ANDREW TAYLOR
THE JUDGEMENT OF STRANGERS

DEDICATION

For Val and Bill

EPIGRAPH

‘Cursed is he that perverteth the judgement of the stranger, the fatherless, and widow.’

from the Service of Commination, in the office

for Ash Wednesday in The Book of Common Prayer.

‘The Manor of Roth is not mentioned in the Domesday Book …’

Audrey Oliphant, The History of Roth

(Richmond, privately printed 1969), p. 1.

Then darkness descended; and whispers defiled The judgement of stranger, and widow, and child …

.....

With flames to the flesh, with brands to the burning, As incense to heav’n the soul is returning

from ‘The Judgement of Strangers’ by the Reverend

Francis St. J. Youlgreave in The Four Last Things

(Gasset & Lode, London, 1896)

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

Epilogue

About the Author

Author’s Note

Praise

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

MAP

1

We found the mutilated corpse of Lord Peter in the early evening of Thursday the 13th August, 1970. He was the first victim of a train of events which began towards the end of the previous summer when I met Vanessa Forde – or even before that, with Audrey Oliphant and The History of Roth.

Every parish has its Audrey Oliphant – often several of them; their lives revolve around the parish church, and in one sense the Church of England revolves around them. It was inevitable that she should be a regular visitor at the Vicarage, and it shamed me that I did not always welcome her as warmly as I should have done. It also irritated me that the Tudor Cottage cat treated the Vicarage as his second home, braving the traffic on the main road to get there.

‘Miss Oliphant practically lives here,’ said my daughter Rosemary at the end of one particularly lengthy visit. ‘And if she doesn’t come herself she sends her cat instead.’

‘She does an awful lot for us,’ I pointed out. ‘And for the parish.’

‘Dear Father. You try and find the best in everyone, don’t you?’ Rosemary looked up at me and smiled. ‘I just wish she would leave us alone. It’s much nicer when it’s just the two of us.’

Audrey was in her late forties and unmarried. She had lived in Roth all her life. Her house, Tudor Cottage, was on the green – on the north side between Malik’s Minimarket and the Queen’s Head. Its front garden, the size of a large bedspread, was protected from the pavement by a row of iron railings. Beside the gate there was a notice, freshly painted each year:

YE OLDE TUDOR TEA ROOM

(Est. 1931)

PROPRIETOR: MISS A.M. OLIPHANT

Telephone: Roth 6269

Morning Coffee – Light Meals – Cream Teas

Parties By Appointment

I had known the place for ten years, and in that time trade, though never brisk, had steadily diminished. This gave Audrey ample opportunity to read enormous quantities of detective novels and to throw herself into the affairs of the parish.

One evening in the spring of 1969, she appeared without warning on my doorstep.

‘I’ve just had the most wonderful idea.’

‘Really?’

‘I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’ she asked, initiating a ritual exchange of courtesies, a secular versicle and response.

‘Not at all.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Nothing that can’t wait.’ I owed her this polite fiction. ‘I was about to have a break.’

I took her into the sitting room and, making a virtue from necessity, offered sherry. Audrey was a small woman, rather plump, with a face whose features seemed squashed; it was as though her skull, while still malleable, had been compressed in a vice – thus the face would have been splendidly in proportion if the eyes and the cheekbones and the corners of the mouth had not been quite so close together.

She took a sip of sherry, allowing the wine to linger in her mouth before she swallowed it. ‘I was in the library this afternoon and some schoolchildren came in to ask Mrs Finch if she had any books on local history. And it turns out that there’s a certain amount on neighbouring towns and villages. But very little on Roth itself.’

She paused for another sip. I lit a cigarette, guessing what was coming.

‘Then it came to me in a flash.’ Her heavy jowls quivered with excitement. ‘Why not write a history of Roth? I’m sure lots of people would like to read one. And nowadays so many people are living here who have no idea what the real Roth is like.’

‘What an interesting idea. You must let me know if there is anything I can do. The parish records, perhaps? I wonder if Lady Youlgreave might have some useful material. She –’

‘I’m so glad,’ Audrey interrupted. ‘I hoped you’d want to help. Actually, a collaboration was what I had in mind. It seemed to me that we would be ideally suited.’

‘I wouldn’t say –’

‘Besides,’ she rushed on, ‘the history of the village can’t be separated from the history of the church and the parish. We could even have a chapter on famous inhabitants of the past. Francis Youlgreave, for example. What do you think?’

‘I’m not sure how much use I’d be. After all, you’re the one with the local knowledge. Then there’s the question of time …’

I watched the excitement draining from Audrey’s face like water from a bath. I felt ashamed of myself and also irritated with her. Why did she insist on calling Roth a village? It was a suburb of London, similar in all essentials to a dozen others. Most of its inhabitants had their real lives elsewhere. In Roth they merely serviced their bodily needs, watched television and on Sundays played golf or cleaned their Ford Cortinas.

‘I quite understand.’ Audrey stared at her empty glass. ‘Just an idea.’

‘I wonder,’ I went on, trying to lessen the guilt that crept over me, ‘would it be a help if I were to glance through your first draft?’

She looked up, her face glowing. ‘Yes, please.’

The decision was made. If Audrey had not decided to write her history of Roth, none of what followed might have happened. It is tempting to blame her – to blame anyone but myself. But fate has a way of finding its agents: if Audrey had not volunteered to be the handmaid of Providence, then someone else would have come forward.

Audrey completed her little book early in August 1969. In a flutter of excitement, she brought me the manuscript, which was written almost illegibly in pencil. It was mercifully short, largely because Roth had relatively little history. Since the Middle Ages, the parish had been overshadowed by its larger neighbours. It was too far from the Thames, and later too far from the railway.

Still, to judge from the old photographs which Audrey had found, Roth had been a pretty place, and remarkably unspoilt, despite the fact that it was only thirteen miles from Charing Cross. All that had changed in the 1930s, when the Jubilee Reservoir was built: seven hundred acres of the parish, including the northern part of the village itself, were drowned beneath seven billion gallons of water, sacrificed to assuage the endless thirst of the inhabitants of London.

I soon discovered that Audrey’s spelling and grammar were shaky. The text consisted of a patchwork of speculations – Who knows? Perhaps Henry VIII stayed at the Old Manor House on his way to Hampton Court – and quotations lifted, often inaccurately, from books she had found in the library. I persuaded her to have the manuscript typed, and managed – diplomatically, I hoped – to arrange for the typist quietly to incorporate some of my corrections. I then went through the typed draft with Audrey and revised it once more. By now it was early September.

‘We must find a publisher,’ Audrey said.

‘Perhaps you could have it privately printed?’

‘But I am sure it would interest readers all over the country,’ she said. ‘In many ways the story of Roth is the story of England.’

‘In a sense, yes, but –’

‘And, David,’ she interrupted. ‘I want all the royalties to go to the restoration fund. Every last penny. So we must find a proper publisher who will pay us lots of money. Why don’t you come to supper tomorrow and we’ll discuss it? I’d like to cook you a meal to say thank you for all the work you’ve done.’ She tapped me playfully on the arm. ‘You look as if you need a good feed.’

‘Unfortunately I can’t manage tomorrow. The Trasks have asked me to dinner. Some other time, perhaps.’

‘Some other time,’ she echoed.

I was relieved that the Trasks had given me such an impregnable excuse. As a consequence of my accepting their invitation, two people died, a third went to prison, and a fourth was admitted to a hospital for the insane.

2

The Trasks lived in a rambling Victorian rectory cheek by jowl with a rambling Victorian church. I knew from past visits that both the church and the house were warm and welcoming. Ronald did a very good job. His congregations were considerably larger than average.

I parked on the gravelled forecourt in front of the house. Two other cars were already there: an Austin Cambridge and a dark-green Daimler. The front door opened before I had reached it. Ronald beamed at me. I was wearing my clerical suit and a dog collar, but he was in mufti – rather a good dark suit, which made him look slimmer than he was, and a striped tie. He was shorter than me but much broader, and he gave the impression of never walking when he could trot. This evening, everything about him sparkled, from his black shoes to his fair hair. Aftershave wafted out to meet me.

‘David!’ He clapped me on the shoulder and drew me into the house. ‘Good to see you. Come and meet the others.’

The hall was full of flowers and smelled strongly of polish. Ronald led me into the drawing room, which was at the back of the house. It was a warm evening. The French windows were open and a knot of people was standing on the terrace beyond.

Cynthia Trask came forward to greet me. She was square and trim, like her brother, and she wore a severe blue dress like a uniform. While Ronald fetched me a glass of sherry, she steered me towards the other guests.

I knew one of the couples – Victor and Mary Thurston. Thurston had made a great deal of money selling cabin cruisers for use on the river, and now he and his wife ‘served the community’ as they liked to put it, which meant sitting on a variety of committees; she preferred philanthropic causes and he concentrated on political ones. Thurston was a councillor and, now he was on the Planning Committee, wielded considerable power.

I had not met the other couple before – they turned out to be the headmaster of one of the local grammar schools and his wife; she was one of Ronald’s churchwardens.

The first thing I noticed about the fifth guest was her hair, which was curly and the colour of glossy chestnuts. As she turned towards me, the evening sun swung behind her, giving her head a nimbus of flame. She was wearing a long dress of thin cotton, with full sleeves and a ruffled neck. For an instant, the setting sun made her dress almost transparent. Her body darkened. I saw the inside of her legs up to her crotch. The dress might as well have been invisible.

‘Here we are, David.’ Ronald was at my elbow with a glass of sherry. ‘Vanessa, I don’t think you know David Byfield. David, this is Vanessa Forde.’

We shook hands. I was momentarily unnerved by the sudden lust I felt. This was a familiar problem. Over the years I had learned to ride the feeling as a surfer rides a wave, until its force diminished. One way to avoid wallowing in sensation was to concentrate on observation. In a few seconds I had noticed that Vanessa had a pleasant face, attractive rather than beautiful, with a high colour and curving nose.

‘Let me get you another drink.’ Ronald snatched the empty glass from Vanessa’s hand. ‘Gin and lemon?’

She nodded, smiling. Ronald darted towards the drinks trolley, which was just inside the drawing room. There was something very boyish about him that evening. At times I glimpsed the adolescent he must once have been; and if I am honest, I should add that I preferred what I glimpsed to the senior churchman he had now become.

I offered Vanessa a cigarette. She accepted, bending forward to receive a light. I saw that she wore a wedding ring. For an instant, I smelt her perfume. It reminded me of one my wife used to wear. We spoke simultaneously, diving into the conversation like swimmers at the start of a race.

‘Do you live locally?’

‘Do you have a parish –?’

We smiled at each other and any awkwardness dissolved.

‘After you, Mrs Forde.’

‘Vanessa, please. To answer your question, I live in Richmond.’

I noticed that she had said I rather than we. ‘And to answer yours, I’m the vicar of Roth.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Do you know Roth, then?’

‘A little.’ She stared up at me and smiled. ‘Does that surprise you?’

I smiled back. ‘Its identity tends to get swamped by its neighbours. A lot of people think the name is familiar but have no idea where it is.’

‘I went there a few years ago to see the church. Rather an interesting one. You’ve got that medieval panel painting over the chancel, haven’t you? The Last Judgement?’

‘That’s right. With scenes from the life of Christ underneath.’

‘One gin and lemon coming up,’ said Ronald, materializing at Vanessa’s elbow and handing her the glass with a flourish. He had a similar glass in his own hand, which he raised. ‘Chin-chin.’ He beamed at me. ‘David, I know Cynthia wanted to have a word with you about Rosemary.’

‘My daughter,’ I explained to Vanessa.

‘Our niece dropped in last week,’ Ronald went on. ‘She left school at the end of last term and she brought over a trunk of stuff for us to dispose of. Clothes, I suppose. I think there’s a lacrosse stick, too. Cynthia wondered if anything might come in useful for Rosemary.’

I smiled and thanked him. There was a time when I would have objected to being on the receiving end of the Trasks’ philanthropy. Now I knew better. Pride is a luxury and children become increasingly expensive as they grow older. At this moment Cynthia reached us, bearing bowls of peanuts and olives.

‘Did I hear Rosemary’s name?’ she asked. ‘Such a delightful girl. How’s she liking school now?’

‘Much better, I think.’ I turned to Vanessa. ‘When Rosemary first went away, she disliked it very much.’ In fact, she had twice tried to run away. ‘But she seems to have settled down in the last year.’

‘She will be taking her A levels next summer,’ said Cynthia, with a hint of interrogation in her voice, indicating that this was an inspired guess rather than a statement of fact.

She detached me from Vanessa and Ronald and talked to me for a moment or two about Rosemary. We decided – or rather Cynthia decided – that she would send Ronald over with the trunk during the next week or so. Anything we did not want for Rosemary could go to our next jumble sale. Having settled the matter, she steered me away from Vanessa and Ronald, who were talking together at the far end of the terrace, and skilfully inserted me into a conversation between Victor Thurston and the headmaster’s wife.

I did not get another opportunity to talk to Vanessa for some time. While we were on the terrace I glanced once or twice in the direction of her and Ronald, still talking, their faces intent. At one point I noticed her shaking her head.

Eventually we went through to the dining room, and Cynthia steered us to our places at the round table. Vanessa was diametrically opposite me. There was a substantial flower arrangement in the middle of the table, so I caught only the occasional glimpse of her. I was sitting between Cynthia and the headmaster’s wife.

Ronald said grace. The meal which followed was uncharacteristically elaborate. Melon with Parma ham gave way to coq au vin. Ronald, usually the most careful of hosts, kept refilling our glasses with an unfortunate Portuguese rosé. The headmaster’s wife tried delicately to interrogate me about Ronald. It soon became clear that she knew the Trasks rather better than I did. At last she gave up and spoke across me to Cynthia.

‘My dear, this is wonderful. How on earth do you manage to prepare a meal like this and go out to work?’

‘I only work in the mornings. I find there’s ample time if one is sufficiently organized.’

‘I didn’t know you had a job,’ I said.

‘I work for Vanessa. I’m her secretary, really. Jolly interesting.’

I wondered whether that explained the special effort the Trasks were making. Was Cynthia hoping for promotion?

‘I suppose you spend most of your time dealing with authors and so on,’ said the headmaster’s wife. ‘It must be marvellous. Do you have lots of bestsellers?’

Cynthia shook her head. ‘We tend to do fairly specialized non-fiction titles. Actually, I think Royston and Forde’s out-and-out bestseller was something called Great Engines of the 1920s.’

Ronald and Thurston talked to Vanessa for much of the meal. When we left the table, Mary Thurston seized her husband’s arm as if to re-establish her claim to him. Ronald went to the kitchen to make coffee.

‘Ronald bought a machine when he was in Italy last year,’ Cynthia explained to the rest of us. ‘He does like to use it when we have guests. Too complicated for me, I’m afraid.’ She added as an afterthought, ‘Super coffee.’

We went back to the drawing room to wait for it. Vanessa came over to me.

‘I don’t suppose you could give me another cigarette, could you? I’ve mislaid mine. So silly.’ She smiled up at me. Even then I think I knew that Vanessa was never silly. She was many things, but not that. She sat down on the sofa and waved to me to join her.

‘Are you in Ronald’s – whatever it is? – area?’

‘He’s my archdeacon, yes. So in a sense he’s my immediate boss.’

I did not want to talk about Ronald. He and I did not get on badly – not then – but we had little in common, and both of us knew it.

‘Cynthia tells me you’re a publisher.’

She squeezed her eyes together for an instant, as though smoke had irritated them. ‘By default.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘It was my husband’s firm.’ She stared down at her cigarette. ‘He founded it with a friend from Oxford. It never made much money for either of them, but he loved it.’

‘I didn’t realize. I’m sorry.’

‘I – I assumed Ronald might have mentioned it to you. No reason why you should know. Charles died three years ago. A brain tumour. One of those ghastly things that come out of a clear blue sky. I’ve taken over his part in the business. Needs must, really. I needed a job.’

‘Do you enjoy it?’

She nodded. ‘I’d always helped Charles on the editorial side. Now I’m learning a great deal about production.’ She smiled towards Cynthia, who was embroiled with the headmaster’s wife. ‘Cynthia keeps me in order.’

‘At dinner Cynthia said she thought Great Engines of the 1920s was your bestselling book.’

‘She’s perfectly right. Though I have my hopes of The English Cottage Garden. It’s been selling very steadily since it came out last year.’ She drew on her cigarette. ‘In fact, our real bestseller in terms of copies sold is probably one of our town guides. The Oxford one. We do quite a lot of that sort of thing – that’s where the bread and butter comes from.’

At that moment, Ronald appeared in the doorway bearing a large silver tray. ‘Coffee, everybody,’ he announced in a voice like a fanfare. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’ He advanced into the room, his eyes searching for Vanessa.

‘One of my parishioners has written a book,’ I said to her.

Vanessa looked warily at me. ‘What sort of book?’

‘It’s a history of the parish. Not really a book. I’d say it’s about ten thousand words.’

‘How interesting.’

She glanced at me again, and I think a spark of shared amusement passed between us. She knew how to say one thing and mean another.

‘She’s looking for a publisher.’

‘Sugar, Vanessa?’ boomed Ronald. ‘Cream?’

‘In my experience, most authors are.’ She smiled up at Ronald. ‘Just a dash of cream, please, Ronnie.’

Ronnie?

‘She believes it might appeal to readers all over the country,’ I continued. ‘Not just to those who know Roth.’

‘The happy few?’

I smiled. It was a novelty to have someone talk to me as a person rather than as a priest. ‘Could you recommend a publisher she could send it to?’ I stared at the curve of her arm and noticed the almost invisible golden hairs that grew on the skin. ‘Someone who would have a look at the book and give a professional opinion. I imagine you haven’t got the time to look at stray typescripts yourself.’

‘Vanessa’s always looking at stray typescripts,’ Ronald said, and laughed. ‘Or looking for them.’

‘I might be able to spare five minutes,’ she said to me, her voice deadpan.

Once again, she glanced at me, and once again the spark of amusement danced between us.

‘Brandy, anyone?’ Ronald enquired. ‘Or what about a liqueur?’

For the rest of the evening Vanessa talked mainly to Ronald, Cynthia and Victor Thurston. I was the first to leave.

3

The following Monday, I looked up Royston and Forde in the directory and phoned Vanessa at her office. Cynthia Trask answered the phone. Oddly enough this took me by surprise. I had completely forgotten that she worked there.

‘Good morning, Cynthia. This is David Byfield.’

‘Hello, David.’

After a short pause I said, ‘Thank you so much for Friday.’

‘Not at all. Ronald and I enjoyed it.’

I wondered if I should have sent flowers or something. ‘I don’t know if Vanessa mentioned it, but one of my parishioners has written a book. She volunteered to have a look at it.’

‘I’ll see if she’s engaged,’ Cynthia said.

A moment later, Vanessa came on the line. She was brisk with me, her voice sounding much sharper on the telephone. She was busy most of the day, she was afraid, but might I be free for lunch? Ninety minutes later, we were sitting opposite each other in a café near Richmond Bridge.

The long, clinging dress she had worn at the Trasks’ on Friday had given her a voluptuous appearance. Now she was another woman, dressed in a dark suit, and with her hair pulled back: slimmer, sharper and harder.

The typescript of The History of Roth was in a large, brown envelope on the table between us. I had picked it up from Audrey on my way to Richmond. (‘So kind of you, David. I’m so grateful.’)

Vanessa did not touch the envelope. She picked at her sandwich. A silence lay between us, and as it grew longer I felt increasingly desolate. The friendly intimacy that had flourished so briefly between us on Friday evening was gone. I found it all too easy, on the other hand, to think of her as a desirable woman. I had been a fool to come here. I was wasting her time and mine. I should have sent the typescript in the post.

‘Do you visit many churches?’ I asked, to make conversation. ‘You mentioned our panel paintings on Friday.’

Vanessa fiddled with one of the crumbs on her plate. ‘Not really. I wanted to see Roth because of the connection with Francis Youlgreave.’

‘The poet?’ My voice sounded unnaturally loud. ‘He’s buried in the vault under the chancel.’

‘He deserves a few paragraphs in here.’ Vanessa tapped the envelope containing the typescript. ‘Quite a sensational character, by all accounts.’

‘Audrey does mention him, but she’s very circumspect about what she says.’

‘Why?’

‘There’s a member of the family still living in Roth. I think her husband was the poet’s great-nephew. Audrey didn’t want to give people the wrong idea about him.’

‘Defile their judgement, as it were.’ Vanessa smiled across the table at me. Then she quoted two lines from the poem that had found its way into several anthologies. It was usually the only poem of his that anyone had read.

‘Then darkness descended; and whispers defiled

The judgement of stranger, and widow, and child.’

‘Just so.’

‘Does anyone remember him in the village?’

‘Roth isn’t that sort of place. There aren’t that many people left who lived there before the last war. And Francis Youlgreave died before the First World War. Have you a particular reason for asking?’

She shrugged. ‘I read quite a lot of his verse when I was up at Oxford. Not a very good poet, to be frank – all those jog-trot rhythms can be rather wearing. But he was interesting more for what he was and for who he knew than for what he wrote.’

‘Not a very nice man, by all accounts. Unbalanced.’

‘Yes, but rather fascinating.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’m awfully sorry, David, but I’ve got to rush.’

I concealed my disappointment. I paid the bill and walked with her back to the office where I had left my car.

‘Would you like to telephone me tomorrow?’ she asked. ‘I should have had time to look at the book by then.’

‘Of course. At the office?’

‘I’ll probably read it at home, actually.’

‘What time would suit you?’

‘About seven?’

She gave me her number. We said goodbye and I drove back to Roth, feeling profoundly dissatisfied. I had made a fool of myself in more ways than one. I had expected more, much more, from my lunch with Vanessa – though quite what, I did not know. I was aware, too, that there was something absurd in a middle-aged widower acting in the way that I was doing. It was clear that she saw me as an acquaintance and that by looking at the typescript she was merely doing me – and Audrey – a good turn from the kindness of her heart.

Still, I thought, at least I had a reason to telephone Vanessa tomorrow evening.

In the event, however, I did not telephone Vanessa on Tuesday evening. This was because on Tuesday afternoon I received an unexpected and unpleasant visit from Cynthia Trask.

4

Cynthia arrived without warning in the late afternoon.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ she said briskly. ‘But I happened to be passing, and I thought this might be a good opportunity to drop in those odds and ends from my niece.’

In the back of her Mini Traveller were two suitcases and a faded army kitbag containing the lacrosse stick and other sporting impedimenta. I carried them into the house and called Rosemary, who was reading in her room. She did not appear to hear.

‘I won’t disturb her, if you don’t mind,’ I said. ‘She’s working quite hard this holiday. Would you like some tea?’ It would have been churlish not to offer Cynthia tea but I was mildly surprised that she so readily accepted. She followed me into the kitchen which, like the rest of the house, was cramped, characterless and modern.

‘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.

I went into the porch. The door was unlocked – I left the church open during the day, though after two robberies I now locked it at night. Inside, the air smelled of polish, flowers and – very faintly – of incense, which I used two or three times a year. The church was small, almost cosy, with a two-bay nave and a low chancel. Above the chancel arch were the panel paintings, their colours murky; the pictures looked as if they were wreathed in smoke. I walked slowly to my stall in the choir. I sat down and began to say the Evening Office.

Usually the building itself had a calming effect on me, but not this evening. At times I found my mind drifting away from the words of the office and had to force myself to concentrate. Afterwards I simply sat there and stared at the memorial tablets on the wall opposite me. It was as though my will had abdicated.

Vanessa and Ronald, I thought over and over again. I wondered if I would be invited to the wedding and, if so, whether I should accept. By that time, perhaps it would no longer matter. I was aware, of course, that I was making too much of this. On the basis of two short meetings, I could hardly claim to have become deeply attached to Vanessa. The real problem was that, quite unintentionally, she had aroused my own long-suppressed needs. At the bottom of my unhappiness was a feeling of profound dissatisfaction with myself.

Time passed. Slowly the light slipped away from the interior of the church. It was by no means dark – merely less bright than it had been before. The memorial tablets were made of pale marble that gleamed among the shadows. Gradually there crept up on me the feeling that I was being watched.

I stared with increasing concentration at the tablet directly in front of me, which belonged to Francis Youlgreave, the poor, mad poet-priest. Everything led back to Vanessa. How odd that she should be interested in him. I remembered the lines that she had quoted to me at lunchtime. I could not recall the words exactly, something about darkness, I thought, and about whispers that defiled the judgement.

Defiled. It suddenly seemed to me that I was irredeemably defiled, not just by the events of the last few days, but by the active choice of someone or something outside me.

At that moment, I heard laughter.

It was a high, faint sound, like the rustle of paper or a whistle without a tune. I thought of wind among the leaves, of beating wings and long beaks, of geese I had seen as a boy flying high above Essex mudflats. Sadness swept over me. I fought it, but it turned to desolation and then to something darker.

‘No. Stop. Please stop.’

I was on my feet. The paralysis had dissolved. I stumbled down the church. The sound followed me. I put my hands over my ears but I could not block it out. The church was no longer a place of peace. I had turned it into a mockery of its former self. Defiled. I had defiled the church even as I had defiled myself.

I struggled with the latch of the south door. I was in such a state that it seemed to me that someone on the other side was holding it down. At last I wrenched it up and pulled at the door. I almost fell into the porch beyond.

Something moved on my right. Audrey’s cat, I thought for a split second, her wretched, bloody cat. Then I realized that I was wrong: that a person was sitting on the bench in the corner by the church notice board. I had a confused impression of pale clothing and a golden blur like a halo at the head. Then the figure stood up.

‘Hello, Father,’ said my daughter Rosemary. Her voice changed, filling with concern. ‘What’s wrong?’

5

At half past nine the following morning there was a ring on the doorbell. I was alone in the house. Rosemary had caught the bus to Staines to go shopping. I had managed to shave, but the only breakfast I had been able to face was a cigarette and a cup of coffee.

I found Audrey hovering on the doorstep, her body poised as if ready to dart into the hall at the slightest encouragement. I kept my hand on the door and tried to twist my mouth into a smile.

‘Sorry to disturb you, David. I just wondered what the verdict was.’

‘What verdict?’

‘You’re teasing me,’ she said in an arch voice. ‘The verdict on the book, of course.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ Indeed I was, though not for the reasons Audrey assumed. ‘I’ve not been able to talk to Mrs Forde about it yet.’

She stuck out her lower lip, which was already pinched and protuberant, and increased her resemblance to a disappointed child. ‘I thought you were going to phone her yesterday evening.’

‘Yes, I’d hoped to, but – but there was a difficulty.’

‘Oh. I see.’

‘I’ll try to talk to her today.’ I smiled, trying to soften the effect of my words. ‘I’ll phone you as soon as I hear something, shall I?’

‘Yes, please.’ She turned to go. She had taken only a couple of steps towards the road when she stopped and turned back to me. ‘David?’

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you for all you’re doing.’

My conscience twisted uncomfortably. Audrey smiled and walked away. I went back to my study and stared at the papers on my desk. Concentration demanded too much effort. I had slept badly, with dreams that hovered near the frontier of nightmare but did not actually cross it. One of them had been set in a version of Rosington, where Rosemary and I had lived before we came to Roth – when my wife Janet was still alive. I had not dreamed of Rosington for years. Vanessa had unsettled me, breached the defences I had built up so laboriously. (And I had been all too willing to have them breached.)

Audrey’s visit reminded me that I still had the problem of contacting Vanessa. I should have phoned her, as arranged, the previous evening, but I had spent much longer in the church than I had intended. By the time I had returned to the Vicarage the last thing I had wanted to do was talk to anyone, let alone Vanessa. I had persuaded myself without much trouble that it was too late to phone.

On the other hand, I could not run away from Vanessa for ever, or at least not until I had sorted out the business of Audrey’s wretched book. I did not want to phone her at the office, however, because that would mean having to run the gauntlet of Cynthia. I remembered that Cynthia worked only in the mornings. In that case, I thought, I would phone Vanessa this afternoon.

Now that I had made the decision, I felt slightly happier. I returned to the accounts I had abandoned the previous evening. But I had not got very far when there was another ring at the doorbell. I swore under my breath as I went into the hall. I opened the door. There was Vanessa herself.

I stared at her, fighting a rising tide of disbelief. She was wearing her dark suit and she had the envelope containing Audrey’s typescript clamped to her chest.

‘Hello, David.’

‘Vanessa – do come in.’

‘I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’

‘Only the accounts. And I was about to make some coffee, in any case. But I hope you haven’t come all this way to bring me back the book?’

She shook her head. ‘I had to visit a bookshop in Staines this morning. I’m on my way back.’

She followed me into the hall, and I led her through to the sitting room.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t phone yesterday evening.’

‘That’s all right.’ She looked out of the window, not at me. ‘I didn’t expect you to phone me back so late.’

‘I’m sorry?’

She turned from the window and looked at me. ‘Didn’t you get my message?’

‘What message?’

‘I phoned last night. I had another phone call, and I – I thought you might not have been able to get through. I left a message saying I’d phoned.’

‘I didn’t receive it.’ I thought of Rosemary waiting for me in the porch of the church. ‘You must have spoken to my daughter. I expect it slipped her mind.’

She smiled. ‘Young people have more important things to think about than relaying phone messages.’

‘Yes.’ I did not know what to say next. I knew I should make the coffee, but I did not want to leave Vanessa. I cleared my throat. ‘I saw Cynthia yesterday afternoon. She brought those things round for Rosemary.’

‘I know. She told me … I think she may have misled you about something.’

I stared at her. We were still standing in the middle of the room.

Vanessa picked at a piece of fluff on her sleeve. ‘I believe she gave you to understand that Ronnie and I are engaged.’

I nodded.

‘Well, that’s not true. Not exactly.’

I patted the pockets of my jacket, looking for the cigarettes I had left in the study. ‘There’s no need to tell me this. It’s none of my business.’

‘Cynthia and Ronnie were very good to me when Charles died.’

‘I’m sure they were.’

‘You don’t understand. When something like that happens you feel empty. And you can become very dependent on those who help you. Emotionally, I mean.’

‘I do understand,’ I said. ‘Only too well.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She bit her lip. ‘Ronnie told me about your wife.’

‘It’s all right. It was a long time ago.’

‘One gets so wrapped up in oneself.’

‘I know.’

‘Listen, two weeks ago, Ronnie asked me to marry him. I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t say no, either. I said I needed time. But he thought I was eventually going to say yes. To be perfectly honest, I thought I was going to say yes. In a way I felt that he deserved it. And I’m fond of him … Besides, I don’t like living on my own.’

‘I see. Won’t you sit down?’

I was not sure whether she was talking to me as a man or as a priest – a not uncommon problem in the Anglican Church. When we sat down, somehow we both chose the sofa. This had a low seat – uncomfortably low for me. It caused Vanessa’s skirt to ride up several inches above the knees. The sight was distracting. She snapped open her handbag and produced a packet of cigarettes, which she offered to me. I found some matches in my pocket. Lighting the cigarettes brought us very close together. There was now no doubt about it: as far as I was concerned, the man was well in ascendancy over the priest.

‘Ronnie hoped to announce our engagement on Friday evening,’ she continued. ‘I think that’s why he wanted the dinner party – to show me off. I didn’t want that.’ She blew out a plume of smoke like an angry dragon. ‘I didn’t like it, either. It made me feel like a trophy or something. And then this morning, Cynthia told me she’d been to see you, told me what she’d said. I was furious. I’m not engaged to Ronnie. In any case, it’s nothing to do with her.’

‘No doubt she meant well,’ I said, automatically clinging to the saving grace of good intentions.

‘We all mean well,’ Vanessa snapped back. ‘Sometimes that’s not enough.’

We smoked in silence for a moment. I glanced at her stockinged legs, dark and gleaming, and quickly looked away. She fiddled with her cigarette, rolling it between finger and thumb.

‘The book,’ I said, my voice a little hoarse. ‘What did you think of it?’

‘Yes.’ She seized the envelope as if it were a life belt. ‘There’s a good deal of interesting material in it. Particularly if you know Roth well. But I’m afraid it’s not really suitable for us.’

‘Is it worth our trying elsewhere?’

‘Frankly, no. I don’t think any trade publisher would want it. It’s not a book for the general market.’

‘Too short,’ I said slowly, ‘and too specialized. And not exactly scholarly, either.’

She smiled. ‘Not exactly. If the author wants to see it in print, she’ll probably have to pay for the privilege.’

‘I thought you might say that.’

‘She’ll probably blame my lack of acumen,’ Vanessa went on cheerfully. ‘A lot of authors appear to believe that there are no bad books, only bad publishers.’

‘So what would you advise?’

‘There’s no point in raising her hopes. Just say that I don’t think it’s a commercial proposition, and that I advised investigating the cost of having it privately printed. She could sell it in the church, in local shops. Perhaps there’s a local history society which would contribute towards the costs.’

‘Is there a printer you could recommend?’

‘You could try us, if you like. We have our own printing works. We could certainly give you a quotation.’

‘Really? That would be very kind.’

Simultaneously we turned to look at one another. At that moment there was a sudden movement at the window. Both our heads jerked towards it as if tugged by invisible strings, as if we were both conscious of having done something wrong. I felt a spurt of anger against the intruder who had broken in on our privacy. Audrey’s cat was on the sill, butting his nose against the glass.

Vanessa said, ‘Is that – is that yours?’

‘No – he belongs to Audrey, in fact – the person who wrote the book.’

‘Oh.’ She looked relieved. ‘My mother was afraid of cats. She was always going on about how insanitary they were. How they brought germs into the house, as well as the things they caught.’ She glanced sideways at me. ‘Do you think these things can be hereditary?’

‘Phobias?’

‘Oh, it’s not a phobia. I just don’t particularly like them. In fact, that one’s rather dapper. It looks as though he’s wearing evening dress.’

She was right. The cat was black, except for a triangular patch of white at the throat and more white on the paws. As we watched, he opened his mouth, a pink-and-white cavern, and miaowed, the sound reaching us through the open fanlight of the window.

‘He’s called Lord Peter,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘As in Dorothy L. Sayers. Audrey reads a lot of detective stories. His predecessor was called Poirot. And before him, there were two others – before my time: one was called Brown after Father Brown, and the first of the line was Sherlock.’

‘I can’t say I have much time for detective stories.’

‘Nor do I.’

I repressed the uncharitable memory of the time that Audrey had lent me Sayers’s The Nine Tailors, on the grounds that it was not only great literature but also contained a wonderfully convincing portrait of a vicar. I stood up, went to the window and waved at Lord Peter, trying to shoo him away. I did not dislike cats in general, but I disliked this one. His constant intrusions irritated me, and I blamed him for the strong feline stench in my garage. Ignoring my wave, he miaowed once more. It occurred to me that I felt about Lord Peter as I often felt about Audrey: that she was ceaselessly trying to encroach on our privacy at the Vicarage.

‘David?’

I turned back to Vanessa, ripe and lovely, looking up at me from the sofa. ‘What is it?’

‘To go back to – to Ronnie. It’s just – it’s just that I’m not sure I’m the right person to marry a clergyman.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not a regular churchgoer. I don’t even know if I believe in God.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, knowing that it did, though not perhaps in the way she thought. ‘In any case, belief in God comes in many forms.’

‘But his parish, the bishop –’

‘I am sure Ronald thought of all that. I don’t mean to pry, but surely it came up when he asked you to marry him?’

She nodded. ‘He said that God would find a way.’

There was a silence. Lord Peter rubbed his furry body against the glass and I wanted to throw the ashtray at him. I felt a rush of anger towards Ronald, joining the other emotions which were swirling round the sitting room. If I stayed here, they would suck me down.

I moved to the door. ‘I’ll make the coffee. I won’t be a moment.’

I slipped out of the room without giving her time to answer. In the hall I discovered that my forehead was damp with sweat. The house seemed airless, a redbrick coffin with too few windows. I went into the kitchen and opened the back door. While I was waiting for the kettle to boil I stared at my shrunken garden.

It was then that the idea slithered like a snake into my mind, showing itself openly for the first time: if anyone was going to marry Vanessa Forde, why shouldn’t it be me?

6

Vanessa did not linger over coffee. It was as if she were suddenly desperate to leave. We made no arrangement to see each other again. During the afternoon, I called at Tudor Cottage and relayed her opinion of The History of Roth to its author. Audrey’s reaction surprised me.

‘But what do you think, David?’

‘I think Vanessa’s opinion is worth taking seriously. After all, it’s her job. And it’s true that The History of Roth is rather short for a book.’

‘Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps it would be simpler to have it privately printed. And then we wouldn’t have to share the profits with the publisher. I wonder how much it would cost?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Would you mind asking Mrs Forde on my behalf? I’d feel a little awkward doing it myself. I haven’t even met her.’

Audrey continued to play the unwitting Cupid. After discussing the pros and cons exhaustively with me, she entrusted Royston and Forde with the job of printing The History of Roth. Audrey asked me to – in her words – ‘see it through the press’ for her. The typescript provided a reason for Vanessa and me to see each other without commitment on the one hand or guilt on the other; she was doing her job and I was helping a friend. We spent several evenings editing the book, and several more proofreading it. Usually we worked at her flat.

Vanessa cooked me meals on two occasions. Once I took her out to a restaurant in Richmond to repay her hospitality. I remember a candle in a wax-covered Chianti bottle, its flame doubled and dancing in her eyes, a red-and-white checked tablecloth and plates of gently steaming spaghetti bolognese.

‘It’s a shame there’s not more material about Francis Youlgreave,’ she said on that evening. ‘And why’s Audrey so keen to avoid giving offence?’

Because she’s a prude and a snob. I said, ‘When she was growing up, the Youlgreaves were the local grandees.’

‘So you had to treat even their black sheep with respect? That may have been true once, but does she need to be so coy now?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s her book, I suppose.’

‘I’ve been rereading Francis’s poems. He’d be an interesting subject for a PhD. Or even a biography. Now that would be commercial.’

‘Warts and all?’

Vanessa grinned across the table. ‘If you took away the warts, you wouldn’t have much left. Nothing interesting, anyway.’

There was no element of deception about our meetings. Vanessa never mentioned Ronald, and nor did I. I assumed that an engagement was no longer on the cards. The Trasks knew that Vanessa and I were working together on The History of Roth. What Cynthia thought about it, I did not know; but Ronald took it in his stride.

‘And how’s the book coming along?’ he asked me at one of the committee meetings he so frequently convened. He smiled, and his white teeth twinkled at me. ‘Vanessa’s told me all about it. I’m grateful, actually. She’s seeing another clergyman in a secular context, as it were. It’s so easy for lay people to assume we’re all dog collars and pious sentiments.’

When two people work together towards a shared goal, it can create a powerful sense of intimacy. Vanessa and I did not hurry, and at least the little book benefited from the attention we lavished on it. It was a happy time because we discovered that many of our tastes coincided – books, paintings, humour. Being a parish priest can be a lonely job, and her friendship became precious to me. Two months later, by the middle of November 1969, I decided to ask Vanessa to marry me.

It was not a decision I reached hastily, or rashly. It seemed to me that there was a host of reasons in favour. Vanessa was an intelligent and cultivated woman, a pleasure to be with. I was lonely. Rosemary would benefit from having an older woman in the family. The Vicarage needed the warmth Vanessa could bring to it. The wife of a parish priest can act as her husband’s eyes and ears. Last but not least, I urgently wanted to go to bed with Vanessa.

I was very calm. How things had altered, I thought smugly, since I had last considered marriage. Before proposing to Vanessa, I discussed my intentions with my spiritual director, Peter Hudson. He was an old friend who had helped me cope in those dark days after I left Rosington.

Peter was a few years older than I and was now a suffragan bishop in the neighbouring diocese of Oxford. At that time, he lived in Reading, which meant I could easily drive over and see him.

The Hudsons had a modern house on an estate. Peter’s wife June welcomed me with a kiss, gave each of us a cup of coffee and shooed us upstairs to his little study. The atmosphere was foggy with pipe smoke.

‘You’re looking well,’ he said to me. ‘Better than I’ve seen you for some time.’

‘I’m feeling better.’

‘What do you want to talk about?’

‘I’m thinking of getting married again.’

Peter was in the act of lighting his pipe. He cocked an eye at me through the smoke. ‘I see.’

‘Her name’s Vanessa Forde. She’s a widow, and a partner in a small publishing company in Richmond. She’s thirty-nine.’

Smoke billowed from the pipe, but Peter said nothing. He was a small, sturdily built man who carried too much surplus fat. His plump face was soft-skinned and relatively unlined, with heavy eyebrows sprouting anarchically like twin tangles of barbed wire. He was the only person in the world who knew how ill suited I was to celibacy.

‘Tell me more.’

I told him how I had met Vanessa and how working on The History of Roth had brought us together. I outlined my reasons for asking her to marry me.

‘I realize it must seem selfish of me,’ I said, ‘but I know she doesn’t want to marry Ronald. And I honestly think I could make her happy. And she could make me happy, for that matter.’

‘Do you love her?’

‘Of course I do. I’m not pretending it’s a grand passion – I’m middle-aged, for heaven’s sake. But there’s love, nonetheless, and liking, shared interests, affection –’

‘And sexual attraction, at least on your side.’

‘Yes – and why not? Surely that’s one of the purposes of marriage?’

‘You’re not allowing that to warp your judgement? Ten years is a long time. The pressure can build up.’

I thought of Peter’s comfortable wife and wondered briefly if the pressure had ever built up in their marriage. ‘I’m making allowances for that.’

We sat in silence for a moment. The sound of the television filtered up the stairs.

‘Other things worry me,’ he said at last. ‘It seems that there’s a very real danger that this will cause trouble between you and Ronald Trask.’

‘She and Ronald were never engaged.’

‘That’s not the point, David.’

‘He misunderstood the situation completely. One could even argue that he took advantage of her emotional vulnerability after Charles’s death. Unconsciously, of course.’

‘Unlike you?’

‘I’m not proposing to take advantage of her. Any more than she’d be taking advantage of me. Besides, Vanessa’s husband died three years ago. Plenty of time to get back on to an even keel.’

‘Your wife died more than ten years ago. Do you feel you were on an even keel after three years?’

‘That was different.’

‘I see.’

‘Ronald will understand,’ I said with an optimism I did not feel. ‘I’ll make every effort to talk to him. I wouldn’t want to let the problem fester, naturally.’

‘Do you think it’s possible to build happiness on the unhappiness of others?’

‘Is that worse than making all three of us unhappy?’

Peter nodded, not conceding the point but merely passing on to the next difficulty. ‘And there’s the consideration that if a priest marries, he should choose someone who shares his beliefs. Otherwise it can put an intolerable strain on the marriage.’

‘Vanessa was confirmed in her teens. She’s not an atheist or anything like that. She’s simply not a committed churchgoer.’ I drew in a deep breath. ‘Quite apart from anything else, I think that this may be a way of bringing her back to the Church.’

‘I shall pray that you’re right.’

‘You don’t sound very hopeful.’

‘It’s merely that, if I were you, I’d tread very carefully. In my experience, a priest should be a husband to his wife. If he tries to be a priest as well, it can cause difficulties. It’s like a doctor treating his own family. There are two sets of priorities, and they can conflict.’

‘I take your point. I wouldn’t be heavy-handed about it. But Vanessa’s the sort of person who might well appreciate the more intellectual side of post-war theology. Tillich, Bultmann, Bonhoeffer – people like that. They could offer her a way back. I doubt if she’s even read Honest to God. I know you and I don’t altogether see eye to eye with –’

‘David?’

‘Sorry. I’m rambling, aren’t I?’

‘Have you discussed the idea with Rosemary?’

‘Not yet.’ I hesitated, knowing Peter was waiting for more. ‘All right. I suppose I’m putting it off. I could have mentioned it when she was home at half-term.’

‘You’ve obviously made up your mind that you’re going to ask Vanessa to marry you,’ he said slowly. ‘Very well. But in that case, I think you should tell Rosemary as soon as possible. She’s bound to feel upset. And if she hears the news from somebody else, think how much more damaging it will be.’

‘You’re right, of course.’

‘You may even find Rosemary’s jealous.’

I smiled. ‘Surely not.’

Even as I spoke I remembered the evening in September when I experienced that unpleasant, dreamlike state in church: the sense of being defiled; the wings of geese flying over the mudflats of an estuary. On the same evening Vanessa had phoned the Vicarage and left a message for me with Rosemary. I had never discovered why Rosemary had failed to pass on the message. I wondered now if she really had forgotten. But what other reason could there be?

The following evening I went to Vanessa’s flat in Richmond. She led me into the living room. A parcel was lying on the coffee table.

‘The book’s ready,’ she told me. ‘I’ve brought advance copies for you and Audrey.’

‘Damn the book,’ I said. ‘Will you marry me?’

She frowned, staring up at me. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t want to?’

‘It’s not that. But I’m not sure I’d be right for you.’

‘You would. I’m sure.’

‘But I’d be no good as a vicar’s wife. I just don’t have the credentials. I don’t want to have them.’

‘I don’t want to marry a potential vicar’s wife.’ I touched her arm and saw her eyes flicker, as if I had given her a tiny electric shock. But she did not move away. ‘I want to marry you.’

We stood there for a moment. She shivered. I slipped my arm round her and kissed her cheek. I felt as clumsy as a teenager with his first girl. She pulled away. Hands on hips, she glared at me with mock anger.

‘If I’d known this wretched book would lead to …’

‘Will you marry me? Will you?’

‘All right.’ Her face broke into a smile. ‘As long as I don’t have to be a vicar’s wife. I ought to get that in writing.’

I put my arms around her and we kissed. My body reacted with predictable enthusiasm. I wondered how on earth I could restrain myself from going further until we were married.

Afterwards, Vanessa brought out a bottle of Cognac, and we drank a toast to our future. Like teenagers, we sat side by side on the sofa, holding hands and talking almost in whispers, as though there were a danger that someone might overhear and envy our happiness.

‘I can’t believe you’ve agreed,’ I said.

‘I can’t understand how you’ve managed to stay single for so long. You’re far too good-looking to be a clergyman, let alone an unmarried one.’ She stared at me, then giggled. ‘You’re blushing.’

‘I’m not used to receiving compliments from beautiful women.’

Simultaneously we picked up our glasses. I think we were both a little embarrassed. The small talk of lovers is difficult when you’re out of practice.

Vanessa cradled the glass in her hand. ‘You’ve made me realize how lonely I’ve been,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ve had more fun with you in the last two months than I’ve had in the last three years put together.’

‘Fun?’

Her fingers tightened on mine. ‘When you’re living on your own, there doesn’t seem much point in having fun. Or a sense of humour. Or going out for a meal. Didn’t you find that?’

Didn’t, not don’t. ‘Yes. But surely Ronald –’

‘Ronnie’s kind. He’s a good man. I like him. I trust him. I’m grateful to him. I almost married him. But he isn’t much fun.’

‘I don’t know if I am, either,’ I felt obliged to say. ‘Not on a day-to-day basis.’

‘We’ll see about that.’ She turned her head to look at me. ‘You know what I really love about you? You make me feel it’s possible to change.’

My inclination was to announce our engagement at once. It gave me great joy, and I wanted to share it. Vanessa, however, thought we should keep it to ourselves until we had told Ronald and Rosemary.

Her delay in telling Ronald almost drove me frantic. I could not feel that she was truly engaged to me until she had made it clear to Ronald that she would never be engaged to him. She did not tell him until ten days after she had agreed to marry me. They went out to lunch, in the Italian restaurant where we had talked about the warts of Francis Youlgreave.

Vanessa did not tell me what they said to each other and I did not ask. But the next time I saw Ronald, which was at a diocesan meeting, he was cool to the point of frostiness. He did not mention Vanessa and nor did I. I had told Peter that I would talk to Ronald, but when it came to the point I could not think of anything to say. He was businesslike and polite, but I sensed that any friendship he had felt for me had evaporated.

His sister Cynthia was less restrained. I had been up to London one afternoon, and I met her by chance at Waterloo Station on my way back home. We saw each other at the same time. We were walking across the station concourse and our paths were due to converge in a few seconds. Her chin went up and her mouth snapped shut. She veered away. After a few paces, she changed her mind and swung back towards me.

‘Good afternoon, Cynthia. How are you?’

She put her face close to mine. Her cheeks had flushed a dark red. ‘I think what you did was despicable. Taking advantage.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘I hope you pay for it.’

She turned away and, head down, ploughed into a crowd of commuters and vanished from my sight. I told myself that she was being unreasonable: that the fact of the matter was that Vanessa had chosen to marry me of her own free will; and there was no element of deception about it.

7

The round of parish work continued. Normally I would have welcomed much of this. Week by week, the rhythm of the church services made a familiar context for my life, a public counterpart to my private prayers. Weddings, baptisms and funerals punctuated the pattern.

There was satisfaction in the sense that one was carrying on a tradition that had developed over nearly two thousand years; that, through the rituals of the church, one was building a bridge between now and eternity. Less satisfying was the pastoral side of parish work – the schools and old people’s homes, visiting the sick, sitting on the innumerable committees that a parish priest cannot avoid.

At that time Roth Park, once the big house of the village, was still an old people’s home. The Bramleys, who owned it, were running it down, which meant that their guests were growing older, fewer and more decrepit. Their policy had an indirect effect on me. There was a run of deaths at Roth Park in those winter months of 1969–70, which became cumulatively depressing. Sometimes, when I walked or drove up to the house, I felt as though I were being sucked towards a dark vacuum, a sort of spiritual black hole.

Rosemary came back from school for the Christmas holidays. She had changed once again. Boarding school had that effect: each time she came home she was a stranger. I was biased, of course, but to me it seemed that she was becoming increasingly good-looking, developing into one of those classic English beauties, with fair hair, blue eyes, a high brow and regular features.

On her first evening home, I told her about Vanessa while we were washing up after supper. While I was speaking I could not see her face because her head was bent over the cutlery drawer. Afterwards she said nothing. She stacked the spoons neatly in the drawer, one inside the other.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘I hope …’ She paused. ‘I hope you’ll be happy.’

‘Thank you, my dear.’

Her words were formal, even stilted, but they were better than I had feared.

‘When will you get married?’

‘After Easter. Before you go back to school. Talking of which, Vanessa and I were wondering if you would like to transfer to somewhere nearer for your last year in the sixth form. So you could be a day girl.’

‘No.’

‘It’s entirely up to you. You may well feel it would be less upheaval to stay where you are. Where you are used to your teachers, among your own friends, and so on.’

Rosemary gathered a pile of plates and crouched beside a cupboard. One by one, with metronomic regularity, she put them away. I still could not see her face.

‘Rosie,’ I said. ‘I know this isn’t easy for you. It’s been just the two of us for a very long time, hasn’t it?’

She said nothing.

‘But Vanessa’s not going to be some sort of wicked stepmother. Nothing’s going to change between you and me. Really, darling.’

Still she did not speak. I crouched beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘So?’ I prompted. ‘What do you think?’

At last she looked at me. To my horror, I saw that her eyes had filled with tears. Her face was red. For a moment she was ugly. The tea towel slipped from her hands and fell to the floor.

‘What does it matter?’ she said. ‘We’ll end up doing what you want. We always do.’

Christmas came and went. Vanessa and I announced our engagement, causing a flurry of smiles and whispers among my congregation. We also agreed a date for our wedding – the first Saturday after Easter, shortly before Rosemary would be due to return to school for the summer term.

‘Couldn’t we make it sooner?’ I said to Vanessa when we were discussing the timing.

‘I think we’re rushing things as it is.’

I ran my eyes over her. Desire can produce a sensation like hunger, an emptiness that cries out to be filled. ‘I wish we didn’t have to wait. I’d like to feast on you. Does that sound absurd?’

She smiled at me and touched my hand. ‘By the way, I had a chat with Rosemary. It was fine – she seemed very pleased for us.’

‘I’m so glad.’

‘“I do hope you and Father will be very happy.” That’s what she said.’ Vanessa frowned. ‘Does she always call you “Father”? It sounds so formal.’

‘Her choice, as far as I remember. She always did, right from the start.’

‘Is it because you’re a priest? She’s very interested in the trappings of religion, isn’t she?’

‘It must be because of growing up in the odour of sanctity.’

Vanessa laughed. ‘I thought clergymen weren’t meant to make jokes about religion.’

‘Why not? God gave us a sense of humour.’

‘To go back to Rosemary: she’s agreed to be maid of honour.’

The wedding was going to be in Richmond, and Peter Hudson had agreed to officiate. The only other people we invited were two of Vanessa’s Oxford friends and a couple called the Appleyards, whom I had known since my days at Rosington. Early in the New Year, Vanessa and I spent a day with the Appleyards.

‘They seemed quite normal,’ she said to me as I drove her back to Richmond. ‘Not a dog collar in sight. Have you known them long?’

‘For years. Henry rented a room from us when we were living in Rosington.’

‘So they knew Janet?’

‘Yes.’

We drove in silence for a moment. I had told Vanessa about Janet, my first wife. Not everything, of course, but everything that mattered to Vanessa and me.

‘Michael’s nice,’ she went on. ‘How old is he?’

‘Coming up to eleven, I think.’

‘You’re fond of him, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’ After a pause I added, ‘He’s my godson,’ though that did not explain why I liked him. Michael and I rarely had much to say to each other, but we had been comfortable in each other’s company ever since he was a toddler.

‘Do they ever come to Roth?’

‘Occasionally.’

‘We must ask them to stay.’

I glanced at her and smiled. ‘I’d like that.’

She smiled back. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it? It’s not just us getting married. It’s our friends and relations as well.’

In January, Rosemary went back to school. Vanessa spent the following Saturday with me. Now we had the house to ourselves, we wanted to plan what changes would have to be made when Vanessa moved in; we had thought it would be tactless to do this while Rosemary was there. After lunch, the doorbell rang. I was not surprised to find Audrey Oliphant on the doorstep.

She wore a heavy tweed suit, rather too small for her, and a semi-transparent plastic mac, which gave her an ill-defined, almost ghostly appearance.

‘So sorry to disturb you,’ she said. ‘I wondered if you’d seen Lord Peter recently.’

Vanessa came out of the kitchen and said hello.

‘Lord Peter – my cat,’ Audrey explained to her. ‘Such a worry. He treats the Vicarage as his second home.’

I leant nonchalantly against the door, preventing her from stepping into the hall. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t seen him.’

‘The kettle’s on,’ Vanessa said. ‘Would you like a cup?’

Audrey slipped past me and followed her into the kitchen. ‘Lord Peter has to cross the main road to get here. The traffic’s getting worse and worse, especially since they started work on the motorway.’

‘Cats are very good at looking after themselves,’ Vanessa said.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’ No doubt accidentally, Audrey tried to insinuate a hint of indecency, the faintest wiggle of the eyebrows, into this possibility. ‘I’m sure you were in the middle of something.’

‘Nothing that wasn’t going to wait until after tea,’ Vanessa said. ‘How’s the book selling?’

‘Splendidly, thank you. We sold sixty-three copies over Christmas. I knew people would like it.’

‘Why don’t you take Audrey’s coat?’ Vanessa suggested to me.

‘People like to know about their own village,’ Audrey continued, allowing me to peel her plastic mac away from her. ‘I know there have been changes, but Roth really is a village still.’

Changes? A village? I thought of the huge reservoir to the north, of the projected motorway through the southern part of the parish, and of the sea of suburban houses that lapped around the green. I carried the tea tray into the sitting room.

‘There’s not much of it left,’ Vanessa said. ‘The village, I mean.’

Audrey stared at Vanessa. ‘Oh, you’re quite wrong. Let me show you.’ She beckoned Vanessa towards the window, which looked out over the drive, the road and the green. ‘That’s the village.’ She nodded to her left, towards the houses of Vicarage Drive. ‘Here and on the left: the Vicarage and its garden. And then on our right is St Mary Magdalene, and beyond that the gates to Roth Park and the river. If you cross the stone bridge and carry on down the road, we’ll come to the Old Manor House, where Lady Youlgreave lives.’

‘I must take you to meet Lady Youlgreave,’ I said to Vanessa, attempting to divert the flow. ‘In a sense she’s my employer.’

It was no use. Audrey had now turned towards the green and was pointing at Malik’s Minimarket, which stood just beside the main road at the western end of the north side of the green.

‘That was the village forge when I was a girl.’ She laughed, a high and irritating sound. Her voice acquired a faint sing-song cadence. ‘Of course, it’s changed a bit since then, but haven’t we all? And beside it is my little home, Tudor Cottage. (I was born there, you know, on the second floor. The window on the left.) Then there’s the Queen’s Head. I think part of their cellars are even older than Tudor Cottage.’

We all stared at the Queen’s Head, a building that had been modernized so many times in the last hundred years that it had lost all trace of its original character. The pub now had a restaurant which served steaks, chips and cheap wine. At the weekend, the disco in the basement attracted young people from miles around, and there were regular complaints – usually from Audrey – about the noise.

‘The bus shelter wasn’t there when I was a girl,’ Audrey went on. ‘We had a much nicer one, with a thatched roof.’

The bus shelter stood on the green itself, opposite the pub. It was a malodorous cavern, whose main use was as the wet-weather headquarters of the teenagers who lived on the Manor Farm council estate.

‘And of course Manor Farm Lane has seen one or two changes as well.’ Audrey pointed at the road to the council estate which went off at the north-east corner of the green and winced theatrically. ‘We used to have picnics by the stream beyond the barn,’ she murmured in a confidential voice. ‘Just over there. Wonderful wild flowers in the spring.’

The barn was long gone, and the stream had been culverted over. Yet she gave the impression that for her they were still vivid, in a way that the council estate was not. For her the past inhabited the present and gave it meaning.

The finger moved on to the east side of the green, to a nondescript row of villas from the 1930s, defiantly suburban, to the library and the ramshackle church hall. ‘There was a lovely line of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cottages over there.’

Vanessa’s eyes met mine. I opened my mouth, but I was too late. Audrey’s head had swivelled round to the south side, to the four detached Edwardian houses whose gardens ran down to the Rowan behind them. Two of them had been cut up into flats; one was leased as offices; and the fourth was where Dr Vintner lived with his family and had his surgery.

‘A retired colonel in the Bengal Lancers used to live in the one at the far end. There was a nice solicitor in Number Two. And the lady in Number Three was some sort of cousin of the Youlgreaves.’

Black fur streaked along the windowsill. A paw tapped the glass. Lord Peter had come to join us.

‘Oh look!’ Audrey said. ‘Isn’t he clever?’ She bent down, bringing her head level with Lord Peter’s. ‘You knew Mummy was coming to look for you, didn’t you? So you came to find Mummy instead.’

8

In February, Lady Youlgreave demanded to see Vanessa. She invited us to have a glass of sherry with her after church on Sunday.

When I told Vanessa, her face brightened. ‘Oh good.’

‘I wish she’d chosen some other time.’ Sunday was my busiest day.

‘Do you want to see if we can rearrange it?’

‘It would be diplomatic to go,’ I said. ‘No sense in upsetting her.’

‘I’ll take you out to lunch afterwards. As a reward.’

‘Why are you so keen to meet her?’

‘Not exactly keen. Just interested.’

‘Because of the connection with Francis Youlgreave?’

Vanessa nodded. ‘It’s not every day you have a chance to meet the surviving family of a dead poet.’ She glanced at me, her face mischievous. ‘Or for that matter the man responsible for the care of his earthly remains.’

‘No doubt that was the only reason you wanted to marry me?’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers. Anyway, I want to meet Lady Youlgreave for her own sake. Isn’t she your boss?’

The old woman was the patron of the living, which meant that on the departure of one incumbent she had the right to nominate the next. The practice was a quaint survival from the days when such patronage had been a convenient way to provide financially for younger sons. In practice, such private patrons usually delegated the choice to the bishop. But Lady Youlgreave had chosen to exercise the right when she nominated me. An ancient possessiveness lingered. Though she rarely came to church, I had heard her refer to me on more than one occasion as ‘my vicar’.

On Sunday, swathed in coats, Vanessa and I left the Vicarage. We walked arm in arm past the railings of the church and crossed the mouth of the drive to Roth Park. The big wrought-iron gates had stood open for as long as anyone could remember. Each gate contained the letter Y within an oval frame. On the top of the left-hand gatepost was a stone fist brandishing a dagger, the crest of the Youlgreaves. On the right-hand gatepost there was nothing but an iron spike.

‘What happened to the other dagger?’ Vanessa asked.

‘According to Audrey, some teddy boys pulled it down on New Year’s Eve. Before my time.’

Vanessa stopped, staring up the drive, a broad strip of grass and weeds separating two ruts of mud and gravel, running into a tunnel of trees which needed pollarding. The house could not be seen from the road.

‘It looks so mournful,’ she said.

‘The Bramleys haven’t spent much money on the place. I’m told they’re trying to sell it.’

‘Is there much land left?’

‘Just the strip along the drive, plus a bit near the house. Most of it was sold off for housing.’

‘Sometimes it all seems so pointless. Spending all that time and money on a place like that.’

I glanced at the gates. ‘How old are they, do you think?’

‘Turn of the century? Obviously made to last for generations.’

‘Designed to impress. And the implication was that the house and the park would be in your descendants’ hands for ever and ever.’

‘That’s what’s so sad,’ Vanessa said. ‘They were building for eternity, and seventy years later eternity came to an end.’

‘Eternity was even shorter than that. The Youlgreaves had to sell up in the nineteen-thirties.’

‘I remember. It was in Audrey’s book. And they hadn’t been here for very long, had they? Not in dynastic terms.’

We walked across the bridge. A lorry travelling north from the gravel pits splashed mud on my overcoat. Vanessa peered down at the muddy waters beneath. The Rowan was no more than a stream, but at this point, though shallow, it was relatively wide.

We came to the Old Manor House, a long low building separated from the road by a line of posts linked by chains. This side of the house had a two-storey frontage with six bays. The windows were large and Georgian. At some point the facade had been rendered and painted a pale greeny-blue, now fading and flaking with age. There were darker stains on the walls where rainwater had cascaded out of the broken guttering.

Between the posts and the house was a circular lawn, around which ran the drive. The grass was long and lank, and there were drifts of leaves against the house. Weeds sprouted through the cracks of the tarmac. In the middle of the lawn was a wooden bird table, beneath which sat Lord Peter, waiting. Hearing our footsteps, the cat glanced towards us and moved away without hurrying. He slithered through the bars of the gate at the side of the house and slid out of sight behind the dustbins.

‘That cat’s everywhere,’ Vanessa said. ‘Don’t you find it sinister?’

I glanced at her. ‘No. Why?’

‘No reason.’ She looked away. ‘Is that someone waving from the window? The one at the end?’

An arm was waving slowly behind the ground-floor window to the far left. We walked towards the front door.

‘How do you feel about dogs, by the way?’

‘Fine. Why?’

‘Lady Youlgreave has two of them.’

I tried the handle of the front door. It was locked. There was a burst of barking from the other side. I felt Vanessa recoil.

‘It’s all right. They’re tied up. We’ll have to go round to the back.’

We walked down the side of the house, past the dustbins and into the yard at the rear. There was no sign of Lord Peter. The spare key was hidden under an upturned flowerpot beside the door.

‘A little obvious, isn’t it?’ Vanessa said. ‘It’s the first place anyone would look.’

We let ourselves into a scullery which led through an evil-smelling kitchen towards the sound of barking in the hall.

Beauty and Beast were attached by their leads to the newel post at the foot of the stairs. Beauty was an Alsatian, so old she could hardly stand up, and almost blind. Beast was a dachshund, even older, though she retained more of her faculties. She, too, had her problems in the shape of a sausage-shaped tumour that dangled from her belly almost to the floor. When she waddled along, it was as though she had five legs. When I had first come to Roth, the dogs and their owner had been much more active, and one often met the three of them marching along the footpaths that criss-crossed what was left of Roth Park. Now their lives had contracted. The dogs were no longer capable of guarding or attacking. They ate, slept, defecated and barked.

‘This way,’ I said to Vanessa, raising my voice to make her hear above the din.

She wrinkled her nose and mouthed, ‘Does it always smell this bad?’

I nodded. Doris Potter, who was one of my regular communicants, came in twice a day during the week, and an agency nurse covered the weekends. But they were unable to do much more than look after Lady Youlgreave herself.

The hall was T-shaped, with the stairs at the rear. I led the way into the right-hand arm of the T. I tapped on a door at the end of the corridor.

‘Come in, David.’ The voice was high-pitched like a child’s.

The room had once been a dining room. When I had first come to Roth, Lady Youlgreave had asked me to dinner, and we had eaten by candlelight, facing each other across the huge mahogany table. Then as now, most of the furniture was Victorian, and designed for a larger room. We had eaten food which came out of tins and we drank a bottle of claret which should have been opened five years earlier.

For an instant, I saw the room afresh, as if through Vanessa’s eyes. I noticed the thick grey cobwebs around the cornices, a bird’s nest among the ashes in the grate, and the dust on every horizontal surface. Time had drained most of the colour and substance from the Turkish carpet, leaving a ghostly presence on the floor. The walls were crowded with oil paintings, none of them particularly old and most of them worth less than their heavy gilt frames. The exception was the Sargent over the fireplace: it showed a large, red-faced man in tweeds, Lady Youlgreave’s father-in-law, standing beside the Rowan with his large red house in the background and a springer spaniel at his feet.

Our hostess was sitting in an easy chair beside the window. This was where she usually passed her days. She spent her nights in the room next door, which had once been her husband’s study; she no longer used the upstairs. She had a blanket draped over her lap and a side table beside the chair. A Zimmer frame stood within arm’s reach. There were books on the side table, and also a lined pad on a clipboard. On a low stool within reach of the chair was a metal box with its lid open.

For a moment, Lady Youlgreave stared at us as we hesitated in the doorway. It was as though she had forgotten what we were doing here. The dogs were still barking behind us, but with less conviction than before.

‘Shut the door and take off your coats,’ she said. ‘Put them down. Doesn’t matter where.’

Lady Youlgreave had been a small woman to begin with, and now old age had made her even smaller. Dark eyes peered up at us from deep sockets. She was wearing a dress of some stiff material with a high collar; the dress was too large for her now, and her head poked out of the folds of the collar like a tortoise’s from its shell.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘This is a surprise.’

‘I’d like to introduce Vanessa Forde, my fiancée. Vanessa, this is Lady Youlgreave.’

‘How do you do. Pull up one of those chairs and sit down where I can see you.’

I arranged two of the dining chairs for Vanessa and myself. The three of us sat in a little semi-circle in front of the window. Vanessa was nearest the box, and I noticed her glancing into its open mouth.

Lady Youlgreave studied Vanessa with unabashed curiosity. ‘So. If you ask me, David’s luckier than he deserves.’

Vanessa smiled and politely shook her head.

‘My cleaning woman tells me you’re a publisher.’

‘Yes – by accident really.’

‘I dare say you’ll be giving it up when you marry.’

‘No.’ Vanessa glanced at me. ‘It’s my job. In any case, the income will be important.’

Lady Youlgreave squeezed her lips together. Then she relaxed them and said, ‘In my day, a husband supported a wife.’

‘I suppose I’ve grown used to supporting myself.’

‘And a wife supported her husband in other ways. Made a home for him.’ Unexpectedly, she laughed, a bubbling hiss from the back of her throat. ‘And in the case of a vicar’s wife, she usually ran the parish as well. You’ll have plenty to do here without going out to work.’

‘It’s up to Vanessa, of course,’ I said. ‘By the way, how are you feeling?’

‘Awful. That damned doctor keeps giving me new medicines, but all they do is bung me up and give me bad dreams.’ She waved a brown, twisted hand at the box on the stool. ‘I dreamt about that last night. I dreamt I found a dead bird inside. A goose. Told the girl I wanted it roasted for lunch. Then I saw it was crawling with maggots.’ There was another laugh. ‘That’ll teach me to go rummaging through the past.’

‘Is that what you’ve been doing?’ Vanessa asked. ‘In there?’

‘I have to do something. I never realized you can be tired and in pain and bored – all at the same time. The girl told me that the Oliphant woman had written a history of Roth. So I made her buy me a copy. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be.’ She glared at me. ‘I suppose you had a hand in it.’

‘Vanessa and I edited it, yes, and Vanessa saw it through the press.’

‘Thought so. Anyway, it made me curious. I knew there was a lot of rubbish up in the attic. Papers, and so on. George had them put up there when we moved from the other house. Said he was going to write the family history. God knows why. Literature wasn’t his line at all. Didn’t know one end of a pen from another. Anyway, he never had the opportunity. So all the rubbish just stayed up there.’

Vanessa leant forwards. ‘Do you think you might write something yourself?’

Lady Youlgreave held up her right hand. ‘With fingers like this?’ She let the hand drop on her lap. ‘Besides, what does it matter? It’s all over with. They’re all dead and buried. Who cares what they did or why they did it?’

She stared out of the window at the bird table. I wondered if the morphine were affecting her mind. James Vintner had told me that he had increased the dose recently. Like the house and the dogs, their owner was sliding into decay.

I said, ‘Vanessa’s read quite a lot of Francis Youlgreave’s verse.’

‘I’ve got a copy of The Four Last Things,’ Vanessa said. ‘The one with “The Judgement of Strangers” in it.’

Lady Youlgreave stared at her for a moment. ‘There were two other collections, The Tongues of Angels and Last Poems. He published Last Poems when he was still up at Oxford. Silly man. So pretentious.’ Her eyes moved to me. ‘Pass me that book,’ she demanded. ‘The black one on the corner of the table.’

I handed her a quarto-sized hardback notebook. The seconds ticked by while she opened it and tried to find the page she wanted. Vanessa and I looked at each other. Inside the notebook I saw yellowing paper, unlined and flecked with damp, covered with erratic lines of handwriting in brown ink.

‘There,’ Lady Youlgreave said at last, placing the open notebook on her side table and turning it so it was the right way up for Vanessa and me. ‘Read that.’

The handwriting was a mass of blots and corrections. Two lines leapt out at me, however, because they were the only ones which had no alterations or blemishes:

Then darkness descended; and whispers defiled

The judgement of stranger, and widow, and child.

‘Is that his writing?’ Vanessa asked, her voice strained.

Lady Youlgreave nodded. ‘This is a volume of his journal. March eighteen-ninety-four, while he was still in London.’ The lips twisted. ‘He was the vicar of St Michael’s in Beauclerk Place. I think this was the first draft.’ She looked up at us, at our eager faces, then slowly closed the book. ‘According to this journal, it was a command performance.’

Vanessa raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t understand.’

Lady Youlgreave drew the book towards her and clasped it on her lap. ‘He wrote the first half of the first draft in a frenzy of inspiration in the early hours of the morning. He had just had an angelic visitation. He believed that the angel had told him to write the poem.’ Once more her lips curled and she looked from me to Vanessa. ‘He was intoxicated at the time, of course. He had been smoking opium earlier that evening. He used to patronize an establishment in Leicester Square.’ Her head swayed on her neck. ‘An establishment which seems to have catered for a variety of tastes.’

‘Are there many of his journals?’ asked Vanessa. ‘Or manuscripts of his poems? Or letters?’

‘Quite a few. I’ve not had time to go through everything yet.’

‘As you know, I’m a publisher. I can’t help wondering if you might have the material for a biography of Francis Youlgreave there.’

‘Very likely. For example, his journal gives a very different view of the Rosington scandal. From the horse’s mouth, as it were.’ Her lips twisted and she made a hissing sound. ‘The trouble is, this particular horse isn’t always a reliable witness. George’s father used to say – but I mustn’t keep you waiting like this. You haven’t had any sherry yet. I’m sure we’ve got some somewhere.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.

‘The girl will know. She’s late. She should be bringing me my lunch.’

The heavy eyelids, like dough-coloured rubber, drooped over the eyes. The fingers twitched, but did not relax their hold of Francis Youlgreave’s journal.

‘I think perhaps we’d better be going,’ I said. ‘Leave you to your lunch.’

‘You can give me my medicine first.’ The eyes were fully open again and suddenly alert. ‘It’s the bottle on the mantelpiece.’

I hesitated. ‘Are you sure it’s the right time?’

‘I always have it before lunch,’ she snapped. ‘That’s what Dr Vintner said. It’s before lunch, isn’t it? And the girl’s late. She’s supposed to be bringing me my lunch.’

There was a clean glass and a spoon beside the bottle on the mantelpiece. I measured out a dose and gave her the glass. She clasped it in both hands and drank it at once. She sat back, still cradling the glass. A dribble of liquid ran down her chin.

‘I’ll leave a note,’ I said. ‘Just to say that you’ve had your medicine.’

‘But there’s no need to write a note. I’ll tell Doris myself.’

‘It won’t be Doris,’ I said. ‘It’s the weekend, so it’s the nurse who’ll come in.’

‘Silly woman. Thinks I’m deaf. Thinks I’m senile. Anyway, I told you: I’ll tell her myself.’

I could be obstinate, too. I scribbled a few words in pencil on a page torn from my diary and left it under the bottle for the nurse. Lady Youlgreave barely acknowledged us when we said goodbye. But when we were almost at the door, she stirred.

‘Come and see me again soon,’ she commanded. ‘Both of you. Perhaps you’d like to look at some of Uncle Francis’s things. He was very interested in sex, you know.’ She made a hissing noise again, her way of expressing mirth. ‘Just like you, David.’

9

Vanessa and I were married on a rainy Saturday in April. Henry Appleyard was my best man. Michael gave us a present, a battered but beautiful seventeenth-century French edition of Ecclesiasticus; according to the bookplate it had once been part of the library of Rosington Theological College.

‘It was his own idea,’ his mother whispered to me. ‘His own money, too. Quite a coincidence – Rosington, I mean.’

‘I hope it wasn’t expensive.’

‘Five shillings. He found it in a junk shop.’

‘We’ve been very lucky with presents,’ Vanessa said. ‘Rosemary gave us a gorgeous coffee pot. Denbigh ware.’

It was only then that I realized Rosemary was listening intently to the conversation. Later I noticed her examining the book, flicking through the pages as if they irritated her.

Vanessa and I flew to Italy the same afternoon. She had arranged it all, including the pensione in Florence where we were to stay. I had assumed that if we had a honeymoon at all it would be in England. But Florence had been Vanessa’s idea, and she was so excited about it that I did not have the heart to try to change her mind. Her plan had support from an unexpected quarter: when I told Peter Hudson, he said, ‘She’s right. Get right away from everything. You owe it to each other.’

It was raining in Florence, too. Not that it mattered. I wouldn’t have cared if the city had been buried beneath a pall of snow.

We had dinner in a little restaurant. Vanessa was looking alluring in a dark dress which set off her hair. We talked more about Rosemary than ourselves. I found myself glancing surreptitiously at my watch. I did not eat much, though I drank more than my fair share of the wine.

While we talked, I allowed my imagination to run free for the first time in ten years. I felt like a schoolboy at the end of term, or a convict coming to the end of his sentence.

As the meal progressed, we talked less. An awkwardness settled between us. My thoughts scurried to and fro as though I were running a fever. Once or twice, Vanessa looked at me and seemed about to say something.

The waiter asked if we would like coffee. I wanted to go back to our room, but Vanessa ordered coffee, with brandies to go with it. When the drinks came, she drank half her brandy in a few seconds.

‘David, I have to admit I feel a bit nervous.’

I leaned forward to light her cigarette. ‘Why?’

‘About tonight.’

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

‘We’ll get used to it,’ I said. ‘I dare say we’ll both find it strange.’ The urgency was building up inside me. I touched Vanessa’s hand. ‘Dearest – you know, there’s no reason why it needn’t be enjoyable as well.’

She ran her finger around the rim of her glass. ‘Charles didn’t seem – he didn’t want it very much. I don’t know why. Of course, it happened quite a lot when we were first married, but then it tailed off.’

‘You don’t have to tell me this.’

‘I want to explain. Charles used to stay up reading until all hours and often I was asleep when he came to bed. There just never seemed to be much opportunity.’

‘Darling,’ I said, ‘don’t worry.’

Her mouth twitched. ‘It’ll be all right on the night, will it?’

‘It will be. And then it will get better and better. Shall I get the bill?’

We walked back – sedately, arm in arm – to our pensione. There was a part of me that wanted to make love to her there and then: to pull her into an alley, push her up against a wall and tear my way into her clothes; and all the while the rain would patter on our heads and shoulders, the lamplight would glitter in the puddles, and the snarls and honks of the traffic would make a savage, distant music.

At the pensione, we collected our key and went upstairs. I locked the door behind us. I turned to find her standing in the middle of the room with her arms by her side.

‘Vanessa.’ My voice sounded like a stranger’s. ‘You’re lovely.’

I took off my jacket and dropped it on a chair. I went to her, put my hands on her shoulders, stooped and kissed her gently on the lips. Her lips moved beneath mine. I took off her coat and let it fall to the floor. I nibbled the side of her neck. My fingers found the fastening of her dress. I peeled it away from her. She stood there in her underwear, revealed and vulnerable. Her arms tightened round my neck.

‘I’m cold. Can we get into bed?’

I was a little disappointed: I had looked forward for months to slowly removing her clothes, to touching as much of her body as I could with my mouth. But all that could wait. She allowed me to help her quickly out of the rest of her clothes. She scrambled into bed and watched me as I quickly undressed. My excitement was obvious.

‘My handbag. I’ve got a cap.’

‘I’ve got a condom.’ I dropped my wallet on the bedside table and slithered into bed beside her.

There was goose flesh on her arm. It was hard to move much because she was holding me so tightly. The restraint somehow increased my excitement. I kissed her hair frantically.

‘I want you,’ I muttered. ‘Let me come in.’

She released her hold. I rolled over and found the condom in my wallet. My fingers were twice as clumsy as usual. At last I extracted the condom from its foil wrapper and rolled it over my penis. Vanessa was lying on her back, her legs slightly apart, watching me. There was a noise like surf in my ears.

‘Now, darling,’ I said. ‘Now, now.’

I climbed on top of her, using my knees to spread her legs wider. I abandoned all attempts at subtlety. I wanted one thing and I wanted it now. Vanessa stared up at me and put her hands on my shoulders. Her face was very serious. I lowered myself and thrust hard into her. She gasped and tried to writhe away but now my hands were on her shoulders and she could not move. I cried out, a groan that had been building up inside me for ten years. And then, with embarrassing rapidity, it was all over.

Trembling, I lay like a dead weight on top of her. In a moment, my trembling turned to sobs.

Once again her arms tightened around me. ‘Hush now. It’s all right. It’s over.’

It wasn’t over, not for either of us, and it wasn’t all right. Two hours later, I wanted her again. We were still awake, talking about the future. Vanessa agreed with me that it would obviously take time before we were sexually in tune with each other. That was to be expected. The second time everything happened more slowly. She lay there while I explored the hollows and curves of her body with my mouth. She let me do whatever I wanted, and I did.

‘Dearest David,’ she murmured, not once but many times.

After I had come again, I asked if there was anything I could do for her, and she said no, not this time. She went into the little bathroom. I lit a cigarette and listened to the rustle of running water. When she came back, she was wearing her nightdress and her face was pink and scrubbed. Soon we turned out the light and settled down for sleep. I rested my arm over her. I felt her hand take mine.

‘How was it?’ I asked. ‘Was it very painful?’

‘I’m a little sore.’

‘I’m sorry. I should have –’

‘It doesn’t matter. I want to make you happy.’

‘You do.’

We were in Florence for seven days. We looked at pictures, listened to music and sat in cafés. And we made love. Each night she lay there and allowed me to do whatever I wanted; and I did. On the seventh night I found her crying in the bathroom.

‘Darling, what’s wrong?’

She lifted her tear-stained face to me, a sight which I found curiously erotic. ‘It’s nothing. I’m tired, that’s all.’

‘Tell me.’

‘It’s a little painful. Sore.’

I smiled. ‘So am I, as a matter of fact. Not used to the exercise. I dare say we’ll soon toughen up. It’s like walking without shoes. One needs practice.’

She tried to smile, but it didn’t quite come off. ‘And my breasts are rather painful too. I think my period is due.’

‘We needn’t do anything tonight,’ I said, my disappointment temporarily swamped by my desire to be kind.

We sat in bed reading. She was the first to turn out the light. The evening felt incomplete. I lay on my back and stared up into the darkness.

‘Vanessa?’ I said softly. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do you feel about making love when you have a period?’ It had suddenly occurred to me that it might be several days before we had an opportunity to do it again. ‘I should say that I don’t mind it, myself.’

‘Actually, it’s very painful for me. I have heavy periods. I’m sorry.’

‘Not to worry,’ I said; I turned and put my arm around her. ‘It doesn’t matter. Sleep well. God bless.’

As usual, her hand gripped mine. I lay there, my penis as erect as a guardsman on parade, listening to the sound of her breathing.

10

After our return from Italy, Vanessa and I slipped into the new routine of our shared lives. We were even happy, in a fragmentary fashion, as humans are happy. Though what was in store was rooted in ourselves – in our personalities and our histories – we had no inkling of what was coming. As humans do, we kept secrets from ourselves, and from each other.

Towards the end of May, Peter and June Hudson came to supper. They were our first real guests. The meal was something of a celebration. Peter had been offered preferment. Though there had been no official announcement, he was to be the next Bishop of Rosington.

‘It’s a terrifying prospect,’ June said placidly. ‘No more lurking in the background for me. No more communing with the kitchen sink. I shall have to be a proper Mrs Bishop and shake hands with the County.’

‘You could be a Mrs Proudie,’ Vanessa suggested. ‘Rule your husband’s diocese with a rod of iron.’

‘It sounds quite attractive.’ She smiled at her husband. ‘I’m sure Peter wouldn’t mind. It would give the little woman something to do.’

The news unsettled me. I was not jealous of Peter’s preferment, though in the past I might have been. But inevitably the prospect of his going to Rosington awakened memories.

After the meal, June and Vanessa took their coffee into the sitting room while Peter and I washed up.

‘When will you go to Rosington?’ I asked.

‘In the autumn. October, probably. I shall take a month off in August and try to prepare myself.’

I squirted a Z of washing-up liquid into a baking dish. ‘I’ll miss you. And June.’

‘You and Vanessa must come and visit. At least there’ll be plenty of space.’

‘I don’t know. Going back isn’t always such a good idea.’

‘Sometimes staying away is a worse one.’

‘Damn it, Peter. You don’t make it easy, do you?’

He dried a glass with the precision he brought to everything. We worked in silence for a moment. It was a muggy evening and suddenly I felt desperate for air. I opened the back door to put out the rubbish. Lord Peter streaked into the kitchen.

Had I been by myself, I would have shouted at him. But I did not want Peter – my friend, not the cat – to think me more unbalanced than he already did. When I returned from the dustbin, I found that the two Peters had formed a mutual admiration society.

‘I didn’t know you liked cats.’

‘Oh yes. Is this one yours?’

‘It belongs to one of my parishioners.’

The cat purred. Peter, who was crouching beside it with a pipe in his mouth, glanced up at me. ‘You don’t like either of them very much?’

‘She’s a good woman. A churchwarden.’

‘Is that an answer?’

‘It’s all you’re going to get.’

‘I shall miss our regular meetings.’

‘So shall I.’

‘When I go to Rosington, you’ll need a new spiritual director.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘A change will do you good.’ Peter’s voice was suddenly stern, and the cat wriggled away from him. ‘Perhaps we know each other too well. A new spiritual director may be more useful to you.’

‘I’d rather continue with you.’

‘It just wouldn’t be practical. We shall be too far away from each other. You need to see someone regularly. Don’t you agree?’

‘Yes. If you say so.’ My voice sounded sullen, almost petulant.

‘I do say so. Like one of those high-performance engines, you need constant tuning.’ He smiled at me. ‘Otherwise you break down.’

11

If it hadn’t been for sex, or rather the lack of it, Vanessa and I would probably still be married. There was real friendship between us, and much tenderness. We filled some of the empty corners in each other’s lives. A semi-detached marriage? Perhaps. If so, the arrangement suited us both. Vanessa had her job, I had mine.

One of the things I loved most was her sense of humour, which was so dry that at times I barely noticed it. On one occasion she almost reduced Audrey to tears – of rage – by suggesting that we invited the pop group that played on Saturday nights at the Queen’s Head to perform at Evensong. ‘It would encourage young people to come to church, don’t you think?’

On another occasion, one afternoon early in August, Vanessa and I were in our little library on the green. Vanessa took her books to the issue desk, to be stamped by Mrs Finch, the librarian. Audrey was hovering like a buzzard poised to strike in front of the section devoted to detective stories.

‘I’d also like to make a reservation for a book that’s coming out in the autumn,’ Vanessa said in a clear, carrying voice. ‘The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer.’

I glanced up in time to see a look of outrage flash between Mrs Finch and Audrey.

Mrs Finch closed the last of Vanessa’s library books, placed it on top of the others and pushed the pile across the issue desk. She jabbed the book cards into the tickets; the cardboard buckled and creased under the strain. She directed her venom at inanimate objects because by and large she was too timid to direct it at people.

While Vanessa was filling in the reservation card, I joined her at the issue desk to have my own books stamped. Audrey swooped on us; today her colour was high, perhaps because of the heat. ‘So glad I caught you,’ she said, her eyes flicking from me to Vanessa. ‘I wanted a word about the fete.’

I did not dare look at Vanessa. The annual church fete was a delicate subject. It was held in my garden on the last Saturday in August. Audrey had organized it for the past nine years. Although she would almost certainly have resisted any attempt to relieve her of the responsibility, she felt organizing the church fete was properly the job of the vicar’s wife. She had made this quite clear to both Vanessa and me in a number of indirect ways in the past few weeks.

Vanessa, on the other hand, was determined not to act as my unpaid curate in this capacity or in any other, and I respected her for the decision. We had agreed this before our marriage. She had a demanding and full-time job of her own, and had little enough spare time as it was: I could not expect her suddenly to take on more work, even if she had wanted to.

This year we had another problem to deal with. This was the suburbs, so many of our patrons came in cars. In recent years, the Bramleys had allowed us to use their paddock, a field which lay immediately behind the church and the Vicarage, as a car park. Unfortunately, they had suddenly left Roth Park at the beginning of June. They had sold the house and grounds without telling anyone. Bills had not been paid. There were rumours – relayed by Audrey – that litigation was pending.

The new owner of Roth Park had not yet moved in, so we had not been able to ask whether we could have the paddock. It would not be easy to find an alternative.

‘Time’s beginning to gallop,’ Audrey told us. ‘We really must put our thinking caps on.’

‘Perhaps they could park in Manor Farm Lane,’ I suggested.

‘But they’d have to walk miles. Besides, it’s not a very safe place to leave cars. We have to face it: without the paddock, we’re hamstrung. I even rang the estate agents. But they were most unhelpful.’

‘We’ve still got several weeks. And if the worst comes to the worst, perhaps we can do without a car park.’

‘Quite impossible,’ Audrey snapped. ‘If people can’t park their cars, they simply won’t come.’

It wasn’t what she said – it was the way in which she said it. Her tone was almost vindictive. In the silence, Audrey looked from Vanessa to me. Audrey’s face was moist and pink. Mrs Finch studied us all from her ringside seat from behind the issue desk. The library was very quiet. A wasp with a long yellow-and-black tail flew through the open doors into the library and settled on the edge of the metal rubbish bin. Lorries ground their way down the main road. The heat was oppressive.

Audrey snorted, making a sound like steam squirting from a valve, relieving the pressure of her invisible boiler. She turned and dropped the novels she was carrying on to the trolley for returned books.

‘I’ve got a headache,’ she said. ‘Not that any of you need concern yourselves about it. I shall go home and rest.’

Mrs Finch and Vanessa began to speak at once.

‘My mother always said that a cold flannel and a darkened room …’ began Mrs Finch.

Vanessa said, ‘I’m so sorry. Is there anything we …?’

Both women stopped talking in mid-sentence because Audrey clearly wasn’t listening, and had no intention of listening. She walked very quickly out of the library. I noticed that her dress was stained with sweat under the armpits. In a moment, the doorway was empty. I stared through it at the green beyond, at the main road, the tower of the church and the oaks of Roth Park. I heard the faint but unmistakable sound of a wolf whistle. I wondered if one of the youths were baiting Audrey as she scurried round the green to the sanctuary of Tudor Cottage.

‘That’ll be one shilling, Mrs Byfield.’ Mrs Finch held out her hand for the reservation card. ‘Five pence. We’ll do our best, of course, but I can’t guarantee anything. The stock editor decides which books we buy. He may not think this is suitable.’

Vanessa smiled at Mrs Finch and gallantly resisted the temptation to reply. A moment later, she and I walked back along the south side of the green towards the Vicarage.

‘Is Audrey often like that?’ she asked.

‘She gets very involved with the fete.’ I felt I had to explain Audrey to Vanessa, even to apologize for her. ‘It’s the high point of the year for her.’

‘I wonder why.’ Vanessa glanced up at me. ‘Tell me, is she normally so irritable?’

I felt uncomfortable. ‘She did seem a little tetchy.’

‘I wonder how old she is. Getting on for fifty? Do you think she might be going through the menopause?’

‘I suppose it’s possible. Why?’

‘It would explain a great deal.’

‘Yes.’ I was in fact unclear what the change of life could mean for a woman. I put on speed, as if trying to walk away from this faintly unsavoury topic. ‘But was she really acting so unusually? She did say she had a headache.’

‘David.’ Vanessa put a hand on my arm, forcing me to stop and look at her. ‘You’ve known Audrey for so long that I don’t think you realize how odd she is.’

‘Surely not.’

We moved on to the main road. We waited for a gap in the traffic.

‘I’d better look in on her this evening,’ I said. ‘See how she is.’

‘I wouldn’t. Fuel to feed the flame.’

‘Flame? Don’t be silly.’

In silence, we crossed the road and went into the drive of the Vicarage.

‘It’s not that I want to see her this evening,’ I went on, wondering if Vanessa might conceivably be jealous. ‘People like Audrey are part of my job.’

Vanessa thrust her key into the lock of the front door. ‘You sometimes sound such a prig.’

I stared at her. This was the nearest we had ever come to a quarrel. It was the first time that either of us had spoken critically to the other.

Vanessa pushed open the door. The telephone was ringing in the study. When I picked up the receiver, the news I heard pushed both Audrey’s problems and my squabble with Vanessa into the background.

12

When I was a child I had a jigsaw with nearly a thousand pieces, intricately shaped. Some of them had been cut into the shapes of objects which were entirely unrelated to the subject of the picture.

I remember a cocktail glass lying on its side in the blue of the sky, and a stork standing upside down in the foliage of an oak tree. A rifle with a telescopic sight was concealed in a door. Not that I knew that it was a door at the outset, or that the stork was in an oak tree. The point about the jigsaw was that a picture had not been supplied with it. Only by assembling the pieces could one discover what the subject was. Since much of the picture consisted of sky, trees, grass and road, it was not until a relatively late stage in the assembly that you realized that the jigsaw showed a Pickwickian stagecoach drawing up outside a country inn with a thatched roof.

The analogy may seem laboured, but something very similar happened in Roth during 1970. One by one, the pieces dropped into place. My marriage to Vanessa, for example. The History of Roth. The preparations for the fete. The sudden departure of the Bramleys from Roth Park. Peter Hudson’s preferment. Lord Peter’s inability to stay away from the Vicarage. Lady Youlgreave’s belated interest in her husband’s relations. Vanessa’s long-standing interest in the poetry of Francis Youlgreave.

All these and more. Slowly the picture – or rather its components – came together. And one of the pieces was my godson Michael.

The telephone call on that August afternoon was from Henry Appleyard. He had been offered the chance of a lucrative four-week lecture tour in the United States, filling in for a speaker who had cancelled at the last moment.

‘I’m flying out the day after tomorrow, from Heathrow,’ he said. ‘I wondered if I could look in for lunch?’

‘Of course you can. When’s your flight?’

‘In the evening.’

‘Are all of you coming?’

‘Just me, I’m afraid.’

The organizers had offered to pay his wife’s travel expenses as well, I gathered, but she had to stay to look after Michael.

‘Can’t you leave him with someone?’

‘It’s such short notice. His schoolfriends are all on holiday, too.’

‘He could stay with us. If he wouldn’t find us too dull.’

‘It’s too much of an imposition.’

‘Why? He’s my godson. But would he be lonely?’

‘I wouldn’t worry about that. He’s quite a self-contained boy.’

‘Rosemary will be home in a few days, so at least he’d have someone nearer his own age. And our doctor has a boy of eleven.’

‘It still seems too much to ask.’

‘Why don’t I have a word with Vanessa and phone you back?’

Henry agreed. I put down the phone and went into the kitchen to talk to Vanessa. She listened in silence, but when I had finished she smiled.

‘That’s a wonderful idea.’

‘I’m glad you like it. But why the enthusiasm?’

‘It’ll make it easier when Rosemary comes home. For her as well as me.’ She touched my arm, and I knew our squabble was over. ‘Besides, you’d like it, wouldn’t you?’

Two days later the Appleyards arrived for lunch.

‘I’m sorry this is such short notice,’ Henry said as we were smoking a cigarette in the drive.

‘It doesn’t matter. Michael’s welcome. I’m glad Vanessa’s here. For his sake, I mean.’

Henry started to say something but stopped, because the front door opened and Michael himself came out to join us. The boy was now eleven years old, fair-haired and slim. He stood close to Henry. They didn’t know what to say to each other.

At that moment a dark-blue car drove slowly down the main road towards the bridge over the Rowan. It had a long bonnet and a small cockpit. It looked more like a spacecraft than a car. The windows were of tinted glass and I could make out only the vague shape of two people inside. It slowed, signalled right and turned into the drive of Roth Park.

‘Cor,’ said Michael, his face showing animation for the first time since he had arrived. ‘An E-type Jaguar.’

Another piece of the jigsaw had arrived.

That evening I telephoned Audrey to see if she was all right. I had not seen her since her outburst in the library. When she answered the phone, her voice sounded weak.

‘Just a headache,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine in a day or two. Rest is the best medicine. That’s what Dr Vintner said.’

‘You’ve been to see him?’

‘He came to me, actually. I wasn’t up to going out.’

I felt guilty, as perhaps she had intended me to feel. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

‘No. I’ll be fine. Well, actually there is one thing. Apparently the new people have moved into Roth Park. You could go and ask them about the paddock. I’d feel so much happier if that were settled. It’d be a weight off my mind.’

I remembered the Jaguar. ‘When did they move in?’

‘Today at some point. Mr Malik told Charlene when he brought the groceries round this afternoon. They’ve opened an account with him. Their name is Clifford.’

‘Are they a family?’

‘Mr Malik’s only met a young man so far. Perhaps he’s the son.’

I promised I would go to see them in the morning. A moment later, I rang off and went to join the others in the sitting room. Michael had lost that frozen look his face had worn since his parents left. He was talking to Vanessa about his school. They both looked up as I came in. I allowed myself to be drawn into a game of Hearts with them. I hadn’t played cards for years. To my surprise I enjoyed it.

The next morning I walked up to Roth Park. Vanessa was at work, and we had arranged for Michael to spend the day with the doctor’s son, Brian. I had not been to Roth Park since May, when the last of the Bramleys’ patients had moved to another nursing home. Privately I had never had much time for Mr and Mrs Bramley, a red-faced and loud-voiced couple who, I suspected, bullied their patients.

It was another fine day. With a copy of the parish magazine under my arm, I strolled down the road, past the church. The traffic was still heavy. In the last thirty or forty years, houses had mushroomed like a fungus along the highways and byways of Roth. The fungus had spread away from the highways and byways and devoured the fields between them. All the occupants of these new houses appeared to own at least one car.

I turned into the drive. On the right was the south wall of the churchyard. To the left, the turbid waters of the Rowan were visible through a screen of branches, nettles and leaves. It was mid-morning and already very warm. It was too hot to hurry.

I was not in the best of moods. I had wanted to make love the previous evening, but when I came to bed Vanessa was asleep. Or rather – I uncharitably wondered – she was pretending to be asleep.

After about sixty yards, the drive dived into a belt of oak trees. It was cooler here, and I lingered. At the time this felt an indulgence. Now, when I look back, it seems as though I were clinging to my state of innocence. A track went off to the right, following the west side of the churchyard; it passed through the paddock behind the Vicarage garden, which we hoped to use as our fete car park, and ran north-west towards the drowned farmlands beneath the Jubilee Reservoir.

I walked on. Once past the oaks, the park opened out. To the south was the Rowan, now a silver streak, lent enchantment by distance. Beyond it, housing estates covered what had once been pastureland south of the river. On the right were the roofs of another housing estate south of the reservoir, encroaching on the grounds from the north.

The drive, which had been moving away from the river, changed direction and swung towards it in a long, leisurely leftward loop around the base of a small hill. There, sheltered by the hill and facing south, was Roth Park itself.

Looked at with an unbiased eye, the house was not a pretty sight. Thanks to Audrey’s book, I now knew that the great fire of 1874 had destroyed most of a late-seventeenth-century mansion. The owner of the estate, Alfred Youlgreave, had built a plain, ugly, redbrick box on the same site with an incongruous Italianate tower attached to the west end.

As the house came into view, two things happened. First, I had the sensation, rightly or wrongly, that I was being watched, that behind one of the many blank windows was a face. I had an impression of stealth, even malice. I knew, of course, that it was more than possible that I was entirely mistaken about this – that the sensation had no external correlation whatsoever; that I was merely projecting my inner difficulties on to the outside world. That did not make the experience less unpleasant.

The other feeling was, if anything, even more powerful. I wanted to run away. I wanted to turn and scurry down the drive as fast as I could. It was not, strictly speaking, a premonition. It was in no sense a warning. I was simply scared. I did not know why. All I knew was that I wanted to run away.

But I did not. I had spent most of my life learning how to restrain my feelings. Besides, I remember thinking, think how odd it would look if there were a watcher: if he or she saw a middle-aged clergyman in a linen jacket hesitating in front of the house and then leaving at a gallop. Our dignity is very precious to almost all of us; and fear of losing face is a more powerful source of motivation than many people imagine.

I walked towards the house. There was an overgrown shrubbery on the right. Outside the house, marooned in a sea of weed-strewn gravel, was a large stone urn stained with yellow lichen. On the plinth – again, according to Audrey – was a plaque commemorating a visit that Queen Adelaide had paid to the Youlgreaves’ predecessors in 1839. I paused by the urn, pretending to examine the worn lettering. I really wanted a chance to look more closely at the house.

I could see no one at any of the windows, but that proved nothing. The building was not as imposing as it looked from a distance. Several slates were missing from the roof at the eastern end. A length of guttering had detached itself and was hanging at an angle. There was a large canopy sheltering the front door, a wrought-iron porte-cochère supported by rusting cast-iron pillars, which gave the house the appearance of a provincial railway station.

Parked beneath the canopy was the Cliffords’ E-type Jaguar, the car which had aroused Michael’s admiration. I marched up the shallow steps to the front door and tugged the bell pull. It was impossible to tell what effect, if any, this had. I noted with irritation that my fingers had left smudges of sweat on the pale-blue cover of the parish magazine.

No one answered the door. I rang the bell again. I waited. Still, nothing happened. I did not know whether to be relieved or irritated. I moved away from the door and walked a few paces down the drive. It felt like a retreat. I didn’t like the idea that I might be running away from something. Then I heard music.

I stopped to listen. It was faint enough to make it difficult to hear. Some sort of pop music, I thought; and suddenly I guessed where the Cliffords were. It was a fine morning, their first in their new home. They were probably in the garden.

I was familiar with the layout of the place from my years of visiting the Bramleys and their patients. I followed a path that led through the shrubbery at the side of the house to the croquet lawn below the terrace on the east front. The lawn was now a mass of knee-high grass and weeds. On the terrace, some four feet above it, were two people in deckchairs, with a small, blue transistor radio between them. A male voice was croaking against a background of discordant, rhythmic music. I walked on to the lawn and raised my Panama hat.

‘Good morning. I hope I’m not disturbing you. My name is David Byfield.’

Two faces, blank as masks, turned towards me; astonishment wipes away much of a person’s outward individuality. If the Demon King had appeared before them in a puff of smoke, the effect would have been much the same.

The moment of astonishment dissolved. A young man switched off the radio and stood up. He was skinny, his figure emphasized by the fitted denim shirt and the hip-hugging bell-bottomed jeans. He had a beaky nose and bright, pale-blue eyes. His hair was thick and fair, with more than a hint of ginger, and it curled down to his shoulders. A hippy, I thought, or the next best thing. But I had to admit that the long hair suited him.

‘Good morning. What can we do for you?’

I took a step forward. ‘First, I’d like to welcome you to Roth. I’m the vicar.’

The man dropped the cigarette he was holding into the bush of lavender which sprawled out of an urn at the edge of the terrace. ‘The church at the gates?’ He came down the steps to the lawn and held out his hand. ‘I’m Toby Clifford. How do you do?’

We shook hands. I realized that he was a little older than I had thought at first – perhaps in his middle or late twenties.

‘This is my sister Joanna.’ Toby turned back to her. ‘Jo, come and say hello to the vicar.’

I looked up at the terrace. There was a flurry of limbs in the other deckchair. A young woman stood up. She wore a baggy T-shirt which came halfway down her thighs and – I could hardly help noticing as she scrambled out of the deckchair – green knickers. Short hair framed a triangular face.

‘The vicar,’ she said and giggled. ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t laugh. Not funny.’

I held out my hand. ‘It’s the dog collar. It often has that effect on people.’

Her eyes widened with surprise. I guessed she was a year or two younger than her brother.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ Toby said. ‘We were just going to make some.’

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