Read Online Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins by James Runcie - Free Book Online Page B

skills she displayed so effortlessly in her work as a curator at the National Gallery (judgement, taste and the ability to spot a fake) in the world of romance. She was also worried that their hostess, Elizabeth Kirby-Grey, had been behaving strangely of late. She wouldn’t mind if Sidney had one of his ‘annoying intuitions’.
    ‘What on earth do you mean, Amanda?’
    ‘I’m not going to say any more. Something’s not right.’
    ‘With the marriage? Her health? Money?’
    ‘I’m not sure. But you often notice things before anyone else.’
    ‘I don’t know about that.’
    ‘It’s because you’re so nosy.’
    ‘I am not nosy, Amanda. I hope people don’t think . . .’
    ‘They’re too polite to say anything.’
    ‘I am curious, concerned, and ready for all things.’
    ‘In other words: nosy. Just come, Sidney. Not for Elizabeth, but for me. I don’t want to make another ghastly mistake. You know how hopeless I am with men.’
    ‘You’re not hopeless.’
    ‘Hildegard has to stay too. She’s just as clever as you.’
    ‘I’m not going to argue with that. It’s only . . .’
    ‘I’ll see you on the twenty-seventh. Make sure you arrive in time for drinks.’
    When the day came, Hildegard worried about leaving Anna for not one but two nights, even though Sidney’s mother had welcomed the chance to spend some time with her only granddaughter. (Sidney’s sister and her husband, the jazz promoter Johnny Johnson, had provided a couple of boys; his brother Matt had not yet settled but was down to what was surely his last wild oat.)
    Although Iris Chambers was due to arrive well before supper, Mrs Maguire had kindly offered to baby-sit for the hour or two beforehand. Malcolm Mitchell would also take the service on Advent Sunday morning. They were little more than an hour away and Sidney’s driving was now sufficiently accomplished to ensure a speedy return should there be any emergency.
    He did, however, acknowledge that weekending with the aristocracy was not one of his favourite pastimes. Grand houses were seldom heated properly, the beds were uncomfortable and the food predictable: the game from the estate, riddled with shot. Conversation could also be hard-going, filled with solipsistic indifference to those who had not been born to similar advantage (despite occasional bouts of ostentatious charity towards ‘the deserving poor’), and a hovering air of indolent entitlement made the company of the privileged a test of endurance.
    Sidney tried to tell himself that this weekend stay would be good for his patience; that Sir Mark was an influential local figure whom it might be good to cultivate for parish funds, and that he might, at least, enjoy a bit of shooting. (It was years since he had last taken part in such a venture and he had borrowed some of the requisite clobber and a couple of Purdeys from a friend in the village.) He also told himself that both he and Hildegard could do with a weekend off before the mania of Christmas.
    A manor house that had once been used as a vicarage, Witchford Hall was built in the seventeenth century in brown brick with red sandstone dressings. It had a symmetrical five-bay Jacobean façade, rusticated Doric pilasters, two floors of sash windows and an attic level that contained four blind oval windows. It would be impossible, Sidney imagined, for a Church of England clergyman ranked lower than a bishop to occupy such a residence nowadays.
    He refused to be intimidated by the grandeur of the approach and remembered his mother once telling him ‘it’s not all jam at the big house’. A Labrador and two Dalmatians ran out into the drive to meet them. Sidney and Hildegard were shown into a cream entrance hall panelled with fluted columns, and their luggage was carried up an imposing staircase with twisted balusters by a lugubrious butler called Muir. Above hung a series of family portraits most of which, Amanda would almost certainly point out as soon as she