Trevor, William - Children Of Dynmouth

‘I’m disrobing, Timothy. I like to be alone when I’m disrobing, you know.’

‘I’ve come in for a chat, sir. Any time you said. Isn’t it a pity about Mr Rine, sir?’

‘He was very old, you know.’

‘He wasn’t young, sir. Eighty-five years of age. I wouldn’t like to live as long as that, Mr Feather. I wouldn’t feel easy about it.’

Quentin began to disrobe since it was clear that the boy wasn’t going to leave the vestry. He removed his surplice and hung it on a peg in a cupboard. He unbuttoned his cassock. Timothy Gedge said:

‘A very nice man, Mr Rine, I often had a chat with him. God’s gain, sir.’

Quentin nodded.

‘The son’s in the fish-packing station. An under-manager. Did you know that, Mr Feather? There’s fish in the family.’

‘Timothy, I wish you wouldn’t call me by that name.’

‘Which name is that, Mr Feather?’

‘My name is Featherston.’ He smiled, not wishing to sound pernickety: after all, it wasn’t an important point. ‘There’s a “ston” at the end, actually.’

‘A ston, Mr Feather?’

He hung the cassock in the cupboard. There was a Mothers’ Union tea that afternoon, an event he had to brace himself to sustain. Nineteen women would arrive at the rectory and eat sandwiches and biscuits and cake. They’d engage in Dynmouth chatter, and he would call on God and God would remind him that the women were His creatures. Miss Poraway would say it would be a good thing if something on the lines of a Tupperware party could be arranged to raise funds, and Mrs Stead-Carter would coldly reply that you couldn’t have anything on the lines of a Tupperware party unless you had a commodity to sell. Mrs Hayes would suggest that not all the funds raised at the Easter Fête should go towards the church tower, and he’d have to point out that if salvage work didn’t start on the church tower soon there wouldn’t be a church tower to salvage.

‘What’s it mean, ston, sir?’

‘It’s just my name.’

He lifted his black mackintosh from a coat-hanger and locked the cupboard door. The boy walked behind him when he left the vestry and by his side on the aisle of the church. Mr Peniket was tidying the prayer-books in the pews. It embarrassed Quentin when Timothy Gedge came to the church and Mr Peniket was there.

‘This bloke in a restaurant, Mr Feather. “Waiter, there’s a rhinoceros in my soup –” ’

‘Timothy, we’re in church.’

‘It’s a lovely church, sir.’

‘Jokes are a little out of place, Timothy. Especially since we’ve just had a funeral.’

‘It’s really good the way you do a funeral.’

‘I have been meaning to mention that to you, Timothy. It isn’t the best of ideas to hang round funerals, you know.’

‘Eh?’

‘You seem always to be at the funerals I conduct.’ He spoke lightly, and smiled. ‘I’ve seen you in the Baptist graveyard also. It’s really not all that healthy, Timothy.’

‘Healthy, Mr Feather?’

‘Only friends of the dead person go to the funeral, Timothy. And relatives, of course.’

‘Mr Rine was a friend, Mr Feather. Really nice he was.’

Mr Peniket was listening carefully, doing something to a hassock. He was bent over the hassock in a pew, apparently plumping it. Quentin could feel him thinking that in Canon Flewett’s time schoolboys wouldn’t have come wandering into the church to discuss the recently dead.

‘What I mean about going to funerals, Timothy –’

‘You go to the funeral of a friend, sir.’

‘Old Mrs Crowley was hardly a friend.’

‘Who’s Mrs Crowley then?’

‘The woman whose funeral you attended last Saturday morning.’ He tried to speak testily but did not succeed. It annoyed him when he recalled the attendance of Timothy Gedge at Mrs Crowley’s funeral, a woman who’d been a resident in the town’s old people’s home, Wisteria Lodge, since before Timothy Gedge’s birth. It annoyed him that Mr Peniket was bent over a hassock, listening. But the annoyance came softly from him now.

‘I’d rather you didn’t come to funerals,’ he said.

‘No problem, Mr Feather. If that’s the way you want it, no problem. I wouldn’t go against your wishes, sir.’

‘Thank you, Timothy.’

At the church door Quentin turned and bowed in the direction of the altar and Timothy Gedge obligingly did the same. ‘Goodbye, Mr Peniket,’ Quentin said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Goodbye, Mr Featherston,’ the sexton replied in a reverent voice.

‘Cheers,’ Timothy Gedge said, but Mr Peniket did not reply to that.

In the porch, full of missionary notices and rotas for flower-arranging, Quentin bent to put on his bicycle-clips.

‘Funny fish, that sexton,’ Timothy Gedge said. ‘Ever notice the way he looks at you, sir? Like you were garbage gone off.’ He laughed. Quentin said he didn’t think there was anything funny about Mr Peniket. He wheeled his bicycle on the tarred path that led, between gravestones, to the lich-gate.

‘I went up to see Dass, sir. Like you said.’

‘I didn’t actually say you should, you know.’

‘About the Spot the Talent competition, Mr Feather. You said the Dasses was in charge.’

‘I know, Timothy, I know.’

‘Only the curtains in the Youth Centre got burnt, Mr Feather. Two boys burnt them in December.’

‘Burnt them?’

‘I think the boys had been drinking, sir.’

‘You mean, they just set light to them?’

‘They put paraffin on them first, sir. They were making an effort to burn the place down, sir.’

He remembered. There had been an attempt to burn the Youth Centre down, but he hadn’t known that the curtains of the stage had been at the point of ignition. It was true, though: the curtains hadn’t been there for ages. He’d wondered why a couple of times.

‘Only I need curtains for my act, Mr Feather. I need darkness in the marquee and the curtains drawn twice. I explained to Dass. I have quick changes to do.’

‘I’m sure Mr Dass can rig something up.’

‘He says he can’t do curtains, Mr Feather. No way, he says.’

‘Well, we’ll find something somewhere.’ He smiled at the boy. He pushed his bicycle across the pavement and on to the road. He had a list of shopping to do for the Mothers’ Union tea.

‘Dass says he couldn’t supply curtains on his own, sir, on account of the expense. Only I think he’s maybe in financial trouble –’

‘Oh, we couldn’t have Mr Dass spending money on curtains. I’m sure we’ll find some somewhere. Don’t worry about it.’

‘You can’t help worrying, sir.’

Astride the saddle of his bicycle, the tips of his toes touching the ground in order to retain his balance, Quentin said again that curtains would be found for the Spot the Talent competition. He nodded reassuringly at Timothy Gedge. He felt uneasy in the presence of the boy. He felt inadequate and for some reason guilty.

‘You’re out with a blonde, sir, you see the wife coming –’

‘I’m sorry, Timothy, I really must be on my way now.’

‘It’s a joke when I call you Mr Feather, sir. Like a feather in a chicken, if you get it.’

Quentin shook his head. They’d have another chat soon, he promised.

‘I don’t think that sexton likes us, sir,’ Timothy Gedge called after him. ‘I don’t think he cares for either of us.’

At half past eleven that morning a man and a woman on a motor-cycle asked the way to the Dasses’ house, Sweetlea.

‘Name’s Pratt,’ the man said when Mr Dass answered the doorbell. Beneath a street-light that was still flickering from the night before the motor-cycle was propped up by the kerb. A woman in motor-cycling clothes and a helmet was standing beside it.