A Fall from Grace (3 page)

“Things are going much better than I thought they would,” said Charlie, when they went into the Black Heiffer one night a few days later, after leaving Carola in the children's play area, and saw Rupert already surrounded by an admiring group near the bar.

“He's even doing some of his own shopping,” agreed Felicity. “So as to meet his admirers. Let's just hope it lasts.”

Their own company that evening was a recent acquaintance, Desmond Pinkhurst, who ambled over to their table, looking around the large bar apparently in quest of someone, before sinking disappointed into a chair beside Felicity. Desmond had been a mildly celebrated young actor forty years before, best known for his “silly ass” roles in British comedy films, as well as occasional similar roles in sitcoms and British musicals, at a time when they were mainly Noel-Coward-and-water. Now, after twenty years of retirement on a share portfolio that was the greatest emotional interest in his life, he was—on the surface—bumbling, well-intentioned, accident-prone and in love with his own anxieties.

“I wondered if . . . ,” he began, his eyes still going
everywhere. “But never mind. How
are
you both? And how is your distinguished father, my dear?”

“We are fine. We are settled in, we no longer trip over the furniture because it's in different places and we're enjoying Slepton and its people,” said Charlie.

“And as to my father, I think most of that applies to him too. It's a big wrench, at his age, moving, uprooting himself. But he's survived, and he's been made very welcome.”

“So I see,” said Desmond. “All the fairer sex fluttering around him.”

“Are you jealous?” asked Felicity. “Or perhaps grateful to him for getting them off your back?”

“I see you've been listening to local gossip,” said Desmond archly.

“Gossip?”

Desmond leaned forward, in confiding mode.

“To the effect that I'm gay. Don't you believe it. I'm not gay at all. Just not particularly heterosexual.”

He looked round triumphantly, as if that explained everything.

“I see,” said Felicity.

“In places like this they say that about anyone who hasn't been married,” Desmond went on. “And I sometimes have male friends from the profession staying with me, and some of those
are
.”

“But you're not?”

“Oh dear no! Just not all that
in
terested, as I say.”

He grinned at them both. Charlie had the sense of having old jokes and old obfuscations tried out on him, as a newcomer. He noticed that as the man sent his grin
around the table, the questing glance went too.

“Are you waiting for someone?” Charlie asked him. Desmond nodded.

“Oh, just for Chris. I want to ask his advice. It's rather a shock, and I don't quite know . . .”

“What's rather a shock?”

Desmond settled, hunched over the table.

“Well, I've just had the offer of a job. A stage job. It's years since that happened. And the poor old stock portfolio has been down a bit these last few months, and so—well, I'm tempted. It's not as if I'm
in need,
but still . . .”

“So what's the problem?”

“It's in Sheffield. Too far to drive to rehearsals and performances. Much too far for me. Even Halifax is an adventure. I shouldn't be allowed on the road. And then, it's such a strange thing to offer me. I mean,
Ibsen.
I've hardly ever done anything really serious, let alone something so—you know. Intellectually challenging—that's really what I mean. And there's already talk of a transfer to London.”

So there it was. The Great Norwegian, intimidating as usual, his British reputation for unrelieved doom and gloom sending shivers down Desmond Pinkhurst's spine for fear he should spoil things by letting cheerfulness break in. Charlie, who was very much a get-up-and-do-it sort of person, played down the Ibsen side and concentrated on the joy and stimulus of working again, of performing before an audience. Desmond remained congenitally uncertain.

“I don't know, really I don't . . . There is pathos in
the character, and some humor. It's Old Ekdal in
The Wild Duck.
It's not often been done in recent years because there's a fairly large cast—lots of small parts. They prefer the later plays with a tiny cast. It's all money these days, isn't it?”

“But the money would come in handy, I suppose?” Charlie asked.

“Oh, it
would.
But learning the part, and the nerves—I'm a bag of nerves, particularly with stage roles. I was always a film and television man.” He thought. “I once had a small part in
Coronation Street.
One of Rita Fairclough's boyfriends. But of course that's a quite different matter from Ibsen. Ibsen! The very thought makes me shiver! I really don't know . . . Oh, there he is.”

And there Chris was. He was buying himself a pint of bitter and swapping greetings with Sid the landlord, but already positioned by his right arm was a stout elderly lady, her eyes on his face, waiting for any sign of an end to the conversation, when she would wade in to get reassurance about a twinge or an ache or a tic. The expression on her face spoke of something close to adoration. And behind the two of them, now, was Desmond, who had got across the expanse of the saloon bar in a surprisingly nippy manner, glass in hand, and was now waiting his turn. Charlie looked at Felicity.

“I don't know how Chris does it,” he said. “Advice to an old dear on cutting down on the chocolates, and to an old thespian on whether or not to take a part in a play.”

Felicity looked at Chris with the assessing eye of
someone who herself wrote (as yet unpublished) novels, and liked things she could make use of.

“He is so immensely likeable,” she said. “I suppose people find that they can just talk away to him and he understands, and just by the process of talking they sort things out in their minds in a way that solitary thinking, and having all the options crowding in on you without any sorting or classifying, doesn't do.”

“I expect you're right,” said Charlie. “Though I'm not sure I would want that sort of responsibility myself.”

“Responsibility? How does he have responsibility?”

“Because even if all he does, most of the time, is listen, they'll associate him in their minds with whatever decision they take.”

“They could, I suppose,” said Felicity thoughtfully. “Especially if they're not logical thinkers.”

“Do you see poor old Desmond as a clear-minded thinker? Oh hell—watch it. Here comes our own personal problem figure.”

It was Felicity's father, steaming over with a female in tow. Charlie and Felicity had agreed when speculating on Rupert's future that what was most likely was that he would try to find a substitute for his dead wife. This would not be, or not primarily, to receive her conjugal pleasures, but the other things, including household help, laundry, shopping and cooking, above all ego-boosting. Felicity had already observed him returning to his bungalow with a variety of women after morning coffee, pub lunches or weekly shopping. When he now introduced Nancy Stoppard, Felicity remembered that she had already been mentioned
by Chris Carlson as “a pleasant widow with a bit of money.” Jackpot!

“Nancy, this is my daughter, whom you've heard me mention, Felicity, and her husband who everyone calls Charlie for no good reason that I can see, and outside playing on the slide is little Carola, the light of my life, my only grandchild until the little one there decides to make his entrance into this wicked world.”

Coggenhoe had a unique ability to make everything he said grate on his daughter. It had been explained to him many times why Dexter Peace had popularly become Charlie (and it didn't need a mastermind to work it out), and he had in fact paid remarkably little attention to his granddaughter Carola since he'd come north, partly because she was too young to be useful to him, and perhaps partly because she was a child with a strong will of her own. Not the sort of female that Rupert tried to attract.

“Nice to meet you,” said Nancy, shaking hands. “Rupert has talked so much about you.”

As she said this Charlie saw an expression waft quickly across her face as she realized that her wholly conventional words were not in this case true: Rupert Coggenhoe had talked very little about his family.

“When is the baby due?” she asked, sticking to convention.

“May,” said Felicity. “Carola's was a fairly easy birth, and I'm hoping this will be the same.”

“But until then
we
have to take good care of
her,
instead of her taking good care of us,” said her father. Grate, grate.

“You have always taken
very
good care of yourself, Dad.”

“And she won't have much time to take care of anyone except herself and the babe for a long time after the birth,” said Nancy. “Even Charlie and Carola will miss out.”

“I'm used to it,” said Charlie. “Carola will create blue murder.”

“Then you must stop spoiling her from now on,” said Nancy. “Restrict all your care to talking, sympathizing and advising.”

Felicity laughed.

“We've just been talking about that. I don't think there's any need in Slepton Edge for that sort of service.”

“Yes, we do have our regular shoulder to cry on,” said Nancy, looking to the other end of the bar, where Desmond had got his place in the sun and was talking earnestly to Chris. His hands sometimes made actorish gestures, but from him they seemed deeply, anguishedly in earnest.

“Desmond's been offered a stage part,” said Charlie. “In
The Wild Duck.
He's not sure he's up to it, not sure he wants the bother. But I think the money would come in useful.”

“He should take it,” said Felicity. “It's a lovely part—funny, but tender and pathetic as well.”

“I hear that he's never done anything except Silly-Billy parts,” said Rupert, nakedly contemptuous of his rival celebrity. “Not much of a preparation for Ibsen.”

“I'm not so sure,” said Nancy. “You sometimes get these comedians and soap stars who suddenly get a chance of a really meaty role and they make a wonderful success of it. He could be at the start of a whole new career. He should go for it.”

She looked studiously away from Rupert Coggenhoe's sneering face. Charlie thought she was an intelligent woman, if only because she agreed with him. If he was right she would not last long as Coggenhoe's favored aide and helpmeet. He leaned forward and picked up glasses.

“Same again, everyone, or a change of tipple?”

At the bar he found himself next to Chris Carlson.

“How's the surgery going?” he asked.

“Quite well,” said Chris, a tiny wafting of irritation crossing his face. “But you're being mischievous as usual. You know I don't do medical advice. The most I do is pass them on to someone who will, if I think there's anything that needs checking over.”

“I'm sure you act impeccably, and I'm sure you save the local GPs from a lot of fruitless surgery sessions. But I meant a sort of emotional surgery. Advice for the sorely tried and bewildered.”

“Ah, poor old Desmond,” said Chris sagely. “Well, I just let him talk the thing through. I can't advise him, but I can listen. I think underneath he desperately wants to experience again the excitement of being onstage, and all the backstage gossip and bitchery.”

“I expect you're right, though the fear at the top isn't going to go away, and it will be worse at his age. But I'm sure you help them to think things through for themselves.”

“I try to. But you have your doubts, don't you?”

“Do I? I suppose my face is easily read . . . I'm not sure I can put the doubts into words. There seems to me a danger of you becoming necessary to people here—someone who anything of any importance has to be discussed with.”

“That makes me sound a frightful prig. But talking things through never did anyone any harm, did it? Why is there any danger in people doing that?”

“I really meant danger to you. Seeing yourself as a sort of moral arbiter to the whole village. You might start to see yourself as indispensable, whereas really you're just the icing on the cake. Now I sound a prig, don't I? But as a rule I find people only take advice that coincides with what they intend to do anyway.”

“Cynic. You make me feel quite useless. Oh, there's Alison. Over here, darling.”

By the time that she had pushed her pregnant way through the crowded bar, Chris had been commandeered by a worried and bespectacled middle-aged man whom Charlie classified in his mind as a schoolteacher. Charlie raised his eyebrows at Alison, added a Britvic Orange to his order, then shared the carrying with her so as to bring her over to his table. He did this with intent, and it worked like a dream: when his father-in-law saw the approach of another pregnant woman he began to show signs of unease, and when Charlie said he'd go out and fetch Carola in as it was getting too cold for her to be outside, he heard as he was retreating the sound of Rupert's and Nancy's
chairs scraping and excuses being made.

Carola was being looked after by a mother with her own small son, and she was reluctant to come in. By the time he had carried her through the bar the two pregnant women were finished with signs and symptoms and were on to Alison's evening.

“It was the Townswomen's Guild, at Halifax,” she was saying. “Quite a good lecture. I was someone's guest—I promised to go during the election. But when I got there I found there was nobody else there under the age of fifty-five.”

“Why on earth did you go?” Felicity asked. “The election is over. You don't need anyone's vote.”

“Oh, I'd promised. Anyway, you never know. Chris says that Archie Skelton, the man who won, shows classic signs of heart problems.”