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Authors: Fay Weldon
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to a lecture – but perhaps she’d be able to slip out from the Rectory while everyone was asleep and meet him up at the farm? – his employers were away for the night and they could have a comfortable bed for a change.
‘Oh go on, Ivy,’ he said. ‘Be a brick. I’ll sort out the tickets for you. We could get up to a thing or to if we had peace and quiet. You know how I love you.’
Oh yes, yes, yes, love, she thought. Do you believe I’m an idiot?
She said she’d think about it, and asked him what the lecture was and he said he was going to a public séance with some of the fellows from college. They were all interested in theories of life after death. Fame and fortune awaited the one who could prove there was. Most séances were fraudulent – but this particular medium seemed to be genuine. If she was, they’d pay her to call by the college to do a range of controlled experiments. Just as some people had talents – good at art, good at writing – some people, often very simple people, were sensitives, good at communicating with the other side.
‘Good at conning gullible folk out of their money, more like,’ said Ivy. ‘Now there’s a way to make a living!’
But she said she’d meet him, sneak out when everyone else was asleep. There was no way she wasn’t going to, and he knew it.
An All-Consuming Fire
When the salesman from Jones and Willis, Church Furnishers, carelessly tapped out his pipe on the wall of the lych-gate, a glowing ember flew up in the wind and landed in the splintered wreckage of the musicians’ gallery. The wood was dry and powdery. The ember continued to smoulder quietly, stuck under the raised wooden seam of St Cecilia’s gown where she’d kicked it up high in her dancing so many centuries ago. The fire started by devouring what was left of St Cecilia and her musicians, and having succeeded in that crept round to the other side of the panel, but its underside was thick with the powder left by a myriad boring beetles, and that blocked oxygen to the flames. For almost twenty minutes it looked as if all would be saved.
It was at this time that Ivy Baines slipped out of the Rectory for a further assignation with the would-be scientist George Topp. She marvelled at the sudden strength of the wind. There were spots of rain in the gale and thunder in the distance. She counted three seconds between thunderclap and lightning. The storm was three miles off. She’d hoped it would pass at a distance: she didn’t want the Rectory roused from sleep to notice her absence. She’d seen no sign of fire, she said later. She passed by Swaley’s Farm without noticing a thing.
But a fierce gust from the south-west had sent sparks to wrap flames round the pale, dry, fragile fingers of the charred lute player, and send flaking fragments back down into the pile. Soon the whole bonfire was ablaze, and the lych-gate too.
Whether now it was that the steeplecock was struck by lightning and the roof started to burn, or whether flames leapt from lych-gate to tree and then onto the porch could not later be determined – the thousand-year-old yew with its dark, oily leaves and dry hollow trunk had certainly gone up at some stage, probably early on.
It was a nasty night and few were venturing out. It was not until the flames set off the great expanse of the thatched roof of the tithe barn with what was almost an explosion that Yatbury was roused to danger. The bell tower of St Aidan’s itself being out of action, and there being only a single bell at the new Baptist Chapel, there was no possibility of reverse peals, the traditional alarm. The wealthy Methodist St Bart’s, its copper spire completed in 1814, an upstart compared to Yatbury’s ancient St Aidan’s, had twenty-four bells in its belfry, famous for its peals, but was locked at night because of fear of theft of its silver plate by rogues and vagabonds. The telephone exchange was closed. The churchwarden had to cycle all the way to the
‘Oh go on, Ivy,’ he said. ‘Be a brick. I’ll sort out the tickets for you. We could get up to a thing or to if we had peace and quiet. You know how I love you.’
Oh yes, yes, yes, love, she thought. Do you believe I’m an idiot?
She said she’d think about it, and asked him what the lecture was and he said he was going to a public séance with some of the fellows from college. They were all interested in theories of life after death. Fame and fortune awaited the one who could prove there was. Most séances were fraudulent – but this particular medium seemed to be genuine. If she was, they’d pay her to call by the college to do a range of controlled experiments. Just as some people had talents – good at art, good at writing – some people, often very simple people, were sensitives, good at communicating with the other side.
‘Good at conning gullible folk out of their money, more like,’ said Ivy. ‘Now there’s a way to make a living!’
But she said she’d meet him, sneak out when everyone else was asleep. There was no way she wasn’t going to, and he knew it.
An All-Consuming Fire
When the salesman from Jones and Willis, Church Furnishers, carelessly tapped out his pipe on the wall of the lych-gate, a glowing ember flew up in the wind and landed in the splintered wreckage of the musicians’ gallery. The wood was dry and powdery. The ember continued to smoulder quietly, stuck under the raised wooden seam of St Cecilia’s gown where she’d kicked it up high in her dancing so many centuries ago. The fire started by devouring what was left of St Cecilia and her musicians, and having succeeded in that crept round to the other side of the panel, but its underside was thick with the powder left by a myriad boring beetles, and that blocked oxygen to the flames. For almost twenty minutes it looked as if all would be saved.
It was at this time that Ivy Baines slipped out of the Rectory for a further assignation with the would-be scientist George Topp. She marvelled at the sudden strength of the wind. There were spots of rain in the gale and thunder in the distance. She counted three seconds between thunderclap and lightning. The storm was three miles off. She’d hoped it would pass at a distance: she didn’t want the Rectory roused from sleep to notice her absence. She’d seen no sign of fire, she said later. She passed by Swaley’s Farm without noticing a thing.
But a fierce gust from the south-west had sent sparks to wrap flames round the pale, dry, fragile fingers of the charred lute player, and send flaking fragments back down into the pile. Soon the whole bonfire was ablaze, and the lych-gate too.
Whether now it was that the steeplecock was struck by lightning and the roof started to burn, or whether flames leapt from lych-gate to tree and then onto the porch could not later be determined – the thousand-year-old yew with its dark, oily leaves and dry hollow trunk had certainly gone up at some stage, probably early on.
It was a nasty night and few were venturing out. It was not until the flames set off the great expanse of the thatched roof of the tithe barn with what was almost an explosion that Yatbury was roused to danger. The bell tower of St Aidan’s itself being out of action, and there being only a single bell at the new Baptist Chapel, there was no possibility of reverse peals, the traditional alarm. The wealthy Methodist St Bart’s, its copper spire completed in 1814, an upstart compared to Yatbury’s ancient St Aidan’s, had twenty-four bells in its belfry, famous for its peals, but was locked at night because of fear of theft of its silver plate by rogues and vagabonds. The telephone exchange was closed. The churchwarden had to cycle all the way to the
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