Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries) (19 page)

‘I think it was Kierkegaard who said that “without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith”.’

Celine smiled. ‘You must love flying more than the fear of falling. Have you read Anaïs Nin? “
La vie se rétracte ou se dilate à proportion de notre courage
”.’

As she spoke, Sidney could see why Reveille had loved her. ‘I’ll be taking the painting back to the Fitzwilliam.’

‘Mr Anderson will be pleased.’

Sidney did not know how much to say. ‘Do you have any message for him?’

‘You can tell him that I am sorry. I didn’t mean to cause trouble. I wasn’t thinking.’

‘It is his favourite painting.’

‘I wonder why?’

‘I think you should ask him that.’

‘That may be a long time away. I shall be in prison.’

‘I will ask him to come and see you.’

‘Why would he want to do that?’ Celine asked.

‘Because the heart has its reasons,’ Sidney replied.

Even though the trip had only lasted a few days, England appeared different on their return; darker, colder and ready for Christmas. Lights had been put up in the Cambridge town centre, trees both real and artificial were on sale in the marketplace, the window displays in the shops were frosted and silver, and tinsel tipped over the tops of shopping baskets as parents tried to restrain the excitement of their children. The Fitzwilliam Museum had put on an exhibition of nativity paintings, and Sidney found Graham Anderson in a swirl of Ghirlandaios, Correggios and Parmigianinos, with all the fat babies, obedient angels and improbable weather that comprised those stilled romanticised versions of what must have been a more difficult birth and a harsher truth. The Director drew his attention to a Dürer engraving of the Nativity and an Altdorfer of the Adoration of Kings, saying that if ever Hildegard wanted to come and look at the museum’s German holdings she would be welcome. ‘But I can’t imagine that’s why you’re here.’

‘No. We have obtained the Sickert, as I think you know. It was your daughter, after all, who stole it.’

‘And what will happen to her?’

‘Prison, I am afraid. Keating thinks it will be a minimum of three and a maximum of eight years. It depends on how the trial goes.’

‘Should I say something?’

‘I think you should see her. You don’t have to tell her everything but you could start with her mother.’

‘I know that it’s wrong for a child not to know her own father.’

‘And I think,’ Sidney continued, ‘that it might not be the shock you are expecting. Celine is used to doubt, secrecy and uncertainty. She knows of her own tragic past. Perhaps you can give her hope. The man she thought was her father is dead and you are alive. What can be more joyous than that?’

‘I wish I could have been better for her.’

‘There is still a future.’

‘I’m not sure if I know how to be a good father or what it means at all.’

‘I am not sure anyone does. I don’t have children myself but my own father seems to regard the whole business of parenting as a benevolent accident that has little to do with him.’

‘Perhaps it’s all to do with the confidence of a happy marriage?’

‘I am sure that helps.’

‘And will you have children, Canon Chambers?’

No one had ever asked Sidney this question so directly, and so he had never prepared an answer and he found himself saying, to his immense surprise, ‘Actually, I do hope so, however unlikely it may be. I think I’d like to be a father.’

As instructed by Amanda, Sidney had managed to bring back a souvenir from Dieppe as a thank you to his wife for letting him go in the first place. Despite being a little too pleased with himself with the purchase, he knew that he still had to be careful because Hildegard was cautious about their finances, especially just before Christmas. In fact, they had already agreed upon a rather unusual money-saving scheme involving the presents they gave to each other. Instead of buying anything new they had decided, as an experiment, to wrap up possessions
that they already had
and had forgotten about. The idea was that this would make them appreciate the things they took for granted, and rediscover objects that Sidney thought had either been lost to the vagaries of his behaviour or the eccentricity of Mrs Maguire’s cleaning. Thus, his grandfather’s leather pouch that he had kept for change, a newly cleaned jumper that had been something of an old favourite, and a silver matchbox case were all about to be given to him as if for the first time; a metaphor, if ever there was one, for the need for light and rebirth in the darkness of winter.

‘You have broken the rules.’ Hildegard looked at him with mock seriousness as she unwrapped her present. ‘And you remembered.’

Sidney had got it right. It was, indeed, her favourite perfume. Shalimar.

‘There are some things in life which are too important to forget,’ he replied, as truthfully as he could.

Later that night, after he had confessed to all his adventures, and while he was going through the correspondence that he had missed while being away, his wife called down to say that she wanted to ask him a question and it was important that he come upstairs without delay.

Sidney climbed the stairs with trepidation. The light on the upstairs landing had been turned off and the bedroom was lit by candles. Hildegard had also brought up the two-bar fire from the living-room.

As he walked through the door Sidney could only just discern the figure of his wife, unclothed on top of the bed and surrounded by apples.

‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘Am I naked or nude? Be very careful how you answer.’

Death by Water

Sidney was uneasy. He knew that it was one of his principal duties as a priest to keep cheerful at all times and he liked to think that he was content with his lot in life, but the copy of
The Times
that he was reading one late April morning in 1963 carried a biblical quotation at the top of the Personal Columns that gave him pause.

‘Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you.’

Sidney smashed the top of his boiled egg. What on earth was wrong with being liked? he mused. Did such a verse from the scriptures suggest that being popular was an attempt to curry favour and the deliberate result of flattery and hypocrisy? Why should one suffer for being loved?

Hildegard recognised the familiar signs of anxiety, tidied away her own breakfast and went off to practise the piano, leaving her husband alone with a vexatious newspaper and an overcooked egg.

This was one of those darker moments when Sidney wondered if his life since the war had been a mistake and that he should, perhaps, never have become a priest at all. It would certainly have been easier for his family, and now, indeed, his wife. He could have been a teacher or an academic, or trained himself up for something to do with the law. His mother and father, liberal North London agnostics both, had hinted at other possibilities while being generous in their acknowledgement of Sidney’s gathering clerical momentum, but there was no family history of holiness, and their son suspected that he would have filled their hearts with more pride had his willingness to work for the greater good been diverted into medicine or politics. Now, however, as he turned the pages of
The Times
, and looked idly into ‘Situations Vacant’, it was clear that he was ill-suited for any position other than that of a priest in the Church of England. He was too old to be a ‘brand executive’ at Lyons Maid ice cream and only just young enough to apply for a job as an agronomist promoting the use of boron in crop nutrition. He read that he could more than double his salary by becoming an electrical engineer in Nigeria (at £1,800–£2,200 per annum), or work perhaps in Canberra, in the Commonwealth of Australia, in ‘three-dimensional site planning’ (if he could ever find out what either of these posts involved). As he turned the pages of the newspaper he thought fancifully what it might be like to up sticks and live with Hildegard in Germany, and
The Times
helpfully advised him that Deutsche Edelstahlwerke AG needed a Managing Director for their works in Krefeld (wherever that was), but Sidney knew he had as much chance of acquiring
that
job as he had of becoming the local blacksmith.

Such idling over the idea of an alternative career had become more persistent after he had been persuaded to take a small part in a low-budget film directed by an old army friend, Nigel Binns. The forthcoming presentation,
The Nine Tailors
, was an ecclesiastical thriller based on the novel by Dorothy L. Sayers. It was set in the fictional village of Fenchurch St Paul and combined crime with campanology as the villain of the piece, a jewel thief, suffered divine retribution in a case of death by bell-ringing.

Grantchester was, in being both rural and relatively close to London, a convenient location for the film and Sidney had been persuaded to play a fictional clergyman, the Reverend Theodore Venables. This was the character who rescues Lord Peter Wimsey from his broken-down Daimler at the beginning of the story, puts him up at the rectory and then asks the great detective to take part in a nine-hour bell-ringing session to see in the new year.

The part of the vicar was, Nigel Binns told him, the ‘engine of the entire drama’, but when Sidney checked the script against the novel he found his character described in more satirical terms, as ‘a man who seldom allowed anybody else to finish a sentence’.

He was surely too young for the part. Venables had thin grey hair and a long nose; his hearing was not as good as it had been and he was always misplacing things (the only thing both actor and character had in common). He was a comic figure and despite the affection Dorothy L. Sayers undoubtedly had for the Church of England, Sidney worried that he would be playing the part of a buffoon.

Nigel Binns reassured him that he had no intention of poking fun and viewed his potential casting as a masterstroke. To have the character of Theodore Venables played by a living, breathing clergyman would give the role depth and authenticity. The film was going to be made like a documentary, he told his old army colleague. What Nigel wanted was the essential truth of things. Neither acting nor costume was required. All Sidney had to do was to learn his lines.

He offered a fee of £50 and Sidney initially thought that he would give the honorarium to charity until Hildegard reminded him that they did actually need the money. She also managed to persuade the director to throw in driving lessons since Theodore Venables had to give Wimsey a lift at the start of the film and her husband still could not drive a car convincingly. It was high time he learned, she said, and this would be the perfect opportunity to get going.

Nigel Binns agreed to the lessons on one extra condition; that Sidney’s Labrador could also be cast in the film. His presence by the water in a final tragic drowning scene would add extra sympathy to the tearjerker he had in mind.

This was slightly worrying because Dickens was not on top form and had recently begun to show signs of arthritis. There were walks on which he could not find his ball or appeared disinterested in any form of play. However, the film was an opportunity and, taking a longer-term view, there was always the thought that his beloved dog would be preserved on celluloid after he had made his final journey to that great kennel in the sky, and so all was agreed.

Sidney had a month to learn how to drive well enough to be filmed motoring up and down a private lane in a Morris Oxford ‘Bullnose’. He took instruction from Fergus Maclean, a lugubrious undertaker with a penchant for quoting Thomas Hardy, and then, on one memorable occasion, from Amanda who thought it would be a ‘lark’ to see how her friend coped with the double declutching required.

‘I really don’t know how you have got away without driving for so long, Sidney. I thought you learned all that stuff in the army,’ she teased.

‘I never got round to taking my test.’

‘You had your mind on other things, no doubt,’ Amanda replied before screaming ‘
Concentrate
’ as they approached an oncoming tractor on the wrong side of the road.

Sidney’s driving was, it had to be said, erratic. He stalled at junctions, proved reluctant to turn right, and was often unsure of the width of the car the film crew had lent him, veering away from the verges into the middle of the road before swerving back into his lane to brush the branches of the hedgerows.

‘I used to think driving revealed the character of a man,’ Amanda observed, ‘but now I am not so sure. You have an alarming ability to alternate between confidence and absent-mindedness. You must pay more attention.’

‘I am trying my best.’

‘Still, I suppose it will be good for the part. You’ll look like a typical vicar.’

‘There is no correlation between vicars and bad driving. That is most unfair.’

‘RED LIGHT,’ Amanda shouted as they made their way back into Cambridge. ‘STOP.’

Sidney hit the brakes and stalled.

His friend looked straight ahead. ‘I rest my case,’ she said.

The weather was far from promising on the day the crew arrived and Sidney knew that he should get Dickens’s morning walk out of the way before the rain came on. Nigel Binns had told him that they were filming at this time of year because they wanted a look of ‘March winds and April showers’ but Sidney did not feel it necessary to experience these things before production began. He therefore set off across the meadows with his beloved Labrador before the weather turned for the worse. Daffodils, crocuses and even a few fritillaries were popping up amidst fresh grass, and he noticed that these signs of spring gave the people of Grantchester renewed confidence. As they looked up to greet each other rather than down to their uncertain footsteps on frosty pavements, smiling a little more often, bicycling with renewed speed, their hearts, perhaps, more hopeful now the weather was warmer. The first cricketing schoolboys had even set up an impromptu game, and Sidney remembered that he had tickets for the forthcoming visit of the West Indies and would be able to see Gary Sobers bat at last.