[Churchminster #3] Wild Things (35 page)

Later, after they’d all had a celebration champers at the Jolly Boot, the members of the Garden Party retired to their respective houses, each hoping and waiting for the day ahead. The judges were due at 10 a.m., and
would
spend three hours walking through the village to assess how well all the categories had been met. As the residents of Churchminster climbed into bed that night, their minds whirred with possibilities, anxieties and excitement.

Could they,
would
they win it?

Clementine woke with a start. Something was wrong. She opened her eyes blearily and looked at her bedside clock. Ten past three in the morning. Then she realized why she could read it: instead of complete darkness, there was an orange glow creeping in through the windows, lighting up the room. Clementine frowned; that was strange. In the distance she could hear a strange crackle. It reminded her of the fat spluttering on a belly of pork when she took it out of the oven.

Suddenly she sat bolt upright, hand clutching her throat in fear. She knew that sound! Moving hurriedly, she got out of bed and went over to the window. The orange glow behind the curtains was even stronger, illuminating the rosebud pattern. Heart clenched with dread and in trepidation, Clementine yanked them back.

For a moment, she registered complete shock and disbelief at the sight before her. Then Clementine’s face crumpled and she started wailing. ‘No! No, it can’t be! Oh, please Lord, no!’

St Bartholomew’s was on fire. The building was a black silhouette against the thirty-foot flames that raged through it. As Clementine watched she heard a huge groan reverberate, as if the old church had
finally
given up in agony, and part of the roof caved in, disappearing in a crash of sparks.

Clementine gripped the windowsill, mesmerized by horror. It was like seeing one of her oldest, dearest friends dying a terrible death in front of her, and she could do nothing about it. She became aware of another, high-pitched noise, which, she suddenly realized, was herself screaming.

Suddenly in the distance, she heard another sound, which snapped her back into the present. Someone had called the fire brigade.

Within five minutes, Clementine was down on the green in her Wellington boots, her gardening overcoat pulled over her nightdress. Two fire engines were there, fruitlessly spraying water over St Bartholomew’s, but the flames refused to relinquish their hold. Already the village green was dotted with people, their cars left parked haphazardly on the roadside as they rushed down to try and help.

Calypso was there, barefoot in a tiny pair of pyjama shorts and vest top. She started sobbing as soon as she saw her grandmother. ‘Oh, Granny Clem!’ she said, running into her arms, ‘I can’t bear to watch, it’s just too awful.’

‘Where’s your sister?’ Clementine asked anxiously, but Camilla appeared by her side, dressed in her nightie.

‘I’m here, don’t worry, but Jed’s in there somewhere! He went in with Jack to try and save some things.’

Just then, two firefighters emerged from the smoke,
clutching
a blackened-faced Jed between them. Camilla ran over in relief but Jed shook her off.

‘I’ve got to go back!’ he shouted. ‘Jack’s still in there!’

Stacey Turner, standing a few feet away with her arm round her mother, started screaming. ‘What do you mean, my dad’s still in there! He’s gonna die! Someone get him, get him fucking out!’

She made a start for the church, but Beryl pulled her back, tears running down her face. ‘No, Stacey!’

In the distance an ambulance siren could be heard. There was a large
whoosh
and another part of the roof collapsed. More people started screaming. One of the firemen moved towards the crowd, waving his arms.

‘Get
back
everyone! This is dangerous!’

Suddenly, through the hiss and crackle, another fireman appeared, half-dragging something beside him. It was only when the exhausted man pulled the shape clear of the fire and laid it down on the wet grass, that everyone could see who it was.

It was the burned, blackened body of Jack Turner.

Stacey started screaming afresh and rushed over. ‘Dad, dad, oh Daddy! Please, someone do something!’

Two firemen were there, one leaning down to his face to listen for Jack’s breathing. He glanced at his colleague, face grim. ‘We’ve lost him, start CPR.’

As the other fireman ripped open Jack’s shirt and started to do resuscitation, Stacey Turner fell in a heap, almost animal-like in her hysteria. ‘My daddy, my daddy, my daddy!’

Beryl tried to comfort her, crying hysterically and
white-faced
in shock. They were all crying: Clementine, Camilla, Calypso, the Bellows, and Angie and Freddie Fox-Titt, with their arms around each other.

An ambulance pulled up and the crew jumped out to take over. One of the firemen looked up at them. ‘I can’t get his heart started!’

The ambulance crew took over, then, and the last sight everyone had of Jack Turner was of the doors closing on his lifeless body, a sobbing Stacey and Beryl by his side.

Chapter 47

THEY’D GOT THE
fire under control in the end, but not before it had swept through the entire church taking almost everything with it. In the end, all that was left standing were the four walls, windowless and roofless. As Clementine stood in the early morning light, debris floating down in front of her, she thought it looked like the carcass of a poor animal that had been ripped apart by vultures. A plume of smoke hung over the blackened wreck of St Bartholomew’s, while a fine layer of ash had settled on the green and surrounding houses.

Freddie came over and squeezed her arm. ‘How are you doing old bean?’

Wordlessly Clementine shook her head. ‘Have you heard from the hospital?’

‘Jack’s in theatre now,’ Freddie told her gently. Clementine’s chin wobbled and she cast her eyes heavenward.

‘Oh Freddie! How dreadful.’

Amongst the villagers still on the green, strange faces
were
milling about. The local police had turned up, and the fire-investigation team were doing what they could before the building was cool enough to let them start their extensive work. It didn’t bode well, one of them had already found a petrol can, which had been tossed over the graveyard wall. The residents rounded on PC Penny, desperate to express their despair.

‘Who would do such a dreadful thing!’ cried Angie angrily.

PC Penny looked overwhelmed. ‘Madam, we will do all we can to find the culprits.’

‘Don’t you mean murders?’ cried Calypso, ‘Did you
see
Jack being carried out of there?’

Camilla put her hand on her sister’s arm. ‘Easy, sweet pea.’

‘I bet it’s the same bloody vandals who did all the damage last few times,’ sniffed Calypso defiantly. ‘The ones who kicked off at
Churchminster’s Got Talent
. As far as I’m concerned they’ve got blood on their hands.’

‘We will be following up all lines of enquiry,’ stated PC Penny.

‘I should go to Bedlington and find them myself,’ muttered Jed.

‘We don’t need you in trouble as well,’ Camilla told him.

‘What do
you
think, Granny Clem?’ asked Calypso. Her grandmother always knew what to do.

Clementine looked at her, eyes vacant.

‘What do I think about what?’

‘About who did it, if it was started deliberately? Do you think it was that lot from Bedlington.’

‘Oh, who knows? It’s pointless worrying about it now. We have a far greater tragedy on our hands.’

Everyone fell silent, thinking about Jack. Calypso gave another sob. The last few days had been an emotional roller coaster and now this. It was too much.

Eventually Freddie looked at his wristwatch.

‘Christ, the judges will be here in a few hours!’

‘Do you think we should try and put them off for a few hours?’ Angie asked anxiously, ‘We could try and clear up.’ She trailed off. There was no point, Churchminster looked like a war zone. It would take weeks to get back to normal again.

Until that moment, Clementine had completely forgotten about the competition, which had so dominated her life the last few months. There was no way they would win now.

‘I need to go to bed,’ she said wearily.

‘We’ll walk you back,’ Camilla said anxiously.

Clementine raised a hand. ‘No darling, don’t bother yourself.’

They all watched as her tall, hunched figure disappeared into the morning mist.

As well as poor Jack, it wasn’t just the physical act of desecration that had so badly affected Clementine. It was all the memories that had been lost as well. She had married and put her darling Bertie to rest in that church, had her son christened there, seen the next generation of Standington-Fulthropes start there, along with many other families in the village. As she curled up in bed, exhausted yet unable to sleep,
Clementine
reflected that a piece of her had gone, along with the church. And she would never, ever get it back again.

They lost Jack three times on the way to hospital. The surgeon who treated him said he was amazed anyone could come back to life with that amount of smoke in their lungs.

‘My dad’s a fighter,’ Stacey told him proudly, as she and Beryl kept a bedside vigil in the intensive care unit. Jack, rigged up to breathing apparatus and unable to say anything, squeezed his daughter’s hand. White bandages swathed his hands and forearms where he’d been burned.

‘We thought we’d lost you, Dad,’ Stacey said emotionally. The familiar feisty look returned to her face. ‘Don’t be such a
gaylord
and do anything so stupid again.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Beryl echoed weakly.

At ten o’clock precisely, the people carrier containing the three judges pulled up at the village green. Grim-faced they dismounted, taking in the scene of carnage. Marjorie Majors, a stout woman in her fifties with cropped grey hair, muttered something to the other two judges, who were male, and shook her head. As Clementine had taken to her bed, it was down to the Fox-Titts to welcome the judges and tell them a little bit about the village. As much as Angie gaily tried to tell them about their wonderful community spirit and picturesque beauty, the hulking blackened shell of St
Bartholomew’s
sat there in the background, like a great ugly albatross.

One of the male judges coughed. ‘All this ash is getting in my throat. Could we get some refreshments at your public house?’

‘I’m afraid it’s shut,’ said Angie apologetically. ‘Jack Turner, our landlord, is in hospital. He went into the church last night, when it was on fire, to save some of the artefacts.’

Marjorie Majors shook her head again. Angie couldn’t make out if it was a gesture of disapproval or regret. ‘You have a lot of bad luck in this village, don’t you? What with floods and now this.’

‘Yes, but we are good at getting back on our feet again,’ said Freddie hurriedly.

‘Hmmm,’ Marjorie Majors didn’t sound convinced. Her eyes travelled over the freshly replanted flowerbeds.

‘You’ve left your planting a little late. Those violas should be flourishing by now.’

‘Bloody vandals pulled up the lot before,’ said Freddie. The three judges exchanged glances with each other.

‘Yes, well, thank you, Mr Fox-Titt, I think you’ve told us all we need to know,’ said Marjorie Majors. ‘I think the only thing left now is for us to get started.’

For three excruciating hours, the judges walked every inch of the village, taking notes and leaving no flowerpot unturned. Brenda Briggs, watching through the net curtains at Hollyoaks Cottage, was convinced
she
lip-read Marjorie Majors saying something about ‘being a total disaster’.

Knowing Brenda’s dramatic imagination, most people tried to take that particular claim with a pinch of salt, but it didn’t stop the sense of impending doom as the judges silently jotted down their thoughts, occasionally pointing something out to each other.

At one o’clock, after displaying disappointment they wouldn’t be able to eat at the Jolly Boot and sample some of the wares – ‘A good local pub is
essential
for a thriving village,’ Marjorie Majors declared – the three judges climbed back in their people carrier and exited the village as silently as they had come in. It was exactly a week until the grand ceremony in London, when the eventual winners would be announced.

No one thought they had a hope in hell. They would have felt even worse if they’d heard the conversation as the judges’ car left the outskirts of Churchminster.

‘What a hellhole. I was glad to get out of there,’ said one of them.

‘Tell me about it,’ said the other.

Chapter 48

THE NEXT DAY
the
Bedlington Bugle
and the
Daily Mercy
ran stories about the fire, both suggesting it was foul play. The
Mercy
had a quote from the senior investigating officer at Bedlington police station, saying that if it
were
arson, ‘they would do all they could to find the culprits’. It didn’t make the residents of Churchminster feel any better. Clementine even talked of cancelling the coach they’d hired to take the Garden Party to London, but Angie managed to talk her out of it.

‘Don’t give up hope now, Clementine, there’s still a chance we could win it.’ Her words sounded hollow, even to Angie. The only good news was that Jack Turner continued to gain strength in hospital. His consultant had warned him he’d have to take things easy for a while, and Jack joked that his recovery was being hindered, rather than helped, by the rather unpalatable home-cooked meals Stacey kept bringing in for him. He reflected ruefully – as he nearly broke a tooth on yet another rock-hard dumpling –
that
his daughter might take after her mother in feistiness, but definitely hadn’t inherited her kitchen skills.

Twenty-four hours later, the villagers got the news they’d been dreading. The fire had been started deliberately in a potting shed beside the church. A full investigation was now underway, even though the police admitted they had little to go on. Meanwhile the skeleton of St Bartholomew’s stood, barely able to support itself, as the insurance company started their own inquiry. Early conservative estimates put the cost of repair at two million pounds.