Eleven Pipers Piping (3 page)

“Yes, chips for tatties,” she muttered over her cookery book; then she looked up. “You really can’t expect little girls to want boiled potatoes, can you, Mr. Christmas.”

How gratifying to be schooled about children’s tastes when he
had spent not a little time easing Madrun into the notion that Miranda’s—nor his—tastes did not run to Gordon Ramsay on a daily basis.

“So, I suppose you could say your Burns Supper is a kind of posh burgers and chips.”

Madrun looked up again. “Well, if you must.”

“Then may I stay? Please.”

Miranda giggled. “Emily says, ‘No boys allowed.’ ”

Except, presumably, for the spectre of young Mr. Burns, crowned with fifteen minutes of fame, Tom grumped. “Then what are you doing for neeps?”

“I’ve made fruit crumble for pudding,” Madrun answered. “Bramleys, Bosc pears, wortleberries, blackberries, yewberries, tayberries, strawberries—I’ve had quite the run this week on the frozen berries I picked and put down in the fall—”

“Clever Mrs. P. They’ll never detect turnip in that.” Tom was full of admiration.

Madrun looked enormously pleased, if enormous pleasure could be counted in a slight upturning of the lips. “Mind you don’t say anything.” She shook a warning finger at Miranda.

“I won’t.” Miranda paused, then raised her own finger to her lips. “Well, I won’t until
after
.”

“After will do. I suppose it’s one way to have children eat their vegetables.” She addressed Tom.

But Tom’s attention had been drawn to Miranda, who had skipped to the kitchen door and was looking through the glass into the garden.
“Papa! Regarde la neige! N’est-elle pas merveilleuse?”
she said, falling into French, as she often did when she was excited. In the darkness of early evening in January, the farthest end of the sloping garden, where trees screened the millpond in summer, seemed a void, soft and black, but where light spilled from the vicarage windows, demarcating the base of the old pear tree and two wicker chairs, all blazed white, diamond bright.

“Yes, it is marvellous, isn’t it,” he responded, joining Miranda to witness the thin veil of snow shimmering in the air. He put his hands on Miranda’s shoulders and felt the straps of her dungarees. He could sense her anticipation: This would be her first full experience of snow, though in the garden outside it was neither particularly deep (patches of stiff grass were visible) nor terribly crisp (wet, more like) nor very even (the terrace had less than the lawn). But it might be before long, if the weather folk read the signs and portents correctly. Shifting weather partly informed his unwillingness to tarry at the wedding reception at Pennycross. Temperatures had dropped through the afternoon; patchy ice had formed in the lanes between Pennycross and Thornford, and the landscape glimpsed between the hedgerows was bleached and undifferentiated in the watery winter light. Perhaps the snow wasn’t so marvellous, after all. Perhaps Madrun had been right: A fallen Yorkshire doth herald tempests drear. Or suchlike.

His stomach growled in response to the thought of food.

“Lions and tigers, Daddy,” said Miranda whose ears brushed his shirt below his chest.

“You could hear that?”

“I could hear it over here, Mr. Christmas. You could have a biscuit, I suppose …” Madrun began, making Tom feel not unlike Bumble, soon to be rewarded for being a good doggy.

He turned. Madrun was studying her watch.

“… or perhaps not. Best not to spoil your supper. Aren’t you expected soon?”

Tom glanced at his own watch. “Oh, yes, I suppose.” Then he glanced again, longingly, at the fridge—a huge double-door chrome American model, surely the largest fridge in the village outside the commercial ones at the Church House Inn, the Waterside Café, and the Thorn Court Country Hotel. “But isn’t there much standing about first, drinking whisky and the like?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to a Burns Supper.”

Startled, Tom was about to ask how she knew, more than he, what he was to expect from such an event, but Miranda interjected, “Are they no-girls-allowed?”

“They are,” Madrun replied stoutly.

“That’s not fair,” Miranda said.

“But yours is no-boys-allowed,” Tom protested.

“Really, Daddy!”

“Really, Mr. Christmas!”

Faced with remonstration to what he thought was reasoned observation, Tom backed down, supposing, in a split second of reflection, that most of human history was no-girls-allowed. Even Jesus, whom he thought a rather forward-thinking chap, hadn’t put a woman among His disciples. He was a bit snippy with His mother, too.

“Never mind. There’s Bumble off his head.” The sound of a frenzied Jack Russell barking could be heard on the other side of the kitchen door. Powell and Gloria stiffened into parodies of alert felines. “Someone must be coming to the front door. Race you!” he called to Miranda.

And yet somehow Miranda made it to the front door first and pushed it open. Ariel Moir and Becca Kaif seemed to pitch in on a gust of wind as Bumble darted between them and dashed into the front garden.

“Bumble! Get in here!” Tom shouted over their heads.

But the dog, now a scurrying, grey shadow against the black stone of the wall dividing the vicarage grounds from Church Walk, had turned dervish in the novel ground cover. Tom could dimly make out four wiry legs wriggling in the air as Bumble churned his back in the snow and made happy growling noises.

“Bumble!”

“Yes, Bumble, there’s a good dog,” called another voice, feminine but authoritative, clear and ringing, and Tom’s attention turned to a shadow moving up the path, various soft shapes hanging from each
hand. Caroline Moir emerged into the halo of the light over the porch, her cap of fine, fair hair blazing almost as white as snow itself. In the same light, her pale heart-shaped face and large, luminous blue eyes lent her a tentative, fragile air, but Tom had been deceived before by this tender vision. In his first week in Thornford, on an exploratory evening walk towards one of the green lanes that radiated from the village into the countryside, he had witnessed Caroline tear after—then tear into, politely but very firmly—a young man whose bullmastiff had fouled the road and who had paid no heed to the bright red dog-waste bin, not five feet away, which the parish council provided. She had not seen Tom pass during the encounter, and he was glad, for she had been introduced to him earlier as a member of St. Nicholas’s choir, and he simply couldn’t remember her name—a hazard of early days in a new parish. The man with the mastiff had glimpsed him, however, and though they occasionally crossed the same path, the man always turned his head away, as if tugged by some string of embarrassed memory. Bumble, too, seemed to know the effect of her voice, for he flipped right-side up at her command, darted over, and leapt up to imprint her camel coat with his damp paws.

“Stop it, Bumble—inside!” Tom commanded, and this time the dog obeyed him, inserting himself between the girls who were taking off their jackets.

“Oooh, he’s all wet!” one of them shrieked.

“These are Ariel’s,” Caroline said, handing him a purple backpack and a rolled sleeping bag. “And these are Becca’s.” She handed him a second set, this one pink, then brushed some snow from her hair. “Are you sure you’re ready for this, Tom?”

“I’m afraid it’s Mrs. Prowse who will bear most of the burden of the sleepover.” Tom dropped the girls’ gear on the deacon’s bench. “I’m going to the Burns Supper at your hotel.”

“Of course. What was I thinking?”

“Would you care to come in for something warm?”

“I can’t. I mustn’t linger. I think I’m parked illegally in someone’s spot.”

“Oh, you drove the girls here.” The hotel wasn’t far up the road.

“I’m going into Totnes to join Adam and Tamara for supper. Tamara and her group are performing at the Civic Hall. Although if this snow keeps falling I may have a sleepover of my own, in town.” Caroline cast him a faltering smile. “Anyway, it might be best to leave you males to your own devices. Burns Suppers have a certain reputation.”

“Perhaps,” Tom responded lightheartedly, tugging at his dog collar, “their chaplain will be a restraining presence.”

A look of half-startled wariness seemed to cross Caroline’s face. She stared at Tom a moment, as if entertaining some private care. “Oh, I should doubt it,” she responded at last, forcing an awkward laugh.

“Caroline,” Tom began, puzzled by her response, “are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine.” She paused. “I’m … perhaps a little concerned about making my way to town. It was quite slippy coming round the lane a moment ago and I wonder how the roads will be out of the village. I don’t think I’ve seen so much snow outside of a ski holiday the family took in Switzerland before Ariel was born.”

Responding to the sound of her name, Ariel said, “Mummy, have you got my camera?”

“Oh, yes, dear, it’s right here.” Caroline reached into her coat pocket. “Now, you remember what we talked about.”

“Yes, Mummy,” Ariel said with a sigh.

“And mind,” Caroline continued, bending down, drawing her daughter into her arms, and lowering her voice, “how you behave towards Becca.”

“Yes, Mummy.” Ariel sighed again, enduring her mother’s hug.

Caroline held on to her daughter for a moment longer than the wriggling girl seemed to wish, then released her. “There. Now be
good.” She rose and addressed Becca. “The pair of you. I’ll be having Mrs. Prowse give me a full report.”

She gave a tentative smile as the girls, divested of their outerwear, raced down the hall towards the sitting room.

“And speaking of Mrs. Prowse, any more fallout from the great Yorkshire debacle?”

“Oh, it’s a puzzle being pondered at some length.”

Caroline’s smile managed to widen. “I see. Anyway, I shall leave you to it. Best of luck.”

St. Nicholas’s bells rang the quarter hour as she turned back down the path, reminding Tom that six thirty was the appointed time for the Burns Supper to begin. Holding Bumble by his collar, he regarded the departing figure with disquiet. Through the demands of managing a hotel, Caroline carved out the time to lend her rich, slightly breathy alto to the church choir, faithful to the Thursday-evening practices and Sunday-morning services, where her white robe and silvery-blond hair lent her an almost ethereal air. But lately she’d had episodes of missing both, excusing her absences lamely, uncharacteristically—usually some consequence of short staffing. She and Will had closed their hotel after Christmas for renovations to take advantage of the low season, and this had given Tom the opportunity to have them for a meal, in part a belated thanks to Will for organizing Race for the Roof, the half-marathon fund-raiser for the church in the autumn. But that afternoon—unexpectedly, for he had found them simpatico on other occasions, imagining that Lisbeth, if she had been alive, would have taken to the accomplished and astute Caroline—conversation had not flowed with particular ease. He had a sense of another conversation, private and passionate, adjourned, to be resumed after tendering good-byes at the vicarage door. At the table, Caroline had seemed to watch Will like a sparrow hawk.

“Come on,” he muttered to Bumble, closing the door, “we need to get you dry.” He lifted the seat of the deacon’s bench, pulled out
an old bath towel, and began rubbing down the dog’s rough coat. Looking up, he noted Madrun coming down the hall from the kitchen bearing a tray with four fluted glasses containing what looked like champagne.

“Surely, Mrs. Prowse, that isn’t—”

“Heavens, Mr. Christmas! Of course it isn’t.”

He followed Bumble into the sitting room, where the three girls—minus the never-on-time Emily Swan—were gathered around the games table, which held two silver trays laden with Lilliputian versions of provender—tiny sausages, mini savoury muffins, chicken goujons, grissini, baby quiches. He was about to reach for one of the pizza fingers when he heard someone—Madrun—say “tut” followed by “those are for the
girls
, Mr. Christmas.”

Becca and Ariel regarded him warily over their flutes of ginger ale, as children might when confronted by a transgressing adult, particularly if that adult was a priest.

He had an idea. He gently brushed his hand by Miranda’s head, then exclaimed, “Look what I found! Miranda’s got ten pence behind her ear.”

“Oh, Daddy,” Miranda groaned, as he showed the coin to the others.

Ariel and Becca’s expressions brightened with curiosity as Tom made quick movements with his hands.

“Oh, look, the coin’s disappeared. I wonder where it went? Perhaps Ariel has it behind her ear. Good heavens, yes! Only Ariel has
fifty
pee behind her ear.”

Ariel shrieked as Tom once again demonstrated the coin, then, with more brisk handwork, caused it to disappear. When he pulled a two-pound coin from behind Becca’s ear, both girls chorused, “How did you
do
that?”

“It’s magic.”

“It isn’t,” Miranda said firmly.

“It’s a magic trick, then. Shall I teach it to you?”

“Don’t you have another engagement?” Madrun regarded him over the top of her glasses.

Tom sighed ostentatiously and moved with theatrical reluctance across the rug, as he might have done upon the stage. “Yes, I suppose I do. Well, girls, enjoy your fine supper. Mrs. Prowse has outdone herself, as usual. I pray I shall enjoy the humble meal that awaits me at the hotel.”

He turned into the hall and quickly crammed three pizza fingers into his mouth. Heaven! His heart and mind may have obeyed St. Paul’s counsel to put away childish things when he gave up his career in magic for the priesthood, but for his stomach there were moments of apostasy.