The Feast by Margaret Kennedy Page B

parental encouragement in pursuing the vendetta. For Dick Siddal had often annoyed his wife by professing considerable admiration for Father Bott. It was not to be hoped that he would do anything energetic himself, but he might say something which could be construed as authority to ring up the police.
    He, too, was taking a little nap when Gerry arrived, in a boot-hole strewn with Sunday newspapers. He had just finished the crossword in the Observer and was collecting his resources before attempting that in the Sunday Express. But he opened one eye and looked at his son good-humouredly.
    ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘How’s Martin Luther?’
    ‘He won’t go.’
    ‘Why should he go?’
    ‘We can’t have people of that sort here.’
    ‘Then why did you take them?’
    ‘We didn’t know what they were like.’
    ‘But you must have known. Do you never read the newspapers? He’s always doing this sort of thing; his name’s a household word. Why … only last month he started a free fight somewhere down in Dorset. He’s been suspended, or whatever it is they do to parsons who won’t behave, but he goes on doing it.’
    Gerry gaped at his father and presently asked:
    ‘Did you know all about him, then, yesterday?’
    ‘Naturally,’ said Siddal, ‘when I heard we’d got a Canon Wraxton I supposed it must be the Canon Wraxton.’
    ‘But why didn’t you tell us?’
    ‘I wasn’t asked.’
    ‘But, Father, you must have known … that we wouldn’t … if we’d had the slightest idea….’
    ‘Not a bit of it. I didn’t like to interfere. Advicefrom me is seldom appreciated. I don’t pretend for a minute to understand how or why your mother chooses her inmates.’
    ‘Then you knew … when we all went to church … you knew this would probably happen?’
    ‘I thought it likely. And when I saw you all coming back I knew I was right. I’ve never laughed so much since your mother opened this hotel. I wish you could have seen yourselves.’
    No help was coming from this quarter, so Gerry climbed the hill in search of Father Bott, hoping to be told that it was his duty, as a good Churchman, to use physical violence on the Canon. But the Vicar, whom he met in the churchyard, was discouraging.
    ‘Oh leave it, leave it,’ said Father Bott. ‘He can’t do more harm than he’s done already. If he tries to get into my church again, I’ll deal with him.’
    ‘But for us to harbour such people!’ cried Gerry. ‘I won’t have it.’
    ‘My dear boy, that’s for your parents to decide. It’s their hotel, not yours.’
    ‘But I’m so angry,’ protested Gerry. ‘I can’t bear to let them get away with it. It was so … so vile … so obscene … it made me sick.’
    ‘It made me sick too,’ agreed Father Bott. ‘But there you are.’
    And he sighed. He was feeling very old and discouraged that afternoon. As a younger man he had enjoyed tussles with Protestants, but he had come to regard his own pugnacity with suspicion as a vice rather than a virtue, and he knew that a fresh scandal at St. Sody’s would do his church no good. He looked up at the sky and down at the grass and then he looked at Gerry’s irate face.
    ‘Dost thou well to be angry?’ he asked, smiling suddenly.
    ‘Yes,’ said Gerry. ‘I really think there are occasions when anger is justified.’
    ‘There may be,’ agreed Father Bott. ‘But I’ve never been able to make up my mind which they are.’
    ‘He insulted God,’ said Gerry.
    ‘Oh no, no, no! Oh no. He couldn’t do that, could he?’
    ‘He tried to.’
    The Rector sighed again, looked at his watch, and said impatiently:
    ‘We don’t have to make all this fuss about God.’
    Then, trying not to laugh at Gerry’s shocked expression, he added:
    ‘God can look after Himself. And He’s told us not to make a fuss. Be still and know that I am God. Now excuse me … I have to take a children’s service.’
    ‘Then you mean … do nothing?’
    ‘Not now. Anything you do just