Preamble 2 - Getting started

Thursday March 20

Rehearsals for the Revue were held in the church hall on Wednesday evening. The church was used by the Muslim congregation, but their did not take place during a rehearsal. The church hall backed onto the church, so the rehearsal noise would have been disturbing.

The Mullah of the Muslim group, a Mr Jericho Williams, was happy to cooperate and would have liked to take part, since his larynx was well-oiled from singing the Koran. He appreciated the work being done by Dorothy, though in return Gareth Morgan, who played lustily at every church event and in between, distrusted any religion that did not rely on his organ for auditory support.

Dorothy was thinking of asking Mr Williams to sing in the Revue, though Jericho insisted that he only sang during religious services. He would think about the kind offer. Dorothy thought that ‘Joshua fit the battle of Jericho’ would be a good number, but Jericho was not quite sure of the implications.

***

When asked why he did not have a suitably oriental name, Jericho explained that he did not have a suitably oriental father. His mother was suitably oriental, a second generation Jordanian, he said. She had reared him to recite the Koran from memory and to forgive anyone who could not achieve that feat.

Being the Muslim with the best academic qualifications in the district, Mr Williams had been voted Mullah of the community and took his duties very seriously. He shared his time between teaching mathematics at Middlethumpton Comprehensive (singing C of E church hymns lustily during assembly) and imparting the Koran at the little Koran school he maintained at his home in Upper Grumpsfield. He had time left over for his hobbies and his wife, an occidental Methodist, and followed enthusiastically the fates of his four pretty daughters, who attended both his Koran school and St Peter’s junior club, a lively ecumenical organisation thought up by Mary Baker to aid interaction and tolerance.

***

Dorothy Price, of no declared religious leaning, was a member of St. Peter’s because, as she explained, that’s what you did in a village. Cleo Hartley, who was a private eye who ran an agency, was not interested in religion of any sort, so she avoided it. Her new partner, Chief Inspector Gary Hurley, a high-ranking official at Middlethumpton Police Headquarters, was ambivalent in his views of religious organisations, having had reason to arrest elements of all kinds of belief for all kinds of crimes. His creed was clear: Belonging to a religious group does not exempt individuals from having and utilizing criminal energy if they are hell-bent thereon. Mumbling prayers to any god you care to name does not mean that you will not go out and kill, rape or rob someone a few minutes later.

***

Dorothy had emphasized all along that a Spiritual Revue was entertainment to be enjoyed by all and not a campaign to recruit parishioners for St Peter's. In that spirit anyone could take part, including a class of line-dancers trained by Cleo’s mother Gloria, who was more interested in high-kicking legs than lofty thoughts and ideas. Gloria wanted her ‘girls’ (mainly corpulent women of advancing years with one or two lithe young things to do the really high kicks) to emerge from the River Jordan dancing and high-kicking. Dorothy was having second thoughts about letting Gloria’s exhibitionists take part, but could see no way of cancelling the invitation tactfully.

Gloria Hartley worked in Robert Jones’s butcher’s shop. Robert was now Cleo’s almost ex-husband legally and the late vicar’s wife’s almost clandestine and mainly reluctant lover, but the topic will not be dwelled on. Suffice it to say that Edith poisoned the vicar either accidentally or on purpose, depending on which version of the story you believe. Edith was responsible for their affair getting off the ground. She had, in her own words, shown Robert the works and it does not take much imagination to work out what she meant. Robert, a shy man with little interest in the erotic side of things, eventually escaped to his little flat above his family butcher’s shop. That should have been the end of story, but it wasn’t.

***

Living arrangements had undergone a sea change about which Dorothy was on no account to be allowed to write. Robert had moved out of Cleo’s cottage via Dorothy’s guestroom. Gloria had moved out of Cleo’s tiny guestroom into Robert’s flat, but she moved into Gary apartment in Middlethumpton of that Robert could have his flat back, while Gary moved into Cleo’s cottage hours after Robert had walked out of it. It should be mentioned (and forgotten) that Edith Parsnip seduced Robert the night before Mr Parsnip departed for Africa and ended up first vanished and then dead. That was already was a spiritual murder, without any song and dance routines.

Edith was imprisoned for murder, but subsequently pardoned because there was no way of proving conclusively that she really had wanted to commit murder Cleo was sure that she was guilty. Edith’s wiles had charmed the ninety per cent male legal system. Anyone who knew what had gone on at the vicarage was convinced that Edith had had enough motives to kill ten vicars. What they did not know was that the vicar might also have had motive enough to wring Edith’s neck several times, had he not been what he said he was, a ‘man of God’.

***

Robert, faced with Edith’s persistent attempts to resume the affair with him, believed that Gary Hurley knew how to handle women, so he eventually confided in him and begged for advice as to how to deal with Edith. Gary tried to make Robert understand that Edith was stalking him because he was not reacting to her antics, included exposing herself inside a look-alike Burberry mac from the charity shop and offering her body for closer inspection. That would have alarmed him, too, Gary assured Robert.

“Stalking is a criminal offence,” said. “Do you want me to arrest her?”

“Couldn’t you just caution her?”

“That won’t do any good, Robert. You’d better challenge her face to face and call the shots.”

“Call the shots, Gary? I don’t want to kill her.”

“Of course you don’t, Robert. I mean that you must tell her to stop following you around and you must find someone else to share your life.”

“I don’t want to share my life with anyone.”

“Weren’t you getting together with your former wife?”

“Rita is either playing hard to get or she doesn't want me.”

“Then you’ll have to try harder, Robert, unless you don’t want her. I don’t know what else to advise you.”

”I suppose you are getting on like a house on fire with my wife, aren’t you?” said Robert. He had not really come to terms with the idea that Cleo was now firmly attached to Gary, though Robert had himself struck his relationship with Cleo the final blow.

Robert had been dishonest from the start. He had known of her attachment to Gary before he married her and had gone ahead, misusing Cleo’s sense of duty. Cleo even had a baby, it transpired by Gary, despite Robert warning her that she was too old, which was deceitful, as he was unable to father any children, but had omitted to tell her.

Cleo had tried, albeit half-heartedly, to forget Gary for the sake of the marriage she had so unwisely agreed to, but he was the love of her life. Cleo, who tried to believe that her secret trysts with Gary were only an affair, had tried to save the marriage that Gary had been sure was doomed from the start. But Cleo could not forget that Robert had been nice to her when others weren’t.

***

Dorothy was relieved when the confusion in the lives of her friends abated, especially as for some considerable time she could not decide who was more worthy of Cleo. As everyone’s confidante, she regarded as dreadful Cleo being torn apart by her love for Gary and loyalty to Robert. Robert’s entanglement with Edith had appalled her, but made her think hard about taking sides. After all, it was none of her business, was it?

***

In the wake of a troublesome autumn, Dorothy could not generate much enthusiasm for the Revue in the absence of anyone likely to be of practical help. Even Laura Finch had been better at motivating amateurs than she was. She was also anxious that Robert, without whom the Revue was doomed to failure, could opt out and had to admit that rehearsals for the Spiritual Revue were probably doomed.

Some participants were on the point of walking out on the belligerent, offensive stage director, a Mr Daniel Defoe-Drummond, who had been brought in from Middlethumpton Operatic Society to sort things out. He had only consented because he was, as he put it, ‘resting’ between operatic productions. Mr Defoe-Drummond was thankful for the fees, small as they were. His life beyond his theatre enterprises consisted of free-lance flogging insurance in and around Middlethumpton, a thankless task in a town where most people were either insured to the hilt or had nothing worth insuring, or worse still, no ready cash to pay for insurance on things they really should insure.

To Dorothy‘s intense annoyance, Mr Defoe had strange ideas about slavery. He was of the opinion that a few ghosts would not come amiss. After all, they were spiritual spirits, weren’t they? The whole of the 19^th century had been chock-a-block with spectres and séances. Some of the gaunter looking members of the cast could be dressed in flowing robes and sent around the stage bathed in blue light. Dorothy pointed out that the church hall did not have blue lighting. Since everyone knew everyone anyway, they would just find it silly. No ghosts, she decreed.

“If you won’t have ghosts, I won’t accept line-dancers,” Mr Defoe bargained. 

***

Dorothy wondered if she could get Mr Defoe to turf out Gloria’s kickers in return for a blue arc lamp and half a dozen anorexic ghosts.