A Fall from Grace Read online

  “Going to nursery school has transformed Carola’s life,” said Felicity to Nancy Stoppard, her father’s widow-friend. “She now has a circle of her own.”

  “To dominate,” added Charlie. “She already has them lining up when she arrives, saluting her and shouting, ‘Heil, Carola!’ ”

  “They don’t say, ‘Hi, Carola’,” said their daughter scornfully. “We all say hello to each other, and good-bye when school is over. Oh look, there’s Victoria and Wendy.”

  That kept her quiet for the next ten minutes. The two little girls were stationed on either side of the brilliantly lit Christmas tree, waving their wands with decreasing enthusiasm.

  Elsewhere the lights around the church and in the road beyond were more dispersed, in some places bright, in others romantically dim, casting a glow of glamour or mystery over the familiar faces of the village. Little knots of people were on the pavement beyond the church gate under the one streetlight. Others gathered around the graves or by the main door, waiting for the music to begin, greeting the vicar, and quietening impatient offspring.

  “This will be your first carol service at Slepton, won’t it?” said Nancy, who had the air of not being entirely easy with them, while doing her duty by village new-comers. “I always love it—there’s always something magical about it.”

  “We’re all looking forward to it,” said Felicity. “Especially Carola, of course . . . Oh look, there’s Desmond! That is nice.”

  Desmond Pinkhurst was standing by a gravestone, his legs somehow intertwined, looking about as relaxed as Bertie Wooster at a World Congress of Aunts. But when he saw he had been noticed he brightened up and ambled over.

  “I say, isn’t this jolly? I always love it. Brings back my own childhood—I once played Joseph, my very first dramatic role! This sort of thing makes the whole ghastly business of Christmas worthwhile. I wonder if Chris will be here,” he went on, looking around him in the way that he had. “I’m not even sure if he’s a Christian. I wanted to thank him for pushing me into taking the part in The Wild Duck . . . you too, of course,” he added, remembering his manners and turning back to Charlie.

  “Oh, I only said what everyone would say: Go for it. I’m sure Chris says these things with much more force and experience behind him.”

  “Well, of course in a way he . . . Anyway, you were both right.”

  “Oh, we’re really glad,” said Charlie and Felicity together.

  Desmond rubbed his hands with glee.

  “I’m enjoying myself to bits! We’ve got four days off now, without rehearsals, to stop us getting stale. I can’t imagine getting stale in a play like that, but there you are. Then we’ve got an intensive week until the first night. I say, isn’t it a wonderful idea to put it on for Christmas?”

  “I don’t really know,” said Charlie. “I’ve never seen it or read it. Is it Christmassy and jolly?”

  “Oh, not at all,” said Desmond. “That’s why it’s such a clever idea. It’s terribly meaty, all sorts of levels or layers or whatever in it, and people need an antidote to all those Aladdins and Peter Pans and nonstop Railway Children on television. I tell you, the advance bookings are marvelous. Everyone’s flabbergasted. A bit of angst and gloom and being made to think seems to be just what people need. And want too!”

  “I’m really glad,” said Felicity. “So the part wasn’t beyond you after all?”

  Desmond put on a coy face.

  “Well”—slyly—“people say not. In fact, they’re being very kind. And it’s a wonderful cast all round. Not just people who’ve been on the telly, which is so demeaning if you haven’t. And my telly days are so long ago that nobody’s seen me. Oh—there’s Chris.”

  Charlie looked at his departing back.

  “I feel I’m in a replay,” he said.

  “A what?” asked Nancy.

  “A replay. A repeat of what happened when I first met Desmond. He makes do with us, practices his woes and worries or joys and successes on us, then at the first glimpse of Chris he hares off.”

  “Chris usually has that effect on people,” said Nancy. Then after a pause she said, “I wonder if he’s heard.”

  But before they could ask what he might or might not have heard, the sound of the first carol floated over from the knot of people around the main door. Accompanied by a pumped-up string quartet of local players, the church choir and all the assembled locals launched into “Away in a Manger,” and on cue a spotlight illuminated a part of the graveyard with waiting space where a makeshift manger had been set up with children miming the Holy Family (with a doll as the baby, the vicar having vetoed the real thing).

  “Very nice,” said Charlie, as the last verse faded.

  “It is nice,” said Nancy, pleased at his pleasure, and opening up. “It’s pretty much the same every year, but that’s because it’s lovely, and we want to see it again.”

  “What were you wondering whether Chris had heard or not?” asked Charlie, always the dog gnawing at a bone.

  “Oh—about Archie Skelton.”

  “Skelton. Isn’t he the mayor?”

  “That’s right. He’s had another heart attack.”

  “Serious?”

  “Very. Couldn’t be more.”

  Charlie put on a concerned expression and nodded.

  The choir and musicians began “While Shepherds Watched” and the audience’s eyes went back to the pretty manger as shepherds came from the side entrance to the church, scantily clad in shifts and carrying crooks in their hands. They paid their respects to the Saviour rather briskly, and then legged it back to the comparative warmth of the church, probably on orders from their parents.

  “If I still had a kid to perform in this I’d insist he was a wise man,” said Nancy. “At least you get robes, and you can put a hot water bottle in your casket.”

  “They don’t look anything like the shepherds on our Christmas card,” said Carola disparagingly. Their first Christmas card had arrived, from a retired bobby Yule-tiding it in Spain, and it had become the pattern for Carola’s view of the Christmas story.

  “Have you heard?” came Chris Carlson’s voice suddenly in Charlie’s ear.

  “What about? Archie Skelton?”

  “No, not Archie Skelton. About Desmond. He’s happy as a sandboy. He’s apparently having a whale of a time at rehearsals, and everyone agrees he’s doing a fine job.”

  “Yes, so he told us.”

  Down in the little square of empty lawn, “We Three Kings” signaled the slow arrival into the nativity story of three very dignified small boys, robed and crowned and no doubt warmer than the shepherds as Nancy had said, carrying their caskets very close to their tummies. When their acts of homage were finished, as the carol about them ended too, a further piece of mime showed the Holy Family being warned of King Herod’s primitive idea of family planning. There being no carol about the Massacre of the Innocents, they all launched into “O Come, All Ye Faithful” and the little family set off through the gravestones to disappear out of the lighted area. It was interval time, and there was a scramble toward the tables set out beside the front door of the church, with mulled wine, Christmas cake and homemade biscuits.

  “Wait a bit,” said Chris, putting out his hand to prevent them starting with the rush. “The scrum eases quite soon, and there will still be plenty of time to gulp and guzzle before the second half.”

  “Is your father here?” Nancy asked Felicity.

  She looked vaguely around.

  “I’ve no idea. He’s terribly independent these days, thanks to you and to his other new friends here. You may have noticed that he’s not awfully into children, whatever he may say, so I didn’t ask him to come with us in case he preferred to come with some of you, or stay away altogether.”

  “I’ll look for him and see that he’s all right,” said Nancy, scurrying away into the thirsty mob.

  “Implied criticism,” said Felicity.

  “Don’t you believe it,” said Chris. �
��Nancy has scaled down her time commitment to your father herself. But on occasions like this she likes to be of use, and that way she shares in the credit for the success of the evening . . . There you are: she’s found him already. She’s joined the throng of fans.”

  They watched Rupert Coggenhoe. He was toward the back of the queue, surrounded by a posse of middle-aged or older women, the little group now being joined by Nancy. Slowly, the women chatting happily, Rupert looking benign but out of things, they moved down toward the mulled wine.

  “They’re losing interest,” said Felicity. “Scaling down their time commitment, as you call it. You can tell from the body language. They’re not looking at Dad adoringly as they used to.”

  “That’s perfectly normal and understandable,” said Chris. “A newcomer arrives in a village, and for a time he’s the center of everyone’s attention, and then they find out that he’s really not all that interesting.”

  “Don’t let my father hear you say that,” said Felicity. “He’d be livid.”

  “Actually,” said Charlie, who had been observing the whole group and taking in the interaction, “if you look at him closely his eyes are going everywhere now. He’s not all that interested in them if they’re not interested in him.”

  Their eyes all went toward Rupert Coggenhoe. As the queue advanced on the steaming vessel the great author’s eyes were indeed, though cautiously, going everywhere. From some signs of irritation among the group of women it was clear his attention was far from any of them, and from anything they said to him.

  “He’s looking for someone,” said Charlie, unafraid to state the obvious. At that moment Coggenhoe’s peripatetic gaze began to steer in their direction, and they hastily looked away.

  Felicity swung round to look at Charlie.

  “I don’t want to see,” she said. “I don’t want to know who it is. I wish we’d never gone along with his plans to move near us. It was just a typical scheme of his to bribe us with his help with the mortgage so that he’d secure a prop for his declining years.”

  “Say slave,” said Charlie. “That’s what he wants and that’s what he won’t get. And don’t pretend to be so surprised. We talked over the probability of this as soon as we got the offer, and we said then there were going to be strict limits to our involvement with him.”

  “You’re both very hard,” said Chris. “After all, he may not have all that long to go—”

  “Oh, don’t give me that,” snarled Felicity. “Have you seen him having trouble walking, have you noticed his mind wandering, have you smelt any signs of incontinence?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “He’ll live to be a hundred,” said Charlie gloomily. He turned to Chris. “And talking about not having long to go, you were right about Archie Skelton.”

  “I was.”

  “I didn’t notice you squeezing the tear ducts for sympathy when you first mentioned to us that Archie was a candidate for a heart attack.”

  “I wasn’t close to Archie, and nor were you. Like it or not, you are to Rupert.”

  “We are not,” said Charlie and Felicity together. Chris shrugged.

  “Sad.”

  “Not sad at all,” said Felicity firmly. “Perfectly natural. As Swift said, children aren’t obliged to feel gratitude to their parents, because when they were being made the parents were thinking of something else entirely.”

  “In my mother’s case I should think it was whether she had any oven chips in the fridge,” said Charlie. “She took so little interest in the whole business that she’s never been able to remember the name of the man whose efforts made me.”

  “Anyway, we have a dead mayor,” said Felicity. “I suppose what everyone will want to know is whether you’re thinking of standing again.”

  Chris shrugged—a display of lack of interest that didn’t quite convince.

  “I don’t know. I’ve only just heard . . . I did quite well last time, didn’t I? I think the whole idea of an elected mayor is still in the experimental stage, so they could decide to revert to the old way of doing things: nominate an elderly party hack as a reward for always voting at his party’s call and never thinking for himself at all. And that probably makes sense: making it elected only brought us the same result—a hack.”

  “But it nearly brought us you,” said Felicity.

  “I must say you seem to have done quite a lot of thinking in a very short time,” commented Charlie. Chris looked slightly embarrassed.

  “Well, to be honest it was something I’ve been expecting. I more or less told you that when we first met.”

  “So you should be able to come to a quick decision.”

  “You think so?” Chris scratched his head in comic bewilderment. “There are so many imponderables. By the time they have made the decision to keep it as an elected post the baby could have arrived, but do babies and campaigning for a job go together? Is this the sort of worthwhile thing to do that I’m looking for? I’ll really have to ponder it a lot, talk it over with Alison . . . Oh, there she is. Let’s all go over and join the queue.”

  The queue was down to five or six people. The ones who had been served were clustered in little knots around the main door and out into the graveyard, talking, sipping, laughing.

  “Oh look, there’s Ben Costello,” said Chris, as they all clutched mugs and biscuits. “I think you both ought to know him—I’m surprised you don’t, Charlie. He’s a policeman.”

  “My main contact with the station here is a man called Harridance,” said Charlie. He and Felicity let themselves be dragged over to a dark man with slicked-back hair and piercing mauve eyes. There was a lot of gym-muscle about him, and a general air of no-nonsense copper. Alison Carlson raised her hand in greeting to an old friend.

  “Ben,” she said, “this is Charlie Peace—Dexter Peace to his birth certificate—who’s come to live in Slepton. And this is his wife, Felicity. Chris over there you know.”

  Ben shook hands genially.

  “Ah—I’d heard we had refugees from Headingley. Things are getting tough there, aren’t they? Every square inch taken over by students. Good to meet you. Coppers either have the instinct to settle down and become part of the community they police, or else the instinct to get away from it so that they’re not faced with local villains the whole time. I don’t need to ask which category you’re in.”

  “Definitely. No job ought to be a twenty-four-hour one. I’ve come here to live to see what class of villain you breed up, and how it compares with the Leeds variety.”

  “I think you’ll find they’re pretty similar. I’m not local, though. You can probably hear I’m closer to your old haunts than to Yorkshire. I’m Stratford East.”

  “And I’m Brixton.”

  “And why did you pull up stumps and move north?”

  “The instinct you just talked about. Wanting to get away from the people I’d known since birth, from the job, and generally to have a normal off-duty life. And you?”

  “Pretty much the same, I suppose.”

  “Don’t try talking about not wanting a twenty-four-hour job if you meet up with a doctor called out in the middle of the night,” said Chris.

  “Don’t talk crap,” said Ben Costello. “You all have agency cover these days, and fair enough too.”

  “Did you hear about us from my father-in-law?” Charlie asked him.

  “Father-in-law? No, I don’t think I know him. It was one of our local men, Harridance, that mentioned you. Good man. Safe pair of hands. Oh, here’s my wife. Belle, this is Charlie and Felicity, and Alison over there. Chris you know.”

  They all smiled at a plump, smiling but forceful-looking woman, exuding confidence, who shook hands with them.

  “My father-in-law lives near you both,” said Charlie. “I thought you might have noticed him as a new arrival—passed him in the street or driven past him.”

  “Oh my God,” said Felicity. “There he is over there.” The words seemed to have been forced out of
her—there was a note of drama and foreboding in her voice. All the other eyes in the group followed hers, surprised.

  They had shifted position slightly when Belle Costello had joined the group, and they now had a view through the big oaken doors into the body of the church. Rupert Coggenhoe was standing, exuding satisfaction and self-love, talking to a girl in school uniform—which she seemed to transform into an ironic contrast with the body inside it, since her face, her carriage, her gestures seemed to proclaim that she was a stunning beauty about to bloom. It was Anne Michaels, Harvey Buckworth’s Miranda, the leader of the little group of childish persecutors.

  Felicity moved forward, as if in a dream. Her father was so taken up with his new interest that there was no chance of his noticing her. Soon she was in the church and within hearing distance.

  “I must go. My mum and dad are down the front, and they’ll wonder where I’ve gone to.”

  “But I’ll be seeing you again soon?”

  “’Course you will. Maybe tomorrow. If not, Monday after school.”

  And in a flash she reverted to the schoolkid and scuttled off down the center aisle. Felicity stopped in her tracks, bowled over by the sheer banality of the exchange. What had she expected? she asked herself. Breathless vows of eternal love? Had her approach prevented their being put into words? She swallowed hard and put herself where her father could not fail to see her.

  “Hello, Dad. Are you enjoying the show?”

  “Felicity!” He turned, awakening from a dream. “Very much so. Or as much as a practically tone-deaf person can.”

  “Who was the girl? Daughter of one of your harem?”

  His nose went into the air in irritation.

  “I don’t have a harem, as you well know. No—just a friend. You wouldn’t want me to depend entirely on you and Charlie for company, would you? You’ve made that very clear.”

  And he stalked off to the most prominent seat he could find, halfway down the church. Felicity looked back to the little knot of people she had left. Chris was looking at her sympathetically. Ben Costello and his wife were looking at Rupert Coggenhoe, clambering across people’s legs to get to the vacant place.