Fete Fatale by Robert Barnard

necessary, or would find it courteous, to pay public attention to the widow of his predecessor. Father Battersby felt no such compulsion; or else he felt that, after the encounter at ours, it would be best for all concerned if he avoided further meetings with Thyrza Primp. So she and Mary could march up the aisles he was proceeding along, they could fix him with long-range, unseeing stares, they could turn icy shoulders, sniff as if they smelt gas leaking—it all went for nothing. Father Battersby chatted, listened, stopped to buy, and was apparently quite unconscious of their presence. It was like an old regime giving way painfully to a new. And if Father Battersby did not notice the antics of some members of the old order, others did, and rejoiced at their discomfiture.
    â€˜Silly women,’ came a voice at my back, as I witnessed one such non-encounter. ‘Silly, silly women.’
    It was Marcus, come in for a ten-minute break from the mallet and the bell.
    â€˜Forget it. They’re not getting through, and it’s doing them no good whatsoever. Who’s testing their strength?’
    â€˜Weston. He’s taking over entirely at three-thirty. Then I’m going home for a cup of tea and a pipe in the peace of my own armchair. Coming?’
    â€˜No such luck. Would that I could. I’m stuck here until all this junk goes. And Mr Horsforth is damn-all use as a partner.’
    â€˜He’s a busy man—I expect he has lots of other things to do,’ said Marcus comfortably.
    â€˜I have a lot of other things to do, but I don’t get to do them,’ I said resentfully. ‘Are you coming back later?’
    â€˜Oh yes, of course: I’ll be here for the finish.’
    â€˜For Lady Godetia and her “absolutely magnificent effort on the part of all concerned”?’ I said, amused by Marcus’s inbred stickling for doing the right thing. “That’s when I shall take off. I’ll go home and prepare you an absolutely enormous dinner—a steak the size of a plate.’
    We stood there in companionable silence, letting the fête flow around us. Marcus noticed the arrival of some slightly tipsy soldiers from the barracks, and he kept his eye on them for any sign of their causing ‘unpleasantness’. Marcus could never abide unpleasantness. I really rather liked it. I grinned secretly as I listened to the subterranean mutterings and grumbles around me: ‘She had the cheek to charge . . . ’ ‘Charity’s one thing, but I don’t like being done! . . . ’ ‘It’s not a chutney I’d expect anyone to pay good money for; and then she goes and gives me 20p too little change . . . ’ ‘I meantersay  . . . ’
    Our brief moment of intimacy, hands held under the stall, was ended by Mr Horsforth’s breezy and unapologetic reappearance.
    â€˜Right!’ I said briskly. ‘Mrs Nielson and I are going for lunch. I can’t stand here in this heat all day without a bite to eat, or I’ll faint.’
    â€˜I’ve only had a cup of tea and a scone myself,’ protested Mr Horsforth.
    â€˜Well, that’s a cup of tea and a scone more than I’ve had. Come along, Gwen.’
    Gwen Nielson had got distracted by a lost child, a tiny mite, howling and blubbering for its mother. She was on her haunches, comforting it with nonsense talk. When she saw I was at last free, she held it up over the crowd, called ‘Anybody own this little lad?’, delivered it over to a not-noticeably-grateful parent, then shoved a sheet roughly over the few jars remaining on her stall and made off with Gustave and me to the sandwich bar. Really, she was a very capable woman.
    With a few packages of standard fête fare, we pushed our way outside. The crush on the meadows was beginning to diminish, and people were wandering home to late lunches, or to get a drink in