by Iona Grey
She shrugged. ‘I’m not religious or anything. I was just . . . passing.’
‘That’s OK. People come in for all sorts of reasons, and they’re all welcome. Except the ones that come in to nick the candlesticks – those ones I could do without – but everyone else is, whether they’re after a chat or a sit down in the quiet, or a cup of not very nice coffee. Churches need people. When they’re empty they’re just buildings.’ Tony Palmer took a sip of coffee and said ruefully, ‘Mostly people don’t feel like they need churches these days, which is why we have to work at keeping them going. Here we run toddler groups and a book club and an art class and a lunch club for the old people, all without mentioning the G word.’ He looked heavenwards and mouthed, ‘God.’
Jess thawed a little. The old people’s lunch club reminded her of why she’d come in. ‘You don’t know anyone round here called Miss Price, do you? An old lady. She might come to your lunch club?’
‘Miss Price . . .’ He considered it. ‘The name sounds familiar, though I can’t put a face to it. I don’t think she comes to the lunch club, but I’ve only been here for eighteen months so she may have been previously. Is she a relative of yours?’
Jess put her cup down and shook her head. ‘A friend of a friend, that’s all. It doesn’t matter.’ She picked up her bag of shopping from the chair. ‘Thanks for the coffee. And the biscuits.’
‘Anytime.’
Aware of his eyes following her, she tried to walk as normally as the too-big shoes and her painful ankle would allow. She’d almost reached the door when he called out to her.
‘Jess? Just a thought—’
She turned round. He came towards her, tapping a finger against his bottom lip. ‘Look, I don’t know how you’re fixed with work or other commitments, but you’d be very welcome to come along to our lunch club – then you could ask some of the other members about your Miss Price. It’s on Mondays and Thursdays, in the church hall.’ He grinned sheepishly. ‘Of course, when I say you’d be very welcome, what I really mean is it would be great to have some younger blood. It gives the older folk a real lift to see a fresh face. You’d get a free lunch, of course. Hot food, and plenty of it.’ He patted the slight paunch beneath the jumper.
‘OK . . . Thanks.’
She had been going to make some excuse, but she was so hungry that the prospect of a free hot lunch was simply too tempting to turn down. It was only as she walked away that it occurred to her that he’d known that. It was that, rather than anything to do with old folk or young blood, that had prompted him to ask her.
The thought was strangely unsettling.
4
1942
The autumn days were getting shorter. At five o’clock Stella gave up struggling to peer through the gloom and did the blackout. It seemed such a shame; the sky was still streaked with ribbons of pink, against which the church’s terracotta roof tiles looked like a frill of black lace, but it was just another thing to add to the list of wartime privations she supposed. Oranges. Chocolate. Soap. Autumn sunsets.
She went into the hallway to knock on the study door and ask Charles if he’d like her to do his blackout too, but the thread of light beneath the door told her there was no need. The meeting had gone on for most of the afternoon. An hour ago she’d taken in a tray of tea and eggless sponge, made especially in honour of the bishop who enjoyed the status of a Hollywood matinee idol in Charles’s eyes. They had stopped their conversation while she set it down on the table, and the bishop had said – in a particularly loud, hearty voice so that Reverend Stokes, who was elderly and deaf, would hear – ‘So this is the lovely Mrs Thorne. With cake! Something of a water and wine miracle, given the circumstances. Well done, my dear!’ She’d retreated, glowing at praise from such an elevated source, pleased as much on Charles’s behalf as her own.
The kitchen was warm after the gusting draughts in the passageway, and deliciously scented with the beef she’d been cooking slowly all day. Brisket, stringy with sinew and unpromising in its paper wrapping, but Ada Broughton, queuing behind her in Fairacre’s the butchers, had told her that done on a low heat for long enough it would make a nice stew. Stella hoped so, since it was their meat ration for the week. She’d decided Woolton pie and cheese bake would be worth suffering for one special Saturday night meal, and had gone to some effort to lay the table in the dining room and the fire in the sitting room.
In truth she’d suffer a lot more than Woolton pie and cheese bake to breach the wall that seemed to have sprung up around Charles. Since they’d returned from Brighton he had slipped further and further from her reach so that she felt that their relationship was even more like that of employer and housekeeper than it had been before the wedding. Perhaps a quiet dinner – something less depressing than their usual dreary fare – and then the concert on the wireless afterwards, by the light of the fire . . .
Perhaps . . .
She shoved her feet into her ugly utility lace-ups and slipped out into the damp indigo evening. The air was scented with earth and cold and smoke from chimneys as she picked up fallen apples from beneath the tree, holding her apron up like a basket to collect the good ones. There weren’t many; the season was almost at an end, and the harvest had been shared. There was hardly a household in King’s Oak that hadn’t had an apple pie this autumn, though the apples were green and sour and devoured valuable sugar. Stella had been terribly mean with what she’d put in the sugar bowl on the tea tray earlier, so she’d have enough to make a good crumble, and custard. Charles was too thin. The hollows beneath his cheekbones had got deeper, the angle of his jaw sharper, which she couldn’t help taking as direct evidence of her inadequacy as a wife.
Before going back inside she paused on the back step, gazing out towards the city. Saturday night. The sky had lost its pink tinge now and was a deep, soft purple, scattered with a few stars and a waxy yellow harvest moon. A Bombers’ Moon they used to call it, though the nights of the raids seemed a long time ago now and everyone had become quite blasé about the possibility of them returning. She thought of Nancy, who would be dolling herself up for a night on the town with her friends from the salon. Several times she’d invited Stella to join them – ‘you’re a wife, not a prisoner, aren’t you?’ – but Stella always found an excuse. She remembered that crush of bodies, the measuring stares. It wouldn’t seem right to be in that atmosphere now that she was a married woman.
She and Nancy had met up for the pictures last week though; Clark Gable and Lana Turner in Somewhere I’ll Find You. There had been a useful film before the main picture, featuring recipes for stale bread. When Stella had scribbled one of them down on the back of her ration book Nancy had laughed so hard that the woman behind had tapped her on the shoulder and hissed at her to shut up.
In the light of the kitchen she saw that the apples were bruised and worm-eaten. What was left after she’d cut out the unusable bits would only be enough for the smallest of crumbles, but at least it would use up less sugar. She left the fruit stewing on the stove and went to check that everything was ready in the dining room.
It gave her a little beat of pleasure to look at the table, spread with an old cloth she’d discovered in a drawer and embroidered with bunches of daisies to cover the scorch marks. She’d sensed Charles’s disapproval of her spending three evenings on such a frivolous project when she could be knitting socks for sailors. She knitted too, but couldn’t quite believe that the endless supply of scratchy socks she turned out would make any real difference to the war, while the embroidered daisies had an immediate and discernible effect on morale on the home front. Against them even the green Vicarage china looked nice, and Miss Birch’s rose bowl made a lovely centrepiece, though it was filled with dying hydrangea heads instead of roses. In a moment of impulse Stella took down the two brass candlesticks from the mantelpiece and placed them on either side of the rose bowl, then went to the sideboard for candles.
Opening the drawer, she hesitated. Would Charles think sh
e was trying too hard? A framed photograph from their wedding stood on top of the sideboard, the one Fred Collins had taken of them cutting the cake. Picking it up, looking at it, she was transported back to the moment, and felt the fine hairs rise on her arms as she remembered Charles’s hand covering hers and the secret thrill of anticipation his touch had given her.
Anticipation that had come to nothing, as it turned out. She put the photograph carefully back in its place and took a step back, though she couldn’t seem to drag her gaze away from it. The girl in white with the wide, dark eyes already seemed like a naïve stranger – what a lot she’d learned in two short months. Like how to launder a clerical collar and make a milk pudding from stale bread and water, and that a white wedding isn’t necessarily the start of happy-ever-after, like it always was in the picture house.
That time she’d gone with Nancy she’d averted her eyes from the screen during the parts where Clark took Lana into his arms and kissed her thoroughly and passionately. Nancy had nudged her at one point and asked if she was all right and she’d nodded dumbly, glad that they were in the dark cinema with the cross woman behind them and that she couldn’t answer properly. She had missed her chance at honesty now; it had come when they’d returned from Brighton and Nancy had been agog to find out how it had gone. How ‘it’ had gone. Her curiosity had been so laden with expectation that Stella had found it impossible to tell her the truth; that the bedroom part had been a dismal failure and the blushing bride had returned from her honeymoon every bit as virginal as when they’d driven away from the wedding.
It sounded so hopeless. She could just imagine the pity (and scorn?) in Nancy’s eyes as she tried to explain about the first night, when they were both tired from the wedding and the journey and a little overwhelmed at the strangeness of finding themselves alone together in the huge and rather bleak hotel room. Charles’s parents had insisted on treating them to the honeymoon suite, and the landlady had showed them in with much lascivious smirking – off-putting in itself. It had been late, but Stella had disappeared to the bathroom next door and, shaking with nerves and a sort of excited trepidation, changed into the silk camisole. When she’d returned the bed was still empty and neat. Charles was sitting, fully dressed, at the table by the window, his head in his hands.
Such was his attitude of despair that she’d spoken his name and gone towards him, ready to put her arms around him and hold him. But as she approached and saw that his eyes were closed, his lips moving, she’d realized that he was praying. Nancy was her best friend; there was nothing they didn’t know about each other, but Stella would never be able to tell her about what happened next. About the moment when she’d touched him and he’d opened his eyes and seen her, and recoiled in distaste.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said stiffly afterwards. ‘It was unexpected, that’s all. Seeing you dressed like . . . like that.’
Stella had been too miserable and humiliated to say anything, least of all that ‘that’ was exactly how she’d thought most husbands would expect their brides to dress on the wedding night.
The next day she had started her monthly, which had also been embarrassing but had at least taken the pressure off the remainder of the honeymoon, which they’d spent walking along the seafront, exploring Brighton’s churches and – one afternoon – going to a tea dance in the hotel, for all the world like any newly married couple. At night they’d lain side by side in the bed like effigies on a tomb.
She jumped as the study door opened and voices spilled out into the hallway. ‘Glad to have got it sorted, Charles. It seems like a satisfactory outcome all round, but let me know if there are any problems your end.’
The rich tones of the bishop. Hovering behind the dining-room door, Stella tugged at the bow of her apron. Should she go out? Surely a good clergy wife would be there to open the door, make gracious pleasantries. She racked her brain for a single gracious pleasantry, but was distracted by Charles’s voice. ‘Thank you for your time and understanding in this matter, Bishop. You’ve been very accommodating.’
‘Not at all, not at all . . . These are difficult times and we must all serve in the way we best see fit. I know this isn’t something you’ve undertaken lightly. Your courage is to be commended, Charles. My regards to Mrs Thorne.’
Stella went into the hallway just as the bishop went out, so all she saw of him was a flash of silvery hair before Charles shut the door. In the light from the study Stella saw that his face had lost some of the tension that had shadowed it for the last weeks. His expression was softer, more thoughtful . . . until he looked up and saw her standing there, when it became suddenly wary.
‘Good meeting?’
‘Yes. Yes, I think so.’
‘Supper won’t be long. I’ve laid the table in the dining room. I thought we could—’
She stopped as Reverend Stokes appeared in the study doorway.
‘Marvellous,’ Charles said, in his hearty, public voice. ‘I’ve invited Ernest to stay. I hope that’s not a problem?’
In the kitchen Stella vented her frustration on the potatoes, mashing them into a pulp to stretch them as far as possible. As if any casually invited dinner guest wasn’t a problem these days! The beef that would have fed two indulgently looked meagre when shared between three plates, but even more upsetting than the disruption to her menu was the ruination of her plans for the evening. Music and candles. Talking in the soft circle of firelight. They could still do that with Reverend Stokes there, but the conversation wouldn’t be what she had in mind. It would be conducted at exhausting, ear-splitting volume for a start.
She could hear Charles’s unnaturally raised voice as she carried the tray of plates through from the kitchen. He was talking about the parish. ‘It’s hardly prosperous, but the people here have enough to get by. They’re decent, hard-working folk who don’t mind doing their bit. They don’t go in much for prayer groups, but the Mothers’ Union is well supported, and the W.I. And there’s a very productive Ladies’ Sewing Circle, isn’t there, darling?’
Caught in the spotlight of his rather forced smile, she had no choice but to swallow her sulk and reply, which annoyed her further because there was nothing to say but ‘yes’. She set the plates on the table, placing the smallest portion by far in her own place.
‘This looks delicious, my dear,’ Reverend Stokes said, rubbing his hands together. ‘But are you not hungry?’
‘Shall I say Grace?’ Charles said, quickly. As they all bent their heads he caught her eye and gave her a grateful smile.
It nourished her more than any feast.
By the time she had served the crumble – in teacups, to disguise how little there was – Stella’s head was throbbing, but the shared effort of maintaining conversation had forged a fragile bond between her and Charles. Escaping back to the kitchen to make coffee she leaned against the sink and closed her eyes, allowing herself a moment of hope. It hadn’t been the intimate evening she’d imagined, but she felt closer to him than she had in a long time. Perhaps this was what marriage was about? Not melting movie kisses or silk nighties, but something more real and meaningful; shared endeavour, joint goals. Maybe when Reverend Stokes had finally gone they could laugh about the teacup puddings and the fact that he thought her name was Sheila, and tonight the space in the bed between them wouldn’t seem like such an arctic wasteland.
Taking a deep breath she carried the coffee through to the sitting room, where Reverend Stokes was now ensconced in the most comfortable chair nearest the fire. Stella hoped that didn’t mean he would be tempted to stay longer. Surely he must be getting bored with hearing about the minutiae of running St Crispin’s by now?
‘Of course, there’s no evensong service now, because of the blackout,’ Charles was saying, ‘but the Sunday morning service is always well attended. People like the sermons to be short but uplifting.’
Stella settled into the corner of the sofa and sipped her coffee. Charles had struggled with ‘uplifting’ lately, often stayin
g up into the early hours of Sunday morning to produce a sermon that struck the right note. At least that’s what he told her he was doing. On those nights he came quietly up the stairs and passed her door on his way to the box room at the end of the landing and, lying beneath the smooth sheets of their marriage bed, she wondered whether avoiding her was also part of his plan.
After what seemed like an eternity, Reverend Stokes hauled himself creakily from the depths of his chair and announced that he must be on his way. As Charles went in search of his coat the Reverend’s damp eyes rested on Stella.
‘Thank you for a lovely evening and a splendid supper, my dear. The first of many, I hope.’
‘Oh . . . yes, I do hope so,’ Stella stammered. Funny how she seemed to lie far more often now she was a vicar’s wife than she ever had before. ‘You’re very welcome any time.’
Charles returned, winding a scarf around his own neck too. He glanced uneasily at Stella before holding out the other man’s coat. ‘Here, Ernest. I’ll walk you down to the bus stop. Make sure you don’t get lost in the blackout.’
She was washing the dishes in the kitchen when he came back. She heard the front door shut and glanced at the clock above the cooker. Almost nine; if she was quick she could finish clearing up in time to listen to the news on the wireless with him. Sometimes she thought she’d rather not know about the misery unfolding across the world but she knew that Charles liked to stay informed of all the latest developments in the war, with so many boys in the parish and now Peter Underwood out there on active service. It seemed a small thing to do to listen to it with him. She ran water into the enamel casserole dish in which she’d cooked the beef; it would be best left to soak overnight.