Read Online Fete Fatale by Robert Barnard - Free Book Online Page B

the knitwear stall, the Bingo drives, the Test the Power of Your Grip machine, the tea and coffee stall (with exorbitant prices) and the home handicrafts display. Just the crowd, too, to listen indulgently to the efforts of the Hexton choir,which was even now assembling outside to present its first musical offering of the day. The Hexton choir existed to sing Messiah at Christmas, and to try, if possessed by an adventurous mood, to put together a performance of The Creation or Elijah at some other point of the year. The only time they had attempted a modern work, they had made Belshazzar’s Feast sound like Belshazzar’s tea-party. Now they launched themselves, with that predictability that characterizes local do’s of this kind, into ‘Sumer is icumen in’. I stood in the sun, looking up to the winding town, to the castle and to Castle Walk, and thought that Hexton was not such a bad place to live in after all. Thus does Hexton woo one, delusively, from time to time. I saw Marcus getting his substantial bulk behind a hefty mallet, and trying to ring the bell on the Test Your Strength machine (he very nearly made it, as he very nearly made it each year). Then I saw Father Battersby arriving.
    He was coming with the Blatchley family, from the direction of Chapel Wynd, where they lived. There were three Blatchley children, noisy and energetic, and ranging in age from five to fourteen. Each of them had gathered around them a little knot of friends, and the parents, pleasant, popular people, had also accumulated acquaintances as they walked. So, though they did little in the way of formal introduction, Father Battersby had already a little circle round him, and he shook hands with some, exchanged words with others, and I saw no sign that his—what shall I call it?—his slightly abstract sympathy, his difficulty of seeing things in purely human terms, had resulted in any of those unlucky coolnesses that I had seen on his previous visit. Probably he was better when he felt at home. It was all pleasant, informal, appropriate, and it gave me some inkling of another Hexton that I wished I knew better.
    â€˜Failed to hit that damned bell again.’ It was Marcus, coming up behind me. ‘Still, I was no further off than last year. I say, that’s Father Battersby, isn’t it?’
    â€˜I can’t imagine there’s likely to be anyone else at the fête wearing that gear.’
    â€˜Perhaps I’d better go and welcome him.’
    â€˜Don’t. Let it happen naturally. It’s all quite spontaneous and informal at the moment, and I think it’s better that way.’
    As I spoke, the Blatchley and Battersby party were approachingthe marquee, and the town clock over the square struck eleven. As if by magic, the substantial figure of Franchita appeared through the flap in the marquee.
    â€˜Roll up! Roll up!’ she shouted with fearsome gaiety, as she pushed back the flap. When she noticed the approach of the Battersby party her jollity stopped dead in its tracks: one could almost see contending in her face the duty of inflicting a snub, and the desire not to mar the beginning of ‘her’ fête with unpleasantness. In the end, what I like to think of as her good nature won out, and she stepped forward to meet the party, her hand outstretched.
    â€˜Welcome to Hexton-on-Weir . . . Father.’
    Father Battersby smiled, nodded, shook hands, and passed in. I slipped through the flap and raced to my stall. Mr Horsforth, naturally, was nowhere to be seen, though I could hear his voice through a mêlée of helpers. The Blatchley party came in, in the wake of the new vicar, then a mere trickle of others, then more and more. The Annual Hexton Church Fête had begun.
    The first hours of a fête are usually the busiest, and this one was no exception. The fête worked up to a kind of climax around lunch-time and drooped rather thereafter. I certainly had