A Tangled Web (6 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

'Mandy,' said Robert Bates, as they sat in his car outside his girlfriend's semi-detached house in the suburbs of Tresham. The film has been violent and noisy, and Mandy had held Robert's hand in a tight, tense grip for a couple of hours. Neither of them had enjoyed the evening much, and Robert wished it had been a romantic film, a love story to put Mandy in the right mood.

'Yes, Robert?' said Mandy, a slender, quick-moving girl with olive skin and a nose like a lump of putty stuck more or less in the middle of her face. Her smile was wide, and her teeth attractively crooked, and she had worshipped Robert Bates since they were at Tresham Comprehensive together.

'I love you, Mandy,' said Robert.'

'I love you too, Robert,' said Mandy, staring straight ahead through the fly-spattered windscreen.

'Will you marry me, Mandy?' said Robert, with a dopey smile.

'Yes please, Robert,' said Mandy, and they both burst out laughing, turning and kissing each other in delight.

They calmed down, and Mandy took Robert's hand. 'Come on,' she said, 'might as well get it over. Dad's at home this evening.'

'Oh Gawd,' said Robert. 'Must I?'

'Yep,' said Mandy. 'We're going to do this thing properly, or not at all.'

'Oh no, not the full white wedding and penguin suit?' said Robert, groaning.

'That's it,' said Mandy, opening the car door. 'Come on, Robert, he'll not bite you. He's probably expecting something of the sort anyway.'

Mandy Butler's father and mother sat in front of the television set, Mrs Butler completely immersed in an old film and Mr Butler fast asleep with his head back and his mouth open.

'Mother, we're back,' said Mandy.

'Good film, dear?' said Mrs Butler, without taking her eyes off the screen.

'Not bad,' said Robert. 'Um, I wonder if we could wake Mr Butler? I've something to ask him.'

Mrs Butler's attention was immediately redirected. She'd watched so many television soaps that her antennae were well tuned to the signs of an important development. 'Reg,' she said. 'Reg, wake up!'

He awoke with some snorting and choking, and denied hotly that he had been asleep. 'Just resting my eyes for a minute or two,' he said.

'Mr Butler,' said Robert, anxious to get the whole thing over. 'I- that is, me and Mandy- urm, well, we'd like to get wed if that's all right with you...and Mrs Butler, of course.' Mandy's mother rose with a shriek and flung her arms round Mandy, while Mr Butler got slowly to his feet. Robert wondered nervously whether he was going to eject him by the scruff of his neck.

'Well done, Robert,' Mr Butler said, extending his hand. 'Me and Mother was wondering when you'd get around to it.' They all laughed with the release of tension, and Mrs Butler went happily out to the kitchen to fetch a bottle of wine put by for just such a special occasion.

'Mother,' said Mandy, as they toasted each other with glasses of the sweet, yellow wine, 'you might as well know that I want the wedding to be in Ringford.' She looked at her mother, dreading the wobbly chin and eyes filling with tears.

Her mother was a very emotional person, and it was not easy to know which way she would take things.

'Oh, I do agree, dear,' she said to her only daughter. 'A village wedding, white dress with a long train, your little cousins for bridesmaids, and Robert in one of those lovely suits. I can see it now . . .' She had a dreamy look on her face, and Mandy knew that all was well.

'It is the most beautiful village,' said Nigel to Sophie. He had returned very late the night before absolutely exhausted, but so cheerful that Sophie knew it had gone well. She made him go straight to bed, promising to listen to a full account the following morning. 'Seems the other applicant was only two years off retiring, and the churchwardens sensibly thought it would be mad to have to go through the whole thing all over again so soon. '

'Tell me about the village, and the house,' said Sophie.

'Ah,' said Nigel, 'yes, the house. Well, it is a lovely eighteenth-century, three-storey stone house. It has five bedrooms and attic rooms, and a wonderful drawing room and a huge dining room, and big kitchen, scullery, walk-in larder, tiled hall the size of this room, and big garden with paddock behind.' He waited anxiously, trying to read Sophie's expression.

A slow smile spread over her face. 'Let's go, then,' she said.

They talked about the village, and Nigel described the wide Green and the chestnut trees leading to the Hall. 'It was a beautiful evening, and I had the feeling I was stepping back in time. The village lies in the Ringle valley, and with wooded hills all round it's like a forgotten hamlet. One of the last to get main sewerage, I was told! Of course, it is an illusion. They are firmly in the twentieth century, and the folk I met were straightforward, practical people, and very kind and welcoming.'

He paused, decided not to mention Miss Beasley, and continued. 'Richard Standing seemed a nice enough chap- bit feudal, as we thought; but very approachable- and Mrs Price, the farmer's wife, was a very comfortable sort of soul. Kindness itself, I should imagine.'

'Anybody I would like?' said Sophie, already beginning to think of a donkey in the paddock, and summer walks by the Ringle.

'A very nice woman called Peggy Palmer keeps the shop. She didn't stay long at the meeting, but said some very sensible things and had a good sense of humour. Seems her husband died last year, and she works hard keeping the shop going.'

'So when do we start?' said Sophie, with a big smile.

The Welsh parish had already got wind of Nigel's intentions, and with unseemly haste had got a new incumbent in mind. He was young, known for his youth work, and one hundred per cent Welsh. He could come as soon as needed, and nothing stood in the way of a quick handover.

'End of August, I should think,' said Nigel.

'Right in the middle of harvest,' said Sophie happily. 'Round Ringford, here we come,' she said, and gave Nigel a big, impulsive kiss on his handsome face.

There was general agreement in Ringford that the Reverend Nigel Brooks seemed a decent sort of chap. One or two of the men in the pub, led by Tom Price and backed up by Foxy Jenkins, who had been bullied along to the meeting by his insistent wife, said they thought he was 'a bit smarmy', but Colin Osman had whooped at the news that Nigel was a cricketer and already had plans for the opening match on Ringford Green.

The Honourable Richard and Mrs Standing were perfectly happy with Nigel Brooks, although Richard said he could not imagine why such an all-round good sort of man should want to come to a tiny living like Round Ringford, and the village should count itself very lucky.

'Perhaps you'd want a complete change if you had been holed up in a frightful little Welsh town,' said Susan. 'I can quite see Ringford must have looked like paradise to him.'

'I think Pa knew his wife's people up in Yorkshire,' said Richard. 'I do remember him talking about some northern Fothergills quite a lot at one time.'

'That clinches it, then,' said Susan, with a quiet smile. 'If Pa knew her people, the whole thing looks absolutely meant to be.'

Warren Jenkins and William Roberts wandered idly across the Green, dribbling a football over the bridge and down past the church and Ellen Biggs's little Lodge house at the entrance to the Hall avenue. There were heavy black clouds massing over the hills on the Bagley Road, and the sunlight had a sharp edge to it, presaging a storm.

William and Warren had formed their own opinion of the vicar presumptive from their hiding place in the bell tower, overlooking Wednesday evening's meeting. Both of them were learning to ring the bells, and knew about the narrow oak door in the vestry, which led up to where thl-ropes hung, never still, always gently swaying in the draughty chamber. The ropes were looped up for safety, and William and Warren had sat cross-legged by a crack in the floorboards, listening to the conversation which had floated up from the meeting below.

'He'll be a pushover,' said William, and Warren had nodded. 'A right softie, if you ask me,' he said. 'What you bet he tries to get the choir goin' again?'

'We'll be ready for him if he does,' said William, with a sinister leer. 'It worked last time, didn't it?' They had clambered down after most people had gone, and slipped out of the church unnoticed.

No thoughts of vicars troubled their minds now as they stopped opposite the Lodge gate, staring in.

'There's the three witches of Ringford,' said Warren, seeing Ellen's front door open and three dark shapes inside. 'Come on, William!' he yelled. 'They're gettin' the broomsticks out!' They shot off at great speed, whooping with what they imagined were witch-noises, and expertly passing the football from one to another, all the way up the avenue until they came within sight of the Hall. There they turned off through a much-used hole in the hedge and disappeared.

'If I catch that Warren Jenkins,' said Ivy Beasley, 'I'll give him something to remember me by.'

Ivy and Doris Ashbourne had walked down to Ellen Biggs's house for tea. It was Ellen's turn, and she had covered a rickety little three-legged cane table with a cloth, the embroidery faded and rusty spots on the creases.

'I remember that cloth, don't I, Ellen?' said Ivy Beasley.

'Used to be on the side table in the dining room at the Hall?'

'They done with it,' said Ellen dismissively. 'Too old and faded for them.'

She set out three cups, two matching saucers and the other very nearly the same. There were hairline cracks and the odd chip, but the china was delicate, and these too had seen better days on the Standing tea tray.

'There you are, Ivy,' said Ellen grandly, bringing in an iced sponge with walnuts on top. 'Slaved all morning in a hot kitchen makin' that for your tea.'

Ivy Beasley leaned forward and took a small piece of cellophane from the side of the cake. 'How come it says "Mr Kip ..." on this scrap o' paper, then, Ellen Biggs you old liar?' she said.

The sky had darkened, and one or two spots of rain spattered on Ellen's mullioned windows. It was dim at the best of times in the Lodge, and now it seemed like twilight in the little sitting room.

Ellen poured cups of strong tea from a big brown pot, slopping a little into the saucers as her hand shook with the weight.

'Gettin' old,' she said. 'That's what, we're all gettin' old.'

'Speak for yourself,' said Ivy Beasley. 'You're as young as you feel, Mother always used to say.'

'Yes, well,' said Ellen Biggs tartly, 'your mother was old from the day she was born.'

'Could we change the subject?' said Doris the peacemaker. 'What did we all think of the Reverend Nigel Brooks?'

'All the same, these vicars,' said Ellen, with an evil chuckle, 'lazy men, ridin' on the backs of the churchwardens, most of 'em.' She poured second cups all round.

'Rubbish, Ellen Biggs!' said Ivy hotly. 'It's not a job I'd say thank you for, and I reckoned that Reverend Brooks was very pleasant, considering.'

'Considering what?' said Doris, licking the sticky white icing from her fingertips and making a mental note to give Ellen some paper napkins for Christmas.

'Considering he'd been listening to all kinds of nonsense from people who never go to church, except to gawp at the new man,' said Ivy, sending a poisonous dart at old Ellen, who deflected it with the ease of long practice.

'All the parish were invited,' she said, 'and Reverend Brooks said to me that he would think of himself as the pastor of the whole village, not just the churchgoers.'

'He addressed no more than two words to you, Ellen Biggs,' said Ivy Beasley, flushing with annoyance, 'you having been a fixture at the coffee table all evening, eating your way through refreshments provided by someone else!'

Doris Ashbourne stood up, brushing crumbs from her smooth navy skirt. 'If you two are going to bicker all afternoon, I'm going home,' she said. 'I've got better things to do.'

Ivy and Ellen were silent for a moment, then Ellen said, 'Oh, all right, Ivy, he never said it to me. But you do provoke on purpose, don't yer?'

Ivy's face was set. She continued to sit in silence, and the other two chatted of gardens and the price of vegetables at the shop and why they weren't fresher, considering they were surrounded by good growing land, and then Ivy put down her plate with a clatter.

'Well, if you want to know what I think of the new parson,' she said, 'I think we'll be very lucky if he decides to come. Course, we don't know what his wife's like, but I thought he was a very nice man.'

Praise such as this from Ivy Beasley was so unexpected that Ellen sat down with a bump in her chair, widening the split in the threadbare upholstery.

'What 'as come over you, our Ivy?' she said, but Doris chimed in quickly, 'I quite agree, Ivy, a very nice man indeed. He seemed to get to know everybody at once, and listened to what you had to say.'

'Well, I don't know I'm sure,' said Ellen Biggs. 'Ow much is it to join the Reverend Brooks's fan club?'

A clap of thunder drowned Ivy Beasley's reply, and old Ellen struggled to her feet. 'You'd best be off 'ome,' she said, 'else I'm goin' to be stuck with the pair of you for hours.'