‘Well, vicar, we wouldn’t put it quite like that, would we, Des?’ Horace responded lamely, his ever-so-slightly shamefaced expression clearly appealing for the newsman’s support.
Crow put up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. ‘Just a bit of harmless fun, vicar. Mercury readers love a bit of a ghost story, and this’ll not only tickle their fancies but it’ll drum up a bit of trade for Horace and Glad.’
‘Disgraceful!’ the vicar shrilled. ‘And you have involved me, a man of the cloth, in it. I might have lied to the bishop, er, if I’d consulted him, that is. It’s simply not cricket!’
‘Anyway,’ Crow attempted to reassure him, ‘you’ll come out of it well in the story, uncovering a good hoax and so forth. Now, I just need to pose one or two more pics.’
The vicar was apoplectic with righteous indignation. The thought of having to explain his presence at the fake exorcism to the bishop whom he had not consulted as he should have done filled him with dread. ‘Story? Story! There’ll be no story! And positively no pictures! If so much as a line about this appears in the Mercury or anywhere else I will personally make sure that the owners hear exactly how you have tricked not only the church but the police, too. Cheating and lying...!’
Crow bit his lip nervously. The Mercury’s owners were known to be, what he called grade one God-botherers and it would not do to invite their wrath, seeing as how they kept him in beer and fags.
‘Point taken, vicar. Not even a paragraph in the village news, then?’ he asked lamely.
‘Not even a paragraph.’ The vicar turned his ire on Horace and Glad. ‘And as for you, well, words fail me.’ But they did not and he ranted on about the pub being a tied house, and how the brewery would be preached against from every pulpit in the diocese if word of the hoax ever passed the licensees’ lips.
In his corner, old Frank let all this wash over him, slurped his well-earned pint and, while no-one was paying him any attention, reached behind the bar for another Penguin for his terrier.
All the time the vicar was ranting, PC Midgley had been racking his own brains about what action he should take, as upholder of the law of the land.
He stroked his chin and fixed Des Crow, Horace and Glad with the stare he normally saved for motorists who had dared to park with abandon. Taking out his little black police notebook, he unhitched the elastic strap, opened it up and stood, pencil poised.
‘Now then,’ he said, having finally made up his mind about the nature of the offence or offences committed, ‘there’s a little matter of wasting police time, and of serving drinks after hours.’
Crow muttered a word that should not be muttered in front of clergymen or ladies like Glad, but Horace held up his hand. ‘Alright, alright, but before you go any further, Alf, let me remind you who came into the back parlour on sale day, in uniform, and, accompanied by his sergeant, partook of pints of best bitter. Were we wasting police time then, or was it you and your sergeant who were wasting time and drinking when you should have been on duty?’
The constable looked a little sheepish as Horace concluded, ‘... and furthermore, there’s the little matter of your half-finished pint on the bar...’
Alf licked his lips nervously, snapped the elastic strap back on his notebook and put it in his pocket. Recovering his equilibrium, he told the three offenders, ‘Just this once, consider yourselves cautioned. And we’ll say no more about the matter.’
Relieved, Horace exhaled and reached for a fresh whisky tumbler. ‘Now that’s all been sorted, how about one for the road Alf? And you, vicar? What will it be, spirits?’
* * *
And so Des Crow relegated the story to his office spike – that pointed piece of wire set on a round wooden base where reporters stuck old court agendas, council minutes or notes that needed to be kept in case of reader, or worse, legal, challenges. It was also the traditional burial place for stories that, for whatever reason, had not made it into the newspaper. Such was the fate of the Five Horseshoes’ ghosts that never were.
Crow continued to whinge to his colleagues about the lack of good stories. ‘The nationals haven’t heard from me with a good saleable story for so long that some of ’em probably think I’m dead!’ he moaned.
And he dreamed dreams of stumbling across a scoop that would restore his reputation as the leading local purveyor of news to Fleet Street – and fill his pockets. It was a search that might last through all eternity, much like a middle-aged lady’s quest for the perfect pair of trousers or the ideal all-purpose handbag.
The vicar put the whole exorcist episode down to experience and vowed never again to allow himself to become entangled with the occult, real or imaginary, reverting to his love of cricket and quiet contemplative study of Wisden.
At the Shoes, the old brass-faced clock, ever pointing to five minutes in the future yet always seeming to make time stand still, continued to tick, slowly.
Old Frank, now a retired ghost, resumed his poaching career and spent lunchtimes and evenings in his corner of the public bar, his terrier at his feet.
With the better weather, the regulars came a little more regularly. And the click of bar billiards, the thud of darts missing the doubles, the drone of flies in holding patterns over Glad’s pies and the murmur of desultory conversation continued exactly as before.
Until trade picked up enough to fill their coffers, Horace and Glad put on hold their dreams of a package holiday to the Costa Brava. There would be no wall-to-wall sunshine, no tapas and no cheap gin as yet.
Instead, they resigned themselves to a fortnight savouring the delights of a Margate bed and breakfast – if and when Glad’s sister Freda and her doleful husband Arnold would agree to hold the fort at the pub. It would not be their dream holiday, but Dreamland.
Philosophical about the failure of the exorcism lark, Horace did his best to lift Glad’s spirits. ‘Never mind, old girl,’ he told her, ‘I’ve got a feeling in me bones. If we play our cards right, one of these days this ’ere pub really will be famous.’
He was right, of course. But that is another story...
The End
About the author
David McDine is a former journalist and member of the Government Information Service and lives with his wife Sue on a Kent smallholding where over the years they have kept children, horses, sheep, rabbits, chickens, dogs, cats and fish. He writes historical books and humorous fiction.
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