‘I suppose he hasn’t got her into the Women’s Institute yet?’ said George, and had to smile at the idea.
‘No, he does the joining, she presides at home and looks handsome. And keeps his friends and rivals coming,’ said Moon with shrewd perception, ‘so he knows what they’re up to. But as far as public functions go, her job is just to be his consort. I don’t think public distinction for her was ever in the contract.’
At St Eata’s church in Abbot’s Bale it was the custom of the trebles, during the sermon, to amuse themselves with various ingenious games invented by themselves. The choir-stalls, part of the elaborate renovations perpetrated in the nineteenth century, were deep, and covered a multitude of sins. The boys on the decani side had to be wary, since a couple of the tenors behind them were tall enough to see down into the stall in front, even when seated, but happily they were also the two who were most likely to be dozing themselves. The Reverend Stephen’s sermons were painstaking and worthy, but not exciting. They also tended to end abruptly, which gave an added spice of danger to some of the games. Passing the chocolate orange, for instance (orange by courtesy of Toffee Bill, whose mother kept the village shop, and paid for by communal funds!), entailed slipping the orange from hand to hand all along the cantoris side to the altar end of the stalls, each boy detaching one section for himself, whereupon Ginger Gibbs, last in the line, had the hair-raising job of lobbing the remnant, precariously re-wrapped in its gold foil, across the intervening space to Bossie Jarvis on the decani side, so that the progress could continue along that stall, too. Nobody had yet thought of a way of getting the few remaining sections across the other end, in full view of the congregation. If any survived, the direction had to be reversed. Judging the right instant to throw required immense coolness and precision. Neither Ginger nor Bossie had ever yet been caught in the act.
There were other pursuits, of course. Those who still carried clean handkerchiefs sometimes tied them into animal shapes, and gave puppet-shows, mainly for their own stall, but sometimes, snatching the right moment, above the desktop for the line opposite. Consequences also had its days, with appropriate variations. Sometimes Bossie, at one end, started a paper slip with the invented name of the dear departed, and each boy after him added one line of the epitaph to appear on his tombstone. But on this particular Sunday it was a similar game played with lines extracted from hymns. This was too difficult to be taken beyond the quatrain, and the fourth participant, if stuck, was allowed to invent his line without being tied to actual hymns. The system had just produced the following:
‘The voice says, Cry. What shall we cry?
When heated in the chase,
Behold, the bridegroom draweth nigh
With his arm round amazing Grace.’
Resulting giggles had to be suppressed, and the next player could start a new stanza, in this case generously enough with a simple line:
‘This is the first of days’
to which Spuggy Price, always enterprising, added:
‘When our heads are bowed with woe’,
and Toffee Bill contributed:
‘Let our choir new anthems raise’.
The manuscript had now reached Bossie, just as the vicar concluded his sermon, as suddenly as ever, and announced the next hymn. Number 193, ‘Jesu, Lover of my soul’. Now this, thought Bossie contentedly, as the congregation squared up hopefully for ‘Aberystwyth’, is one he can’t spoil. Even if he chose ‘Hollingside’, instead, that would be only a shade less satisfying than the majestic Welsh harmonies. Only the rest of the choir rose apathetically. Bossie, for once, had missed practice, owing to the slight aftermath of a visit to the dentist, and the sound of a completely strange, complicated and extremely uncongenial tune rolling down from the organ-loft caused his jaw to drop, and his eyes to pop out like hat-pegs with indignation. He could even spoil this! Here on the edge of Wales, in a parish of fervent singers, who but Rainbow would have dared to ditch something as splendid as ‘Aberystwyth’ for this trendy drivel?
Bossie grasped the pencil and wrote the final line of the quatrain so violently that he pushed holes in the paper:
‘Rainbow’s got to go!’ Underlined savagely, and with the added note below: ‘In the furnace-room after service. Council of war!’
They sat on upturned boxes among the coke, and there wasn’t a dissentient voice among them.
‘Our choir’s been made to raise new anthems long enough,’ said Bossie grimly, setting his rounded but resolute jaw. ‘The others are just as fed-up as we are, and dislike him just as much, and if he stays here much longer somebody’s going to get desperate and dot him one, or set his house on fire, or something. Because he’s never going to fit in, he’s all wrong, and he’s got to go!’
‘You’re only saying what everybody’s been saying for weeks now,’ Ginger reminded him reasonably. He was a solid, sensible boy, large for his thirteen years, freckled and sandy, but placid of disposition instead of fiery. ‘They shut up if they think we’re listening, but you should have heard the basses letting fly the other night, after he produced this new tune. They didn’t know I was still there. But if they can’t think of any way of getting rid of him, what do you reckon we can do?’
‘He won’t go easily,’ said Toffee Bill gloomily. His mother’s shop had not benefited at all from the coming of the Rainbows, who had most of their exotic goods delivered from Comerbourne. Middlehope was good enough to exploit and patronise, but not to mix with; except, of course, its top layers, where layers had never played much part before. The pub didn’t benefit, either, drinks were sent up by the crate from dealers in Birmingham. ‘He’s got that house all poshed up, he won’t let go of it now, after all the money he’s spent, not unless he’s druv out. And I don’t know how you set about that.’
‘Grown-ups are too squeamish,’ said Bossie darkly. ‘What’s the use of fair means, if they don’t work? They’ve been trying to chill him out for ages, ever since they found out what he’s like, but he doesn’t even notice. As long as he’s running everything in sight his way, he doesn’t care whether people like him or not.’
‘Well, that’s what I’m saying. If he doesn’t care, freezing him out isn’t going to work, is it?’ Toffee Bill, treasurer of the gang’s funds and adviser on best-buys in the sweet world, expert on special offers, competitions and bonus bars, was the thinnest child in the choir, being blessed with one of those metabolisms that can deal with huge amounts of food without putting on an ounce of flesh. His voice was passable, but nothing to write home about, but his value to the group was immense, and they would have resigned en masse if his tenure had been threatened. He was, however, a pessimist, necessary ballast to any company that included Spuggy Price, the fiercest and most daring of ten-year-olds, and owner of a light, floating voice, good for at least three years yet, and understudy to Bessie’s mellifluous solo act.