Passing Strange Read Free

see what you mean.”
    â€œI can’t deputize for anyone dabbling with the occult, even in fun.”
    â€œEven in a good cause?” asked Hebbinge wryly.
    â€œThe Bishop wouldn’t like it,” said the Rector, blithely invoking his spiritual superior. (There was, he felt, no reason why that good man shouldn’t come in handy sometimes.)
    â€œNo, no,” protested Hebbinge hastily, “of course not. I must say we hadn’t thought of that aspect at all.”
    The Rector stroked his left cheek with a gentle finger. “I have enough trouble getting my flock to understand that the Devil is a fallen angel without confusing them by appearing to change sides …”
    But Edward Hebbinge had already gone. The Rector turned back to the second-hand books only to find Fred Pearson and Ken Walls by his side.
    â€œWe’ve got a little problem, Rector, if you don’t mind,” began Fred.
    The Reverend Thomas Jervis didn’t mind. In fact he was old enough and wise enough to welcome little problems as being more likely to be capable of solution than big ones.
    â€œAbout tomatoes,” amplified Ken Walls.
    The Rector bent his head attentively. Ken Walls was married to a querulous, complaining creature for whom there was no real solution this side of the grave. The man never even referred to the big problem in his life and the Rector was only too happy to help him with a manageable one, recognizing that the pursuit of the perfect tomato was an alternative to committing a homicide that, if not exactly justifiable, would at least be comprehensible.
    â€œTell me all …” he began.
    It wasn’t very much later that the Rector met his own wife in the tea tent.
    â€œAt least,” said Mrs Jervis, when she had heard about the tomatoes, “it’s one thing that can’t be laid at the door of the Church of England.” She was a staunch defender of the faith at grass roots level.
    â€œI have known parishes,” declared the Rector, “rent asunder …”
    â€œSplit,” interrupted the Rector’s wife automatically. She did her best to keep weekday and Sunday phraseology separate.
    â€œSplit,” amended the Rector equably, “on such fundamental issues as who runs the cake stall.”
    â€œOr plays Boadicea in the pageant,” supplemented his helpmeet, who had heard it all before.
    â€œQuite apart from the academic point of whether she should be unclothed.”
    Mrs Jervis regarded her husband fondly. Any man who thought that point academic was best in the church. As a man of the cloth he could be as unworldly as he liked. She chose an iced bun. “Always supposing,” she added drily, “that Boadicea was as young as the Pageant Committee thought.” Almstone Pageant had been two years ago but reverberations from it still echoed round the parish like the grumble of thunder in mountains.
    â€œI think,” said Thomas Jervis mildly, “that they were confusing her with Lady Godiva.”
    â€œIvy Challender wasn’t a day over seventeen at the time. My guess,” said the Rector’s wife, who had a position of her own to keep up, “is that no one – queen or not – could lead a tribe – civilised or not – at seventeen.”
    â€œLady Godiva wasn’t leading a tribe.”
    â€œIt wasn’t Lady Godiva they were confusing her with,” said Mrs Jervis triumphantly.
    â€œNo?”
    â€œNo,” she said. “It was someone else in a chariot.”
    â€œJehu?” he said, surprised.
    â€œJezebel,” said Mrs Jervis, biting into her iced bun. She tasted it critically. “Rose Burton made this. She leaves them in the oven too long.”
    â€œDoes she?” The Rector eschewed the buns and reached for a rock cake instead. “Jezebel didn’t drive up in a chariot.”
    Mrs Jervis ignored this. “And as for Ivy Challender