The Bad Samaritan

by Robert Barnard

  “You have been wonderful!”

  “—but well, the fact is that everything a clergyman does is observed.”

  “And everything his wife does,” said Rosemary. “By hawklike eyes.”

  The next night, when Paul was out at a meeting of Leeds clergy discussing the theme of “targeting young people,” Rosemary and Stanko walked to the Ilkley Road and along to Pizza Pronto. As they neared the brightly painted little takeaway, Stanko, at Rosemary’s suggestion, dropped back a few paces, and entered the warm, friendly place just behind her. As Rosemary went up to the middle-aged man behind the counter with a meaningful smile on her face, Stanko ducked under the counter and went to stand casually among the hot ovens and the table with bowls of chopped sausage and chopped mushroom and large tins of peeled tomatoes.

  “Mrs Sheffield,” said Rosemary. “The two I ordered.”

  Signor Gabrielli was friendly and respectful, but in a quite nonchalant way. Rosemary paid her money and went out bearing her comfortingly hot burden. She did not notice that among the little knot of people waiting for their orders was Selena Meadowes, and she certainly did not realise that Selena had been watching their approach all the way along the Ilkley Road.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Whispering Campaign

  Stanko came back to the vicarage an hour later, but only to collect his clothes and belongings.

  “I don’t want to go,” he said. “You have been so kind, both. But is better for you. The job is fine, the room is fine. I shall be quite all right.”

  “But you’ll keep in touch,” Rosemary insisted. “If you get any news from home you’ll come round or ring? I’ll give you our phone number.”

  “Is here,” said Stanko, tapping his head.

  He looked so slight and pathetic standing in the doorway that Rosemary wanted to give him a hug, as she might have hugged a son going off to school for the first time. But she resisted the impulse and told herself it was absurd: Stanko was experienced in the ways of the world—more experienced in its nastier byways than she was, in all probability. For a moment his gentleness and bewilderment seemed to her something like a triumph of the human spirit.

  In the next few days Rosemary went about her business in the usual way, with that significant exception that she did not go to church. The omission, now several weeks long, left a hole in her life, but she found it difficult to pin down the nature of the void: was it a spiritual one or a social one? Or was it, perhaps, simply a matter of time? Sometimes she tried to fill the hole by walking to church to meet Paul as the service finished. That way at least she met some of the people she had been accustomed to meet. Mostly they were very kind and relaxed, but one evening she did note Timothy Armitage, an elderly and very devout parishioner, scurrying off in an unaccustomed direction, and she wondered whether he was trying to avoid her. Again, Mrs Mulholland, a middle-aged battle-axe, walked past her stony-faced one evening, but that was the sort of thing she did after the most trivial of slights: an omission to thank her for some small service, forgetting to enquire after her health when she’d been ill. Rosemary did not give it a second thought.

  One evening, when Stanko had been gone nearly a week, after she’d been to tea with a housebound young mother, she turned aside from her shortest route home and went to see him in Pizza Pronto. Signor Gabrielli greeted her with a smile and took her hands in his.

  “The boy makes a very nice pizza. He’s very handy. You want to talk to him? I take over a bit.”

  And he went to where Stanko was juggling with little bits of this and that, scattering them blithely on to the dough base and laying shreds of ivory-coloured mozzarella on top. Stanko looked up, saw Rosemary, and came over, his face suffused with smiles. He had the gift of making people feel special.

  “Rosemary! You are very kind.”

  “I wanted to see you. They said on the news there’d been an outbreak of fighting near Petrinje.”

  “Yes, I hear.”

  “You’ve had no news from your wife?”

  “Nothing. I have a letter from my mother, but she hear nothing either.”

  “Is your mother in that area?”

  “No. She is now in Zagreb. Is in safety.”

  “But she’s no way of contacting your wife?”

  “None.” He looked up at her, with pain in his troubled eyes. “Is horrible—not knowing anything.”

  “It must be.” She bent down, speaking earnestly. “Please ring us or come round if there is any news. The job here is all right, is it?”

  “Is very nice. Always busy—that’s what I need. I good friends with Hanif, and Mr Gabrielli is very kind. Don’t you worry about me, Rosemary.”

  She smiled, said a hearty, encouraging good-bye, and left. She did not recognise anybody sitting waiting on the chairs around the counter: most of them were probably students or members of families where both parents worked—anyway, not members of the St Saviour’s congregation. When she got home Paul was already back from one of his eternal meetings.

  “I dropped in on Stanko on the way home from Maggie Pauling’s,” Rosemary said.

  There was a tiny pause before Paul said, “Good. How is he getting along?”

  Rosemary and Paul had been married for more than twenty-five years. Both of them knew in all its intricacy the grammar of marital discourse. Rosemary understood perfectly the significance of that tiny pause, and Paul knew that he had let something slip and that she had understood what it was. Both of them decided it was something best not pursued until it was absorbed and all its implications comprehended.

  It was a case, Rosemary decided, in which the best thing was to watch for signs and then interpret them. There had been talk, obviously, about her and Stanko. How did they know about Stanko, and how much did they know? She was more worried about that than anything they might imagine about the relationship between her and him. Dirty minds she could cope with, but there was the possibility that as soon as his nationality was known, someone would put two and two together and decide he was an illegal immigrant, or at least working illegally. Paul’s was an intelligent rather than a warm-hearted parish.

  The signs that she had decided to look for were not slow in showing themselves. They were ones that were usual in well-bred English circles: increased reserve or reticence in conversation, constraint in greeting, avoidance on social occasions. This was the British way not only of expressing disapproval of a supposed sin or crime, but also of sparing the disapprover the embarrassment of being open in their condemnation. It showed Rosemary that the person concerned had heard that she was having a fling, but it did not in any way pin them down as far as future conduct was concerned: if in the future the gossip proved groundless they could resume their relationship with her as if nothing had happened. In Italy ugly names might have been shouted at her in the street. In England people found urgent reasons for crossing to the other side of the road.

  Rosemary observed and absorbed, as if she were studying British habits for a sociology course. She viewed this development surprisingly dispassionately as far as she personally was concerned. She was mainly worried about Stanko’s plight. She rang Signor Gabrielli, who assured her that in the pizzeria Stanko was referred to as Silvio and that they conversed in the presence of the customers in an elementary kind of Italian.

  “He speak a little, you know. We are neighbours, Italy and Yugoslavia, is a lot of tourism and he learns quickly. Is the same with my Tunisian. The buyers like to think these are Italian pizzas made by Italian boys—is natural.”

  Armed with this knowledge Rosemary felt she could talk the rumours over with somebody before she thrashed the matter out with Paul, in an attempt to decide whether to confront the gossip or just let it ride. She chose to visit Violet Gumbold, whose own marriage had been the subject of innuendo, based, so far as Rosemary knew, on little more than the fact that her husband was frequently away from home. Violet was getting around a bit more now but was still visited a lot by female parishioners, who stopped b
y for tea, biscuits and a spot of character assassination—in this respect parish behaviour had changed little over the last two hundred years. Rosemary found her in the middle of limb-strengthening exercises which she was very ready to discontinue. The pair of them sat in the kitchen, and Rosemary circled around the delicate subject.

  “You’ll soon be able to come back to church,” she said.

  “Next Sunday, I thought. People have offered me lifts, but I want to get there under my own steam when I do go. Pity you won’t be there.”

  Rosemary grimaced.

  “I have considered just going along—as a sort of habit, or in the hope that something will ‘happen,’ as I think Paul still hopes it will. It would fill a gap. But the idea of spending a lot of time on what has become an empty observance just doesn’t appeal to me. There’ve got to be better ways of using my time.”

  Mrs Gumbold looked dubious.

  “I suppose that’s the practical view. But I do think it’s sad. I hope you don’t mind me saying that.”

  “Not in the least. But I have to say that for some reason—and it’s odd, when you think how much of my life has been given to the Church, in one way or another—it’s not sad for me. I feel freed from something.”

  “Well, I hope it doesn’t last.”

  “I almost hope it does. Maybe it’s the pleasure of being freed from some of the sort of people who do go to church.”

  She looked at Violet Gumbold out of the corner of her eye and saw that she took the point.

  “Rosemary!” she said, beginning to blush. “You’ve always got on so well with us all in the past.”

  “Yes—well enough. But the relationship has never really been challenged on either side. Now it has been.”

  “By your loss of faith?”

  “That, and this notion that I’m having an affair.” Mrs Gumbold looked down into her cup. “And now that it is challenged, I’m afraid I’m weighing a lot of people in the balance and finding them wanting.”

  Violet Gumbold made no reply, though she was clearly trying to think of one.

  “Is the whole parish talking about it, Violet?”

  “Well, yes. I’m afraid they are.” She seemed quite ready to talk as long as they stuck to facts.

  “Without coming to talk to me about it?”

  “I suppose they think you’d just deny it, there wouldn’t be any point.”

  “Ah—the ‘he would, wouldn’t he?’ syndrome. They must feel they have some pretty good evidence.”

  “I don’t know about that. You have been seen to go to Pizza Pronto just to talk to him.”

  “Gosh! How sinful!”

  “And it’s said you introduced him to Mr Gabrielli and persuaded him to give the young man a job.”

  “Again, gosh. Come off it, Vi. They must be throwing around nastier stuff than that.” Violet Gumbold was silent. Rosemary sighed. “All right, let’s get on to the who. Who started all this talk?”

  “Really, I couldn’t say, Rosemary.”

  “You mean you won’t tell me.”

  “No, I won’t. But I will tell you what they’re saying about how it started.” She was still looking down at her cup, but she felt she had to look Rosemary in the face when saying it, so she raised her eyes. “They say it began when you went to Scarborough, and that he got the sack when he was seen coming out of your room one night.”

  Rosemary laughed.

  “Right. Thank you, Violet. That’s really what I wanted to know. You know, if it wasn’t for poor old Paul and his position in the parish I think I’d find it rather flattering that someone my age could snap her fingers and have someone St—Silvio’s age come running. But it doesn’t seem much like real life.”

  “I don’t know, Rosemary: affairs between older women and younger men seem very common these days.”

  “Only in the soaps. And they’re not real life.”

  “It’s not just the soaps. You read about it all the time. Show biz people and that. You’re still a very attractive woman.”

  “The ‘still’ says it all.”

  “And he’s a charming young man.”

  “You know him?”

  “Well, I saw him when I was driven by Mrs Harridance to get a pizza.”

  Rosemary allowed herself a malicious smile.

  “Funny, I’ve never thought of you as a pizza sort of person, Violet. Or Florrie, come to that. One good result of all this is probably that Signor Gabrielli’s business has picked up no end.”

  “Oh Rosemary, you’re being unkind. I don’t want to believe these rumours, truly.”

  “Then don’t. The trouble with rumours is that people get the idea that if they hear them often enough they must be true. This one is being circulated vigorously, you’ll hear it often, but it is nonetheless a lie.”

  Leaving Violet Gumbold’s Rosemary felt delighted that she’d pumped her: the information she had got was just what she wanted. It gave her, too, several possible avenues for further activity, at least one of them very enticing. It was by no means clear to Rosemary, though, how best to investigate the Scarborough connection, and it was not till the following afternoon, when she was alone in the vicarage, that she felt confident enough to ring up the Cliff View Guesthouse.

  “Hello, that is Mrs Blundell, isn’t it? This is Rosemary Sheffield—I stayed with you a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Oh yes, Mrs Sheffield.” Cautious—not a good start. It threw Rosemary off course, and she blundered on less circuitously than she had intended.

  “Mrs Blundell, I wanted to ask something about Stanko—”

  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly discuss any of my staff with you, Mrs Sheffield.”

  “I don’t want to discuss him, Mrs Blundell. He’s here in Leeds at the moment, and I can talk to him any time I want.”

  There was a slight access of warmth, as she added: “I hope he’s found a job.”

  “Yes—he’s working in a pizzeria.”

  “Good. I always liked him greatly.”

  “He says he was sacked because the police were clamping down on people working illegally.”

  “I couldn’t possibly comment on that.”

  “Mrs Blundell, let’s stop being cloak and dagger about this, shall we? I very much doubt if my telephone or your telephone is being tapped. I know and you know that Stanko has no work permit. Was this why you got rid of him?”

  There was a brief silence, then some sign of cautious co-operation.

  “When summer comes the police tend to get more interested, with all the hotels and guesthouses taking extra people on. I always make sure that all my staff have their papers in order during the peak months.”

  “Meaning July and August. So that wasn’t why you got rid of Stanko now, in May?” There was silence at the other end, and Rosemary plunged on. “Mrs Blundell, there is a nasty rumour being spread around the parish, very distressing to my husband and me, that Stanko was sacked after being seen coming out of my room. The implications are obvious. Is that true?”

  This time, after a pause, Mrs Blundell replied.

  “No, that’s not true. I can assure you of that, Mrs Sheffield. As you know, there was quite a while between your visit and my suggesting to Stanko that he move on.”

  “Exactly. But am I right in thinking that there was some kind of an incident?”

  “Well . . . the fact is, Mrs Sheffield, that he was seen coming out of your room one evening—not late, as you will know, but—well, old people talk, and often they have rather nasty minds. When it came to me, this talk, I took no notice, because I knew you took an interest in him and his problems. But a lot of my guests are long-term in the winter months, and when the same people came to me with another incident of the same kind—”

  “You mean Stanko coming out of a female guest’s room?”

  “Yes. Such a nice woman, really sweet, here for a few days with her mother. So anyway I felt I didn’t have a leg to stand on, when it happened a second time, particularly as I’d told hi
m to be careful, so I asked him to move on.”

  “You didn’t talk to Mrs Meadowes about it?”

  “No, I didn—” There was a shocked silence. “I did not mention any name, Mrs Sheffield.”

  “No, Mrs Blundell, you didn’t need to. I am so grateful to you for clearing the matter up.”

  “So far as I know, Mrs Meadowes knows nothing about it—she and her mother left the next morning. I wouldn’t want—”

  “I shall be very careful, Mrs Blundell, very tactful. I can assure you of that. It goes with being a vicar’s wife.”

  So that was that. Thinking about it as she put the phone down she wondered whether her closing remark hadn’t been misleading: she was tempted to be very tactless indeed. In fact she was tempted to spread the rumour, or rather the news, that Stanko had been sacked after he had been seen leaving Mrs Meadowes’s bedroom. That would certainly signify an end to turning the other cheek, but it would be both satisfying and poetically just.

  A moment’s thought convinced her that such a move could spell disaster for Stanko. The more attention that was focussed on him, the more likely it would be that he would be forced to make another quick move. The only safe course for Stanko was to fade into the background, and the really unfortunate aspect of Selena Meadowes’s gossip was that it prevented him doing that. But how much did she know about him? Did she know anything about his place of origin?

  Rosemary decided to find out. She also determined to have a showdown with Selena.

  She had just made this decision, and was turning her mind to the when and where, when Paul came in from evensong. He seemed in fine good humour.

  “I made a suggestion about the party after the spring fete,” he said, rubbing his hands.

  “Some genteel version of the rite of spring?” Rosemary enquired. “With me as sacrificial victim?”

  “Ah yes—well, it did have something to do with that. All this silly talk—I know we haven’t discussed it—”

  “But we both know it’s been going on.”

  “Exactly. Well, I thought that for refreshments, as a change, instead of going to the Cosy Nook people to do quiche and salad as usual, we’d get a big order of pizzas from Pizza Pronto. Everybody likes them, and it will make a change.”