‘It’s 191 and 75, respectively,’ said the man. ‘I’ve played both of them in my time.’
Jenny and Brian were astounded. ‘You’ve played them both? Entire concertos?’
‘I used to be a pro, but then I got married. You can’t support children and a wife, especially not my wife anyway, if you’re just a bassoonist. Now I play with whoever wants me. I keep my hand in. One of these days I’ll be back on the road, God willing. Well, wife willing.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ asked Jenny.
‘Oh no,’ said Peter, waving his spanner, ‘I can just see what’s coming. God save us all.’ He strode away to renew battle with his mower. The children, who all this time had been standing dumbly by with their thumbs in their mouths, returned to their scrum on the lawn.
‘So what were you doing round here?’ asked Brian.
‘I’m a de Mandeville,’ said the man, as if that amounted to an explanation. ‘Or man-devil, as my wife likes to say.’
‘I don’t see …’ began Jenny.
‘I’m Piers de Mandeville. Piers is a family name. There’ve been lots of us. You’ve probably noticed the big tomb just outside the door of the church. It’s the one where they hide the key. That’s the Piers de Mandeville I’m descended from. We used to be the lords of the manor, you know, in that house where the musicologist lives. Unfortunately we went down in the world. It was the South Sea Bubble, apparently. The family lost a fortune.’
‘How do you know all this?’ asked Brian. ‘I don’t even know the names of my great-grandparents.’
‘I’m a genealogist. When I’m not a bassoonist, I spend my time finding the ancestors of Americans, mainly. It pays surprisingly well. They’re all convinced that they’re related to the royal family. Or Irish chieftains.’
‘It’s like people who believe in reincarnation,’ said Jenny. ‘They all think they were Cleopatra.’
‘Do they?’ said Brian. ‘They say I’ve got an ancestor who was hanged for being a highwayman.’
‘Well, anyway, I like to come here and see where Piers and Bessie are. It’s a sad story.’
‘Go on,’ said Jenny, ‘depress us. Do come in and have a cup of tea.’
Once in the drawing room de Mandeville continued. ‘Well, Bessie was from the poor side of the family, who lived in Chiddingfold. The Maunderfields. They were farmers. Apparently she and Piers fell in love, and they got married rather late in the day, after a lot of opposition from his family. Three months after they married, poor Bessie died. It says “dyed in childbed” on the tomb.’
‘Oh, I saw that,’ said Jenny. ‘It always makes me feel sad. And there are three little children in there by a second wife. They are all called John and they died one after the other in the space of three years. It’s awful.’
‘After Bessie, he married one of the Rector’s daughters. Emily Sutton. They had eight children, so losing three wasn’t so bad, I suppose, by the standards of the time. I’m descended from Bessie, the first wife. The little baby survived and they sent it to Chiddingfold for the grandmother to look after, and then when Piers remarried the boy was sent back to the manor. They called him Perditus.’
‘Perditus?’ said Brian.
‘Little Lost One. Since then, some of us have had it as a second name.’
Jenny suddenly felt tearful. She was a sentimental person, and her feelings came easily to the surface. She dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve.
‘He did well, though. When he grew up he started quarrying Bargate stone. All the old buildings around here are made of it. You know the old lime kiln next to the church? I think they probably used it for making mortar, as well as lime for the fields. Anyway, that’s the story. I was visiting Piers and Bessie and Emily and the three little boys, and when I came back down the hill, I heard you two playing. By the way, there were two old ladies in the graveyard, and one of them introduced me to someone who wasn’t there.’
‘Wasn’t there?’ repeated Brian.
‘She had someone on her arm, as if she was supporting him, and she kept talking to him, but he wasn’t there. When she noticed me looking, she said, “This is my husband.” Well, I didn’t know what to do. I wondered if I ought to pretend to shake his hand. Then the old lady said, “We’ve just been visiting his grave.” It was quite bizarre.’
‘That’s Mrs Mac,’ said Jenny. ‘She’s a spiritualist. She lives with her sister and the ghost of her husband. He’s called Mac. She even goes on the bus with him and tries to pay two fares.’
‘How very entertaining,’ said Piers, and then he frowned. The tone of his voice changed, and he looked at Jenny. ‘I’d like to know if you know the K number of Mozart’s oboe concerto in C major.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Then why did you expect me to know the K number of the bassoon concerto?’
‘We didn’t know it, anyway,’ said Brian cheerfully. ‘You could have said anything you liked.’
‘Do you drive a Morris Minor, by any chance?’ asked Jenny.
‘No, I’ve got an old Minx. Why?’
‘We have eligibility criteria.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Oh, never mind,’ said Jenny.
‘You have to bring offerings of tail feathers from pheasants,’ said Brian.
After the bassoonist had gone home in his Minx to his difficult wife, Jenny and Brian went out into the garden. The children clambered up Brian and draped themselves from him like human flags. ‘Oh God,’ he said, as he toppled over.
Peter relaxed the throttle lever on the mower and stopped making his stripes. ‘I just thought I’d tell you, darling,’ said Jenny, ‘the bassoonist is coming to Sunday lunch tomorrow. I’m sure there’ll be enough for all of us. There just won’t be any leftovers for warm-up. And he’s bringing his wife. And his bassoon.’
Peter sighed and pursed his lips. He put on a funereal Scottish accent and said, ‘We are doomed, Captain Mainwaring, doomed.’ Then he throttled up the mower and resumed his work.
As Jenny said goodbye to Brian, she remarked, ‘Talking of pheasant feathers, I wonder how you clean out a bassoon.’
‘Alsatians’ tails,’ said Brian.
‘Not very practical. I don’t think you’d get one round the bends.’
‘You hardly ever find a dead one,’ said Brian, ‘and it’s a bit cruel cutting them off when they’re still alive. When they come round from the anaesthetic, they’re all off balance for a while.’
‘We just need a flautist, now,’ said Jenny. ‘One that plays in tune, and breathes at the right times, and isn’t mad.’
Brian shook his head. ‘There’s probably more chance of finding an Alsatian’s tail sticking out of a hedge.’
FOOTPRINT IN THE SNOW
BACK THEN EVERY parish of the Anglican Church still had its own vicar or rector, and many of them still lived with modest gentility in substantial houses inherited from more prosperous and faithful days, when God was indisputably in His heaven, and all was right with the world. These were the times when one was not respectable unless seen in church, at least at Christmas and Easter. For teenagers it was a chance to eye up the prospects, and for middle-aged and elderly women it was a chance to remark upon who wasn’t there, and to deplore each other’s hats.
The Reverend Godfrey Freemantle, together with his wife, three pretty daughters, a yellow Labrador and two tabby cats, occupied a substantial rectory at the foot of the hill below St Peter’s Church. It had fifteen rooms and was supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a pregnant serving maid who had been found dead under suspicious circumstances in 1879, shortly after the Tay Bridge Disaster. It was said that her wraith wafted about the attic rooms of the former servants’ quarters, wringing its hands and looking for Epsom salts in the cupboards. No one had ever seen it, but the Reverend Godfrey Freemantle often liked to suppose that from time to time he detected a chilling of the air when he was up there at the skylight, observing the moon through his telescope. Occasionally he had thought of performing an exorcism, but he felt a little embarrassed about the idea of approaching the Bishop for permission, and he was too trepidatious to go ahead and do it without.