Charity Begins at Home (14 page)

"And you fish, your brother said." Tristan felt a bit of triumph that they were having a real conversation. Charlie even looked up at him.

"Well, Barry fishes. Mostly I tramp around in the water, looking for interesting pebbles. Barry doesn't like it. He says I scare the fish." The boy's rare smile flashed; for a moment he resembled his sister, all bright irony. "But he'd rather not get any bites at all, than to spend the time alone. Barry hates being alone. He doesn't care if I don't say a word or if I fall asleep, as long as he can chatter away."

"Where are your brothers?"

"Francis is right there." Charlie gestured toward the knot of people still around Anna. The eldest Calder was standing protectively near. Tristan supposed he ought to feel guilty, to let another man keep guard over Anna, but he felt only relief.

"And Barry stayed in bed." Charlie ducked his head and smiled to himself. "He went to the Rose and Crown—that's the public house—with the squire's boys last night. He said he couldn't face the day. He turned green when I yanked open his drapes and let all the sun in!"

"But aren't there five of you? And Charity? Where are the other two?"

The laughter left Charlie's eyes and his face grew still again. "They're—they're out there. Out back. Charity's there." Then, with an apologetic bob of his head, Charlie slid down the iron rail and ran off down the lane.

Tristan meant to propose a meeting with Charity to start the Jonah painting, and besides, he was curious to discover the reason for the boy's odd manner. So he walked through the empty church, his footsteps echoing in the quiet. Light streamed through the prismatic stained-glass windows, painting the gray stone floor with color. The altar cloths had already been put away; Charity was nowhere to be seen. He stood indecisive in a pool of rosy light, then walked on, automatically genuflecting in the papist way as he passed the altar.

At the end of the altar rail, beyond the statue of St. Christopher holding a lamb, was an arched door. This led through a small passageway to an exit out the back of the church, away from the village.

The steps led down to an old brick walk through the old graveyard. On either side of the path leaned headstones, most worn smooth with age. Charity stood before a group of newer ones, a bouquet of the altar lilies in her hand. She bent to place a bloom before each of three stones. One was a doubled arch, like Moses's tablets—for her parents, no doubt. The other two were smaller. She put a hand on the smallest and patted it, as she might pat the head of a child, then repeated the action with the other simple stone. Then she stood there silently, head bowed, the remaining blooms dropping unnoticed from her hand, her pale blue skirt rustling in the light breeze. The only other sound was the distant cries of children.

Abandoning his original intent, Tristan turned and pushed back through the door before she could see him. But he found no answer in the empty sanctuary. All the prisms disoriented him, all that dancing color in the gray stillness. The place seemed to echo with color, with the last solemn note of the Bach fugue she had played, with the secret sadness of a cheerful girl.

Chapter Eight

Monday the two eldest Callers shared a working lunch at the white iron table in the courtyard. Behind them the Grange spread out, comfortable as a dowager, its two wings edged with centuries-old gardens. If they looked up from their papers, they might see a sunlit meadow complete with grazing cows and a brook reflecting the angelic blue sky. But they seldom looked up; it might be a landscape worthy of Constable, but it was home, and not worthy of note.

Francis and Charity often met for lunch in the brick courtyard to exchange village news and make plans for the household. This camaraderie was relatively new, as they had never been close as children. Four years separated Francis from the twins Charity and Ned, an unbridgeable gap in childhood. And Charity had always been fonder of her high-spirited twin than of sensible Francis.

But she was ever old for her age, and those four years shrank as her responsibilities grew. Francis had been helpful when Ned died, when they had to unite to keep their father from drinking away the estate in remorse. A year or so ago Charity realized she actually liked Francis. She didn't want to, for he possessed too many of her boring virtues, steadiness and diligence and thrift, and none of her cherished flaws—cynicism and guile and secret romanticism. And Francis was stuffy, no doubt about it, in a way she had never been. Even this morning, when he expected to spend the day in the fields, he wore a starched neckcloth under his riding coat.

But Francis had a fine intellect, even if he used it primarily to make agricultural progress, and a dry sense of humor that occasionally, on certain sorts of days, struck his sister as hilarious. And when she was being very honest, Charity admitted that it was good to know someone as reliable as she was herself. She never worried that Francis would bankrupt them with some mad investment or that he would miss dinner without sending word or that he would plunge into melancholy just when planting started, requiring her to set her own shoulder to the plow.

They dealt together so amicably that she seldom remembered that when Francis finally decided to make someone a wonderful husband, Charity would have to surrender her home to another woman.

But today her worry about the future extended only as far as the next three weeks, culminating in the Midsummer fair. Actually, the festivities would all take place on Midsummer Eve, June 18, starting in the afternoon with athletic events and an open market. The great evening banquet would cap the day's revelry, culminating in the plays and the parade and a great bonfire after darkness finally fell.

Pencil in hand, Charity was deep into revisions of one of the plays, the one that was to keep the children out of mischief. She had set aside the lists of duties yet to be delegated and booths yet to be assigned, and now stopped editing only long enough to sip her lemonade, which was growing warm in the noon sun.

Mr. Greenaway's Jonah and the Whale was just as fearsome as she had dreaded, full of intricate metrical patterns, labored classical imagery, and odd but ingenious rhymes. She wondered how a schoolteacher could expect children to rattle off the likes of "Forcible bears the great Leviathan/to yon trim brig we few rely upon." She changed to "The whale is ramming the boat! The whale is ramming the boat!" and hoped Mr. Greenaway wouldn't notice the substitution.

Weary of the whale and his chronicler's heavy hand, Charity sighed and with a sense of relief took up the booth assignment sheet. This was a more delicate task than might be expected, with the need to accommodate longstanding village rivalries. Neither Mrs. Hering nor Mrs. Dalton could be trusted with the pie booth, for example, for each would be sure to give her own pies the most advantageous placement and sales pitch, while making vaguely foreboding observations about the cleanliness of the other's oven. Mr. Petrick, the local magistrate, had asked to run the children's bean-toss game again, but Charity thought him too rulebound. He never countenanced "helping" a beanbag into the bushel basket, so last year only three children won prizes.

Charity nibbled on her pencil, then inscribed the magistrate's name on the line for the bottle-smash game, which attracted a raffish set of older boys. The kindly Mrs. Petrick could take on the bean-toss booth, and Mrs. Hering could have the ale concession. Charity smiled, remembering the fiasco one year when her own father had been put in charge of that booth. At least Mrs. Hering could be trusted not to drink up most of the supply, give free samples to all her friends, or end up standing on the barrel declaiming bawdy poetry.

"What do you say to a family excursion Wednesday?" Francis asked, looking up from his perusal of the day's post.

Charity knew better than to commit herself, for she had accompanied her brother on excursions before. "I say no, if it means standing in a barley field while you discuss some farmer's new way of processing manure."

"It's not my idea. Comes from your artist."

"Lord Braden?" With elaborate unconcern, she raised her pencil and returned to her booth diagrams.

"You have other artists? Yes, Braden. And don't pretend you aren't curious. I see your little ears prick up." Only after she put down her pencil with an exasperated sigh did he explain. "Braden writes very kindly to ask if we—I expect he means the lot of us, but Barry's gone back to Oxford, he'll be glad to hear—will join the lot of them—I expect that means the little demons, too, worse luck—on a picnic luncheon in their Greek folly on Paige Hill." He tossed down the paper in disgust. "Blast, they've remembered that execrable folly after all. I was hoping they'd forget it was ever built and one night I could send Barry and the squire's boys to tear it down. You would think, wouldn't you, that an artist like Braden would see what a travesty that temple is and rid Kent of it once and for all."

Charity let him run through all his oft-stated objections to good English landowners who defaced the good English landscape with bad copies of foreign buildings. She was too busy contemplating what this invitation might mean to take much note of his dissertation: "A druid structure like Stonehenge, well, I could abide that, and anything Celtic, for the Celts were the earliest British race, and, I suppose, even a Roman ruin, especially here in Kent where they ruled, but Greek? Greek?" She looked up only when he spoke that infuriating word. "A pagan temple, only a stone's throw from our fine Norman church."

"You're as bad as the vicar!" she commented acidly. "Always worrying about the pagans. Well, what is so dreadful about the pagans, I ask you? They didn't recognize our Savior, but then, that hadn't occurred yet. And it seemed to me they had a deal more excitement in those temples than we do at St. Catherine's of a Sunday!"

Francis opened his mouth to object, then closed it again. Finally, laughing, he said, "Charity, you heretic. Mind your tongue or the vicar will cut it out and have you burned at the stake. He's had enough difficulty swallowing all the Dionysian revelry you've got planned for the Midsummer fair."

She went back to her work, leaving him to chuckle over the vision of his sister, the church organist, roasting on the heretic's spit. But finally he rattled the letter to remind her of the question at hand. "So what about this pagan picnic? Would you like to go?"

Charity bent her head to hide her expression as she contemplated what sorts of things might transpire on a pagan picnic. Not much, she concluded, with the families present. Even pagans had some limits. And duty, as usual, reared its dissenting head. "I don't know as I can spare the time. The fair is only two weeks from Friday."

"You told the vicar yesterday you had it all under control. Of course, you've doubtlessly got the Christmas carol service under control, seeing as it's only six months away."

"Yes, well, I didn't want Mr. Langworth to bring up canceling again. If I should venture to complain that Mr. Greenaway's version of the Jonah story is a bit complicated or that the nails for the booths are too short, he will brighten up and say not to worry, he will just make an announcement next week before the sermon, and all my problems, and the Midsummer fair, will be gone."

Francis gave her a sharp, assessing took. "You aren't having any trouble, are you? If it's too much work, you need only ask for a bit of help. Mrs. Hering—"

"Is helping a great deal, for she's taking care of making all the prizes, and Mrs. Dalton is organizing the marketplace, and Crispin promised to build the booths. I've little to do, actually," she said more cheerfully. "Just the games and the banquet and the plays. I do wish I hadn't suggested that we have a preliminary go-round this Saturday. It will earn a bit of money, and the children will enjoy rehearsing the sporting events. And we will come out of it with someone to play St. George. But it's one more thing to plan this week, and I'd best get that done before I contemplate any picnics."

Francis put his hand out. "Give me a sheet of that paper. I'll make up a list of the games for Saturday and put an adult's name next to each to give lessons, and that will be that. The ladies will all bring pies and lemonade of their own accord, and the prospective St. Georges will bring their swords, and everyone will contrive to have fine time. There." He wrote one last name with a flourish and tossed the pencil down. "Now you have no excuse not to go to the picnic."

Charity took back his scrawled list and frowned thoughtfully at it. "Well, I've been over to Haver near every day to help Cammie, so this won't be very different, will it? And it is our duty to help poor Anna get out more into the fresh air."

"Our duty. To Lady Haver. Nothing to do with her brother."

Charity mistrusted her brother's grin, which, lacking only a trail of cream, resembled a cat's. "Anna is at last emerging from her cocoon. I was so pleased to see her at church yesterday. You were too, I noticed."

There, that got him back. Francis flushed and dropped his gaze back to the note. "Half eleven, Braden says. You will get plenty of time with him," he added with his version of a wicked leer. "Says he will be back from an overnight visit to his estate today. Significant, don't you think?"

"No," Charity answered crossly.

"He's probably walking through the place right now, noting all the dust and decay, imagining how comfortable and homey it could be if only you were there to supervise its operation. Crack the whip over the maids, refurnish the drawing room, match the linens."

For an instant Charity wondered if it were true. I should never have let him see me mopping that terrace, she thought bleakly. Now he must think me some sort of haut ton housekeeper. To her brother, however, she aimed a scornful look. "You're being absurd, Francis. We haven't met above four times, and he's never shown me any sort of particular attentions."