Free Fete Fatale by Robert Barnard

my hands full, because Mr Horsforth’s appearances behind the stall were so spasmodic as to be almost token. He irritated me a great deal and had I not been to some extent dependent on his goodwill, being a possible supply teacher, I would have said something sharp, never finding it difficult to find something sharp to say. I was quite willing to believe that a headmaster had more duties to fulfil and more people to have a word with than the wife of a vet, but in that case why volunteer for duty at all? Meanwhile it was I, on my own, who had to cope with the rush of customers.
    Mr Mipchin was one of my early buyers, and one with a good eye. Among the better things that I had accumulated or wheedled out of people was a charming mid-Victorian tea-caddy, which he took a fancy to. I pushed him up to a good price, and insisted that he take something from Thyrza’s stuff as well. He chose a little model of a lady in Welsh national costume, holding a broom, and in her dusty and decrepit state looking tolerably like a witch.
    â€˜Something to remember her by,’ he said, and I could swear there was a malicious little smile playing around somewhere underneath the walrus moustaches.
    Thyrza’s stuff usually met with an incredulous rummaging, with a racking of memories among the elderly to dredge up the purpose of this or that item. ‘Egg cosies!’ they would say contemptuously. ‘Who on earth uses them these days?’
    â€˜Cor, look, Annie,’ said one fat lady, the wife of one of Hexton’s greengrocers. ‘A toasting fork! And hatpins! She could never have used all them hatpins. And remember them things, Annie? They called them chafing dishes in the olden days.’
    â€˜That’s very cheap,’ I said determinedly, for it was one of the more saleable items. ‘You should buy it as a souvenir of Thyrza Primp.’
    â€˜Best souvenir I can have of her is the sight of her back when the bus leaves,’ came the dour reply. So much for ‘dear Thyrza’, so irreplaceable, in Mary’s eyes, in Hexton life.
    Father Battersby, meanwhile, was going around, meeting people, having a word here, a nod there, and generally seeming to need no outside help in getting to know people. I was glad Marcus had made little effort to arrange anything, because what was happening was so obviously unpremeditated. I never saw him but that he was surrounded by one or two, or by a little knot. Timothy, I noticed, obedient to his father’s detail, brought along periodically some schoolboy or other to have a shy word with the new vicar. (What Timothy’s father was doing with the time he was not spending at the stall I had no idea.) When Father Battersby got round to my stall, I had some new experience of his talent for the mal à propos. By chance Mrs Mipchin was standing at Mrs Nielson’s stall opposite, having her sandalled toes licked disdainfully by Gustave, and examining pots of strawberry jam to try to avoid the runniest. (‘They’re all a bit runny,’ Mrs Nielson was saying dubiously, ‘but I expect it’s just the heat.’)
    â€˜Hello, hello—I still haven’t thanked you for your hospitality last time I was here,’ said Father Battersby, in his carrying, clergyman’s voice. (He hadn’t, either. That was one of the little formalities that I suspect he set little store by.) ‘Golly, what a collection of this and that you’ve got here. Where does it all come from?’
    â€˜That’s all Thyrza Primp’s,’ I said, neutrally. ‘Stuff she’s clearing out of the vicarage, to let you in.’
    â€˜Yes,’ he said, gazing down at the pile. ‘As soon as one moves, one realizes what an awful lot of rubbish one has accumulated.’
    It wasn’t much, but it was enough. I heard, even over the babble of the crowd, a sharp, shocked intake of breath; when I was conscious of Mrs Mipchin’s sandalled