A Fall from Grace (2 page)

“Once a doctor, always a doctor,” he said.

“Why throw away a good selling point?” said the woman beside him. “I'm Alison Carlson. The wife.”

“I'm Charlie Peace.”

“And are you thinking of coming to live here?” asked Dr. Carlson. “I saw you coming out of the estate agents'.”

“Maybe. This is one of the places we're looking at. But I don't expect we'll be in time to vote for you.”

“Never mind. That wasn't why I asked. I'm serious about standing for mayor, but I'm not desperate to get elected. How about a cup of tea and a muffin? Alison has to get home and rest, and I'm always interested in a new face.”

“Sure,” said Charlie, with that feeling familiar to
policemen of being glad to be wanted. They raised their hands to Alison and the other two helpers storing the equipment away in an old car, then crossed the road toward a tearoom called the Hot Muffin.

“Only started up three months ago,” said Dr. Chris. “I think she's struggling a bit. Hello, Hilda, this is—sorry, I've forgotten your name.”

“Charlie Peace.”

“He's thinking of moving here.” She showed them to a table, and they began poring over their menus. “Moving here with wife? With kids, perhaps?”

“Yes, both. One little girl and another unspecified on the way.”

“And you want to move out of the city? Yes, I thought so. We've got one on the way too, as you'll have noticed. It's like a reward, or maybe a benediction. I say, we could betroth the two at birth, like in a Dickens novel—if they turn out to be of different sex, of course.”

“Sounds like a recipe for disaster,” said Charlie. “Anyway, if our Carola is anything to go by it wouldn't work. She decides everything—and I mean
every
thing—for herself. She might consider a suggestion, but she'd never accept dictation . . . Why did you say your sprog would be a reward or a benediction?”

Dr. Chris turned to Hilda and ordered tea and hot muffins.

“Benediction for giving up the practice of medicine. People sometimes suggest it was irresponsible or worse. But the sprog is like someone is saying, ‘You did the right thing.' Actually, what it really means, I suppose,
is that we both became more relaxed, certainly more happy, and simply had more time. Giving up work—that work—has been like a liberation. It's as if I was a new person, and that applies to Alison too. The fact that I've slipped my fetters means an entirely new sort of life for her.”

“You're never going back?”

He shrugged, suggesting genuine uncertainty.

“Not so far as I know—certainly not in the immediate future.”

“What do you do with your time?”

“What time? No, I'm joking, but it all does seem to get filled. I do all sorts of things. Mostly I paint. I hadn't had a paintbrush in my hand for years—not since my first long vacation from medical school. But I've always loved it. I'm not
good,
don't think that. But I'm a good amateur, and my landscapes strike a chord in your average art fancier who knows what he likes.”

“So you make a living out of it?”

“I'm just starting to. I take them round the classy shopping malls, have little exhibitions in Harrogate, Ilkley, places like that. We'll not starve when the little one comes.”

“With a nice lot stashed away from your time as consultant,” said Charlie dryly. Chris laughed.

“My complaint was never about the pay. What's wrong with the Health Service is the deal that patients are getting.”

“And everyone here knows you're a doctor, I notice.”

“Oh yes.”

“And they come to you with their little ailments and worries?”

“How did you know?”

“I'm a policeman. We're experts at spotting the obvious. No, that's not true. In fact, we have to really struggle to know what ordinary people do, because we usually see people who are at the worst end of ‘ordinary.' But I could see you were sympathetic and approachable with the crowd outside. Of course they'd bring you their troubles.”

“I squared it with the local group of GPs,” said Chris, as if he needed to apologize. “It takes from their shoulders a lot of visits from people who just want to talk things over, want to be reassured that their little pains in the area of the heart, their twinges in the back, are not signals to give up the struggle for living. And I sometimes alert them to something that might be serious, and make the sufferer go along to see them. If I say they need to get something checked up, they generally go.”

“I'm sure they do. You're persuasive.”

“And what about you? Are you a persuasive policeman?”

Charlie laughed. It wasn't a question he'd ever been asked.

“I'm not sure persuasion is a weapon we use very much. Mild bullying, tricking, threatening . . . Oh, I do a job of work that is much less salubrious than yours.”

“Still, I expect people here would be quite pleased to have another policeman living among them.”

“Maybe. I hope I can be an off-duty one. I haven't actually spoken to anyone yet apart from you. Felicity
and I are viewing some places tomorrow night.”

“Remember people here are a little conservative. Don't be too harsh on them.”

Charlie understood at once what he meant.

“Believe me, I know all the range of facial expressions of people who open their doors to a black face: everything from shock-horror to pleased anticipation. I've learned not to pay too much attention to initial reactions over the years.”

“Forgive me. Of course you have. I don't suppose there's anything I could teach you about black-white relations.”

Charlie's face showed amusement rather than anger.

“Felicity is white, by the way. That helps. You might think it would be the reverse, but I think the white person provides a sort of way into the situation for the kind of person who lives in a place like Slepton. We shall bring my father-in-law with us if we come here, though I'm not sure he'd be much use in a sticky racial situation.”

“So you've got three generations living together. That's good of you.”

“
Not
living together, and not good of us at all. He's going to buy a separate house, and he's helping us with our mortgage. Don't sentimentalize us, and don't sentimentalize him. My father-in-law is a selfish, clinging, narcissistic and emotionally blood-sucking apology for a father.” He looked around the sparsely patronized tearoom. “One of the appeals of this place may turn out to be the predominantly elderly population, which will give him a circle to drop into. The fact that he's a
writer will help that.”

“Oh really? What does he write?”

“Everything. Anything he thinks will sell. He's also bitterly resentful that he's never been a bestseller. Among his pseudonyms are Jed Parker and Chantalle Derivaux, which gives you an idea of his range. If we can get some people reading his books, and if they will tell him how much they enjoyed them, which they usually do with authors, then things may go swimmingly. Disraeli should have said, ‘Everyone enjoys flattery, and when it comes to authors you should lay it on with a trowel.' ” Charlie got up. “It's time I was making a move.”

“Must you go? I'm enjoying this conversation.”

“And I'm on duty. I'll have to disguise this break by pretending I was investigating whether there is a British National Party presence at this election.”

“There isn't. They probably don't think the job of mayor is one of sufficient power to justify their muscling in on it. And of course in this country it isn't.”

“Why are you standing then?”

“Shall we say for a bit of fun? Though that's only part of the truth. I do feel that the party system has stifled genuine debate, polarized opinions in a totally unhelpful way and led to the sort of yah-boo politics that gets us nowhere. It
is
time for a change. We need a solid block of true independents who look at every issue in a clear-eyed way.”

“Well, I'll wish you good luck,” said Charlie, shaking his hand. “And I really will be following your progress with interest.”

In the event, that turned out to be more easily said than done.

When he got home he found that his father-in-law had dumped himself on them, having sold his cottage, hollyhocks and all, to a buyer who wanted to move in immediately. He became cagey when he was asked why he hadn't even given them a phone call to warn them. Clearly he had feared excuses, lodgings found for him, obdurate refusals of hospitality. So speed was now of the essence. The next evening Charlie and Felicity viewed the three properties in Slepton Edge, along with the smaller ones, and chose two. The one they chose for themselves was a stone house dating from the 1880s with three rooms downstairs and four bedrooms upstairs, one of them marked as a study for Felicity, who followed the parental example in one thing only: the urge to write fiction. There was a little scrap of garden at the front and a larger one at the back, clearly destined to be a playing area for two, which Charlie decided on the spot would be nothing but grass. Mowing he could enjoy; planting, tending, weeding and pruning he didn't have time for, and wouldn't until he reached retirement age.

The bungalow they chose for Rupert Coggenhoe was five minutes away, gently uphill and on the edge of the inhabited part of the village, with nature metaphorically speaking on its doorstep. Felicity's dad had said that he relied entirely on their judgment, which would give him unlimited opportunities for whingeing once he had moved in.

The choice having been made, it was time for the
lawyers, surveyors, solicitors and removalists to take over, and on Charlie and Felicity's part a constant and successful effort to get the transaction finalized and the move made as soon as possible. At work, reading the Yorkshire papers during a quiet spell, Charlie learned that the election for mayor of Halifax had been won by the Labour candidate Archie Skelton, a party stalwart in his sixties, but that Dr. Christopher Carlson had come a respectable and surprising second, having been beaten by only 267 votes.

And that was the situation when, on the thirteenth of November, Charlie and Felicity, accompanied by Carola and the fetus, moved to 15 Walsh Street, Slepton Edge. Mr. Rupert Coggenhoe, accompanied only by his half-finished manuscript novel
Georgiana Cavendish,
came with them in the car and had his first sight of his fifties bungalow, 23 Forsythia Avenue, Slepton Edge. From Charlie and Felicity's point of view it was near enough for help to be on hand, but not quite far enough for comfort. As for Coggenhoe, he sighed, as if it wasn't really his sort of place at all and they should have known that, but allowed himself to be led out of the car and shown around.

The process of the Peace family getting themselves settled into the new house in Slepton Edge took three days, days which Charlie took off from work, to toil but also to enjoy. They took Carola with them on those days but not Felicity's father, counting on Carola as being less trouble. Not only was she that, but she was also an excellent talking point with neighbors, shopkeepers and people met casually in streets and in pubs. On the fourth day Charlie returned to work in Leeds, and Felicity supervised her father's move from Leeds to Slepton.

In itself it went perfectly well. All the furniture which had been in storage since her father had moved from the hollyhocked cottage arrived on the morning of the move, fitted well into the new bungalow, and by evening all was so settled and convenient that he was able to sleep the night in his own bed in his own house. Whether that was what he wanted was another matter. He claimed that he had not eaten since they
had left him alone in Leeds, and when Felicity pointed out that there were plenty of good cafés, restaurants and pubs nearby, he sighed and said he couldn't splash out money intended for them when he was Gone (the capital letter was his). He also said that things in Slepton (of which he had seen almost nothing) were Not What He Was Used To, but at least, he said, he would be near to them.

That, Felicity thought, was not a comfort, but the principal fly in the ointment.

Still, the situation admitted of several hopeful factors. On the trips she and Rupert took around Slepton to introduce him to shopkeepers, pub landlords and café proprietors, several people recognized them and stopped. “You must be the author,” several said. Or, even better: “You must be Rupert Coggenhoe, the author. I've read several of your books.”

Chris Carlson had been doing a propaganda job. They had been at his house a couple of times in the middle of the moving process, and had liked both him and his wife. They had told him more about Felicity's father, and the problems and dangers he presented, and he had obviously taken measures in his usual quiet but efficient way.

This recognition of her father, however artificially induced, seemed after a few days to be paying off. The arrival of Coggenhoe, the author, was generating in sleepy Slepton the sort of interest that in such places passes for excitement. Slepton Edge had a great many retired people among its inhabitants, as well as some, like Dr. Carlson, who were redesigning their lives. New stimuli,
new topics of conversation, were just what was needed in such an environment, and during his first weeks in the village Rupert Coggenhoe enjoyed something very close to popularity. Most of his new readers were women, but there was the odd male one too, and by being sociable in the tearoom and in one or other of the two pubs, he gathered around himself something that could be called a circle.