Pictures of Perfection

Then someone coughed gently and a voice said, ‘Need any help?’

He turned and saw the Scudamore sisters, or rather he saw Caddy, and he knew instantly he needed more help than anyone here below could give him.

It was a coup de foudre, a surge of longing so intense he felt as if every ounce of his flesh was on fire.

He stammered thickly, ‘The church … I’d like to look at the church …’

Kee Scudamore, whom he’d registered merely as a pale presence, bland and bloodless alongside the vibrant carnality of Caddy, said, ‘The church? Perhaps you should ask the vicar.’

He heard himself say idiotically, ‘I am the vicar’, and the smaller, darker, infinitely more luscious girl put a paint-stained hand to a mouth made to suck a man’s soul out of his body, and tried to stifle her giggles.

‘You mean the painting? Of course,’ said the cool blonde.

She moved past him, unfolded a set of steps, mounted, and unhooked the picture.

He had left with the painting wrapped in brown paper under his arm. It had cost him more than he could afford, but what was money when he was already aware of the incredibly high price he was likely to pay for his visit?

He was in love, a man who had nothing to offer, a man bound by a vow no one could release him from. He didn’t doubt that if he consulted his friend, the Bishop, he would be offered all the reassurance which that pragmatic prelate could muster. It is better to marry than to burn, would be trotted out. But it all depended where you were going to burn! He wasn’t sure just how much credence he gave to a physical hell, but he knew he had a belief to match Thomas More’s in the nature of a vow.

So he had thrown himself into his parish work with a fervour which soon won golden opinions, and he put himself out of temptation in his ‘spare’ time by following the Bishop’s suggestion and Charley Cage’s example by plunging into the past. Sorting out Charley Cage’s chaos of archival material was a necessary as well as a therapeutic act. As forecast by the Bishop, the diocese’s business managers had decided to do what Cage’s obduracy had inhibited them from doing much earlier, which was to build a modern bungalow and sell the rambling old vicarage into private occupancy. So Lillingstone had a great deal to occupy him. Yet in a small place like Enscombe not all the business in the world could prevent occasional encounters with Caddy, and the merest glimpse of her was like a tot of whisky to an alcoholic, producing instant relapse. Fearful that the physical effect of her presence would be too visible to sharp country eyes, he had abandoned the tell-tale tight jeans which were his preferred off-duty garb and reverted to the protective folds of the traditional cassock, a move which mollified his older parishioners who liked a parson to look like a parson.

His efforts to avoid Caddy did not extend to her sister. On the contrary, he found much solace in Kee’s grace and composure. Here was the still centre of the Scudamore household, its domestic and commercial strength and its tutelary spirit. And while Lillingstone would not have dared to be alone with Caddy, the company of Kee permitted a pale but safe shadow of contact.

‘Larry? Are you all right?’

He turned from his mirror to find Kee Scudamore, like a conjuration of his thought, standing in the open french window. A quick glance reassured him she was alone and he went towards her, smiling.

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Just rehearsing my Luncheon Club talk.’

‘Indeed? Well, if that was a dramatic pause, I’d be careful. There are ladies there who will not hesitate to rush forward with offers of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.’

‘I think you overestimate my charms,’ he said glumly.

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way to Old Hall and I thought I’d return these documents. Fascinating.’

She placed the box file on his desk.

‘I’ve hung on to the Deed of Gift,’ she said. ‘By the way, what exactly is a tithe?’

‘Old English teopa, Middle English tipe, a tenth,’ he said promptly. ‘Specifically, that tax of one-tenth of produce or labour paid for the upkeep of clergy. Last century as the produce and labour thing became uncollectable, or just undesirable, a rent charge was substituted. And in 1936 the Tithe Act abolished tithes completely, except as purely voluntary payments. Why do you ask?’

‘It was just something in the Deed,’ she said vaguely.

He glanced at her sharply and said, ‘You’ve not been nobbled by the antediluvians, have you? The ones who think the vicarage shouldn’t be sold because it was a gift from the parish?’

‘It does seem a mite ungracious.’

‘Kee, it was two hundred years ago!’ he said in exasperation. ‘And even if it were yesterday, a gift’s a gift. You don’t retain rights.’

‘So you’ll be happy to move into some little breeze-block bungalow?’

‘Of course not. I love it here. But you must admit it’s absurd for one single man to be rattling around in a place this size. Anyway, it’s not my decision. I have got masters.’

‘I thought you worked for God. Sorry. Let’s not fall out. I noticed your For Sale sign says Under Offer. Anyone I know?’

‘Indirectly,’ he said, not too happily. ‘Phil Wallop.’

‘What? As in Philip Wallop, Contractor, who’s doing Girlie’s improvements at the Hall? What’s he going to do with the place? Turn it into a massage parlour?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘There are of course restrictive covenants. Domestic use only. The positive way to look at it is a man doesn’t make a mess in his own back yard.’

‘You’re losing me, Larry,’ she said. Then her sharp mind made the leap. ‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with this working estimate for the Green Edwin was just telling me about? It would, wouldn’t it! My God, Wallop’s going to turn us into a suburb!’

Her face flushed with anger, she strode through the french window and across the lawn. Lillingstone hurried after her, catching up as she passed through the arched gateway leading into the churchyard.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘if the Green’s put on sale, it’ll be on the open market. There’ll be other bidders than Wallop.’

‘Other developers, you mean?’

‘No one’s going to pay the kind of money we need without planning permission. It’s Hobson’s choice, Kee, the school or the Green. But I’m not Hobson. Even the PC’s not Hobson. It’s the whole village, and that’s who’ll be making the choice at tomorrow night’s meeting.’

She walked on through the well-kept churchyard till they reached another arched gateway, this one with Guillemard arms and motto above it, marking the entrance to the family’s own private route from Hall to church, known as Green Alley. A hundred years ago it had been a broad gravelled path along which full-skirted ladies on the arms of full-bellied gents could stroll between banks of laurel and viburnum and lilac and rhododendron. But the cost of labour had gone up and the cost of irreligion had gone down and gradually Green Alley had shrunk to a muddy track scarcely wider than a sheeptrod.

Here she turned, the anger gone from her face, and reached out and touched her cool fingers against his hand.

‘Larry, I’m sorry. I’ve no right to snap at you. Something’s happening here – the school, the vicarage, the Green, the Hall – something that can run out of control unless we all stick together and use our heads. Forgive me?’

‘Of course,’ he said. Her candid gaze, her wise smile, her understanding tone, the cool touch of her fingers, brought to him how much he admired and respected her. Several times in the past he had come close to opening his heart to her and confiding his feelings for Caddy. Something had always got in the way. But here and now seemed the ideal time, the ideal place.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

‘Kee,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I’m passionately, insanely, helplessly in love with Caddy.’

He opened his eyes and found he was talking to Kee’s retreating back. But having come so far he was not about to give up. Dauntless, he plunged after her along the narrow track till she reached a small clearing where she paused and turned and said, ‘Sorry, Larry, were you saying something?’

‘Yes,’ he said, keeping his eyes open this time. ‘I want to tell you that …’

‘How very odd,’ said Kee.

‘Odd? Why so?’ demanded Lillingstone, assuming some kind of precognitive response to his proposed confession.

‘The hat,’ she said.

He knew he wasn’t wearing a hat. Nevertheless his hand flew to his head.

‘There,’ she said impatiently.

He followed her pointing finger. The function of this clearing was easy to work out. Here those upper-class promenaders overcome by fatigue, devotion or love had been able to rest a while on a granite bench made for two. It was lichened and ivied almost to invisibility now, but its location was signposted by a marble faun strategically placed to leer encouragingly over the heads of bashful wooers.