Louis de Bernieres - Notwithstanding - Stories from an English Village

‘After Bessie, he married one of the Rector’s daughters. Emily Sutton. They had eight children, so losing three wasn’t so bad, I suppose, by the standards of the time. I’m descended from Bessie, the first wife. The little baby survived and they sent it to Chiddingfold for the grandmother to look after, and then when Piers remarried the boy was sent back to the manor. They called him Perditus.’

‘Perditus?’ said Brian.

‘Little Lost One. Since then, some of us have had it as a second name.’

Jenny suddenly felt tearful. She was a sentimental person, and her feelings came easily to the surface. She dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve.

‘He did well, though. When he grew up he started quarrying Bargate stone. All the old buildings around here are made of it. You know the old lime kiln next to the church? I think they probably used it for making mortar, as well as lime for the fields. Anyway, that’s the story. I was visiting Piers and Bessie and Emily and the three little boys, and when I came back down the hill, I heard you two playing. By the way, there were two old ladies in the graveyard, and one of them introduced me to someone who wasn’t there.’

‘Wasn’t there?’ repeated Brian.

‘She had someone on her arm, as if she was supporting him, and she kept talking to him, but he wasn’t there. When she noticed me looking, she said, “This is my husband.” Well, I didn’t know what to do. I wondered if I ought to pretend to shake his hand. Then the old lady said, “We’ve just been visiting his grave.” It was quite bizarre.’

‘That’s Mrs Mac,’ said Jenny. ‘She’s a spiritualist. She lives with her sister and the ghost of her husband. He’s called Mac. She even goes on the bus with him and tries to pay two fares.’

‘How very entertaining,’ said Piers, and then he frowned. The tone of his voice changed, and he looked at Jenny. ‘I’d like to know if you know the K number of Mozart’s oboe concerto in C major.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Then why did you expect me to know the K number of the bassoon concerto?’

‘We didn’t know it, anyway,’ said Brian cheerfully. ‘You could have said anything you liked.’

‘Do you drive a Morris Minor, by any chance?’ asked Jenny.

‘No, I’ve got an old Minx. Why?’

‘We have eligibility criteria.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Oh, never mind,’ said Jenny.

‘You have to bring offerings of tail feathers from pheasants,’ said Brian.

After the bassoonist had gone home in his Minx to his difficult wife, Jenny and Brian went out into the garden. The children clambered up Brian and draped themselves from him like human flags. ‘Oh God,’ he said, as he toppled over.

Peter relaxed the throttle lever on the mower and stopped making his stripes. ‘I just thought I’d tell you, darling,’ said Jenny, ‘the bassoonist is coming to Sunday lunch tomorrow. I’m sure there’ll be enough for all of us. There just won’t be any leftovers for warm-up. And he’s bringing his wife. And his bassoon.’

Peter sighed and pursed his lips. He put on a funereal Scottish accent and said, ‘We are doomed, Captain Mainwaring, doomed.’ Then he throttled up the mower and resumed his work.

As Jenny said goodbye to Brian, she remarked, ‘Talking of pheasant feathers, I wonder how you clean out a bassoon.’

‘Alsatians’ tails,’ said Brian.

‘Not very practical. I don’t think you’d get one round the bends.’

‘You hardly ever find a dead one,’ said Brian, ‘and it’s a bit cruel cutting them off when they’re still alive. When they come round from the anaesthetic, they’re all off balance for a while.’

‘We just need a flautist, now,’ said Jenny. ‘One that plays in tune, and breathes at the right times, and isn’t mad.’

Brian shook his head. ‘There’s probably more chance of finding an Alsatian’s tail sticking out of a hedge.’

BACK THEN EVERY parish of the Anglican Church still had its own vicar or rector, and many of them still lived with modest gentility in substantial houses inherited from more prosperous and faithful days, when God was indisputably in His heaven, and all was right with the world. These were the times when one was not respectable unless seen in church, at least at Christmas and Easter. For teenagers it was a chance to eye up the prospects, and for middle-aged and elderly women it was a chance to remark upon who wasn’t there, and to deplore each other’s hats.

The Reverend Godfrey Freemantle, together with his wife, three pretty daughters, a yellow Labrador and two tabby cats, occupied a substantial rectory at the foot of the hill below St Peter’s Church. It had fifteen rooms and was supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a pregnant serving maid who had been found dead under suspicious circumstances in 1879, shortly after the Tay Bridge Disaster. It was said that her wraith wafted about the attic rooms of the former servants’ quarters, wringing its hands and looking for Epsom salts in the cupboards. No one had ever seen it, but the Reverend Godfrey Freemantle often liked to suppose that from time to time he detected a chilling of the air when he was up there at the skylight, observing the moon through his telescope. Occasionally he had thought of performing an exorcism, but he felt a little embarrassed about the idea of approaching the Bishop for permission, and he was too trepidatious to go ahead and do it without.

It was mid-morning, shortly before that Christmas that would always be remembered as the last in the village when it actually snowed on Christmas Day, and the Reverend Freemantle was in his study with a Handel flute sonata crackling and clicking on the record player, as he flicked somewhat despairingly through his collections of sermons for one that he might plagiarise for the family service. The composition of sermons was a weekly torment to him, as he was conscious of never having in all his life as a minister come up with something fresh or original. He was tired of repeating himself, but lacked the nerve to go to the pulpit unprepared. The Church of England was not an extemporising institution. What made it worse was that he often found God a difficult customer to deal with, and at this time was fresh from wondering what God could possibly have been up to when He let poor pretty Mrs Rendall die horribly of cancer while she was still so young. He wondered if God realised how difficult it was for him to keep making excuses on His behalf.

As he browsed a sermon on the True Meaning of Christmas, it suddenly occurred to him that he had not for some weeks seen Sir Edward at Holy Communion. The thought alarmed him.

Sir Edward Rawcutt (pronounced Rawt), fifth baronet, was not the squire of the village, although he performed that function to some extent, simply by being the only resident who was a baronet. The manor itself was occupied by an eminent musicologist, who was rumoured to drink tea and write about baroque music all day, emerging only in the evening, with his chamber pot perilously brimming. Few people had ever seen him, but his only daughter caused some comment by being dark-haired, passionate, black-eyed, beautiful, and always dressed in romantic white dresses, even for her forays to the village shop to buy mentholated Du Maurier cigarettes. The musicologist was to come into his own quite suddenly at the time of the great hurricane, when it transpired that it was the duty of the manor house to keep the pathways of the common land clear. He and his son took on the monumental task with amazing alacrity and efficiency, and thereafter the son never lost his interest in it.