After the committee meeting at which she had appeared out of
the blue, Mr Morgan had started courting Clare von Klippen, though she did not
know it.
Hearing that Clare was working at the library, he had skipped
his organ practice and gone there. He was so conspicuous that Cleo almost asked
him if he had a special reason for sitting diagonally opposite the counter,
ostensibly reading a book while his beady eyes followed Clare’s every move. His
antics were quite obvious to everyone and Cleo found them very amusing. She
wondered if he thought it was Edith. He came every day and Cleo did not think
he had his sights set on her.
But Gareth Morgan was persistent. He could not think of a
reason for not going back next day, this time on the pretext of returning the
unsuitable book. The pattern was set.
When he turned up for the umpteenth time, curiosity got the
better of Cleo.
“I’ve just come to exchange this book, Miss Hartley,” he said.
“Now, now, Mr Morgan. You don’t really expect me to believe that,
do you? You only borrowed it yesterday. You can’t have finished it already.”
“It’s too technical. I didn’t understand a word.”
“I did not think you would understand a book on knitting, Mr
Morgan. You should not have taken it home in the first place. Could it be that
you have taken a fancy to my assistant?”
Mr Morgan looked guilty and started to stammer. He rubbed his
sticky hands together nervously.
“What makes you think that, Miss Hartley?”
Mr Morgan had been hoping to brazen it out, but he was getting
red in the face and his hands were now as slimy as kippers, reactions
admittedly induced at least in part by clandestine gulps of vodka from the
pocket flask he had brought along to get him through the morning.
“Can I give you a friendly tip, Mr Morgan?” said Cleo, after
watching this bundle of nerves almost melting before her very eyes.
Mr Morgan looked at his finger-nails, which were chewed down even
further than usual. He could feel the sweat dripping down his back. He thought Cleo
must have read his mind. Interfering busybody.
“Why don’t you just ask her to go for a coffee with you? She
can only say no, can’t she?”
And that’s exactly what Mr Morgan wanted to avoid. As long as
he had not received a downright refusal, he could go on dreaming. But what did
he, a humble Welsh organist of rather squat stature and limited means, have to
offer such a lovely English lady as Clare von Klippen?
Cleo deliberately misinterpreted the look of desperation on
his face. She did something totally unexpected to Mr Morgan, who was already
quaking.
“Hey,Clare! Come here for a moment, will you?” Cleo called
out.
Now Clare would come near enough to see the little pearls of
sweat gathering on his brow. Mr Morgan wished the floor would swallow him
instantly.
“Yes, Cleo? What is it?”
Giving Mr Morgan a little warning nudge, Cleo announced: “Mr
Morgan wants me to go for a coffee, but I can’t take the time. Would you like
to go instead?”
Mr Morgan gasped.
“Well, why not?” came Clare’s reply, to Gareth Morgan’s acute
consternation.
Clare thought she was rescuing Cleo from a fate worse than
death. She knew exactly how to deal with men like Mr Morgan so that they did
not try it on a second time.
“That’s settled, then,” concluded Cleo with a wicked smile on
her face. “I have to go to the printers to order posters for the talent
contest, but Clare will be here until one, Mr Morgan. Why don’t you sit and
read a newspaper until then?”
Now he was committed, Mr Morgan had no choice but to go with
the flow. Soon after one o’clock he escorted Clare down the street to the
corner café, walking on the building side and letting Clare walk on the less
protected street side. Mr Morgan was full of trepidation and really did need
protection now he had been blessed with the chance to get nearer to the object
of his infatuation. His pocket flask had been empty for the past hour. Its
contents had possibly not been quite enough to give him the confidence to
master the situation in which he now found himself. Curse meddling women like
Cleo Hartley though on the other hand, she had been generous enough to arrange
this tryst.
There could not be a greater contrast between the Cleo’s surprise
dinner with Robert Jones and the date she had stage-managed for Mr Morgan. Seated
at the corner table in that scruffy café, Clare felt claustrophobic in the
company of such a vain little man who was quite obviously at pains to impress
her, though his method defied all logic.
Clare soon realized that Cleo must have known all along that
Mr Morgan was stalking her and she could have kicked herself for falling for
the ruse. Mr Morgan was unaware of Clare’s desire to escape. He fetched two
small cups of nasty coffee from the self-service and sat down on the chair
right next to her, dragging it even closer and leering from ear to ear. His
clandestinely imbibed vodka was hitting the spot square on in the smoky warmth
of the café.
Apart from thanking Mr Morgan for the coffee, which was
undrinkable, Clare said nothing at all. She didn’t need to. Mr Morgan droned on
and on about the lady friends he had had, or not had, to be more precise,
including Megan, the ungrateful Welsh grocer’s daughter.
For good measure he told Clare all about his mother and even talked
about Laura Finch’s chorus ladies in flattering terms.
Despite his animated raconteuring, it was quite clear to Clare
that the little man’s life was strewn with unsatisfactory relationships and she
hated to think that she might be added to the list of what he probably counted
as conquests to be retold at the next opportunity.
There is also no doubt that even had Clare had the slightest
interest in cultivating a relationship with Mr Morgan, his monologue would have
put her off for good, as it had probably repelled all the others before her.
Clare thought Mr Morgan’s mother had been right when she told
him he was a disappointment. He assured Clare that he had always tried to do
what his mother wanted, but it had never been good enough. She was evidently an
ebullient character who enjoyed making people squirm. Cleo gathered that Mrs
Morgan was the curse of the local Mother’s Union, a constant irritation in
chapel affairs, and had been the bane of Mr Morgan Senior’s existence, so much
so that he had gone down the road to the cigarette machine one night and never
been seen since, leaving his son even more at his mother’s mercy.
Coming to Upper Grumpsfield had been a desperate bid to get
away from the matriarchal figure. Even England was better than life in single
combat with her. Here he could have a lady friend without her being held up for
scrutiny and eligibility. The way was clear for romance, he told Clare. He was far
from sober.
Clare had no sympathy for Gareth Morgan’s plight. She stood up
and asked to be let out so that she could go to the ladies room. Mr Morgan
waited in vain for her to return. She had snatched her jacket from the clothes
rack and made for the exit, run back up the road to her car and driven off
before he noticed she had gone.
Relieved as she was to escape Mr Morgan’s clutches, Clare
would nevertheless have taken more time over the drive back to the vicarage had
she known that Karl von Klippen was there. As it was, she cut two minutes off
her time from Middlethumpton and turned into the vicarage drive in a good mood that
was immediately shattered by the sight of Karl’s car parked in her space.
Karl drove an average French family saloon that was washed and
polished faithfully every Saturday and
still looked immaculate after driving across half Europe. What the hell does he
want here, went through Clare’s mind as she drove round the side of the house.
Edith saw Clare’s car through the kitchen window and hastened
to the door.
“Guess who’s here!” she exclaimed.
“I don’t need to guess. We don’t know anyone else with an
Austrian number plate.”
“Oh, silly me. Of course. The car!”
“I really thought he’d given up at last.”
“Well, he hasn’t. He looked for you at the school and when he
heard you had left he got straight back into his car and drove here.”
“Tell him I’ve left the country.”
“I can’t do that. It’s dishonest!”
“Who cares? He’s the last person I want to see. I had enough
trouble ditching that half soaked little organist just now.”
“Mr Morgan?”
“Cleo tricked me into going for a coffee with him. He is
simply awful.”
“I feel a bit sorry for him. He’s such a good organist.”
“That doesn’t make him the ladies’ man he thinks he is.
Disgusting.”
Edith could hardly believe her ears. She had thought his heart
beat faster for her and had been willing to share him with her sister. He had
betrayed her by going after Clare.
“Clare. Don’t be so heartless.”
“Talking of heartless, did Karl say how long he’s planning to
hang around?”
“No. I don’t think he’ll stay long and this time I don’t think
he expects you to go back with him. He just wants to be friends.”
“Friends?”
“Yes. After all, he came a long way to see you. You can’t
expect him to go back home without visiting us as well. We’re family.”
“Oh yes I can. Last time I told him quite clearly that he was
to leave me alone.”
“But that’s years ago. Can’t you just be friendly for a day or
two?”
Clare helped herself to some coffee. She couldn’t decide which
was worse: a date with Gareth Morgan or a reunion with Karl von Klippen.
“Anyway, why are you so late?”
“I told you. Cleo wangled me a date with that Welsh troglodyte.
I thought I’d never get away. I’d still be there if I hadn’t left him sitting in
that foul coffee bar and made a dash for it.”
“Oh dear! And I thought he was an asset to us.”
Edith had turned away, but Clare could not help noticing a
note of nostalgia in her voice.
“Hey, Edith! I’m surprised at you.”
“What?”
“Have you got a thing about that organist?”
“Certainly not. I...”
Edith was a trifle too anxious to deny a liking for him. She
found herself owning up to listening secretly to Mr Morgan’s organ-playing. She
even told Clare about the donation box. Up to now, she hadn’t told a soul. The
incident was still weighing heavily on her mind.
“And Frederick didn’t guess who did it?”
“No. Don’t talk so loud. He thinks getting it back was a
miracle.”
Clare laughed.
“Typical,” she said. “And Cleo didn’t guess the truth,
either?”
If she had guessed, she had at kept the knowledge to herself
and Edith was not going to stir things up by asking her.
“Cleo? What would she have to do with it?” Clare asked.
“Cleo is rather good at finding things out. Freddie hired her
to solve the mystery, but I was able to replace the box before the real
sleuthing could begin. And since Cleo is not a regular churchgoer she didn’t
hear Freddie preaching about the ‘miracle’. I didn’t hear it either, actually.
I couldn’t have stood it, under the circumstances. But I heard about it later
from people who thought it was marvellous.”’
“I suppose he got carried away.”
“Before that he had got drenched praising God and the angels in
the pouring rain, shouting it’s a miracle. He could have caught his death.”
The sisters had been so engrossed in their conversation that
they hadn’t heard Karl enter the room.
“Who got carried avay?”
Clare and Karl did not greet each other the way long lost
relatives or partners do. Karl would have liked to, but Clare made sure there was
enough distance between them.
“You look wery vell, Clare!”
“Thanks. You have bruised forehead, Karl. What do you want
here?”
“Zat is not a good velcome to give me.”
“It’s all you’re going to get. Why do you keep turning up in
my life?”
“I am not turning up. It is....let me see... nearly three years
since I visited the school.”
“Is it? How time flies when you’re having fun.”
“And now you are not at the school anymore.”
“No. Something happened last week that made me leave.”
“And you are living here now?”
“Only until I find somewhere. I got a job at the library.”
“Ach. Zee library.”
Edith wondered how Clare had stood life with Karl for as long
as she had. Two years was it? Now she was giving Karl absolutely no
encouragement, but he didn’t seem to need any. He was battling on like a
long-distance runner.
“I’ll make some fresh coffee,” Edith offered. “It’s time Frederick
stopped working.”
If Edith suspected that the vicar was taking an elongated nap,
she wasn’t telling. Mr Parsnip lived in a world of his own most of the time and
it was probably just as well.
“Ah, yes. Freddie-old-man! We had the chat in his office. Nice
man. Very nice man. About the bicycle and lead on the roof. Before my head got
the shooting.”
He hasn’t changed a bit, Clare thought. His English is still atrocious.
“What are you talking about, Karl?,” said Clare. “You’ve
forgotten all your grammar. What’s all this about a shooting?”
“Albert shot Karl between the eyes with a suction arrow,” explained
Edith.
“‘Zat is the bruise. You can see the red.” Karl offered his
forehead for closer inspection.
“I can’t see anything much except a bit of redness,” retorted
Clare. She was not going to pander to Karl. “Typical of a man to make a fuss about
nothing.”
“Who is making a fuss about nothing?”
Mr Parsnip had now joined the fray.
“Did you have a nice nap, Frederick?”
“I had a dream.”
“Tell us about it!”
Clare was glad Frederick had come in. Now she would probably
escape further attention from Karl for the time being.
Frederick reported having dreamt about being Robin Hood, or to
be more exact, Friar Tuck, and being woken by someone shouting ‘Help! I am
shot!’
“That was me,” confessed Karl. “I am shot. And here is the
arrow.”
Karl handed over the red plastic arrow with its
disproportionately large suction pad for the vicar’s inspection.
“But isn’t that...?”
Edith felt the need to intercede.
“‘Yes it is. But they didn’t mean to do it, I’m sure.”
“I opened the window to get the fresh air in and zimsalabim...”
“I’ll have a serious talk with the boys,” promised the vicar,
as usual totally overestimating his power of authority.
“It’s nearly dinner-time now,” Edith chipped in. “If you want
to eat it while it’s hot you’d better get out of my kitchen while I finish off
the cooking and leave the serious talking for later. Clare, please lay the
table in the dining-room and Frederick, you can entertain Karl!’
Edith sounded quite bossy for a change. Even Mr Parsnip was impressed.
Clare acquiesced, relieved that Frederick and Karl seemed to
be getting along quite well together. At least she wouldn’t have to entertain Karl,
and with any luck he would leave in a day or two. She thought she would survive
by simply not being there any more often than necessary.
Karl von Klippen wondered if it really was the end of the road
for his marriage to Clare. He was getting tired of making an effort to revive
it. But it was pointless trying to get Mr Parsnip to advise him. As soon as
they were out of earshot, Frederick started to tell Karl that he wanted to go
to Africa to save souls.
“Freddie-old-man, you have such nice children and a nice wife.
You can’t go away.”
“I will one day,” said the vicar looking into the distance as
if he could already see pagans waiting to be converted.
There was not much Karl could say to that in his scanty
English, so he made no further comment.
***
Sometimes things run smoothly and sometimes they don’t.
Sometimes one can predict the outcome of an event or a situation, sometimes one
can’t. If anyone had told Mr Parsnip what was in store for him that night, he
would have wrung his hands in dismay.
Dinner passed peacefully enough. The boys were quite well
behaved, Clare and Karl did not argue, Edith’s cooking was much better than her
normal fantasy-free level of achievement and Mr Parsnip felt so good about his sermon
that he did not even mention the suction arrow. After the boys had gone to bed,
coffee and brandy were served in the sitting room and the last hour of the day passed
pleasantly.
Clare eventually broke up this family idyll. She simply had to
get some sleep after a tiresome day. Karl made a move to accompany her, but
Clare put a swift end to any inopportune behaviour and Karl accepted the fact
that it really was a bit of a tall order to expect Clare to be nice to him
simply because he was there.
Mr Parsnip was puzzled by the situation, since reunions were
not normally accompanied by thanklessness. Edith jumped up and joined Clare as
she left the room, as if to make sure she got to her room without incident. The
two men were left to brood over their brandy and their choice of spouses. At
eleven, the lights went off in the lower floor and all was quiet.
Clare woke out of a light sleep to a faint sound that could
have been something small and furry scurrying around in the rafters. She got
out of bed and went to the window. There was a faint red glow coming from the
direction of the wine cellar and reflecting through a tiny window onto the path
outside, shedding a narrow shaft of light onto the pebbles. Clare realized to
her horror that the noise was not mice, but the crackling of flames. She shot
out of her room screaming ‘Fire!’ as loudly as she could. Karl, who was also
having difficulty sleeping on a day bed that was too short and seemed to have
more metal frame than mattress, was the first to react. In no time, he had
woken everyone and assembled them outside on the vicarage lawn, wrapped in
blankets and shivering from the shock of being thrown out of their warm beds.
Clare rang the fire brigade on her mobile phone. Within minutes,
the fire brigade roared up the vicarage drive and a fire crew set about getting
the flames under control.
“You’re lucky it’s an old house,” the chief fireman commented.
“Those wine cellars are built into the earth and quite well insulated.”
Mr Parsnip, who was more hysterical than anyone else, ran back
and forth lamenting the imminent loss of house and home. The five boys were unaware
of the seriousness of the situation and enjoying the impromptu moonlit adventure.
Thanks to the prompt action, it didn’t take long to quench the
flames. What had started as a dramatic incident was ending as a damp squib. The
vicarage was saved from major damage. The old wooden wine racks had taken a
long time to ignite and the foam from the hosepipe had quickly stopped the
flames spreading.
So what had caused the fire?
“Well, I’d say it was a short circuit,” the chief fireman
announced on his return from a detailed inspection of the damage. “Sparks
spread to some old potato sacks and set them on fire. Another couple of hours
and the wine racks would have gone up in smoke, turning this place into an
inferno. No danger of that now, but you’ll have to go without electricity for a
bit. The fuse box has melted and I’ve had to turn the power off at the mains.”
What the fire chief did not say was that new houses had new
wiring, so the chances of them going up in smoke were not as close at hand.
“Oh dear, how can I get the breakfast made?” wailed Edith.
“As soon as the insurance has inspected the damage, you can
get it all repaired and Bob’s your uncle. Thank your lucky stars that someone
noticed the fire before it had time to spread,” the chief fireman told them. He
was himself relieved that the fire had been caught in time. No knowing what
dangers his men would have been exposed to if they had had to quench fire on
the upper floor. Those old buildings had far too much straw and wood in their
construction for his liking. The floorboards would have crashed in and who
knows how it would all have ended.
“Yes, thank you, Clare.”
Mr Parsnip was feeling quite emotional now the worst was over.
“What would we have done without you?”
The vicar was sure that he would never see Clare in the same
light again. Providence alias God had brought her there. He would invite her to
stay for as long as she liked.
The boys had enjoyed the drama.
“Burnt at the stake,” chanted Albert, who was learning all
about Joan of Arc in the history lessons.
“Baked in our beds,” added Bertram, whose history lessons were
deeply involved with Alfred and the cakes.
After all the excitement, a cup of tea would have been nice,
but since there was no power to boil the kettle, the grownups settled for more brandy
and the boys were allowed the cans of coke normally reserved for special
occasions. Then, armed with torches, they were sent back to bed. The grownups
sat in front of a hastily lit fire – in the grate this time – until they were
calm enough to go back to bed. It was a night to remember, one way or another.
Next morning, Mr Parsnip started on a brand new sermon for the
following Sunday. Having had a lucky escape from the flames, he saw it as his
duty to point out the folly of taking everything for granted. Clare had up to
now been an unwelcome guest, but thanks to her prompt action she had achieved a
new status for the vicar. He was torn between the sermon themes of live and let
live and loving one’s neighbour.
Loving one’s sister-in-law was quite a new slant on things, so
it took a whole morning of serious meditation to get it all straightened out in
his mind, whereby the question “What if...?” cropped up so often that Mr
Parsnip wondered why he had never asked it before.
News of the vicarage fire spread like wildfire. The result was
a steady stream of parishioners wanting to view the damage. Someone must have
phoned the press, because it wasn’t long before a photographer turned up to
take photos of every nook and cranny. Bernie Browne, editor of the Gazette,
came himself and asked a lot of questions. In the absence of really dramatic
damage to the vicarage and its residents, and admittedly hoping to redirect to
himself some of the focus on Clare’s role in the narrow escape they had all had,
Mr Parsnip persuaded the reporter to write about the miracle of the donation
box as well. That was, Bernie Browne remarked, food for the Gods.
Though sceptical about paranormal mythology, the vicar was
attaching mystical elements to his interpretation of the incident. Bernie let
the vicar tell him every last detail long after the journalist from one of the
national dailies had left. Genuine eccentrics were few and far between these
days. Better make the most of it, Bernie decided.
Fortunately, Edith did not hear any of the twaddle the vicar
was spouting. A shrewder reporter than Bernie Browne would have immediately
cottoned on to her role in the donation box incident, even if the idea of a vicar’s
wife helping herself to charitable donations seemed more than a little
far-fetched.
Next day, Karl von Klippen was still shaken from the ordeal,
much of which had taken place in his head and not until the immediate danger
had passed. He was also asking himself ‘What if...?’ and getting a horrific reply.
The notion of being burnt to a frazzle in his bed and never seeing his beloved
Austria again was at least as shocking as the realization that but for Clare,
that might have been the fate of them all.
Clare went to her job at the library as usual, thankful to
escape the chaos and wanting to give herself time to think about her unexpectedly
mixed feelings about Karl. Her account of the previous night’s events at the vicarage
left Cleo almost, but not quite speechless. Clare dropped broad hints about
being impulsive and was it a good idea. Cleo found herself exhorting her to go
ahead with whatever it was, having only a vague idea of what this Austrian guy
was like, but rightly assuming that he was the immediate cause of Clare’s inner
conflict. Clare, feeling she had already said too much, diverted the
conversation to Edith’s dilemma of not being able to feed the boys hot food.
“I’ll cook something for everyone and bring it along at supper
time,” Cleo offered.
“There are nine of us.”
“Just leave it to me,” said Cleo. “I could even have a go at
toad in the hole.”
Clare’s instructions on how to create a toad in the hole to
Edith’s specifications and a quick phone call to Robert Jones produced the
necessary ingredients and Cleo marvelled at how easy to make and tasty such a
basic dish could be. And not a toad in sight, she could tell her friends back
home who might take the title of the dish literally.
By the time the electricity had been restored temporarily with
a cable from the road, just about everyone in the village had put in an
appearance at the vicarage and Mr Parsnip’s list of sermons to write and people
to thank for their concern, promises of donations and offers of help to get
everything straightened out was getting longer and longer.
Cleo made good her offer to cook for everyone for a couple of
days with generous meaty donations and cooking aid from Robert Jones’s shop.
After the hungry had been suitably impressed with the toad in the hole on that
first evening, it was followed up by huge spreads of Kentucky fried chicken,
giant sized porterhouse steaks and other traditional dishes from across the
pond.
The boys wanted to know if they could always have Cleo’s
cooking from now on. Edith was understandably worried that they might no longer
be satisfied with her culinary skills, which, though practical and nourishing, could
not compete with Cleo and Robert’s massive spreads of delicious food.
Relations between Clare and Karl had changed literally over
night, but Karl could not arrange to stay for more than a day or two longer. Clare
was a bit put out that despite their impromptu reconciliation he made no serious
attempt to woo her back to Austria. By the time he had packed his belongings,
clambered into his freshly polished car and left for home, she was bereft, an
emotion she had never felt before. Later, she even admitted to Edith that she missed
him.
The incident at the school had had a sobering effect on Clare.
She had finally grown up. In comparison with Mr Morgan, whom she would in any
case avoid like the plague, Karl was now acknowledged to be a candidate for Mr
Right. Mr Morgan, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Clare had stood him up,
frequented the library almost daily in the hope that she would again take pity
on him. Clare started to wear her wedding ring and frequently referred to Karl
as ‘my husband’ with heavy emphasis. Finally, in a desperate attempt to
convince Mr Morgen that he was barking up the wrong tree, Clare told him that
she was planning a trip to Austria in the near future. After that, Mr Morgan
gave much consideration to the idea that Edith might conceivably be the more
desirable of the sisters and stopped attending the library on a regular basis.
Fortunately for Clare, the forthcoming talent contest was
keeping Laura Finch busy. That meant that Mr Morgan also had to attend extra
rehearsals, thus narrowing his scope for stalking outside library opening times.
