A Village Deception (Turnham Malpas 15) (17 page)

So that was one problem solved satisfactorily. Others were not so easily solved, but they struggled on. Twice the deliveries didn’t arrive on time, then the deep freeze in the front of the store packed up. They lost a lot of food as it had almost completely defrosted during the night and Tom daren’t refreeze it, just in case. Then some boys playing football out in the street close to the store put a ball clean through a side window that had to be boarded up before Tom could lock up for the night. All in all, Tom would be glad when Jimbo returned.

Jimbo’s return was eagerly awaited by others besides Tom, in particular the ones who had taken exception to Peter wanting to sell the silver.

The news about selling the church silver had flown far and wide. In Penny Fawcett and Little Derehams they had heard almost as soon as Turnham Malpas, and they were furious. ‘Sell it? Over my dead body’ was a frequent remark and Tom was
inundated with queries and questions all the time in the store. But where else could they grumble? No one fancied facing Peter head-on over it. It needed saying, but they all kept their heads below the parapet for fear of his wrath. In truth, Peter was not wrathful at all, merely amazed at the trouble he’d stirred up with a mild suggestion of a possibility.

Caroline had warned him, but he’d felt sure he could carry them all with him.

‘It’s no good,’ she said for the umpteenth time, ‘you’ll have to drop the whole idea.’

‘I don’t want to. It’s a very simple solution at no cost to anyone at all. They won’t have to lift a finger, all the jobs can be done and the church fabric will be kept in good order.’

Caroline had to laugh at Peter’s attempt at common sense. ‘Wait until Jimbo gets back, like he said. You’ll have to hope a holiday has done his temper some good and he comes back in a better mood!’

‘I have never seen him so angry about anything at all.’

‘Overworked, I suppose.’

‘He’s got some good workers though. Tom, Harry, Bel and Greta. They all worship the ground he walks on.’

‘Everyone worships the ground
you
walk on, except maybe not so much as they used to!’ Caroline couldn’t help but laugh a little.

‘It’s not funny, Caroline. Not funny at all. Bishop Simeon says he’s had a letter from Gilbert putting the case for not selling. I’m surprised, he’s never opposed me before, not once in all the years I’ve been here.’

‘Is that telling you something? Telling you it’s time to step away from your suggestion and let it be, perhaps?’

‘Or I could always suggest that we have a big fundraising effort and raise the money for the repairs ourselves?’

‘They’ve done a lot of fundraising lately, they’ve only just finished fundraising for the Organ Fund and, before that, there
was the money for your New Hope Mission. That was a whacking great effort, you have to admit. Maybe you’ve reached a kind of saturation point with fundraising.’

‘All the more reason for selling the silver.’

Caroline had to laugh but, at the same time, she was worried that Peter was in danger of overstepping the mark with his congregation and undoing all his years of patient, loving work.

Word of Peter’s tentative plans reached the big house and Mr Fitch’s secretary thought he would have an apoplectic fit when he heard, so she secretly looked up details of how to deal with it in her First Aid manual, just in case. He stormed round his office and at one stage, swept a pile of papers awaiting his attention clean off the desk. She wanted to go and pick them up immediately, before he walked on them, but decided that would not be politic at the moment.

Instead she escaped to her office and brewed a pot of coffee for him, waiting until he’d finished fuming over by the window before she entered with the silver tray and all the accoutrements he so loved. She crept towards him, cup in hand, served just how he liked it, and tentatively mentioned the word coffee.

‘Thanks. Find out if the rector is home at the moment.’

She hesitated, thinking about his first appointment in fifteen minutes.

‘Now. If you please.’

‘You have that appoin—’

‘That can wait. Phone them and delay them till later in the day.’

She still didn’t move.

But Mr Fitch swung round and confronted her, his temper rising again. ‘I said
now.’

Accepting defeat, she replied, ‘Very well, Mr Fitch.’

*

‘He’s in,’ was the answer.

‘Back in an hour.’

‘Very well, Mr Fitch.’

Craddock Fitch roared up to the rectory in his Rolls, braked harshly, leaped out, and forgot to trigger the remote control lock, a very real sign of how angry he was.

Peter answered the door saying, ‘I could have come up to see you, I know how busy you are. Coffee?’

‘No, thank you.’ He marched into Peter’s study without waiting for an invitation, dropped down onto the sofa, and held back from speaking until Peter had closed the door.

‘I am angry.’

‘Yes.’

‘Very angry. In fact, so angry I could punch you right on the nose for this stupidity.’

‘Right, I see. About … ?’

‘You know full well what about.’

‘Ah! The silver, you mean.’

‘The proposed selling of the silver. I won’t have it.’

‘Something like fifteen years ago, could be more, you were more than willing to sell it to your own advantage. I’m thinking of selling it for the benefit of the church, a very different matter.’

Mr Fitch looked momentarily contrite, but the jibe at the end of Peter’s speech really got to him. ‘I’ve … I’ve had a change of mind since then. That silver belongs to the church and the people of the three villages, and I’m defending their rights. Not mine.’

Peter fiddled about with his desk, straightening the pens and tidying his papers while he waited for Mr Fitch to dig deep for some more reasons to not sell the silver.

‘Have you heard me?’

‘I have.’

‘Well?’

‘We get the silver out for display only on high days and holy
days, perhaps four times in a year. The rest of the time it is out of sight in the safe. Surely it would be more useful to sell it and use the money wisely. Let’s face it, Craddock, how many times this year have
you
actually
seen
the silver? Mmmm?’

A long silence fell. Eventually, Mr Fitch muttered, ‘Not once.’

‘There we are then. There’s your answer. It hardly counts that you have decided that you have a right to dictate to me what I do with the silver, because fifty-two Sundays in the year you don’t give a damn about it.’ Peter snapped his middle finger against his thumb and the sharp click made Mr Fitch jump. Peter turned as though he was about to continue what he had been doing before he was interrupted.

Mr Fitch, sitting silently on the sofa, wondered how he’d arrived at this insurmountable situation. On three counts really. One, it was so unlike Peter to be so hard, so confrontational; two, Peter was absolutely right, he didn’t give the silver a single thought from one year to the next; and three, why did he feel so strongly about it when what Peter had said was absolutely right?

But he did feel strongly about it. He didn’t want it sold. He remembered the thrill of handling the plates and the candlesticks and that magnificent floor-standing candlestick, especially.

‘Very well then. I hear what you’re saying, but I will oppose you selling it if I never do another thing. I’m deeply upset by the idea of it leaving the village, I don’t know why, but I am. But let’s part friends. I can’t be at odds with you, not after all these years. I’ve always had respect for you, Peter. A man of the cloth and all that.’ He held out his hand in friendship and of course Peter shook it. ‘Still friends then, Peter?’

‘Of course.’

As Mr Fitch closed the heavy rectory door behind him, he muttered, ‘But it will be me who wins.’

The summer turned very hot indeed, and some of the enthusiasm for action drained away. Lethargic clapping at the cricket matches on Saturday afternoons was about the most energetic activity any of them could muster. Ninety degrees some days, made most people disinclined to take any positive action until Jimbo returned.

Tom couldn’t wait for Jimbo’s return, but only from the point of view that control of the business was just beginning to slip away from his grasp. Harry seemed to be taking charge, and that wasn’t what had been intended. Tom didn’t like it. Greta found herself stewing in the Mail Order office because the very necessary air-conditioning seemed to be overcome by the excessive temperature. Everyone, customers as well as staff, were inclined to be edgy. Sharp exchanges of temper occurred all too regularly in the store and Tom was beginning to grow weary of keeping his temper when he felt like turning everyone out and locking the door.

But only five more days to go and Jimbo would be back. Several emails had come through to the store and it appeared that Jimbo and Harriet were the only ones enjoying this brilliant weather, allowing for two notable exceptions. Namely Harry and Venetia.

Harry was loving the heat. His office was cool as the sun didn’t creep in through the vast window until late in the afternoon, by which time he was on his way to his swim. Well, more accurately, on his way to his beloved. His fascination for
Venetia had not waned; if anything, it had increased. He looked at the office clock only to count how many minutes it would be before she was in his arms. Frankly he felt her to be the most delightfully tempting woman he had ever met, and he couldn’t get enough of her. The feeling appeared to be mutual and the two of them had cast aside almost all attempts at keeping their affair secret. So long as Jeremy didn’t know, and he never gave a hint that he did, they simply didn’t worry who saw them, who raised a questioning eyebrow, who looked disapprovingly in their direction. Well, until the evening in Home Park. That sweltering evening when they escaped outside to lie underneath the trees enjoying the shade and somehow they’d been embracing and progressing towards the inevitability of the outcome of their actions when Peter, of all people, had come walking by. He never spoke a word of recrimination, simply paused for a moment, and then walked on. Harry recollected the anger Venetia had felt, and expressed, in loud terms once Peter was out of hearing. She’d slipped her bra straps back in place, tidied her skirt and stormed off home in a blazing temper.

Occasionally Harry’s conscience switched on and he had uncomfortable moments about the whole matter, but one second in Venetia’s arms and all the pricks of conscience in the world bothered him no longer. All that mattered was their passion for each other. Harry had even been planning to stay on in Turnham Malpas and not disappear over the horizon as soon as Jimbo came back. In fact, not seeing Venetia every day brought him out in a cold sweat and he had to get a grip on himself. They couldn’t stay as they were, because Jeremy wasn’t going to just disappear into thin air, not now that he and Mr Fitch seemed to have come to an understanding and got on tolerably well. In any case, Jeremy was reaching that point in his career when, agewise, applying for another job would not be a good move. So if he wanted to keep Venetia, then he and Venetia would be leaving together. Harry’s fingers were poised over
the computer keyboard but he was gazing out of the window seeing nothing but Venetia’s lithe figure coming towards him, arms outstretched in an all-encompassing, loving welcome. He questioned whether it was love or lust that kept him by her side, but seeing as he’d never known the kind of passion poets wrote about, he didn’t know. Whatever it was, he wanted to keep it. But how long could it last?

At the very same time, Venetia was planning a visit for the students to a massive building project seventy-five miles away that Craddock Fitch was also involved with. She also sat gazing out of the window, the end of her pen tapping against her front teeth while she pondered exactly the same question as Harry. There was no doubt in her mind that her feelings for Harry could be for life. He never left her mind and any hours spent not in his company were wasted ones. Ten times a day she decided that going to live with Harry would be the most wonderful thing to happen to her. And why not, she’d spent years chained to Jeremy and for what? He neither charmed her, nor excited her. Nothing at all, he was a void … someone who slept in her bed, someone who aggravated her beyond all reason every day of his life. But Jeremy’s job kept her housed in the big house, which she loved. It gave her the chance to flirt with the students, organise their free time, and give parties, which she loved doing. Being surrounded as she was by all these young, smart, go-getting students, female as well as male, gave her a fillip no other job could ever do. And seeing as Jeremy didn’t appear to know about Harry, why should she worry? Enjoy it while she could, was her motto.

But the third person in the triangle was totally aware of the situation and sometimes he writhed with the agony of it all. Despite everything she had done he still loved her. Someone less loving than himself would have demanded divorce at the very least, but he still loved her. He tried not to, but he always took her back as though nothing had happened. He never discussed
the whys and wherefores with her. She’d been unfaithful to him more times than he could remember, and still she reinstalled herself and carried on as though nothing was wrong between them. Jeremy couldn’t understand why he was so tolerant and the idea that this time would be the last time he’d tolerate her bad behaviour filled him with dread. She was so wonderfully full of life and shining with a love that she was incapable of hiding that he had reached the point where he might have to, for once in his life, stand tall and put an end to her dilly-dallying once and for all. Quite how he’d do that, he’d no idea.