Everything Sally saw, even Lucy and Michael, seemed both physically remote and to belong to a lesser order of importance. It impinged on her no more than the flickering images on a television set with the sound turned down. Her mind was focused on the woman in the beret and raincoat, not on her appearance or what she was saying but on the deeper reality beneath. Sally tried with all her might to get through to her. She found herself visualizing a stone wall topped with strands of barbed wire.
Michael and Stella had reached the woman now. Like an obliging child confronted by her parents, she held out her arms, giving one hand to Michael and one to Stella; she closed her mouth at last but her eyes were still on Sally. For an instant Michael, Stella and the woman made a strangely familiar tableau: a scene from a Renaissance painting, perhaps, showing a martyr about to be dragged uncomplainingly to the stake, with her eyes staring past the invisible face of the artist, standing where her accuser would be, to the equally invisible heavenly radiance beyond.
The tableau destroyed itself. Stella scooped up the carrier bag with her free hand. She and Michael drew the woman along the pew and walked with her towards the west door. Their shoes clattered on the bright Victorian tiles and rang on the central-heating gratings. The woman did not struggle but she twisted herself round until she was walking sideways. This allowed her to turn her head as far as she could and continue to stare at Sally.
The heavy oak door opened. The sound of traffic poured into the church. Sally glimpsed sunlit buildings, black railings and a blue sky. The door closed with a dull, rolling boom. For an instant the boom didn’t sound like a closing door at all: it was more like the whirr of great wings beating the air.
Sally took a deep breath. As she exhaled, a picture filled her mind: an angel, stern and heavily feathered, the detail hard and glittering, the wings flexing and rippling. She pushed the picture away.
‘God does not change,’ she said again, her voice grim. ‘But we do.’
Afterwards Derek said, ‘These days we need bouncers, not churchwardens.’
Sally turned to look at him combing his thinning hair in the vestry mirror. ‘Seriously?’
‘We wouldn’t be the first.’ His reflection gave her one of his pastoral smiles. ‘I don’t mean it, of course. But you’ll have to get used to these interruptions. We get all sorts in Kensal Vale. It’s not some snug little suburb.’
This was a dig at Sally’s last parish, a predominantly middle-class enclave in the diocese of St Albans. Derek took a perverse pride in the statistics of Kensal Vale’s suffering.
‘She needs help,’ Sally said.
‘Perhaps. I suspect she’s done this before. There have been similar reports elsewhere in the diocese. Someone with a bee in her bonnet about women in holy orders.’ He slipped the comb into his pocket and turned to face her. ‘Plenty of them around, I’m afraid. We just have to grin and bear it. Or rather them. We get worse interruptions than dotty old ladies, after all – drunks, drug addicts and nutters in all shapes and sizes.’ He smiled, pulling back his lips to reveal teeth so perfect they looked false. ‘Maybe bouncers aren’t such a bad idea after all.’
Sally bit back a reply to the effect that it was a shame they couldn’t do something more constructive. It was early days yet. She had only just started her curacy at St George’s, Kensal Vale. Salaried parish jobs for women deacons were scarce, and she would be a fool to antagonize Derek before her first Sunday was over. Perhaps, too, she was being unfair to him.
She checked her appearance in the mirror. After all this time the dog collar still felt unnatural against her neck. She had wanted what the collar symbolized for so long. Now she wasn’t sure.
Derek was too shrewd a manager to let dislike fester unnecessarily. ‘I liked your sermon. A splendid beginning to your work here. Do you think we should make more of the parallels between feminism and the antislavery movement?’
A few minutes later Sally followed him through the church to the Parish Room, which occupied what had once been the Lady Chapel. Its conversion last year had been largely due to Derek’s gift for indefatigable fund-raising. About thirty people had lingered after the service to drink grey, watery coffee and meet their new curate.
Lucy saw her mother first. She ran across the floor and flung her arms around Sally’s thighs.
‘I wanted you,’ Lucy muttered in an accusing whisper. She was holding her doll Jimmy clamped to her nose, a sign of either tiredness or stress. ‘I wanted you. I didn’t like that nasty old woman.’
Sally patted Lucy’s back. ‘I’m here, darling, I’m here.’
Stella towed Michael towards them. She was in her forties, a good woman, Sally suspected, but one who dealt in certainties and liked the sound of her own voice and the authority her position gave her in the affairs of the parish. Michael looked dazed.
‘We were just talking about you,’ Stella announced with pride, as though the circumstance conferred merit on all concerned. ‘Great sermon.’ She dug a long forefinger into Michael’s ribcage. ‘I hope you’re cooking the Sunday lunch after all that.’
Sally took the coffee which Michael held out to her. ‘What happened to the old woman?’ she asked. ‘Did you find out where she lives?’
Stella shook her head. ‘She just kept telling us to go away and leave her in peace.’
‘Ironic, when you think about it,’ Michael said, apparently addressing his cup.
‘And then a bus came along,’ Stella continued, ‘and she hopped on. Short of putting an armlock on her, there wasn’t much we could do.’
‘She’s not a regular, then?’
‘Never seen her before. Don’t take it to heart. Nothing personal.’
Lucy tugged Sally’s arm, and coffee slopped into the saucer. ‘She should go to prison. She’s a witch.’
‘She’s done nothing bad,’ Sally said. ‘She’s just unhappy. You don’t send people to prison for being unhappy, do you?’
‘Unhappy? Why?’
‘Unhappy?’ Derek Cutter appeared beside Stella and ruffled Lucy’s hair. ‘A young lady like you shouldn’t be unhappy. It’s not allowed.’
Pink and horrified, Lucy squirmed behind her mother.
‘Sally tells me this was once the Lady Chapel,’ Michael said, diverting Derek’s attention from Lucy. ‘Times change.’
‘We were lucky to be able to use the space so constructively. And in keeping with the spirit of the place, too.’ Derek beckoned a middle-aged man, small and sharp-eyed, a balding cherub. ‘Sally, I’d like you to meet Frank Howell. Frank, this is Sally Appleyard, our new curate, and her husband Michael.’
‘Detective Sergeant, isn’t it?’ Howell’s eyes were red-rimmed.
Michael nodded.
‘There’s a piece about your lady wife in the local rag. They mentioned it there.’
Derek coughed. ‘I suppose you could say all of us are professionally nosy in our different ways. Frank’s a freelance journalist.’
Howell was shaking hands with Stella. ‘For my sins, eh?’
‘In fact, Frank was telling me he was wondering whether we at St George’s might form the basis of a feature. The Church of England at work in modern London.’ Derek’s nose twitched. ‘Old wine in new bottles, one might say.’
‘Amazing, when you think about it.’ Howell grinned at them. ‘Here