‘Anything I can do to help?’
‘Everything’s under control, thank you.’
‘This is the first time I’ve been inside the new vicarage. You must be so relieved.’
‘It’s certainly easier to keep warm and clean than the old one was.’
It was partly due to Ronald’s influence that the old vicarage – a large, gracious and completely impractical Queen Anne house – had been demolished last year. The new vicarage was a four-bedroomed, centrally heated box. Its garden occupied the site of the old tennis court and vegetable garden. The rest of the old garden and the site of the old house itself now contained a curving cul-de-sac and six more boxes, each rather more spacious than the new vicarage.
‘Of course, you didn’t really need all that space. You and Rosemary must have felt you were camping in a barrack.’
‘Rather an elegant barrack,’ I said. ‘Do you take sugar?’
I carried the tea tray into the sitting room. Having a stranger in your home makes you see it with fresh eyes, and the result is rarely reassuring. I imagined that Cynthia was taking in the shabby furniture, the cobwebs in the corner of the ceiling and the unswept grate.
‘Much cosier,’ Cynthia said approvingly, as though she herself were responsible for this. ‘Do you have someone who comes in to do for you?’
I nodded, resenting the catechism. ‘One of my parishioners acts as a sort of housekeeper.’ I handed Cynthia a cup of tea. ‘Your house is pretty big,’ I said, trying to change the subject, ‘but it always seems very homely.’
She smiled wistfully. ‘Yes, I’ve enjoyed living there.’
‘Are you moving?’
‘Almost certainly.’
‘How wonderful.’ I felt a sudden stab of envy. ‘You must be very proud of Ronald.’
Cynthia frowned. ‘Proud?’
‘I assumed you meant he’s been offered preferment. Well deserved, I’m sure.’
Cynthia flushed. She was sitting, pink and foursquare in my own armchair. ‘No, I didn’t mean preferment. I meant that, when Ronald marries, I shall naturally move out. It will be time to make a home of my own. It wouldn’t be fair to any of us if I stayed.’
‘I didn’t realize that he was getting married.’ I guessed that Cynthia and her brother had shared a house for nearly twenty years, for I remembered hearing that Ronald’s first wife had died soon after their marriage. I wondered how Cynthia felt at the prospect of being uprooted from her home. ‘I hope they will be very happy.’
‘There hasn’t been a formal announcement yet. They haven’t sorted out the timing. I know Ronald nearly said something on Friday evening, but they decided it would be better to wait.’
A suspicion mushroomed in my mind. Suddenly everything began to make sense.
‘They are ideally suited,’ Cynthia was saying, talking rapidly. ‘And Vanessa has been so lost since Charles died. She’s the sort of woman who really needs a husband.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
Cynthia put down her cup and saucer and looked at her watch. ‘Heavens, is that the time? I really must be going.’
I took Cynthia out to her car. I think I said the right things about the charitable donation she had brought. I asked whether she would like me to return the suitcases, though I cannot remember what she replied.
At last she drove away. I trudged back into the house and took the tea tray into the kitchen. I was being childish, I told myself. I had not even realized that I was entertaining foolish hopes about Vanessa Forde until Cynthia had made it so clear that my prospects were hopeless. I had been celibate now for ten years – at first from necessity and later by choice – and there was no reason why I should not remain celibate for the rest of my life.
That afternoon some very unworthy thoughts passed through my mind. Jealousy and frustrated lust are an unsettling combination. I respected Ronald Trask, or rather I respected some of his achievements. One day he would probably be a bishop. I did not find that easy to accept. It was a shock to discover that I found even less palatable the thought that he and Vanessa would soon be married.
Sex apart, I had liked what I had seen of Vanessa. Ronald was a bore. A worthy bore, but still a bore. Vanessa deserved someone better. But of course there was nothing I could do about it. In any case, if Ronald and Vanessa chose to marry, it was nothing to do with me.
It was one thing to frame these rational arguments; it was quite another to accept them emotionally. I went into my study and tried to write a letter to my godson, Michael Appleyard. That proved too difficult. I turned to the parish accounts, which were even worse. Always, in the back of my mind, were the interlocking figures of Ronald and Vanessa. Physically interlocking, I mean. It was as if I were trapped in a cinema with a film I did not want to see on the screen.
Time crept on. Rosemary was still working in her room. At six-thirty I decided to go over to the church and say the Evening Office. Then I would ring Vanessa about Audrey’s book. I went into the hall.
‘Rosemary?’
She did not answer. I went upstairs and tapped on the door of her room. Her room was uncluttered. Even as a young child she had had a formidable ability to organize her surroundings. She was sitting at her table with a pile of books in front of her and a pen in her hand. She glanced at me, her eyes vague.
‘Is it suppertime already?’
‘No – not yet. I’m going over to church for a while. Not for long.’
‘OK.’
‘You’ll be all right, my dear?’
She gave me a condescending smile, which said, Of course I’ll be all right. I’m not a baby. ‘I’ll start supper in about fifteen minutes.’
‘Thank you.’
Rosemary let her eyes drift back to her book. I envied her serenity. I wanted to say something to her but, as so often, I could not find the words. Instead I closed the door softly behind me, went downstairs and let myself out of the house and into the evening sunlight.
The Vicarage was next to the churchyard, separated from it by a high wall of crumbling eighteenth-century brick. I walked through the little garden to our private gate, a relic of the old house, which gave access from the grounds of the Vicarage to the churchyard. As I opened the gate the church was suddenly revealed, framed in the archway.
Most of the exterior of the St Mary Magdalene was of brick, and in this light it looked particularly lovely: the older bricks of the sixteenth-century rebuilding had weathered to a mauve colour, while the eighteenth-century work was a contrasting russet; and together the colours made the church glow and gently vibrate against the blue of the sky. Housemartins darted round the tower.
I closed the gate behind me. Traffic rumbled a few yards to the left on the main road and there was a powerful smell of diesel fumes in the air. I caught sight of a shadow flickering through the grass near the gate to the road. I was just in time to see Audrey’s cat slipping behind a gravestone.
I walked slowly round the east end to the south door on the other side. On my way I passed the steps leading down to the Youlgreave vault beneath the chancel. The iron gate was rusting and the steps were cracked and overgrown with weeds. No one had been interred there for almost fifty years. The last Youlgreave to die, Sir George, had been killed in the Pacific in 1944, and his body had been buried at sea. I noticed there were grey feathers scattered on the bottom step, immediately in front of the iron gate, where no weeds grew. I wondered if Audrey’s cat was in the habit of dismembering his kills there.