Tea with Jam and Dread (13 page)

FRESH FIG BREAD

Combine and let sit for fifteen minutes:

1½ cups chopped ripe figs

¼ cup cooking sherry

Mix in small bowl:

1
²
/
₃
cups flour

½ cup chopped walnuts

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp salt

Beat together in large bowl:

1½ cups sugar

½ cup salad oil

2 large eggs

Blend flour mixture into oil mixture; gently fold in figs. Pour batter into well-greased 5×9 inch loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1¼ hours. Cool in pan for 10 minutes; invert on rack to cool. Freezes well.

P
astor Diffledorf is a kindly old man who possesses at least
two faults of which I am aware. His most obvious failing is that he insists on retaining a silly-sounding family name that I can’t, for the life of me, seem to remember. His only other flaw is that he never had enough ambition to get a
real
paying job. My church pays him, of course, by passing around two much-battered offering plates every Sunday morning. However, even though we have not become godless pagans like the unchurched Brits, our attendance has dropped drastically as our young people flock to the shopping malls, stay home to watch sports on television, or in the case of Elmer Gingerich and Rudy Swinefister, misbehave in the hayloft. The sad truth is that not even a church mouse on the dole could survive on the pittance we pay Pastor Dufflediff.

‘Pastor,’ I cried in alarm. ‘It’s not my turn to serve you Sunday dinner is it?’

‘No, Magdalena, it is not, but neither is it your turn to skip church.’ He looked around with mock astonishment, which in God’s eyes is surely just a hair’s breadth away from a lie. ‘Why, just look at the earthly mansion which you inhabit. It is no wonder that you care naught for your Heavenly abode, which is even now being prepared for you.’

‘
This
is a bed and breakfast hotel,’ Toy said gallantly, ‘not just Magdalena’s private residence.’ He paused only a millisecond. ‘Although, I would wager that she’s raking in the loot with both hands and
could
afford to put a mansion down anywhere that she wants – even in Heaven.’

‘Toy!’ I said while waggling my long, shapely index finger at him. Hernia’s young, Episcopalian peace-keeper and my aged clergyman do not see bright blue eye to grey-blue eye. I turned back to Pastor Daffleduff. ‘Now that you are here, looking after my soul, who is back at the church, hectoring the flock – I mean, delivering the sermon?’

‘My wife.’

‘Your
wife
?’

‘That would be Daphne Diffledorf, a woman whom you know quite well. Sits in the front right pew every Sunday morning. Black hat, black gloves. Anyway, since she has to listen to me rehearse my sermons all week long, she practically knows them by heart.’

Of course I knew the pastor’s wife! I’m the head of the search committee that gave the elderly gent his job. But Daphne Fiffledord didn’t just sit in the front right pew, she
filled
it. Once, after a particularly long service on a hot, humid day when Daphne stood up, the pew rose with her. I am not being unkind when I relate this detail, mind you; I am merely fulfilling my duties as a keen observer of the human condition.

‘But Pastor Dumblefirth,’ I exclaimed, ‘is a woman even
allowed
to preach in our denomination?’

The old man nodded. ‘With consent of the individual congregation, the answer is “yes.” Perhaps I should have checked with you, however, given that you, a
woman
, are the Senior Elder in the church, but then again, you were nowhere to be found – except for here, keeping company in your own
bed
and breakfast hotel with an exceedingly handsome
young
man.’

‘I explained everything,’ I mumbled miserably. ‘But for what it’s worth, given that I am already an inadvertent adulteress – having once unknowingly married a bigamist, I mean – my reputation is so tarnished that I sometimes think I should just bid my morals adieu and become the scarlet woman whom I have been made out to be. At least I might have a bit of fun for a change. No, no, I take that all back – I didn’t mean it! Living into my reputation would be a terrible sin, of course. I’m just saying that –
oy!
Look, it isn’t easy keeping to the straight and narrow path when one is always being judged. Besides, red is really not my colour.’

‘I didn’t come here to judge you,’ Pastor Faddledeaf said. ‘And maybe you did already explain things; I’m getting old and my hearing isn’t what it used to be. Anyway, where are the royalty? The ladies of the church have prepared a bounteous buffet for the Queen and her entourage.’

It was Toy who snickered then, not me. ‘Pastor, dear,’ I said kindly, ‘Her Majesty is approaching ninety, if she hasn’t already achieved it. Therefore I doubt if she has plans to visit Hernia in this lifetime. My guests this week are merely members of the aristocracy – lords and ladies and, alas, a lad who will not be entitled to a title.’

Dear Pastor Fiddlefuddle looked absolutely befuddled. ‘Magdalena, yet again you have managed to communicate naught with your flowery verbiage.’

‘Thank you, dear. That is indeed my intention – at least half of the time.’

The wise old gent shook his head sadly. ‘I suppose that the rest of the time you babble incessantly without a direction in mind?’

‘Oh, woe is me; I’ve been found out for the charlatan that I am!’ I cried as I beat my chest with my fists (lightly, of course, given my lack of natural padding).

Toy snickered again. ‘I’m sure that happened a long time ago,’ he said.

‘Indeed, it did,’ Pastor Fiddlesticks said. ‘Magdalena, you are aware that the
ladies
of your church, although they do not hold titles of nobility, are going to be beside themselves with disappointment when they learn that your
titled
guests have already returned to their palaces in England. What are they to do with the sumptuous potluck lunch which they have prepared with their old, arthritic, and I am sure, very painful hands that have been damaged by years of hard labour as they toiled side by side with their husbands in the fields?’

‘Well, uh—’ I was admittedly slow on my boat-size feet.

‘They haven’t left yet,’ Toy blurted. I am sure that he was only trying to help, and I will give him the benefit of the doubt, but only because he is so easy on the eyes.

‘
Oh?
’ Pastor Fumbleforth said. He had ears like bonnie Prince Charles and was able to rotate them in my direction like a pair of remote-controlled satellite dishes. ‘Am I to believe that they are up in their rooms as quiet as palace mice or, perhaps, as still as the young Japanese tourist in yon elevator shaft?’

The hairs on my head stood on end, causing my white organza prayer cap to teeter precariously atop my do. Granted, that statement was hyperbolic, but not by much. Even Toy seemed to be caught off guard.

‘What is this about a Japanese tourist?’ he said, recovering faster than I did, although his voice was almost an octave higher than usual.

Pastor Fibberblatt had the temerity to hold Toy’s steady gaze. ‘Forgive my poor choice of words,’ he said. ‘I forgot that you law enforcement types speak only in certainties and the Japanese girl’s final whereabouts were never conclusively determined.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘In fact, one quasi-official party floated the theory that Yoko-san is alive and well in Nebraska, where she owns a noodle shop called Udon Have to Stay Forever. It serves affordable meals to migrant oil pipeline workers.’

‘I see,’ Pastor Flutterbutt said. ‘Is there any chance that this half-baked theory-floater would be you?’

I gasped. ‘Mind your tongue, Pastor Patterfelt! I’ll have you know that I am
quite
baked – through and through.’

‘Oh, come on, Magdalena,’ Toy pleaded. ‘We may as well come clean for this man of the cloth and tell him where everyone is. He’ll find out soon enough, anyway. You know that what’s-her-name can’t keep a secret.’

‘Aha!’ The clever clergyman’s faded eyes suddenly flickered with an unfamiliar intensity. ‘Your mother-in-law has them, doesn’t she? I should have known as much; Mother Malaise possesses a silken tongue as persuasive as the serpent that coaxed Eve to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden.’

‘Ha,’ I said. ‘Now it is you, Pastor Piffledaffle, who embroiders the truth!’

‘Not hardly,’ he said. ‘And need I say that should Mother Malaise’s words ever fail her, why, that handsome heathen could rely on her looks alone to lead sinners into the gates of Hell.’

‘She might
scare
them through the gates,’ Toy said, reading my mind and thus earning my undying gratitude for saying what I could not say.

Yes, I know, I should not even have
thought
such a horrible thing about my husband’s mother. Jesus taught that if we kill someone in our heart it is the same as if we’ve done it in real life. Of course, I can’t argue with my Lord, or can I? My Jewish husband insists that wrestling with God is precisely what we’re meant to do. Well, in my defence, as weak and useless as it might be, I just want to say that Jesus did
not
have a mother-in-law.

‘Harrumph,’ Pastor Pumppump said. ‘You are certainly a judgemental young man. If I were not already married, and Ida Rosen, aka Mother Malaise, a Jewess and a Heathen, I would certainly set my cap for her.’

‘And you are behind the times, pastor,’ I said, not unkindly. ‘The term “Jewess” is no longer used by educated folk. The suffix “ess” is added to the names of animal species to indicate the female gender, as in lion
ess
or tigr
ess
, but we don’t apply it to religious or ethnic groups. For instance, when is the last time you heard someone say Baptist
ess
, or French
ess
?’

Pastor Poopdidoo could be argumentative at times. ‘What about baron
ess
? Or marchion
ess
?’

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ I said. ‘While you’re splitting hairs, your happy, handsome heathen doth gyre and gimbal in the wabe – and in the altogether too, I might add.’

‘Whatever is she jabbering on about?’ Pastor Huffandpuff said.

‘They are prancing about naked,’ I said, admittedly with relish. ‘Your second choice for a helpmate is frolicking about without a stitch of clothing on, her sagging body parts heaving here and there. But not only that, by now I’m sure that she has seduced the Brits into shedding their clothes as well. After all, the distance from Anglicanism to apostasy can’t be all that far.’

‘Again with the judgement!’

‘A fact is a fact, dear. So, do you want to do something about it – maybe salvage a meeting between the congregation and our English visitors – or just register a complaint?’

‘The third option,’ Toy said with a wicked glint in his eye, ‘is to cross the road to the convent and let it all hang out.’

It appeared to me as if Pastor Diffledorf had just been made an offer that his flesh was having a hard time refusing. It is desire of the flesh, as St Paul was so intent on warning us, that is truly the Devil’s most effective bait. It was up to me to tip the scale a wee bit in the other direction, even if it wasn’t quite the truth. Sometimes the means does justify the end, especially if it can prevent two ends from coming into contact.

‘My dear Pastor Diffledorf,’ I said, ‘by now you have lived in our community long enough to have heard all the rumours concerning me. You know that I was a virgin until age forty-four, when I was tricked into a bigamous marriage with my second-cousin, Aaron Miller. Thus, you know that I am a pious—’

‘Ahem,’ Pastor Diddedorf said. ‘I also heard that you sat on your washing machine during the spin cycle. That is hardly the act of a pious woman.’

‘No woman should deny herself a ride on a three-legged washer with unbalanced load,’ I roared. ‘That is a God-given right in America. And as for that blazing look of lust in your eye, I was about to say: “Down boy.” The Countess Aubrey and her daughter, the Lady Celia, are so hideously deformed that when they emerged from their vehicle a flock of starlings dropped dead from the sky and all the flowers along the front walk immediately wilted.’

‘Not to mention the sidewalk cracked under their weight,’ Toy said.

At last the good pastor saw the light. ‘What must I do to save the day?’ he asked.

‘Hie thee back to thy sacred space,’ I said. ‘That is to say –
our
church – and have the ladies pack up the food. Then have everyone drive up to the picnic area atop Stucky Ridge. In the meantime, Toy and I will waste no time in getting the errant aristocrats back into some suitable Christian clothes. That done, we will meet you there. Oh, and bring the hymnals. It’s about time we subjected those Anglicans to some rousing American hymns.’

‘Huh?’ said Toy. ‘You mean like hymns written in the late nineteenth century, back when God was still in charge of things?’

‘Exactly. Tra-la-la-la-la,’ I sang in my pleasant but off-key voice as I all but pushed the pastor out the door.

When my thick front door had closed securely behind my clergyman, I turned back to Toy. ‘A word before we retrieve any naked nobs.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Don’t you think it very strange,’ I said, ‘that he referred to poor Miss Yoko-san being in the elevator shaft?’

‘Yes, ma’am, I did,’ Toy said. ‘And not only that, it sounded like he thought it might be problematic for the others. It was as if he’d just been called with the news of her discovery and he knew that she was still in there.’

‘So what do you think that means?’ I said. I started to tremble. Ever since I’d started down the road of playing detective – not
my
choice, mind you – it has become ever more apparent that no one is so spiritually evolved that they can be held above suspicion.

Toy scratched his perfectly formed head. ‘It means that I’ll take care of the body. In the meantime, you attend the picnic and watch the reverend like a hawk.’

Honestly, that was what I intended to do. It really was.