Late of This Parish

by Marjorie Eccles

  Time’s running out, Laura, began the litany whenever she looked in the glass. No grey in the thick dark hair yet, still all your own teeth, lines only of laughter – but it won’t be long. Thirty-six next birthday, too old soon for children. And there was the real pain: never to feel a small warm body in her arms, or walk with a child’s hand held in hers. The only child she had was her father. Tied to him and no way out, except by marrying Jon Reece.

  It had been a shock to Jon’s self-esteem when she had refused him, but one from which he’d quickly recovered. He might even have been relieved. All his life, things had fallen into his lap. Perhaps that was partly why she’d refused him, to show him that she at least was immune to his charm. She liked him, but no more. And even at the ripe old age of thirty-five, the blood leaps, the heart dictates more than the head ...

  She’d been right to hesitate. Because now here was David and there was no hesitation at all, nothing but the certainty that nothing must spoil it this time. She would do anything, anything at all, to prevent that. But her father was implacably opposed to him, with the result that for months she’d felt torn in two, vacillating between being convinced that she had a right to a life of her own and knowing that she could never face the consequences of direct opposition to him.

  Heavy drops fell on to her head from the wet branches above as she reached the top of the hill, mounted and rode along the main street until Dobbs Lane and the turning for the houses on St Kenelm’s Walk.

  From where he sat, in the comfortably cushioned window-seat of the second house in Parson’s Place, the Reverend Lionel Oliver just caught a glimpse of Laura, hair and skirts blowing, as she cycled up Dobbs Lane and turned into St Kenelm’s Walk. She was one of his favourite parishioners, willing, able – and nice to look at, too. A sweet young woman and a good child to her father to boot, not like some offspring. He sighed, turned his handsome profile to his hostess, sipped the last of his sherry and suggestively tipped up his glass to catch the very last drops. The sherry was excellent, as always, fine and dry, an eminently civilized sort of drink. Much to be preferred to the very dry martinis his hostess, Miriam Thorne, was in the habit of drinking. Several of them by now. Miriam was never half-hearted about anything.

  Large, bossy, vigorous, generous and with a wild bush of untidy carrotty hair, she drained the latest martini and looked meaningfully at the clock. After having been married to Denzil Thorne for nearly twenty-five years the Rector’s pre-supper visits and mildly flirtatious attentions were not unwelcome, but she was a busy woman, organizing herself and others to the last degree. As well as teaching modern languages at Uplands House, she was a tireless worker for the church and most of the other local good causes. No one ever came to Miriam for advice and went away without it.

  ‘Another sherry, Lionel? Though I’m going to have to turf you out shortly. Denzil will be home pretty soon and I’ve got work to do – and it must be nearly dinner-time at the Rectory. Wouldn’t do to let the shepherd’s pie get cold.’

  This last was said not with any intended malice; Miriam was not a malicious woman, although the cooking at the Rectory was a subject better not mentioned and her careless laugh intimated that such mundane dishes and regular mealtimes were an unnecessary bore. Her own cooking was slapdash, but often successful.

  ‘Oh,’ he answered indifferently, ‘Catherine won’t be expecting me yet. She’ll still be busy in the summerhouse with her little drawings, I dare say.’

  Miriam raised an eyebrow as she reached for the sherry, but said no more and the Rector, reminded of something he would rather ignore, resolutely turned his back on the offending prospect of his own garden next door, or rather that part which could be seen from Miriam’s back window. Unfortunately this did not happen to be the section kept tidy by his jobbing gardener. Not the well-tended lawn and neat flowerbeds immediately outside the french windows, alas, but the semi-wild, overgrown, ever-encroaching acre, now lush with the burgeoning foliage of a wet May, which ran steeply down to the river. The part which Catherine, with surprising obduracy, insisted on leaving as it was. Ah well.

  Watching the quick frown of displeasure gradually clear from the Rector’s face, Miriam guessed he had again put aside the problem of Catherine and old Willard and decided that she herself would certainly have to do something about it, if only for Catherine’s sake. For a man of the cloth Lionel Oliver could at times be peculiarly insensitive.

  He was an attractive man of considerable charm, extremely good-looking, perhaps more so now than in his youth. Now that his thick smooth hair had acquired that distinguished silver patina like the very best old Sheffield plate, and especially when wearing his long black cassock, a garment that seemed specifically designed to accentuate his height and the leanness of his still youthfully trim figure. He was generally regarded as well-intentioned and urbane, pompous it must be admitted, but good-humoured if not pressed too much.

  He had married circumspectly, the daughter of his bishop, and although preferment had not come as swiftly as he had hoped (and believed he deserved) there were compensations. While the Rectory was by no means to be compared to the Bishop’s Palace, and Bishop Lionel admittedly had an enviable ring to it, life in Parson’s Place was agreeable and undoubtedly created less demands on him than a bishopric would have done. As a rural dean he presided over several parishes, which made him busy but not overworked. Here he could serve God with the ritual and ceremonial he regarded as paramount, conduct his elaborate services and his daily recital of Evensong without interference. He would dearly love to be known as ‘Father’ but few in Wyvering would go so High.

  And he could always, for instance, find time for a cup of tea or a glass of something with Miriam in this pleasant little house. It was a harmless custom which offended no one, least of all Catherine, who if she was even aware of it gave no indication, merely smiled vaguely whenever Miriam’s name was mentioned.

  ‘Well, all I can say is that old Willard is a spiteful old man and Denzil a fool for getting involved,’ Miriam declared energetically, refilling his glass and dismissing the subject they had been discussing, though not from her mind. How facile that sort of judgement really was, she thought, putting the sherry decanter firmly back on the sideboard. For no one was in a better position to know that Dr Denzil Thorne was not a fool than she, his wife – but, though he might be the Director of the Fricker Institute, Miriam sometimes thought he possessed no common sense whatsoever. So willing, so eager, so much more obviously good than either of the two neighbouring clergymen. So like a lovable but not very well trained puppy dog, leaping up with great licks of unwanted affection. Poor Denzil. Tiresome Denzil, putting his foot in it with Catherine – but not to be underrated. He could still on occasions surprise her with his insights and this kept her irritation at bay. She was really rather fond of him.

  As for old Willard ... one still tended to believe that a dog-collar automatically conferred goodness and simplicity on the wearer. Nothing could be further from the truth where that selfish old tyrant was concerned. Laura deserved better after dancing attendance on him all these years and now that she had the chance to get away Miriam hoped she’d have the sense to take it this time, and to blazes with her father. There were times recently when Miriam had noticed an expression on her face that could only be described as quietly desperate.

  The Rector said, turning to a topic that mention of Denzil had brought to mind, ‘So the police are no further forward with their inquiries about the bomb at the Institute?’

  ‘The police?’ Miriam rolled her eyes to heaven to show what she thought of them. ‘Fat lot of good they’re being! Nearly a month and they still haven’t a clue who planted it.’

  ‘Some misguided animal rights activists, of course,’ he replied with conviction. ‘Protesting against experiments. One must admit to a certain sympathy with their point of view but it’s difficult to support the logic of their thinking.’

  ‘I’d give them animal rights!’ Miriam returned, raking
back her hair with her fingers. ‘What about people rights? What about the babies with leukaemia, mothers with cancer? Do they have any thoughts for the rights of the man who was killed, his wife and children? He was only the security guard, only doing his duty.’

  The Rector blinked, slightly taken aback, though he should have been used to her vehemence by now. Miriam was always so forthright, so sure she was right!

  The clock on the mantelpiece chimed a silvery six, and as it did so a car was heard to draw up outside with an unnecessarily noisy application of brakes. The wide uneven floorboards protested at Miriam’s not inconsiderable weight as she went to the small front window, peered out and gave a little shriek. ‘Good heavens, it’s Philly! And the naughty girl never told me she was coming home!’

  It was a very small room, with windows back and front. Lionel craned his neck and was rewarded by the sight of young Phyllida Thorne, in a tight black sweater, an extraordinary hairstyle and a skirt of inflammatory length. Slamming the door of her little black MG and with a great display of shapely legs and a clinking of attendant chains and bracelets, she walked round to unlock the boot.

  ‘Gracious!’ he said, echoing Miriam’s exclamation a little faintly as at the same moment the passenger door opened and a young man of immense elegance slid out, ‘she’s brought Sebastian!’

  Miriam was halfway to the front door and didn’t hear him. The Rector finished his sherry in one unwise swallow and felt the familiar disagreeable sensation in the pit of his stomach as he watched his only child walk round to join Philly and extract an ominously large holdall from the car boot.

  When Laura walked into the sitting-room, her father was seated in his wheelchair in front of the french windows, facing the garden that plunged to the valley, the inevitable book on his knee. He didn’t turn round as she came in, always a bad sign, and her heart sank. She forced a smile to her lips, cheerfulness she didn’t feel into her voice. ‘Well, I see he came. Did you have a good old natter?’

  The Reverend Cecil Everard Dalby Willard, sometime headmaster of Uplands House School, spun slowly round, looking pained. ‘Bernard Quentin and I had an interesting conversation, yes, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘And a good tea, too, by the look of what’s left,’ she answered, refusing to be needled by the veiled sarcasm in his clipped, dry voice.

  She had come home at lunch-time and left everything ready. Homemade buttered scones and jam, a date and walnut loaf, Bath Olivers and gentleman’s relish, a Dundee cake. The small table laid with her mother’s best lace cloth and silver tea service, the electric kettle already filled. Her father could manage, he always made tea for himself and any visitors he had, but if not, surely even a bachelor don from Cambridge was capable of plugging in the kettle? No matter, she’d no intention of staying at home as her father clearly thought she should, as if her job at the school was a hobby she could pick up or discard as and when she felt so disposed, like knitting.

  As she feared, he stayed wrapped in his black mood all evening. As a rule, Laura welcomed visits from his old friend Bernard Quentin for their therapeutic value. Her father’s body might be weakened but his intellect remained unimpaired, as sharp and abrasive as ever, and the stimulus of conversation and argument with Quentin did him more good than a whole bottleful of his tablets, enlivening him and making him more like the man he used to be, less of the enfeebled and disagreeable old man his stroke had made of him.

  Tonight, however, Quentin’s visit seemed to have had quite the opposite effect. Her father was at his worst, querulous and demanding. He needed his pills immediately, he wanted to know why she was spending so long in the kitchen. He threw down unfinished The Times crossword, which he always saved to do during the half-hour before supper. Clearly, something had put him out. She thought at first it must be the saga of those wretched badgers again, and cursed Denzil Thorne and wished Mrs Oliver could bring herself to be a little more detached on the subject. Or that he might be going to bring up that business of Danny Lampeter again.

  At supper, she learned that it wasn’t either the badgers or Danny, this time.

  ‘Quentin is publishing his book on the Middle Eastern question’, her father said. ‘At last.’ Pushing aside his lasagne, he added petulantly, ‘I really cannot see why you insist on making this stuff, you know it’s too rich for me. I can’t eat any more.’

  She was on the verge of apologizing (not for the lasagne, it was one of his favourite dishes) but stopped herself in time. She knew him better than that. Whatever disappointment he felt about his own unpublished work he would not want anyone, even her, to show they were aware of his disappointment. He had never at the best of times had the humility to take the slightest sympathy.

  After she’d cleared the dishes and washed up, Laura sat drinking her coffee in front of the sitting-room window. She never tired of the view from here, the perspective it put on feeling and emotion. The feeling of littleness against the immensity of the landscape, surrounded by sky, was always overwhelming. Tonight, the sky was spectacular with a theatrical, Turneresque beauty. Purple thunderheads piled up in the west, shot with unearthly rays of silver light from behind. A band of clouds lay below, wine-dark streaked with gold. The river was a still ribbon of pewter far beneath her and tiny Dinky cars crawled imperceptibly on the curving road. And all of it in tune with her own excited apprehension, the tremulous fear that filled her whenever she thought of what she was about to do.

  ‘More coffee, Father?’

  He was asleep, his mouth slightly open, and she sat watching him, filled with pity. She knew how deeply he felt about his failure to finish the book he’d been working on, a complicated study of the comparative religions of pre-Reformation Europe. The fact that it would have been completed now had it not been for his stroke must be profoundly galling to him. Intellectual faculties intact, he simply no longer possessed the considerable physical stamina necessary to sustain such a Herculean labour. He had seemingly accepted this, acknowledging that although contemplated for many years, the work had been begun too late in life, after his retirement and shortly before this illness overtook him. Whereas Bernard Quentin was twenty years younger and worked in the fullness of his health and strength. All the same, it was perhaps understandable that his friend’s achievement should have upset her father. But why had it upset him so much?

  The clock in the hall hissed the usual warning before booming out its nine deep strokes. Her father woke, reached out his good arm for his cup of weak, decaffeinated coffee and finished it. She took a deep breath and turned her back on the view, facing the room furnished with things familiar to her for most of her life: a long, low room, dominated by the number of books in it. The shabbiness of the furnishings had acquired a certain distinction through long association – the comfortable sagging armchairs, the worn old rugs, the faded brown velvet curtains, the set of black and white cathedral etchings and sepia photos of people long gone, known only to her father. There was nothing of her own personality stamped on the room, nothing to her own taste.

  She decided to speak. Although aware that it might not be the best time to re-approach the subject that was uppermost in her mind, something in her naturally impulsive nature impelled her to do so. She had to give it one last try, to hope that he might make the effort to understand her. She said abruptly, ‘I do wish you’d meet David and talk with him.’

  Her father didn’t answer immediately. His eyes, watching her, were hooded, like an old turtle’s. His withered neck, rising from the clerical collar he still insisted on wearing, reinforced the impression. ‘Illingworth and I have already met several times,’ he said at last.

  ‘I mean to talk. To discuss our marriage.’

  ‘I fail to see any point in doing so, since as far as I’m concerned there can be no prospect of a marriage. You know my beliefs, and after a lifetime of seeing them work in practice I am glad to say they are still quite unshakable. A Christian marriage, once made, is for ever.’

  ‘Even w
hen it’s become a travesty? When it’s tearing two people apart, when there’s nothing left to salvage?’

  ‘There is always something left.’

  ‘Not always. Sometimes, divorce is the only way out. Father, I know how strongly you feel about this and I respect your views, but surely we can come to some sort of compromise? We wouldn’t expect you to actually marry us, even though I’ve always hoped you would when the time came.’

  ‘I think,’ he answered, reducing her to the level of one of his errant ex-pupils with a smile colder than was perhaps intended, ‘that isn’t a proposition even you could have considered very seriously.’

  She said nothing because in her heart she’d known not to expect miracles. He wouldn’t change, perhaps he couldn’t. The idea that his daughter might go against him and marry a divorced man despite his wishes seemed never to have entered his head. To him it was unthinkable. And perhaps it was, she thought drearily. She could never match him in argument and the habit of believing he was always right was hard to break.

  ‘Nor, I might add, will I support his claim to the Headship, on that and other grounds. I am still on the board of governors, don’t forget – and there will be others who think as I do.’ He paused as if about to add something else, but merely said abruptly, with one of his sudden swings of mood, ‘I’m sorry if you’re feeling hurt over this, Laura. One cannot avoid that when faced with making moral choices, none of us can. But, my dear, are you sure you’re not being led into something you would certainly regret because you are – how shall I put it? – of an age to think that life is passing you by?’

  Her nails bit into her palms in an effort to stop herself answering. She would have liked to think he didn’t realize how witheringly unkind his comments could be – but how could he not know? And what moral choices could he be faced with, sitting here all day? she thought, her resentment mounting. And what could he know of love? She was ignorant of the state of her parents’ marriage. Her father had been middle-aged when she was born, she remembered her mother only as a pale, gentle ghost. But although she forbore to speak, what she was thinking must have registered on her face.