The Feast (8 page)

‘Help me, somebody,’ he said, almost humbly.

The paralyzed congregation bestirred itself. Bruce and Sir Henry went to help him and between them they carried the laughing, screaming girl out of church. The verger shut the door upon the noise, but there was still a sound of sobbing for several of the children had begun to cry. It was some minutes before these gasps of woe subsided and Father Bott was able to finish the Consecration.

‘But you’ve no idea,’ said Gerry, ‘how utterly
disgusting
it was. What an outrage…. One reads about that sort of thing in the papers and it sounds shocking enough then. But to be there … they
must
go. We can’t keep them. I told Father Bott … I said we’ll turn them out immediately.’

‘We can’t make them go,’ sighed Mrs. Siddal. ‘I spoke to Canon Wraxton. I explained how embarrassing it is for us. But he simply said he’d paid for a week and should stay for a week.’

‘What about the girl? She was worse than he was … the ghastly noise she made.’

‘I don’t know where she is. She wasn’t at lunch, and she’s not in her room.’

‘Would Father …?’

‘Gerry, you know he wouldn’t.’

‘Very well, then. I must. I’ll go and speak to the old brute now. I’ll tell him to clear out. Give me the money they paid, and I’ll return it.’

Gerry marched upstairs, determined to have a fight with somebody. He was not naturally pugnacious, but he felt that the morning’s outrage demanded action of some kind. The Wraxtons must be demolished. He did not distinguish much between them, nor was he quite clear about the facts. They had created a most
blasphemous
disturbance, shouting and laughing, until they were turned out. From his place, up by the altar, he had seen very little. He had tried to rush down and hit Canon Wraxton, but Father Bott had restrained him. He did not realize that Evangeline’s laughter proceeded from hysteria, not from mockery, and he believed that the interruption had been deliberately planned by both the offenders.

The Canon was lying on his bed having forty winks. But when Gerry came in he sat up and swung his legs to the floor.

‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘And what can I do for
you
?
’

Gerry put twelve guineas on the bedside table.

‘You must go, please,’ he said. ‘At once. Here is the money you paid.’

‘Are you,’ asked the Canon, ‘the proprietor of this hotel?’

‘No. I’m speaking for my mother.’

‘Why doesn’t she speak for herself?’

‘Because you won’t listen to her.’

‘I listened to her. It’s she who didn’t listen to me, or she’d have told you what I said.’

And the Canon flung himself back on his bed.

‘She told me you wouldn’t go.’

‘And I told her that if she wants me out she’ll have to send for the police to put me out. Let nobody make any mistake about that.’

‘All right!’ said Gerry.

‘I also told her that, if I’m put out, I shall sue her for breach of contract. She agreed to take me in and to render certain services for which I paid.’

‘No hotel is expected to keep people who cause a public scandal,’ said Gerry.

‘No scandal, as you call it, occurred on your mother’s premises. But if she wants a fight she can have it. I don’t mind a fight. If Mister Bott wants a fight he can have one too. He’ll have it whether he wants it or not. I’m writing to his Bishop. I shall see that the facts are known.’

‘So shall we,’ declared Gerry.

‘And if I’m turned out of this hotel for doing my duty as a Minister of the Church of England, I shall see that that’s known too. I shall write to every newspaper in the country.’

‘You must do as you please about that,’ said Gerry. ‘As long as you go.’

‘I’ll go if I’m flung out by force. Not otherwise.’

Gerry went off to find his mother, but could not
persuade
her to send for the police. She said that she would rather put up with the Canon for a week, nor would she agree that loyalty to their Parish Church demanded
extreme
measures. When he persisted, she even said that it was partly Father Bott’s fault, for being so High Church. ‘He’s not High Church,’ explained Gerry. ‘He’s
Anglo-Catholic
’

‘Which is worse,’ said Mrs. Siddal. ‘I’m sure I
sympathize
with people who don’t like it. What did we have the Reformation for?’

‘I’m an Anglo-Catholic myself,’ said Gerry.

‘I know. But I’m not. I’m a Protestant and I don’t
like all these goings on in my Parish Church. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, and I won’t have the police brought into it.’

In despair Gerry took an unusual step. He decided to consult his father, hoping to get some kind of parental encouragement in pursuing the vendetta. For Dick Siddal had often annoyed his wife by professing
considerable
admiration for Father Bott. It was not to be hoped that he would do anything energetic himself, but he might say something which could be construed as authority to ring up the police.

He, too, was taking a little nap when Gerry arrived, in a boot-hole strewn with Sunday newspapers. He had just finished the crossword in the
Observer
and was
collecting
his resources before attempting that in the
Sunday
Express.
But he opened one eye and looked at his son good-humouredly.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘How’s Martin Luther?’

‘He won’t go.’

‘Why should he go?’

‘We can’t have people of that sort here.’

‘Then why did you take them?’

‘We didn’t know what they were like.’

‘But you must have known. Do you never read the newspapers? He’s always doing this sort of thing; his name’s a household word. Why … only last month he started a free fight somewhere down in Dorset. He’s been suspended, or whatever it is they do to parsons who won’t behave, but he goes on doing it.’

Gerry gaped at his father and presently asked:

‘Did you know all about him, then, yesterday?’

‘Naturally,’ said Siddal, ‘when I heard we’d got a Canon Wraxton I supposed it must be
the
Canon Wraxton.’

‘But why didn’t you tell us?’

‘I wasn’t asked.’

‘But, Father, you must have known … that we wouldn’t … if we’d had the slightest idea….’

‘Not a bit of it. I didn’t like to interfere. Advice
from me is seldom appreciated. I don’t pretend for a minute to understand how or why your mother chooses her inmates.’

‘Then you knew … when we all went to church … you knew this would probably happen?’

‘I thought it likely. And when I saw you all coming back I knew I was right. I’ve never laughed so much since your mother opened this hotel. I wish you could have seen yourselves.’

No help was coming from this quarter, so Gerry climbed the hill in search of Father Bott, hoping to be told that it was his duty, as a good Churchman, to use physical violence on the Canon. But the Vicar, whom he met in the churchyard, was discouraging.

‘Oh leave it, leave it,’ said Father Bott. ‘He can’t do more harm than he’s done already. If he tries to get into my church again,
I’ll
deal with him.’

‘But for us to harbour such people!’ cried Gerry. ‘I won’t have it.’

‘My dear boy, that’s for your parents to decide. It’s their hotel, not yours.’

‘But I’m so angry,’ protested Gerry. ‘I can’t bear to let them get away with it. It was so … so vile … so obscene … it made me sick.’

‘It made me sick too,’ agreed Father Bott. ‘But there you are.’

And he sighed. He was feeling very old and
discouraged
that afternoon. As a younger man he had enjoyed tussles with Protestants, but he had come to regard his own pugnacity with suspicion as a vice rather than a virtue, and he knew that a fresh scandal at St. Sody’s would do his church no good. He looked up at the sky and down at the grass and then he looked at Gerry’s irate face.

‘Dost thou well to be angry?’ he asked, smiling suddenly.

‘Yes,’ said Gerry. ‘I really think there are occasions when anger is justified.’

‘There may be,’ agreed Father Bott. ‘But I’ve never been able to make up my mind which they are.’

‘He insulted God,’ said Gerry.

‘Oh no, no, no! Oh no. He couldn’t do that, could he?’

‘He tried to.’

The Rector sighed again, looked at his watch, and said impatiently:

‘We don’t have to make all this fuss about God.’

Then, trying not to laugh at Gerry’s shocked expression, he added:

‘God can look after Himself. And He’s told us not to make a fuss.
Be
still
and
know
that
I
am
God.
Now excuse me … I have to take a children’s service.’

‘Then you mean … do nothing?’

‘Not now. Anything you do just now will probably be wrong. I must admit I’m extremely angry myself. But I doubt if I do well.’

He turned away and strode across the grass, his old cassock flapping about his thin legs.

Baffled, the good Churchman returned to Pendizack. He was not going to be allowed to fight anybody though his fury was unabated. The Wraxtons were not entirely responsible for his frame of mind; the long trial to his patience, his father’s spite, his mother’s partiality, and his own frustrated existence, were getting to be more than he could bear. So that it was a relief to feel that his wrath was righteous.

On the doorstep, unfortunately, he encountered
Evangeline
. She had been hiding for hours in some lair on the cliffs, unable to endure her disgrace, and was now hoping to creep back to her room unnoticed. Gerry stood aside, grimly, to let her pass. But at the sight of him the silly creature dodged and swerved and waited for him to precede her. For a few seconds they danced about on the doorstep.

‘Please go in,’ said Gerry, with freezing politeness.

She gulped and began to mutter. He caught the words:

‘So very sorry … apologize….’

‘Don’t speak of it,’ he said. ‘If you were really sorry you wouldn’t insist on staying here when we’ve asked you to go.’

He watched her cross the lobby and crawl up the stairs. It should have been a satisfaction to see her so brought down. But it was not, and he felt more miserable than ever. He had never before in his life spoken to anyone so unkindly.

The whole house was suffering from moral shock. The hideous scene in church weighed upon the spirits of all who had been there, and there was a tendency among the adults to sit alone in their rooms.

The children vanished, rising up like a flock of starlings immediately after luncheon and betaking themselves to some hidden place. They retired into their own world, as children will when their elders misbehave. Bewildered, unable to judge, they turned their backs upon the ugly memory.

At supper time they reappeared and, as one child, refused the dessert of loganberries and ice-cream with which Mrs. Siddal had hoped to cheer them. The Giffords waved it away grimly. The Coves, who were dining, after all, downstairs since Mrs. Siddal had insisted upon charging full rates for them, declined it with a devotional enthusiasm. Fred brought a whole dish back into the kitchen, and Siddal consoled his wife by suggesting that Duff could eat it.

‘It will melt unless he comes in soon,’ she said. ‘He and Robin went over to Porthmerryn. I’ll put it in the larder.’

‘Yes … do,’ said Siddal. ‘Gerry and I don’t want any, either.’

Blushing a little she exclaimed:

‘Oh … I meant after you’d had some.’

And began to help them, while Gerry tactfully divertedhis father’s attention by passing him a piece of paper.

‘I picked this up in the hall,’ he said. ‘It looks likea cypher.’

On a page torn from an exercise book a message wasprinted in capitals:

Siddal, who liked puzzles, took it and put on his spectacles. When Duff and Robin came in he was so intent that he hardly looked up.

It was at once apparent to Mrs. Siddal that Duff had been up to something. He was flushed, excited and
unusually
silent. She was so much disturbed by his looks that she scarcely noticed Robin’s boisterous swagger. But Gerry did, and thanked heaven that his father’s attention should be engaged elsewhere. He hoped that the cypher would take a long time to solve. Later on, in the privacy of the stable loft, he would doubtless hear all about it.

Robin, however, had no wish to conceal his condition.

‘We’ve been drinking!’ he announced. ‘We’ve been drinking old fashioneds in the bar of the M.P.’

‘
Robin
!
’ cried Mrs. Siddal.

‘Who paid?’ asked Gerry.

Duff looked up and asked why they should not have paid for themselves.

‘Because you’ve got no cash, either of you.’

‘A strange lady paid for us,’ said Robin. ‘So what?’

He teased his mother for a little while, and then he explained:

‘We met her on the Parade. She couldn’t make her cigarette lighter work. So Duff gave her a light. And we talked a bit and she asked us into the M.P. for a drink. She’s staying there.’

‘Oh well …’ said Mrs. Siddal unhappily, ‘I suppose girls do that sort of thing nowadays.’

‘She wasn’t a girl,’ said Robin. ‘She was older than you I should think, wouldn’t you, Duff?’

‘No,’ said Duff. ‘A big younger than Mother.’

‘It’s quite easy,’ said Siddal. ‘It reads: “All Spartans will refuse desert to-night by order.” I think desert means dessert.’

He sat back and smiled triumphantly at his family.

‘So that explains it,’ said Mrs. Siddal. ‘Some game of the children’s.’

‘She’s a lady authoress,’ said Robin. ‘I never met one before. She says she knows Father.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Siddal.

‘A lady we met in Porthmerryn. Her name is Mrs. Lechene.’

Siddal gave a joyous squeak.

‘Good old Anna! Fat old Anna! You don’t mean to say she’s still above ground?’