Here Lies Gloria Mundy

2

Chance Encounter

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When I ran into Hardie Keir McMaster after a lapse of seven years it was at one of the more unlikely places, for it was outside the south door of a church. There had not been a wedding or a funeral; neither was it a Sunday, so I could only conclude that he was there for the same purpose as I was. This was to take a look at the church itself, a most surprising thing for him to do. At college he had been one of our ‘hearties’ with, so far as anybody knew, no interest in either art or architecture.

As well as being a freelance journalist, I am a novelist and biographer. With regard to the first, I look hopefully for commissioned articles and can supply these on any subject covered by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but for the other two I please myself. At the time I had just published my third novel. My biography of Horace Walpole was still selling, and the royalties had just come to hand, so I was taking a little holiday, ‘resting’ as actors call it, and that morning I had driven in my car to Herefordshire to look at Kilpeck church.

Kilpeck church is unique. I had heard of it from friends and had seen photographs of its south door. I was prepared for the south door, but not to see McMaster standing in front of it. I was more than surprised, but I could not mistake that massive six feet three, those mighty shoulders, the firmly planted feet and, still less, that Viking thatch of yellow hair. I went up and thumped him on the back.

It was an ill-judged act. He swung round and nearly knocked me flying. However, he collected me, planted me in front of him, held me at arms’ length and said, ‘Well, I’m damned. Just the very man!’

‘How are you, Hara-kiri?’ I asked. He had been given the title at college. He had played prop forward for us and some wit had christened him with a joke on his first names of Hardie Keir because it was alleged to be tantamount to committing suicide if you tackled him on the field. Off it, a sucking dove might have envied him and even striven to emulate him, for he was normally the gentlest and most amiable of creatures.

‘Corin Stratford, by heaven!’ he shouted. ‘What on earth are you doing here, you old son of a mermaid?’

‘Taking a photograph of the south door of this church, when you move your great carcase out of the way,’ I said. Unmistakeably of its period, the south doorway of Kilpeck church nevertheless bears some striking and unusual features. Like many late Norman doorways, it is extensively decorated, and among the decorations are two warriors wearing trousers, Phrygian caps, and tunics of chain mail. I had read that the whole doorway is a representation of this sinful world of lust and strife, but it also holds a promise of better things to come, for in the concentric double tympanum arch is the Tree of Life, and on the jamb a writhing serpent is shown, head downwards in defeat.

There is a suggestion of the Saxon origin of the church in the style of some of the carvings, but even more obvious is the Celtic influence. Moreover, on the west wall of the church I had seen gargoyles in stone which could only have derived from the carved wooden prows of Viking ships, so the church is an epitome of local history.

‘Let’s walk round,’ I said. ‘There’s a corbel-table underneath the eaves. There are birds and beasts and human heads. There is even a sheila-ma-gig.’

‘You mean a thingummy-jig,’ said McMaster.

‘No, I don’t. I mean a sheila-ma-gig. She’s a rather rude lady who appears on some Irish churches. My guess is that she represents something fairly unspeakable from the Book of Revelations. Anyway, compare her with the crude Australian term “sheila”, meaning a woman and used, I always think, in a derogatory sense. After I’ve identified her, if I can, I’m going inside the church. There’s a notable chancel arch. After one has looked at these warriors and the serpent, and has seen the lion and the dragon fighting each other as depicted on this doorway, the chancel arch promises the peace of heaven, so that the church preaches a sermon in stone.’

‘See you later, then,’ he said. ‘I’m going to look at the gravestones. I collect curious epitaphs.’

I laughed. ‘I know one or two,’ I said.

‘ “Mary Ann has gone to rest,

Safe at last on Abram’s breast,

Which may be fine for Mary Ann,

But sure is tough on Abraham.” ’

He laughed, too.

‘That’s apocryphal,’ he said, ‘and, anyway, I know it.’

‘All right, then. What about this one?

‘Here lies that old liar Ned,

But he can’t lie because he’s dead,

For now he lies on heaven’s shore,

Where he don’t need to lie no more.” ’

‘Where did you get that?’

‘From a chap in a pub in Bristol.’

‘It’s difficult to get them authenticated,’ said McMaster, ‘when they’re only given you by word of mouth. I got a beauty in East Anglia once, but the chap couldn’t name the church. It was:

‘Poor Dimity Ann,

Her tooken one can

Too many, so her vomit,

And that done it.” ’

‘Well,’ McMaster concluded, ‘see you when you’ve gloated over your Sheila.’ He pointed to one of the figures carved on the uprights of the doorway. ‘Talking of sheilas,’ he said, ‘I wish that fellow didn’t remind me of Gloria Mundy.’

‘Gloria mundi, according to the learned professor who tried to teach me Latin,’ I said.

‘No,’ said McMaster, ‘I don’t mean the glory of the world. I mean a girl I used to date until I found out what a little tramp she was and ditched her. She used to wear a cap like that one, and a sort of ridged and ruckled sweater to try to hide how thin she was. His chain mail reminds me of it. She also used to knot a long silk scarf thing round her waist to keep her pants up because she really hadn’t any hips to hang them on to, and the ends of the scarf used to hang down in front in just the way that chap’s seem to do.’

‘I suppose she carried a sword over her shoulder, too,’ I said ironically.

‘No,’ he replied seriously, ‘not a sword, but whenever it was sunny she carried a parasol and used to slant it over her shoulder in just that way. She was partly redheaded, you see, so she burnt to an unbecoming brick-red and then began to peel if she allowed Phoebus Apollo to take any liberties with her complexion. Oh, well, never mind Gloria. Come with me for a drink when you’ve finished with the church. I’ll be somewhere around the grounds. I have a proposition to put to you and I’ve got a pub in Hereford which I think you’ll like.’

‘You’ve got a pub? You’re a Mine Host?’

‘No. I’m on the board of directors of a chain of hotels and the one in Hereford belongs to our group. We have a number of places which are meant to attract tourists, particularly foreign tourists. We have others for commercial travellers and to accommodate coach parties and bodies attending conferences and the Rotary people and all that sort of thing, but, so far as you are concerned, I am not including these. What we want is an updating of our brochures for our top-class tourist hotels. It’s a sort of sub-editing job for you, really. A lot of the information — golf courses, stately homes and castles, old churches and cathedrals, areas of unspoilt natural beauty, facilities for fishing, pony-trekking, access to riding-stables, all that — is already printed in our booklets, but the information is several years out of date. You would have to check all the various items, especially the routes, and make any additions and alterations you thought necessary, bearing in mind that the readers will be on holiday and bent on enjoying themselves in various ways which may or may not be your idea of pleasure.’

‘How long is all this supposed to take? I mean, how many hotels are there and where are they situated?’

‘There is nothing further north than Yorkshire. We’ve got a couple there, one in Norfolk, a couple in Worcestershire, one in Suffolk, one in Dorset, two in Devon, two in Cornwall, two in Sussex, one in Kent and this one in Hereford. You can lump some of them together, I should think. Everybody has a car nowadays and a hundred miles means nothing. We can give you until the end of November to send us the stuff so that the printers can get it out for next season. Oh, a photograph for each brochure would be nice. That’s a pretty good camera you’ve got. You will live free at the hotels, get a generous petrol allowance and a certain amount of credit at the hotel bars and, of course, your pay.’ He told me what this would be and added, ‘I had thought of going up to town this afternoon to ask a newspaper editor I know whether he could put me on to anybody for this job, but I would far rather have you.’

We met again twenty minutes later, when I had examined the rest of the church and he, I suppose, had searched for a headstone to add to his collection. The church was small and, in any case, I was able to purchase two descriptions of it, with some excellent drawings and photographs, when I had been inside the building. Hardie expressed appreciation of the churchyard, but had not been able to add to his gallery of epitaphs.

‘Some of these graves are those of children,’ he said, ‘and that depresses me. Did you get any joy out of your sheila-ma-gig?’

‘I couldn’t even identify her,’ I said. He sighed and then laughed.

‘Damned if I’m sure whether I could identify Gloria herself nowadays,’ he said, ‘and I should class her as the queen of the sheila-ma-gigs.’

‘A rather rude lady?’ I asked, quoting my own words.

‘A damned dangerous one, anyway,’ he said. ‘If you’re ready, let’s go.’

The hotel was all that he had claimed for one of his ‘specials’ and gave me some idea of the kind of work he expected me to do. It was outside the town, had its own golf course of nine holes and the gardens went down in three broad terraces to an immense lawn. Beyond this there was a reed-fringed lake with water-fowl and a smaller pond with water-lilies and goldfish.

The public rooms were high-ceilinged and grand and before lunch he was able to show me a suite of rooms upstairs which the manager told him would not be tenanted until the weekend.

‘Kept for visits from royalty or one of the Arab oil-nabobs,’ McMaster said. Then he asked me how much time I would need to consider his offer.

‘I don’t need any time at all,’ I replied. ‘I’d admire to take it on, as our American cousins used to say.’

‘Oh, that’s good, Corin. When can you start?’ he asked. ‘It will take you quite a bit of time, you know, and we must have the stuff by November.’

‘I can start as soon as ever you like. Is it all right if I get a book out of my experiences? They should be rather productive of copy.’

‘So long as you don’t libel us or any of the hotel residents, go ahead, but bear in mind that at these particular hotels we get VIPs and other sensitive plants. Well, what about some lunch? After that, perhaps you’ll spare time while I give you a fuller briefing and get you to sign on the dotted line, and all that sort of rot.’

Over lunch he told me more about the girl he had called Gloria. I began it because I asked him whether he was married.

‘Lord, yes, for three years now,’ he said. ‘One reason I had to ditch Gloria was that I’d met Kate. Mind you, I was warned against Gloria by Wotton. You remember Wotton, of course. Front-row forward and capable of even more dirty work in the scrum than most front-row forwards, but a nicer fellow off the field you’d never meet. He had had a brief spell with Gloria himself. Met her on a Mediterranean cruise, I believe. My word, those shipping companies will have something to answer for in the great hereafter! Of course he came to his senses when all the boat-deck-by-moonlight stuff was over and they were back in England, but Gloria, I fancy, was very difficult to dislodge.’

‘So he off-loaded her on to you?’

‘Not exactly. She picked me up at a night-club. She soon decided I was a better bet than Wotton. This was before he came into the property, of course. She wasn’t really the type for either of us. I have never seen a girl so thin.’

‘What did you have against her, apart from the lack of robustness in her component parts?’ I asked. ‘Was it because you knew she had had an affair with Wotton?’

‘No, I’m broadminded about that sort of thing. It was over. That was all that mattered. I soon found though, that she was dashed expensive. I wouldn’t have minded that so much, although she was stretching me to the limits of the salary I was getting in those days, but then I found out that she was double-crossing me with an Italian artist fellow and subsidising him out of my money and by selling the jewellery I’d given her. When I remonstrated with her and we had a row, she had the neck to threaten me with breach of promise if I didn’t shut up and continue to play ball. Well, I was pretty sure the case wouldn’t succeed, but I knew that, if she brought it, it would queer my pitch with my father, who had promised to take me into partnership; also there was Kate, so I stalled, and then the artist chap committed suicide, poor devil, and there was a fair amount of stink with Gloria mixed up in it. She disappeared out of my life for a time, and I was thankful.’

‘Only for a time?’

‘Oh, yes. When the suicide became old hat, and things simmered down, she bobbed up again, but by that time I’d got married to Kate. When Gloria knew this, she threatened to write to Kate with details of the night-club pick-up and its aftermath. I told her Kate knew already (although, of course, she didn’t) and I said that if Kate received even one dirty letter I would strangle Gloria. I tracked her down and I went so far as to give her a short demonstration of what I would do to her. That really frightened her off. I think she believed I meant what I said, and I reckon I would have meant it, too, if she had attempted to muck up my marriage.’

‘When we were looking at that church doorway, you told me she was partly a redhead. What did you mean by that?’

‘Oh, apart from her extreme emaciation — although she ate like a starving wolf when I took her out — she had one very unusual feature. She was auburn-haired on one side of her head and coal-black on the other.’

‘Dyed, to create an effect?’

‘No. Before I rumbled that she was playing me up, I used to help her wash her hair. The colours were genuine enough. She told me one of her ancestors had been burnt as a witch and that all the female descendants had had half their hair red and the other half black ever since. I could well believe the witchcraft story. The way Gloria could charm the money out of my pockets was witchcraft enough for me. I nearly went to the money sharks, I was so desperate, but came to my senses and made a clean breast of things to the family lawyer. He subbed up on the strength of my expectations — he had drawn up my father’s will — and I married Kate.’

‘So you haven’t heard from Gloria again?’

‘No, and, until I saw that fellow carved on that doorway, I’ve never even thought of her since I threatened to kill her. Not that I now retain any really hard feelings towards her. The Lord who made the little green apples also made the little gold-diggers, I suppose. I’d like to know why the artist chap committed suicide, though. She must have led him the devil of a dance.’

‘Artists, like women, are kittle cattle,’ I said. ‘There’s no accounting for them.’ We finished lunch, and in the lounge he drafted out a simple form of contract for me to sign and I promised to begin work on the hotel brochures as soon as I had arranged my own affairs. I had booked a room for that night in a hotel at Tewkesbury but, before I went there after I had left him, I decided to pay another visit to Kilpeck church.

The early summer evening was still light enough to allow me to distinguish the figures and carvings on the south door. I stood in front of it and apostrophised the swordbearer in the Phrygian cap.

‘Well, Gloria, old fellow, you’ve done me proud today,’ I said. Of course, the evening was drawing in, so I could not see his features all that well, but I could have sworn that, as I spoke, the Celtic warrior winked at me and grinned.