Pictures of Perfection (3 page)

The name had popped into his head. He must have seen it on a report. He’d had nothing to do personally with either of the PO jobs here.

The young constable was clearly impressed and disconcerted at this degree of knowledge. His mind was trying to fit it in with the appearance of a detective-sergeant, some way past the first flush of youth, wearing black leather and riding a high-powered motorbike.

He said, ‘You’re not here officially, are you, Sarge? I mean under cover …?’

Wield barked the sound which friends recognized as his way of expressing amusement though others often took it as a sign that the interrupted lycanthropic process suggested by his face was about to be resumed.

‘No, son. Just out enjoying the countryside. And dying for a cup of tea. It said something back there about refreshments.’

‘You’re out of luck. Sorry,’ said Bendish as though he felt personally responsible. ‘Place isn’t open to the public till Easter; it does say so on the sign. You must have missed it. But there’s a café in the village. Dora Creed’s place. She’s a smashing baker. Very welcoming.’

‘Oh aye?’ said Wield. ‘I saw it. Next to a bookshop. Make me welcome there too, would they?’

‘Oh yes. Old Digweed’ll talk to you for hours about books if you let him.’

‘So,’ said Wield, ‘if we add you, that must make Enscombe about the most welcoming place in Yorkshire. It fair wears a man out. I reckon I’ll head on home and make my own tea.’

To give unalloyed joy is a rare privilege. Observing the undisguisable relief and pleasure which broke out in the young man’s face, Wield thought: Mebbe I should say goodbye to folk more often.

‘Sorry about the misunderstanding, Sarge,’ said Bendish.

‘You’ll be sorrier if I catch you wandering around
again baht ’at,’ said Wield heavily. ‘This isn’t Ilkley Moor. Take heed!’

He revved up and set off slowly through the gateway. The watcher at the window had vanished but the little girl was still standing in the porch. He waved at her as he passed and she waved back, then ran into the house.

The young constable watched him out of sight. Then he flung up his right arm in a gesture as much of exultation as derision and yelled, ‘And goodbye to you too, you ugly old sod!’

Then, laughing, he turned and ran back into the rhododendrons.

‘… so young, so blooming and so innocent, as if she never had a wicked thought in her life – which yet one has some reason to suppose she must have had …’

Kee Scudamore watched the last motorcyclist move away, then crossed the street. She walked with an easy and unconscious grace untroubled by the gusting wind which unfurled her long flaxen hair and pressed her cotton skirt to the contours of her slender thighs. Under her left arm she carried a box file.

‘Dora, Edwin, good day to you,’ she said in a soft voice with just enough music in it to take the edge off a certain almost pedantic note. ‘And what did Guy the Heir want with you?’

‘Pie for his cronies,’ said Dora Creed. ‘I sent them packing. Rules’s no good if you make exceptions. No hippies, no bikers.’

‘Take care, Dora. Once he comes into his own, it will be his decision who caters for the Reckoning, not to mention the new café.’

Dora shrugged indifferently and said, ‘Hall may stand higher than the church, but it’s the church I look up to.’

‘Well said,’ replied Kee. ‘I wish everyone had your principles, especially up at the Hall.’

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Digweed. ‘Not more revelations?’

Dora Creed shot him an indignant glance and said, ‘The Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.’

Digweed replied with some irritation, ‘If the Lord can tolerate the enthusiasm of a vessel as holy as yourself for the works of Harold Robbins I am sure he will permit me the occasional profanity. Kee, what now?’

‘It’s this gift shop Girlie’s planning. First there was your brother’s carved crooks, Dora. Not that I can really complain about that. George is a free agent and goes his own way.’

‘As an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks,’ said Dora Creed fiercely.

Kee raised her eyebrows questioningly at Digweed who shook his head as if to say he didn’t understand either.

‘However,’ resumed the blonde woman, ‘Beryl Pottinger’s a horse of a different colour. I’ve put in a great deal of time and effort there, and she’s learned a lot from Caddy. Her watercolours have become our bestselling line. Now she tells me Girlie’s offering her a better deal. This is blatant poaching.’

‘I cannot believe Beryl would let herself be bought.’

‘With her job at the school on the line, money may seem a little more important.’

‘He that hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent,’ said Dora.

‘Let’s hope we can save her job,’ said Digweed.

‘By selling the Green, you mean? Even if that’s what the village opts for, would it raise enough?’

‘With planning permission, possibly. The Parish Council put out some unofficial feelers and got a working estimate. But let’s leave all that till the meeting tomorrow night, shall we? Meanwhile I hope you get your difference with Girlie sorted out. She’s a reasonable woman.’

‘She’s also a Guillemard, and
Fucata non Perfecta
’s a hard virus to get out of your blood. Holistic healing and executive cowboys and indians may save the Hall, but what kind of people do you think they’ll be bringing into the village?’

‘Hippies. Bikers,’ said Dora promptly. ‘They go to and fro in the evening: they grin like a dog, and run about through the city.’

Digweed and Kee laughed out loud and the bookseller said, ‘Certainly that last creature that was here, the one by himself, he was straight out of
Mad Max
! But there can’t be many around like him, thank heaven. Kee, that deed of gift you want me to look at …’

‘I’ve got it here,’ said the woman, opening the box file which was full of what looked like old legal papers. ‘Here you are.’

‘My law is very rusty,’ he said warningly as he took the document she handed to him.

‘Mine’s non-existent,’ she replied, closing the file. ‘I’ve probably got the wrong end of the stick. Nevertheless, it could be worth a look. Meanwhile I’ll drop the rest of this stuff off at the vicarage and I might just carry on to the Hall and have a talk with Girlie about Beryl. Edwin, if you see anyone going into the Gallery, you might pop across. Caddy’s supposedly in charge, but once she gets stuck into something in her studio, you could blow up the till and she would hardly notice.’

She set off up the street with the wind dancing attendance.

Digweed, watching her go, said, ‘Interesting how well Kee managed to suppress her fascination with parish history while old Charley Cage was up at the vicarage.’

Dora said, ‘A vicar needs a wife. It’s not natural else.’

‘Indeed? Perhaps you should drop a line to the Pope. I think I’ll just pop over and check that Caddy’s OK.’

He patted his silvery hair as he spoke, though unlike Kee’s silken mane, it was too coarsely vigorous to be much disturbed by the wind.

Dora Creed said, ‘The hoary head is a crown of glory if it is found in the way of righteousness.’

‘True beyond need of exegesis,’ said Digweed.

He crossed the street and entered the Gallery. Converted from the old village smithy, it
was a spacious, well-lit room, the upper walls of which were crowded with paintings and the lower shelved with tourist fodder. Behind the unattended till a door opened on to a narrow, gloomy passage. Digweed went through it and called, ‘Caddy?’

‘Here,’ a voice floated down a steep staircase.

Digweed ran lightly up the stairs and along a creaking landing into the studio. This consisted of two rooms knocked together and opened into the attic whose sloping roof was broken by a pair of huge skylights. These spilled brightness on to a triptych of canvases occupying almost an entire wall. On them was painted a Crucifixion, conventionally structured with the cross raised high in the central panel and a long panorama of landscape and buildings falling away behind in the other two.

Here conventionality ended. Though much was only sketched in, the background was clearly not first-century Palestine but twentieth-century Enscombe. And the as yet faceless figure on the cross was a naked woman.

At one end of the chaotically cluttered room, Caddy Scudamore, as dark as her sister was fair, and as luscious as she was lean, stood in front of a cheval-glass with her paint-stained smock rolled up, critically examining her heavy breasts.

‘Hello, Edwin,’ she said. ‘Nipples are hard.’

‘Indeed,’ said Digweed, his gaze drifting from reflection to representation. ‘And perhaps one
should ask oneself whether in the circumstances they would be. Caddy, I think the time has come for you and I to have congress.’

And he carefully closed the door behind him.

‘… he gave us an excellent Sermon – a little too eager sometimes in his delivery, but that is to me a better extreme than the want of animation, especially when it comes from the heart.’

‘The church of St Hilda and St Margaret in Enscombe, dominating the village from the high ground to the north where the valley of the Een begins to climb up to the moors which give it birth, has two immediately striking, unusual features. One is the double patriotic dedication and the other is the famous leaning tower which, though no challenge to Pisa, is certainly more inclined to Rome than a good Protestant church ought to be.’

(
Pause for laughter
.)

The Reverend Laurence Lillingstone paused for laughter.

His audience, which was himself in the pier-glass set in his study wall, laughed appreciatively. So too, he hoped, would the ladies of the Byreford and District Luncheon Club. ‘Not too heavy,’ Mrs Finch-Hatton had said. ‘Save your fine detail for the Historical Association.’

He had nodded his understanding, concealing his
chagrin that the Mid-Yorkshire Historical Association had just rejected his offer of a talk based on his researches into the Enscombe archives. ‘Sorry,’ the secretary had said, ‘but we’ve got old Squire Selwyn doing his ballad history. Don’t want to overdose on Enscombe, do we?’

Dear God! What sort of world was it where serious scholarship could be pushed out by a music-hall turn?

The handsome face in the glass was glowering uncharitably but as he met its gaze, the indignant scowl dissolved in a flush of shame.

What right had he to mock old Selwyn’s verses when God who knows everything knew it wasn’t serious scholarship that drove him to his own historical researches, it was serious sex!

He’d thought he’d put all that behind him when, after a highly charged episode during his curacy, he had taken a solemn vow of celibacy.

This was of course purely a private matter as the Church of England imposes no such restraint upon its ministers. But when he was offered the living of Enscombe, he felt duty-bound to apprise the Bishop of his condition … ‘in case such a rural community might expect eventually to have a vicar’s wife to run the MU, help with the WI, that sort of thing’.

The Bishop, of the Church’s worldly rather than otherworldly wing, replied, ‘You’re not trying to tell me you’re gay, Larry?’

‘Certainly not!’

‘I’m relieved. Not that I’ve anything against gayness. Some of my best friends ought to be gay.’

‘But you don’t think Enscombe is ready for such an imaginative appointment?’ smiled Lillingstone. ‘Not even after putting up with the Voice of the People for so many years?’

‘Charley Cage, your predecessor, was my predecessor’s predecessor’s revenge on the Guillemards. Shortly after his elevation to the episcopate back in the ’thirties, he gave way to pressure from the then Squire to move the then incumbent, Stanley Harding, on. Later, as he grew into the job, he much regretted this weakness, so when, just before his own retirement in the ’fifties, the living became vacant again, he looked around for someone whose views were likely to cause the Guillemards maximum pain, and lit upon young Charley.’

‘What was Stanley Harding’s crime?’

‘Oh, social awareness, Christian charity, the usual things. But worst of all he had the temerity to marry the Squire’s daughter!’

‘Good Lord! And the Bishop got his own back with Cage.’

‘This is only my own theory, you understand,’ laughed the older man. ‘In fact, it rather backfired. The old Squire died and his son, the present Squire, got on rather well with Charley. At least they never fell out in public. But to get back to your non-gayness, I’m relieved because old
Charley was in every sense a confirmed bachelor, and I feel that after forty years, the blushful maidens of Enscombe deserve at least a level playing field.’

‘I haven’t made my vow lightly,’ said Lillingstone, slightly piqued.

‘Of course you haven’t, but the strongest oaths are straw to the fire i’ the blood, eh?’

‘Saint Augustine?’ guessed Lillingstone.

‘St Bill, I think. No, you’ll do nicely for Enscombe, Larry. But be warned, it’s a place that can do odd things to a man.’

‘Such as?’ inquired Lillingstone.

The Bishop sipped his Screwdriver and said, ‘Old Charley used to claim, when the port had been round a few times, that after the Fall God decided to have a second shot, learning from the failure of the first. This time He created a man who was hard of head, blunt of speech, knew which side his bread was buttered on, and above all took no notice of women. Then God sent him forth to multiply in Yorkshire. But after a while he got to worrying he’d left something out – imagination, invention, fancy, call it what you will. So he grabbed a nice handful of this, intending to scatter it thinly over the county. Only it was a batch He’d just made and it was still damp, so instead of scattering, it all landed in a single lump, and that was where they built Enscombe!’

Lillingstone laughed appreciatively and said, ‘I wish I’d known Cage.’

‘He was worth knowing. He died in the pulpit, you know. No one noticed for ten minutes. His dramatic pauses had been getting longer and longer. He was extremely outspoken both on his feet and in print. For recreation, or as he put it, to keep himself out of temptation (though he never specified the nature of the temptation), he was writing a history of the parish. You’re a historian yourself, aren’t you? If you feel the flesh tugging too strongly, you could do worse than follow Charley’s example. All the archival stuff’s at the vicarage. It’ll need sorting out before our masters sell the place from under you.’

‘Sounds interesting,’ said Lillingstone. ‘But if Cage’s work was well advanced …’

‘Oh yes. He showed me various drafts. Fascinating, but much of it utterly unpublishable! No, you take my advice, Larry. There’s nothing like the dust of the past for clogging an overactive internal combustion engine!’

The young vicar had taken this as a joke till a few days after his induction when his desire to meet those of his flock who hadn’t been at the church (i.e. the majority) took him through the door of the Eendale Gallery.

He had been instantly aware that there were paintings here of a quality far above that of the usual insipid watercolours of local views which filled much of the wall space. One in particular caught his eye, a small acrylic of his own church, stark against a sulphurously wuthering sky, with
the angle of the tower so exaggerated that it looked as if the building had been caught in the very act of being blown apart.

The Gallery had been empty when he entered and so rapt was he in studying the picture that he did not hear the inner door open.

Then someone coughed gently and a voice said, ‘Need any help?’

He turned and saw the Scudamore sisters, or rather he saw Caddy, and he knew instantly he needed more help than anyone here below could give him.

It was a
coup de foudre
, a surge of longing so intense he felt as if every ounce of his flesh was on fire.

He stammered thickly, ‘The church … I’d like to look at the church …’

Kee Scudamore, whom he’d registered merely as a pale presence, bland and bloodless alongside the vibrant carnality of Caddy, said, ‘The church? Perhaps you should ask the vicar.’

He heard himself say idiotically, ‘I
am
the vicar’, and the smaller, darker, infinitely more luscious girl put a paint-stained hand to a mouth made to suck a man’s soul out of his body, and tried to stifle her giggles.

‘You mean the painting? Of course,’ said the cool blonde.

She moved past him, unfolded a set of steps, mounted, and unhooked the picture.

He had left with the painting wrapped in brown
paper under his arm. It had cost him more than he could afford, but what was money when he was already aware of the incredibly high price he was likely to pay for his visit?

He was in love, a man who had nothing to offer, a man bound by a vow no one could release him from. He didn’t doubt that if he consulted his friend, the Bishop, he would be offered all the reassurance which that pragmatic prelate could muster.
It is better to marry than to burn
, would be trotted out. But it all depended where you were going to burn! He wasn’t sure just how much credence he gave to a physical hell, but he knew he had a belief to match Thomas More’s in the nature of a vow.

So he had thrown himself into his parish work with a fervour which soon won golden opinions, and he put himself out of temptation in his ‘spare’ time by following the Bishop’s suggestion and Charley Cage’s example by plunging into the past. Sorting out Charley Cage’s chaos of archival material was a necessary as well as a therapeutic act. As forecast by the Bishop, the diocese’s business managers had decided to do what Cage’s obduracy had inhibited them from doing much earlier, which was to build a modern bungalow and sell the rambling old vicarage into private occupancy. So Lillingstone had a great deal to occupy him. Yet in a small place like Enscombe not all the business in the world could prevent occasional encounters with Caddy, and the merest
glimpse of her was like a tot of whisky to an alcoholic, producing instant relapse. Fearful that the physical effect of her presence would be too visible to sharp country eyes, he had abandoned the tell-tale tight jeans which were his preferred off-duty garb and reverted to the protective folds of the traditional cassock, a move which mollified his older parishioners who liked a parson to look like a parson.

His efforts to avoid Caddy did not extend to her sister. On the contrary, he found much solace in Kee’s grace and composure. Here was the still centre of the Scudamore household, its domestic and commercial strength and its tutelary spirit. And while Lillingstone would not have dared to be alone with Caddy, the company of Kee permitted a pale but safe shadow of contact.

‘Larry? Are you all right?’

He turned from his mirror to find Kee Scudamore, like a conjuration of his thought, standing in the open french window. A quick glance reassured him she was alone and he went towards her, smiling.

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Just rehearsing my Luncheon Club talk.’

‘Indeed? Well, if that was a dramatic pause, I’d be careful. There are ladies there who will not hesitate to rush forward with offers of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.’

‘I think you overestimate my charms,’ he said glumly.

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way to Old Hall and I thought I’d return these documents. Fascinating.’

She placed the box file on his desk.

‘I’ve hung on to the Deed of Gift,’ she said. ‘By the way, what exactly is a tithe?’

‘Old English
teopa
, Middle English
tipe
, a tenth,’ he said promptly. ‘Specifically, that tax of one-tenth of produce or labour paid for the upkeep of clergy. Last century as the produce and labour thing became uncollectable, or just undesirable, a rent charge was substituted. And in 1936 the Tithe Act abolished tithes completely, except as purely voluntary payments. Why do you ask?’

‘It was just something in the Deed,’ she said vaguely.

He glanced at her sharply and said, ‘You’ve not been nobbled by the antediluvians, have you? The ones who think the vicarage shouldn’t be sold because it was a gift from the parish?’

‘It does seem a mite ungracious.’

‘Kee, it was two hundred years ago!’ he said in exasperation. ‘And even if it were yesterday, a gift’s a gift. You don’t retain rights.’

‘So you’ll be happy to move into some little breeze-block bungalow?’

‘Of course not. I love it here. But you must admit it’s absurd for one single man to be rattling around in a place this size. Anyway, it’s not my decision. I have got masters.’

‘I thought you worked for God. Sorry. Let’s not
fall out. I noticed your
For Sale
sign says
Under Offer
. Anyone I know?’

‘Indirectly,’ he said, not too happily. ‘Phil Wallop.’

‘What? As in Philip Wallop, Contractor, who’s doing Girlie’s improvements at the Hall? What’s he going to do with the place? Turn it into a massage parlour?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘There are of course restrictive covenants. Domestic use only. The positive way to look at it is a man doesn’t make a mess in his own back yard.’

‘You’re losing me, Larry,’ she said. Then her sharp mind made the leap. ‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with this working estimate for the Green Edwin was just telling me about? It would, wouldn’t it! My God, Wallop’s going to turn us into a suburb!’

Her face flushed with anger, she strode through the french window and across the lawn. Lillingstone hurried after her, catching up as she passed through the arched gateway leading into the churchyard.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘if the Green’s put on sale, it’ll be on the open market. There’ll be other bidders than Wallop.’

‘Other developers, you mean?’

‘No one’s going to pay the kind of money we need without planning permission. It’s Hobson’s choice, Kee, the school or the Green. But I’m not Hobson. Even the PC’s not Hobson. It’s the whole
village, and that’s who’ll be making the choice at tomorrow night’s meeting.’

She walked on through the well-kept churchyard till they reached another arched gateway, this one with Guillemard arms and motto above it, marking the entrance to the family’s own private route from Hall to church, known as Green Alley. A hundred years ago it had been a broad gravelled path along which full-skirted ladies on the arms of full-bellied gents could stroll between banks of laurel and viburnum and lilac and rhododendron. But the cost of labour had gone up and the cost of irreligion had gone down and gradually Green Alley had shrunk to a muddy track scarcely wider than a sheeptrod.

Here she turned, the anger gone from her face, and reached out and touched her cool fingers against his hand.

‘Larry, I’m sorry. I’ve no right to snap at you. Something’s happening here – the school, the vicarage, the Green, the Hall – something that can run out of control unless we all stick together and use our heads. Forgive me?’

‘Of course,’ he said. Her candid gaze, her wise smile, her understanding tone, the cool touch of her fingers, brought to him how much he admired and respected her. Several times in the past he had come close to opening his heart to her and confiding his feelings for Caddy. Something had always got in the way. But here and now seemed the ideal time, the ideal place.