The Rectory

by Ivan B

  He gave a sly grin.

  “Yes and no. I hate courses and our burglar alarm supplier insists that an employee of every installation firm attends the course. The only way I could prise Yolande from this place is to book a course and then be unavailable.”

  I laughed and he relaxed.

  “Where’s she got to?” He asked.

  I shrugged.

  “I think she was going to finish off the downstairs lighting today and then start on the ring mains, I think she said there’s one on every floor and one for the kitchen.”

  He nodded and muttered.

  “I dare say she did, it does sound logical, but if I interfere in that she’ll brain me.”

  He looked around the kitchen.

  “Has she routed out the sockets?”

  “Pardon?”

  He went over to the explain-in-one-syllable mode.

  “Has she cut the holes in the plaster where the mains sockets are going?”

  He was taxing the limits of my technical knowledge.

  “I don’t think so, but she has put marks on the wall where the sockets are going to go.”

  He smiled and supped his tea.

  “Now there’s a job I can do, she hates routing because of the dust and noise.”

  He sipped his tea and I got the sinking feeling that he hadn’t really come to do anything electrical. In the end h he looked at me over his tea and said quietly.

  “I suppose you think that this is a peculiar job for a girl.”

  I wasn’t sure where he was going; fathers of women I knew always made me nervous, especially after Roberta’s father had thrown me out of the house and called me a brainless pratt; Amelia’s father had been little better and Frankie’s father was best forgotten.

  “She seems to know what she’s doing.”

  He nodded sagely.

  “But there aren’t many female electricians around.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for playing verbal games.

  “What are you trying to say?”

  He put his mug down and his eyes took on the expression of a woeful hound.

  “She’s told you about her brother I suppose?”

  “Yes.” I was giving nothing away.

  He suddenly looked even more glum.

  “She was pretty mixed up after he died, all hysterical like. One moment she’d by OK and the next she’d be ranting and raving. Joining me in the business seemed to stabilise her and I know that she’s happy, you can always tell when Yolande is unhappy.”

  “How.”

  “She shuts down and goes into herself.”

  I realised what he was trying to say, but goodness knows why he was saying it to me;

  “And you’re worried that I might try and persuade her to give it up as it’s not a feminine occupation?”

  He nodded and I said softly.

  “I’m not sure that it’s any business of mine, but I’d never do that. This is her chosen profession and she can stick to it as far as I’m concerned.”

  He visibly relaxed and I pondered the reality of the situation. He said that she needed to take the job in the business for her sanity and she said that she joined the business for his sanity. I decided that reality probably lay somewhere in-between.

  A couple of minutes, and some non-consequential conversation, later he stretched his arms up towards the ceiling, “Well I’ll just pop home and get my router, I haven’t got it on the van.”

  “Has Yolande got one?”

  “Of course.” He seemed surprised that I thought she might not have one.

  “Well her van’s round the back, why don’t you use hers and save yourself a journey in the snow.”

  He looked at me for a few seconds with that sort of look that is a cross between ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ or ‘please tell me that what you’ve just said isn’t true.’

  “What’s it doing there?”

  What did it matter anyway where the van was parked?

  “We went to Aldeburgh and got snowed in and when we eventually got back I dropped her off at home.”

  He buried his head in his hands and I said kindly.

  “Problems?”

  He looked up, angst written in every pore of his face.

  “Her van had a water pump leak so I changed the water pump gland on Wednesday evening, but I didn’t have any anti-freeze so I just topped up the system with pure water, I meant to add some antifreeze on Thursday, but I must have forgotten after I got called out to the hospital again.”

  Both our eyes swivelled to the back of the kitchen. Now I’m no mechanic, but even I know that to leave an engine without anti-freeze in a back-garden in sub-zero conditions is not prudent. We trooped outside and he lifted the bonnet and felt the bottom radiator hose. He grunted like an ape in despair.

  “Rock solid.”

  “So now what?”

  He put his hands on his hips.

  “It might be recoverable, I’ll warm it up with a hot-air gun.”

  I thumped the bumper.

  “Bit of a wreck anyway isn’t it, why hasn’t she got one like yours?”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Because she won’t let me. We could buy one and write it off against tax, but will she have a new one – no! She just says that the planet’s resources are limited and she doesn’t want to take part in a throwaway society when it is perfectly adequate transport.”

  We both looked at the engine and simultaneously thought that it might not be perfectly adequate transport for much longer. I left him rigging up an extension lead out to the van and went back to mail sorting.

  The mail sorting had been occupying my mind in the mornings for a good few days and I was beginning to make sense of what I was finding. The problem was that the letters were in the mailbags in no particular order, so to get a full picture of what the letters signified I had to work through the lot. So far I had kept myself to twenty-seven piles on the floor by throwing out the dross. The problem was that Mr Grant may have been a physical recluse, but he had not cut himself off from the world, rather the opposite as he seemed to have written letters of comment or complaint to just about everyone. The hitch being, of course, that he never bothered to read their replies. Thus the bags were full of one-off replies that I had to eliminate from my search before I could follow through the major themes, but they were beginning to emerge. After about an hour I looked up from the letter I was reading to watch a grey mist roll across the garden. It must have taken me ten seconds to realise that it was not a mist, but smoke. I ran to the window to observe flames licking out from the crack between the wings and bonnet of Yolande’s van. I then broke the world record for running upstairs, grabbing her father and running back down and out to the van. He grabbed the van’s powder fire extinguisher and squirted it through the flaming crack and then, using a screwdriver, threw the bonnet back allowing me to throw bucketfuls of snow into the engine bay. After five or six minutes of strenuous effort and the complete contents of the fire extinguisher of his van, the fire was out, but the engine bay was a sorry sight. I remarked casually that the engine was warm enough now to be rewarded with a desperate look.

  “She’ll kill me,” he said, “she’ll bloody well kill me. This van is her pride and joy.”

  “Even though it’s a wreck.”

  “Because it’s a wreck,” he exclaimed in total desperation. To her it proves that she’s saving the environment from another rotting van in a scrap-yard and from the use of non-renewable materials; least that’s what she’s always telling me.”

  I must admit that I felt for him.

  “Is it repairable?”

  He coughed, “I shouldn’t think so, wiring looms gone, electrics are mangled, front tyres are burnt to hell, goodness knows if it has any hydraulics left.”

  I threw a snowball onto a sizzling plastic mass where the fusebox had been.

  “Well then, your challenge for the week is to replace the van in three days.”

  “Four,” he said ab
sent-mindedly, “she’s not back till Saturday morning, I told her to stay in Ipswich and not try and go back and forth in this weather.”

  I tossed in another snowball as the plastic mass still threatened to burst into flame.

  “Why not get her one like yours?”

  He shook his head.

  “She’d blow her top, I can hear her now,” he mimicked her voice, “Too expensive, too large, too uneconomic and too environmentally unfriendly.”

  He had her voice and mannerisms so perfect that I had to smile. “Well why not get her one of those diesel-electric vans that won that award recently.”

  He blinked at me and I thought he didn’t understand.

  “You know, they have a large battery under the floor and the diesel engine charges them, or adds extra power, but the main motive power comers from an electric motor on each wheel and for mainly short easy journeys an overnight charge will…”

  He suddenly grabbed me, kissed me on the forehead and made for his van, only stopping at the corner of the house to tell me to fill up the engine bay with snow. I hoped that kissing other men was not normally on his agenda.

  The rest of the afternoon I continued working through the mail, by five o’clock I’d had enough. I thought I knew where it was all leading, but there was still a quarter of a bag to go, so I knew that on Wednesday I would know enough to be certain of where my sword of Damocles was aimed, I already feared that was at the heart of my bank accounts.

  That evening I watched a decent film and went to bed, but I wished that I’d watched the film with Yolande and took a long time to get to sleep. However, my sleep was broken at 1am when I tried to turn over and found that my feet were pinned to the bed courtesy of a white fluffy cat with a nick in his left ear.

  Robbie Burns said something about the best laid plans of mice and men going astray and he was right. Wednesday morning I had just finished breakfast when my Julius Caesar look-alike vicar turned up on my doorstep. I ushered him into my flat and sat him down, he declined tea; it’s always a bad sign when a vicar declines tea. As usual he didn’t beat about the bush. “Thought you’d like to know,” he said miserably, “that the Church Council said that they’d take the kind offer of the field next to the graveyard, but declined your offer to give them the field by the chancel; you can guess why.”

  I shook my head and wagged my finger.

  “Oh no, they come as a pair. If they want one they have to take both.”

  He sat looking glum and I realised that he’d probably already said that to the council.

  “They can’t seriously think that I’d give one without the other can they?”

  He shrugged and sucked in his cheeks.

  “Sometimes the reality of a situation passes them by, it did take them five years to accept that they might have to take Mr Grant to court.”

  I thought for a moment.

  “Well tell your council that if they won’t take the fields from me, and remember we are talking about a free gift here, then they can’t use them. So from this tomorrow they can’t use the chancel-field as a car-park and to forget the idea of using the other field for a summer fête or any other kind of fête.”

  He looked startled.

  “But the Church Lane is too narrow to park in safely and you have to do a two-mile loop if you can’t turn round!”

  I shrugged as if I didn’t care.

  “I was being amenable.”

  “But we’ve laid concrete matting in the chancel field so we can park in it, Mr Grant said he didn’t mind.”

  “Well I do mind, you can get into the field to recover your concrete blocks, but that is all.”

  He sat still for a moment and then a long slow smile spread across his face.

  “But your offer of giving us the fields is still on the table?”

  “Of course.”

  He’d got the message, he’d now have a lever to beat his council with. He stood up.

  “Well I suppose that I’d better call an emergency meeting of the council.”

  He turned to go and then hovered. Eventually he muttered.

  “I hear on the grapevine that you play the organ.”

  “That must be some grapevine.”

  He smiled.

  “Vicars do talk to each other you know, your previous minister says that you can make a pipe organ or a piano do miracles.”

  I shrugged, I knew what was coming.

  “I need an organist for Sunday evenings.” He muttered.

  “Not every evening,” he added hastily, “just…”

  I helped him out, I’d been though this routine before.

  “Just most.”

  He nodded. I thought for all of a microsecond.

  “I don’t think that would be wise at the moment do you? It wouldn’t be right, playing the organ while the church council are lusting for my blood because I’ve shut the fields.”

  He tried for a way out.

  “They might accept the fields now.”

  “Then they’d be lusting for my blood because I’d forced the Lay Chancellor upon them.”

  He nodded glumly so I added a caveat, after all I did enjoy playing the organ.

  “Look, I’ll probably be worshipping with you so lets see how things pan out.”

  He brightened up.

  “That sounds wise.”

  He left and I watched him traipse up the drive. I actually really felt for him; he’d followed a vocation to be a priest, a shepherd of the sheep, and ended up spending a fair amount of his time on church affairs that he obviously disliked.

  When I eventually got to the house Yolande’s father was routing out the cavities for the mains socket in the lounge and the noise was unbearable, so I retreated to the local supermarket, I was getting low on microwave meals in any case. By chance at the supermarket I met Freddy and we decided to have lunch and catch up on old times. By the time I got home it was too late to start sorting the mail; at least that was my excuse as I knew very well I didn’t want to face what I almost knew it was going to reveal.

  That evening I watched the early evening news and then sat staring at my telephone. I wanted to telephone Yolande, but to say what? That I missed her, that her father had destroyed her van, that I wanted her advice? Believe it or not it took me ninety minute to pick up that phone and dial her mobile phone. The moment she answered I knew that she was in a pub, it’s the background noise, pub sounds are unmistakable. My throat went dry and I croaked, “Yolande?”

  She must have looked at her mobile’s screen to see who was calling as she knew it was me.

  “Is that Richard?”

  “Yes, I thought…”

  “Hang on,” she yelled, “I’ll go outside.”

  The background noise diminished and I imagined her standing in a snowy street.

  “That’s better,” she said in a normal voice, “are you still there?”

  “Yes, sounds like you’re in a pub.”

  “Yes, I’m staying here, it’s cheap clean and near the college.”

  “Which pub is it?”

  Who cares which pub it is, I just wanted to keep the conversation going.

  “The Dolphin and Ferret.”

  “Pardon?”

  She giggled and the sound made my spine tingle.

  “Apparently it used to be called The Gay Lad, but they changed the name for obvious reasons.”

  I knew the pub and pictured it’s large bow window and her standing by it. “Yeah, I know it; never been in it though, what’s it like?”

  “As I said it’s clean and cheap and it has a wicked karaoke machine otherwise it’s just a pub.”

  I almost ran out of conversation, but she started on a new, and difficult, conversation.

  “Is my van still round the back of the house?”

  “Yes, don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on it. What’s the course like?”

  We chatted about the course for a couple of minutes then she asked casually.

  “Did you have a reas
on for ringing?”

  This was the moment I knew I had to grab, I knew that if I said the wrong words it could be disastrous and disaster was normally my constant companion.

  “No, I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice.”

  She didn’t reply and I feared the worst, so I gabbled on.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  To tell the truth I wanted to leap into my Land Rover and tear into Ipswich, just the sound of her voice made me feel lonely. There was a few seconds of silence and then she replied, “Really?”

  I could not discern the tone of voice she was using, it was half natural, half inquisitive and half cold. I decided to tell the truth.

  “Really.” I said with as much conviction as I could muster.

  “Is that missed as in ‘can’t find a comfortable pair of slippers’ or missed as in ‘I wish you were here?’

  I closed my eyes, the next few words were crucial,

  “It’s missed as I long to be with you?”

  “Why?”

  The simple question threw me into a spin. I’d already spent a restless night pondering the answer and come to no definite conclusion.

  “I can’t describe why, I just miss you.”

  There was more silence and I burst out in desperation.

  “Look I’m not good at this. I miss you, I’m jealous of anybody you’re in the pub with and just the sound of your voice is giving me goose-bumps, does that answer your question?”

  She replied quietly and evenly.

  “Actually I miss you to, but I was beginning to think that you didn’t care.”

  “Well I do care, I might not be good at showing it, but I do care.”

  There was more silence and she once again replied softly and in a neutral even tone. But it was not Yolande the happy electrician or Yolande the companion that replied, it was Yolande the woman, in fact it was Yolande the careful woman; careful not to be hurt that is.

  “Do you really want to go down this road Richard? Go down it with me that is, or would any woman do?”

  I felt that it was all slipping away, this was not the conversation I had intended. I began to panic and strove to keep my voice even.

  “No any woman would definitely not do. And I do want to go down this road, I know that we could be good friends, but that’s not enough.”