Consolation

by James Wilson

  ‘And what’s her name?’

  ‘Mary Wilson.’

  ‘Is it, now?’

  A frightening, exhilarating idea suddenly hit me.

  ‘You don’t know her, do you?’

  He let out a soft, almost noiseless whistle, and shook his head. ‘No.’

  The collision between disappointment and relief squeezed the air out of me. ‘Ah, well,’ I wheezed. ‘It would have been astonishing if you had, I suppose.’

  He took a deep gulp of beer, emptying his glass. ‘But I think I know where you might find her. St. Lawrence’s church, up in Heanor. Tomorrow morning. Stand outside after Sunday School, and see if you can spot her there.’

  My first thought was that this must be a piece of braggadocio: I had simply not told him enough about Mary Wilson for him to be able to make a reasoned guess about where I might find her. But then it struck me that – having seen the woman I had been following – he already had a rough guide to Mary Wilson’s appearance, and there could not be very many other people of a similar age and colouring and figure in a place the size of Langley Mill.

  ‘Why Sunday School?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s a Mrs. Wilson just started there, who teaches my niece. I’ve seen her a couple of times in the street, and she looks like enough your lass.’

  ‘But you’ve never spoken to her?’

  He laughed. ‘I shouldn’t trust myself. I think it’s a crime. Cramming children’s heads with all that bread-and-butter pudding. But I’ll wager you five bob that she’s the one.’

  I longed to question him further, and find out what else he could tell me about her. But I knew that if I did he would almost certainly demand more confidences from me in return; and I feared I had said far too much about Mary Wilson already, and risked compromising her reputation. So I merely thanked him; and then – as if as an afterthought – added:

  ‘By the way, I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression. There is really nothing improper about my relations with Mrs. Wilson, or my intentions towards her. And her behaviour towards me has been absolutely beyond reproach.’

  He laughed again. ‘What makes you think I’m the man to reproach her? Or reproach you, either, if it comes to that?’

  VI

  When Jessop and I met for dinner that night, I felt strangely constrained with him – mentioning my encounter with Davey Riddick only in passing, as an amusing curiosity, and saying nothing at all about the Sunday School teacher, or my plans to go in search of her the next day. At the time, I justified this simply as prudence: what, after all, was the point in raising his hopes, when the chances were that I was following a false lead? But now, looking back, I think I can identify another, barely conscious motive: the sense a hunter has, when he thinks he may have caught a distant glimpse of his quarry, and fears that if he draws too much attention to it he may frighten it away.

  Thankfully, Jessop compensated for my reserve by being more than usually ebullient himself.

  ‘Here,’ he said, slapping his notebook on the table and riffling the pages with his thumb. ‘Two new songs. And tomorrow I’m invited to Sunday dinner with a mill-worker, whose mother is eighty-two, and a living encyclopaedia – or so he tells me – of the old ballads. Do you want to come with me?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  He looked at me curiously for a second or two, but did not seem particularly dashed or surprised – and, to my relief, did not bother to ask me what I was intending to do instead.

  *

  In the morning, I hovered in my room until Jessop had gone. Then, after quickly dressing as churchily as I could, and slipping the copy of She into my pocket, I snatched a hurried breakfast, and set off on my quest.

  Heanor, it turned out, was not part of Langley Mill, but a separate little town, standing a mile or so away on a low rise above the valley. I climbed towards it up a winding road that seemed unable to decide whether it was urban or rural, but stuttered uncertainly from one to the other, with rows of neatly kept cottage gardens suddenly giving way to a sprawling carriage-works or the sweet steamy stink of a knacker’s yard. Only at the very top did it finally abandon the countryside, emerging through a tight bottle-neck of buildings into a small market square lined on every side with sooty-faced shops and houses and inns. There was no difficulty, at any rate, in finding the church: it stood in one corner, on the highest point of the hill, its thickset, crenellated tower louring over the landscape like the keep of a mediaeval castle.

  I had heard the faint sound of the bells starting to ring out soon after I had left the hotel, and by the time I arrived the service was clearly well under way: I could see lights inside, and just make out the muffled drone of a hymn wafting through the stained glass. Behind the nave was a functional modern hall, where presumably – although I could see no sign of it, except for a half-open door – the Sunday School was being held. I did not want to make myself conspicuous either by barging into the service half-way through or by loitering outside, so I decided to make a tour of the square – keeping one eye more or less permanently fixed on the church.

  It was one of those days when spring suddenly seems to lose its nerve and take a step backwards. A vicious wind blew up from the north, harrying black-edged clouds across the sky and flinging tiny spatters of snowflakes into my face. Uncomfortable though it was, I couldn’t help feeling grateful for it, because it gave me a pretext for tugging down my cap and turning up my collar without appearing strange – so allowing me the comforting sense that I was, if not quite invisible, at least so thoroughly disguised that even a close friend would not know me. Some flinty little part of my mind told me this was a delusion, but I chose to ignore it, knowing that without a belief in my own invulnerability – and hence my own power to control events – I would simply turn tail and flee in panic.

  It took me a couple of turns round the deserted market-place to discover that the best shelter from the weather came from a dingy hotel called the King of Prussia. I stationed myself in front of it, rubbing my hands and peering into the distance, doing my best to look like a man who was waiting for a companion to arrive before going inside. I had been there for more than ten minutes, and was beginning to think it was time to assume another character and go somewhere else, when I suddenly became aware of the clatter of footsteps and a surge of children’s voices coming from the direction of the church.

  I started towards the sound, travelling in a wide arc, so that I ended up not directly by the churchyard gate but across the road from it. A seemingly endless procession of children was marching from the hall to the church. I looked around for their teacher, and finally spotted a young woman sauntering beside them at a slower pace, as if she were waiting for the end of the line to pass her so she could bring up the rear.

  I squinted at her, trying – as I had with Alice Dangerfield, and the woman in the pawnbroker’s – to superimpose her figure on my memory of Mary Wilson’s. It did not seem to fit: it was too willowy. But I was still too far away to be absolutely sure, so – pulling my cap even lower, and hunching my shoulders – I began to sidle closer, and reached the the churchyard wall just as she passed in front of me.

  No, there was no question about it: she was at least three inches taller than Mary Wilson, and I could see a curl of golden hair poking out from beneath her hat.

  I suddenly noticed that two small girls were pointing at me and whispering. I started to back away again, trying to move out of reach of their curiosity, but something at the edge of my vision stopped me: a point of intense stillness in the middle of all that jostling motion.

  I turned towards it. Another woman had emerged from the hall and was standing in the doorway, staring at me across the stream of children flowing between us.

  It was her. I knew it instantaneously, not through the usual process of mental comparison that tells you you’ve seen someone before, but as a kind of self-evident truth about the nature of the world, like the colour of grass, or the regular passage of night into day. And it
was absolutely clear that she recognized me, too. Her mouth was half-agape, and she clung to the door-jamb with both hands, as if the shock of seeing me had robbed her legs of the power to support her.

  I raised my cap in greeting. She was still too dazed to smile, but managed to give me an abbreviated nod in reply. As the stream of children thinned to a trickle, we started to edge towards each other – and then found ourselves having to wait while the last stragglers dawdled their way between us. She stood watching, her lips pursed and her fists tight with impatience, as they meandered, infuriatingly slowly, towards the church. Only when they had finally disappeared inside did she turn back, and totter the last few steps to meet me at the wall.

  I held out my hand. She did not take it, but merely went on looking at me – her chin tilted slightly forward, her brow creased. Then, suddenly, she began to sway. I caught her elbow, and lowered her gently until she was sitting on the wall. She was very pale, apart from a vivid rash of pink on her throat. I sat down next to her, so that we faced each other like a couple in a love-seat.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  She did not seem to hear me, but tentatively reached out and touched my wrist.

  ‘You must wonder at seeing me here, I know,’ I said. ‘But –’

  ‘I have been very stupid.’

  ‘No, it’s perfectly understandable –’

  She shook her head. After a moment, her voice flat with resignation, she said:

  ‘The box, is that it?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The box I gave you. Something’s happened to it?’

  ‘I buried it, as you asked me to.’

  ‘But then the vicar found it, and dug it up again?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. I think it’s pretty safe where it is.’

  ‘Then why are you –?’ she began, then spread her hands in a despairing gesture that said: no, don’t answer.

  I started to take the book from my pocket, but it seemed such a puny thing to put into the scales against so much unhappiness that I dropped it back again.

  ‘You must forgive me,’ I said. ‘If I’d known how upset it would make you, I would never have dreamed of coming.’

  I began to walk away. I’d gone no more than a dozen steps or so when I heard her start after me. I stopped and turned to face her.

  ‘You don’t realize,’ she said, hurrying up to me. She was trembling, and her fists were balled like an angry child’s – as if by apologizing I had taken some unfair advantage of her, and forced her into making a response against her will.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I can see that. But you really don’t have to explain if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ She glanced towards the church. ‘Only I should be in there. They’ll be wondering where I’ve got to.’

  ‘Please go, then. The last thing I want is to be a burden to you.’

  She considered for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No, it’ll only cause more raised eyebrows if I go in now. The sermon’s the same in any case, inside or out: For whosoever hath, to him shall be given; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.’

  ‘What have I taken from you?’

  She looked round nervously. ‘We’re not safe here. People might see us.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk, then.’

  She hesitated. ‘I’m meant to be having lunch with the rector and his wife. My husband’s away, you see, so they’re doing their Christian duty and taking me in.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s more than duty …’

  She turned towards me. Her eyes had a kind of bottomless darkness that reminded me of looking into a tin of treacle.

  ‘Are you? Why?’

  I had no answer. She nodded curtly, then glanced at the church clock.

  ‘I’ll need to be at the rectory by half-past one,’ she said.

  ‘That gives us almost two hours. Is there a park here?’

  ‘Someone would be bound to notice us there.’ She thought for a moment, then stood up abruptly. ‘Let’s go to Langley Mill. We’ll say you’re an old friend of the family, who turned up unexpectedly to see my husband, but then discovered he wasn’t here. So I’m walking you back to the station.’

  ‘Do you honestly think we need to make up a story like that? Surely no one’ll think there’s anything wrong in a man and a woman talking publicly to one another in broad daylight?’

  She shook her head. ‘People are terrible gossips.’

  She was trembling with fear.

  ‘All right,’ I said, relenting. ‘What’s your husband’s name?’

  ‘Christopher. Chris.’ She looked up at the church spire, as if we might see him peering down at us from the battlements. ‘He’s the curate here.’

  ‘And how do I know him?’

  ‘You were at school together?’ She squinted at me, assessing my age. ‘No, that won’t do. Theological college, then.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d make a very convincing clergyman.’

  ‘No.’ She continued to stare at me, biting her lip. ‘Ah, I know what it is: you met him in Tenerife.’

  ‘Tenerife?’

  ‘He was the English chaplain there. A couple of years ago. And you could have been on your way to India. Or South America, perhaps.’

  ‘India’s safer, I think. Let’s say I was going to visit my sister. Who’s a school-mistress in Simla.’

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. She nodded and said:

  ‘Come on, then.’

  We started walking, retracing my journey down the hill. Neither of us spoke again until we were clear of the town. Then I said:

  ‘Why were you so taken aback to see me?’

  She glanced behind her, to make sure there was no one following us.

  ‘You will laugh at me,’ she muttered, turning back. ‘You will think I’m the stupidest woman you ever met.’

  ‘No, I shan’t.’

  ‘How can you say that? You don’t even know what I’m going to say!’

  Again, it was unanswerable. She seemed to relax slightly, as if she had scored a small victory over me, and it had made her more confident.

  ‘I thought you were an angel,’ she said.

  I mastered the impulse to laugh. ‘An angel?’

  She nodded. ‘An angel in disguise. Sent to take care of my child. To lead him to a better place. So you can imagine – when you turned up again like that – in broad daylight –’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘There, doesn’t that seem ridiculous to you?’

  I shook my head. ‘Or, at any rate, it’s no more ridiculous than what I thought about you.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘You … You seemed, somehow, the realest thing that had ever happened to me.’

  She nodded again, then bit her lip, frowning abstractedly.

  ‘Isn’t that odd?’ she said finally. ‘When I felt you were the unrealest thing that had ever happened to me! Well, not unreal, exactly. Real in a different way. In the way a story is real.’

  ‘What, you mean I was a … a happy ending? For your child?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that was it.’ A savage little gust of wind hit her, buffeting her sideways and whipping loose a strand of black hair which she distractedly tucked back behind her ear. After a few seconds, she looked up at me and said:

  ‘And for me, too, in a way, I think. Because he was the best of me. The truest part of me.’

  For a moment I was too embarrassed to speak. Then I managed to stammer out:

  ‘Well, I’m sorry. I can see it must have been a dreadful disappointment to find I’m just flesh and blood after all. But it was awfully dark in that church porch, of course, so it was a natural enough mistake to make.’

  Even before I’d finished speaking, I was cursing myself. She had the grace to try to smile, but it was clearly a struggle, and the result – a tremulou
s, thin-lipped crater in her pale face – was heart-breakingly sad. She shivered, and pulled her cloak tighter about her shoulders, retreating into her own misery. In an effort to draw her out again, I said:

  ‘Do you often see angels?’

  Her neck stiffened, and a tiny circle of colour appeared on her cheek. I held my breath. Finally she said:

  ‘Not see, no.’

  She sounded surprised, but not angry. I let the air out of my lungs as noiselessly as I could. After a moment she went on:

  ‘But I used to believe in them, when I was a child. Or half-believe. In one, at any rate. My angel.’

  ‘What, a guardian angel, you mean?’

  She started, and her blush deepened.

  ‘Yes, that must have been it, mustn’t it? I hadn’t thought of that. But then I haven’t ever spoken to anyone about this before. So I never had to find a word for it.’

  ‘Did you hear him? Did he talk to you?’

  She considered, then shook her head. ‘I just always felt that he was there. No, always isn’t right. What I mean is, there were always times when I felt he was there.’

  I nodded.

  ‘It must have begun, I think, with my French nurse,’ she said, teasing the words out slowly, as if she were explaining as much to herself as to me. ‘When I was two or three, it started to dawn on me that all the other children we met in the park had mamas and papas. So I asked her where mine were. And she said: “Tes parents terrestres sont partis. Mais tu as le bon Dieu comme père.”’

  She glanced towards me suddenly, roused from her self-absorption by the thought that I might not have understood.

  ‘“Your earthly parents have left. But you have God for a father.”’

  She nodded. ‘“And he will send an angel to protect you.”’

  ‘And was he a French angel?’

  She gave a quick surprised smile. ‘I’m not sure. Do angels have nationalities?’

  I shrugged. ‘Perhaps you should ask your husband. He’d know, I presume, if anyone does.’

  From her reaction, you would have thought I had suggested something indecent. She shuddered, and then immediately hurried on: