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  CONTENTS

  Note

  Chapter 1: Hexton-on-Weir

  Chapter 2: Christian Spirit

  Chapter 3: Father Battersby

  Chapter 4: Battle Lines

  Chapter 5: Watery Bier

  Chapter 6: Curtains

  Chapter 7: Cold Steel

  Chapter 8: Our Gallant Boys

  Chapter 9: Castle Walls

  Chapter 10: Chez Mipchin

  Chapter 11: Thyrza at the Vicarage

  Chapter 12: Secrets

  Chapter 13: Delusions of Grandeur

  Chapter 14: At Li Chen’s

  Chapter 15: The Westons

  Chapter 16: Seeing the Light

  Chapter 17: Final Accounts

  Chapter 18: Afterwards

  NOTE

  Yorkshire buffs will recognise that certain architectural features of Hexton-on-Weir in this book are taken from a well-known Yorkshire town. All the more necessary, then, to insist that the general characteristics of Hexton are my own invention, and that all the characters are totally imaginary.

  CHAPTER 1

  HEXTON-ON-WEIR

  In the first place, Hexton-on-Weir is in possession of the Amazons. That you have to remember throughout this story. I noticed it days after I moved to the town, newly married, and I said so to Marcus.

  ‘It’s the women who rule in Hexton,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Marcus. ‘You just think that because you’re a vet’s wife, and women are always bringing their animals in. There’s hardly a woman on the town council.’

  ‘I’m not talking about town councils. I’m talking about the—I don’t know—the tone of the place; the ethos. The voices that you hear are women’s.’

  That was it, really. It was something the casual visitor might not notice, or not in the first hour or two. There are men walking the streets, and shops that cater for the needs of men: tobacconists that still specialize in pipes, rather tweedy gentlemen’s outfitters, and sporting shops where one could buy the wherewithal to deal death to fish and fowl.

  But when you’d been in the town for a bit—and by the time this story opens I had been there for twelve years or so—you realized that the dominant tones that you heard were female. It was a woman laying down the law to a shopkeeper, a woman who was haranguing a police constable in the square about dog shit on the pavements, a woman who was exchanging heavy pleasantries with the tea-shop proprietor. And these dominant tones were a sort of middle-class lingua franca, with only occasional notes of Yorkshire (in which Hexton-on-Weir is very centrally embedded).

  Gradually, in the early years of my marriage, I began to appreciate the standing of the men. However solid they might be physically, they had the status of appendages: they carried, they followed, they agreed. Their voice was low, their tone was mild—rather like the Victorian maiden’s. Legally they were all the householder, but they did not aspire to be head of the house. When they retired here—and Hexton was very much a place to which people came to die, though many took a long time over it—some of them wilted in the overpoweringly feminine atmosphere. But others flourished in an environment where the troublesome business of decision-making had been taken off their shoulders: they adopted traditional roles such as the gay old dog, the father-confessor to the younger generation, the ‘bit of a wag’. But, in essence, they were marginal, and they knew it.

  Marcus came round to acknowledging this a couple of years after we were married.

  ‘You were right, of course,’ he said. ‘The town council has nothing to do with it. Hexton is run by the women.’

  Marcus was in a position to know. He had served briefly on the town council, as an Independent (that is, an old-fashioned sort of Tory-with-a-conscience), and he was a churchwarden who gave a great deal of his spare time to church matters. I stood for the council a year or two ago, for the Alliance, but I did not get in: none of the women voted for me, or allowed their husbands to.

  It was Marcus in his role of churchwarden who made the remark that—rightly or wrongly—I always think of as the beginning of the trouble.

  ‘You’ll call on Mary, won’t you, Helen?’ he said, one evening in early April, he as usual sitting solid and comfortable in his chair by the fire, surrounded by a veritable whirlpool of pipe-smoke. Marcus was big, solid and unflappable, and always liked to do the right thing.

  ‘Oh God—do I have to? It’s not as though the old lady’s death was unexpected. Or particularly regrettable, come to that.’

  ‘Mary’s bound to miss her, after nursing her all these years. And since we have no vicar at the moment—’

  ‘I will call on Mary, since it’s the done thing in Hexton, but I’m damned if I’m going to act as surrogate vicar’s wife,’ I said, with some spirit.

  ‘Good girl,’ said Marcus comfortably. ‘Give her my condolences, won’t you?’

  So there I was, committed to a visit of condolence to Mary Morse—one of those old-fashioned conventions of Hexton that I often enjoyed flouting and never enjoyed following. Old Mrs Morse had once been a powerful force in the town: a grim-looking, starchy, disapproving presence. In the last few years she had lost much of her position as a touchstone of respectable conduct and had become, in fact, quite childish. Her death, you might say, had been coming on for some time, but of course I made all the right noises when I went to pay my call on Mary.

  ‘So good of you to come,’ said Mary for the second time, pouring from the best teapot into the best teacups. ‘One values one’s friends at such a time.’

  So little did I count myself her friend that as I settled back in my chair with my cup I could not remember when I had last been in that room. The curtains were drawn, but no extra light had been put on, so I had to peer rather to make out the contours of the furniture. It was old but good, in a standard sort of way, and it was kept immaculately polished. I have always thought that if there is one thing that I would rather die than hear said about me, it is ‘she keeps her house spotless’. But it was said of Mary, and she smiled in quiet self-satisfaction if she heard it said. On the sideboard there were pictures of the Morse boys—men, rather. There had been two sons, but they had both left Hexton-on-Weir, as young men did tend to: they scuttled away from the overpoweringly feminine (or rather female) atmosphere. One of the Morse boys had scuttled to Australia, and wrote at Christmas. The other had gone to Scunthorpe, and was never mentioned—whether because he had gone to the bad, or because Scunthorpe was not the sort of place either Mary or her mother cared to mention, I had never found out.

  ‘One misses Mother so much,’ Mary was saying. ‘But life must go on, of course.’

  ‘Quite,’ I said briskly, peering at my little triangle of sandwich in a vain attempt to find out what I was eating. ‘Do you think of taking a job?’

  ‘A job?’ said Mary, with a hint of outrage in her voice. ‘Charity work, do you mean?’

  ‘Actually I meant a paid job—now you no longer have to nurse your mother. I’m sure there are lots of things that you could do.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Mary, pursing her lips primly. ‘Fortunately I have no need to take paid employment. I shall be comfortably off. Mother saw to that. I’m sure Mother wouldn’t at all have liked the idea of my taking a job.’

  ‘I thought it would give you an interest,’ I said, ignoring her obvious displeasure, as I always did when I had decided that I really could not restrict my conversation to
the sort of things that Hexton wants to hear. ‘Fill in the time.’

  Mary glared at me, prim-lipped, her hands linked in the lap of her drab grey woollen dress—a dress that was quintessentially Hexton. The tone of her voice was designed to stamp on this topic of conversation once and for all.

  ‘I’m very far from needing things to fill in my time. With the house, and the garden, and so many interests in the town. You’re still a newcomer really, Helen dear, so you probably hardly remember how active I was before Mother’s sad illness. In fact, there was something I wanted to have a word with you about—do please have another sandwich, my dear.’

  I took another little triangle. Cream cheese, I had decided, and as near tasteless as made no difference. I waited with foreboding for Mary’s ‘word’.

  ‘Of course this really isn’t the time, but perhaps since you’re here I ought to seize the opportunity, and so far as I can judge the matter is urgent. It’s about the new vicar—’

  I swallowed the tip of the triangle and resumed my briskest manner.

  ‘As far as that’s concerned, you’ll have to talk to Marcus. As you know, I’m a mere Sunday attender. If it wasn’t for Marcus, I don’t suppose I’d be that.’

  ‘Quite, my dear. We all know that. What I’m hoping for is your influence as a wife.’

  And there, of course, was the rub. The influence, the dominance, of the women of Hexton had not been achieved under the inspiration of any vulgar, modern feminist notions. Indeed, should any notable feminist have had the temerity to show her face in Hexton, she would most likely have been lynched in the genteelest possible way. In Hexton one used the time-honoured devices by which women have achieved power—not, of course, the devices of the courtesan, but those of the wife: the curtain lecture, the non-stop domestic needling. Mary did not see the fact that my husband was a devout and involved Christian whereas I was barely a believer as any bar to my exercising these traditional and successful Hexton levers of power. In fact, our marriage was not at all of the Hexton type, but if I had said to Mary that Marcus and I discussed things and then went our own ways, she would simply have refused to understand me.

  ‘I think Marcus is much more likely to agree with you on church matters than he is with me,’ I said, taking another sandwich. Watercress, of all the loathsome fillings. ‘I’m not at all sure that you and I are likely to take the same point of view.’

  ‘Oh, this is something you could hardly disagree about,’ said Mary triumphantly, as if even my cussedness had its limits, ‘My dear, I’ve heard a whisper that the Bishop intends to give the living to Battersby—Battersby of St Bride’s, in Sheffield.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said blankly. Mary was looking at me so knowingly that after a minute I had to add: ‘I’m afraid I’m not really up in clergymen—unless their sex lives get them into the Yorkshire Evening Post. What exactly is wrong with Mr Battersby?’

  ‘Father Battersby he calls himself. And that’s my point, my dear: he is quite incredibly high.’

  ‘Well, it makes a change.’ I knew at once I’d said the wrong thing, and was delighted. I went on, out of sheer malice: ‘The Reverend Primp was an old dear in many ways, but you can’t say he brought much colour and drama to the services, can you?’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll find that people in Hexton want that kind of change. Colour and drama? This is religion! We’ve always had a very traditional and unexceptionable kind of service here. Nothing extreme. Not too evangelical, of course, but none of the more showy kinds of ritual either. Leave that to the Romans, as Mother used to say. We have our own ways. But Helen, dear, I don’t think you are understanding the real crux of the problem.’

  ‘No doubt I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m very stupid on church matters.’

  Mary leaned forward dramatically.

  ‘The fact is, Father Battersby is a celibate.’

  She hissed it, very much as she might if she were accusing him of pederasty or leather-fetishism. I refrained from saying that so far as I knew her own life had not in its first forty-five or so years been marked by unremitting copulation.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s hardly a matter that it would be easy to use as an objection.’

  ‘It most certainly is!’ said Mary. ‘Father Battersby is not just a bachelor, which would be bad enough: he is a celibate on principle. So that, though he is quite a young man, there is no question of there ever being a vicar’s wife. Think of it! A celibate vicar is quite inconceivable here in Hexton. The parish revolves around the vicar’s wife. What would Mr Primp have been without Thyrza? Nothing! Less than nothing! I can’t imagine what the Bishop is thinking of. He has the disposal of the living.’

  I shivered presciently. ‘What an unpleasant phrase.’

  ‘It simply means that the decision is his alone. But he should take account of the congregation’s wishes. Has nobody made him aware of them?’

  ‘That would be Colonel Weston’s job,’ I said hurriedly. ‘He’s the senior churchwarden.’

  ‘Quite. And one can only conclude that Colonel Weston has not been doing his job. That’s why I do so want you to have a word with Marcus.’

  ‘Well, I’ll certainly tell him how you feel about it,’ I said dubiously. ‘I really have no idea of his views on the subject. I know he’ll want to hear your views, if he knows you’re worried.’

  ‘Not just me, dear. Please don’t give him the idea that I’m being selfish or quirky about this. It’s the whole parish who will object if the Bishop does dispose of us in such an unsuitable way. And please, Helen dear, do emphasize to Marcus that I’ve nothing personal against the man. Your husband is so good-natured—I’d hate him to think there was any feeling against Father Battersby himself. As a person.’

  ‘It’s just his ritual and his wifelessness that’s the problem. Yes, I’ll make sure Marcus understands that.’

  Mary gave me a long, cold stare.

  ‘From your tone, Helen, I rather gather that you’re not taking this altogether seriously. Of course I know you’re not a church person by birth, but I do think you might try to enter into Marcus’s interests more thoroughly. I assure you, it’s not something I’m taking up in any light spirit. I feel it deeply. I think I owe it to Mother’s memory to do something about it.’

  I sighed. If that was to be the line of argument, there was no opposing or ridiculing it. The matter of the new vicar had been declared a sacred cause by the spirit of the late Mrs Morse, the Blessed Gertrude. I saw through the dim gloom the grim set of Mary’s thin lips. Mary, without a doubt, was to be the subject’s leader and orchestrator, the protector of Middle Church against the inroads of Popery. It was a role that Mrs Morse had often played in the past, for there was nothing ecumenical about her sort of Christian spirit, and now by some kind of apostolic succession it had descended on Mary. Even in her mother’s lifetime, Mary had been no mean concerter of outrage. She it was who had spotted Hexton’s first male ear-ring, she who had scotched the idea of bingo in the church hall, she who had had the trading licence revoked of the town’s first and last video library. Now, it seemed, she was moving by natural progression to the central position she had always aspired to.

  ‘I’ll talk to Marcus about it,’ I said, feeling that I had done all that convention demanded, and getting to my feet. ‘Though of course, as you know, it’s Colonel Weston who is the senior of the two churchwardens.’

  ‘Naturally I’ve spoken to Mrs Weston, but what can a wife do if her husband has no backbone? In my experience there is nothing so weak as a military man. I expect the Bishop rode roughshod over such protests as he saw fit to make.’

  ‘Well, if Colonel Weston has already been—’ I was about to say ‘got at’, but I drew back—‘approached, I don’t suppose you will do much good with Marcus. He would never go behind the Colonel’s back.’

  ‘It may be necessary to go behind the Colonel’s back,’ said Mary forcefully. We were at the sitting-room door, and she suddenly changed her tone. ‘Oh, Helen—I’ve
just remembered that I wanted to talk to Marcus about Sophronia.’

  Mary’s manoeuvre was quite transparent: she saw that I was likely to be a lukewarm advocate, and she wanted to put her case herself. I looked at the easy chair where Sophronia Tibbles, a lazy and evil-minded Persian, dozed oblivious, dreaming dreams of the slow dismembering of mice.

  ‘She looks healthy enough.’

  ‘She’s bringing up so much. I think maybe she’s missing Mother. Of course normally I’d bring her to Marcus’s surgery . . . ’

  ‘All right,’ I said, suppressing a sigh. ‘I’ll tell him to call.’ And I’ll tell him there’s nothing wrong with your damned cat too, I thought.

  As we crossed the hall, Mary took up a couple of library books from the hall stand.

  ‘Oh, Helen, I wonder if you would be so kind as to return these two to the library? At the moment, of course . . . ’

  I felt I learned more and more about the minutiae of Hexton mores every day that I lived there. Now, after twelve years, I was discovering that it was not permitted to take your cat to the vet or to change your library book during the first fortnight of mourning. Was there some point, I wondered, some intermediate state of half-mourning, during which it was permitted to take your cat to the vet, but not to change your library books? It was no wonder, with a code of such subtlety, that I was stepping on toes from morning to night. I took the books from her and looked at them.

  ‘Oh, Barbara Pym, how nice. So restful, with all that church activity,’ I said, with sardonic intent.

  ‘She’s just a little too modern for me,’ said Mary. ‘So little of what I’d call story, don’t you feel? I can’t see her ever replacing Angela Thirkell.’

  ‘She certainly won’t now,’ I said. ‘But I’m sure there’s a waiting list at the library. And for the C. P. Snow, now that he’s on television.’ Mary had opened the front door a fraction, and I blinked as the murk was pierced by a shaft of sunlight. ‘Oh, splendid. The sun has come out.’