"Great idea-but not till I pour the tea. The Potter children."
"Are they keen on biscuits?"
"Anything. On the last Sunday school outing, Kenny Potter ate three people's picnic lunches and was sick before we got to Weymouth."
"Watch out, then," said Rachel. "I saw him with his sisters going through the hamburgers this afternoon, followed by candy floss."
He pulled a face. "Pink alert."
She laughed. "So how can I be useful?"
He gave that a moment's thought and said mysteriously, "By not being useful. Take a seat. Relax." He went on to explain, "You've been hard at it all afternoon. This is my chance to thank you."
"And all the others," she pointed out.
"And all the others," he repeated in a downbeat tone that Rachel took as a compliment.
Since this seemed to be getting personal, she said, "But you've been on duty like the rest of us."
"So I have," he said. "Let's forget the others and clear off to the pub." He aimed two fingers, pistol-style, at his head. "Joke. Shouldn't have said that, you a married woman, and me … I think we're coming to the boil, don't you?" He took a large blue teapot to the kettle and warmed it in the approved fashion before tossing in several teabags. "And if anyone mentions coffee, pretend you didn't hear."
Rachel carried in the first tray. This wasn't her imagination. The rector was getting frisky. If that was what the church fete did to him, what was he like after a couple of beers?
She didn't find out that evening, though she stayed long enough for a glass of the elderflower wine he had bought from the bottle stall. With a couple of other people she helped stack up plates beside the deep, old-fashioned sink that had been there since the forties. The rector was insisting that he would do his own washing up later.
"He could do with a dishwasher," one of the women commented.
Nobody spoke, but there were smiles all round.
Gary wasn't in when she got back, and it was too late to do anything useful in the garden, so she made herself a sandwich and settled down to watch Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick. Men with devilry appealed to her, at least on screen. There wasn't much of the devil in Gary these days. On Saturday evenings he was with his jazz circle, a pathetic crowd of middle-aged blokes in black T-shirts and sandals who drank real ale and listened to records of players of fifty years ago they referred to familiarly as Dizzie, Bird and Bix. The sight of them stretching their necks to bob their bald heads like wading birds was not pretty. Upstairs Gary had a tenor saxophone he had been trying to master ever since his schooldays. She found out about it only after they married.
And why did they marry? There had been a spark of something when Gary had come to paint the outside of her parents' house and posted a note through her bedroom window suggesting a date. She'd always had a wild streak in her own character, so she didn't hesitate. He was in better shape in those days, with dark, sleeked-back hair. He knew which clothes to wear, took her to discos, to parties, to London. Helped her learn her lines for the plays she was in. Talked about what they would do with their lives, the foreign countries they would visit on their world tour. Made love to her under the stars on the beach at Weymouth, inside the tower on top of Glastonbury Tor, on a punt (carefully) on the river at Oxford, in a first-class compartment on the last train home from Paddington and in a hot-air balloon over Bristol, drunk on champagne, while the other passengers pretended to admire the view from the opposite side. He took risks then. He would have done it between the aisles in Sainsbury's if she had asked. Never mentioned the heart murmur he was supposed to have had since childhood. She heard about that much later. That murmur was his excuse to avoid all strenuous work. "Can't take risks," he'd say. So the garden was Rachel's responsibility. Fortunately she didn't mind. Plants in their infinite variety fascinated her. Without knowing their botanical names she had a passion for flowers and a sound knowledge of the best way to care for them. And, it has to be said, they gave her the excuse to get out of the house when Gary was home.
"Can't take risks." These days the biggest risk Gary took was stepping out of doors without his baseball cap. Didn't want the wind blowing that streak of hair off his scalp.
She told him once that the Walkman he used to listen to jazz was rubbing on his scalp, making him bald. Mean. He was sensitive about hair loss, but she was sick to the back teeth of hearing the tinny sound. He believed her for a while and took to wearing the headband under his chin, which made no difference to her frustration and just made him look more ridiculous than ever, with his silly spit of hair linking up to form an oval around his head, like a slipped halo.
There had been other boyfriends before Gary. She attracted them, knew how to perform the balancing act between sex and her reputation. She liked men, needed someone to share with. Yet by nature she was not a liberated woman. Oh, she was willing to have a career, make a contribution, but basically what she craved above everything was marriage and children. Chances had gone by. Men more attractive than Gary-men she had slept with-had found other partners and taken jobs in places she would have adored to live in, one in San Francisco and another Paris. Even Aberdeen, where her second lover ended up working for an oil company, would have been an improvement on Foxford, Wiltshire-or Wilts, as she thought of it.
No use moaning, she often told herself these days. Get on with life. The marriage was childless and barren of romance, so she put her energy into her part-time job, three days at the health centre as a receptionist; the garden, which she'd cultivated as a traditional cottage garden, with shrub roses, laburnum, foxgloves and herbs; and amateur dramatics, always a passion, plus her charity work and her support of the church. It was her Christian sense of duty that made divorce too awful to contemplate. True, she had erred and strayed in her youth, but she took the solemn vows of Holy Matrimony seriously. She had not been with another man since her wedding day.
Gary came in around eleven-thirty, after she had rewound Jack Nicholson and was watching some inane Saturday night programme aimed at the teenage audience. He wasn't a smoker, but some of his friends were and she could smell the cigarette fumes clinging to his clothes. He peeled a banana and flopped into a chair, the baseball cap still on. "How'd it go?"
"The fete, you mean?" she jogged his memory. He wouldn't recall how she was spending her day. "Top result. With weather like that, it couldn't miss. We were really busy on the cake stall."
"Did you bring one home?"
She shook her head. "It isn't the thing."
"What isn't?"
"For the people in charge to put cakes aside for their own use."
"Very high-minded. What happened to the ones you didn't sell?"
"Everything went. If you really want cake, I can cook one tomorrow."
"Don't bother. You'll be at church tomorrow."
"Not all day. There's time."
Gary shook his head. "So how did he shape up?"
"Who?"
"The new sky pilot."
"Have some respect, Gary. He's the rector. And he isn't all that new. He's been here since last year."
"A bit flash isn't he? Wears red socks."
"I hadn't noticed the socks," she said casually and untruthfully. "Who cares what colour his socks are if he does his job well? He stayed all afternoon."
Gary laughed. "He couldn't very well bog off, could he? What time did it end?"
"Five, or thereabouts." She chose not to speak of her invitation to the rectory afterwards. Instead she said, "He made a good speech to open the fete. He said the word 'fete' came from 'feast.' He'd found a parish magazine from the nineteen-thirties with a correction notice about a day of prayer and feasting in support of the Congo mission. It should have read prayer and fasting. He's always got a funny story."
Gary said without smiling, "Must be the way he tells them. What are they saying about the bishop, then?"
"The bishop?"
"Yours, isn't he? Glastonbury? It was on the local news tonight. Took a jump
, didn't he?"
"The bishop?"
"They found him at the bottom of some quarry and his BMW at the top."
"Oh, that's awful! You're serious? Dead?"
"He made sure of that. The drop looked like Beachy Head. What made him do that, for Christ's sake?"
"I can't believe it. He confirmed me."
"P'raps he was on something. Thought he could fly with the angels."
Gary's tasteless humour left her cold. "Poor man."
They stared at the screen for a while, locked in their own thoughts. Rachel eventually suggested coffee.
"Don't bother." He reached for the remote control and turned down the sound, the unfailing sign that he wanted to say something momentous, however casual he tried to make it sound. "I was talking to the lads. I don't know who mentioned it. Gordon, maybe. There's a travel agent in Frome offering three weeks in New Orleans for nine hundred quid. That's everything. Flight, hotel."
"In America?"
"That's where New Orleans is."
"You're thinking of going?"
"It's the jazz capital of the world. Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver."
"And you'd like to go?" she pressed him. She would have preferred New York or San Francisco, but she would cheerfully settle for New Orleans, strolling the sunny streets in shorts, eating Cajun food in the French Quarter or on one of those Mississippi paddle boats. It would be the nearest thing to the world tour they had promised each other all those years ago. "When?"
"It has to be soon. The offer only lasts through September."
"I'm game," she said. "We can afford it, can't we?"
Looking uncomfortable, Gary ran his stubby fingers under the neck of the T-shirt and eased it off his skin. "It's a trip for the guys."
"What?"
"If I go, it's for the music."
She sat forward. "I'm not included? Is that what you're saying?"
"Nothing is fixed yet."
"I'm going to bed."
She left him in front of the screen, trying to look as if there was something of interest going on. Upstairs, in the privacy of the shower, she tasted her tears, and mouthed the word "bastard" repeatedly, hating him for his selfishness and herself for letting it get to her. Was this what twelve years of marriage added up to, putting up with life in this poxy village, living decently, staying faithful to a boring, unattractive nerd who ignored her except when he wanted "a ride," as he crudely called it? She felt a visceral rage at the humiliation, the discovery that she hadn't even entered his plans.
Well, she wouldn't demean herself by begging to go with him. Even if he saw how wounded she was, changed his mind and condescended to let her join him, she would refuse.
In their kingsize bed she lay so close to the edge of the mattress that she could feel the beading under her knee. She heard the selfish sonofabitch come upstairs, take off his things, go to the bathroom. Next, his bare feet crossing the carpet and finally the springs moving as he got into bed. She breathed evenly, feigning sleep. If he reached for her as he usually did on a Saturday, she would take her pillow and sleep in the spare room.
He had the sense to leave her alone.
Three
Everyone in Foxford knew about the bishop's death before Otis Joy announced it in Morning Service, but something had to be said. As usual, the young rector found the right words. "It appears he took his own life," he said on a note of shocked disbelief that spoke for everyone in the congregation. "If so, that's specially difficult to understand, but I don't think we should try without knowing all the facts. God moves in mysterious ways. Marcus Glastonbury was an able, honest and caring bishop, strong in his leadership of the diocese. Some of you knew him personally, as I did. A great loss. I'm sure there will be a memorial service in due course and some of us will be there. For the present, let us remember all he did to encourage this, our church, as we pray for him."
This, their church, was Saxon in origin and there was a legend about its building that showed how the conflict between good and evil was strong in the minds of the early Christians. The first site proposed had been half a mile away, at a place where the "old religion" had been practised. The foundations were put down and the building began, but by night the Devil was supposed to have come and removed some of the stones to their present site. The builders persevered, and so did the powers of darkness until a decision was taken to give way and build at this end of the village. If the legend had any truth in it, and the Devil chose the site, you would think people would be wary of some devilment lurking in the walls. Not, it seemed, in the modern age.
All that remained of the Saxon church were some stones built into the tower at the west end. The present St. Bartholomew's was a nineteenth century reconstruction with a short, recessed spire. Inside were traces of medieval carving: an early thirteenth century arch in the north porch and a window with motifs of around 1320. The Victorian restorer had done a good job. The interior was simple, light and welcoming. The timbers of the hammerbeam roof gave a feeling of solidity.
This century's contribution was mainly in the fabrics sewn and woven by the women of Foxford: the embroidered altar-cloth with a floral design; the dossal, or hanging back-panel for the altar, representing the Annunciation; the lectern fall with crucifix in padded gold kid; the individual kneelers, memorials to past worshippers; and the priest's vestments, including a magnificent cope handworked in combinations of metallic threads, kid-leather, beads and stitches. Usually it came out for weddings, baptisms and the great festivals of Christmas, Whitsun and Easter. Otis Joy was modest in his choice of vestments the rest of the year.
William Cowper's hymn "Sometimes a light surprises" was an inspired choice to follow the prayer for the bishop, a perfect link to happier matters. The fete had raised the record sum of?520. Standing in the aisle with one hand resting on a pew-end, the rector said, "You know, we in the church are sometimes uncomfortable about money-raising. Money is the root of all evil. Does anyone know who said that?"
"St. Timothy," spoke up one of the Bible Class.
"Sorry, George, but no. I think it was the Andrews Sisters. Anyone remember the song? You're not going to own up, are you? 'Money is the root of all evil, take it away, take it away, take it away.' What Timothy said was 'The love of money is the root of all evil.' Not quite the same thing, is it? Now you won't catch me challenging the teaching of the Bible. But I don't think our church fete had anything to do with the love of money. Let's face it, this was the giving of money, your money, as well as your talent, your time, your cakes and your runner beans, all for the upkeep of the Lord's house. So let's rejoice in our five hundred and twenty pounds. Speaking for the church, I thank you warmly." He paused and smiled and looked as grateful as if the profit from the fete were his birthday present, turning to let his gaze take in everyone in the crowded church. "The sellers of tickets, the buyers of tickets, the stall-holders, the generous folk who cooked and knitted and gave things to stock those stalls, the brass band, the fortune-teller and the humble donkey. Teamwork. Brilliant. There's another text I like, and and I won't ask where it's from, because I can't remember myself, but I know how it goes: 'A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.' Which brings us tidily to Hymn three-seven-seven, 'Let us, with a gladsome mind, Praise the Lord, for he is kind.' ";
Rachel, in her place to the left of the aisle, six rows back, praised the Lord whilst noticing how the rector, lustily leading the singing, had caught the sun at the fete. It had picked out and reddened the angles of his face-the broad forehead, the interesting cheekbones, the ridge of his nose and the point of his chin, making him look more ruggedly attractive in his robes than any member of the clergy ought to appear. She-it must be said-was singing the words of the hymn without taking in the meaning. And during the sermon, with Otis Joy's dark head and the top of his surplice showing above the pulpit, she tried mentally dressing him in a variety of uniforms, as you would in those children's books with sections you
put together in different combinations. Cowboy, soldier, policeman, pilot, boxer, bridegroom.
All too soon they were singing the last hymn and he said the Grace and made his way up the aisle to the door, passing so close to Rachel as she knelt in prayer that she felt the movement of air from his cassock.
The pews creaked with the weight of people resuming their seats to dip their heads in a last, silent prayer. These days the church was filled for Morning Service. Two extra rows had to be provided with stacking chairs from the church hall. No other rector in living memory had achieved such support except for the Christmas Midnight Service.
The organ started up again to the tune of "For all the saints" and the movement towards the door began. Rachel filed out behind two old ladies in black straw hats who always sat behind her and sang half a bar after everyone else. When their turn came to shake the rector's hand, they congratulated him on his sermon, but he didn't appear to hear. He was already in eye contact with Rachel.
"I didn't thank you."
"Thank me?"
"For your help."
"You just thanked us all, beautifully."
"At the rectory last evening."
"It was nothing, really," she said, enjoying the touch of his hand. "We all joined in."
"But you did more than your share."
She shook her head modestly and was starting to move on when he added, "Look, there's something else, if you don't mind waiting a few minutes. Would you?"
She managed to say, "Of course." Her voice piped up in a way she didn't intend, but he had surprised her. Puzzled and a little light-headed, she stepped forward into the sunshine and stood on the turf to one side of the path to let the others pass. Her friend Cynthia Haydenhall emerged in a pink two-piece and a matching hat that she held with a gloved hand in case the wind blew.
"I've seen the figures. We came out top-and that's official," she told Rachel. "The cake stall took more than anyone else."
"Great," said Rachel, trying to sound as if it mattered.
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