There was a sparkle in Fiona Lister’s eyes as she leaned forward to listen. Her highly sensitive gossip-antennae informed her that bitchiness was imminent.
Terry Harper listed some of the locals who’d featured in previous years’ Art Crawls, but whose work didn’t meet the more exacting artistic standards his regime was introducing. Andrew Wragg chipped in to the aspersions with his own scurrilous addenda. They were clearly going into a practised routine; some of Terry’s lines showed signs of long honing.
None of the names meant anything to Carole or Jude, so they just sat back and let the malice flow around them.
Terry: “His idea of mixed-media is about as original as cheese and pineapple chunks on a cocktail stick.”
Andrew: “And the cheese in his case’d only be bog-standard Cheddar.”
Terry: “I mean, her little whimsical pictures of kittens’d be all right on the front of a chocolate box.”
Andrew: “Oh yes, lots of people like a nice bit of pussy.”
Terry: “Goblins and elves carved from driftwood must be useful for something…”
Andrew: “Kindling, perhaps?”
“…but you can’t call them art,” Terry Harper concluded. “No, so I’m afraid a lot of the local amateurs and weekend painters have had their noses rather put out of joint. But I just think that in the arts you have to have the highest standards possible.” He spoke with regret at the hard task he had set himself, but was obviously enjoying every minute of it. He loved being in charge of the Fed-borough Art Crawl Hanging Committee. And his attitude to hanging was reminiscent of Judge Jeffries.
“So who of the locals has survived?” asked Fiona Lister eagerly, storing information for future slights and put-downs.
“Well…Alan Burnethorpe’s still in there, of course, but then his drawings are quite superb.”
James Lister chuckled. “I always like his stuff. Doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination. After last year there was no one in Fedborough who didn’t know what the lovely Joke looked like in the altogether.”
He was all set to bracket the speech with another chuckle, but catching Fiona’s eye, let it wither instantly on the bough.
Terry Harper sighed coyly. “And I’m afraid there’s someone else in this room who’s survived the cull.” He sent an indulgent look across to Andrew Wragg. “Because I just haven’t got the strength for any more tantrums. I knew if I excluded him, I’d never hear the end of it.”
“That’s not the reason. Don’t listen to him!” shrieked the younger man in mock-affront. “I’m going to be represented because I’m bloody good! In years to come, art-lovers will make pilgrimages to the Fedborough Smokehouse to see where I worked. And all of you lot’ll be boasting that you once were once at the same dinner party as Andrew Wragg!”
He was so over the top as to be humorous, and he duly got his laugh. But Carole had the feeling he more than half believed what he was saying.
“What about Debbie Carlton?” asked Fiona Lister in acid tones. “Have her little watercolours survived the cull?”
“Oh yes,” Terry replied. “Debbie’s one of the few genuinely talented artists in Fedborough. Present company, of course, excepted,” he added quickly before Andrew could say anything.
This was clearly the wrong answer so far as Fiona Lister was concerned. “Her parents always said she was very gifted.” She sniffed. “Couldn’t see it myself. Billie and Stanley were very tickled when she got into art college. Can’t imagine why. It’s not a proper training for anything. At least our children all got professional qualifications, didn’t they, James?”
Her husband hastily agreed that indeed they did.
With trepidation, the Rev Trigwell tiptoed into the conversation. “Of course, Fiona, you must have seen a lot of the Frankses in the old days…what with their grocery being right next door to your butcher’s…”
From the frown it prompted, this hadn’t been the right thing to say either. Carole got the feeling that the only right thing to say after Fiona Lister’s every pronouncement was ‘Yes’. From the subdued way her husband was behaving that evening, it seemed to be a lesson he had learnt early in their marriage.
“Did you hear,” Fiona went on, after a withering look at the vicar, “that Francis Carlton had been back in Fedborough this week?”
“Oh, yes!” squealed Andrew Wragg. “Owning up to the police about all the women he’d chopped up in the cellar of Felling House.”
Fiona Lister spoke, darkly portentous. “He certainly did have other women friends, after he’d been married to Debbie.”
“Having women friends,” said Jude, who was getting a bit sick of all the prejudice flying about, “doesn’t automatically mean chopping them up.”
“It could do,” her hostess riposted. “The kind of man who betrays his wife is capable of all kinds of other moral lapses.”
“I don’t agree with that. You can’t apply the same standards to sexual behaviour and criminal behaviour.”
Fiona Lister turned the beady majesty of her stare on Jude. She was not used to having her opinions challenged, least of all in her own house. Jude, who had never been afraid to express her views on anything, seemed blithely unaware of the beam of disapproval focused on her.
The Rev Trigwell tried to ease the conversation, andregain some of the ground he’d lost by his previous remark. “Very sad that things didn’t work out with Debbie and Francis.”
Fiona Lister was implacable. “Her parents gave that girl too much freedom. Too full of her own opinions, if you ask me. That kind can never make a marriage work. You need discipline. Marriage may not be fun all the time, but you have to stick with it. All our children’s marriages are still intact. Aren’t they, James?”
Her husband, who hadn’t heard the subject that was being discussed, took the safe option of saying that indeed they were.
“It hit her parents very hard when Debbie and Francis divorced,” Fiona went on. “The shock was what started Stanley’s illness, wasn’t it, Donald?”
“Oh, I don’t think one can say that,” the doctor equivocated. “He was deteriorating long before Debbie’s marriage went wrong. Anyway, no one really knows what brings on Alzheimer’s.”
“In Stanley’s case it was Debbie getting divorced.” Fiona Lister would never change an opinion simply because there was an expert on the subject present. “Have you seen him recently, Donald?”
“Couple of weeks back. The Elms is part of my patch, so I do go down and check over the old lot on a fairly regular basis.”
“Any change with Stanley? I met Billie in Sainsbury’s the other week and she said he was improving.”
“I’m afraid there’s little chance of that. Alzheimer’s is a degenerative condition.”
Carole wondered whether the doctor should be talking about one of his patients in this way. Surely even someone in Stanley Franks’s condition had the right to medical confidentiality. She thought how much she would dislike meeting her own doctor socially, sitting down to meals with someone to whom she had entrusted embarrassing physical secrets. But perhaps that was inevitable in a small community like Fedborough.
She was also beginning to wonder why she and Jude had been invited to the dinner party. Once they’d said they came from Fethering, nobody had asked them any further personal details. Fiona Lister wasn’t, as her husband had said, interested in new people; she just wanted to appropriate new people before anyone else in Fedborough got their hands on them.
The assumption seemed to be that the immigrants from Fethering should be deeply honoured to be included in conversations about Fedborough people they didn’t know and were never likely to meet. Jude, having experienced the same at the Roxbys’, had issued a warning in the car on the way over, but Carole had thought she was exaggerating.