It was Upper Grumpsfield’s
coldest February in living memory. It had snowed almost nonstop all through
January. There was so much snow that you could not tell where the pavements
ended and the roads started. The older children could not get to school in
Middlethumpton by bus and instead spent their days tobogganing down Monkton
Priory hill and skating on the frozen village pond. Everyone agreed that it was
the worst – or best - winter in living memory.
Laura, who seemed to have
wheedled her way back into the vicar’s affections, possibly because she had put
on a startlingly good show as an improvisations artist (and Dorothy would not
admit it for all the tea in China), must be prevented at all costs from making
such a suggestion to the vicar, who welcomed every idea with open arms.
Dorothy hoped the absurd idea
of dedicating a whole evening to the Finch Nightingales’ caterwauling would be
buried under all the snow. To her delight it was, for the time being. Laura would
not get the positive press coverage after all. Dorothy was shamefully gleeful
that her former friend was thwarted.
But as luck would have it,
when a baby decided to be born in Lower Grumpsfield during a snow storm, the
midwife had to be flown in by helicopter, since the only available snow plough
– an improvised piece of ironmongery pushed along by a local farmer –
capitulated, and the powers that be in Middlethumpton needed theirs to clear
their own roads, especially those to and from the town hall and the private
residence of Mr Cobblethwaite, the mayor.
Laura found herself in a new
impro role, that of midwife. That alone would ensure her of nationwide
admirations. It was truly unfortunately for Dorothy that the baby’s parents
lived nearly next door to Laura. The news of Laura’s intervention made the
headlines of the national newspapers and even merited a mention on BBC
television news. To her extreme annoyance, Dorothy was obliged to watch Laura
shaking hands with the helicopter pilot and waving to the cameras. Laura had a
talent for getting into the picture.
Even worse for Dorothy, in the
wake of her involvement in the baby’s birth, Laura Finch announced her
forthcoming choral concert. The vicar, who usually had an open ear for
Dorothy’s suggestions and warnings, was overjoyed at the free publicity for his
church.
He had been talked into
Laura’s concert without Dorothy’s knowledge, Dorothy thinking she should be
consulted about every musical event in the village. She would phone the
vicarage forthwith and demand an explanation. After all, she was more or less
in charge of organizing the musical activities at St Peter’s parish church. She
wondered if Mr Morgan had had a hand in the subterfuge. She wouldn’t put it
past him. He was probably being blackmailed by Laura Finch for some sin or
other and he had something to lose since he was being paid to accompany Laura’s
shabby chorus. That’s how highly Dorothy Price now regarded her former friend.
A few days later, the critical
weather eased off and Upper Grumpsfield was coping again, though the inconvenience
caused by the icy conditions was still the main talking point. A skeleton bus
service now crept warily up and down Thumpton Hill, and a shuttle service was
being provided by Robert Jones in his white butcher’s von, which was equipped
with four wheel drive and even had chains attached to cope with the worst of
the snow and ice, just like vehicles in the Alps. Robert offered to assist
anyone with their shopping, since it was too slippery to go anywhere on foot
safely and everyone was aware that he did not just do that to improve sales.
Dorothy was not the only one
grateful for this offer. To everyone’s surprise, Mr Bontemps had managed to
overcome his aversion to making a special effort and was taking orders over the
phone. Robert had helped to deliver those orders, too, since Mr Bontemps’s
ancient Citroen, though an integral part of his Gallic image was only
roadworthy in dry weather and he charged for his delivery service whereas
Robert did not.
The children attending upper
school in Middlethumpton now had long faces. By the following Monday, a regular
bus service would be transporting them to and fro again, putting an end to
their impromptu vacation.
Dorothy’s next door neighbour,
Mr Barker, who was normally most helpful to older ladies, had not used his car since
Christmas because the door of his garage had frozen shut with icicles dripping
from the flat roof in an most artistic, but inconvenient way. Mrs Barker
thought they could release the car by melting the snow with buckets of steaming
hot water thrown at the ice, but that didn’t help at all. The icicles just got
longer and longer. There was nothing for it but to wait until the thaw set in,
since Mr Barker refused to allow his resourceful wife to light small bonfires
to melt the garage door free.
On the other hand, there were
probably more pros than cons to not having a car at their disposal. They could
wrap up warmly and go for long walks instead, Mr Barker decided. Mrs Barker was
not enamoured of that idea. Long walks in any weather were something she could
well do without. Mr Barker told her she should appreciate the snow more. Did
she know that there were millions of people who had never seen snow in their
whole lives? Mrs Barker pointed out that many children born in big cities had
never seen a cow, but were none the worse for that, and she had never been in
the Brazilian rainforest fighting off snakes.
It didn’t take long for a
full-scale argument to develop in the Barker household. Who had access to what,
being the gist of the debate. The final straw was Mrs Barker’s denial that
Switzerland was land-locked.
“Whoever heard anything so ridiculous?”
retorted Mr Barker. “You’ll have to prove that Switzerland does not have its
own ocean, Jane.”
“How? We can’t get there in
all this snow.”
“I wasn’t thinking of going
there, Jane. Didn’t you do geography at school?”
“We did Australian sheep, if I
remember rightly.”
Mr Barker couldn’t think of
anything to say about Australia that would drive his point home. It occurred to
him that anywhere less land-locked than the Australian continent still hadn’t
been invented. He fetched his father’s school atlas, which he cherished for old
times’ sake, but most of whose land and state boundaries would now have to be
ranked as historical, and opened it at the map of Europe. At least Switzerland
had stayed where it had always been.
He dabbed an index finger at the
spot. “Satisfied, now?’ he said, looking smug.
At the sight of all those
mountains surrounded by countries such as France caused Mrs Barker to shrug her
shoulders and put the kettle on, but there was no running water. The big freeze
had got into the water pipes.
Mr Barker was unsympathetic.
He had always been an enemy of British plumbing. In Switzerland they never had
frozen pipes, as far as he could remember from his youthful skiing holidays
there.
“Why?” Mrs Barker wanted to
know.
“Because the pipes don’t run
down the outside walls, Jane.”
“But they are put there so
that they can be repaired easily when they freeze.”
Mr Barker sighed.
“They only freeze because they
are on the outside, Jane.”
“Oh.”
“And don’t phone the plumber.
He hasn't got time to melt ice. We’ll just have to wait. You can fetch buckets
of snow in and melt that.”
“Is it clean enough?” asked
Mrs Barker.
“If it’s white it’s clean,
Jane,” replied Mr Barker.
“Like my washing,” said Jane.
Quite a few of the villagers
were having the same water(less) problem, but that was cold comfort.
Fortunately, thanks to
government hand-outs of various kinds, mainly to preserve the village character
of old buildings rather than have people knocking them down and building modern
ones, some of the cottages in Upper Grumpsfield were now either centrally
heated or furnished with state of the art electric fires mounted in front of
the gaping hole that leads up the chimney. Those heaters gave some hint of
cosiness with the imitation fiery flames that accompanied their warming
elements.
Dorothy had one such item. She
preferred that to running to the coal shed all the time for buckets of black
gold to replenish a real fire, though she made an exception on high days and
holidays, when the fake grate was removed and little bonfires built instead,
albeit only when the wind was blowing in the right direction as otherwise the parlour would fill with smoke
and the fire would go out like a damp squib rather than crackle and dance.
There was a notable exception
to the village central heating rule: the vicarage. The big old house had been
built in an age when people either didn’t feel the cold as much, or had not
taken to complaining about it. In any case, no incumbent had ever stayed there
long enough to think about improving things, let alone been rich enough to install
a heating system. Even warm water out of the tap was an innovation added only
shortly before Mr Parsnip had been called to St Peter’s, since emersion heaters
had not been Spartan enough for true Christians. The emersion heater was only
put in on the late vicar’s 90th birthday as a present from the
diocese. The old vicar had not lived long enough to appreciate the luxury of a
long, hot soak. Edith Parsnip, as long a suffering vicar’s wife as there had
ever been, had no alternative to lighting coal fires in the living-room and Mr
Parsnip’s study and switching strangely buzzing, ticking and creaking old
electric fires on everywhere else. And if Mr Parsnip wondered who brought the
buckets of coal in to keep the home fires burning, he didn’t let on. His bad
back always occurred during the coal-carrying season.
The vicarage might be cold and
draughty, but St Peter’s parish church was even colder and a good deal draughtier.
Gareth Morgan, who normally practised for a couple of hours every weekday and
gave organ lessons to anyone who wanted them, was reluctant to stay there for
any longer than it took to get the music sorted out before hurrying back to his
flat and opening up his Hammond organ, which was less grand, but was good
enough for practising on in an emergency. If Mr Morgan was forced to practise
something in the church, he wore gloves with the ends of the fingers and thumbs
free. His mother had knitted them especially for such eventualities and sent
them in a care packet when the first snowflakes started to fall. She had also
sent 3 striped ties, 2 patterned home-knitted pullovers and a matching cap and very
long scarf, all in her favourite matching shades of russet and turquoise, but
they were immediately dispatched to Middlethumpton charity shop, where they
failed to attract attention though their prices were reduced three times and
were eventually given away.
As far as Mr Morgan was
concerned, the only two saving graces during the inclement weather were that
first, his mother had not taken it into her head to deliver the gloves
personally and second, if Edith Parsnip happened to see him go into the church
by the side door, which was visible from a side window in the vicarage, she
would hurry over with a thermos flask of hot soup to warm him from the inside.
He was presumably unaware that Edith often found herself on the lookout for
him, whatever the weather, but these days she made no secret of the fact. Edith
had stopped having secrets of any kind, well almost. Old habits die hard.
***
***
People who live in villages are used to things staying the
same. It’s part of the charm. Life meanders on at a leisurely pace and changes
are not usually welcomed.
On the other hand, nothing really stays the same anywhere.
If something doesn’t go forwards, it goes backwards. That’s what the village
regulars at The Dog and Whistle said when their home from home closed down. To
them it was the end of the world.
Delilah Browne, former musical comedy diva, of late an accomplished
pub entertainer, had worked there as a barmaid between engagements and
understandably also mourned the closure of this village institution when the
landlord could not be bothered with it any longer, but she had not had the
money to take over and carry on where he left off. The previous landlord had
already regarded it as a hobby and the pub no longer made a profit. That might
be all right if it was only a kind of extension to your living-room where you
entertained your old cronies, but it was hardly a business proposition, so
Delilah had reluctantly put the pub out of her mind and gone on a vaudeville
type pub tour followed by another and another.
Eventually, the Dog and Whistle regulars found interim
refuge in the church hall, where, thanks to Edith, beer and a dart board were
organized on Friday evenings. It wasn’t really up the vicar’s street, but he
recognized that the church would have to take pity on the sorry little band who
had taken to meeting on the common clutching their supermarket liquor, a
situation that attracted tramps and layabouts, thus becoming a disgrace to the
community.
At the church hall they were spared the inclement winter
weather. Rougher elements were discouraged, and it did make the vicar feel
magnanimous, which in turn spawned several useful sermons.
The Dog and Whistle was not sold. It was a memorial to past
pub glories and in a sorry state of repair. Now Delilah was back in Upper
Grumpsfield, her latest tour having been a riotous success and lasted three
times as long as originally planned, Delilah was wondering what to do next. She
had seen enough and even earned enough on her tour to convince her that the
idea that had sprung to mind the minute she set eyes on The Dog and Whistle
again was perfectly designed to bring Upper Grumpsfield up to date.
Having attained modest affluence, Delilah would open a
karaoke bar and bistro with a pub regulars’ corner for good measure. Other
traditional pubs had gone successfully down that road. She would do good trade
with the people who came back from hunting ghosts at the priory, and a little
bird in the form of Gareth Morgan had told her that the pub on Thumpton Hill
was closing down because of the new city orbital planned for Middlethumpton.
That pub had put in a tender to open as a motorway café it was going to call a
‘Diner’ in true American freeway fashion.
Delilah was not someone to beat around the bush. In no time
at all the legalities were complete, the lease on the pub was signed, the
forthcoming event publicized in the local press and a grand opening planned for
April 1st. Cleo and Robert would be sure to support her, and she would not be
short of custom.
Unfortunately, the pub had seen much better days and its
state had not been improved by the months it was closed down. In fact, when
Delilah had finished looking in every nook and cranny, she was no longer sure
she even wanted to go on with her project, in which she would give
demonstrations of how to sing along to the karaoke machine before handing over
to the customers.
In her dream of success, would-be talents would be
discovered and Mitch, her dreamboat Adonis cum sound engineer from the last
tour would turn up out of the blue to help. He would be in charge of the
technicalities and have acted as talent scout in the Middlethumpton district to
make sure they got off to a good start. After that he would be gratified that
he had invariably been on the right track and they would land in bed together.
It was all a bit far-fetched, but everyone would have had a good time, including
her and Mitch.
The main hitch was that Mitch had gone out of her life for
ever. Why had she not kept in touch?
But then Mitch arrived, his last engagement was over, he
said, so he was at a bit of a loose end. He had been the keyboarder on Delilah’s
tour and had also acted as sound engineer. In pubs and halls you cannot be
heard unless supported by microphones and loudspeakers, so he had been
indispensable until the audiences had stopped to listen to the voluptuous Lady
with the sexy voice and low-cut frocks.
Mitch had taken a fancy to Delilah, but been too diffident
to let her know. He was ten years younger and had only recently been ditched by
his girlfriend, a pale young thing named Maggie who was not into anything much
before she had achieved a wedding ring on her wedding-ring finger. Delilah was
light-hearted, independent and good company. Men swarmed around her like bees
round a honey pot, though she was double the girth of the current beauty ideal
and twice the age of the youngest Romeos.
Karaoke had been an extra feature of the pub tour and had
attracted audiences normally found jerking around to jerky music in murky discos.
Young men found that karaoke made them attractive if they sang pop songs more
or less in tune and wiggled their hips. Young women also found it useful to
display their vocal and other physical talents as well as wiggling their hips.
Karaoke was nothing if not productive and often even responsible for new
‘matches’.
Delilah was standing in the main pub lounge wondering what
Mitch was doing now when he stole up behind her and made her jump by asking her
if she could find him a job.
“You look as if you need someone, Del.”
Before she could stop herself, Delilah had flung her arms
around him in a passionate embrace.
“Mitch! Perfect timing.”
Mitch appreciated being appreciated.
“Great minds think alike.”
“Am I glad to see you. Just look at the state of this
place.”
“Rack and ruin wherever you look, Del.”
“If I’d only known before...”
“Before taking it on?”
“Well yes. Would you want to take on this much work?”
“Probably not, but it has potential and I need a job.”
“I didn’t know you had my address, Mitch.”
“You weren’t hard to find. There’s only one pub Upper
Grumpsfield and only one delicious female like you, Del.”
Delilah wriggled herself out of an exceedingly unmistakeable
body to body hug.
“Are you serious about wanting a job?” she said, buttoning
up her blouse and making an effort to look respectable.
“Yes, but I’ll need a roof over my head and a bed to sleep
in, Del.”
Delilah refrained from telling Mitch that there was room for
him in her bed.
“The upstairs rooms are habitable. It’s just the pub that
has fallen into neglect.”
“Let’s get started then.”
“Where?”
“Upstairs, of course. We need to seal the agreement, Del.”
“I can’t pay you much until we open.”
“That’s OK. I don’t take money for sex and both are incentives
to get a move on, on way or another!”
“So what shall we do first?”
“Before or after?”
Delilah did not have to think for long. On the tour she had
avoided serious hanky-panky with anyone, but if she had had any, it would have
been with Mitch, she mused.
“After.”
Two hours later, the newly-installed lovers came down the
stairs. Delilah stood by while Mitch looked around.
“We’ll order a skip to get rid of the junk, re-do the wiring
and paint the walls.”
“Mitch. You’re a godsend!”
“That’s what they all said.”
