Mr Campion's Fault by Mike Ripley Read Free Book Online Page A

like the local restaurant,’ chirped Rupert, ‘though I’m not sure I can remember how I liked my baskets cooked.’
    ‘Don’t be a clot,’ said Perdita, indicating left and waiting for a coal lorry to thunder by before she turned, ‘or a snob, and if we should go there don’t you dare ask for soup-in-a-basket. I’m used to your sense of humour but there’s no need to impose it on the natives.’
    From the fork guarded by the Green Dragon, which sat like a stopper on the bottle that was Denby Ash, the road rose westward into a fading afternoon sun in a long hill running along the side of a valley. As was almost traditional in English villages, the nearest building to the pub was a church, set on a slight rise away from the road, a free-standing wooden signboard displayed the name of the church and details of its services. Rupert decided to show he was paying attention.
    ‘I spy, with my little eye … the church of St James the Great, and next to it there’s the school!’
    ‘That’s the village primary school,’ Perdita said patiently. ‘Ash Grange is at the other end of the village at the top of this hill. Godfather Brigham said if we kept going we’d come it eventually.’
    Rupert leaned forward in the passenger seat, turning his head to give a running commentary on his view through the windscreen and his side window.
    ‘I spy a row of houses, then another and another,’ he said. ‘In fact, if it wasn’t for those little alleyways between them it could be one long continuous sausage of a house.’
    ‘Ginnels,’ said Perdita primly.
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘They call them ginnels up here – those passageways between the rows of houses. It’s how people get to their back doors.’
    Rupert, suitably impressed at his wife’s local knowledge, concentrated on the left side of the road where more modern houses were clustered in small cul-de-sacs where the contours of the hill had allowed. Between them were detached buildings set back from the edge of the road as the church had been, and in Rupert’s personal game of ‘I Spy’, many of them indeed seemed to be churches.
    ‘I spy with my little eye something called the Zion Chapel. Do you think they placed it deliberately near the working men’s club on the principle of know-your-enemy? And now my little eye can’t quite believe it’s now spying a Wesleyan Chapel as well, not to mention’ – he paused for dramatic effect – ‘a
Primitive
Methodist Chapel, whatever that is. The churches believe in outnumbering the pubs round here, don’t they? It’s not like Norwich, is it?’
    ‘Norwich?’ laughed his wife. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
    ‘Isn’t it Norwich which has a church for every Sunday but a pub for every day of the year?’ posed Rupert.
    ‘I’ll take your word on that,’ chuckled Perdita, ‘but I wouldn’t worry about the bodies and souls of the local inhabitants here. Their needs, both spiritual and temporal, seem to be well catered for and there’s another pub to even up the odds.’
    ‘So there is.’
    Although clearly older and more picturesque, the Sun Inn made no attempt to compete with the bold claims of its larger competitor, yet it occupied, at the western edge of the village, a similar strategic position guarding the solid stone bridge which carried the road on towards Huddersfield just as the Green Dragon protected the fork in the road at the eastern end. Rupert imagined the two pubs almost as victualing customs posts guarding the entrances to Denby Ash, with the large working men’s club he had ‘spied’ exactly halfway between the two acting as some sort of United Nation’s demarcation line. Perhaps there were gregarious customers who could not make the journey from one pub to the other without a refreshment break. Or perhaps the locals were so fiercely loyal to either the Sun or the Green Dragon that the issue divided the village and the idea of visiting both was akin to breaking a local