Chapter 2, whited sepulchres

Chapter 2- Whited Sepulchres

Sir Tarleton Rickett [“Not Sir Richard Tarleton, please!”] strode out onto the cricket ground for a little net practice. His long-suffering man-of-all-work, Jamison, was to bowl for him.  Sir Tarleton looked around the centre of the village with complacent pleasure; it looked good to him, the self-styled squire and leader of society, such as it was.

And then his eye fell on a sight which suffused his already florid face with purple, and made his Colonel Blimp moustache quiver in outrage.

A down-and-out in the bus shelter!

Sir Tarleton strode over to the bus shelter.

“Look here, you, just get out of our village,” he said.

Chaz looked up from his book.

“I beg your pardon, what did you say?” he said.

Sir Tarleton went a shade more purple.

“I told you to get out!” he bellowed.  “You layabouts have no place around decent folk! A little military service is what you need!”

“I have seen active service, as it happens,” said Chaz, mildly, whose education had been Eton, Sandhurst, Iraq and Oxford.  His voice sounded like it, but Sir Tarleton was too incensed to notice.

“Oh, one of these cowards claiming PTSD, I suppose, after hearing a gun fired once,” he sneered.

Captain Cunningham, DSO, who had singlehandedly taken out an enemy mortar position, flared briefly in the blue eyes of Rev Chaz, and was subdued for a while.

“Where did you see active service, sir?” Chaz asked.

“None of your business!” roared Sir Tarleton, whose active service had been served behind a desk in the Ministry of Defence.   Soft answers did not turn away wrath in Sir Tarleton’s case, but were rather a red rag to a bull.  “Now you just get out and don’t question your betters!”

“I don’t feel like getting out, you know,” said Chaz.  “I’m enjoying watching the village life. I certainly have no plans to leave on the say-so of some over-inflated desk-wallah. You can’t make me, you know.” He mentally grimaced that the captain had escaped momentarily to speak with such scorn.

Sir Tarleton raised his cricket bat.

“I can make you; one way or another,” he said, grimly.

Chaz was vaguely aware of a flash of light, but he became rather preoccupied.  He had taken seriously the warning from Tony that he would meet some disapproval, but that anyone should actually physically attack him was not something he had anticipated.

He gave his full attention to the charging Sir Tarleton.

Sir Tarleton could not have explained afterwards how he ended up disarmed, and flat on his back, minus his whites.

Chaz threw the trousers back to him, the reverend mentally chiding the captain for backsliding.

“They’re too big for me,” he said. “I think I might keep the bat to hand to the police as evidence as well.  Really, assault and battery upon the Queen’s highway?”

“I have a photograph of him going for you while you were sitting there,” said a female voice.  “I took it as evidence of his violence as the police don’t believe me.”

“Who would believe a whore?” blustered Sir Tarleton.

“Our Good Lord, when he accepted Mary Magdalene,” said Chaz. The woman flushed, angrily.

“I am not a whore, and so I keep telling him!” she said.  “He tries to force himself on me – I have an illegitimate daughter, because my fiancé and I got premature and he went out to fight in the second gulf war. He died there.”

“My commiserations; you are a widow without a pension,” said Chaz.  “I was also in Iraq; it was a mess. Knowing that you loved him probably buoyed him up.  I will ask for the use of the photo, and I will ask the police to listen seriously to your complaints.”

“Who are you?” asked the woman. “I was bringing you a thermos of coffee and some sandwiches when Sir Tarleton started in on you.”

Sir Tarleton was putting his trousers back on over incongruous boxers with an adult theme to the pictures on them.

“He’s a down-and-out,” he snarled. “You found your level with him, Lucy.”

“Miss Grey. I have never said you can use my first name, Sir Tarleton,” said Lucy.

“Miss Grey, delighted,” said Chaz.  “My name is Charles Cunningham; I’m the new vicar here, and I decided I would like to see the village incognito, so I dressed down.  I see that some people make it something of a whited sepulchre.”

“I don’t believe you!” Sir Tarleton blustered, his colour draining.

Chaz shrugged.

“If you ever come to church you will find out,” he said.  “You are someone who needs the power of prayer to heal you.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me!” cried Sir Tarleton.

“That is why you are so much in need of healing,” said Chaz.  “Miss Grey, will you share coffee and sandwiches with me?  I have some maids of honour which I can add to the pool, but only water to drink.”

“If ... if you don’t mind eating sandwiches made for a homeless person...” said Lucy.

“Jesus said, ‘whenever someone does any kindness to the least of my people, he does it to me,’” said Chaz.  “Now feed the inner Jesus; and then I will call the police.  I shan’t press charges, but they need to have a crime report to establish character.  Perhaps being watched by the fuzz will have a greater impact on Sir Tarleton than the knowledge that God sees all.”

Sir Tarleton glowered and stalked off, his afternoon’s cricket quite spoiled, and a number of aches and contusions making themselves felt on his body.

“So, what can you tell me about the village?” asked Chaz, devouring his second sandwich. “These are good; what do you put in the egg that lifts it?”

“A pinch of black pepper, chopped spring onion and the lightest touch of cardamom,” said Lucy.  “It wasn’t as bad when Gran was alive – I’m an orphan – but calling it a whited sepulchre is spot on. Above the surface all is pretty, and good, and below the surface all sorts of tensions seethe.  I’m a bit of a pariah to some people because I have a love-child, which I think is a nicer term than bastard, but it’s unfair on Summer, because some people won’t let their children play with her.  And it’s not her fault.”

“No, poor child, and it’s not yours either,” said Chaz.  “What about your man’s family?”

“Diana, his mother, is very good,” said Lucy. “But she’s moved out to Collingham, to be away from memories of Adrian growing up.  I sort of understand, but I would want the memories, myself, if I lost Summer.  And I know it’s an odd sort of name, but it was Ade’s nickname for me, because he said I was like sunshine on a dull day.  So her middle name is Adriana after him ... I’m babbling.”

“I think you’ve needed someone to talk to for a while,” said Chaz.  “I find it hard to take on board how parochial and unkind people can be in this day and age; in a city, a significant number of the kids in any school don’t even know who their father is, let alone have a hero to be proud of, lost rather than strayed, as you might say.”

“And I almost took Diana up on her offer to go and live with her with Summer in Collingham, where such things are not unknown,” said Lucy.  “But it seemed like cowardice.  And Gran left me her cottage, and expected me to keep it nice.  It would be like letting her down as well as letting down Adrian’s memory.  Am I making any sense?”

“All kinds,” said Chaz.  “Oh dear, here comes trouble.”

Trouble was in the shape of Mrs. Hadley.

She glared.

“Not content with flaunting yourself in public, Lucy Grey, you consort with his type?” she said. “I thought the police moved you on.” That was addressed to Chaz.

“I can’t help what you think, I’m afraid,” said Chaz, firmly quashing the captain’s desire to question out loud whether she was capable of thinking. “But I think you are rather discourteous to the widow of a war-hero.”

“If she told you she was the widow of a war-hero she was lying! She’s nothing but an unwed mother!” frothed Mrs. Hadley.

“Oh, weddings are made in Heaven, and a temporal ceremony is merely a matter of dates,” said Chaz.  “The intention to marry Adrian was there, and God sees and knows.  And a soldier who dies for his country is a war-hero in my book, you know. She did not claim it, but you see, it is a matter of perception.  I think you should see someone about the plank in your eye before claiming that Miss Grey has a mote in hers.”

“Well really!” said Mrs. Hadley. “Don’t think you can get round me by quoting the Scriptures; the Devil quotes the Scriptures for his own purpose.”

“Well, that’s the first time I’ve been called a devil in English,” said Chaz, amused.  “I don’t think it counts coming from an Arab out of his head on adrenaline on the scary end of an AK47.”

“You, sir, are a disgrace, if you are frightened of Arabs,” said Mrs. Hadley.

“Oh, not in general, and I did not have time to be scared, but with an assault rifle jammed in my belly, I was a trifle unnerved,” said Chaz. “Fortunately he had not cared for it properly, and it jammed long enough for me to sock him on the jaw and take it away from him.  But war reminiscences are tedious fare.  It is sad that there are people of any religion who cannot accept that others follow different paths, and that Christians, Jews and Muslims even worship the same God.”

Mrs. Hadley, who ranked Jews along with Methodists and Catholics as Unbelievers, let alone Muslims, gaped at him in incomprehension.

“I meant, young man, that you should not be afraid of inferior types like foreigners,” she snapped.

“Inferior to whom?” asked Chaz. “If the Good Lord sees every sparrow fall, does he rate er, foreigners lower than Britons? Or did you mean only English Britons?”

“A good English sparrow is better than any foreigner,” said Mrs. Hadley.

“Jesus was a Jew from Palestine,” said Chaz.

“Wash your mouth out, you heathen!” cried Mrs. Hadley.

Chaz dissolved into laughter.

“He’s the new vicar,” said Lucy.

“I don’t believe it!” Mrs. Hadley almost shouted.  “Swapping lies, that’s what you two disgraceful objects are doing! I shall write to the Bishop.”

“Yes, he told me the village needed a shakeup,” said Chaz.

Mrs. Hadley, incensed,  stalked off, not sure whether to believe such utter nonsense or not. She planned to telephone the bishop as soon as she got home to ask whether he had sent a vicar, and if it was indeed an extraordinary young man with a motorbike who looked like a hoodlum.

Chaz had no idea that Mrs. Hadley was about to be told by the Bishop’s secretary that yes, he was the new vicar, and that he had been appointed to bring the village into the twentieth century since the Bishop considered that aiming for the twenty-first was probably a little too ambitious.

He was discovering that unless an individual tackled a problem, it was swept under the carpet.

“You’ll think it a little thing, I am sure, but I see it as a way of demonstrating things,” said Lucy.  “Rose Cottage belonged to an estate agent, and she lived here most of the time, but when she got promotion, she moved to the city, and because she only had a flat there, she didn’t take her cats with her.  And she had never bothered to neuter them, she just kept them in at night.  Well, everyone complained about the sounds of cats mating, and the explosion of kittens,  but nobody was willing to do anything, until Lyndsey Grayling stepped in.  She’s one of the two vet receptionists, but she’s training to be a vet nurse too.  And she collected Josephine, who has a coat of many colours, and the black panther, and took them in.  She called the black one Reuben until she produced kittens, when she changed her name to Ribena.  And they were then neutered, and I helped her trap the tomcat who had sired kittens on them, and the vet did the neutering for the cost of the anaesthetic.   The tomcat is Jacob, and Lyndsey gradually captured Isacher, Gad, Dan, Zebulun, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Benjamin, Dinah, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah to have them done.  Summer helped me clear out so we could have a garden sale to help with the costs, and Sausage-Roll Sally , that’s the other receptionist, baked stuff to sell.”

“I take it she makes sausage-rolls and doesn’t need feeding any,” said Chaz. “I thought health and safety regulations banned the use of meat in fundraising cooking?”

“Probably, but nobody here takes any notice of it,” said Lucy.  “Only instead of being grateful that Lyndsey took care of the problem, half the village just refer to her as the crazy cat lady.”

Chaz nodded.

It was a little thing, perhaps, but it was emblematic of the problems the Bishop had outlined.  He had told Chaz that the village was smug and self-satisfied with a good many churchgoers, but bums on seats did not indicate souls in contemplation. Chaz had pointed out that he might lose a few parishioners, but the Bishop had reminded him that the Good Shepherd sought for those who were lost, and there were more ways to stray than not going to church.

“It sounds as though Lyndsey had help from you,” he said.

“And from Patty; Patty Raikes,” said Lucy. “We grew up together and have always been friends.  They never judged me, and I think without them I would have given up.”

“Patty was recommended to me as a cleaner if I teach her to cook in return,” said Chaz.  “Her boyfriend is a copper.”

“Oh, yes, they’ve been engaged for years, waiting to afford a down-payment on a house,” said Lucy.  “I would have let them live in Honeysuckle Cottage if I moved.”

“And is that by any chance next to Rose Cottage where the cats were left?” asked Chaz.

“Yes, and Rose Cottage has been bought by someone who keeps himself to himself,” said Lucy.  “It used to belong to the Vaiseys; Adrian’s people.  And Lyndsey on the other side, with her parents, in Clematis Cottage.  There’s a row of half a dozen of what used to be farm workers’ cottages, the three at my end timber-framed and the others at the other end built to resemble them in the eighteenth century as what they called ‘cottages ornés’ to fit the look.  Apart from Gran’s cottage, which was already named by  Gran’s parents when they married, the others were just numbers two to five.  Someone bought them all in the 1920s and fancied them up, and gave them all flower names in keeping with Honeysuckle Cottage.  My great-grandparents refused to sell.  So now the other three are ‘Lavender Lodge’, where the doctor lives, ‘Marigold Mansion’ which is where Sir Tareleton lives, and a misnomer if there ever was one, and ‘Hyacinth House’.  All terribly pretentious, but then, that also shows what the village is about.”

Chaz nodded.

“So who lives in Hyacinth House?” he asked.

“Tony, the landlord of the ‘Thrasher’,” said Lucy. “He’s an incomer, like Sir Tarleton, but at least Tony had relatives here. He’s only been here twenty odd years; moved in when I was a kid, you are laughing at me.”

“Only a little,” said Chaz.  “And how long has Rickett been here?”

“Sir Tarleton moved in when I was in my teens,” said Lucy.  “He had a wife, then; but she was terribly frail.  I think he bullied her to death.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Chaz.  “Well if he and Tony, whom  I have met, along with Fang, are incomers, what does that make me?”

“A breath of fresh air,” said Lucy, and then blushed.