The Judgement of Strangers

by Taylor, Andrew

  ‘Yes. If you say so.’ My voice sounded sullen, almost petulant.

  ‘I do say so. Like one of those high-performance engines, you need constant tuning.’ He smiled at me. ‘Otherwise you break down.’

  11

  If it hadn’t been for sex, or rather the lack of it, Vanessa and I would probably still be married. There was real friendship between us, and much tenderness. We filled some of the empty corners in each other’s lives. A semi-detached marriage? Perhaps. If so, the arrangement suited us both. Vanessa had her job, I had mine.

  One of the things I loved most was her sense of humour, which was so dry that at times I barely noticed it. On one occasion she almost reduced Audrey to tears – of rage – by suggesting that we invited the pop group that played on Saturday nights at the Queen’s Head to perform at Evensong. ‘It would encourage young people to come to church, don’t you think?’

  On another occasion, one afternoon early in August, Vanessa and I were in our little library on the green. Vanessa took her books to the issue desk, to be stamped by Mrs Finch, the librarian. Audrey was hovering like a buzzard poised to strike in front of the section devoted to detective stories.

  ‘I’d also like to make a reservation for a book that’s coming out in the autumn,’ Vanessa said in a clear, carrying voice. ‘The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer.’

  I glanced up in time to see a look of outrage flash between Mrs Finch and Audrey.

  Mrs Finch closed the last of Vanessa’s library books, placed it on top of the others and pushed the pile across the issue desk. She jabbed the book cards into the tickets; the cardboard buckled and creased under the strain. She directed her venom at inanimate objects because by and large she was too timid to direct it at people.

  While Vanessa was filling in the reservation card, I joined her at the issue desk to have my own books stamped. Audrey swooped on us; today her colour was high, perhaps because of the heat. ‘So glad I caught you,’ she said, her eyes flicking from me to Vanessa. ‘I wanted a word about the fete.’

  I did not dare look at Vanessa. The annual church fete was a delicate subject. It was held in my garden on the last Saturday in August. Audrey had organized it for the past nine years. Although she would almost certainly have resisted any attempt to relieve her of the responsibility, she felt organizing the church fete was properly the job of the vicar’s wife. She had made this quite clear to both Vanessa and me in a number of indirect ways in the past few weeks.

  Vanessa, on the other hand, was determined not to act as my unpaid curate in this capacity or in any other, and I respected her for the decision. We had agreed this before our marriage. She had a demanding and full-time job of her own, and had little enough spare time as it was: I could not expect her suddenly to take on more work, even if she had wanted to.

  This year we had another problem to deal with. This was the suburbs, so many of our patrons came in cars. In recent years, the Bramleys had allowed us to use their paddock, a field which lay immediately behind the church and the Vicarage, as a car park. Unfortunately, they had suddenly left Roth Park at the beginning of June. They had sold the house and grounds without telling anyone. Bills had not been paid. There were rumours – relayed by Audrey – that litigation was pending.

  The new owner of Roth Park had not yet moved in, so we had not been able to ask whether we could have the paddock. It would not be easy to find an alternative.

  ‘Time’s beginning to gallop,’ Audrey told us. ‘We really must put our thinking caps on.’

  ‘Perhaps they could park in Manor Farm Lane,’ I suggested.

  ‘But they’d have to walk miles. Besides, it’s not a very safe place to leave cars. We have to face it: without the paddock, we’re hamstrung. I even rang the estate agents. But they were most unhelpful.’

  ‘We’ve still got several weeks. And if the worst comes to the worst, perhaps we can do without a car park.’

  ‘Quite impossible,’ Audrey snapped. ‘If people can’t park their cars, they simply won’t come.’

  It wasn’t what she said – it was the way in which she said it. Her tone was almost vindictive. In the silence, Audrey looked from Vanessa to me. Audrey’s face was moist and pink. Mrs Finch studied us all from her ringside seat from behind the issue desk. The library was very quiet. A wasp with a long yellow-and-black tail flew through the open doors into the library and settled on the edge of the metal rubbish bin. Lorries ground their way down the main road. The heat was oppressive.

  Audrey snorted, making a sound like steam squirting from a valve, relieving the pressure of her invisible boiler. She turned and dropped the novels she was carrying on to the trolley for returned books.

  ‘I’ve got a headache,’ she said. ‘Not that any of you need concern yourselves about it. I shall go home and rest.’

  Mrs Finch and Vanessa began to speak at once.

  ‘My mother always said that a cold flannel and a darkened room …’ began Mrs Finch.

  Vanessa said, ‘I’m so sorry. Is there anything we …?’

  Both women stopped talking in mid-sentence because Audrey clearly wasn’t listening, and had no intention of listening. She walked very quickly out of the library. I noticed that her dress was stained with sweat under the armpits. In a moment, the doorway was empty. I stared through it at the green beyond, at the main road, the tower of the church and the oaks of Roth Park. I heard the faint but unmistakable sound of a wolf whistle. I wondered if one of the youths were baiting Audrey as she scurried round the green to the sanctuary of Tudor Cottage.

  ‘That’ll be one shilling, Mrs Byfield.’ Mrs Finch held out her hand for the reservation card. ‘Five pence. We’ll do our best, of course, but I can’t guarantee anything. The stock editor decides which books we buy. He may not think this is suitable.’

  Vanessa smiled at Mrs Finch and gallantly resisted the temptation to reply. A moment later, she and I walked back along the south side of the green towards the Vicarage.

  ‘Is Audrey often like that?’ she asked.

  ‘She gets very involved with the fete.’ I felt I had to explain Audrey to Vanessa, even to apologize for her. ‘It’s the high point of the year for her.’

  ‘I wonder why.’ Vanessa glanced up at me. ‘Tell me, is she normally so irritable?’

  I felt uncomfortable. ‘She did seem a little tetchy.’

  ‘I wonder how old she is. Getting on for fifty? Do you think she might be going through the menopause?’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible. Why?’

  ‘It would explain a great deal.’

  ‘Yes.’ I was in fact unclear what the change of life could mean for a woman. I put on speed, as if trying to walk away from this faintly unsavoury topic. ‘But was she really acting so unusually? She did say she had a headache.’

  ‘David.’ Vanessa put a hand on my arm, forcing me to stop and look at her. ‘You’ve known Audrey for so long that I don’t think you realize how odd she is.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  We moved on to the main road. We waited for a gap in the traffic.

  ‘I’d better look in on her this evening,’ I said. ‘See how she is.’

  ‘I wouldn’t. Fuel to feed the flame.’

  ‘Flame? Don’t be silly.’

  In silence, we crossed the road and went into the drive of the Vicarage.

  ‘It’s not that I want to see her this evening,’ I went on, wondering if Vanessa might conceivably be jealous. ‘People like Audrey are part of my job.’

  Vanessa thrust her key into the lock of the front door. ‘You sometimes sound such a prig.’

  I stared at her. This was the nearest we had ever come to a quarrel. It was the first time that either of us had spoken critically to the other.

  Vanessa pushed open the door. The telephone was ringing in the study. When I picked up the receiver, the news I heard pushed both Audrey’s problems and my squabble with Vanessa into the background.

  12

  When I was a child I had
a jigsaw with nearly a thousand pieces, intricately shaped. Some of them had been cut into the shapes of objects which were entirely unrelated to the subject of the picture.

  I remember a cocktail glass lying on its side in the blue of the sky, and a stork standing upside down in the foliage of an oak tree. A rifle with a telescopic sight was concealed in a door. Not that I knew that it was a door at the outset, or that the stork was in an oak tree. The point about the jigsaw was that a picture had not been supplied with it. Only by assembling the pieces could one discover what the subject was. Since much of the picture consisted of sky, trees, grass and road, it was not until a relatively late stage in the assembly that you realized that the jigsaw showed a Pickwickian stagecoach drawing up outside a country inn with a thatched roof.

  The analogy may seem laboured, but something very similar happened in Roth during 1970. One by one, the pieces dropped into place. My marriage to Vanessa, for example. The History of Roth. The preparations for the fete. The sudden departure of the Bramleys from Roth Park. Peter Hudson’s preferment. Lord Peter’s inability to stay away from the Vicarage. Lady Youlgreave’s belated interest in her husband’s relations. Vanessa’s long-standing interest in the poetry of Francis Youlgreave.

  All these and more. Slowly the picture – or rather its components – came together. And one of the pieces was my godson Michael.

  The telephone call on that August afternoon was from Henry Appleyard. He had been offered the chance of a lucrative four-week lecture tour in the United States, filling in for a speaker who had cancelled at the last moment.

  ‘I’m flying out the day after tomorrow, from Heathrow,’ he said. ‘I wondered if I could look in for lunch?’

  ‘Of course you can. When’s your flight?’

  ‘In the evening.’

  ‘Are all of you coming?’

  ‘Just me, I’m afraid.’

  The organizers had offered to pay his wife’s travel expenses as well, I gathered, but she had to stay to look after Michael.

  ‘Can’t you leave him with someone?’

  ‘It’s such short notice. His schoolfriends are all on holiday, too.’

  ‘He could stay with us. If he wouldn’t find us too dull.’

  ‘It’s too much of an imposition.’

  ‘Why? He’s my godson. But would he be lonely?’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that. He’s quite a self-contained boy.’

  ‘Rosemary will be home in a few days, so at least he’d have someone nearer his own age. And our doctor has a boy of eleven.’

  ‘It still seems too much to ask.’

  ‘Why don’t I have a word with Vanessa and phone you back?’

  Henry agreed. I put down the phone and went into the kitchen to talk to Vanessa. She listened in silence, but when I had finished she smiled.

  ‘That’s a wonderful idea.’

  ‘I’m glad you like it. But why the enthusiasm?’

  ‘It’ll make it easier when Rosemary comes home. For her as well as me.’ She touched my arm, and I knew our squabble was over. ‘Besides, you’d like it, wouldn’t you?’

  Two days later the Appleyards arrived for lunch.

  ‘I’m sorry this is such short notice,’ Henry said as we were smoking a cigarette in the drive.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Michael’s welcome. I’m glad Vanessa’s here. For his sake, I mean.’

  Henry started to say something but stopped, because the front door opened and Michael himself came out to join us. The boy was now eleven years old, fair-haired and slim. He stood close to Henry. They didn’t know what to say to each other.

  At that moment a dark-blue car drove slowly down the main road towards the bridge over the Rowan. It had a long bonnet and a small cockpit. It looked more like a spacecraft than a car. The windows were of tinted glass and I could make out only the vague shape of two people inside. It slowed, signalled right and turned into the drive of Roth Park.

  ‘Cor,’ said Michael, his face showing animation for the first time since he had arrived. ‘An E-type Jaguar.’

  Another piece of the jigsaw had arrived.

  That evening I telephoned Audrey to see if she was all right. I had not seen her since her outburst in the library. When she answered the phone, her voice sounded weak.

  ‘Just a headache,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine in a day or two. Rest is the best medicine. That’s what Dr Vintner said.’

  ‘You’ve been to see him?’

  ‘He came to me, actually. I wasn’t up to going out.’

  I felt guilty, as perhaps she had intended me to feel. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

  ‘No. I’ll be fine. Well, actually there is one thing. Apparently the new people have moved into Roth Park. You could go and ask them about the paddock. I’d feel so much happier if that were settled. It’d be a weight off my mind.’

  I remembered the Jaguar. ‘When did they move in?’

  ‘Today at some point. Mr Malik told Charlene when he brought the groceries round this afternoon. They’ve opened an account with him. Their name is Clifford.’

  ‘Are they a family?’

  ‘Mr Malik’s only met a young man so far. Perhaps he’s the son.’

  I promised I would go to see them in the morning. A moment later, I rang off and went to join the others in the sitting room. Michael had lost that frozen look his face had worn since his parents left. He was talking to Vanessa about his school. They both looked up as I came in. I allowed myself to be drawn into a game of Hearts with them. I hadn’t played cards for years. To my surprise I enjoyed it.

  The next morning I walked up to Roth Park. Vanessa was at work, and we had arranged for Michael to spend the day with the doctor’s son, Brian. I had not been to Roth Park since May, when the last of the Bramleys’ patients had moved to another nursing home. Privately I had never had much time for Mr and Mrs Bramley, a red-faced and loud-voiced couple who, I suspected, bullied their patients.

  It was another fine day. With a copy of the parish magazine under my arm, I strolled down the road, past the church. The traffic was still heavy. In the last thirty or forty years, houses had mushroomed like a fungus along the highways and byways of Roth. The fungus had spread away from the highways and byways and devoured the fields between them. All the occupants of these new houses appeared to own at least one car.

  I turned into the drive. On the right was the south wall of the churchyard. To the left, the turbid waters of the Rowan were visible through a screen of branches, nettles and leaves. It was mid-morning and already very warm. It was too hot to hurry.

  I was not in the best of moods. I had wanted to make love the previous evening, but when I came to bed Vanessa was asleep. Or rather – I uncharitably wondered – she was pretending to be asleep.

  After about sixty yards, the drive dived into a belt of oak trees. It was cooler here, and I lingered. At the time this felt an indulgence. Now, when I look back, it seems as though I were clinging to my state of innocence. A track went off to the right, following the west side of the churchyard; it passed through the paddock behind the Vicarage garden, which we hoped to use as our fete car park, and ran north-west towards the drowned farmlands beneath the Jubilee Reservoir.

  I walked on. Once past the oaks, the park opened out. To the south was the Rowan, now a silver streak, lent enchantment by distance. Beyond it, housing estates covered what had once been pastureland south of the river. On the right were the roofs of another housing estate south of the reservoir, encroaching on the grounds from the north.

  The drive, which had been moving away from the river, changed direction and swung towards it in a long, leisurely leftward loop around the base of a small hill. There, sheltered by the hill and facing south, was Roth Park itself.

  Looked at with an unbiased eye, the house was not a pretty sight. Thanks to Audrey’s book, I now knew that the great fire of 1874 had destroyed most of a late-seventeenth-century mansion. The owner of the estate, Alfred Youlgreave, had built a plain,
ugly, redbrick box on the same site with an incongruous Italianate tower attached to the west end.

  As the house came into view, two things happened. First, I had the sensation, rightly or wrongly, that I was being watched, that behind one of the many blank windows was a face. I had an impression of stealth, even malice. I knew, of course, that it was more than possible that I was entirely mistaken about this – that the sensation had no external correlation whatsoever; that I was merely projecting my inner difficulties on to the outside world. That did not make the experience less unpleasant.

  The other feeling was, if anything, even more powerful. I wanted to run away. I wanted to turn and scurry down the drive as fast as I could. It was not, strictly speaking, a premonition. It was in no sense a warning. I was simply scared. I did not know why. All I knew was that I wanted to run away.

  But I did not. I had spent most of my life learning how to restrain my feelings. Besides, I remember thinking, think how odd it would look if there were a watcher: if he or she saw a middle-aged clergyman in a linen jacket hesitating in front of the house and then leaving at a gallop. Our dignity is very precious to almost all of us; and fear of losing face is a more powerful source of motivation than many people imagine.

  I walked towards the house. There was an overgrown shrubbery on the right. Outside the house, marooned in a sea of weed-strewn gravel, was a large stone urn stained with yellow lichen. On the plinth – again, according to Audrey – was a plaque commemorating a visit that Queen Adelaide had paid to the Youlgreaves’ predecessors in 1839. I paused by the urn, pretending to examine the worn lettering. I really wanted a chance to look more closely at the house.

  I could see no one at any of the windows, but that proved nothing. The building was not as imposing as it looked from a distance. Several slates were missing from the roof at the eastern end. A length of guttering had detached itself and was hanging at an angle. There was a large canopy sheltering the front door, a wrought-iron porte-cochère supported by rusting cast-iron pillars, which gave the house the appearance of a provincial railway station.