In that second, Barry Gamble had turned his head to the right and was staring directly at the Hollands. And the look on his face told a whole different story from the accompanying piece on the benefits of balsam bashing. His expression was a mixture of loathing and triumph. He had the air of a man taking one last, gloating look at his intended victims.
19
Riddings Show was held on Froggatt Fields, right on the western edge of Riddings where it met the neighbouring village of Froggatt, another of the duke’s creations, known for its quaint seventeenth-century bridge.
The show was said to be an offshoot of the village cow club, but there were no cows present now. Small-scale livestock shows had become far too complicated and risky to organise. They were too bound up in red tape and form-filling, too constrained by DEFRA regulations, too exposed to the possibility of another outbreak of disease. Foot and mouth, blue tongue, BSE – they had all contributed to the decline. Many village shows had never recovered from last-minute cancellation, and insurance premiums were beyond the reach of societies with limited sponsorship. Cloven-hoofed animals had become an event organiser’s nightmare.
So Riddings Show had transformed itself into a more genteel August bank holiday occasion. Cooper expected there would be flowers, vegetables and handicrafts, with the only livestock being the ponies and riders in the gymkhana ring.
It had begun to rain on and off almost as soon as he’d left the garden of the Bridge Inn, and he needed his windscreen wipers as he joined the flow of traffic into the showground. When he drove through the gate on to Froggatt Fields, he was greeted by the smell of engine oil, and the chug of vintage farm equipment. There were a few nods to the show’s agricultural origins after all.
The marquees and stands had been set up in the lower field, separated from the river by a line of trees. At the far end, the gymkhana arena lay in a natural hollow. As Cooper walked down the slope from the parking area, a brass band was playing a medley of James Bond themes. Goldfinger, From Russia with Love. The grass in the parking area had been mowed, but not removed, so the cuttings lay everywhere in deep swathes. They wrapped themselves around the tyres of the car, and covered everyone’s shoes. He found himself wading through heaps of wet grass all the way down to the show ring.
He stopped for a moment to watch a children’s entertainer in a sparkly blue jacket, who was talking to a dummy Afghan hound. The dog didn’t answer, except by whispering in his ear. What did you call a ventriloquism act where the dummy didn’t speak? He had no idea.
Cooper turned away. There were already too many people whispering to each other in this case. Why didn’t everyone say out loud what they thought? It would make life so much easier. His life, anyway.
Carol Villiers was already on the showground. She was dressed off duty, in jeans and a T-shirt, with a jacket tied round her waist. She looked every bit the outdoor girl, the sun bringing out the colour in her face. Out in the sunlight, between showers, Cooper noticed how pale her eyes were. Sandy, as if they had been bleached in a desert climate.
They walked towards the long canvas marquee, where signs announced that it had just opened to the public after judging.
‘I’ve heard you’re engaged, Ben,’ said Villiers. ‘Congratulations.’
Astonished, Cooper turned and stared at her as if she were a witch. Psychic, at least.
‘I haven’t told anyone here about that yet,’ he said.
‘Well, someone has.’
‘Blast. I didn’t expect it to get round so quickly.’
‘It’s one of the perils of having a relationship with a colleague,’ said Villiers. ‘I should know.’
‘I suppose so.’
Cooper realised this was going to take some getting used to. Once his engagement was announced, and was out in the public domain, it became real.
Inside the marquee, the long rows of tables looked spectacular. They were lined with all kinds of produce, from bottles of red sloe wine to jars of runner bean chutney. The scone classes seemed to have been particularly popular, and some of those extravagant flower arrangements must have taken many hours to create. Someone had even embroidered butterfly species around a cottage scene.
Cooper saw that the band was a local one, from Hathersage. Mostly middle-aged men, dressed in red jackets. Though a bandstand had been set out for them, they were playing inside the produce tent to avoid the rain. One of the musicians had stored his tuba case under a trestle table covered in mammoth cabbages and strings of onions.
‘My brother used to be in a brass band,’ said Villiers. ‘Soprano cornet.’
‘I’d forgotten you had a brother.’
‘Charlie. You must have met him.’
‘I’m sure I did. I just can’t quite…’
‘He only joined the band for the beer,’ said Villiers.
At the other end of the tent, Cooper stopped to look at the winner in the photographic competition, a stunning close-up shot of frost on a barbed-wire fence. The photographer had caught the spikes of the frost mirroring the angle of the steel barbs. The clarity of the detail was amazing. Every facet of the ice crystals shone out of the picture.
Next to it on the table were entries in another photographic class – local scenes. Each entry was labelled with the name and village of the photographer, and one sprang out at him immediately. B. Gamble, Riddings. Of course. A keen amateur snapper like our Barry wouldn’t have been able to resist showing off his talents in the local show.
Mr Gamble hadn’t won a prize, though. Not even highly commended. His entry showed a corner of Riddings that Cooper wasn’t familiar with. An ancient building with a corrugated-iron roof, moss growing on the stone walls, a door half covered in peeling green paint. No windows visible, so it was probably an old farm building. A lot older than most of the properties in Riddings. Perhaps it was a remnant of an agricultural holding that had stood in the village before the big houses were built.
Cooper guessed that Gamble had been going for an artistic statement about decay and abandonment. The building had reached a fairly picturesque stage of dilapidation. The weeds in front of it were dense and impenetrable. A bird had built its nest on top of a broken downspout. But he could also see why the photograph hadn’t received even a commendation from the judge. The composition was all wrong. The angle of the shot was awkward, and the building itself was off-centre, part of it concealed by an ugly tree stump that had got in the way, as if the photographer hadn’t noticed it. Cooper wasn’t an expert, but even he could see that the picture would have been improved immensely if Gamble had simply moved ten yards to the right and got a few steps closer to his subject.
‘Our Mr Gamble,’ said Villiers, looking over his shoulder. ‘Will he be here?’
‘Oh, he wouldn’t miss this.’
‘A chance to observe his neighbours out in the open.’
‘The same reason we’re here, in fact.’
Cooper looked around, searching for the familiar faces of Riddings residents. The relationships and hierarchies were difficult to assess without seeing people together. He had been speaking to them only on their own territory, where they could present themselves in their best light, give an account of their relations with their neighbours that they wanted him to believe, tell him any story without fear of contradiction.
Outside the tent, children were running around with giant inflatable hammers their parents had won at a hoopla stall. Cooper and Villiers passed a vicar with cropped grey hair and a goatee beard, wearing muddy black jeans. A visitor had noticed his dog collar and stopped him: We don’t see a clergyman around here very often. The vicar started to explain that he covered a huge area, stretching from Riddings and Curbar across a vast swathe of the Peak District to Great Longstone and Stoney Middleton. The sighting of a Church of England clergyman in an English village was becoming as rare as a working phone box.