Body In The Belfry

The Body In The Belfry

By

Katherine Hall Page

1

Faith Fairchild, recently of New York City, paused to catch her breath. Benjamin, her five-month-old son, was sound asleep, securely strapped to her chest in his Snugli. Her aching shoulder blades and the fact that she had been focusing on the worn path beneath her feet instead of the autumnal splendor to either side reminded Faith that Benjamin was definitely getting a bit too chunky for this mode of transportation. She straightened up and looked around.

It was New England with a vengeance : riotous orange and scarlet leaves beneath enormous, puffy white clouds suspended in a Kodacolor blue sky. A calendar maker 's dream. And of course brisk, clean air as crisp as a bite of a McIntosh apple just off the tree.

Faith hated McIntosh apples.

She walked up the Belfry Hill path a bit farther to a small clearing, which gave her an unobstructed view of the Aleford village green far below. She sat down and sighed heavily.

Her life was becoming terribly quaint, Faith thought. Time was when 'village' meant 'the Village' and 'town' was up or down. And when did she start using phrases like 'time was'? She let another sigh escape into the pollution-free landscape and longed for a whiff of that heady combination of roasted chestnuts and exhaust fumes that meant autumn to her.

There wasn't even any litter in Aleford, she mused wistfully as she hummed a few bars of 'Autumn in New York' softly to herself so as not to awaken Benjamin. Memories of the angry looks she used to hurl at offenders tossing candy bar wrappers on the sidewalk were conveniently pushed to a far corner of her mind, a corner somewhere near Lexington and 59th Street.

She stared fixedly at the green—so very green and like a tablecloth spread out for a tidy picnic. She blinked and wondered, not by any means for the first time, how Fate could have plucked her from her native shores and placed her in this strange, wholesome land.

But then Fate had nothing to do with it. It was plain old love and not a little of plain old sex. All in the seductive shape of Thomas Fairchild, a New Englander born and bred, and, to make matters worse, a minister.

For Faith, the daughter and grandaughter of men of the cloth, who had sworn all her life to avoid that particular fabric, was the village parson's wife. It had been and was a terrific surprise. Not at all what she had had in mind for her life.

Benjamin gave a tiny burp and Faith welcomed the slightly sour, milky baby smell that, delighted as she was with her infant, she knew only a mother could love. She stroked his soft cheek and cooed, 'You sweet boy, you.' Hitching him up farther on her chest to a possibly more comfortable position she added, 'My darling benign little growth.' Faith was fond of outrageous endearments and the Snugli always reminded her of those trees with the bulges growing to one side, so obviously not a part of the original trunk.

A trunk in Faith 's case more like a sapling's. Faith was as slender now as she had always been, despite a pregnancy punctuated by voracious cravings for H&H bagels with Zabar's herring salad, which her mother kindly supplied. Her mother had also supplied Faith's big blue eyes. Her father 's family was responsible for the blond hair, which she wore in a blunt cut that just touched her shoulders. She was neither tall nor short. In fact she looked like a lot of other women, and people had a tendency to greet her warmly in the street, only realizing that she wasn't 'Nancy' or 'Jill' when they were actually face to face. But when they were, they always looked twice—an act that had never displeased Faith. Just now the despised New England air had given her complexion a rosy glow, which matched Benjamin 's, and she looked beautiful.

Faith frowned and resumed her climb. She was annoyed with herself, all these Victorian sighs. But it was hard not to think about what was wrong, and she was drawn to her misgivings just as one's tongue irresistibly searches out the sore place in one's mouth to see whether it still hurts and of course it always does.

I have everything anyone could possibly want, she told herself sternly. A darling baby who sleeps through the night ; a wonderful husband who fortunately doesn't. Good food, good health, and a pretty little house, maybe a mite too much like an illustration for Mosses from an Old Manse, but as parsonages go, a jewel. No damp and plenty of working appliances.

This wasn't a question of physical well-being. She had never felt better in her life. This was a mental sore spot. And the worst possible kind. She was bored. And not only bored, but homesick.

The parish, as well as the whole town, had welcomed her warmly, but there were few women her age who weren't working and those were busy with hearth and home. Faith was pretty busy with these things herself. Benjamin took up more time than she would have believed possible for one small infant. She didn 't begrudge it, but at the same time he wasn 't exactly a scintillating conversationalist. Tom was around more than many other husbands—the parish office was in the church, which was in turn a mere stone 's throw away from the parsonage, if one had been inclined to throw stones at the church, that is, and Faith had not reached that point.

She wasn't actually unhappy, she told herself. Yet there was an insistent, insidious whisper murmuring in the porches of her ears that nothing had ever happened in Aleford, at least not since 1775, and that nothing ever would. Especially to Faith.

She stood up and shook a mental finger at her pathetic weaker self. The whole thing was absurd. Things didn't just happen, one made them happen. Sure, it was easier in New York, but she had to start looking at Aleford as a challenge.

Her steps assumed a firmer character and she realized she was almost at her destination, the top of Belfry Hill and the reconstruction of the original belfry erected for the Bicentennial. Inside the wooden structure, which looked like the top of an old schoolhouse without the bottom, was the reconstructed original bell. The bell that had sounded the call to arms on that momentous April morning. Now it was solemnly tolled for only three occasions: the death of a president; the death of a descendent of one of the original Aleford settlers ; and the alarum for the Patriot 's Day reenactment of the skirmish. A very serious bell.

While all of this was of mild, and possibly even mildly increasing, interest to her the longer she lived in Ale- ford, Faith was not on a historical pilgrimage. She was headed for one of the benches inside the belfry that the town fathers and mothers had thoughtfully provided for weary tourists. The benches were solid and had supported the Bicentennial hordes without a crack. Now they were used by occasional visitors, but more frequently by the inhabitants of Aleford. Faith liked to sit and eat her lunch here while gazing out the doorway to the town below. From the hilltop, the church, with its tall white steeple surrounded by prim clapboard houses and brick sidewalks, reminded her of those tiny wooden villages in gold mesh bags she and her sister, Hope, used to get in their Christmas stockings.

Today she had one of her favorite sandwiches tucked in the pocket of her Girbaud jeans—a pan bagna with ripe tomatoes, hard-boiled egg, tuna, and a little olive oil on her own homemade bread. She felt more cheerful just thinking about it and as for the sighs—the ennui, the restlessness, the lack of someone to give her a really good haircut—well, she would just have to cope.

Besides, there simply wasn 't any choice. Some people wore their hearts on their sleeves. Tom Fairchild wore his on his face and Faith had only to picture this charming visage with the slightly off-center nose to know that there was no place he might go to which she wouldn't happily go along. She might be homesick, but there wasn't a blessed thing she could do about it.

Blessed ? When had she stopped swearing ? She sighed before she could help herself and continued up the steep path.

Faith Fairchild, nee Sibley, had not only been bred in Manhattan, but born there. Faith's mother, a capable and beautiful woman with the deceptively simple name of Jane, was descended from several of New York's old families, the branches of the tree heavily weighted with Stuyvesants and Van Rensselaers. She had married an impoverished divinity school student on a sudden uncharacteristic romantic impulse and accepted the role of minister's wife, but gently and firmly refused to leave the city. It would have been impossible to consider giving up its many amenities—Carnegie Hall, the MOMA, the Metropolitan, Bergdorf 's and Balducci's—even for God 's work. Jane was sure there was plenty for God, through Lawrence Sibley, to do in New York and no doubt she was right.