The Haunted Season (6 page)

Nearby Monkslip-super-Mare had many more poor people, and eventually the food service had drifted and finally settled where the need was greatest, without any ecclesiastical posturing over boundaries.

These occasions were as much beneficial to the volunteers as, one supposed, they were to the recipients of the largesse. The chatter as the volunteers worked, stirring soups and building sandwiches, was nonstop, the sounds of gossip filling to the edges of the room. So dense and excited was the hubbub that only snatches could be overheard:

“She planted her beets during a waxing moon. Anyone could have told her—certainly Awena could have told her—she had it all wrong. They'll
never
thrive now. You plant lettuce during a waxing moon, not beets.” …

 … “The Ladies of Perpetual Help have hidden my shoes somewhere again. Lately Maria is more like La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” …

 … “Did you say you could volunteer to teach the sewing classes? It's been ever so popular with the women from Pakistan and Afghanistan. It builds their trust, you know.” …

 … “Those children and that practically feral mother of theirs. Who's raising those kids is a mystery.” This was Suzanna Winship, never one to use the soft-pedal on her pronouncements.

“Tildy Ann seems to be raising herself.
And
her brother.” …

 … “Awena is like the Melanie of Nether Monkslip. You know, Melanie in
Gone With the Wind
. Impossibly good. That our dishy vicar fell for her—well, I guess I'm not surprised.” (Suzanna again.) …

 … “Have you seen the baby? Is he gorgeous or what? All that dark hair!” …

 … “What on earth was she wearing? A shroud?” …

 … “It was
definitely
not Sandra he was with.” …

 … “But Elka needs to take a firm stand. Tell that son of hers which end is up and all. Be strong.”

“Like you with your daughter, you mean?” said Suzanna, rushing in to defend. She and Elka might squabble on occasion, but there were times for a united front. And the woman with opinions about Elka had a teenaged daughter who famously ran amok in Staincross Minster the minute her mother's back was turned, although Suzanna diplomatically, for once, forbore to point this out. “Elka is tougher than anyone in the village. And harder working. She just has a soft spot for her son, that's— Step lively, here comes the first round.”

Heads turned and faces broke into smiles at each new arrival at the door. The deserving poor were shown into a room where half a dozen large tables had been set for them.

Chanel Dirkson arrived late, running awkwardly on sensible sandals she was not quite used to. Like something a shepherd would wear, thought Suzanna. Clearly, Chanel needed to be taken in hand. She was new to the village, a forty-something writer of self-help books who, like so many lately, had come seeking the bucolic peace of Nether Monkslip. She fell into conversation with Suzanna as they organized sandwiches on trays, for she and Suzanna had become fast friends, despite their outward differences (Suzanna glamorous, and Chanel, despite her namesake, pastoral). Both women had moved to Nether Monkslip from London, although Chanel had arrived there by way of Wiltshire. As she pointed out, “People everywhere have problems, so I can offer advice from anywhere I happen to live. It's just that in London, they tend to have problems with traffic and parking. I'm looking for the real problems, if you know what I mean.”

“Parking situations can lead to murder,” said Suzanna. “I could cheerfully throttle the next person who cuts me off in traffic. Of course, for real traffic, you have to drive to Monkslip-super-Mare.”

“Precisely,” agreed Chanel, smoothing the nap of her tunic-style blouse. She always wore all-organic clothing—cotton, linen, and very expensive—and little to no makeup. As Suzanna had observed, this made her fit right in with the granola-crunching, fruit-canning, bean-sprouting ethos of Nether Monkslip. Chanel's features reminded Suzanna of a Madonna in a Russian Orthodox icon. There was a downward curve to her eyebrows when she was in repose that made her look sad; it matched the often-downward curve of her mouth. Whatever wisdom Chanel had to impart, it seemed to have been hard-won.

“What are you working on now?” Suzanna asked politely, not really caring. She got her fill of writerly talk at the legendarily contentious meetings of the Writers' Square, of which Chanel had thus far resisted becoming a member. “Can we get some more cheese over here?” Suzanna yelled over her shoulder. Turning back to Chanel, she muttered, “Typical. Eugenia is never around when you want her. And you so seldom want her.”

“They—the publishers—want a novel based on my newspaper columns. A sort of Bridget Jones meets Heathcliff, as it was described to me. But I'm not sure. I'm strictly a nonfiction writer.” Chanel's expertise was in sternly removing the blinders from the eyes of the star-crossed lover, for handing out no-nonsense advice of the “get real, he's a loser” variety. Her newspaper columns had spawned several advice books, of none of which, judging by the titles, did Suzanna feel the need to avail herself. Books like
Ten Warning Signs He's a Sociopath
and
Before You Meet His Mother
were, in Suzanna's estimation, for rank amateurs at play in the fields of love. Still, the books sold well; judging by appearances—that organic stuff really did cost the moon—Chanel was comfortable, if not wealthy.

“Sounds interesting,” murmured Suzanna. “Are all the tomatoes gone?”

“What I'm working on right now is a chapter about dealing with difficult people,” Chanel continued, glossing a slice of whole-grain bread with French mustard and neatly stacking layers of cheese and lettuce on top.

“Hmph. You've come to the right place. But ‘Go sit by someone else' would be my advice. The world is full of people, and life is too short.”

Chanel laughed. “That's probably a very good distillation of what I recommend. However, sometimes—sometimes people come into your life whether you want them to or not. And stay there. Just leaving them alone is not always an option. Haven't you ever had a difficult boss?”

“Several. I just ignored them until they quit.”

Again, Chanel laughed. It was a good laugh that reached those rather sad eyes and made them shine. Unbeknownst to Chanel, Suzanna was already sizing her up for sister-in-law potential. Her brother, Dr. Winship, had been single too long.

“Anyway, you're the expert, judging by your success,” Suzanna observed. “We can't be running out of mustard, for God's sake.”

“I've been lucky. What, after all, separates the middle-of-the-road writer from the wildly successful one?”

“Talent? Perseverance?”

“No.
No-o-o-o.
Luck, of course. Pure luck. It's a business that runs on luck. Otherwise, I'd still be selling ladies lingerie at Harrods.”

“According to our resident best-selling author, Frank Cuthbert, it takes more than that. Frank claims it takes genius. While I'd say Frank is a high-functioning idiot, I'd also say he's right. At the least it takes talent. Don't be so modest.”

The chatter continued in a giddy ebb and flow interspersed with laughter; in between could be heard the scrape of utensils on plates or the sound of water being poured into glasses. After a time, Suzanna's voice again could be heard above the rest, asking, “Where
is
Eugenia? She said she was bringing serviettes. It's not like her to be late.”

“Eugenia?” asked a woman who was new in the village. Suzanna thought her name was Bridget.

“You know. The one who dresses like a reenactor, although it's not clear what century she thinks she's in. Seventeenth, possibly.”

“Eugenia would have liked the seventeenth century,” someone commented. “Lots of rules.”

“And punishments,” added someone else.

“And public hangings.”

Several nodded at this. Under Eugenia's reign at Bowls for Souls, several minor uprisings had taken place, only to be ruthlessly put down. However, if she insisted on X brand of coffee, someone might bring Y in a feeble show of independence—accompanied by a fist pump once Eugenia's back was turned.

Although she put on a brave front, these insurrections were painful to Eugenia. She would paste on a mask of Christian forbearance while nurturing the grudge for weeks. “They know not what they do,” she might murmur, in a gross misapplication of Scripture. One and all agreed Eugenia's head was screwed on just a bit too tightly.

It's since her brother died, said some. And didn't she have a son somewhere that no one ever saw? She didn't used to be quite so … so. Well, so weird. So particular and driven about everything. But few thought her really sinister or threatening in any way. Simply tedious as a head cold, as Suzanna Winship might say.

Sometimes, when reprimanded by Eugenia, the donor would comment that these were poor people they were feeding, and no doubt those in need would appreciate whatever was given them, and not judge too harshly the brand of mustard being used.

“Are you saying that they should be happy with whatever rubbish we choose to foist off on them?” Eugenia would demand. “That they are somehow less than we are—we who can afford to buy the national brands?”

“Of course not!” would be the reply. “I wasn't saying that!” But somehow the donor felt caught out by the accusation, as if in some way guilty of snobbery or of being a cheapskate, when in fact some of them had a job to scrape together the pennies for the well-intended donation. The whole transaction, meant to be a generous and kind-hearted impulse, somehow had become tainted by this point. Eugenia noticed there were dropouts from the roster of volunteers, but she never suspected she was the cause.

*   *   *

By the time Eugenia arrived fifteen minutes later, the soup soiree was in full swing. She had, she explained, been delayed on the train from London. Not everyone welcomed her arrival, but Eugenia set to work, immediately getting on Suzanna's nerves.

She got on everyone's nerves, but she got on Suzanna's in a big way, since Suzanna frequently also had to deal with her when organizing Women's Institute events.

Eugenia threw herself into WI projects with the same lunatic verve that might have been better applied to resolving a standoff between Russia and the Ukraine. And she was not one to admit failure. A recent theater outing to Staincross Minster she had organized for the women had not been a success, as predicted by Suzanna.

“That's because
Titus Andronicus
was boring when it was first written.”

“Was not.”

“Was too.”

“It's Shakespeare.”

“So? Shakespeare had his off years, too. We can't all be Harold Pinter.”

“Talk about boring.”

“Is not.”

“Is too.”

Now the perennial argument with Suzanna again had to do with buying supplies for the luncheon. The smart money was on Suzanna to win this time. She had bought half a dozen tins of sliced pineapple on sale, a rare and unusual treat, and she was proposing to make upside-down cakes for a future meal.

“On sale? Are you saying the needy should be fobbed off with stale, low-quality food?” Eugenia demanded.

Suzanna met her steely gaze head-on.

“No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying even I can't afford to eat organic fucking sliced pineapple imported from goddamn Hawaii, for Chrissake.”

“Language, please! We are here to set a Christian example.”

“Then do a better job of it.” Suzanna stared boldly back, taking in the hair, the general air of desperation that she sensed lurked behind the relentless, tireless do-goodery. In charge of feeding the homeless, Eugenia had managed to rile both the destitute and all the volunteers with overly precise instructions (“How many times? I said Ryvita. It
has
to be Ryvita. Where did this CrispAlivo come from, anyway?”) and with her constant hovering. Soon many of those in need stopped showing up for their free lunch, heading over to St. Catherine's instead, even though the food wasn't as good and it was a long bus journey out of town to get there. But the nuns fed them, asked no questions, believed their lies, or pretended to, and stayed out of their business. This, to those in need, was much more like it: Just hand over that sandwich and shut up about it.

Eugenia had drawn back at Suzanna's little outburst of profanity. Now she turned the tin of pineapple over and over in her hands, like a grenade she was preparing to lob. “Twenty-two grams of sugar,” she read from the label. “Think what it's doing to their arteries.”

“Think what going without food is doing to the rest of them,” Suzanna shot back. “You know what, I really don't need this.” To herself she added, What have the poor ever done for me, anyway? “I should be over at the Village Hall, helping them get ready for the gymkhana on Saturday.”

“Fine,” Eugenia said shortly. “Why don't you just go do that.”

Suzanna, subsiding into a mutinous huff, considered quitting Bowls for Souls altogether. But as she had said the evening before to her brother, Dr. Winship, if she waited long enough, Eugenia might get bored and quit.

“There's also divine intervention,” she had added, in what she knew was a lovely, throaty voice—a voice of command she used to good advantage at WI meetings, speaking with a polished and direct delivery that suggested Sarah Palin barnstorming across America's corn belt.

“You're not thinking of how you rose to power in the Women's Institute, are you?” Bruce had asked.

“I was, rather.” Suzanna had ascended the throne in time-honored fashion, via the untimely death of her predecessor. Now she reigned supreme and unchallenged. It helped, of course, that no one else, with the possible exception of Eugenia, really wanted the position. It involved a tremendous amount of work. The WI, along with the Altar Guild, constituted a sort of women's underground in Nether Monkslip, the women constantly abuzz behind the scenes, only the results of their efforts showing. And they had fun, too, if the latest wine tasting and photography event were anything to go by. Although it was later suggested they might want to keep these two events separate in future.