The Girls' Book of Priesthood

by Louise Rowland

  Chapter 22

  Third week of June

  The line where sea meets sky has always captivated her. Blue, green, grey, the swirl of the colours dependent on the height of the cloud, the depth of the water, the presence or absence of the sun, wind, rain. She loves the blurring of the edges, the way it creates a great blank canvas of space and possibility. The huge sweep of the bay out towards the needles and the Isle of Wight, the polar-bear shape on the cliffs at its southernmost tip.

  There’s a stiff breeze this morning, sending clouds scurrying across the sky and whipping up ridges of opalescent expanse. Part of her would like to stride out into the waves and disappear.

  She takes her time walking along the sand, taking in the dedications on the wooden benches strung along the seafront.

  Rachel, 1985–2003. Shine On, You Crazy Diamond

  For Andy Browne – Who Always Loved This Place

  Betsy Lambert, who passed on in 1999, aged 65 years. On a Clear Day We Can See Forever

  She slows down at each one she walks past, humbled at these moving testimonies to the endurance of love.

  An unseasonal wind has emptied the beach. Just a few doughty hardcore types behind their stripy windbreakers, a handful of mothers and toddlers kicking balls through the shallows, dogs racing along the bottom of the scarp, finally off the leash. Just like her.

  Think of these few days as a retreat, Hadley said. A break in which to regroup spiritually and emotionally. Who’d have thought returning here to Highcliffe could offer her any kind of peace? And yet over the past few days, somehow it has.

  She sits down one of the benches, watching the sun emerge, allowing a dancing trelliswork of silver to appear where the beams hit the water.

  She’s found a small B & B place a couple of streets back. The owner hasn’t shown the least interest in who she is or why she’s here, providing just the anonymity she’s been craving. Sitting on the narrow single bed watching the sun dip into its watery berth though a gap in the trees has given her a profound sense of calm.

  Over the past three days, she’s walked up and down this shoreline she’d forgotten she knew so well, its contours as familiar as a lover’s face.

  On the train down from Waterloo, she’d worried that she would end up spending the entire time churning everything over. Yet the moment she walked down here past the multicoloured beach huts and caught the salty tang, heard the terns screeching overhead, saw the lush green woodland of the Chewton valley reserve, she knew this was the only place she could have come to right now.

  She strolls along the sand, her toes feeling for the tiny turban shells and stripy bivalves they always used to collect as children, watching children play It with the waves, a father teaching his son how to make his kite duck and dive on the currents, a pensioner wielding a metal detector with the intensity of the true believer; she understands that she’s home.

  Yesterday, she ended up turning inland for a mile or two and then realised she was on a mission. It had taken her over an hour to walk there because she’d got lost a couple of times on the way. It probably won’t even be open, she’d thought. Most aren’t on a daily basis: sign of the times. Then, when she’d arrived outside, at the corner of the nondescript parade of shops and 1930s redbrick houses, she’d had to go and sit in a café opposite to regroup. Then she’d crossed back over and stood outside the door, hesitating for several minutes, but finally she’d lifted the latch, because she knew it was another staging post on this journey. The door opened and with a quiet roar, it all came flooding back.

  There are six voicemail messages and eight texts from Felix when she finally disobeys Hadley’s orders.

  ‘Margot, can you please call me? Christ, this is insane. I mean, you know, I can speak to your vicar or something? You had nothing to do with me and Patties, nothing. You know that. Please call me back. I need you.’

  She swallows. His voice was cracking. She forces herself to listen to the next message and the next and the next.

  Then the anger.

  ‘Do you have any idea how this feels? Do you? What a shitty way to be treated.’

  She throws the phone across the room and buries her head in her hands.

  Nothing whatsoever from Clarissa, hostile or otherwise.

  ‘Jeremy?’

  She rocks backwards and forwards on the edge of the bed, all of a sudden queasy with unease.

  ‘Oh, hello, Margot.’ His tone is flat. ‘How are things? Feeling on the mend?’

  The bedroom curtain flaps around the window frame in the evening breeze. The ozone is always the most intense at this hour. Something to do with the tide? She’s cradling a pink-and-white netted whelk from the small collection gathered on the ledge. Grains of sand are grazing her palm.

  ‘Much better, thanks.’

  He coughs. She can picture the glasses being pushed up his forehead. He’ll loathe this conversation as much as she does. ‘I’m afraid things are hotting up here, one way or another.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But best talk about all that when you’re back. We won’t disturb your retreat.’

  She can’t detect anything in his voice, but he wouldn’t be human if he wasn’t wondering what possessed him to bring such a liability into his parish.

  ‘Whatever you think best, Jeremy.’

  ‘A couple of days won’t make a difference at this point. And it’s important you regain your strength.’

  For dealing with the days to come.

  ‘OK, well, see you Friday, then.’

  ‘Thanks for calling, Margot. Oh, one other thing before you go.’ She twists the shell in her fingers, wishing she could crawl inside. ‘A lady called Linda rang me yesterday.’

  Later, when the sun has set, but the twilight is refusing to cede its place, she reaches for the phone again.

  In the end there is only love, Hadley said. That’s the whole story. All there really is. Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of everything.

  If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am only a responding gong or a clanging cymbal.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Oh, hello, Margot, love.’ He pauses, ‘I thought you might ring. Sorry about that call, but she insisted, said she’d do the heavy lifting for you or something.’

  It takes her a moment.

  ‘Oh. Don’t worry about it, Dad.’ No matter how bad Linda’s phone call was. ‘Listen, Dad. I’m down here in Highcliffe for a couple of days. I wondered if I could get the bus over and come to see you?’

  She can see the surprise on his face.

  ‘Well, I’m off tomorrow, as it happens. Was planning a bit of fishing down on the Avon. Season’s just started.’

  She knows exactly where.

  Her mother had probably seen it as another form of abandonment when the three of them went off together for the day, each of the children carrying a small backpack with their lunch inside. Yet, despite the emotional tug of war, Margot remembers them as happy times.

  Sometimes he’d fish directly from the beach in Bournemouth with his waders on, alongside all the other evening hobbyist fishermen. But best of all was when he used his permit for the Royalty Fishery here on the river near Christchurch. This was the place Margot always loved most of all. Something about the flatness of the meadows and the angle of the light made it feel as though they were stepping into a medieval painting of villagers working the fields, standing upright from time to time to rub the base of their spine and look southwards towards the church tower dominating the horizon. It had once been an Augustian Priory before Henry VIII unleashed his fury and ransacked its coffers. Margot had climbed the bell tower a couple of times when she was young, counting the steps all the way up to the top, until she and Dan were able to look down over the moss-spangled turrets to the wide-open plains below.

  She leans against the grassy bank and takes in the scene. The river has a glassy quality she remembers well, a dark green ribbon meandering through the fields, the weeds belo
w the water yearning seawards, the peppery cow parsley on its banks swaying in the wind.

  ‘Caught anything, Dad?’

  She peers into the bucket.

  ‘Right out of practice, I’m afraid. I need to work on my rolling meat technique.’

  ‘Whatever that is.’

  ‘Not so much time these days.’

  Their eyes catch. Treacherous waters already.

  ‘Linda encouraged me to get back into it, actually. As long as I throw them straight back in.’ He clears his throat. ‘Something to do with one of her previous incarnations. Or was it theirs? I can never remember.’

  ‘I see.’

  She avoids his eyes. Who is she to criticise the sanity – let alone the sanctity – of anyone’s beliefs?

  There’s what sounds like a light snort behind her, and she turns back, surprised, to see Ricky grinning at her.

  ‘Just kidding, love. I’m not, you know, totally up to speed on all that stuff, but, hey, live and let live.’

  She smiles back. The danger has passed.

  A bee is working its way up a reedy stem next to her. This was always his favourite, most productive, place to fish. Parlour Pool. An abundance of pike, carp and barbel, the water so clear there, it’s black.

  ‘Down here for work, then, Margot?’

  ‘Kind of.’ She hesitates, loathe to shatter the mood. ‘I need to sort a few things out.’

  ‘Oh?’ He looks up from rewinding his reel. ‘Not because of Linda?’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’

  He stands the rod up against the fence.

  ‘Anything you want to talk about?’

  Margot sighs, looking out at the water moving inexorably towards the end of its journey less than a mile away. The smoothness of the surface here is deceptive; she knows that a few metres further on, it becomes a torrent, impatient for resolution.

  ‘Maybe later?’

  ‘Take this bait box, then, and make yourself useful.’

  Neither of them speaks for a while amidst a companionable silence of twisting flies onto hooks.

  Margot clears her throat.

  ‘Dad, I wanted to tell you, I’d be happy to do your wedding, your handfasting.’ She pauses. ‘But I’m not sure I’ll be able to now.’

  He waits. She manages reaches for a pink-and-red fly far too beautiful to be speared on a hook.

  ‘But I will do, if I make it that far.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. Why wouldn’t you?’

  A heron is sitting statue-still on the opposite bank, intent on something it’s spotted under the surface. She envies its undiluted sense of purpose.

  Ricky watches her watching.

  ‘That guy knows all about patience and biding his time. If he goes in too early, there’ll be no lunch for our long-necked friend.’

  He reaches over for her arm.

  ‘You’ll get there, love. Dead cert. I mean, you’ve put up with my barracking all these years, right?’

  She doesn’t dare look at him. This is the first time in eight years he’s ever said anything like this.

  He squeezes her shoulder.

  ‘Linda will be thrilled about the wedding. The whole thing is a big deal for her.’

  ‘How about you?’

  He gives a light laugh.

  ‘I know this hasn’t been easy for you, Margot. Even after all this time.’

  ‘Dad, I—’

  ‘For either you or Danny, actually.’

  Margot looks down. She can’t speak for him on any level.

  The wind ruffles the rushes below them. The heron is still on the opposite bank in its elder statesman pose. He’ll wait as long as it takes.

  Her father sits down next to her.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about the first time I saw your mum?’ She breaks off a piece of reed for support, welcoming the breeze across her cheeks. ‘She was in a comedy revue. I was working in Bristol and one of the guys dragged me along to this thing. I don’t remember anything about the rest of it, just your mum in a couple of the sketches. Hilarious. She was the best bloody thing by far. Standing there in her black high heels, red curls piled on top of her head, hand on hip, looking like she owned the stage. Which she did. She was in her own skin up there.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him run the back of his hand across his cheek.

  ‘You spend years afterwards thinking about all the things you should have said. Done.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Or not done.’

  She places her fingers on his wrist.

  ‘I know you and Danny were kind of cut adrift afterwards. I was completely bloody useless.’

  ‘Dad, stop. It doesn’t matter any more,’ she says, not sure she can take much more.

  ‘I just didn’t know where the hell to start.’

  She squeezes his fingers.

  ‘I had no idea she was so depressed at the time, love. Danny told me years later. When you were at Cambridge.’

  Margot carves a hole in the reed she’s holding. Danny had to deal with it.

  ‘It was Linda who helped me sort out my head about it all.’

  She raises her head.

  ‘She’s made me feel whole again. In her own way, she really is a kind of healer, I suppose.’

  There’s a beating sound as the heron glides into flight, its enormous grey wings drawing a graceful arc above them.

  Margot turns back to face him.

  ‘She is,’ she says, smiling. ‘I’m happy that you’re happy, Dad. Really happy.’

  The knot inside her shifts a fraction, a tiny loosening of its inner coils.

  ‘I’m sure you and Linda will, you know, click, when you get to know each other a bit more.’

  She picks up a second reed and ties the two together.

  ‘Look, I’m already weaving my crown for the big day.’

  She watches his line cast out into the farthest reaches of the stream. Christ was a fisherman.

  Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.

  The staircase in Clarissa’s student accommodation block on Mare Street is dingy and sour-smelling on a drizzly, unforgiving June evening. Why does she continue to live in these places, Margot wonders, with their overwhelming sense of impermanence and lonely anonymity?

  Her heart is thumping hard. This was the first thing she needed to do when she got back from Highcliff. So much to try and heal. So many acres of friendship to try and claw back.

  Right from Cambridge onwards, Clarissa’s loyalty has been a fixed point in her life. No matter how autocratic, Margot knows that Clarissa would have braved anything – anyone – on her behalf.

  She’s carrying bricks on her shoulders as she knocks on the door.

  Nothing. She’s sure she’s in there.

  Margot knocks again, harder, determined to see it through.

  ‘Clariss. It’s me.’

  Margot can sense her presence on the other side of the metal door. Someone has scratched their initials near the lock.

  ‘I never had you down as a coward.’

  The door yanks open.

  ‘Why didn’t you reply to any of my texts?’

  ‘Tell you what, feels shitty, doesn’t it?’ snaps Clarissa.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Give me one good reason why.’

  Margot bites her lip.

  ‘Because you’re a better person than me.’

  The hostility radiating from Clarissa is chilling. She braces herself for the door being slammed in her face, but finally Clarissa jerks her head sideways and lets Margot pass.

  She’s shocked yet again at the prison-like brutality of these rooms. A bed, a desk, a wardrobe, washbasin and that’s it.

  ‘Been a while since I was here.’

  ‘You said it.’

  ‘Can we sit down?’

  Margot drags the chair out from under the desk. Her breath shortens at the thought of the conversation ahead.

  ‘I know I owe you an apology.’

  Clarissa doesn�
�t move a muscle.

  ‘I know why you’re mad at me, Clariss. But it was just all so—’

  ‘Don’t tell me, passion got the better of you.’

  Margot focuses on the fluorescent-green bag in the corner, grubby and coming unstitched in the corner.

  ‘Can you just let me try and explain?’

  ‘Sorry, but you’re mistaking me for someone who gives a fuck.’

  Margot pinches the inside of her arm for support.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about all your Soulmates guys and—’

  ‘My Soulmates guys?’

  ‘No, what I meant was—’

  ‘Will anything ever puncture that self-righteous little bubble of yours?’

  ‘Clariss, I haven’t come here to—’

  Clarissa shoves some piles of clothes off the bed and crashes down next to Margot. Her eyes are ringed with black shadows. There’s a half-eaten plate of something abandoned on the floor.

  ‘Let me explain. Soulmates was a bit of fun to help you, Margot.’ She jabs her finger in the air. ‘That’s how it’s always been. Me picking up the little bits and pieces of you and gluing them back together after whatever the latest drama in your life has been. The Eddie obsession, the finals crisis, the shall-I-be-a-priest crisis. Sometime I feel I’ve lived through it all so closely, it’s like these things are my backstory, not yours.’

  ‘You finished?’

  ‘We agreed, no married men. Ever.’

  Margot recoils against the wall.

  ‘Have you been stalking me?’

  ‘You’ve heard of Facebook?’

  Margot gapes at her.

  ‘I can’t stand hypocrites,’ adds Clarissa. ‘You’ve known me long enough to know that about me, Margot.’

  Something dislodges in Margot. This is all because she dared to fly solo, the one small area of her life where she has not sidestepped the rules.

  She jumps up and grabs for her bag, but misjudges and its contents upend all over the floor.

  ‘You know what? That’s pretty funny coming from someone who didn’t mind humiliating me just for a laugh,’ she says, shovelling everything back inside her bag. ‘And anyway, Felix is as good as divorced.’