‘Maths wasn’t your strong subject at school?’
‘I didn’t go to school.’
‘Oh?’
‘I went to a few. Got expelled from them all. Cordie gave up the ghost and said she’d educate me herself. Except she didn’t really, except in horses and dogs and things of that sort. Animals were her great love.’
‘I can’t picture you as the school troublemaker. What did you do?’
‘Oh, I was a little shit, pardon my French, vicar. But I was. I liked to frighten people. I lived to scare them out of their wits, in fact. And I was very good at it. So good that nobody wanted to share a building with me.’
Adam found himself looking more closely at Julia, at her aquiline features and her cool, challenging eyes. Her dress was always understated, her manner aloof – she was, in so many respects, Evie’s complete opposite. But something about her drew him in today, and he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
‘I suppose after what happened with your parents – you had some emotional difficulties,’ he surmised.
‘If you say so. You’re a very interesting man, you know,’ she said suddenly, homing in on him.
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he floundered.
‘I do. I’m intrigued by you. You seem so – hardcore. And yet you have this ridiculous weak spot. More like a weak crater, actually, miles wide. For that little tart at the back of the bus. What is it about her?’
‘Please don’t talk about her like that.’
‘Why not? She opens her legs for all and sundry and makes no secret of it. Is that what you like about her?’
‘I won’t discuss this.’
‘It must be something,’ she persisted. ‘She’s pretty, that can’t be denied, but there’s more than one pretty girl in Saxonhurst.’
‘Change the subject.’
‘Oh, all right. When did you last have a girlfriend?’
‘Not that one.’
‘Oh, Adam, don’t be so tight-lipped. You look furious! It’s a reasonable enough question. I want to know about your past.’
‘I can’t think why you would. I’m a vicar. I trained as a vicar. I got ordained. I came here.’
‘This is your first parish?’
‘No.’
‘Why did you leave the last one?’
‘Julia, are you a Catholic?’
‘No, of course not, why do you ask?’
‘You seem to have had training from Torquemada.’
‘Goodness, so cagey. So Adam Flint has no past, no relationships, no previous job. How interesting. What a challenge for an enquiring mind.’
‘I’m really very much as you see me. There’s no great mystery.’
‘I refuse to believe it. I’ll work you out yet. See if I don’t.’
He strove, with some effort, to drive the conversation towards the history of Saxonhurst.
‘Was there always a member of your family as lord of the manor?’
‘Oh yes, we go back centuries,’ she said. ‘There’s a Shields in the Domesday Book, you know.’
‘No, really?’
‘Indeed. We presided over this village through thick and thin and we always chose the right side. Stephen over Matilda, Yorkists over Lancastrians, Parliamentarians over Royalists. We had the best connections and we made sure they counted. When Saxonhurst was a rotten borough, a Shields was the MP. We were bulletproof. We even got away without a single plague sufferer.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I’ve told you.’ Julia’s face, eager for once, closed immediately. ‘The misfortune of my parents, my own financial incompetence.’
‘And there isn’t a single spare Shields who can come and take the reins of the dynasty.’
‘I’m last of the line.’
‘You never married?’
‘Oh, I’d tell you mine if you’d tell me yours. But you won’t, will you?’
And there the conversation ended, signposts for the seaside having been sighted on the motorway, to rousing cheers from the back of the bus.
The villagers had scattered so rapidly and randomly once the bus was parked that Adam had missed his chance to try and ascertain Evie’s movements.
He found himself alone on a crowded promenade, a lonely black-clad figure in a sea of lobster-red skin and fluorescent nylon. What should he do with himself? Have his fortune told by Gypsy Rose Petulengro? Hardly appropriate for a man of the cloth. Have his portrait drawn in charcoals? Who would ever want such a thing? Take a ride in a flight simulator? No, all the amusements ranged around him failed to amuse.
He wanted Evie. He wanted to find her and take her away from her pernicious influences, just as Tribulation Smith had done before him. But where was she? If he looked in all the seafront pubs, he would draw unwanted attention to himself. Perhaps she was innocently eating candyfloss on the pier. Yes, the pier.
Without questioning it too deeply, he let his footsteps tend in that direction. He walked on through a garishly painted arch, on to the wooden boards, and spent 50 pence on looking through a telescope, out to sea and the cliffs that bordered it.
‘You won’t find her out there,’ said a voice behind him.
‘Julia,’ he said, removing his eye from the lens and turning to find her proffering an ice-cream cone with a chocolate flake.
‘Spotted you moping about on the prom. Thought you looked as if you needed cheering up. Come on. Walk along the pier with me and I’ll tell you about my lovers.’
‘Julia, my interest wasn’t prurient …’
‘Of course it wasn’t.’
She winked – a most un-Julia-like gesture.
‘Come on,’ she wheedled. ‘Have the ice-cream. Live a little. God knows, you need it.’
He took it and walked with her past the faded ballroom and the clapped-out funfair to the end of the structure, where beaten-down fishermen sat all day with rods and lines.
‘I met him at the seaside, actually,’ she said.
Waves rolled in and under the boards, sea spray kissing the metal spars that held them up.
‘Your husband? You had one?’
‘It was a short-lived thing. A whirlwind romance.’
‘You don’t have to tell me.’
‘I want to. I was in one dodgem car. He was in another. He wouldn’t stop ramming me – rather metaphorical, really. He drove me to the side of the ring and I couldn’t out-manoeuvre him. He said he’d let me out again if I went for a drink with him. He wasn’t my sort really – a jack the lad, all charm and flash, no class. But sometimes you get so tired of having to measure up class, don’t you find? You want to throw it all aside and get to the heart of things, to the lusts and desires that drive them.’
‘I couldn’t say …’ Adam feared he might be blushing.
‘After one gin and tonic with Darren, my legs felt like they wanted to open wide and stay that way forever. He could do what he wanted with me. He wasn’t even that good-looking, but he had charisma, that certain Pied Piper thing that makes people follow and fall for him. It was in the way he looked at me, as if he could see me naked. And the way he dropped his voice to talk to me, and the way he used his smile, and his eyes. I was a goner, then and there.’
‘You got married?’
‘I haven’t got to that part yet. Don’t rush me. That gin and tonic was the only drink I had that day – unless you count Darren’s semen.’
‘Julia!’
‘We never made it back to the bar. We went straight behind the pub toilets, this dirty little outhouse in this nasty little gravelled car park, and I let him lift up my skirts and put his fingers right up me. And then I let him lift me up and hold me against the wall and fuck me the way I’d never been fucked in my life. Properly, for the love of it, for the need of it.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because of the way it roughens your voice and reddens your cheeks. Because it’s what you need. You need a Darren.’
‘I’m heterosexual.’
<
br /> ‘I’m metaphorical.’
The bold challenge of her eyes should have driven his own sideways, or upward, or somewhere that wasn’t Julia’s face, but it didn’t. Somehow he couldn’t look away from her.
‘What is it with the women in this village?’ he muttered.
Julia put her hand on his upper arm, then, when he didn’t shy away, she moved it to his face.
‘It’s not wrong, you know,’ she said gently. ‘It’s not healthy to keep it all in.’
For a horrible moment he wanted to cry, the way he did as a child when somebody was teasing him in the playground for his uncool trainers or poor prowess at Sonic the Hedgehog. It’s not my fault, he used to yell. It’s not my fault I’m not like you – any of you.
Julia offered him an opportunity to be normal, to be a card-carrying citizen of the 21st century, just for that afternoon – and it was almost too cruel of her. How could he accept it? He loved Evie and love had to be pure and unselfish and not driven or derailed by base lusts and …
Julia kissed him.
Her lips were slightly dry, cracked and salty-tasting, and yet the word that flashed into Adam’s head was manna.
She was taller than Evie and her touch was cool where Evie’s was feverish – in his dreams, at least. She was like the moon to Evie’s sun, pale and remote but no less desirable for it.
There was a mad second during which Adam vacillated between hysterical repudiation and continuation of the kiss. The second passed and the incipient panic died away, replaced by a profound and almost reassuring pleasure.
Julia’s kiss, so sure and confident, made him feel that everything would be all right. This was good. This was fine. The saints did it – well, some of them.
His hands wavered at her side for a moment or two, then, as their embrace deepened and the roar in his ears drowned out the roar of the sea, he put them to the sides of her head, mussing her immaculate coiffure. She didn’t seem to mind.
Against his clerical black shirt, her silky blouse slipped and slid, the pearl buttons bumping about his chest. Their arms stretched and wrapped around one another, their hips and pelvises met, their thighs pressed together. She was so slight, almost insubstantial in his hands, that he felt he had to cling to her to prevent her slipping away from him like a vapour. But her mouth was full and lush and promised him the earth, especially when she made use of her tongue.
The fishermen forgotten, Adam shut his eyes and let himself be beguiled. It was a moment of relief, that was all, a break to recharge the batteries of his virtue before he put them to work on the claiming of Evie Witts.
Julia’s tongue flicked along his lips, one of her hands massaging his neck while the other dropped lower, creeping with manicured fingernails down his back until it reached his bottom and gave it a cheeky squeeze.
He wriggled his hips involuntarily, panting into her mouth, feeling the dragging weight of his balls and the uncomfortable tightness of his trousers.
I shouldn’t, he thought foggily. I shouldn’t, but …
She found his testicles and gave them a rub through his trousers.
Now is the time to stop this, if I’m ever …
Her palm closed on his erection.
She broke the kiss.
‘I know a good hotel. A friend owns it …’
‘Oh God, forgive me,’ he whispered in agony.
‘He will. That’s his job, isn’t it?’ She put her head to one side and stroked his cheek pityingly. ‘Poor love. You need it so badly. Come on. Come with Julia.’
He allowed her to lead him by the hand.
A lamb to the slaughter.
Chapter Ten
THE FUNFAIR WAS riotous, the lights flashing and the sirens blaring. Further on, in the faded ballroom, something was even rowdier, a huge press of men with plastic pints of lager spilling out on to the boardwalk, whistling and catcalling.
From somewhere inside, louche music played.
Adam saw Julia peer inside, then look sharply forward and step up her pace to a near-run. Intrigued, he pulled her back, wanting to know what had caused her change in demeanour. A pin-thick gap between sweating beer guts gave him the glimpse he needed.
He let go of her hand and barged through the crowd.
Evie was pole-dancing on a stage, apparently participating in some amateur competition. She had exchanged her sundress for a skimpy bikini and the raffia wedges were replaced with diamante stilettoes. Her routine was so blatantly suggestive the other competitors whispered behind hands or sat watching with milk-souring expressions. She was more popular with the men, though.
Adam had never seen tongues literally hanging out until now.
Every man in the place wanted to take her from that pole and fuck her raw.
The very air swam with sex and violence.
It smelled of sweat and stale beer.
Adam fell forward on the carpet and retched over some huge tattooed hulk’s shoes.
He looked up to apologise, only to see a fist descending at speed and from a great height. He shut his eyes, resigned to unconsciousness, but the fist was halted by a flailing, kicking dervish who proved, once Adam had groggily come to his senses, to be Julia Shields.
‘Get off him!’ she shrieked.
The pole-dance music stopped.
Somebody took Adam by the arm and dragged him away from the hulk, then handed him a paper tissue to wipe his mouth.
In the meantime, the hulk had stepped back from Julia and was being calmed down by a group of friends.
‘Come on, Adam,’ said Julia gruffly. ‘You need a lie down.’
Evie leapt off the stage and stood with a hand on her hip, staring fiercely at Julia.
‘What’s your game?’ she demanded. ‘What are you doing with him?’
‘I don’t have a game,’ said Julia haughtily. ‘You’re the one with the agenda. We all know what it is. Well, I don’t think he deserves it.’
‘Get your hands off him!’
‘Come on, Adam.’
Adam, unsteady on his feet and with black spots floating in and out of his field of vision, followed the most soothing voice. It happened to be Julia’s.
He wove through the mob in a dark-edged dream, his stomach in revolt, his brain furred up with equal measures of revulsion, despair and, behind it all, a confusion of lusts. For Evie, for Julia, for flesh, for sin, for forgetting – any or all of them boiled within him as his feet trod an unknown, careless path.
Greasy smells of frying onions and burnt candyfloss and engine oil mixed with the sea salt, swimming past him, with the noise and the press of heated bodies.
He came to his senses on a bed, sprawled out where Julia had pushed him. She had loosened his collar and taken off his boots.
He opened his eyes slowly, taking her in as she hovered above him with a tooth glass of water. Her fair hair shone like a halo.
She sat down on the side of the bed and stroked his brow. He couldn’t hold back any longer. He laid his head in her lap and burst into tears.
‘There, there,’ she said, and every caress of her fingers, mopping up his tears, was like the re-establishment of some long-lost bond.
‘What’s happening to me?’ he pleaded. ‘Why is it happening to me?’
‘Darling, I imagine this has been a long time coming. You’re tired. You’ve used up too much energy denying your nature and masking it with this old-time religion of yours.’
‘What do you mean, my nature? You don’t know me that well.’
‘I know you very well, Adam. You and all who came before you.’
‘What are you talking about?’ His lament came out as a strangulated bellow. ‘What is going on in this village? Julia, I have dreams – such dreams. Dreams of being a Puritan preacher who takes a witch for a wife. What does it mean?’
‘It means you’re the last in a long line, my love. And so is Evie Witts.’
‘What line?’
‘I shouldn’t say. The village secrets aren’t mine to
disclose.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake! Forgive me, O Lord. I’m leaving. I resign.’
‘You won’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Evie won’t have it. You won’t leave here without her. And she’ll never leave.’
Adam contemplated this. Julia was right. Except he would make Evie leave. He would make her come with him.
‘Tell me why you came here,’ said Julia in a low, persuasive voice.
‘Nobody else would take the post,’ moaned Adam. ‘And I couldn’t find another. I have a reputation – for being a bit too hardline. I’m an embarrassment to the church, this stupid soft-centred namby-pamby church of ours. Where are all the muscular Christians now? That’s all I want to be.’
‘I think you’re a very muscular Christian,’ said Julia soothingly, putting a hand on his upper arm and squeezing it. ‘You have the soul of a missionary. In fact, one of your predecessors had been a missionary. A Victorian chap, came to us from Congo. A rather unsuccessful mission, I gather. He bore some interesting scars.’
‘What are you talking about – my predecessors? You keep coming out with these bizarre statements, speaking as if you were 400 years old yourself.’
‘I need to mind my tongue, don’t I? Thank you for telling me about how you came to be here. Now, how about the girlfriends?’
She smiled roguishly and ruffled his hair.
He shut his eyes and whispered, ‘Nothing to tell.’
‘What? You’ve never had a girlfriend? Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘The risk … Too much.’
‘Risk? What risk?’
‘Risk of temptation. Temptation of the flesh.’
‘Adam, you aren’t a monk!’
‘I wanted to save myself. I wanted to be pure.’
‘You’re a virgin?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t kiss like one.’
‘Thanks, I think.’
‘You weren’t born for the celibate existence, my love. You need more than that.’
‘My flesh is so weak …’
‘Don’t think of it as weakness. It’s another way of being. It’s not wrong, it’s not right. It’s how God made you.’
‘God would not make me a – fornicator. It’s His way of testing me, the hardest test He could give me. I don’t care for drink or gambling or money or anything like that. But Evie Witts … Oh, Evie Witts …’
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