Reginald Hill: Pictures of Perfection

‘As an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks,’ said Dora Creed fiercely.

Kee raised her eyebrows questioningly at Digweed who shook his head as if to say he didn’t understand either.

‘However,’ resumed the blonde woman, ‘Beryl Pottinger’s a horse of a different colour. I’ve put in a great deal of time and effort there, and she’s learned a lot from Caddy. Her watercolours have become our bestselling line. Now she tells me Girlie’s offering her a better deal. This is blatant poaching.’

‘I cannot believe Beryl would let herself be bought.’

‘With her job at the school on the line, money may seem a little more important.’

‘He that hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent,’ said Dora.

‘Let’s hope we can save her job,’ said Digweed.

‘By selling the Green, you mean? Even if that’s what the village opts for, would it raise enough?’

‘With planning permission, possibly. The Parish Council put out some unofficial feelers and got a working estimate. But let’s leave all that till the meeting tomorrow night, shall we? Meanwhile I hope you get your difference with Girlie sorted out. She’s a reasonable woman.’

‘She’s also a Guillemard, and Fucata non Perfecta ’s a hard virus to get out of your blood. Holistic healing and executive cowboys and indians may save the Hall, but what kind of people do you think they’ll be bringing into the village?’

‘Hippies. Bikers,’ said Dora promptly. ‘They go to and fro in the evening: they grin like a dog, and run about through the city.’

Digweed and Kee laughed out loud and the bookseller said, ‘Certainly that last creature that was here, the one by himself, he was straight out of Mad Max ! But there can’t be many around like him, thank heaven. Kee, that deed of gift you want me to look at …’

‘I’ve got it here,’ said the woman, opening the box file which was full of what looked like old legal papers. ‘Here you are.’

‘My law is very rusty,’ he said warningly as he took the document she handed to him.

‘Mine’s non-existent,’ she replied, closing the file. ‘I’ve probably got the wrong end of the stick. Nevertheless, it could be worth a look. Meanwhile I’ll drop the rest of this stuff off at the vicarage and I might just carry on to the Hall and have a talk with Girlie about Beryl. Edwin, if you see anyone going into the Gallery, you might pop across. Caddy’s supposedly in charge, but once she gets stuck into something in her studio, you could blow up the till and she would hardly notice.’

She set off up the street with the wind dancing attendance.

Digweed, watching her go, said, ‘Interesting how well Kee managed to suppress her fascination with parish history while old Charley Cage was up at the vicarage.’

Dora said, ‘A vicar needs a wife. It’s not natural else.’

‘Indeed? Perhaps you should drop a line to the Pope. I think I’ll just pop over and check that Caddy’s OK.’

He patted his silvery hair as he spoke, though unlike Kee’s silken mane, it was too coarsely vigorous to be much disturbed by the wind.

Dora Creed said, ‘The hoary head is a crown of glory if it is found in the way of righteousness.’

‘True beyond need of exegesis,’ said Digweed.

He crossed the street and entered the Gallery. Converted from the old village smithy, it was a spacious, well-lit room, the upper walls of which were crowded with paintings and the lower shelved with tourist fodder. Behind the unattended till a door opened on to a narrow, gloomy passage. Digweed went through it and called, ‘Caddy?’

‘Here,’ a voice floated down a steep staircase.

Digweed ran lightly up the stairs and along a creaking landing into the studio. This consisted of two rooms knocked together and opened into the attic whose sloping roof was broken by a pair of huge skylights. These spilled brightness on to a triptych of canvases occupying almost an entire wall. On them was painted a Crucifixion, conventionally structured with the cross raised high in the central panel and a long panorama of landscape and buildings falling away behind in the other two.

Here conventionality ended. Though much was only sketched in, the background was clearly not first-century Palestine but twentieth-century Enscombe. And the as yet faceless figure on the cross was a naked woman.

At one end of the chaotically cluttered room, Caddy Scudamore, as dark as her sister was fair, and as luscious as she was lean, stood in front of a cheval-glass with her paint-stained smock rolled up, critically examining her heavy breasts.

‘Hello, Edwin,’ she said. ‘Nipples are hard.’

‘Indeed,’ said Digweed, his gaze drifting from reflection to representation. ‘And perhaps one should ask oneself whether in the circumstances they would be. Caddy, I think the time has come for you and I to have congress.’

And he carefully closed the door behind him.

‘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?’