by James Runcie
‘And why would he do that?’
‘So that he could marry the daughter without her mother’s blessing.’
‘Couldn’t they just wait?’
‘Apparently not. She was a tough old bird.’
Amanda returned to her meal. ‘Almost as tough as these pork chops, I imagine. Has your inspector friend got on to the case?’
‘He has. We both feel rather uncomfortable.’
‘So it is either a medical act of mercy or something altogether more sinister?’
Sidney began to wish he had not raised this subject but it was too late. ‘I am not sure the daughter was involved.’
‘Well, there is one reason that the mother could have disapproved,’ Amanda continued. ‘Although I can’t see why it makes much difference in this day and age . . .’
‘And that is?’
‘Oh Sidney, how could you be so dim? She’s obviously with child.’
‘Of course,’ Sidney thought to himself. How could he have been so slow?
‘If her mother dies before the pregnancy is obvious then they are in the clear; not that they needed to worry that much in the first place. There was nothing else stopping them marrying, I imagine . . .’
‘I think Isabel wanted to do the right thing by her mother . . .’
‘Isabel? You are on first-name terms with a potential murderer?’
‘She is not a murderer, Amanda. She is a woman who has been bullied all her life who has now found late-flowering love.’
‘And so her wishes have come true.’
‘Love is something to celebrate, Amanda.’
‘You never thought of marrying her yourself?’
‘Now you are teasing me . . .’
‘Is she attractive?’
‘She is. But she is not, of course, as attractive as you.’
‘Oh Sidney,’ Amanda leaned forward and placed her hand on his. ‘I can rely on you to say the right thing. You have such perfect manners too. I wish my London admirers would follow suit.’
The waitress returned with a jam roly-poly and Amanda withdrew her hand.
‘I think we should be careful what we wish for,’ Sidney replied as calmly as he could. ‘Sometimes, even when our prayers are answered, there is an ironic twist that we could never have anticipated.’
‘Well, let me pay for lunch, Sidney, there’s a twist to begin with.’
‘I don’t think I can let you do that, Amanda.’
‘What rot. I think I shall always pay. It will make everything easier . . .’
‘Amanda . . .’
‘Don’t be silly, Sidney. Think of it as a down payment against future marriage guidance. There will probably be rather a lot of it.’
At the beginning of March the snows began to melt and slide off the roofs, taking both shoppers and cyclists by surprise. Hawks hovered over the Meadows, and further out of town, in the fields around Grantchester, the farmers were able to plough and sow at last.
This was the hope of spring. Students unbuttoned their duffel coats and loosened their college scarves, children played football by the river and the first winter hyacinths began to appear in front windows.
Leonard Graham had settled in to one of the upper rooms of the vicarage. Sidney was happy to delegate duties, instruct him in the responsibilities of the ministry and let him preach sermons on the tensions between Kantian and Utilitarian ethics as often as he liked, providing he was kind to Mrs Maguire and was not impatient with those parishioners who had been spared a university education.
‘Natural wisdom,’ he told Leonard, ‘cannot always be found in books.’
‘I agree,’ his curate replied, ‘but to be naturally wise and then to read books gives you even more of an advantage.’
‘Over what?’ Sidney asked.
‘You think I am going to say “other people”, don’t you, Sidney, but that’s not what I mean at all. Reading gives you an advantage over life and time.’
‘I am aware of that,’ Sidney replied tersely.
‘You can travel through history, converse with the dead and live multiple lives . . .’
Sidney thought it sounded exhausting but his curate was unstoppable.
‘That is how I spend my free time,’ he continued. ‘I look to those who have lived before me in order to learn more about how to live now.’
‘I wish I had the opportunity to do that,’ Sidney replied. ‘But, alas, I do not.’
He knew that he was sounding pompous but he was distracted. He was waiting for the results of the coroner’s inquest. He still had not quite managed to pin down why Derek Jarvis unsettled him so much. He had thought that it was the black and white nature of his morality and the brisk efficiency with which he operated. But it might also be the fact that he was jealous. Sidney allowed his parishioners so much more time and so much more of a say when they were discussing their problems and their fears than the coroner ever did with his corpses. It was not that he resented this time, but sometimes he wished he could cut his meetings shorter and resolve the issues with which people came with more clarity. Perhaps, Sidney considered, he could even learn something from the coroner’s manner?
But no. Like a doctor, a priest had to allow events to run their course.
Sidney hesitated. Was this what Dr Michael Robinson had done? Had he allowed Dorothy Livingstone’s life to ‘run its course’ or had he hastened it towards its end? And if he had done so, were his intentions truly and only honourable and merciful? In short, were his actions those of a Christian?
As both a priest and an Englishman, Sidney liked to give people the benefit of the doubt, but he knew that he would have to find an excuse to see his doctor on his own and ask him a few direct questions.
He decided to make an appointment as a patient even though there was nothing specifically wrong with him. In fact, and in many ways, Sidney had never felt better in his life. He could perhaps go to the doctor’s surgery in Trumpington Road with talk of headaches, migraines even, but he did not want to suggest anything that might lead to an investigation or a hospital visit for tests.
‘Gout?’ he wondered idly. It had done for Milton, Cromwell and Henry VIII but did he really want to be associated with ‘the rheumatism of the rich’? Besides, his current abstinence would surely rule that out.
By the time Dr Robinson had asked, ‘What can I do for you?’ Sidney had still not thought of a convincing complaint.
‘I’d like you to take my blood pressure.’
‘Any reason?’
‘My heart seems to beat at different rates at different times of the day. I am more aware of it than I normally am.’
‘Roll up your sleeve. Any pain?’
‘No, I don’t think so. But sometimes I feel a bit fragile . . .’
‘That’s normal.’ Dr Robinson wrapped a cuff around Sidney’s upper left arm.
‘Is it?’
‘We can all feel a little delicate during difficult times, Canon Chambers.’
‘Yes, I suppose it must be very trying for you at the moment.’
Michael Robinson began to inflate the cuff until Sidney’s artery was occluded. He then listened with a stethoscope to the brachial artery before slowly releasing the pressure on the cuff.
Sidney did not like to speak during the process but wondered whether people’s blood pressure actually rose in a doctor’s surgery; if the very act of being there made them tense and their hearts race.
‘The coroner hardly helps matters . . .’
‘I can imagine . . .’
‘Sometimes these things are best left.’
‘I suppose he is only doing his job.’
The doctor looked at his watch and then at the dial. ‘Well, he won’t find anything. I have done nothing wrong.’
‘Then you have nothing to fear.’
The doctor unwrapped Sidney’s arm. ‘Your blood pressure is completely normal, Canon Chambers. Is there anything else?’
‘Not really. I do have trouble sleeping sometimes . . .’
‘Do you keep regular hours?’
‘It’s not so much the falling asleep as the waking up in the middle of the night . . .’ Sidney replied, thinking how soon he could move the conversation on to sleeping pills, sedatives and painkillers.
‘Do you try milky drinks?’
‘I do . . .’
‘And how long has this been going on?’
‘For the past few months.’
‘I find exercise also helps. And not eating too late. . . .’
‘You don’t prescribe sleeping pills?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘You don’t approve?’
‘Canon Chambers, forgive me for being rude but is there anything that is really the matter?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘I am not sure you came here because you were ill.’
‘I did want a quiet word.’
‘Anything in particular?’
‘It is a delicate matter.’
‘I am a doctor, Canon Chambers. There is no such thing as a delicate matter as far as I am concerned. You can raise any subject you like.’
‘Miss Livingstone . . .’
‘What about her?’
‘Is she well?’ Sidney realised he had lost his nerve. What on earth was he doing going along with all of this?
‘Well, she is sad, and a little nervous, but there is nothing you can’t ask her yourself . . .’
Sidney felt rather ashamed.
‘You don’t suspect her of anything, do you?’
‘No, of course not . . .’
The doctor looked out of the window and his confidence seemed to fall away. He looked exhausted. Perhaps he was tired of keeping up his professional demeanour.
‘I am sure that you have sat with the dying many times, Canon Chambers. You think that one would get used to it but it is different every time. Sometimes people are ready, and sometimes people hold on, refusing to leave, even though their time has come. They are stubborn and it is uncomfortable but they are indomitable. Isabel’s mother was not like that. She wanted to go but death was not ready for her.’
‘You know she wanted to go?’
‘She told me that she had had enough, that she was looking forward to what she called “the long sleep”.’
‘And so . . .’
‘I relieved the pain.’
‘And she was at peace?’
‘There’s an extraordinary thing I have noticed, Canon Chambers. I hope you won’t mind me saying this but in those final moments I don’t think faith makes much difference. People are either scared of death or they are not. People divide quite clearly. Even the faithful can be frightened.’
‘I know. It is a mystery. But perhaps they are not so much frightened of death as of dying.’
‘Yes, they are distinct. Do you ever turn a blind eye, Canon Chambers?’
‘When no harm is done.’
‘Well, that, of course, is my Hippocratic oath. ‘‘First, do no harm.’’ It could work just as well for priests, I suppose.’
‘It’s a good motto,’ said Sidney. ‘We have very clear instructions in the Church of England, guidelines as to how life must be lived. But people can’t always see what they are, of course. They move in all sorts of directions, like moral dodgems, and the lines are never straight at all.’
‘I agree. People don’t live neat lives.’
There was a pause before Sidney returned to his questioning. ‘But you are convinced that you were acting in Mrs Livingstone’s best interests? That you did no harm?’
‘I was, even though to tell you so is none of your business.’
‘Sometimes I am not sure what my business is, Dr Robinson,’ Sidney replied. ‘It is everything and nothing, the whole of life, and yet my involvement is not so much on the pages of people’s lives but in the margins.’
‘You are too modest . . .’
‘No, it is true. But this is, of course, the way of Our Lord. Are you a believer?’
‘You have asked me that before.’
‘That was when you came to see me about your marriage.’
‘You will still marry us? Despite what I say?’
‘The marriage service asks if there are any impediments. It does not require a degree in theology.’
‘I was brought up with an intense faith. I know the liturgy. I admire the language and the music. I still hope for revelation. But I am afraid I have seen too much suffering to believe in divine benevolence. The war, you know. I presume you were a pacifist?’
‘I am afraid you presume wrongly,’ Sidney cut in, a little too aggressively, he thought. ‘I fought for what I believed in.’
‘Even if it meant killing people?’
‘A lesser evil.’
‘Ah yes,’ the doctor replied, his vulnerability signalled by a furrowed brow that hovered over eyebrows that were darker than his hair. ‘A lesser evil. I think we both know about that . . .’
When Sidney returned home he found that Leonard Graham had already left to visit the sick on his Communion round and that, in his absence, Mrs Maguire had decided to pick all his books off the floor of his study yet again, stacking them all over his desk, in order to vacuum the whole house. He had repeatedly asked her not to do this but any request he had made in the past had fallen on deaf ears. He had never seen such a small woman act with such gusto. There was an aggression to her hoovering, a violence that was clearly some kind of displacement activity. He had only seen it once before, after she had been given an unconfirmed report that her husband, who had disappeared in 1944 amidst conflicting rumours of pacifism and bigamy, might actually be living in West London. He guessed that this was not the best time to engage her in any kind of conversation but he was mistaken. Mrs Maguire was all too eager to converse.
She turned off the vacuum cleaner and removed her apron. She had clearly been waiting for this moment and Sidney feared the worst. There were rumours in the village, she told him, and they were bad.
‘What do you mean, Mrs Maguire?’
‘I will spare you the conversations regarding yourself . . .’ she began, as if such a silence was of the utmost difficulty.
Sidney was alarmed. He liked people to think well of him. ‘What can you mean?’
‘My sister is refusing to see the doctor,’ Mrs Maguire announced.
‘And why is that?’
Mrs Maguire folded her arms in what Sidney took to be a gesture of defiance. ‘She is frightened he’s going to kill her.’
Sidney could not believe it. Somebody had been talking out of turn. His own conscience was clear, and he assumed that he could trust Inspector Keating. Could it be the coroner, or perhaps a spurned admirer of Dr Robinson? He would have to visit Derek Jarvis once more.
‘That is nonsense.’
‘All tittle-tattle, I imagine,’ Mrs Maguire continued. ‘But you know what they say? There’s no smoke without fire . . .’ She looked at Sidney as if she had used a phrase he had never heard before.
‘I have always found that to be a most unhelpful aphorism,’ Sidney answered.
Mrs Maguire took a step forward. ‘I don’t suppose you know anything about it?’
‘I do not,’ Sidney replied, unconvincingly. It really was extraordinary the number of lies he had to tell since becoming embroiled in criminal investigation.
‘But I think you’ll still want to know what they’ve been saying about you?’
‘Not particularly, Mrs Maguire.’ Sidney tried to sound nonchalant. ‘I would rather people told me what they thought directly.’
‘Very well. Then I will tell you. They think you’re going to marry Miss Kendall.’
‘That is most unlikely.’
‘That’s what I said to Mr Graham.’
‘You have discussed the matter with him? What did he reply?’
‘That it wasn’t for him to comment.’
‘Quite right too.’
‘But everyone is talking about it,’ Mrs Maguire continued.
‘You were seen in a restaurant holding hands . . .’
‘Only for a brief moment . . .’
‘Long enough for the waitress to tell the chef, who told his sister, who is a barmaid at The Green Man. The news will be all round Grantchester by now and tomorrow it will be at every high table.’
‘I hardly think that the dining tables of Cambridge colleges are interested in my marital prospects, Mrs Maguire . . .’
‘Clever folk love an opportunity to make fun of their rivals, I’ve noticed.’
‘I don’t have rivals, Mrs Maguire. I have friends.’
‘Call them what you like; but if you hold hands in public there’ll be no stopping the gossip.’
Sidney was annoyed. What business was it of anyone else? His relationship with Amanda was private. He hated the idea of anyone talking about them. Now he would have to explain something that he didn’t want to explain because he liked it all being vague and inexplicable. ‘I marry other people to each other. I have no plans to marry myself. Miss Kendall is a friend.’
‘That’s what I said to them,’ Mrs Maguire continued before stopping to check. ‘So I am right, then?’
Sidney sighed. The quicker this conversation was brought to a conclusion the better. ‘Of course you are, Mrs Maguire,’ he replied. ‘You always are.’
That should do it, he thought.
Unfortunately he was wrong. Encouraged by his response Mrs Maguire put her apron back on and continued, breezily. ‘I know you won’t mind but I’ve been telling everyone. She’s a fashionable woman from London with expensive tastes. You wouldn’t catch the likes of her marrying a clergyman, would you now?’
She turned the hoover back on and resumed her work. After a few vigorous movements back and forth she looked up to see that Sidney had not moved.
‘Did I say the wrong thing?’ she shouted over the noise of her work.
Sidney said nothing but picked up a stack of books and took them through to the kitchen. On the top of his pile lay The Confessions of St Augustine. It was not going to help.
The next morning Grantchester was visited by yet another dose of persistent sleet, warning that winter was still not at an end. ‘Where are the songs of spring?’ Sidney wondered, forlornly, ‘Ay, where are they?’ There weren’t even any daffodils in bloom. This was a day, Sidney thought, to hunker down; a day for tea and toast and warm fires, for pastime with good company followed by a hearty stew and a good red wine.