She recognized one of them – Andy Cutler, a shamelessly good-looking sixteen-year-old with a black pony tail, black leather jacket and silver earring. Her eyes lingered on him fondly; just the type of young rebel she liked. The church was badly in need of a youth club, and it would take someone like this lad to give it any sort of street cred. She bet herself a half-bottle of her favourite Chablis, to be collected after its inaugural meeting, that she could pull him in as a founder member. He was definitely the brightest thing she had laid eyes on in her six weeks’ tenure.
The last of them were straggling out now; a mother clasping a child, sprawled in sleepy abandon across her shoulder, elderly Mrs Travers, immaculate in her Jaeger coat and Gucci scarf, but clinging to her husband’s arm and walking painfully with a stick. They were the old guard, living in the original village manor house in its own park. He tended to see himself still in the position of squire even if nobody else did, but they performed what they saw as their duties with an old-fashioned courtesy which was hard to resent. Nobody had the heart to tell them that the commuters who had now gentrified the cottages the Travers family had once owned didn’t really consider themselves peasants any more. Now they paid the compliments of the season with appropriate cordiality, as Penny Jackson, the organist, shot past, her hair as usual in mad disorder, calling over her shoulder, ‘Left the pudding on! Merry Christmas!’
Margaret went back into the church where Ted Brancombe, one of the churchwardens, was waiting to count the collection with her. He bent to kiss her cheek, a big solid farmer with grizzled fair hair and hands as hard as horn from years of toil and weather. He had checked the heating already, he told her, so it was all in order for tomorrow morning’s services.
His wife Jean, a thin, anxious, small-boned woman who was blowing out night-lights and collecting the jam jars on to a tray with the practised efficiency of one who had performed the task many times before, pattered over with her Christmas greetings, and Margaret embraced her too with genuine warmth. She was aware of the dangers of having favourites among your parishioners, but there were, thank God (and that was not a phrase she used lightly), people you simply couldn’t help liking.
With the collection safely counted and stowed away, and the service-books neatened for Christmas Day, they left Margaret to lock up.
She went into the vestry to disrobe and came out again, buttoning her practical tweed coat up to her throat. She bobbed to the altar, snapped off the lights, and stood for a moment in the hushed holy darkness of the church. Her church.
The light source was outside now, and she could see faintly the deep reds and blues of the ancient glass in the windows. It was all very beautiful and very peaceful.
Right now, in St John’s Marketgate, they would be serving hot coffee and mincepies to people who, for one or another sad reason, had nowhere else to be. There would be people drunken and maudlin, or stoned and impervious, or weeping over past or present failures. Her successor, a decent young man, would be summoning up the last remains of his energy to cope with six simultaneous demands despite sinking fatigue, both mental and physical.
And here she was, bursting with energy and nothing to do with it except go home and give her cat, the irresponsibly-named Pyewacket, a saucer of Christmas cream and perhaps a sliver of the smoked salmon she was allowing herself for Christmas lunch.
She had sent presents for her old friends, the familiar dossers and winos who frequented the churchyard, and money for their Christmas feast, but would any of them at St John’s, she wondered, have time to spare her so much as a thought? She doubted it.
But that was a self-indulgent, mawkish sort of reflection, and finishing the communion wine was hardly enough to give her an alcoholic excuse for such a pathetic and self-pitying attitude. But could this really be her destiny – the plan she was so sure God had in mind for her – or was she merely suffering the result of a Bishop’s whim? Though that, of course, was religion’s catch-all; God could use as an instrument the Bishop’s prejudices just as easily, and certainly more commonly, than Cecil B. de Mille-style thunderbolts.
It was an odd sort of challenge, this parish of hers. She had followed an elderly priest, wise and much-loved, who had looked after his flock without ever feeling that their heels needed nipping. Margaret couldn’t quite see it that way.
If only Stretton Noble weren’t so neat, so self-sufficient, so perfectly organized in its discreet worship of Mammon, with God kept tidily in this pretty stone box and propitiated with offerings (meagre enough, she thought wryly) to His Fabric Fund and His Organ Appeal.
She had begun to stir things up already, with a sermon at the regular Sunday morning service today about the dual nature of Christ as God and man, which led naturally enough to contemplation of our own dual selves; the temptation to show a surface which was smooth and pretty, and totally at odds with the darker needs and failures and shame of our fallen state, which we denied at our peril.
It was a departure from the usual ‘wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was nice’ sermon they tended to expect, and she had sensed the frisson every preacher recognizes when the message somewhere has struck home. At least she hadn’t had a single hearty, ‘Splendid sermon, vicar!’ on the way out, which had to be progress.
The trouble was, she didn’t really know where to go from there. It reminded her forcibly of one of those very tasteful, highly-expensive educational puzzles in hand-crafted wood which children loathe and parents will insist on buying for them instead of Sonic the Hedgehog and Barbie and Power Rangers. Everything in Stretton Noble fitted together with just such smooth, forbidding intricacy, with no awkward protuberances and no disfiguring gaps.
She sighed, looking down the length of the nave towards the altar. Oh Lord, she prayed silently, help me to be a catalyst for change. Help me to break apart this deathly smugness, and open up their hearts to real emotions once more.
She did not recall a favourite saying of her mother’s, whose constant complaint it had been that her children never listened to a word she said. ‘Be very, very careful what you ask for,’ she had cautioned, ‘because you just might get it.’
But Margaret’s round, cheerful face was sombre as she locked the huge oak door and set off with uncharacteristically leaden steps towards the two-bedroomed box in a recent housing-development which was the new vicarage, still thinking about the neat, smooth, impenetrable artefact.
She did not, unfortunately, follow her own image through to its logical conclusion. Hand-crafted puzzles, once they are taken apart, are not readily reassembled. Without great patience, determination and skill, they are doomed to lie for ever in pieces at the bottom of the toy box. And already, though she had failed to notice it, the sections were beginning to slide apart.
2
‘Come on, come on! The night is young, and there’s still a few inches of whisky left in the decanter,’ Piers McEvoy was urging the group gathered outside the lych gate, which included those who had dined with him at the Lodge, now saying their thank yous and goodnights.
Patrick Bolton, at the edge of the group, took deep breaths of the cooler air. He had drunk a little too much – somehow you always did at the McEvoys’ – and he was in the mood of philosophical disengagement which that state so often induces. He lit up a cigarette and drew on it, exhaling smoke which hung about his head in the dampness.
Throwing him a look of contempt, Suzanne went past to join the others and was soon laughing and talking animatedly. He found himself looking at her with the eyes of a stranger; in his current detached state, he felt only an intellectual regret that this was so, and that the marriage which had seemed so solid before he became a failure in his wife’s eyes had become such a cold, uneasy relationship.
Yet nostalgia was part of the Christmas package, wasn’t it, with all those corny carols and ‘There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus’ and all that stuff. It set him thinking back to their better times, their army days. They had both been so well-suited to army life, tha
t was the thing. As the eldest in a family of six, he had been used to responsibility, and the protection duties of the modern military had suited him admirably. It had given him a deep satisfaction to think that, thanks to him, an aid convoy had got through or an IRA attack on civilians been thwarted.
Suzanne had been the perfect soldier’s wife, following the drum cheerfully, and constantly resourceful and uncomplaining. It had never occurred to either of them that he would not be offered a further commission and promotion.
It had been painful to adjust to life without the ceremonial and the comradeship, and even Queen’s Regulations, God bless ‘em, and he had taken a long time to find his feet in the engineering parts business, because his heart was not in it. It had been a great relief to find that Suzanne could immediately pick up a good nursing job in one of the London teaching hospitals, and even become the major breadwinner through the rough days of the recession when he was still on his learning curve. He had been neglectful then, perhaps, but when you’re fighting to keep your head above water you don’t have time to look at the scenery.
It was only when business picked up and he had at last got on top of the job that he realized that somewhere along the line he had become – diminished, that was the word, now that she had taken over the responsibility that had previously been his. She had to exercise considerable authority, of course, in her position as theatre sister, but it had begun to spill over into everyday life to a positively worrying extent. She was becoming a control freak; it was losing her friends, but she flipped if he so much as suggested that spontaneity was also a virtue, and a little bit of muddle never hurt anyone. They didn’t make love very often these days; he had begun to feel she had a stopwatch on him, and a ‘duly-performed’ checklist in her head.
Much of the time, he simply accepted that they lived at arms’ length, but he regretted that she had no use now for the protective warmth that had characterized his relationship with her in the past. He knew she was having problems at work, and was indeed worried about what it seemed to be doing to her, but offering TLC to Suzanne was about as profitable as snuggling up to a Scorpion tank.
His eye fell on Elizabeth McEvoy, on the farther side of the group behind her husband, also a little detached from it. He could never understand how such a gentle creature could have brought herself to marry a brute like Piers, whose coarse bullying manner even he found offensive. It was her neat, delicate profile he could see, her mouth drooping and her eyes wide and wistful, as if she were looking sadly out to distant horizons. The Little Mermaid, he thought suddenly; that was what she reminded him of, the enchanting statue on the Langeline in Copenhagen, and she looked all too often as if, like Andersen’s tragic sea-maid, she too were walking on knives. His gaze softened as he looked at her.
Elizabeth did not notice his regard. As her husband issued invitations, she dug her nails into the palms of her hands until she thought they must bleed. And she should never have worn these stupid sandals; her feet were killing her, her back ached and her head was throbbing so that she felt almost sick. She had to go on and on, with all this desperate entertaining, trying to keep Piers busy and amused, but increasingly these days everyone seemed tense and jaded. Tonight she had been terrified that the whole thing would blow up in their faces; you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. Surely no one who didn’t have to go home with Piers would choose to do so!
She was desperate that the children should have a proper Christmas. Peter, at nine, was still sentimental when he was allowed to be, and this was probably the last year Milla would believe in Santa Claus wholeheartedly – that was, as long as Paula wasn’t inspired to make this the night she extended her sister’s education, and surely even Paula in her current phase of twelve-year-old cynicism couldn’t be as merciless as that.
But she must get them to bed, and have time to sort things out. This Christmas was going to be worse even than usual, the first since Mother Mac died. Piers’s mother had been, like his father, blunt and plain-spoken and formidable, but she could be relied on to keep Piers in line, and she had been improbably kind to the daughter-in-law who was as unlike her as anyone could be. She had always given Elizabeth a sense of security, and indeed it was only after her death that Piers had started drinking in earnest – but she mustn’t think about that now. She must put on a good show tomorrow, if this Christmas wasn’t to be like far too many other recent occasions, with her left frantically trying to put on a brave face and salvage something from the wreckage to slip into the thin file in her mind marked ‘Happy Family Memories’.
But nobody wanted to come, thank God, thank God, thank God. They were all, even Hayley Cutler, collecting up assorted children and making their excuses.
‘You’re a glutton for punishment, Piers, I’ll say that for you,’ Patrick said with an attempt at jollity as Piers, unsuccessful elsewhere, turned to him. ‘I’ve got another heavy day’s partying ahead, and I want to be fit to enjoy it.’
Suzanne said acidly, ‘That’s what’s known as the triumph of hope over experience. Good-night, Lizzie. That was a perfectly lovely party – I don’t know how you do it. Try to get ten minutes shuteye before tomorrow morning, won’t you? You can always get Piers to peel the potatoes.’
Elizabeth smiled tiredly and hugged her, but Piers had moved out of earshot.
‘Anthea, you’ll come won’t you darling? You’re off the leash without the old man for once – make the most of it!’
Anthea Jones, in her red coat, was moving off already, as if trying to keep space between herself and her would-be host.
‘That’s very kind, but I must get back to my babies. Richard’s second on call, so I really shouldn’t be out at all. And we’ve still got to do the Santa bit.’
‘Sssh!’ Suzanne frowned, pointing down to the six-year-old leaning sleepily against Elizabeth McEvoy’s coat, but the child was clearly not listening.
‘Come on, Milla darling,’ her mother said. ‘Time we got you home.’
Her husband, seeing the party break up despite his efforts, turned away with a petulant shrug, returning none of the shouted ‘Good-nights’.
Hayley Cutler’s rich American tones carried in the night air as she summoned her family.
‘Gather up, Cutlers! Back to the ranch. Andy!’ she called towards the teenagers still clustered round the gate.
He detached himself and lounged across. There was a low-voiced discussion before she turned away, calling over her shoulder, ‘OK honey, an hour but that’s all. Past 1.30 and you’re grounded.’
With the two younger children, she crossed towards the Briar Patch, as she had christened the cottage where they had lived since her divorce five years ago.
‘Patrick, for heaven’s sake don’t be so bloody stupid. I’ll drive – the place is swarming with policemen on a night like this. Into the back, Ben.’
Bolton, protesting that it wasn’t far and he was perfectly fit to drive, handed over the keys meekly enough, and Suzanne swung the car round neatly and set off back the way they had come, past the Lodge and out the quarter of a mile to Bentham’s, on the edge of the village.
It was only a few hundred yards back to the Lodge, but with Milla clinging to her waist and stumbling along half-asleep, Elizabeth walked slowly. She was wrestling with a deep reluctance to go back to the house, which was natural enough considering all that she still had to do when she got there.
Yet it wasn’t only that. There was something about the house these days, a sort of feeling that something – somewhere – was badly wrong. It wasn’t her house at all, of course, it was Piers’s house, his possession and his pride. And things were badly wrong with Piers; perhaps, she thought fancifully, his darkening spirit poisoned the air.
But even that wasn’t everything. There were strange things happening, things she couldn’t explain, like the spilled sugar with the primitive face drawn in it: a circle, with two dots for eyes, a down-turned mouth, and other little strokes representing tears. It was the sort of thin
g a child might draw, but she had gone to bed after the children and got up before, and she always woke if they were moving about...
They had reached the gate now, and in she must go. Peter, at her side, had been talking companionably – he was a child who was seldom silent – about a moth which had tried to barbecue itself over his own personal candle.
‘So I shooed it away, Mummy, but then it came back, again and again. So I put a hymn book over the top, but it began to smell funny so I took it off, but I had to keep on shooing it away all the rest of the hymn. Why do they do that, Mummy? It’s silly, isn’t it? Why don’t they know it’s silly, Mummy?’
‘I don’t know, darling,’ she said mechanically. Piers had gone on ahead, of course, presumably to shut himself into the games room, which was his particular preserve, with what was left in the whisky decanter, just in case she was unreasonable enough to ask him to help her clear up, or do something for tomorrow, or even fill the children’s stockings.
She bit her lip. She couldn’t afford to let herself start crying now. She mustn’t fall apart. She had far too much to do.
***
Paula McEvoy had outdistanced the family party, while not walking fast enough to risk catching up with her father. She was tired, though she wasn’t prepared to admit it to herself, and as a result felt crosser than usual. Even crosser than usual.
It was all just so naff, the whole Christmas bit. Why couldn’t Mum just chill out, instead of pretending like this? They’d be a lot better off like the Cutlers, with everyone accepting that Christmas Day was dismal and you just had to get through it, so you would have no need to feel sorry for your mother and guilty because you weren’t making yourself into some sort of domestic slave, or something.
She’d said that to Martha Cutler this evening, when the two of them had sneaked out into the garage for a smoke. It had been cold, and she wasn’t that keen on fags, actually – she’d had to be very careful not to breathe in too deeply and choke, which would give away the fact that she hadn’t quite worked out how to inhale – but Martha, who was a year older, really smoked, four or five a day sometimes, and she definitely wanted Martha to be impressed.
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