by Jane Anstey
Whenever he felt tempted to give way to depression, he had always found it helpful to pray for someone else or try to help them in some practical way, but today even that solution seemed to lead nowhere. Rose seemed beyond his help, having rejected the spiritual solutions he had tried to find for her––even faith itself. Simon appeared to have turned his back on their embryonic friendship and was getting ready to leave Two Marks, or so he had heard. He had visited Ben Cartwright the previous week, and if he went back to see him so soon the old man would probably suspect him of expecting his, Ben’s, imminent demise. Otherwise, most people were at work, or about their daily business. The children were at school. No one had phoned requesting a sick visit or needing communion to be brought to some ailing relative, and it being a Monday, he would normally have rejected such requests anyway, unless they were urgent.
A tiny breath of worry crossed his mind about George. He had not seen the farmer for a week or so, and then he had seemed very low and despondent. Lucinda, not content with filing for divorce, had refused to let her husband visit her––George thought it was the blow to her pride in being held on remand that had caused this, though that didn’t make much sense to Jeremy.
Should he go and visit George? He reached the gateway to Church End Farm and paused. There was no particular reason why he should go in and probably nothing much he could say if he did. George always welcomed him and never seemed to think that wordless sympathy was also worthless, though Jeremy had his doubts. Yet what could be said? George’s situation was as tragic, in its way, as Rose’s, and Jeremy felt he had failed both of them and could do nothing more. If George wanted to see him, he could phone the rectory and ask. He didn’t want to intrude on the man’s unhappiness, and on a Monday, he told himself, as rector, he was anyway supposed to lay down the benefice’s burdens and find some refreshment and relaxation for himself. But this was an excuse, a get-out, he knew that. Normally, he would have followed up that faint sense of unease and tramped up the drive to the farm to check, day off or no day off. But today he could find no spiritual resources to bring to George and shrank from trying to share with the farmer the poor shreds of faith and encouragement he still had.
He shrugged off the irrational anxiety and walked on.
~ * ~
At the rectory, Liz was settling the pre-school children into their various activities. One little group was cooking in the rectory kitchen with her assistant, a competent maker of biscuits and cakes––all decorated daintily and much loved by pre-school parents––but inclined to leave the kitchen in a king-size muddle. The rest were drawing or making collages with cut-outs from magazines and glue. The drawing room would also, she could see, be an unholy mess by the end of the afternoon’s activities.
She looked at her watch. One o’clock. She had eaten a quick sandwich before the children arrived, but Jeremy, who usually shared a spartan lunch with her on Mondays at which they tried––but usually failed––to avoid parish concerns, had not returned. It was unlike him to miss a meal without good reason, especially on a Monday.
She sighed. She had not dealt well with his concern over Rose, and she felt bad about it. She also hated keeping a secret from him––something she rarely did, so that it always upset her when she was forced to do so. Their relationship was normally too transparent, too honest, to deal in secrets and lies. This was a strength in many ways, she knew. It ensured their marriage had rock-solid foundations and good communication channels to deal with any problems that arose. But at the same time, it made it difficult for either of them to have any private life as an individual, to hold divergent views on a topic or harbour fantasies of a different life, as she had done just recently.
Two of the four-year-old boys in the group were having difficulty sharing the glue, she noticed suddenly. She had been day-dreaming, not keeping her attention on the job, and had almost failed to prevent a full-scale battle. She jumped to her feet and whisked the glue bottle away from between them. A bellow of rage immediately arose from one of them, while the other looked sulky.
“Shaun, you don’t need to get upset. Look, there’s a glue stick here—that’s much easier to use for sticking card. Here, let me show you.” She bent to help the boy, while covertly handing the glue bottle to his rival. Peace returned, and she went to admire the drawings of the three little girls sitting at the folding table on the other side of the room.
“That’s really good, Britney. And so is yours, Jade. How about colouring the sky blue, perhaps? Look, there’s a nice light blue crayon.”
What strange names parents called their children these days, she reflected—often after some minor celebrity who had appeared on a reality show on TV or taken part in one of those long-running competitions that favoured the public vote in deciding who went on from one round to another. Liz had watched some of the early Big Brother series, fascinated like everyone else by the interplay of individuals thrust together willy-nilly for the cameras, and the suspense of who would have to leave the house each week. But in recent years the whole reality show concept had become a kind of circus, offering viewers the equivalent of gladiatorial combat in Ancient Rome, complete with the chance to give contestants thumbs-up or thumbs-down courtesy of the voting phone lines. Even singing and dancing competitions had been infected with the same strange malaise. It gave people in offices something to talk about, she supposed, but even that only served to distract them from real life as real people actually lived it.
She heard the phone ringing in Jeremy’s study. Why could parishioners never remember that he had a day off and deserved to be allowed to enjoy it undisturbed? Although it was a dedicated landline, separate from the main rectory one, sometimes she answered it, if the pre-school children were quiet and her assistant was in the room to mind them. She had been known to give a parishioner who phoned on a Monday a piece of her mind on the subject, which had discouraged a few of the more inveterate callers, though Jeremy was always upset if he found out she had done it. Of course, there were occasions when the matter was urgent—someone was dying and had asked for Jeremy to go and see them, for example—and she accepted that she couldn’t expect him to be off duty in such circumstances. Perhaps this was one of those. She told herself to be charitable and not assume the worst. Whoever it was could phone back or leave a message. Shaun and Wayne (named after the footballer, perhaps? she wondered idly) were about to fall out with each other again, this time over the blunt-ended scissors, and she couldn’t leave the group alone in the drawing-room anyway. Anna, her assistant, might hear the phone ringing, but she wouldn’t answer it, and that was how it should be, of course. Rectory phone calls were often confidential. Some people wouldn’t want anyone to know they’d even telephoned, never mind what their business was. This time, the answer phone would have to deal with the caller, and Jeremy could phone back when he came home. Which reminded her––where on earth had he got to?
Twenty-two
George put down the receiver slowly and stared at it. The rectory answer phone had requested him to leave a message. Jeremy’s voice had told him, kindly, that no one was available just now but that he would ring back as soon as possible. But George couldn’t think of a message to leave. How could he tell an impersonal answer phone––especially knowing that it might blurt the message out for anyone to hear––that his life had hit the buffers and he desperately needed Jeremy’s help, and now. He supposed he should at least have left a message to ask the rector to phone him, or to come round as soon as possible. Or he could have tried Jeremy’s mobile. He had the number somewhere. That would have been better than just putting the receiver down again without leaving any message. But when it came to it, he hadn’t been able to think of what to say, and in the end had said nothing. He often found that distress or panic would rob him of words, as though his own fear or unhappiness constricted his throat and shut off his voice. But Jeremy could usually cope with that. Several times this winter, the rector had come and sat with him in comforting silence, not
expecting him to explain anything, sometimes with a kind word of his own or a gentle pat on the arm or shoulder, sometimes just in silent sympathy. He had so much appreciated it. But even that wouldn’t help now. Nothing would. He didn’t know why he had phoned the rectory. Jeremy couldn’t change the way things had turned out.
He picked up the letter from the mortgage company again, with some dim but forlorn hope it would say something different this time. His debts had piled up this winter, and last year’s income had not been enough to stave off foreclosure on the mortgages. The previous summer had been a poor one for growing things, although prices had risen a bit in response to greater demand for food worldwide. But the weather had let them down, and although the animals had done well and George had sold some in the autumn for slaughter and others for breeding, it wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t matter what he sold now. The whole lot would have to go, to pay off the arrears.
Repossession. Another word for ruin. If the land and the house were repossessed, he would have nothing left. Where would he go––he who had spent his whole life on this farm? Brian had built a big new house for himself when their father split the land between them, but this was the original one where the family had lived for generations. It wasn’t as gracious as Lucinda had wanted it to be––she had been volubly disappointed when he had refused to let it and build her a new one to rival Brian’s––but it was the bearer of his family traditions. It housed the family soul. George couldn’t bear the thought of leaving it and going off to face an uncertain future, where he would be certain to fail again. His nephew Eamonn wouldn’t take him in––he was too like his father, caring for nothing but success and money. He’d already put Brian’s farmhouse and the land on the market. And even if his nephew had been willing to help him, George couldn’t see himself living with Eamonn or on Eamonn’s bounty.
He put his head in his hands as a black tide of depression rose and filled him. No home. No Lucinda. No companionship or security in the old age to come. Nothing. I might as well be dead.
The thought came quite clearly into his mind and immediately took root. He went over to the big bureau and unlocked the small drawer beneath the lid. Inside was his father’s old revolver, which he’d always kept in working order, for sentiment’s sake more than anything else. His father had used it in the Home Guard during the war, but goodness knows where he had got it from in the first place––it wasn’t a service-type revolver. George had a permit for the big shotgun he used to shoot rabbits every summer, but this one was a secret. Not even Lucinda knew he had kept it. It reminded him of his father, who had always looked after it and who’d shown him how to use it when he was a teenager. The special ammunition for it was kept separately, in another drawer, also locked.
He loaded it, carefully, tenderly, thinking of his father, reflecting that they had both known the gun would be useful for something, some day. Not for this, though, he thought uncomfortably. The need to end everything now, today, was a surprise to him; and his father, reared in the pre-war stiff-upper-lip era, would not have understood his reaction to despair. But he knew he’d let his father down as well as everyone else. He should have resisted Lucinda’s extravagance years ago and protected the farm from creditors, not let the land and the business drown in debt to indulge her whims. Not only that, but he should have resisted her demand that he hide Brian’s body that night last November when she begged him to help her, to save her from the police’s scrutiny, from having to take a breathalyser test. It had always been a useless idea to bury his brother in the woods to keep his body from being discovered and his death investigated. George had known it, in his heart, but Lucinda so seldom begged rather than ordered him that he had given in, even though he’d felt he was letting his brother down as well as himself.
Now it was all too late. Much, much too late. His self-respect was gone, along with the rest.
Only one question remained. Where did he want to die? And the answer seemed very simple. Outside in the fields, where his dying would leave little mess behind for others to clear up, where he could feel the sun on his face and the wind in his hair at the end. Someone would have to find him, of course, and that would be a shock to them. But better outside than in the office or here in the drawing room that Lucinda had cherished. Outside in the clean, cool air, looking at the view he had loved all his life.
He tucked the gun into the big pocket of his old working jacket and went outside into the yard. The dairy cows were down in the middle field below the village green, almost out of earshot. The sheep had all gone to market back in the autumn, to pay off the loan he’d taken out to buy Lucinda a better car, a car she wouldn’t need for a while, as it turned out. When she was remanded in custody he’d sold the car, though he hadn’t told her, but depreciation had lowered its value too far to be enough to repay the original loan.
He opened the nearest field gate and walked down the hill away from the cottages. The beloved countryside view opened up before him, the graceful undulations of the Hampshire hills and valleys, a patchwork of green pastures and brown ploughland with pockets of woodland scattered here and there. He stood for a little while looking at it, making his peace with the world. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled the gun out, trying to decide where to aim for. Not the head, he decided, though it was the easiest, the surest. He didn’t want that person who found him to be haunted by the sight of his brains all over the place. A single bullet to the heart would do well enough, though he would have to keep the gun steady as it recoiled.
He sat down on the damp grass and cocked the ancient revolver. It seemed strange to point a gun at oneself, rather than sighting along the barrel to take out a rabbit or a fox. There was a surreal quality to the whole situation, as though normality had taken leave of absence and left him in a slow-motion film sequence in which the action was already predetermined and he was just following through the moves.
But the scene was nearly finished. He had only to pull the trigger.
~ * ~
Jeremy arrived home to find the kitchen full of pre-school chefs and the drawing room occupied by their artistic counterparts. This was not abnormal for a Monday afternoon, and he often went with pleasure to see what the children were doing and made kind or humorous comments, depending on his mood. Today he found their invasion of his home irritating, and without even putting his head round the door of the drawing room to tell Liz he was home, he went into his study and closed the door. After a few moments he noticed that the answer phone light was winking. He pressed Play, but there was no message, just a few seconds of silence. Perhaps whoever had phoned had remembered it was Monday and decided to call back the following day. Out of curiosity more than anything else, he picked up the receiver and dialled 1471, to find out who had made the call.
George’s number. He wondered why the farmer hadn’t left a message, and more to the point, why he had phoned in the first place. He couldn’t think of anything practical or administrative that George would have been phoning about, which meant it was probably a pastoral matter. In other words, George needed him. If he hadn’t left a message, did that mean the matter wasn’t urgent, or that it was so personal he hadn’t wanted to risk someone else hearing his voice on the line? He was almost sure he’d given George his mobile number, so why hadn’t he phoned that?
He rang George’s number and waited while the phone at the other end rang and rang. George had no mobile number that he knew of, and he couldn’t remember whether they had an answer phone at Church End Farm. If so, George hadn’t turned it on, which probably meant he hadn’t gone far. But the ringing tone went on, brr, brr, and eventually he put the receiver down again.
Jeremy rubbed his hand thoughtfully across his chin and wondered what to do. If this was really urgent, perhaps he should go down to the farm. He remembered that brief hint of worry––not quite a premonition or even a telepathic nudge, but still something—he had felt as he walked home past the farm. Was it his imagination, or was it just a hint of the ki
nd of near-extrasensory perception that occasionally assailed him? He usually took notice of those feelings, just in case they meant something. Today he had ignored them, and now he had come home to find that George had tried to phone him.
Still hesitating, he felt a stronger sense of alarm he couldn’t ignore. He went out into the hall, calling to Liz. “George rang and didn’t leave a message. I’ll just go down and see he’s all right.”
He wasn’t sure she had heard him above the rising note of children’s voices, the art and cooking phase of the afternoon having given way to some more active pursuit. But he didn’t want to wait. He took his cloak down from the hook in the hallway and pulled the front door closed behind him.
As he walked towards Church End Farm, he heard a single shot, somewhere behind the farmhouse in the fields. George after a fox, perhaps? The sound of the gun didn’t sound quite right for that, somehow, but he wasn’t an expert on guns and he couldn’t think who else would be shooting over there.
The farmhouse was empty. The back door was open, not just unlocked but actually standing open as though George had just walked out into the yard for a moment with the intention of coming straight back. Hairs rising on the back of his neck, Jeremy peered into every room. Everything looked normal, but he couldn’t get rid of his sense that things weren’t normal and that he needed to investigate. More than anything, he needed to find George.