LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER THREE

      ‘… so young, so blooming and so innocent, as if she never had a wicked thought in her life – which yet one has some reason to suppose she must have had …’

      Kee Scudamore watched the last motorcyclist move away, then crossed the street. She walked with an easy and unconscious grace untroubled by the gusting wind which unfurled her long flaxen hair and pressed her cotton skirt to the contours of her slender thighs. Under her left arm she carried a box file.

      ‘Dora, Edwin, good day to you,’ she said in a soft voice with just enough music in it to take the edge off a certain almost pedantic note. ‘And what did Guy the Heir want with you?’

      ‘Pie for his cronies,’ said Dora Creed. ‘I sent them packing. Rules’s no good if you make exceptions. No hippies, no bikers.’

      ‘Take care, Dora. Once he comes into his own, it will be his decision who caters for the Reckoning, not to mention the new café.’

      Dora shrugged indifferently and said, ‘Hall may stand higher than the church, but it’s the church I look up to.’

      ‘Well said,’ replied Kee. ‘I wish everyone had your principles, especially up at the Hall.’

      ‘Oh Jesus,’ said Digweed. ‘Not more revelations?’

      Dora Creed shot him an indignant glance and said, ‘The Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.’

      Digweed replied with some irritation, ‘If the Lord can tolerate the enthusiasm of a vessel as holy as yourself for the works of Harold Robbins I am sure he will permit me the occasional profanity. Kee, what now?’

      ‘It’s this gift shop Girlie’s planning. First there was your brother’s carved crooks, Dora. Not that I can really complain about that. George is a free agent and goes his own way.’

      ‘As an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks,’ said Dora Creed fiercely.

      Kee raised her eyebrows questioningly at Digweed who shook his head as if to say he didn’t understand either.

      ‘However,’ resumed the blonde woman, ‘Beryl Pottinger’s a horse of a different colour. I’ve put in a great deal of time and effort there, and she’s learned a lot from Caddy. Her watercolours have become our bestselling line. Now she tells me Girlie’s offering her a better deal. This is blatant poaching.’

      ‘I cannot believe Beryl would let herself be bought.’

      ‘With her job at the school on the line, money may seem a little more important.’

      ‘He that hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent,’ said Dora.

      ‘Let’s hope we can save her job,’ said Digweed.

      ‘By selling the Green, you mean? Even if that’s what the village opts for, would it raise enough?’

      ‘With planning permission, possibly. The Parish Council put out some unofficial feelers and got a working estimate. But let’s leave all that till the meeting tomorrow night, shall we? Meanwhile I hope you get your difference with Girlie sorted out. She’s a reasonable woman.’

      ‘She’s also a Guillemard, and Fucata non Perfecta’s a hard virus to get out of your blood. Holistic healing and executive cowboys and indians may save the Hall, but what kind of people do you think they’ll be bringing into the village?’

      ‘Hippies. Bikers,’ said Dora promptly. ‘They go to and fro in the evening: they grin like a dog, and run about through the city.’

      Digweed and Kee laughed out loud and the bookseller said, ‘Certainly that last creature that was here, the one by himself, he was straight out of Mad Max! But there can’t be many around like him, thank heaven. Kee, that deed of gift you want me to look at …’

      ‘I’ve got it here,’ said the woman, opening the box file which was full of what looked like old legal papers. ‘Here you are.’

      ‘My law is very rusty,’ he said warningly as he took the document she handed to him.

      ‘Mine’s non-existent,’ she replied, closing the file. ‘I’ve probably got the wrong end of the stick. Nevertheless, it could be worth a look. Meanwhile I’ll drop the rest of this stuff off at the vicarage and I might just carry on to the Hall and have a talk with Girlie about Beryl. Edwin, if you see anyone going into the Gallery, you might pop across. Caddy’s supposedly in charge, but once she gets stuck into something in her studio, you could blow up the till and she would hardly notice.’

      She set off up the street with the wind dancing attendance.

      Digweed, watching her go, said, ‘Interesting how well Kee managed to suppress her fascination with parish history while old Charley Cage was up at the vicarage.’

      Dora said, ‘A vicar needs a wife. It’s not natural else.’

      ‘Indeed? Perhaps you should drop a line to the Pope. I think I’ll just pop over and check that Caddy’s OK.’

      He patted his silvery hair as he spoke, though unlike Kee’s silken mane, it was too coarsely vigorous to be much disturbed by the wind.

      Dora Creed said, ‘The hoary head is a crown of glory if it is found in the way of righteousness.’

      ‘True beyond need of exegesis,’ said Digweed.

      He crossed the street and entered the Gallery. Converted from the old village smithy, it was a spacious, well-lit room, the upper walls of which were crowded with paintings and the lower shelved with tourist fodder. Behind the unattended till a door opened on to a narrow, gloomy passage. Digweed went through it and called, ‘Caddy?’

      ‘Here,’ a voice floated down a steep staircase.

      Digweed ran lightly up the stairs and along a creaking landing into the studio. This consisted of two rooms knocked together and opened into the attic whose sloping roof was broken by a pair of huge skylights. These spilled brightness on to a triptych of canvases occupying almost an entire wall. On them was painted a Crucifixion, conventionally structured with the cross raised high in the central panel and a long panorama of landscape and buildings falling away behind in the other two.

      Here conventionality ended. Though much was only sketched in, the background was clearly not first-century Palestine but twentieth-century Enscombe. And the as yet faceless figure on the cross was a naked woman.

      At one end of the chaotically cluttered room, Caddy Scudamore, as dark as her sister was fair, and as luscious as she was lean, stood in front of a cheval-glass with her paint-stained smock rolled up, critically examining her heavy breasts.

      ‘Hello, Edwin,’ she said. ‘Nipples are hard.’

      ‘Indeed,’ said Digweed, his gaze drifting from reflection to representation. ‘And perhaps one should ask oneself whether in the circumstances they would be. Caddy, I think the time has come for you and I to have congress.’

      And he carefully closed the door behind him.