Tom's main thrust and tactic - how typical of the office of the man - is that I should wrap up the iron fist of some personal and private info he was able to supply me with on both warring-to-be parties [Mildred and Maurice] in a soft glove of Xtian 'forgiveness is all' charity, thereby both scaring and seducing the pair into submission and a calling off of the fight.
No hint of the facts of past mis-living that Tom shared with me concerning M 'n' M will be here noted, save to say that I had never thought either capable of such extremes of uninhibited and so out-of-character behaviour. One wonders indeed if one will ever be able to look either square in the eye without giggling and enquiring of the one their views on nude sunbathing in St. James Park or of the other their thoughts on what sort of 'blue' joke The Princess Royal might have found amusing if told during the course of a county social evening say about some thirty years ago. (Amazing just what the Bish does know about folk. Bit alarming all round the very notion indeed!)
Nonetheless I am not yet totally convinced this line of attack would actually prove a success, nor indeed that I am the ideal cavalryman to lead such a charge. Blackmail - for it is no less than this, even though for completely honourable purposes - is not my forte, hardly even my piano. That is, never having resorted to it I doubt I have either the calling or the character to pull it off.
Now Old Horace, who minded gardens and had enjoyed a thoroughly good War as a thoroughly bad spiv would have been an ideal choice for such a mission. Sadly though Old Horace is lately the late Old Horace having taken a fatal tumble into Colonel X's ha-ha whilst on a moonless midnight patrol seeking to snare some of same Colonel X's prize partridges.
Time to take stock of options and a moment's muse over an early malt.
Musing and malt done only one thought emerged intact: cometh the hour, cometh the woman. H would have to be co-opted into my strategic planning exercise. This, of course, would be one's ordinary course - would indeed have occurred whether bidden or not! - but up until now I had wanted to leave her out of consideration in consideration of the sensitivity of the affair. Not that I have had any doubts regarding H's keeping properly discreet - though I could imagine her honking with laughter at the weirdness of it all - rather a concern that she might simply take a robust and Knot of Gordius approach, demanding of M and M that they get a grip, get a life, get a copy of the Guardian and get reading about real people with real problems. (Couldn't see this whole 'Gotcha' angle working with either - and most certainly not Maurice and the Guardian, oh dear me no!)
But being in quite extremis there was naught else to do but to approach the lioness in her den - H in the morning room - and lay it all before her for pertinent advice.
"I've been meaning to have a word with you about Maurice and Mildred. I'm rather at a loss to suggest what to do for the best and thought it sensible to pick your brains on the matter."
Imagine my total shock and awe on hearing - yes hearing not speaking - these words. By what extraordinary powers of transference had my problem become hers? Was this the ultimate test of bonding between two persons that we had become but a single entity with just the one mind? Well not quite it seemed.
H's tale was, if anything, more extraordinary than mine own. She and Mildred have been abiding chums from more or less the moment we landed. 'Indispensable' is the general word on Mildred around these parts - not easily dispensed with certainly in my experience! - and it was a part of her self-selected mission to ensure any new vicar's companion-in-residence [be they female or male, espoused or merely partnered - or indeed any of the now vast range of domestic set-ups one could and often does find] had all the - and more - support and guidance they needed to settle in.
How not to make a complete nag's arse of one's first sortie among the village elders, or to ensure that the Church flower patrol was appropriately unfairly divided as to labour and honour - that general sort of thing. H had been naturally somewhat chary of being so completely taken under a wing thus. Not being naturally disposed to such a passive nestling, nor indeed entirely convinced that being under any one wing might not put other wings badly out of joint to her detriment.
Her fears though on both counts had been readily discounted, as M proved not only to be an utterly invaluable source of info, gen and other briefing materials, but had also been quite totally in control of her ground. M having established her position of authority in the village over many decades of careful campaigning, it had come to the pass that hers was the only nihil obstat in town worth having. If M said you were a 'good sort' then a good sort you were and - worryingly - vice versa. (There may have - must have indeed - been rebellious factions who would have wished to seize the M crown, but they were not yet of a size or maturity or confidence to utter an unspoken, let alone a spoken, challenge.)
There was also, as it turned out, a sympathetic meeting of minds on key matters that helped to seal their partnership. This was less a matter of agreements in principle or practice regarding political or social outlooks on life, and more a question of both having strong and complementary views on which end of a line of resistance would be and was their default position on any 'issue'. (You will not need my prompting to gather that their end of that line was never the least.)
This delight in controversy could, naturally, be extremely wearing for all: for any whose strong resistance they sought to wear down or subdue in some other more direct way; for myself as one oft called upon to hear of and bear witness to the rectitude of any campaign; for even themselves too, worn down and sometimes nearly out fighting the good fight of the week. But what is life if not a struggle!
Over time - some years now - their campaigning partnership has turned to a friendship with more personal sharing of thoughts than merely how to thwart Mrs J's nomination for WI presidency. Thus it was - to cut finally to the chase - H came to learn from M that her heart - long assumed by all to be in her sole and undivided possession - belonged to another and, what's hugely more, belonged to Maurice!
Given the equally long established public antipathy between the two of them this not much beggars belief and strips it naked and parades it down the High Street for all to mock! But there it is apparently, according to H - and if you have been following the above you will understand that she is ideally placed to make cogent comment on the matter - and what's more Mildred is now at such a point of pining for 'her' Maurice that she must, metaphorically, do or die.
H's take on this is as ever profound in its considerations and most certainly alarming in its implications for myself. I, it seems, have been chosen by H - with Mildred's blessing - to do the 'go-between' number with Maurice and attempt to assay whether there is any 'hope', as one generally expresses these things at such a moment.
Were it not for the fact that a resolution between M and M on the other matter of the Feud were not so forward in my present thinking, I might just have had to tell H that in this - her own pursuit on behalf of her friend - a 'no' would have to be taken for her answer, will she or indeed nil she. (Hartley's past may well be another country, but this is Eliot's here, now in England and anyway M is not a patch on dear Miss Julie Christie!)
That Feud fact though is most certainly there being thence the catalyst and cause of my - still with considerable trepidation - agreeing to her request/command.
It may be an hour or two before sundown, but another medium malt is called for at this point, to be followed by a significant lie down in a darkened room to ponder just how best - or if not that then at least not worst - to carry this one off!
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