Pictures of Perfection

CHAPTER FOUR

‘… 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.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

‘Kee,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I’m passionately, insanely, helplessly in love with Caddy.’

He opened his eyes and found he was talking to Kee’s retreating back. But having come so far he was not about to give up. Dauntless, he plunged after her along the narrow track till she reached a small clearing where she paused and turned and said, ‘Sorry, Larry, were you saying something?’

‘Yes,’ he said, keeping his eyes open this time. ‘I want to tell you that …’

‘How very odd,’ said Kee.

‘Odd? Why so?’ demanded Lillingstone, assuming some kind of precognitive response to his proposed confession.

‘The hat,’ she said.

He knew he wasn’t wearing a hat. Nevertheless his hand flew to his head.

‘There,’ she said impatiently.

He followed her pointing finger. The function of this clearing was easy to work out. Here those upper-class promenaders overcome by fatigue, devotion or love had been able to rest a while on a granite bench made for two. It was lichened and ivied almost to invisibility now, but its location was signposted by a marble faun strategically placed to leer encouragingly over the heads of bashful wooers.

A hundred years ago, who knows what ardent outbursts that prurient presence had provoked?

Today, however, it was a real turn-off. Laurence Lillingstone had not become a vicar without being able to recognize a sign when he saw one.

This after all was neither the time nor the place to confess an illicit love.

Not in the presence of a marble statue wearing a policeman’s hat.

PROLOGUE BEING EXTRACTS FROM THE Journal of Frances Guillemard

August 29 1931. After the school committee meeting this evening Stanley asked me to stay behind to help with some correspondence. As soon as we were alone he made a very stilted and stuttering proposal of marriage! It was so unlike himself that I laughed and asked him if he’d been reading Trollope, upon which he grabbed me in his arms and kissed me so hard I thought I would stifle, but I didn’t want him to stop. After that I would have stayed all night. As it was, I got back very late and expected a scolding (24 and I still get scolded!) but it turned out Selly had done something to draw all the fire and I was able to slip upstairs hardly noticed.

All I wanted was to think about the evening and fill in my journal, but Guy appeared in his dressing-gown, very put out because he’d been sent to bed at nine for asking questions when the row started, which he felt was considerably beneath the dignity of a young gent of 13! He thought it had something to do with Agnes, the undermaid, and said Father was in a tremendous paddy and talking, as he always does when Selly gets in hot water, of sending him off to Uncle Jack’s ‘to grow up’! I got the feeling that, hurt pride apart, Guy wouldn’t be too displeased at the prospect of being left the sole son of the house, with first pick of the horses and everything. But it probably won’t happen.

August 30. Went to Selly’s room this morning and found him packing. This time it’s true. He’s spending a couple of weeks with Great Aunt Meg in Gilbert Street, then it’s off to New Zealand to learn about sheep! As if there wasn’t one thing we had an excess of in Eendale, which is sheep! He was very coy about the reason for his banishment, and in the end he got so pompous we quarrelled. What on earth do they feed them at school and college to make them believe a young idiot who’s spent most of his time shut up with other young idiots knows more about life than any woman who isn’t forty and formidable!

Later I got it out of Mummy. Guy was right (he usually is, the little sneak) and Selly has been ‘misbehaving’ with little Agnes Foote. Agnes has of course been sacked and sent back to her family in Byreford. I said it all seemed a bit extreme to me, Selly off to the Antipodes and Agnes in disgrace all because of a bit of slap and tickle. Sharp intake of breath from Mummy at the expression! Said that the trouble was Selly was taking it too seriously and talking about being in love. Agnes was much more sensible (surprising how sensible servants have to be!) and I needn’t worry about her. Didn’t think it was a good moment to mention me and Stanley, knowing as I do that Father has already got him marked down as ‘modern’ which is only one step above total decadence!

September 24. This has been a dreadful day. I thought that since Selly sailed last week, I had observed a slight softening in Father, as if he relented his harshness to his son and heir, and, though too pigheaded to change his mind, was converted to a gentler, more rational regime in regard to the rest of us. So I told him about me and Stanley. Or rather, coward that I am, I told Mummy and let her pass on the news. I knew when I heard his cry of rage from the stables that I’d made a gross miscalculation! It was all Mummy could do to stop him from locking me in my room and heading down to the vicarage with a horsewhip. But at least it’s done. I feel quite serene. Nothing will stop me from marrying Stanley now. It’s silly but I find the only thing that really worries me is that I can’t see Stanley getting much help from Father in his efforts to rebuild the village school!

October 26. Today Stanley and I were married in St Mark’s at Byreford. It was a disappointment not to have the ceremony in our own church but at least I was spared the threat of interruption from Father, who would have seen this as the ultimate provocation! I slipped up to the Hall this morning to see Mummy. She wept a lot and said that Father was implacable and wouldn’t I change my mind even now? How little she understands. I bumped into Guy who is home for half-term. He had the cheek to lecture me about disgracing the family by marrying an atheist socialist agitator! He really is the most obnoxious little snob. I have written to Selly baldly stating the facts. I hope he may be more sympathetic, though I know he’d never have the strength of will to stand up to Father. I thought of Selly later as I came out of church, and who should I see among the onlookers but little Agnes Foote, now Agnes Creed, for when I spoke to her she told me, blushing, that she’d married an old flame of hers from Byreford and by the look of her, he has not been long in doing his ‘progenitive duty’. The euphemism is Mummy’s. She speaks rarely of such things and always as a necessary pain. I hope I shall not think of it so. Soon I shall know. Stanley, who has stayed downstairs to smoke a pipe, has had time to burn a ton of tobacco by now! Shall I ring a bell to summon him to his ‘progenitive duty’? Then we would see how ‘modern’ he is. But I think I hear him now.

CHAPTER ONE

‘Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted.’

Wield usually walked to work. It wasn’t far and the exercise did him good. But these weren’t the only reasons.

He lived his life in compartments and the bike did not belong in the same compartment as the job. There was no hard and fast rule. He’d use it if necessary. But why attract attention? He was ‘out’ if being resolved never to deny his sexuality meant being out, but that didn’t mean he had to wear a Kiss-me-Quick T-shirt, did it? It was all perfectly reasonable.

Yet his mind, which could collate evidence, analyse statements, and parse PACE, with a speed and clarity beyond computer programming, knew that perfect reasoning is a perilous plan for living. Perfection has no safety net. One slip and it shatters.

When the job was going well, when he was fully involved with his work both on and off duty, he could imagine things were OK. Leisure in short bursts he could pack with his martial arts classes, his Gilbert and Sullivan discs, his motorbike maintenance, his Rider Haggard novels.

But when he had a full day off, or, worse, several full days, the truth came rushing up to meet him. These compartments were empty. There was no one to share them with. There had been no one for longer than he cared to remember. There was part of his life he hadn’t just compartmentalized; he’d walled it off and plastered over the bricks.

It wasn’t simply a matter of sex. A man could do without that and still function. Or if he couldn’t, there were outlets of minimal risk.

But companionship, closeness, care; sorrow at parting and joy at reunion; planned trips and surprise treats; accusations, apologies, quibbles, quarrels, and quiet breathing; all the pain and pleasure of shared existence; this was what he’d walled himself off from, raising a dust of desolation which no amount of fresh spring air blasted over his face as he roared through the highways and byways of rural Yorkshire could blow away.