Past Praying For

by Aline Templeton

  He thought he caught the gleam of tears in her eyes, but all she said fiercely was, ‘Life has to go on. There are patients who need me, you know, and I’m a trained nurse. Your training gives you the discipline to put other things out of your mind.’

  Patrick opened his mouth to speak, thought the better of it, shrugged, then got back into his car and reversed it out into the street.

  Suzanne followed him, then put down her window as he passed her on his way back.

  ‘You will test all the alarms to make sure they’re working, won’t you? And if you hear anything, be sure and phone the police.’

  And will I call the fire brigade if the house goes on fire, he thought of asking, but decided against such provocation.

  ‘Don’t overdo it,’ he said instead. ‘And drive carefully. It’s going to be foggy tonight.’

  He raised his hand in farewell but she drove off without looking at him, and feeling foolish he lowered his hand and went into the silent house.

  It was blazing with light. All the curtains had been drawn, but in each room every light was on; the reading lights as well as the overhead light in the sitting room, the light over the mirror in the bathroom, even the hob light on the kitchen cooker. What fiends of darkness could she be trying to hold at bay?

  The thought made him deeply uncomfortable. He went through the house, Tigger bounding enthusiastically round him as he switched them off. Was this really within the bounds of normal behaviour, or was Suzanne...He shied away from articulating that fear.

  He certainly pitied the people she would be dealing with tonight at the hospital. She was probably more in need of medical help than they were. He decided to have a quiet word with Richard Jones the next time he saw him.

  Tigger was still dancing round his feet; he couldn’t have been fed, though Suzanne normally did it before she went out at night. He opened a tin of dogfood and scooped it into the little dog’s bowl; Tigger wolfed it gratefully, his whole body waggling in the brief ecstasy of eating.

  Patrick was tired and hungry himself. He mixed a gin and tonic, sipping it as he checked in the oven and fridge to see whether Suzanne had left something for him. Once, there would have been a place laid at the kitchen table, a casserole in the oven or a plate to put in the microwave; it was the sort of thing on which she had prided herself. Now there wasn’t even a note to say what she wanted him to use from the freezer, and if he took the wrong thing – and somehow he inevitably would – there would be more tight-lipped patience to endure.

  He took another sip of his drink. There was a long evening stretching ahead, and he hardly needed to look to see if there was anything on the box. At this time of year it was a diet of films you had seen three times already and re-runs of sitcoms which had been only slightly funny the first time round. And Suzanne was clearly expecting him to be on fire-watch all evening; he was only surprised she hadn’t left buckets of water everywhere as well.

  He set his glass down rebelliously. He wasn’t going to let her dictate to him; she hadn’t even bothered to make a meal for him, when she had been at home all day while he spent five hours on a tedious expedition pandering to her neurosis. He picked up his car keys again and went out.

  11

  It was such a relief to get out of hospital. Hospital was, Margaret Moon reflected, the last place anyone would choose to be ill in. This morning she had been roused from sound sleep to breakfast at 6.30: after that, every time she had fallen into a comfortable doze, she had been wakened by noise, visitors or a nurse taking her temperature or giving her another eyewash.

  Now she sank into the deep soft cushions of the Brancombes’ sofa, under the crocheted comforter Jean had insisted on, and looked round the big farm-house sitting room with a sigh of content.

  There were no signs of Christmas past in the tidy room, apart from a neat pile of cards waiting to be checked off on the Christmas card list beside them. It was Jean’s practice to clear the house the day after Boxing Day: it just made her nervous, she said, sitting there waiting for pine needles to fall on the carpet, and the housework took twice as long when you had to take all the cards down each day to chase the dust from your polished surfaces, and then set them all up again.

  It was eight o’clock. They had been sumptuously fed, and Robert had left after supper for another consultation with Rod Vezey. Ted had gone out to check on the cows, and Jean had insisted on popping along to the vicarage with a list of things Margaret might need for the next few days, until her home should be habitable again.

  Pyewacket lay on the hearthrug, purring his satisfaction at his first experience of an open fire, and the only other sound in the room was the muted roar of the log blaze and the occasional crackle as a dry twig caught. Survival, sight restored and the kindness of friends; she was a lucky woman. Tomorrow she would have to deal with all the problems of the aftermath of fire and the details of her losses, but following St Matthew’s sage advice about the sufficiency of each day’s troubles, she put such considerations out of her mind and closed her eyes in unarticulated thankfulness. She was drifting agreeably between sleep and wakefulness when Jean returned.

  ‘I’ve put your clothes up in your room, dear,’ she said. ‘Here are the books you wanted, and I picked up the post while I was there.

  ‘And do you know, we’ve got such a nice young man outside? He says he’s been detailed to keep an eye on the house, with you being here. I tell you, I’ll get the first sound night’s sleep I’ve had since this whole dreadful business began.’

  ‘I’m glad I’m able to be of some service to you, even if it’s only by proxy,’ Margaret said, taking the books and the pile of mail from her. ‘You look worn out, and I feel so guilty that Robert and I have billeted ourselves on you too.’

  Ted, his rounds finished, had come into the room behind his wife, and put his arm round her shoulders.

  ‘Ah, Margaret, when you’ve known Jean as long as I have you’ll realize that this is her chosen state. Never happy unless she’s overworking and has something to worry about. And if she hasn’t got a big worry, she can always find a little one to be going on with.’

  ‘Well, if it was left to you, Ted, the world would run down and stop,’ his wife retorted, pulling a face at him. The look they exchanged was one of perfect understanding.

  This was one of the occasions when Margaret felt a pang of regret over her single state. It was a rare occurrence: too often long-married couples made her wonder if they shared the nature of St Aldegonde, reputed to delight in marriages and public executions.

  She turned to sorting through her correspondence. There wasn’t much: one or two late Christmas cards, a couple of circulars and nothing, she noted with relief, addressed using an old-fashioned typewriter. Then she came to a parcel underneath, untidily-wrapped and directed in uneven, ill-formed capitals. It had not come by post. She looked at it with a rising sense of unease.

  Ted noticed her change of expression. ‘Something wrong, Margaret?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s just–’ Overcoming a feeling of reluctance, she forced herself to open it, then stared in some bewilderment at the little blue book.

  ‘It’s a child’s diary,’ she said. ‘A diary from 1967. Who in the world could be sending me that?’

  She shook it, expecting a note to fall out, then searched through the wrappings for any clue. Finding none, she opened the book under the Brancombes’ interested eyes.

  ‘1st January: Today we went to the panto. I wore my new dress.’ Oh, and she couldn’t spell ‘laugh’ – look. Daddy obviously wasn’t easily amused!

  ‘What age is she, I wonder? There are a few other spelling mistakes, but it’s very neat in general.’

  She came to the blank pages. Now she’s given up. That always happened to me. I never seemed to have anything to confide to my diary in February, and after that the relationship became one of embarrassment. But see, here we are again. Oh – oh, good gracious. How dreadfully, dreadfully sad. Look.�
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  The other two bent over her shoulder and read the stark entry announcing the child’s mother’s death. They read on, through all the details of that hideous Christmas, the news of her brother’s death, all told with childish simplicity and unreliable spelling. When they came to the pages of final despair – black, black, black – there were tears in Margaret’s eyes and Jean was openly weeping.

  Ted cleared his throat. ‘Poor little thing,’ he said, and blew his nose loudly in a red-spotted handkerchief.

  ‘It’s her, of course,’ Margaret said softly. ‘This is Missy, and this is what caused it all. It was just too much for her to cope with and she blotted it out, created someone who could cope with it for her, just as Robert said. And now something else has happened, something that is too much for her in adult life, and her creation has returned to haunt her. To haunt us all.’

  ‘We’ve got to help her.’ Jean was twisting her hankie in her fingers. ‘We’ve got to do something.’

  ‘It’s certainly a cry for help,’ Margaret said. ‘But the trouble is, it’s a very imperfect one. She told me on the phone she was in desperate distress; she’s explained to me why, now. But she hasn’t said who.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s going to. Perhaps that’s the next step,’ Jean suggested. ‘It’s too much to expect her to trust you all at once, but given time –’

  Ted stared at them. ‘We give this to the police,’ he said. Now. This minute.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘You can’t –’

  The two pairs of eyes fixed on him held identical expressions of accusatory horror, and Ted flushed.

  ‘Look, I’m not being heartless. That’s the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. But you’re not just talking about a woman with problems, you’re talking about a woman who’s gone mad. I don’t suppose that’s what they call it – Robert would have some fancy technical name, I’ve no doubt – but that’s what she is. At this very moment she may be planning to burn down another house. You were lucky on Thursday night, Margaret, you know that. Someone else may not be so lucky.’

  The women exchanged glances.

  Margaret said slowly, ‘I’m a priest, Ted; she’s addressed the parcel to me as the vicar. It’s – it’s a problem I’ve had a lot of difficulty with already. How do I balance up the dangers against the betrayal of trust?’

  Ted snorted, but it was Jean who said, slowly, as if she were thinking aloud, ‘But – are you sure it would be a betrayal? She doesn’t ask you to keep it a secret, after all, does she? Perhaps she sent this to you, hoping that you would do just that – take it to the police, so that they could stop her before she did anything worse.’

  Torn, Margaret stroked the soft cover, trying to feel her way through to the ethical decision. She could think of objections to both courses of action, but there was no doubt which was the more sensible. And where moral issues were concerned, common sense was often the best, and indeed the only guide you had.

  She sighed. ‘All right, Ted,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘I think you’ll get Robert at the police station in Burdley. That would be the best thing.’

  Ted came back from the phone saying, ‘They’ll be here in twenty minutes. And Robert says not to touch it – fingerprints.’

  ‘Oops,’ said Margaret, looking down at the book which she was still holding protectively between her hands, as if somehow that might shelter its owner. ‘Oh well, they’ve taken my prints already, so they’ll be able to eliminate them, no doubt. In any case, how could I have known what was in it unless I’d touched it – silly man.’

  However, she tipped it neatly on to the wrapper then slid both off her knees on to a coffee table without touching them again, while Jean scurried off to the kitchen to set up a tray with tea and enough cakes to supply the complete operational strength of Burdley division.

  When Robert arrived, Vezey was with him, as well as a silent young man, also in plain clothes, whom Vezey addressed as Dave.

  Vezey, taking large tweezers out of his pocket, lifted the book on to a convenient surface, and with Robert looking on opened it, held it flat with the end of a pencil and turned the pages by the same method. He made no comment, but when they had finished he clicked his fingers and Dave produced two large plastic bags. The book was dropped into one and the wrapper into another; the bags were sealed and labelled.

  ‘Thank you,’ Vezey said curtly. ‘We’ll go back and get on with that right away. I’d like you too, Robert, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘But you’ll stay and have some tea,’ Jean protested, her hospitable soul outraged. ‘It’s on a tray, all ready...’

  ‘You’re very kind. But we’ve got no time to waste. There’s another long night still ahead of us.’

  They went out, and the chill that struck the room was not solely from the cold damp air that came in through the open front door.

  ***

  Laura Ferrars said, ‘I think we should put this house on the market and move away from here.’

  She and James were alone together in the sitting room having coffee after supper. She made the dramatic statement with a strange, dream-like lack of emphasis, but James, for once shocked out of his usual cool detachment, positively jumped with surprise.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘The house. That we should sell it. You don’t really want me to repeat it, you heard me perfectly well. It’s just that you don’t want to believe I said it.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to believe it. It’s that I can’t believe it. We’ve lived in this house for fifteen years; it was your dream house, remember? Space for the girls to have their own rooms, this little sitting room as well as the big one – ’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing especially wrong with the house.’ Laura’s voice quavered as she dismissed fifteen years of meticulous planning, decorating and furnishing. ‘It’s where it is, here, in this place, this awful, awful place.’

  This was, paradoxically, helpful. James believed he understood: the Boltons’ fire had been very upsetting, and now of course everyone was running around panicking because of the attack on poor Margaret Moon. And yes, theoretically, they could be next – anyone could be next – but that didn’t make it likely, and this sort of hysteria certainly wasn’t constructive. It wasn’t like Laura to behave in such an extreme manner, but then she had been behaving very oddly ever since her disappointment over the job.

  He said soothingly, ‘Look, this unpleasantness is all temporary. With the effort the police are putting in now, they’re bound to find whoever it is before long, and things will return to normal. My dear, it’s perfectly natural you should be upset, but I have to say I think you’re getting it just a little out of proportion.’

  ‘Is it the money?’ Laura said, her voice rising. ‘We’d get a really good price for this house, so you wouldn’t lose out at all on the money side. Which, of course is all you really care about, isn’t it?’

  James was moved to protest.

  ‘That’s utter nonsense, Laura, and you know it. I’m simply stunned by what you seem to be saying. You love this house, or so you’ve always said, and all our friends are here –’

  ‘Friends? What friends are these?’

  ‘Laura, perhaps I’m being stupid,’ he said with the maddening assurance of one who considers the suggestion unfeasible, ‘but this is a conversation I am entirely failing to understand. We’ve been friends with the Boltons and the McEvoys for years, and Hayley too, of course, and the Cartwrights and the Joneses and –’

  ‘These are not friends. They’re acquaintances of long standing. And even you can hardly be insensitive enough to describe Piers McEvoy as my friend. It’s his fault I’m in the state I’m in now. He’s – he’s an insect. If I could rub him out with my foot, I would.

  ‘I need to get away, James. I can’t be responsible for what will happen if you make me stay here. Something terrible. I need a new life, real friends – friends I can trust, who trust me –’

  Once again, Jame
s believed he had seen the light. The girls had had a spat, that was it, and it was true enough that Piers had been a complete sod over that appointment.

  He said kindly, ‘You know as well as I do, my dear, that making friends doesn’t happen like that –’

  ‘Do I? How do you know what I know?’ Her eyes were dangerous, too bright. ‘And don’t call me “my dear”. It’s what you call your bloody maiden aunt, “my dear”.’

  There was a frantic note in her voice, and he was starting to be seriously alarmed. ‘Laura –’

  ‘Oh, shut up! “My dear” – that’s just your mark, isn’t it? Where’s the excitement, where’s the passion in that? Where’s the passion in our marriage, come to that?

  ‘What’s happened to us, James? Where did they go, the people we used to be? When did the dream disappear?’

  She was almost shouting now, and he shushed her nervously. The girls, mercifully, were out, but the way she was going on the people next door would be able to hear her.

  ‘Oh, don’t shush me, James! Can’t you hear what I’m saying? Can’t you understand how wrong, how dreadfully wrong things are – ’ She caught her breath on a furious sob. ‘But you don’t want to know, do you? The only passion you have left is a passion for monotony!’

  For a moment anger flared. Just for a moment, he was tempted to shout back, to detail at the top of his voice his own dissatisfactions. He too had had his painful accommodations to make, like giving up the precarious criminal bar to be a commercial solicitor when the girls were born. She had never acknowledged that sacrifice, or perhaps he had never made his wretchedness evident. Perhaps by then it had already become easier to pretend that everything was absolutely fine. But it was certainly too late now – years too late – and control was a habit long-established.

  With heightened colour he rose from the armchair at the opposite side of the fireplace. With what he felt to be a certain dignity, he said, ‘I’m sorry you’re so distraught. Clearly this is something we have to talk about when you are feeling calmer, but there is absolutely no point in prolonging this discussion now, and I have no intention of doing so.’