Evie considered this for a while, sipping at her lukewarm tea.
The room seemed suddenly airless and oppressive to Adam, the birdsong outside deafeningly strident. The inward fight against his outward arousal reached its critical point. The visions of grabbing Evie and fucking her against the wall that threatened to tip into the broadest stream of his consciousness couldn’t be repelled for much longer.
She broke the tension with a laugh.
‘I like you, vicar. In a funny kind of way. You’re interesting. All right, then. I’ll do it.’
He was too surprised to move for a moment, winded by what seemed like vast and unexpected good fortune.
‘You’ll – study with me?’
‘Yeah. Why not? Could be a giggle. Not every night, though. Call it Wednesdays and Sundays. Oh no, I guess you’re busy Sundays. Mondays then. Wednesdays and Mondays. “Save Evie’s Soul” – the challenge is on.’
‘You must take it seriously.’
‘Oh, I take you seriously, vicar. I take you very seriously. You’re pretty scary in that black dress, you know.’
‘Cassock. It’s a cassock.’
‘You’re like a big old crow. From long ago.’
A knock on the door interrupted Evie’s teasing. Mrs Witts stuck her head round.
‘Don’t mean to interrupt, Reverend, but isn’t it getting a bit late? They’ll be waiting for you in Little Minching.’
‘Oh! Yes. Yes.’ He looked at the clock and sprang to life, gathering up books and papers for the service.
‘You coming to the kitchen with me, Evie?’
‘Yeah. Smells lush. Thanks, vicar. I feel like my spiritual life is about to begin. See you tomorrow night.’
She sailed past him with a wink, her scarlet silk dress swishing over her curves as she followed her aunt out to the hallway.
Once the door was closed, he sank to his knees beneath a wall-mounted crucifix and muttered prayers until the fever was past and he could embark on his trip in a pure frame of mind.
That night, he dreamed.
Evie sat at a desk, studying her Bible, but she was naked. Her hair spilled on to her round breasts and the nipples stood firm and proud.
He stood at the front of the room, a schoolroom. She inflamed him. He was powerless to resist. There seemed to be only one way to deal with the burgeoning heat in his groin, and she knew it before he even spoke.
She looked up at him and closed the book.
Lifting her hair and holding its heavy weight at the back of her neck, she rose, revealing a delicate covering of curls above her pubic triangle, though in reality he knew she was shaved there. Her body was healthily proportioned, blending pink and white, softness and firmness. She embodied fleshly temptation, sinful sensuality. Every move she made was a lure.
She walked to the side of the room and took from a cupboard a long willow switch. This she bore in both hands, palms upward, presenting it to him as an offering.
When he had taken it, she turned and wordlessly bent over the desk, pushing out her bare bottom.
Next time you spank me …
He looked at her sweet, white globes; unmarked, blank canvases. She wiggled her hips, as if impatient for him to begin.
He raised the rod and whipped it smartly down, exhaling along with the swoop of the lash, sighing as it made its crack of impact. A red line rose, beautifully contrasting with the pale skin it streaked. She made no sound. Before he stopped, she must beg for his mercy.
His arm powered back and forth, wrist flicking, switch falling over and over until that pert bottom was a criss-crossing welter of weals, bright red and raised. The endless giddy whoosh of the whip sang in his ears, the crack bumping along with his heartbeat. He made music, a flagellating symphony, and his blood fizzed with power. The girl was his. She submitted to his will, and through his will, the higher will.
He saved her with this switching. He saved her soul.
She spoke the words.
‘Have mercy on me, a sinner.’
He put down the rod and put his palm to that subjugated flesh. How it burned. His mark was upon her, and she would bear it on her soul and in her memory even after it faded.
He unbuckled his belt.
The image faded and altered.
Evie disappeared.
Confusion reigned until he awoke to wet sheets and dry, feverish eyes.
‘Have mercy on me, a sinner.’
But this time the words came from him.
Chapter Three
‘WE SHOULD BEGIN at the beginning, shouldn’t we, vicar?’
Evie pushed aside the New Testament and the exhortations of St Paul to the Ephesians.
‘I think the most pressing issue for you is an understanding of how to live in a Christian fashion.’ Adam disagreed.
He seemed to be disagreeing with everyone today.
He had disagreed with Julia Shields over the best way to go about banishing the pornographers from her ancestral home. She wanted him to make complaints to the authorities – the planning office at the local council, to begin with. But Kasia and Sebastian had registered the property’s change of use in advance, and they were breaking no laws. They were paying their taxes like everyone else. “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”, he had told Julia. She had snorted and said Jesus didn’t have to deal with skinflicks being made in his lowly stable.
‘He wasn’t living in a stable by then,’ said Adam patiently, but Julia wasn’t listening.
‘Are you telling me that you are going to let them carry on with this? Right under our noses?’
‘No, I’m not telling you that. I’m as against it as you are. But I think we need to get the village on our side. Why don’t you call a meeting? I’m happy to give the church hall over to it. Leaflet the parishioners and get them on our side.’
And get them on to church premises, for the first time in their heathen lives.
With a little flutter of optimism, Adam saw an opportunity to make the church central to village life. If everyone joined in their crusade, he could make his services a key part of the fight. Bums on pews at last.
‘Well, I suppose so.’
He didn’t understand her dubious reaction. Surely this was the obvious path to take.
‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’
‘It’s just, well, I’m not the most popular person in this village.’
‘Oh.’
‘Why don’t you produce the leaflets? You’re new here; they won’t have any of their loopy peasant prejudices against you.’
He sighed. His head was going to be well and truly over the parapet. Trusting that the diocesan authorities would understand and approve, he assented.
So he’d leafleted each house in the village, calling a public meeting for the Thursday evening.
Of course, Sebastian had been straight on the phone.
‘It’s harassment, pure and simple,’ he raged. ‘Don’t think I won’t involve the police if it gets out of hand.’
‘People have a right to express their opinions, peaceably,’ Adam pointed out, though he was feeling far from peaceable at that point. The idea of storming the manor with flaming torches grew more appealing by the moment.
And now Evie, at her first tuition session, was taking a dim view of it all.
‘I reckon God’s all right with erotic stuff,’ she said. ‘Forget this St Paul bloke, let’s do Adam and Eve. He gave them the Garden of Eden and I bet that was a sexy place. I mean, they walked around butt-naked all day long. God didn’t seem that bothered by it.’
‘Man wasn’t able to handle his desires,’ said Adam severely. ‘Hence their banishment.’
Evie stretched out and yawned, her hand brushing Adam’s upper arm as he sat beside her.
‘I reckon Eve gets a bad press. I would, though, wouldn’t I? We’ve got the same name. I’ve always been on her side.’
‘She was weak.’
‘No weaker than Adam. I suppose you think he’s all
right, do you? It was him thinking with his dick got us into all this. And men ain’t been no different since.’
‘He disobeyed the word of the Lord, yes, but he wanted forbidden knowledge not – not, you know, sex. And so did Eve. They were both guilty.’
‘But Eve got the worst out of it. Way the worst. Do you think that’s fair, vicar? Adam had to chop a few logs but Eve had all the pain and the blood. I’d have swapped.’
‘It was Eve who listened to the serpent, Eve who took the apple.’
‘Apple.’ Evie shook her head. ‘Are we meant to believe that, vicar? Everyone got in all this bother just for the sake of a boring old apple? I’d understand if it was a Toblerone.’
With difficulty, Adam forced his mind back to St Paul, taking the book and shoving it down under Evie’s nose.
‘We are not talking about Adam and Eve,’ he said firmly.
‘Oh yes we are. When we’re together, we’re always talking about Adam and Eve.’
Oh Lord, she was right. How had this happened so fast and so fatally? Their dynamic already was one of tension, temptation, resistance, played out in infinite variations.
He had to be stronger than his biblical namesake, that much was clear. Whoever the serpent might be was doing a grand job of it.
Was it Sebastian? One of those village men in the cornfield? Someone had to be pulling Evie’s strings. Who was it?
‘What do you reckon the Garden of Eden was like?’ she asked idly, pushing the New Testament away again.
He tried not to answer, he tried to resist her line of beguiling enquiry, made with such ingenuous lowering of eyelids, such provocative pouting of lips. But it was no use.
‘A very beautiful place, of course. Scholars dispute over its geographical location –’
‘Oh, I don’t care about what it looked like. I mean, what was it like? What was it like to live there? What did Adam and Eve do all day?’
‘Obey the Lord,’ said Adam, a tad sulkily. ‘And now ’
‘What would you do all day? If you were in the Garden of Eden, starkers, with a beautiful woman?’
‘This isn’t relevant.’
‘Yes it is. It’s how it all began. How can it not be relevant? Imagine you’re Adam and I’m Eve – not that much of a stretch, is it? You don’t have to work. Everything’s all there for you – food and warmth and so on. You can do anything and everything you want, all day and all night. What would you do?’
‘I would pray. Now, when St Paul arrived in Ephesus … What are you doing?’
She had put her finger on his lips. She was so close to him and her hair smelled of meadows.
‘I reckon it’d be like this. You’d be there, in the Garden of Eden, and once God had done that lecture about not eating from the tree and whatnot, you’d turn and see me on the grass beside you. And you wouldn’t want to pray. You wouldn’t want to stroll around admiring the rivers and the valleys and all that. You’d want to fuck.’
He took hold of her arm, wresting her finger away from his mouth.
‘I won’t hear that kind of talk in my home,’ he rasped.
‘I reckon the air in that garden was loaded with sex. You’d be at it night and day. And that’s a good thing, vicar. While we’re making love, we ain’t making war. Don’t you think?’
‘There are other things to make, worthy things.’
‘But right down at the root of it, we all want to fuck. Even you. Especially you. You want it right now, I can tell.’
‘Get away from me!’
She did so, standing up and picking up her bag.
‘Sounds like we’re done for tonight, then. I feel sorry for you, Adam. What you need is a woman. Or maybe you’re gay? Is that it? No, can’t be, or you wouldn’t fancy me.’
‘Just leave me alone.’
‘So, same time Wednesday?’ she said breezily. ‘I’ll see you then.’
She turned and looked back at him just before she left.
‘Oh,’ she said.
He lifted his head from the desk and stared at her.
‘You know about the May Fair, do you? On Saturday?’
He cast his mind back, vaguely recalling a notice on the village green.
‘May Fair? Oh, right.’
‘You’ll come, won’t you? It’s so much fun. And you might learn a few things about us.’
She left.
He sat up eventually, bleary-eyed and thick-headed, still feeling drugged with arousal, but determined to stamp it down. He was a soldier of righteousness, and she was his adversary, trying to run him through with the lance of fornication. He let this metaphor run through his mind for a few moments longer, enjoying the image of himself in shining armour atop a fine steed.
He looked again at the antique writing desk that had formed part of the vicarage fixtures and fittings. Where was the key for that locked drawer? He’d asked Mrs Witts but she’d just given him her trademark bamboozled look and gone back to boiling asparagus. They had the best asparagus around here, elegant spears whose delicacy was famed across the country. In fact, all the fruit and vegetables grew in embarrassing abundance, nature’s bounty blessing the Vale every year. Scientists had come to try and work out what made the soil so very fertile, but nobody had formulated a plausible theory yet. Chemically, it was no different to the neighbouring lands.
An image of Evie, taking village lad after village lad and performing those invocations to Robin Goodfellow sprang into his mind uninvited.
How preposterous. They probably believed that their barbaric little ritual was what made the tomatoes so very fat and red and the cucumbers so perfectly long and green. Idiotic superstitions.
He jiggled the drawer handle again, then gave up and let his head fall back on the polished walnut.
Evie in the cornfield. What made her the way she was? What kind of woman let herself be penetrated by a succession of men in pursuit of some ungodly tradition?
He sat up, rigid, his eyes wide.
Somebody was using her, making her the instrument of his will. Her conversation about Adam and Eve had been code, some kind of cry for help, maybe? She wanted him to save her from the serpent.
A force of evil, somewhere in the background, was decanting his foul lusts into the vessel of Evie’s helpless body.
He would find out who it was. He would banish him, as God banished Lucifer from the chorus of the angels. This Adam and Eve would not fall. This Adam and Eve could … Oh Lord, is that your purpose? Is that why you have brought me here? To show me my destiny, my, my, my wife?
Please. Let it be so.
‘Evie, tell me about your ritual in the cornfield,’ he commanded urgently the minute she had passed through his door on the Wednesday evening.
She looked surprised at his enthusiastic welcoming of her. Of course, she couldn’t know that the very sight of her made his insides melt, his stomach churn, his skin prickle, his heart tighten. He longed to take her in his arms and tell her he knew her terrible secret and he could protect her, shield her even if it meant his death. But she wasn’t ready for that, not yet.
‘Evenin’, vicar,’ she said, dropping her handbag on the desk.
She looked luminous in a green halter-neck top and a flouncy white cotton skirt, like a ravishing village gypsy about to dance on her bare brown feet.
‘The ritual?’ he prompted.
‘I thought you knew all about that, what with having a ringside seat for the last one.’ She sat down, attempting a demure look that didn’t quite come off.
‘I know what you do, of course. But why do you do it?’
‘For a good harvest. It brings the favour of Robin Goodfellow to the village.’
Adam raised his eyes to the ceiling and humphed in faux amusement.
‘Robin Goodfellow? You really believe that?’
‘I really believe that we have the best harvests around, every single year. So why wouldn’t I? God, on the other hand, don’t seem to do that much for us.’
‘You need
faith, Evie.’
‘I need to eat, love. We all do.’
‘Who started the ritual?’
‘It’s much older than I am.’
‘When did you first perform it?’
‘I was 18.’
‘Who did it before you?’
She hesitated. She looked rattled. He was on to something here. Excitement swelled in his breast as her reaction seemed to fit with his theory.
‘I dunno.’
‘What? In a village this size? You must.’
She shrugged defiantly.
‘How long has it been going on?’ he persisted.
‘Ages. Maybe 500 years, maybe more, how would I know?’
‘Who introduced you to it?’
‘Oi, vicar, I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.’
‘They were Catholics.’
‘Whatever. Can you lay off me, please? Unless you want to lay on me, know what I mean, Adam?’
She gave him a louche wink that immediately diverted his thoughts down to his trousers.
‘Let’s talk about the Ten Commandments,’ he stammered.
‘Oh gawd, let’s not. Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. What shalt thou? Is anything allowed?’
‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’
‘Before you? Sorry to break it to you, love, but you ain’t no god. Not bad-looking, I’ll grant you, but –’
He thumped the desk with his fist. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Evie!’
She jerked back and looked up at him. The tiny tremor of fear on her face aroused him more than he had ever been before. Those eyes, wide, and those lips parted were maddeningly beautiful. He wanted to reach out, touch, kiss – but there would be time enough. He would pluck his pretty apple from the tree as soon as she was ripe.
She sat, quiet and subdued, through the rest of the lecture, hardly speaking at all except to answer questions in a sulky tone. He made it all the way up to “Thou shalt not kill” without encountering any resistance from her.
Before they could move on to adultery, though, and the speech he had prepared on how “adultery” technically covered all fornication including the things she got up to with the village lads and sundry porn actors, she stood and made an abrupt declaration of a prior commitment.
Saxonhurst Secrets Page 4