A Fatal Winter (2 page)

“Then keep the fucking cat out of the church,” said Suzanna.

Elka reeled back in a somewhat stagey posture of horror. She was used to Suzanna. All the Nether Monkslip villagers were.

“Really, Suzanna!” she said, just to keep in form. “You might remember where you are.”

Suzanna, caught up in the fizz of the moment, had actually forgotten she was standing in the narthex of St. Edwold’s, where she and Elka had repaired to continue what had escalated from casual discussion to simmering warfare. They had gone there to talk away from the ears of the church handyman Maurice, who was again painting over the persistently recurring water stain on the church wall.

“Sorry,” she said, automatically.

Elka, seizing the momentary advantage, pressed on: “Luther lives here. He’s the official St. Edwold’s mouser. But we can’t afford to have another debacle like last year. Don’t you remember the nativity scene, when one of the lambs burst out crying when one of the angels pulled its ears, and Mary dropped the baby Jesus, which fortunately had not been a
real
baby, of course. Actually, she didn’t so much
drop
it as it came unwound from its swaddling clothes and sort of rolled naked down the chancel steps. The children didn’t quite know what to do and several more of them burst into tears. They thought they’d be held accountable, you see, for all of its going tits-up so quickly. It doesn’t do to have children younger than five up there. If they haven’t taken their naps that day, well—what can you expect? It would be like sending me on stage before I’d had my coffee in the morning.”

Suzanna had just stared at her throughout this recital. “Jesus,” she said at last.

“Precisely,” said Elka. “I mean, not precisely, it was a baby doll, but you do see why we can’t have anything go wrong this—”

Suzanna cut her off. “Yes. Say no more. Please.”

She sighed heavily, her buxom figure straining the fabric of a bright red woolen dress that wrapped and tied at her waist. She wore tan knee-high boots of a buttery leather and an antique brooch of holly leaves and berries, and she’d recently had her thick blond hair swept into an updo at the Cut and Dried Salon. She knew she looked smashing.

Although why I bother in this one-donkey town, she thought, where the only male of any viable interest is the vicar, who is
not
taking the bait, is beyond me.

“Mice,” she said now, enunciating slowly in her husky voice, “have rights, too. Did you ever think of that? We’d be doing them a favor—entire families of helpless mice. Fathers and mothers, struggling to raise tiny newborns, under constant threat from Luther. What’s one life weighed against so many?” Suzanna loved cats, and would never see any animal harmed, but Elka, she suddenly realized, was driving her quite, quite mad. Even if hell prevailed, she would never allow herself again to be paired with Elka Garth on the church flower rota. Never, never, ne—

Suzanna’s thoughts hung suspended in midair, for just then, the Reverend (and extremely dishy) Max Tudor came into view, walking down the High. Blundered into the situation, as he would later recall it.

Elka turned toward him, relief making her plain round face shine. Suzanna tucked a stray wisp of hair back into her French twist and began smoothing the fabric of her skirt over her hips. Both women approvingly watched his approach. He had a loping gait, and the long stride and easy movement of the athlete.

For his part, Max was thinking of his sermon for the next day, which was Advent Sunday. He was preoccupied by metaphors for this time of waiting, an occasion that too often had nothing to do with patience and calm, but with frantic rushing about and shopping and overindulgence. Simultaneously, he was giving some advance thought to his Christmas Day sermon. Always so important to get right, he told himself. In actuality, Christmas was his favorite holiday and working on the sermon a particular pleasure. What was most to be avoided, as always, was providing a sense of dreary, never-ending monotony with a sermon that would have parishioners wondering, with Tom Stoppard, “Where is God?”

Max was so preoccupied, in fact, that initially he did not recognize what was at stake in the women’s discussion.

“Hello, Father!” said Elka, shouting her greeting and not-so-gently elbowing Suzanna aside as he approached. “Poinsettias are poisonous to cats, aren’t they?”

Max, startled by the question, fell unwittingly into the trap.

“I believe I’ve read somewhere they can be toxic.”

Elka whipped her head round to look at Suzanna, the
Told you!
plain if unspoken.

“But only mildly,” he said, opening the church door. “It’s the holly berry that can be extremely toxic.”

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, his gaze wandered to either side of the altar, where copious sprays of both offending items were beautifully arrayed, reflecting hours of effort by both women.

“Oh,” he said.

Suzanna, who had also supplied the holly berries, driving all the way to Monkslip-super-Mare to collect the donation from the flower shop, looked crestfallen. As if to underline the point, Luther chose that moment to sprint in front of the altar in pursuit of some unseen and possibly imaginary quarry.

“I’m sure something can be arranged,” Max said, with a bright but feckless optimism that, given his knowledge of his contentious parishioners, bordered on insanity. Still, he was hoping the generally amenable Elka would volunteer a home for Luther. Or even that Suzanna would, given the circumstances.

“Allergic,” said both women in unison.

“Awena?” he said hopefully. Awena, the village’s so-called New-Agey Neopagan, was known to have a soft spot for animals.

The women shook their heads in unison.

“I happen to know she’s in London,” said Suzanna. “Shopping for decorations for her holiday party.” Thank God. She could just picture Awena trotting along right about now, swinging her little basket (probably full of eye of newt or whatever a neopagan would haul about with her), and Max’s eyes lighting up at the sight.

“Well, of course,” Suzanna continued, “she’s calling it a
holiday
party to be inclusive, but she told me she was doing her solstice shopping. The party’s being held on the winter solstice, did you realize? That’s a big festival for someone of Awena’s … persuasion.”

“Yes, and there will be a full moon and a total lunar eclipse that night besides,” said Max, smiling his oblivious smile. “That’s rather rare, I understand. Sounds to me like the perfect time for a birthday celebration. Especially
this
birthday celebration.”

“Right,” muttered Suzanna. “All we’re missing now is a star in the east.”

If she had hoped for a stronger or more disapproving reaction from Father Max, as the villagers called him, she was disappointed. She was not alone in noticing the vicar’s fondness for Awena. To be fair, it was a fondness shared by most of the villagers, of whatever religious persuasion.

The trouble with Awena was that everyone
liked
Awena so. Suzanna herself liked Awena, which made her recent dislike all the more puzzling and irritating. Suzanna acknowledged to herself that all this made no sense at all. But it was the Reverend Max Tudor’s evident awareness of Awena, all the while Suzanna was practically throwing herself into his arms, that was feeding this aversion. What Suzanna didn’t need right now was competition. Max Tudor was a tough enough nut to crack as it was.

“Anyway,” she said. “She won’t be here for a while. Maybe you can get your Mrs. Hooser to feed him, at least until Awena gets back.”

Max bridled at the notion of Mrs. Hooser, the woman who “did” for him with an incompetence bordering on domestic sabotage, being in any way “his.”

“Thea…” he began.

“Thea is the gentlest dog that ever lived.” It was Elka’s turn to press home the advantage. “She’ll get along fine with Luther. She’ll welcome the company, more like as not.”

“I don’t know…” said Max. “I have to be in London myself, the early part of December, for a symposium of sorts.”

“Mrs. Hooser can cope,” said Suzanna brightly.

Both Max and Elka turned to look at her.
Really? Since when?

But in the face of the women’s predicament, and allowing his helpful, peacemaker tendencies again to get the better of him, Max nodded and said, “Okay. Fine. I’ll take Luther in. What harm can it do?”

DECEMBER 3

‘Tis the season to be jolly …

Jocasta and Simon Jones were flying coach, a rare economy in a lifetime of wild, even frenzied, spending. So as not to be recognized, Jocasta was wearing a wig. Or perhaps, thought a cynical Simon,
hoping
to be recognized as one so famous a wig was required for her to get from point A to point B in public, unmolested by a ravening media.

But flying coach was a novel experience for Jocasta. And her entry into this new world was not going well.

The choices, as their flight attendant Wendy had chirped over the PA system, were between two boxed lunches. Jocasta, at fifty a worshiper at the altar of youth and vitality, chose the “Healthy Option.”

She unwrapped the box when it had been deposited on her tray table and peered inside. There nestled a small tin of albacore, a small plastic tub of applesauce, and a large bag containing approximately ten crisps, along with plasticware wrapped hygienically and impenetrably in plastic. There was also a large, round, nubby object that might have been a biscuit or a cow pat.

Jocasta pushed the button on her armrest for the attendant. Two seconds later, she pushed it again. On, off. On, off.

“Seven
dollars
and fifty
cents
for a box of
tuna
and
applesauce
?” she cried, when Wendy had rushed to her side, expecting no less than a passenger in the final stages of cardiac arrest. “Are you quite mad?”

The flight attendant grinned her determined, battle-stations grin. It was the wide grin she saved for the type of passenger she would refuse to assist with their oxygen mask and flotation device should the need arise, hewing close to her own survival-of-the-fittest philosophy. Sod the lot of them, anyway.

But the airline had only yesterday caught major media flack for its unfriendly service and everyone was on short notice to start being nicer to passengers. Just my rotten luck to draw this witch today, Wendy thought, grinning yet more broadly.

“What’s so funny?” demanded Jocasta suspiciously.

“I’m afraid we have no control over the food choices the airline offers.” She was thinking how you used to be able to tell the Brits from the Yanks, and it wasn’t just the accents—you could tell by the shoes and clothing. And the haircuts. This one was British but she’d been in the States a long time. The haircut—or was it a wig?—was expensive, and subtly American in style. The clothes? Designer stuff, but last year’s. It was the clothing that made it hard to tell anymore. We’re all starting to dress alike.

Wendy leaned in confidingly, a past mistress of the art of talking down the obstreperous passenger. She whispered, “It’s chronic, isn’t it? We have to eat that muck, too—even the pilots!—and we all complain about it, believe you me, dear.”

Jocasta merely scowled and demanded her money back. She had already eaten the “Healthy Option” crisps and fully intended to eat the rest of the box’s contents. But the flight attendant was too quick for her.

“Certainly, madam,” she said, seizing the box and turning away, never to reappear until the plane landed at Heathrow. “I’ll credit your charge card.”

“I simply can’t believe this,” Jocasta fumed to Simon. “I suppose these seats don’t convert into a bed, either? No free champagne? No gourmet meal, just that box of crap? No Canadian Ice Wine to go with the pudding?”

Her chin quivered with outrage. Jocasta, her husband noticed, was again getting a bit fleshy around the neck, despite the ministrations of a renowned Hollywood doctor who “did” necks as a specialty, much as a garage might specialize in mufflers or brake pad replacement. You could have hidden marbles in the folds of her neck before she had the first of many surgeries. Now she had that death’s-head look, so common in Hollywood, of skin stretched too tautly to fool anyone into believing they were looking at the full bloom of youth.

Simon had come to regret his role, however well remunerated in the past, as a propper-up of a fading actress’s ego—an ego otherwise sustained only by her bottomless belief in her own attractiveness. Jocasta was an actress of a particular stamp: the damsel of horror or science-fiction films, permanently typecast as the moronic but nubile maiden who explores the castle alone with only the aid of a flickering stub of a candle, and later as the moronic but spry matron who is generally the first victim of the headless corpse/marauding microbe. But the longer her career went on, the shorter seemed to be Jocasta’s time on screen. Roles calling for nuance and subtle shading generally going to actresses roughly of her generation like Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep, Jocasta soldiered on, increasingly baffled by her agent’s inability to keep her image before a fickle public. The pinnacle of her career was now considered to be her portrayal of Jula Bates in
I See Crazy People
, which had developed a (very) small cult following, after which it had all gone downhill. Roles having disappeared entirely, Jocasta had formally announced her retirement, in the hope of generating a clamor for her return. The announcement had been greeted with a stony silence—even the Hollywood trade papers had ignored the press release spat out into the tray beneath their fax machines.

That Simon was fourteen years his wife’s junior was starting to bother him—in the early days he could not have begun to predict how much it would. He supposed it was because despite the difference in their ages, he was much the more mature of the two, the stabilizing force. But to this day he could not watch
Sunset Boulevard
without flinching, particularly at the opening scene in which William Holden’s body floats lifelessly in Gloria Swanson’s pool.