‘No you bloody well couldn’t. “A parishioner”. Any money says it’s Easy Evie.’
‘Yes, well, that’s a diocesan matter, of course, and I’d refer you back to the bishop.’
‘I refer you back to the handjob I gave you yesterday afternoon. Regarding which, I expect to see you here at my place in about an hour? Yes?’
‘Oh, I understand the bishop’s very overburdened just at the moment. Possibly the archdeacon, then? In any event, yes. I’d say, yes.’
‘Good. See you then.’
‘Thank you. God bless. Goodbye.’
He put the phone down, excused himself, and went to stand in the vestibule for five minutes to compose himself.
Julia and Evie.
Was it possible that he, Adam Flint, fire-and-brimstone virgin of this parish, was at the centre of a love triangle?
He stuffed his mouth into the sleeve of his hung-up coat to stifle a wave of hysterical laughter.
‘Where you been?’ demanded Evie when he was master enough of himself to return to the study.
‘Parish business,’ he muttered.
‘Parish business? You ain’t got no parish. Your parish is me and the widow Shields.’
He double-took, his fingers skidding over the book he had been about to open.
‘Widow? Julia’s a widow?’
‘Yeah.’ Evie seemed to enjoy the impact her words had made. ‘Didn’t you know? Came to a bad end, he did, old Darren Frensham.’
‘Frensham?’
‘She never took his name. Why should she? Don’t suppose I shall, when and if I marry. I’m a Witts and I’m proud of it.’
‘What was this bad end he came to?’
‘Well, there’s the thing, vicar. It’s all a bit of a mystery. He had a bit to drink, went out walking to the barn to clear his head, and never came back.’
‘Never came back? So …?’
‘Oh yeah, he’s dead. They found the body, right there, in Palmers Barn.’
‘What – did he die of?’
‘Seemed like a heart attack.’ Evie shrugged. ‘Something scared him, p’raps. He ain’t the first to die out there, after all.’
‘You’re talking about ghosts. Please don’t. Perhaps some animal? Or he was attacked?’
‘Not a mark on him. There’s those as suspects our precious Ms Shields put something in his drink. You see, they weren’t getting along so famously – it was common knowledge in the village.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘She married beneath her, for love. Or something like it. More like lust, I think. He was a charmer, was Darren. But he was no good. Gambled away most of her money and drank the rest. That’s why she lost the manor.’
‘Oh.’
‘It was repossessed the week he died.’
‘Oh.’
‘She weren’t best pleased.’
‘No.’
‘There’s a substantial school of thought in the village that she had something to do with his death.’
‘And that’s why she’s unpopular here?’
‘That’s about it. The black widow, they call her.’
‘Imaginative.’
‘Yeah, not really. You do like her, don’t you? Darren was very well liked, especially around the pub. He was one of those blokes – you know he’s no good, but you can’t help but want to be in his company. He weren’t faithful to her neither. And she knew it. Everybody did.’
‘Did you and he …?’
‘No, he weren’t my type. I know, I know, you’ll say everyone’s my type. But Darren weren’t a Saxonhurst boy, so he was pretty much off my radar.’
‘So Julia married a wastrel …’
Evie laughed. ‘I love the way you talk sometimes. You’re so old-fashioned. You’re just like …’ She broke off. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Julia married this Darren, who broke her heart, lost her money and her home and then left her a widow in the most unpleasant circumstances – and yet nobody in this village feels any sympathy for her?’
‘Well,’ Evie shrugged. ‘She ain’t likeable, is she? Aloof and snooty, thinks she’s better than us.’
‘Yet a gambling, womanising – piece of worthless rubbish – is mourned here. Never has my challenge in this parish been more starkly illustrated.’
‘I reckon that’s life,’ said Evie.
‘Yes. Yes, you’re right. And thank heaven for the one that follows this and is to come. If it weren’t for that, why should any of us behave decently?’
‘See, you’re angry now. Don’t shoot the messenger. I just told you what happened. I bet she’d’ve kept it close. You’d never have heard it from her.’
‘It’s her private business.’ Adam felt intensely defensive of Julia, despite her alarming behaviour at the seaside. Or perhaps because of it. He couldn’t really explain it himself.
‘Don’t you get mixed up in it,’ warned Evie. ‘Stay with them as cares about you.’
Adam stared. ‘And who might they be? Nobody in this village, as far as I can make out.’
‘I do, Adam. I care about you.’
‘Then why, Evie, why do you … Oh.’ He threw up his hands, waiting for another pert answer. But this time it didn’t come.
Evie was silent for a while, and she seemed to be struggling with something – was it tears?
When she spoke, her voice was low.
‘I’ll never be able to explain to you why I act as I do, Adam. But I’m asking you to believe that there is a reason, and it ain’t just my nature. Though I do love to love, and be loved – that’s like breathing to me. There’s other forces at work behind it, and I just want you to – I dunno – look out for me. Is that too much to ask?’
‘Forces? At work?’ Adam’s mission of salvation rushed back to his emotional foreground, all thoughts of Julia’s plight pushed behind it. It was true. Evie did not want to spread her legs for every oaf who winked at her. She needed him.
His body burned as if in fever at her admission.
‘I can’t tell you,’ she said, and a tear fell.
He made a dive forward, snatching at his handkerchief to wipe it away. With one hand gripping the back of her chair, he crouched close beside her, breathing in her rich, animal scent, mingled with some cheap musky perfume from the supermarket. All his blood rushed to his cock.
‘Evie, let me help you. I just want to protect you.’
‘I wish you could. But the time ain’t right. I have to wait. Wait for me, lover.’
What had she just called him?
‘Oh my darling,’ he breathed. ‘How long? How long must I wait? I don’t think I can.’
‘I’ve got things to finish this summer. Things I can’t let drift. But when the harvest moon comes round, then I’ll be free.’
‘And you will come to me?’
‘I will come to you. I promise it.’
‘Oh Evie.’ He took her face in his hands and swooped forward, but she turned her head swiftly.
‘Not yet. You mustn’t kiss me. Not yet.’
‘How can you say these things and ask me not to kiss you?’ Adam was in agony, and yet ecstasy was laced through it at every point.
‘Don’t question me. It’s how it has to be. And now I should go, before …’
‘Before?’ He swiped at the empty air where she had been sitting.
But she was on her feet, gathering her bag.
‘You only have to wait,’ she said softly, standing by the door. ‘That ain’t so hard, is it?’
She must know that it was the hardest thing of all, thought Adam, surely she must.
But he looked after her as she hurried, head down, through the churchyard, and then he could do no more than sit in the seat she had recently vacated, staring into space, in a profound rapture, for the rest of the evening.
Chapter Twelve
HER WEDDING GOWN was no more than a shift with a coarse peasant dress over the top. In her hair she wore a garland of flowers. He didn’t
approve of such ornamentation, but since she was a bride – his bride – he decided to let it pass.
Few guests attended the event, the sole witnesses being Sir Henry Shields of the manor and his wife. Previously, the good preacher had thought the changes to the marriage laws and the introduction of banns a good thing, but this past three weeks had had cause to differ. If he could have married Evangeline sooner, his influence might have saved her kinswomen. As it was, they had been hanged in a trio at Parham, just the week before.
But Evangeline survived, and Evangeline was the important one.
Even in her grief, she was beautiful. Her tears didn’t redden her nose or dim her eyes like they did with other women. Instead, they made her soul shine through the defiance and the lack of refinement. She was a living thing; she breathed and felt.
He might have postponed the wedding to a less inauspicious time, but it seemed the witchfinder snapped at his heels, eager to come back and bag the final female of the quartet. Even if it was not so, he felt it must be.
His ring on her finger, he bore her away to a frugal breakfast at the manor, courtesy of the Shields, and then they returned to his abode.
‘Good wife,’ he whispered, as soon as they were through the low door. ‘There is but one duty left me to perform.’
She raised her face to his and accepted a kiss. She was always so passive, never responding in kind, yet never recoiling from him either. It was, he supposed, a maidenly modesty within her, which knew the meaning of sin and avoided its active commission. But now, within wedlock, there was no sin in this. He sought to remind her.
‘Dearest love, we are wed. Such as it pleases us to do will also please the Lord. We act in good faith and with the blessing of the church if we …’
He reached for the neck of her shift and made to lower it, exposing the upper slopes of her breasts. Again, she merely tilted her neck to one side and let him, her eyes half-shut and distant.
‘Do you love me?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she replied.
He held his hand where it lay and stared at her.
‘You say no? You do not love me? I, who have saved you?’
‘You did it for your own base reasons. If my mother had taken your fancy, she it would be who stood here today.’
A great anger arose in him. He tore the shift to the hem of her bodice and held her close to him, their faces touching at the nose tips.
‘You would prefer to have swung? You would prefer to burn?’
‘No, sir, and that is why I am your wife, and each day I chide my own weakness. Yet I will not bear you love. I will never bear you love.’
His vision flushed hot red and the blood thumped in his ears. Seizing her by the shoulder, he flung her on to the bed that lay in the corner of the single-roomed dwelling.
‘If you will not bear me love, then you will bear me obedience,’ he vowed.
In his ears rang her screams, and forever more he would never forget her fearful eyes, her whispered curses, the thin, mean pleasure he drew from his transgression.
And the other thing he would never forget was the stain on the sheet afterwards.
No blood, only his own issue.
‘You have another lover!’ he bellowed, beside himself, on his knees before the crucifix that was the room’s only embellishment. ‘You have duped me.’
‘You won me by false means,’ she wept. ‘I have always loved another. I feared to tell you.’
‘Who is he? Tell me his name.’
‘You will do him harm.’
‘I will find it out, Evangeline. It will be known to me.’
Adam awoke in a cold sweat. He was still in the desk chair and his muscles ached from the unforgiving wood. But the physical discomfort was as nothing compared to the unfolding pain in his head.
He, as Tribulation Smith, had raped Evie. It was a dream, yes, it was not a substantial crime, and yet he felt as guilty as if his own body had violated hers. It made no sense, but it was so vivid that he felt again the retching nausea that had overcome him at the seaside.
He sank his head on to the desktop and groaned with anguish.
The groan was still not fully discharged when an indignant rapping at the door interrupted it.
‘Oh Lord, have mercy on me,’ he whispered, deciding to ignore the late-night caller. Even Evie would not be welcome at this time, surrounded as she was with these disturbing ghosts and presences.
But within a minute, a dark shadow loomed by the window and knocked on it. Adam leapt from his chair and moved towards it. The shadow was slight, almost wraith-like. With a shock of yet more guilt – this variety from a different source – he recognised Julia.
He gestured towards the front door, indicating that he would go and open it for her. When he did so, she streaked inside like a cat, flattening herself to pass him and head straight for the living room.
She was already sitting, like an enthroned queen, on the best armchair in the house when he entered. He stood uncertainly in the door frame for an instant, too out of sorts to know how to speak or act.
‘Why didn’t you come?’ she asked. ‘What are you afraid of?’
Two very separate questions in Adam’s mind. He decided to tackle only the first.
‘Evie was here. I lost track of time after she left, fell asleep in the chair.’
‘She makes you lose your mind. Ah well, perhaps it’s too late after all.’
Julia chewed moodily on a knuckle, looking sideways at the bookshelves. J.E. Lydford’s history of the village caught her eye.
‘That book’s mine, isn’t it?’ she said, stalking over to inspect it.
‘You lent it to me.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Why don’t I remember it?’
‘You were – well, you’d had a drink or two.’
‘Oh, that sodding journalist. Yes, well, you shouldn’t have taken advantage of me.’
Adam burst into a mirthless laugh.
‘The irony,’ he said.
She came closer, close enough for him to smell her, if she’d had any scent except an anonymous floral perfume. He tensed.
‘You were asking for it,’ she said, softly. She reached for the book. ‘I’ll have this back, if you don’t mind.’
‘I haven’t finished reading it.’
‘It’s codswallop, start to finish.’
‘You seem very sure of that.’
‘An interesting man, Joss Lydford. He was vicar here, half a century or so ago.’
‘I know. I’ve seen his name on the board in the church. What happened to him?’
‘He went mad.’
‘That’s a pity.’ Adam felt a pull of the most heartfelt sympathy for his predecessor. It would be very easy, perhaps the easiest thing of all, to go mad here, in this role, in this horrendous parish. He shut his eyes for a moment, wondering with distant horror if that might not be what was happening to him.
‘Yes, isn’t it? The thing is, he got too involved. Too drawn into the village and its secrets. Which simply won’t do. It’s a sure-fire route to madness.’
‘You know these secrets, or so you keep intimating?’
She pursed her lips.
‘I know a lot of secrets, Adam. Some of them would benefit you. Some of them wouldn’t. Do you want me to show you?’
She put a hand on his shoulder.
He flinched, thinking of Evie, swallowed and shook his head.
‘Julia,’ he said in a hoarse whisper, ‘what happened on the excursion … It was … I think you meant well. But it can’t have a sequel. It can’t happen … I’m not free …’
‘Not free?’ Her fingers closed around his shoulder, bony and hard. ‘What do you mean? What’s happened?’
‘I can’t change the way I feel,’ he said. ‘Especially if she feels it too.’
Julia retracted her hand and used it to smite her forehead, groaning.
‘Dear God, she’s got you. You’re doomed. Well, now I need to rethink. Somehow or other, by
hook or by crook, I’m not letting this happen. If I can’t tempt you with a shag, then I need to come up with something else. Watch this space.’
She swept away, taking the book with her.
Adam sank down into the armchair. His brain was a fog of alarming information. How Julia’s husband had died, the fate of J.E. Lydford, his horrifying dream and, most of all, the fact that Evie might, after all, come to him and be his.
It was too much. For the first time in his life, Adam found himself craving brandy, or at least a little something to dull his senses and let him drift easefully into dreamless sleep. But there was no brandy in the house and he sat up, hour after hour, until finally, just before the dawn, the relief of oblivion was his.
The village cricket match against Hamframpton had been going on all day. On and on and on, in fact, if you asked Adam, who was no great fan of the sport. But he had volunteered his services as umpire, in his endless quest to grab some kind of foothold in village life, so he stood under an unforgiving late June sun in a white coat a size too small for him, his face smothered in clown-thick sunblock.
Saxonhurst were winning. In fact, according to the statistics, Saxonhurst had never lost a village cricket match. They were invincible. Legend had it that, back in the 1980s, they’d played the all-conquering Somerset county side in a friendly and won. They’d bowled out Ian Botham for a duck.
Yet, as far as Adam could tell, they rarely practised and only played a few games each season. Just another piece of unquantifiable Saxonhurst luck.
On the sidelines, Adam was constantly aware of Evie, in her scarlet silk dress, cheerleading enthusiastically. Every time a Saxonhurst man was called out, she ran up to him and leapt into his embrace, snogging the face off him until Adam felt quietly sick. Since her declaration at the Bible study session, she had skirted around the subject every time they met, uncharacteristically demure and coy, not her usual brazen self at all.
And yet she would not relinquish her work at the porn set, nor was she seen any the less wrapped around hearty village lads in the beer garden of the Fleece.
‘The time isn’t right yet,’ was all she would say.
‘But surely if I have to wait, then you could at least stop all this …’
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