Standing, looking out of the window of his dismal bedroom, Cecil felt the greater challenge had arrived already. He’d felt such dismay from the moment he had seen the valley at the end of which this town lay, long before he had reached the parish. It was impossible to account for the way the sight of those forested hills and that shining river had made him want to weep and run away. The peace of the scene, its beauty, made him want to scream. Who could he expect to understand that? It was insane to want traffic thundering along filthy roads, and blackened buildings, and ugly tower blocks and litter blowing everywhere, and exhausted people rushing around ignoring each other, but he did. He wanted to be lost in that sort of chaos, and yet it had brought him to what the bishop called grief. He opened the window wider and took several deep breaths – he had only met two women, only seen the inside of this house, and yet was basing a whole set of prejudices upon these brief encounters. He knew he should not have bundled the women out so quickly. Not a good start.
He decided to close the bedroom windows before he left the room. The scent of the honeysuckle made him feel sick. He wandered about the rest of the house slowly realising that it faced north and that at the back, where the sun shone so brightly, there were only two small windows. The larger windows looked north or east. Someone had built the house expressly to shut out the sun. It felt cold even now, on a hot day. He could see no radiators, which meant there was no central heating: just as well, because he couldn’t afford to use it. He poked about and located two storage heaters and an electric fire of ancient design, and noticed two of the fireplaces had coal in the buckets beside them. One of these fireplaces was in a small room off the hall, which he took to be a study. It had a desk in it, a rather ugly, dark wood thing, squat, and with the wood badly scratched and the handles missing from three of the drawers. There was a leather armchair in the corner with an antimacassar over its back and an embroidered cushion perched against it. He would live here, he decided. He would shut the sitting-room up. The kitchen he would have to use, though its size and chilliness were daunting, but he would never eat there. He would bring his food into this study on a tray. For a moment, he thought of dragging a mattress down here so that he could sleep in this study as well, but dismissed the idea as too ridiculous. Hiding in a little room was not going to help.
He couldn’t think what was going to. This was a family house and he had no wife or children to humanise it. The silence made him shudder. It felt dangerous, as though it might suffocate him if he didn’t do something about it. He hated the sound of his footsteps echoing as he walked around and every time he closed a door he winced at the absurdly loud noise. He hadn’t unpacked a thing, or attempted to settle in, but he had to get out. Once he’d opened the front door, which creaked horribly, he felt a bit better. The thing to do was to stay out of the house as much as possible. The key safely in his pocket, he decided it was time to acquaint himself with the church. He’d passed it driving here. The bishop had told him it was a late nineteenth-century building, of no architectural merit but with a fine east window donated by a local merchant of the time. It had no spire or tower, and the limestone was from local mines. He walked to it along the tree-lined road, a mere three-minute walk, and entered by a side gate. The graveyard surrounding the church was in excellent condition, the grass neatly cut and flowers in urns in front of many of the gravestones. He stopped and read some of these, noticing that Nicholson was a local name, from the frequency with which it occurred, and that gilt lettering on black marble appeared to be the preferred form of memorial. The church had a porch, not quite in proportion to the building itself, and the door was open. There were notices inside, pinned on boards to either side, but he didn’t stop to read them – he knew what they would say and he didn’t want to dwell on the inevitable bring-and-buy sales and fetes and teas. Inside the church at last, he paused. The east window, as promised, was indeed fine and commanded attention at once. He studied it carefully, imagining the morning sun turning the yellow of the angels’ hair into a blaze of glorious light. Slowly, he advanced down the nave along the rush matting, touching the pews as he went. They were made of oak, he thought, and seemed light in the general darkness of the church. Reaching the altar, he knelt and prayed to find the strength to do good work here. This was what he wanted. This was what made him happy: a silent church, a stone floor beneath his knees, light coming towards him over an angel’s wings. Here, praying, he was sure of his faith and of himself. Even the smell, musty, slightly acrid, pleased him. He breathed in deeply and bent lower, almost prostrating himself, the palms of his hands flattened on the cold stone. ‘O Lord,’ he began, saying the words out loud, in a whisper, ‘O Lord, help me be worthy of thee . . .’
Even before he had finished his prayer, he heard someone enter the church behind him. They came in as quietly as he had done himself – he heard the light footsteps and then a pause. Bracing himself to encounter whoever it was, he stood up and turned round. A woman was standing stock-still in the middle of the nave, her hand at her throat and a look of utter astonishment on her face. He smiled and began to walk towards her, his arm outstretched to greet her, but in one swift movement she turned and walked quickly away. He couldn’t shout to her, not in the church. He hurried after her, but was thinking, as he tried to catch up, that since she obviously hadn’t wanted to meet him he ought surely to let her go. She had, in any case, vanished – by the time he came out of the porch all he could see was a flash of her skirt as she went through the gate, a good 50 yards away. He stood still, wondering if she hadn’t realised that he was the new vicar, but she could not have missed his collar even if his jacket and trousers gave nothing away. Somebody who wanted to be alone in the church, then, as he did. Alone on a sunny weekday afternoon. And he had spoiled her intended reverie, her need, perhaps, to pray. Another fine beginning.
He dreaded the thought of returning to the vicarage, so instead he sat on one of the benches placed round the graveyard. It was quiet, but not oppressively so. There was quite a bit of traffic running along the road into the town centre and he could hear a pneumatic drill working somewhere nearby, and lawn-mowers nearer still. He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a small notebook and a pencil, thinking he should jot down ideas for his first sermon here. It would, he decided, have to take the form of a confession – he would talk about his illness openly, about how his terror of people had grown until he could barely speak to anyone at all, and throw himself on the mercy of the congregation, asking them to help him overcome his inadequacies. It was a risk, of course. He might embarrass these people, or worse still, horrify them. They would want their vicar to be strong and confident, friendly and ready to help them, and not a man in need of help himself. There might be complaints lodged against him with the bishop. He stared at the blank page in his notebook, sighed, and put it back in his pocket. He felt the letter there, the only one that had been waiting for him at the vicarage. It was from St Mary’s Hospital, asking if he would fulfil the same duties as the Rev. Barnes had done as a relief hospital chaplain and inviting him to a meeting of the Friends of the hospital. He supposed he ought to accept, though the last thing he ever wanted to have to do again was go into a hospital.
Eventually, after an hour of wandering around, he returned to the vicarage. He’d put it off as long as possible, pretending that he needed to familiarise himself with the locality so that he could set his new home in context. The context was much as he had surmised on his arrival. St James’s was on the edge of a small market town stuck at the end of a valley cut off from the coastal plain by what seemed to him formidably huge hills. The town itself had little bustle about it – the general cleanliness and orderliness were to him astonishing. There were no supermarkets or chain stores, just a succession of small shops selling mostly food. He noticed people standing talking to each other in the streets, with nobody hurrying, and greetings were called out across them. He walked down the tree-lined main street and round the square at the end, noting th
e ugly war memorial at its centre, and then back again to the unnerving emptiness of the roads around the church. There seemed to be no one at all about – a few cats prowling along the hedges, and that was all. The roads were clean, the gardens tidy. He’d made a square round the vicarage and by the time he turned into the right road again he was dismally aware that he’d landed in small-town suburbia. The vicarage now looked totally out of place among the semi-detached houses, gross in size compared to them and its gaunt stone exterior, incongruous next to their whitewashed, rendered-concrete fronts. Trudging up the short, gravelled drive, he wondered if he could find somewhere else to live. Couldn’t the vicarage be let out, for a rent that would go into the church coffers and be useful? He only needed a bed-sitting-room. But this was not the sort of place that had such rooms to let, and in any case the vicar would be required to have the status an imposing vicarage conferred.
There was someone sitting on his doorstep. A man, middle-aged, or older, strong-looking, dressed in a tweed jacket and old-fashioned flannels. He got up as Cecil approached, and straightened his jacket, pulling it down firmly and buttoning the middle button, and cleared his throat. ‘Sorry to disturb you, vicar,’ he said, ‘on your first day, and that, but could I have a word?’ There was nothing Cecil could do but say yes, of course, but he felt flustered and dropped the front door key twice before inserting it in the lock, and then he had to fiddle with it before the wretched door would open. ‘Needs a spot of oil,’ his visitor said. Cecil agreed. He stood in the bleak hall, wondering where to take this man, and decided it had to be the sitting-room, after all, a room he’d merely glanced into before shutting the door. He led the way fearfully, dreading the discomfort of not knowing where to sit, or whether to sit at all. There was a gigantic three-piece suite in the room, hideously covered in a drab, dark maroon material, and two chairs facing the sofa with a small, glass-topped table between them. He gestured to one of the chairs. The man sat on the very edge, feet planted apart on the worn, brown carpet. Cecil sat opposite, the table between them like a barrier. ‘How can I help you?’ he said. ‘As you see, I haven’t settled in yet.’ The man nodded. ‘I’m Ida’s husband,’ he said, and waited. Cecil raised his eyebrows enquiringly. ‘The lady who was cleaning when you arrived, the bigger of the two.’ ‘Oh, of course,’ Cecil said, relieved. ‘Very kind of her, of them, very kind.’ The man smiled. He looked a nice man. Straightforward, decent, friendly. Cecil relaxed a little. Maybe this would not be too difficult. ‘It’s about Ida I’ve come,’ said the man. ‘I thought I’d come straight away, in case.’ He paused, as though waiting for encouragement, but Cecil warned himself not to try to give it – it was one of the things he’d learned (if little else), always to wait. ‘She might bother you,’ the man said. ‘She gets pretty desperate, and then she comes running, and you just have to be patient, not that I’m trying to teach you your job. The name’s Martin, by the way. Martin Yates, pleased to meet you, I should have said it first, my name, I mean.’
He half rose and held out his hand, and Cecil leaned forward and took it, the edge of the table digging into his knees. ‘Cecil Maddox,’ he said. Then there was silence. Was he supposed to ask in what way Ida Yates might bother him and why she became pretty desperate? It didn’t appeal to him. ‘Ida was christened here,’ Martin Yates was saying, ‘and we were married here, in the church that is, and in times of trouble she’s always turned to the vicar. The Rev. Barnes was very good, very understanding.’ Cecil nodded. Comparisons with his predecessor would be inevitable. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘thank you for filling me in, Mr Yates. I’ll try to do my best, if your wife does need comfort.’ He stood up, but Mr Yates didn’t. Should he sit down again? But that felt foolish. Slowly, the other man got up too. ‘It’s cancer,’ he said, ‘that’s Ida’s trouble, or was, I never know whether to say it is or it was.’ His hand went to his chest. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘she gets frightened sometimes, she panics. I thought you should be told, in case she can’t say it, in case she’s confused when she comes, hysterical, maybe. Then you’ll know what to do.’
Cecil almost laughed at the absurdity of the idea in this man’s head – that he would know what to do! He was dreadfully afraid that a spasm might have crossed his face and looked like a smirk, and so he said, very hastily, and not making sense, ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, that’s fine.’ They shook hands again, and then there was the awkward business of moving towards the door side by side, and edging through it and out into the hall and then at last Mr Yates had gone. Cecil leaned against the closed door and closed his eyes. A vision of Ida Yates hysterical and weeping rose before him and he groaned. What would he do with her? What if she were to come in the middle of the night – but no, surely her husband, the caring Mr Yates, would stop her. What had Paul Barnes done to calm her? Suddenly, he rushed into the study. Paul Barnes might have left some explanatory notes for him. There was a folder he’d noticed, in the top drawer, marked ‘Parish Matters’, which he hadn’t been able to face looking at. Now he took it out and flipped through it: dross. Merely telephone numbers for the church wardens, bills for new hymn books, nothing about any parishioners at all.
His forehead felt sweaty and hot. He wiped it with his sleeve, then went to wash his hands and splash cold water over his face. He was still drying it when the telephone rang and he froze, staring at himself in the mirror above the sink. He would have to answer it, would have to, but his footsteps dragged as he went towards the ledge in the cavernous hall where the instrument stood. ‘Hello! Am I talking to the new vicar? I hope I am!’ ‘Yes,’ said Cecil. His voice was a croak. ‘Who is this, please?’ It was a hearty, booming Paul Barnes, ringing to wish him luck, glad he was at last in residence, pleased to find him at home, hoping he was settling in, and finally telling him he was a lucky chap, couldn’t be a nicer, easier parish. Cecil hesitated and then decided that he had to take this chance to ask about Ida Yates, explaining about her husband’s visit. ‘Oh, Martin’s a lovely chap, salt of the earth, that’s typical of him, typical, but of course he knows his wife, he knows what she’s like, quite unhinged sometimes, but don’t worry about it.’ Cecil said he couldn’t help it, he was worried, he felt very apprehensive at the thought of this woman perhaps arriving in a distressed state. ‘Part of the job, surely,’ said Paul Barnes. ‘Never come across it before? Ida wants reassurance, that’s all. Say a prayer with her, give her a cup of tea, and she’ll be on her way. She’s an unhappy woman these days, can’t face up to dealing with breast cancer, though I gather she’s fine now. It’s hard for Martin, wonderful chap. You’ll like him.’
Cecil could find no food in the kitchen, but then he hadn’t brought any with him and there was no reason why anyone else should have provisioned for his early arrival. There was tea, though, left by the two women, and he wasn’t really hungry so much as thirsty. He sat in his study with a large mug of weak tea and tried to compose himself. He thought of Ida Yates and her possible hysteria, and of the woman who had run away from him in the church, and wondered if his mission here was to act as psychiatrist not vicar. But then the administering of religion, if it could be described like that, was a sort of psychiatry. The only problem was that he still needed psychiatric help himself. He was close to mad sometimes. Could the half-mad help the temporarily unstable? It sounded as though he would have to find out. It had all been in his head, to deliver as his first sermon, the confession of his weakness, but now he realised he couldn’t deliver it. What would Ida Yates think? What would her solid husband think? What would the nervous woman who’d run away think? He could not publicly advertise his own frailty. He had to show how comfort and healing could be achieved through faith. Everyone wanted help of some sort and only God, working in his mysterious ways, could give it.
He found a can of oil in a cupboard in the kitchen. It was actually labelled ‘for troublesome front door’. Cecil went slowly to the door, opened it, and began applying oil to the hinges.
*
It took Edwina a
while to recover – she couldn’t think what had made her do such an unlikely thing. Churches were places she shunned, only entering them on the kind of occasions when not to do so would offend others. St James’s was not like the Methodist chapel of her youth, it was an interesting and attractive building, but nevertheless it held no charm for her and she had never in fact been inside it. But passing the church that afternoon she had paused near the gate into the churchyard and thought how pretty and well-kept it was. Graveyards were bits of history, and she was interested in history. She’d gone through the gate to look at the gravestones not in any morbid fashion but to see how old they were, and then it had suddenly seemed to her like a dare: could she overcome her aversion and enter the church itself?
There was no reason why not. Maybe, she’d thought, it would calm her. Her head seemed to throb with worry about Emma – where was she, was she safe? – and it was partly for that reason that she’d come out to walk. She couldn’t read any more. When she most needed to, she couldn’t concentrate on the words, they’d failed her. She pushed the door of the porch open and almost tiptoed inside. It was cold, as it always was in churches, cold and musty, a combination which made her shiver. For a moment, she had turned to go straight back into the sunshine but then she’d thought no, she must enter the church itself. The inner door was slightly ajar. Hesitantly, she slipped inside and stood beside a table laden with hymn books. The intense silence, instead of soothing her, agitated her. All the dreadful things that might be at this moment happening to Emma crowded in on her and she put a hand across her forehead as though to try to subdue them. It had been a mistake to imagine any kind of comfort could be found in St James’s. But since she would never enter the church again she thought she should just look at its famous east window and then go, quickly. Crossing the stone flags, she glided towards the centre aisle and then, turning to face the window, she saw a man rise up and come towards her.
Is There Anything You Want? Page 14