no reply.
‘I’ll get on then if yer not talking.’
He turned his back on Muriel and heaved the bin bags off to his dustbin corner.
Muriel sat on her little seat by her rose arch, tickled Pericles behind his ears as he settled down beside her and pondered on her predicament. If she told someone, they would have her certified. If she didn’t tell someone, she would go mad. Maybe she was already mad and didn’t know it. Perhaps one would be the last to realise. If she did one more stupid thing she would give up playing for the school. Last week she had made an idiot of herself with constant wrong notes, wrong timing – and even the wrong tune, once. She couldn’t expect Mr Palmer to put up with it much longer. She didn’t profess to be a pianist as such but she could play some lively tunes for her age. That was it – her age! She was trying to be twenty-four when she was sixty-four. One glimpse of her reflection in a shop window and she despised herself. She was nothing but a faded
elderly spinster, dragging out her life because she was too much of a coward to commit suicide. Death would bring its own reward. Paradise. What greater prize could one have than entering paradise? What an incentive, Thy face to see. Surely the good Lord would let her in? She’d been well-behaved all her life. For this to happen just as she was feeling needed and beginning to enjoy her life … One can’t even gas oneself nowadays. That would have been a gentle way to go. Drowning? Jumping off the church tower? But she got vertigo simply going up to take the bell-ringers their cocoa on New Year’s Eve. She’d never reach the top. In any case, Peter would be so upset …
This last incident was ridiculous, but she’d done it. How could anyone leave the oven on at full blast with the door open and all the rings on as well? To say nothing of the gas bill. The house was positively steaming when she got back. She’d had to open all the windows and the doors to cool it down. She hadn’t even intended to cook a Sunday dinner seeing as it was 82 degrees. Tomorrow when she went to church she would take particular notice of what she was doing and check everything before she left. That way she’d know when she got back that she hadn’t done it. Maybe she had a ghost. Maybe someone from years past resented the cottages being built on church land. There’d been plenty of opposition when they were built – from the living, never mind the dead. If that was it, Peter would have to exorcise it.
Sunday morning came. The sun shone brilliantly as it had done for two months now. Before it got too hot, Muriel watered her most precious plants with water from the butt. She enjoyed turning the little tap on and watching the water come running out. When she’d finished she lifted the lid to check how much water was still left: floating in the top was
a drowned cat. A drowned ginger cat. A fully grown, drowned ginger cat. A beautiful fully grown drowned ginger cat! Someone’s pet, someone’s beloved pet in her water butt. The horror of its drowning whilst she’d been going about her affairs ignorant of its agony, was more than she could tolerate.