Salley Vickers - Mr Golightly’s Holiday

The common weal, and other large causes, can generally be relied on to outweigh lesser domestic concerns and Keith was relieved to see his wife already at the door of Spring Cottage as he reversed the Renault down and out of the front drive. He could wing it into Newton Abbot, place the bet on Banoffee Pie and then pick up some brownie points with She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed by hopping down to Tesco’s to do the weekend shop.

Mr Golightly had already switched on the kettle for a second cup of coffee and was about to put on Clifford Curzon playing the Schubert impromptus when there was a rap at the door. The lunch with Ellen Thomas had been nourishing, and entertaining, but it had not forwarded his writing plan. He had shut his eyes for a mere five minutes and already it was evening…But sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof was his motto and that morning he had woken bright and early and ready to work.

The effort at opening the front door to Sam Noble had eased the tendency to stick; a fact which Mr Golightly regretted when he saw he had yet another visitor, one who was engaged, it appeared, in robbing the garden of its crop of harmless wildflowers. Unless it was the gardener Nicky Pope had warned him to expect.

The Reverend Fisher held out a frankly earthy hand – in the other she held a bunch of wilting dandelions.

‘Hi there. Meredith Fisher.’

‘Golightly,’ said Mr Golightly, somewhat emphasising the syllables of his name.

‘I’m the rector – don’t fall down dead with shock!’

‘No,’ said Mr Golightly. If anyone was about to fall down dead it certainly wouldn’t be he.

‘I’ll leave the weeds here, shall I?’ asked Meredith, rubbing earth enthusiastically into the other hand. ‘Better late than never! I’ve come to welcome you to the parish of Great Calne.’

‘What I like to stress to my clients,’ the Reverend Meredith was saying, ‘is that love is a verb. ’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Golightly, trying his best not to show his attention was drifting.

Once he, too, had believed that he knew much about love. That a woman with a dog collar (though this morning the Reverend Fisher wore only a roll-neck sweater to indicate her calling) should beard him on the subject struck him as faintly absurd.

‘You see, it’s the active ingredient which counts.’

Mr Golightly had thought much about love’s multiple complexities. Like the vicar, there was a time when he had been strenuous in his loving. For years he had given his support to people in return for their absolute loyalty – but when, as was inevitable, given the instability of all things, this loyalty had flagged or wavered, he had reacted with a vehemence he now deplored.

‘Is it?’ he heard himself say. A mistake. He knew enough about human nature to be sure that he had let himself in for an argument.

‘Oh, I think so,’ said the Reverend Meredith, and her eyes gleamed with what Mr Golightly recognised, with an inward shudder, as zeal. Zeal, like vehemence, was nowadays a condition he fought shy of. ‘You see…’

Years ago, when Mr Golightly had gone about more in the world, he had encountered people like the Reverend Fisher. It seemed to him they spelled trouble. They had to put their fingers in every pie and could not leave well alone.

In the past, it had been his habit to try to steer such people into situations where their conviction had fuller scope. Some, he was sorry to say it now, he had employed to promote his business. But since the catastrophe he had become mistrustful of all endeavour which tried to improve the human lot. The world was no longer a theatre for his grand gestures. That idea now seemed unspeakably grandiose…

The worst thing about such people was that it was the Devil’s own job to escape the running fire of their counsels. The Reverend Fisher drew breath only on sufferance. She was delivering an enthusiastic account of the ‘meaning of the Gospels’, which, Mr Golightly dazedly gathered, were packed with emotional prophylactics and helpful panaceas, until the sound of a car outside distracted her. That, she explained, must be her husband, Keith, back from the shops.

Mr Golightly felt towards Keith something of the gratitude of a dog who sees a stranger about to remove a troublesome thorn from its paw. He conducted the vicar to the door, but she hung on still, promising a future visit accompanied by contemporary feminist exegeses of the parables. ‘I’ll get Keith to pop across and help you with all of this,’ she declared finally, gesturing at the crop of harmless dandelions.

‘No,’ said Mr Golightly firmly. ‘Golden lads and girls…’ He was fond of these reminders that all humanity must come at last to dust.

‘Sorry?’

‘Dandelions. When the blooms go they become like chimney sweepers’ brushes,’ he added, confusingly.

‘It will be good for Keith – for his health,’ said the Reverend Meredith, ignoring this incomprehensible irrelevance.

‘But not for mine.’

‘Well, if you’re sure…?’ asked his neighbour, fired up by the sense she had a fight on her hands.

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