Judgment Day

  “It was Daniel, you may recall, who had the last word.”

  * * *

  George Radwell supposed he would have to be chairman of this fund-raising committee. It would look a bit odd if he weren't. The prospect depressed him, not least because already, in the mind's eye, there loomed the abrasive presence of Mrs. Paling, and how he would cope with that he did not know. He could see her already, sitting there with that toothy smile and those little pointed breasts, asking awkward questions and saying things that threw you off key so that you said things back that made you appear foolish and you could see yourself as she saw you: foolish. She was a clever woman, no doubt, for what that was worth. Well, if she had some bright ideas about fund-raising maybe it would turn out to be worth having her. But.

  But one could have managed very well without. He sighed.

  And now there was someone coming up the front path toward the front door. A someone he didn't recognize: a large, heavy, middle-aged woman. Mothers' Union business, no doubt, or the preliminaries about a daughter's wedding—could be anything. He went to the door.

  She sat on the leather sofa in the study, a massive figure in blue crimplene, hefty knees a little apart so that he had to keep his eyes averted from the shadowy hinterland between and beyond. She had a doughy, expressionless face. At first he could not make head or tail of why she had come. She dumped herself there and seemed to expect him to find out the reason. She was called Mrs. Tanner. She lived on the council estate on the far side of Laddenham. She came to church, now and then, Christmas and that. She did not look, on the face of it, like a person in search of spiritual guidance, but then you never knew. George shifted uncomfortably in his chair, fumbling for further conversational openings. And then at last she said it was about her illness.

  “Illness?” George eyed her with apprehension. Cancer? Some awful diagnosis? He hoped not; comforting the dying was a thing he never could cope with, his eyes slid from their gaze and his voice loudened with heartiness. She certainly didn't look ill, at all.

  “That's why my daughter brought me,” said Mrs. Tanner. “Her that was at the gate, with the little boy. It's this phobia, see. It's been ten years now—ten years this spring. The doctors haven't ever been able to do anything, so my husband said the other day, why not try the vicar? See what he's got to suggest, if anything. Can't do any harm, can it, he said, and that's what they're there for, that sort of thing.”

  “Yes,” murmured George, doubtfully. “Yes, quite.” Mrs. Tanner stared at him, expectant. She moved a thigh like a bolster and the broken spring in the sofa groaned. George cleared his throat, “What sort of phobia, Mrs. Tanner?”

  “That's just it, they can't exactly put a name to it. It's interesting, they say, but it's not quite the straightforward ones. Agoraphobia—that's when you can't go out of doors at all, see.”

  “And you don't mind going out?”

  “Of course I do,” said Mrs. Tanner reprovingly. “I said my daughter had to bring me here today, didn't I? I can't go out alone. Nor cross the street nor go in a cinema or a big shop—crowds, see. Nor car journeys.”

  “Buses and trains?”

  “Not trains. A bus at a pinch, if it's not crowded, so long as my husband's with me, or my daughter.”

  George let this sink in. After a moment he said, “Then you can't really take a holiday?”

  “Well, I wouldn't want to anyway, would I? Not with the way I am about the sea.”

  “The sea?”

  “I can't look at the sea even in pictures,” said Mrs. Tanner impressively. “Not a calendar or on the telly. If it comes on the telly my husband has to switch off for me.” She stared across at him, her feet planted squarely on the worn vicarage rug, her massive thighs denting the sofa,

  “It must cause a lot of difficulties.”

  “Difficulties!” Mrs. Tanner snorted.

  “Could you tell me,” said George delicately, “what it is you feel—I mean, why it is you don't like to go out alone, or be in a crowd, or go in a car, and so on.”

  “Going out alone is animals, in the first place. Dogs. But cats, too. See a dog and I'm a jelly. That's why my husband's always got to be there, in case there's a dog—get between me and it, see. Or my daughter. She comes for me every day and walks me to the shops. Oh, it's no good telling me they don't go for you in the normal way, dogs, I know that. But they can. It's been known. For someone with my condition that's all that matters.” She shot a look of triumph at George. “Then crowds is there might be a fire and you'd not get out. Crossing the street and cars is road accidents.”

  “I see,” said George. They sat in silence. Mrs. Tanner sniffed, succinctly. George went on, with caution: “I suppose one could say—well, all those things are the same for everyone. For all of us. I mean, the chances. It's—well, just the risk of being alive at all.” He gave a little laugh.

  Mrs. Tanner looked at him with contempt. “Oh yes. Oh yes, that's been said before. But it's only someone with my condition that feels it.”

  George said thoughtfully, “The sea?”

  “Heaving like that. What it'ud be like if you were in it.”

  George nodded. He couldn't really think of anything much to say. Mrs. Tanner gazed fixedly at him. “They've been seeing me at the clinic seven years now. The old doctor I used to see passed on last March, there's a woman now. Reams of notes they've taken, there's a file that thick.” She measured off an inch or so between finger and thumb; George registered respect. “They give me drugs and that. I'm on three different ones. They don't make any difference,” she ended complacently.

  George began to talk. He talked about stress and pressures and relaxing and seeing things in perspective. He said everyone has their quirks. He said, with another laugh, now with me it's heights, even a stepladder, an ordinary stepladder … Mrs. Tanner looked across at him, stonily. He rambled on in some desperation and eventually ran dry. Mrs. Tanner gathered up her shopping bag and fastened her coat. She said, “I thought, well, no harm in asking. I said that last night, to my husband, no harm in seeing if there's anything he can suggest.” She moved out into the hall. George opened the door for her; at the gate, a harrassed-looking woman with a baby in a pushchair was hanging about. “My daughter,” said Mrs. Tanner. “She's waiting to see me home. Thank you, Vicar.” She moved away down the path, with a curiously smooth gait, as though she were on castors.

  George went back into the study. He felt both unnerved and irritated. The sofa bore, still, the impression of her massive bottom and there was a faint whiff of peppermint. Her jaw, at the points when she had sat in stolid silence, had champed at something. He opened the window and sat down at the desk, where the Restoration Appeal notices awaited him.

  * * *

  Clare, walking the thirty yards from her own door to the vicarage, thought, I wonder who'll be chairman. Not me, anyway, that's for sure. Oh dear, last arrival, there they are all round the table already, that'll be a black mark to begin with. She saw George Radwell get up from his chair and stand waiting at the vicarage front door, which was badly in need of a coat of paint.

  They inspected her, covertly, as George, getting things off to an inept beginning, bumbled through what had to be done and what people had suggested and what he himself was about to propose.

  Miss Bellingham thought, those blue canvas trousers like children wear, for a committee meeting, you'd have thought a skirt at the very least, and the jersey's seen better days. John Coggan, receiving across the table Clare's large grin, smiled weakly back and became absorbed in the notepad in front of him; Church Restoration Appeal Comm. he wrote busily, and then the date, twice, and a list of committee members. He would end up as chairman, he supposed: no bad thing, look good in the local papers—Chairman, J. Coggan, Esq. Make a better job of it than the vicar, too. He stretched a leg out, under the table, clipped what must be Mrs. Paling's shin, and felt a warm glow creep above his collar; there was something about that sort of woman that made you put yourself in th
e worst possible light. Harry Taylor, solicitor and chairman of the Parish Council, took his pipe from his mouth and nodded: pity Paling hadn't joined the committee himself, would have been no bad thing to get to know him better, one of the high-ups at United Electronics. Sending his wife instead rather put local affairs in their place, not altogether tactful; odd-looking woman, too.

  Sydney Porter, talcing the minutes, recorded Clare Paling's presence and left it at that.

  George Radwell, plunging on, not looking her way, could feel her on his right like the threat of some unstable substance, a fuse that might be sparked off by any unwary movement. He talked faster and worse to cover his unease; incoherence compounded with repetition. Was checked at last by Taylor, wondering smoothly if perhaps the election of some officers, and an agenda, might be an idea at this stage.

  John Coggan was elected chairman, Harry Taylor having declined to stand, on the grounds of existing commitments. John Coggan said, “Well, of course, if that's what the general feeling is, glad to do it. Sure that's all right with you, Vicar?” George, simultaneously offended and relieved, said, too lengthily, that he didn't at all, good heavens no, much better that someone else take over.

  They discussed fund-raising methods: sponsored walks and fetes and raffles and jumble sales.

  Harry Taylor said, “Small beer.”

  Miss Bellingham, inferring criticism of a lifetime thus engaged, said huffily that well if Mr. Taylor was used to doing things on a bigger scale, Oxfam and all that, then it would be nice if he could give them some ideas. Personally she'd always found that a good summer fete, if the weather was kind…

  John Coggan remarked that even nowadays fifty thousand was a lot of money.

  “What is the church worth?” said Clare. “On the open market. As a piece of real estate. Just out of interest. Mr. Coggan, you know about that kind of thing?”

  There was a startled silence. Miss Bellingham pursed her lips and sniffed. George murmured, “Yes, interesting. I wonder,” and avoided her indignant stare. Next time he was going to make a point of not sitting next to Mrs. Paling, not that he'd chosen to this time, she'd just put herself there; out of the corner of his eye, like it or not, he could see her long trousered flanks disappearing under the vicarage dining-room table.

  “Well,” said John Coggan, clearing his throat, “since you ask, I'd be hard put to it to suggest a figure. Not a thing that's ever come my way.” He laughed, a touch embarrassed. “We had a Methodist chapel once, very bad state of repair. But something like St. Peter's …” He shook his head.

  Miss Bellingham observed that in Norfolk there were churches quite derelict and run down, not used at all, and it was a crying shame. She also thought it was neither here nor there, there were things you couldn't put a price on. Shooting a look at Mrs. Paling; a moneyed young woman, you could tell, never mind the clothes, and there was always something just a mite vulgar about moneyed people.

  Harry Taylor stoked his pipe and inquired (jovially} if Mrs. Paling was suggesting they sell off the chancel.

  “It wasn't entirely a frivolous thought,” said Clare. “It struck me that since we can't possibly rely on churchgoers to give us enough to meet the Appeal, as I'm sure Mr. Radwell would agree, in this day and age…”

  George broke in to agree fervently, and for too long.

  “…then in that case we have to strike a chord generally. We've got to think of what it is the church has got that most people might feel they wanted to do something for. And what the church has got is age. It's a very old building. And old buildings are well-regarded just at the moment. They have a scarcity value. You know that, Mr. Coggan, well enough; antiquity has its price.”

  John Coggan agreed that there was always a market for a period house.

  “Exactly. So I wasn't meaning that we sell the church. Just that we cash in on its greatest asset. Use it.”

  “It's a historical monument,” said Miss Bellingham. “It says so somewhere. Grade I. Of course some of us,” she went on, not looking at Mrs. Paling, “would feel that that comes second. But still.”

  “All churches, virtually,” said Clare, “are of some interest. This one rather more than most. The wall painting alone…”

  “It's the Day of Judgment,” instructed Miss Bellingham. “You've got the saved going up to heaven on one side and the—the unsaved—going down to hell on the other.”

  “The damned,” said Clare. “Quite.” She lit a cigarette.

  There was a silence, during which Miss Bellingham could be felt to retract, glower, and gather herself. Sydney Porter, hitherto silent, spoke. He said that he didn't know a lot about that kind of thing, but he'd been looking up one or two books in the library, because he'd been thinking a bit along the same lines as Mrs. Paling, since you had to be realistic, and church attendance wasn't that high these days, and it seemed that the church had had quite a bit of history.

  “Well, it would, wouldn't it,” snapped Miss Bellingham.

  “All that time.”

  Harry Taylor came in to say that he thought Mr. Porter had a point there, quite a point. There might indeed be something that could be done by way of using the church's historical associations. They had to bear in mind the size of the tourist industry nowadays and while admittedly Laddenham wasn't exactly on the Stratford run it might well be that they could put on something that would pull in a few visitors. We mustn't underrate history.

  Miss Bellingham moved in. “I think that's a very nice idea, Mr. Taylor. Very nice. It's what I was just about to suggest myself. A masque, that kind of thing—costume and Good Queen Bess and the schoolchildren could do some maypole dancing. People are very keen on that. I saw the most delightful son et lumiere last year at—dear me, I forget exactly, it was a county house somewhere, a very historical place—with lovely music and the actors having a medieval banquet and then dancing and so on, all in costume.”

  “That's not history,” said Clare. “History is ghastly. Nothing but misery and war and brutality. One should be glad it's over.”

  Miss Bellingham glanced at her with scorn. What an ignorant and silly remark. It showed Mrs. Paling up. She herself thought highly of history and always took some out of the public library on Fridays, along with travel and a couple of thrillers: good biography, like Lady Longford on Queen Victoria, or something on the Greeks and Romans, or a book about stately homes, with nice pictures.

  Sydney Porter was speaking again. He said it wasn't history in general that he'd had in mind. It was things particularly to do with the church, with St. Peter's, and as far as he could make out from this book he'd found, a book on local history it was, there'd been two quite important events actually in the church. At least the first wasn't in the church, it was in the churchyard. There'd been five men shot there.

  “Gracious!” interrupted Miss Bellingham. “Well I don't think that's something we want to be reminded of, do we?”

  Shot during the Gvil War, in the time of Cromwell and King Charles. These men had been shot by the parliamentary people because though they were on their side, as it were, they weren't toeing the line. They'd got out of hand. Levellers, they called themselves. Lined up against the churchyard wall and shot.

  Harry Taylor was attending to his pipe. “Rough justice!” He looked round the committee, with a little laugh.

  George wanted to say something witty that would catch Mrs. Paling's attention: something about “other times, other customs,” but that ought to be in French and he didn't know how you pronounced it. He opened his mouth once or twice and shut it again. Finally he came out with, “Hope it wasn't on a Sunday, at least.”

  None of them paid him any attention. Sydney Porter began again.

  And then later, in the last century, there'd been business with a lot of farm workers who'd been demanding higher wages (“Ah!” Harry Taylor interjected. “Now we're getting nearer home. Plus ça change, eh?”}. Riots. There'd been threatening letters to landowners and big farmers, just signed “Captain Swing,
” about what would be done if they didn't give more money—violence and so on—and the rioters had come to the church and met the parson there, and the local squire, and they'd broken down the altar railings, and messed the place up. In the end, twenty men had been sentenced and transported to Australia.

  Miss Bellingham said, “A lot of them are descended from convicts, out there. Of course they don't like it if it's pointed out too much. My cousin married a person who lives in Sydney.”

  Sydney Porter, delivered of his information, was making some notes; meticulous writing, the margin aligned as on the printed page.

  Clare lit another cigarette. “I think that's all very interesting. I think we should find out more about it and see if we can't make some use of it for the Appeal.”

  “It's depressing,” said Miss Bellingham.

  “History often is.”

  John Coggan cleared his throat. That was the trouble with this sort of setup, broad-based, all kinds of people: you got scrapping. Have to pull things together. He began to summarize the achievement of the evening, insofar as the word was appropriate. The target; the time-scale; the methods. “And we're all agreed, aren't we, that we should give some thought to making use of the church's history. Some kind of event, perhaps, that we could build up to…”

  “A fete,” said Miss Bellingham. “With maypole dancing.”

  “…and hope to draw a wider audience. Perhaps some sort of—well, re-enactment of these incidents Sydney's told us about.”

  “Is shooting people an incident?” murmured Clare. “But I agree that it would be…”

  Miss Bellingham interrupted to say that she didn't see how you re-enacted that, not authentically.

  John Coggan ignored her. And with this in view, he went on, perhaps Sydney and er, Mrs. Paling maybe, since she was enthusiastic about the idea, could put their heads together and find out some more about the background and what actually happened and so forth and then the committee could talk about it again at the next meeting.

  The committee dispersed. Clare, looking back for a moment as she went out of the vicarage gate, saw George Radwell at the uncurtained window, staring out and then turning away hastily as he caught her eye. There's a bloke who doesn't care for me one little bit, she thought, oh well, it's mutual, come to that. And now for bed and a good book, after that lot. Or a good husband.