The Art of Standing Still Read online

  ALSO BY PENNY CULLIFORD

  Theodora’s Diary

  Theodora’s Wedding

  Theodora’s Baby

  ZONDERVAN

  The Art of Standing Still

  Copyright © 2007 by Penny Culliford

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

  ePub Edition June 2009 ISBN: 0-310-86102-0

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Culliford, Penny.

  The art of standing still / Penny Culliford.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-310-26559-7

  1. Theater — Fiction. 2. Women journalists — Fiction. 3. England — Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PR6103.U46A88 2007

  823'.92 — dc22

  2006030876

  * * *

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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  06 07 08 09 10 11 12 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Act One

  Scene One

  Scene Two

  Scene Three

  Scene Four

  Scene Five

  Scene Six

  Scene Seven

  Scene Eight

  Scene Nine

  Scene Ten

  Scene Eleven

  Scene Twelve

  Scene Thirteen

  Act Two

  Scene One

  Scene Two

  Scene Three

  Scene Four

  Scene Five

  Scene Six

  Scene Seven

  Scene Eight

  Scene Nine

  Scene Ten

  Scene Eleven

  Scene Twelve

  Scene Thirteen

  Scene Fourteen

  Scene Fifteen

  Scene Sixteen

  Author’s Note

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  Acknowledgements

  MY THANKS AND APPRECIATION FOR ALL THEIR HELP WITH THIS BOOK GO TO Mike Tyler, Kit Bird, Alan Lyons, and Samuel Valentine for inspiring me with their experiences of the York Mystery Plays. To Lucy Brinicombe and Peter Unsworth for helping me to understand the workings of a local newspaper and Peter Cornwell for showing me inside a police station and so cheerfully answering my bizarre and gruesome questions. To Debi Simmons for musical advice. To Wintershall Estates, Surrey, for helping me to visualise the performance and for advice on costumes, and the Alexanders at Home Farm for inside information on cattle farming. Finally, my gratitude goes to my editor Diane Noble and to Sue Haward for reading it and helping me to make it make sense.

  Christ is already in that place of peace, which is all in all. He is on the right hand of God. He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance which issues from the everlasting throne. He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness – stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy; that most perfect of joys, the utter profound, ineffable tranquillity of the Divine Essence. He has entered into His rest. That is our home; here we are on a pilgrimage, and Christ calls us to His many mansions which He has prepared.

  CARDINAL JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

  Be still, and know that I am God;

  I will be exalted among the nations,

  I will be exalted in the earth.

  PSALM 46:10

  Act One

  Scene One

  IT WAS THE SPLASH THAT WOKE JEMMA DURHAM.

  She thought at first that it was a swan or one of the other water birds landing upstream, but the muttering and muffled cursing certainly didn’t belong to any kind of waterfowl. She sat up and checked her alarm.

  ‘Two forty-eight,’ she groaned. ‘Who in their right mind . . . ?’

  It was still pitch black. Wary of drawing attention to herself by switching on the light, she tiptoed to the galley end of the narrow-boat and edged back the curtain. She peered outside, blinking back sleep.

  Silhouetted in the moonlight, stood a person. He – or she – was dressed in dark clothes and leaned out precariously from the towpath. Jemma held her breath. The figure appeared to be holding a long pole, perhaps a branch or a boat hook.

  She watched, intrigued yet horrified, as the figure dragged it through the water as if dredging the river. Or maybe searching for something.

  Jemma returned to bed and tucked her knees under her chin. She wondered if she should call the police. What would she say? ‘There’s someone mysterious poking around in the river with a long pole?’

  She could imagine the laughter. She couldn’t lie still, not with the splashes and muffled mutters from across the river. She returned to her sentry post at the window. Half of her brain wished they would go away so she could get back to bed. The other half hoped they would fish up a dead body or something – anything that she could transform into a story for the Monksford Gazette, fry up, and present on a plate to her editor in the morning.

  The figure seemed to be getting frantic, thrashing around with the pole in the water. Curiosity completely overwhelmed her. She pulled on her coat and Wellingtons and quietly unlocked the door. The water lapped slightly against the Ebony Hog’s hull as she climbed up the ramp. She sneaked along the grass next to the towpath, avoiding the gravel surface so her footsteps wouldn’t be heard.

  As she crept closer, hiding in the shadow of the elder bushes and willow trees, she heard him utter a curse. A dog barked nearby. Jemma froze and held her breath.

  The figure, she was sure now it was a man, straightened, listening.

  They both stood motionless for what seemed like years. Then, to her horror, she heard a familiar tune. The phone in her pocket had started to ring. She unzipped her coat, groping frantically to silence it. But it was too late. He dropped the pole and ran with long strides up the towpath towards Todbourne Heath.

  A car door slammed and an engine fired up. She stood, dismayed, as the sound grew more distant. She heard the car accelerate along the Fordbrook Road; then it was gone. Jemma looked up the river and saw the abbey illuminated in the moonlight. The dog barked again; then all was silent.

  She glared at her phone. What kind of idiot rings someone at that time in the morning? She flicked through the menu.

  Richard’s number.

  Jemma didn’t know whether to be furious or worried. One thing for sure – her cover was blown. That was the end of her surveillance operation for tonight. And she was none the wiser a
bout who she had seen and what he was doing.

  She turned and walked back up the towpath, not caring now how much noise her feet made on the cinder surface.

  Back aboard the Ebony Hog, she stared at her phone. She hadn’t spoken to Richard since ‘the note.’ He had made his feelings perfectly clear. She threw it into her handbag and lay down in bed. The events at the river and Richard’s call jostled in her mind, and neither was likely to allow her the luxury of getting back to sleep.

  No point lying there worrying; she needed get up and do something – anything. In college, she had written many essays in the early hours, and more recently, she had seen the sun rise several times while completing articles. She crawled out of bed again and put the kettle on. There wasn’t much she could do about the stranger’s ‘night fishing trip’, but she could find out what Richard was up to.

  She extracted the phone from her handbag and took a deep breath as she pressed the call-back button.

  ‘Hello.’ Richard’s voice sounded slurred.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Jems . . . I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry for what? Sorry for leaving me or sorry for ringing me at three in the morning.’

  ‘It’s just that I miss you.’

  ‘Oh, you miss me, do you? You wouldn’t be missing me if you’d stayed. How’s that tart you left me for?’

  Silence.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’

  More silence . . . except for his irregular breathing. It sounded as if he was crying.

  ‘Jems . . . I’m all on my own here.’

  ‘Good. Then you know what it feels like.’ Jemma pressed the off button and threw the phone back into her bag. She flopped down on her bed, no nearer sleep than before.

  So, he was all alone? Well poor him!

  ON REFLECTION, JEMMA DECIDED THE NEXT MORNING, DRIED COW PATS WERE definitely preferable to fresh ones. She wiped her heel on a tuft of grass and picked her way, with increased care, through the field towards the makeshift arena.

  She should not have sacrificed practicality for fashion. Had she thought deeply enough about it, she would have realised the hazards associated with a ‘cow-pat throwing contest’ would be of a bovine residual nature. If anyone had asked her advice on what to wear, she would have recommended Wellington boots every time. And she would have done well to heed her own advice. But Jemma preferred giving advice to taking it. Anyway, it was too late now. She hadn’t time to go home and change. The contest was in full swing and she didn’t dare miss a throw.

  She caught a glimpse of Saffy Walton, the photographer, zooming in on a grinning man who was holding a bovine pancake aloft as if it were the World Cup. Being on an assignment with Saffy Walton was rather like being trailed by a slightly bewildered gerbil. Oh well, it was going to be one of those days.

  Jemma checked her bag – notebook and pen; handheld recording machine, though she preferred shorthand; bottle of mineral water (still, not sparkling), and the note. The note from Richard that she found on her table in the galley last week. The one that she had read over and over, but the words still seemed to say he was leaving and not coming back. It was written on a piece of paper torn from an envelope. Surely two and a half years deserved at least a piece of narrow ruled, if not vellum. She stuffed the crumpled scrap to the bottom of the bag. Then he had the nerve to phone her last night!

  ‘Come on girl, you’ve got a job to do.’ She waved a fly from her face and set off smartly across the field – as quickly as her impractical footwear would permit.

  Jemma believed in self-motivation. If she told herself she could do something often enough, she would come to believe her own words. And it seemed to be working. So far she had spent only an hour on the phone to Lou, alternately sobbing and shouting, another hour stuffing Richard’s belongings into several black sacks while listening to breaking-up songs on a late-night radio station, and had, this morning, after several fitful nights’ sleep, gone shopping.

  The taupe-suede kitten-heel boots were a bribe to herself, like chocolate to follow nasty medicine. They had called to her from the shop window – and they went beautifully with her soft beige corduroy skirt. They had cost nearly half a week’s wages, but she could surely justify the expense. She had worn them to prove she was over Richard. It didn’t seem to be working.

  To her irritation, she noticed that Saffy was wearing sensible green Wellingtons with her baggy jumper and jeans. Her corn-stalk hair was sticking up in all directions. She looked as if she had just crawled out of a barn. Typical local paper! Jemma never quite fitted in with that image – she just wasn’t a tweed-cap, green-gilet-wearing country hack. To her, the job with the Monksford Gazette was merely a stage, a step, a tread on the stairway to the national dailies.

  The realization, however, that the darling little suede boots were infinitely more suited to the paved serenity of ‘Fleet Street’ than a field somewhere southeast of Monksford, just served to make Jemma more irked. Only the thought that Richard would have hated them stopped her taking them off, stuffing them into her bag, and carrying on in her socks. That and the fresh cow pats.

  ‘And the winner of the under eighteens with a throw of three metres, twenty-four is Harry Denholm,’ crackled the public address system. ‘If the next contestants for the freestyle throw – the over fifties – would please step up to the mark.’

  The grass in the arena had been flattened by the people of Monksford who had turned out in force to support the event. It was wise to keep in with the locals, so Jemma nodded a greeting to those she recognised. Who knows when the next town scandal or piece of juicy gossip might find its way to her?

  It appeared that all the great and good of the town had gathered to watch desiccated cow dung being tossed into orbit. It served to prove what Jemma had long suspected – that not much happens in the town of Monksford.

  There seemed to be a lull in the proceedings – that, or maybe there was never more excitement than this – so Jemma headed towards the tea tent for a coffee. She yawned. Perhaps the caffeine would cancel the effects of her sleepless night. Tired and grumpy was not the best frame of mind to attend this event full of fragrant local colour.

  ‘Bound to be that disgusting instant stuff,’ she muttered to herself, trying to avoid the potholes and muddy places on the grass. A short woman with ginger hair came out of the entrance to the tent and almost bumped into Jemma, slopping her tea on Jemma’s boots.

  ‘Watch out!’ Jemma shouted. She was about to let rip with a tirade of choice words when she noticed the woman was wearing a dog collar.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ The woman said as she started to mop at Jemma’s feet with a paper serviette.

  ‘Ruined! And they cost me a fortune,’ Jemma said. The boots, like her day, seemed doomed.

  ‘I can’t apologise enough. I’ll pay to have them cleaned. Make sure you send me the bill.’

  ‘I will.’ As if a few pounds would make her feel any better.

  The woman wrote her address on a scrap of paper, and Jemma took it. ‘Reverend Ruth Wells,’ it read and gave the address of the vicarage. To her amazement the woman smiled.

  Jemma did her best to smile back, ‘Thanks – no, really. It is kind of you.’ She thrust the paper into her pocket and went into the tea tent. She was pleasantly surprised to find a pot of percolated coffee sitting on a warmer and a large jug of fresh creamy milk. A jolly caricature of a farmer’s wife with a flowery frock and a terrible perm served her cheerfully.

  She took her coffee and found a seat outside the tent. The tables were covered in blue-and-white checked cloths, each with a china vase holding a posy of wild flowers. The sun was warm on her face and the coffee tasted heavenly. Farmers with chocolate éclairs shared anecdotes with ladies with large-brimmed hats and strings of pearls who delicately nibbled their clotted-cream scones.

  Jemma looked around. A young policewoman in uniform stood by the entrance to the tent, sipping from a blue-and-white striped china mug. Should s
he say anything about the nocturnal shenanigans by the river? A group of teenage boys swaggered past. Jemma remembered their photographs on the Gazette’s ‘Shop a Yob’ page. They ‘accidentally’ bumped into the policewoman, slopping her tea. She yelled in protest, and the group ran off, with the policewoman in pursuit. Jemma’s heart beat a little faster at the whiff of a newsworthy story. She jumped up, leaving her half-finished coffee on the table, and scrabbled in her handbag to find her notebook.

  She squinted in the brilliant sunshine outside the marquee. The WPC stood at the gate with her hands on her hips as the lads sauntered up the lane, turning around to shout the occasional curse.

  She returned her notebook to her bag. ‘Youths Spill Constable’s Tea’ would make a lousy headline.

  Jemma made her way back to the arena, passing women in flowing summer dresses, twin-sets and pearls, and hats that would not be out of place at Ascot.

  At least she wasn’t the only one to commit a fashion crime. A woman in a short tight skirt, high heels, and enough foundation on her face to plaster a wall caught Jemma’s eye. She tottered around on the arm of a middle-aged man who was wearing a dark business suit. Her pencilled eyebrows zigzagged in irritation as she stumbled over the rough grass. She clung to his arm like a lifebelt. Sweating profusely, he scowled in the September sunshine, and then paused to wipe the sweat from his coarse face. Jemma recognised them as Councillor Alistair and Mrs Amanda Fry. As she took them in she made a mental note: visits to farms – no short skirts, no pinstriped suits, and definitely no kitten heels.

  At last, someone to interview! Her heels embedded themselves in the soft turf as she half ran, half staggered, towards a pen where Fry and his wife were admiring a large Jersey cow.

  ‘Jemma Durham, Monksford . . .’

  ‘I know who you are.’

  Jemma thrust her hand out to the man, who shook it reluctantly. ‘Excuse me, Councillor Fry, can you tell me why the council overturned the previous decision not to build a road through Monksford farmland?’