At Long Last Love

by Milly Adams

  ‘You don’t have to come. Besides, the office must be wondering why the trains are always such a problem on a Monday. I mean, you stayed on last Monday as well. What must they be thinking?’

  ‘Work at the solicitor’s is rather slow, and they’ve said I can have this time off as compassionate leave, to help your recovery, so it’s not a problem.’

  He tried to look pleased, but went on, ‘There’s really no need. I’m as recovered as I’m going to be. The time I needed help was months ago.’

  Pauline pouted.

  He shouldn’t have said anything, and he did hope there wasn’t going to be a ‘do’, as there seemed to be rather often. He kissed her, aiming for her cheek, but she turned her head and met his lips. She pulled him close, which Tom would have given his right arm for once, but for him everything had changed.

  Anyway, Sunday was a day that left him exhausted at the best of times, and it seemed so much worse since she had been insisting on cooking Sunday lunch, because, sadly, she couldn’t cook. Sadly, also, she upset Mrs B, whose prerogative it was.

  Pauline stood on her tiptoes to kiss him again, but he stepped back, laughing slightly. ‘I have to remember I’m the vicar. Public kissing is perhaps not such a good thing.’

  ‘Private kissing seems to have its problems too,’ she snapped, turning on her heel. Then, as she opened the door, she stopped, saying over her shoulder, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been cross. I find Sundays rather tiring, what with all the services, and lunch. But I like to look after you. It’s what a fiancée should do.’

  There was a pause. He said, ‘Goodnight, sleep well.’

  The rain was falling hard, darkness cloaked the puddles and he lost count of the number that he inadvertently walked through. His trousers were quite sodden on his return, which made him cross. He slammed the door behind him, shook out his umbrella and left it in the hall-stand. He should tackle Pauline about this fiancée business, but somehow every time he started, she distracted him. And it then became too difficult, and he simply couldn’t bear the thought of a scene. He’d have a bath and try to clear his head.

  He padded up to his bedroom, bathed quickly, hung up his trousers to drip into the bath and dug out the pyjamas that his mother had bought for his birthday. He needed some comfort, damn it. He sat on the bed, acknowledging to himself that he simply didn’t know what to think, and what to do about ‘things’. His mother had telephoned him last week, warning him about Pauline and sure that, having been dumped by the policeman she had left Tom for, she was looking not just for a husband, but for a child.

  ‘She wants to avoid war work at all costs, or so the girls at the hairdresser’s said, and a baby is as good a way as any.’

  He thought about his mother’s words as the rain beat on the windows; but really he should ignore them, because he was a man of God, and gossip was harmful, as had been obvious where Kate was concerned. It would, after all, be hypocritical to work towards repairing the damage done to Kate, whilst listening and being swayed by tittle-tattle from a hairdressing salon. Anyway, what could he do, when it was he – not Pauline – who had changed? They had a past, after all, and perhaps he was in fact honour-bound to marry her, as she had said when she returned; she’d just needed time to sort herself out, and he knew all about that.

  He couldn’t settle and paced to the bedroom window, then found himself making for the stairs, and finally fiddling about in the kitchen. Should he drink a gin or a Scotch? He discovered there was no gin, which he’d prefer, but an inch of malt whisky remained. He was also bloody hungry, because he’d visited Sadie Jenks, one of Stella Easton’s schoolchildren, after morning service. Her father, a merchant seaman, had been killed, so he had sat with the family as their grief and anger ebbed and flowed.

  On his way back from visiting Sadie Jenks, he had called on Mrs Martin, the chairwoman of the WI, whose father-in-law was dying of old age. He had sat with elderly James Martin and chatted about seagulls following the plough. He had moved on to the success of the bowling club, which had brought them close to the top of the league table; then to the American attack on the Solomon Islands, and the arrival of more and more GIs in Britain, until James had held up his hand. ‘Bugger off now, Vicar. I need me sleep, in case I have to go down below and stoke the furnaces, instead of going up to bang on the Pearly Gates while listening to some ruddy choir.’

  Tom had returned to the vicarage for lunch, only to find Pauline’s roasted neck of lamb was now a charred blob. They had eaten National wholemeal bread with gravy and overcooked vegetables. Mrs B had left a pudding of spotted dog, for which he had blessed her crusty old soul, until Pauline realised she had forgotten it was still in the oven and it was now burnt to oblivion.

  He remembered the burnt smell as he stared at the Scotch, and his stomach rumbled. Damn it; he poured a small one, and slip-slopped in his slippers to the annexe, which he had begun to call the ‘snug’, lighting the paper beneath the kindling and dried logs. It was an extravagance, but tonight he deserved it. He settled himself in his chair and sipped his drink, feeling its warm comfort slip down his throat.

  But he couldn’t keep his mind away from his dilemma, because he suspected Pauline would never fit into the life of a vicar’s wife, if they did marry. She came to the auditions, granted, but sat reading a book at the side, as one person and then another gave it a go. She sighed frequently, and when the plumber had taken to the stage and gave a fairly dreadful rendition of ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ on a comb, she put her fingers in her ears. Arthur had seen this and flushed, and so had Stella and Kate. Stella opened her mouth and then closed it again. Not Kate, though. But when was she ever stuck for something to say?

  The fire was crackling now as the logs caught alight.

  He grinned at the memory of Kate stabbing her pencil at Arthur. ‘Do you know, those of us with taste think having that song in the concert is inspired, Arthur, thank you so much. We’re really pleased, aren’t we?’ She looked at Tom and Stella. They both nodded, wondering where this was leading. ‘I think you’ll make a wonderful addition to our band.’

  It was a perfect solution, because Arthur could be merged in amongst the other instruments and his feelings would be spared.

  Kate had scribbled on one of the cut-up pieces of paper that Stella brought to every audition, and now beckoned Arthur over. ‘I’ve written “Band” on this. Bring it to the first rehearsal, but not to worry if you lose it. Miss Easton has you written down on our list. Also, Arthur, we’ve a problematic ballcock in the village-hall toilets. Any chance of slipping in with your tools as soon as possible – tomorrow would be good? I know it’s the Home Guard’s evening, but perhaps they won’t mind.’

  What could Arthur say? Without a pause, Kate had called the next act on. They were jugglers from Stickhollow, a village along from Little Worthy, near a bend in the river. There were three of them, aged eleven. Their parents sat on the chairs set up at the back of the hall.

  Stella had passed along a note: ‘Whatever the reaction – fingers in ears or whatever – these children must have a place.’ Kate had nodded. Tom remembered that he had flushed at this, but hadn’t leapt to Pauline’s defence. Perhaps he should have done.

  Here, in his sanctuary, he closed his eyes for a moment, listening to the logs crackling, and feeling the heat on legs still stinging from the slapping of his wet trousers. Life so often seemed to steer him towards such a muddle.

  He withdrew Hastings’s notebook from the drawer, with a sigh of relief. He hadn’t been able to get to it for a couple of weeks and he had missed meeting his mentor, as he increasingly thought of Bertie Hastings. He settled back. Hastings was up to 1933, nine years ago. He sipped his Scotch, feeling the day’s pressures ease, and began to read about the new baby born to the Fellows’s maid, following her marriage to the chauffeur, and the couple’s subsequent dismissal, for it was not in Mrs Fellows’s remit to house a child. It didn’t surprise Tom, knowing the woman and her husband, who was the
leader of the parish council and so enjoyed his status. Fortunately, Hastings had known of a more generous employer in Preston Road, Yeovil, who had taken on the couple.

  Tom smiled. This village was why he was beginning to love his calling and inch towards God. But even as he thought it, he felt that awful frisson that presaged the remembered sound of the guns. And here they were, along with the blast, the heat, the pain … and Daniel’s call. He buried his head in his hands and rocked, rocked, until – much quicker than in the past – it faded. He pressed his head hard, until the images were finally gone. He breathed deeply, sat back and gripped the notebook as though it was a liferaft. He was here, in this snug, in front of the modest fire, his shabby slippers on his feet as protection against the stone floor. There was no sand, no dunes, no bombers. Dunkirk was over. It was finished, all of it.

  He opened the notebook and flicked over the page, where Kate’s name seemed to jump out at him. It was as though Hastings had leaned more heavily on his pen, almost gouging the paper. He read on, absorbing Hastings’s distress as he recounted a visit from his verger, Reginald Watson, who had begun by sitting opposite Hastings in the sitting room. He wrote of the man’s uproar of spirit as he pushed himself from the chair and paced backwards and forwards, telling of how he had followed and seen his daughter – Katherine, Kate – in the woods.

  She was dancing like a wild thing, with a gypsy, Hastings wrote, clearly noting Reginald’s words, perhaps almost to the letter. Reginald had heard the others call this boy ‘Andrei’. It was a tango: the abandonment, the wildness, he had almost wailed, or so Hastings wrote. He had dragged Kate home, in disgrace.

  Tom laughed to himself. Wild child indeed, our Kate, and to some extent she still was, but it was only a tango, for heaven’s sake. He had been taught to tango at a dance academy, along with the waltz, the quickstep and the list of usual suspects, because his mother felt that in the army he would need social skills. He couldn’t imagine Kate pacing backwards and forwards like Reginald Watson, but perhaps if he’d been in the woods with a gypsy girl, she … He nodded. Yes, perhaps she would have some concerns, but wailing. Oh, come on.

  He flicked over the page, then checked his watch. Yes, time for a bit more. He was still smiling as he read on. Kate went back to the woods, climbing out of the attic window, he now read. What’s more, she’s pregnant, Reginald Watson had finally said, sitting again and burying his head in his hands. She’s pregnant, Vicar, and she’s only fifteen. He had wept.

  Well, Tom thought, drawing in a deep breath, that had been increasingly clear from the continuing gossip, and here it was, in black-and-white. He paused in his reading, feeling – what? Sad, worried, but also, good grief, a sort of … He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what he was feeling, but it was almost – well, he didn’t know.

  He metaphorically shook himself. His feelings, whatever they might be, had no bearing on the revelation. What did matter was how dreadful it must have been for Kate to give up her child, give up her life in the village. How empty she must have felt: her mother dead, her child gone; how scared, how alone.

  He read on as Hastings described how he had risen from his own chair and patted his verger, a dry and unapproachable man who, he wrote, had been left a widower in charge of two girls: one of whom could only be held up as an example to follow; and Kate, who had always been a challenge. What’s more, Reginald Watson was a pillar of respectability, on a par with his close friend, Dr Bates.

  Together they had built the local golf club into something of which to be proud, and although Bates wasn’t a regular churchgoer, he too was an exemplary character and a medical doctor. The villagers depended on him and he never failed them, turning out at all hours to tend to their illnesses, and travelling to the other villages too. As for Reginald, never had the church been run so efficiently.

  Tom yawned. This was all beginning to read like a reference for a job, or even an obituary for the two men. So what had this to do with a girl who had made a mistake, probably because she was still grief-stricken over the death of her mother? Yes, she had her sister back from France, but Sarah was married with her own life and probably not involved.

  He thought of himself at fifteen. The confusion, the boredom, the frightening thought of life as an adult. And all right, Kate had broken the bounds of her father’s precious respectability, but where was the compassion for her from Hastings? Why all this talking up of her father, and Hastings’s friend, instead of care for this young motherless girl? He felt disturbed, and distressed at this virtual dismissal of someone who had become his friend.

  Tom finished his Scotch and chucked another log on the fire, staring at the sparks that shot up, and then the flames that sneaked around the sides. Where was the gypsy, Andrei, now? Did he even know he had fathered a child? For a moment he thought of the two of them together, by a camp fire or in the shadows, and there it was again, that feeling … Yes, a sort of pain. He stood up, then sat down.

  He poked the fire. It was time he let it die and headed to bed, but he couldn’t. Well, it had been a difficult day. Yes, that’s all it was. He leaned back, shut his eyes and sought some calm, but all he could see was Kate – her beauty, her energy, with this wretched Andrei. Damn it. How could Andrei have taken advantage of her? How could she have got herself into such a mess? For a moment he pictured them together again, and the deepening pain took him by surprise and he simply couldn’t understand himself.

  Unable to sit still any longer, he paced the tiny study, and then it came to him. He was damned well hungry. Yes, that’s what it was. He stormed into the kitchen, searching the cupboards for something, anything. There was some jam, but no, he couldn’t stand bread again. He slammed the cupboard door shut, then saw the cake tin on the shelf and eased off the lid. Was there any chance? Yes, yes, a sponge cake. God in his heaven, bless Mrs B.

  He cut a slice, and then another. Mrs B would sniff, but perhaps she’d be pleased that he’d liked it enough; or would she think Pauline had eaten a slice too? Lord, even eating a piece of cake was complicated. He boiled the kettle and made mint tea, which had been Kate’s idea. She was as much of an example as her sister – couldn’t her father see that? She’d made a success of her life and was kind. Kind enough to draw Stella Easton out of her misery, and to make Mrs B feel as though no-one else could accompany the auditioning singers.

  As he finished the second slice of cake he felt so much better that he thought he’d just read a few more pages while he finished his tea, then up the wooden hill, as … Yes, as Kate said. He took his tea into the warmth of the snug again and sat with the notebook in one hand, his mug in the other. Hastings had moved on from the men, and was back to the actual event:

  Reginald sat there, disbelief in his voice, and told me of Kate’s dreadful lie, and her accusation. With the discovery of her pregnancy, you see, her father had stormed to the woods, dragging her with him, hunting for – as he described him – ‘the beggar of a gypo’. But he, and they, had moved on. All that remained was the flattened grass, and the scorched earth where the communal fire had been.

  Kate told her father, ‘They left two weeks ago. Andrei asked me to go with him, but I was too scared. I don’t really know him. He taught me to dance, and he was kind. I didn’t know I was pregnant then, or I would have gone.’

  Reginald told me he’d lost control and slapped her; she had fallen, shielding herself as he slapped her again and again, at which point he had been filled with shame. But then, as he pulled her up and hurried her through the woods, she had said, ‘It’s not his baby; it’s Dr Bates’s, Father. He came when you were doing something at the church and I had flu, don’t you remember? He took my nightie off. I thought he was going to listen to my chest, because he wore his stethoscope round his neck, but he didn’t. He didn’t do anything of the sort; he climbed on top of me instead. He did, Father. He said I must never tell, or he’d hurt you. But now I have to tell, don’t you see that? But how can we keep ourselves safe, and the baby, now
that I have?’

  Reginald told me that Kate had said to Dr Bates, ‘Please don’t, Dr Bates, you’re hurting me.’

  It was all a fabrication, we felt sure. The idea that Dr Bates would do something like this was absolutely preposterous. Dr Bates is an upstanding and respected member of Little Worthy’s community. He is known by every family in the village, and I have never heard a bad word said about him. Did this flighty young girl, who’d given her widowed father so much trouble over the years, really expect anyone to believe her tall story? Did Kate know the damage she would cause to an innocent man’s reputation? Just to make doubly sure, we telephoned the nursing home where Dr Bates would have been on his regular calls at the time this event was supposed to have happened. As we thought, his visit showed up in their diary. It was a lie, such an awful lie, because Dr Bates could not possibly have been at the two places at once. She could so easily have destroyed a wonderful man.

  Tom was reading fast now, drinking in the words, drawn on, but wanting to stop.

  Hastings hadn’t finished:

  Kate came to see me two days after her father. She knocked on the door and brushed past Mrs B, as though she was a block of wood. She barged into my sitting room, while I sat at my desk, working on correspondence. She said, ‘It’s not Andrei’s baby. I had flu. I thought Dr Bates had come to see how I was, but he hadn’t come for that. He can’t have been at the nursing home – he can’t.’

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Then she went on to say, ‘You’re a vicar, it’s your job to believe me.’

  I replied, ‘It’s my job to endeavour to reveal the truth. I have investigated, and it can’t have been the doctor. He was elsewhere at the time. I have proof. Your accusation can only be termed wicked and destructive. You must withdraw it immediately, before it spreads beyond we three.’

  I thought she would strike me, such was her anger. Instead she picked up a vase and threw it into the fireplace. The flowers, I can see them now, delphiniums; and then she rushed from the room, almost into Mrs B.