The Rector's Wife

by Joanna Trollope

  He was slightly defiant about doing this. He was genuinely abashed at his opposition to a move which was very likely to benefit Flora, while at the same time feeling that Anna, by taking charge, had not only made him look weak, but had meant to. She had also said that morning, while they were dressing, ‘I suppose you aren’t trying to impress the nuns, are you? Taking Flora on her first morning when I can’t remember you ever taking any of them to school before—’

  He said, ‘I’m trying to make amends.’

  She had looked at him, with a look that wasn’t unkind but wasn’t particularly loving either, and then had gone downstairs to find that a radiant Flora, flawless in her new uniform, had already laid breakfast (unheard of) and was slicing bread for toast with a fine disregard for symmetry. Breakfast had been quite cheerful, with Flora so exuberant and Luke able to face a new term and old friends with the dignity of actually, for the first time in his life, being in funds. Charlotte had gone back to Edinburgh on her bus three days before, kissing everyone goodbye with a fervour born of relief. She had left Anna a postcard on her pillow, a reproduction of a Klimt, with, written on the back, ‘Dearest Mum. Women are no longer victims of circumstance. You have to believe that. Love, Charlotte.’ Anna had been very touched. The card – an erotic, exotic painting of Judith – was in her bag now.

  When he had dropped Flora – ‘Ah,’ Sister Ignatia had said, clasping his hands in both her faintly damp ones, ‘now here’s a very special little newcomer’ – Peter drove back into the market-place, and managed to park in the double file of spaces in the centre. He got out, locked the car carefully, and crossed to the pavement that led down to Pricewell’s, at the point where the market-place narrowed into the High Street He walked against the buildings, slightly sideways as if trying not to be conspicuous, and, when he reached the great blank windows of the supermarket, he stopped, and peered in at an angle. The inside was brightly lit, but his view was half obscured by the row of tills against the window. He began to sidle along the glass, gazing up the aisles between the rows of tins and packets and bottles. From half-way along one, standing on a small stepladder, Anna watched him. She watched him reach the door, hesitate, and turn away. He walked back, more briskly, the way he had come. Anna looked for a while at the point at Which he had vanished and then shook herself, and turned back to her shelves.

  Chapter Nine

  Jonathan Byrne made himself a study in Woodborough Vicarage. He spent a happy afternoon roaming through the unused upper rooms, and chose one with an elaborate stone-mullioned Gothic window surmounted by trefoils filled with coloured glass. The diocese was, of course, agitating to sell the Vicarage and erect the usual sensible, faceless, mediocre building instead, so perhaps within years this room and its splendid window would be taken over as a dormitory by boys from The King’s School, an undistinguished private establishment currently benefiting from parental anxiety about the unreliability of state education, and needing to expand.

  In the meantime, Jonathan decided, it would serve him excellently. He retrieved various pieces of furniture from around the Vicarage – a table, some tremendously heavy pitch-pine shelves, several chairs and a spectacularly morbid Piranesi print of dungeons – and arranged these to his satisfaction. Miss Lambe, luckily, had no notion of how to interfere or domesticate, so he was not burdened with curtains or cushions or unwanted strips of comforting carpet. The uncompromising angularity of the room, when he had finished, pleased him very much. He went down to Daniel’s study to summon him on a little tour of appreciation, but Daniel was not there. He was, said Miss Lambe, out in the combined parish of Great and Little Blessington with Mumford Orchus, swearing in a new churchwarden.

  Jonathan felt the need of company. Miss Lambe, for all her hamster-like charm, was not much good for conversation on account of her powerful sense of anxious inadequacy, and in any case, she was doing the ironing and, whenever addressed, gave a little start and put the iron down in order to attend respectfully to whatever was being said to her. It was clearly both kinder and more practical not to say anything. Jonathan collected his jacket and a handful of change and said he was going out for an hour. Miss Lambe stopped ironing to say it looked like rain.

  Woodborough Vicarage opened straight on to a cobbled lane that ran down to the High Street. It was a neglected lane, too narrow for all but the smallest cars, and dank weeds and mosses grew sadly between the cobbles. It was closed at one end by a small lich-gate to the churchyard intended by the Victorians for the Vicar’s private access, and opened at the other on to the pavement opposite Woolworth’s. As Jonathan turned away from the church, its clock announced that it was five – time, he considered, for a cup of something to reward his scene-shifting efforts.

  The pavements were quite full. Jonathan threaded his way along, thinking how aggressive and proprietorial of pavement space the possession of a pushchair made most women. He passed a newsagent and an electrical goods shop and a window full of women’s clothes – Jonathan had never known how to look at their clothes, but this riotous assembly of floral patterns struck him as quite inappropriate (except, of course, if you were a flower) – and then he came to Pricewell’s. Pricewell’s. He remembered. He stopped. In Pricewell’s worked the interesting Mrs Bouverie who had, Daniel said, caused such fluttering in her parish hen coop by her small, brave show of independence. Jonathan had seen her on Easter Sunday, but she had been harassed and tense, in no mood to be interesting. He thought he would go in and spy on her, just briefly. He pushed open the door.

  Pricewell’s was almost empty. In ten minutes, it would be full of people released from their offices, but for now it felt calm and spacious. Jonathan walked up and down the aisles, marvelling at the extraordinary things the public seemed to have a taste for, and looking for Anna. She was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps Thursday was not her day. He stopped a plump woman patting packets of paper towels into order and asked her where Anna was. ‘In the warehouse,’ she said. ‘Could you—’ She looked at him. He smiled. ‘All right,’ she said, but she sighed.

  He waited for what seemed a long time among the quiet columns of lavatory paper. When she came down, Anna was wearing a blue overall over much longer clothes, and looked anxious.

  ‘Mr Byrne, is anything the matter, has your brother—’

  ‘No,’ Jonathan said, ‘I just wanted someone to have some coffee with. To talk to. I came in here to have a snoop at you going about your tasks, but then I thought I’d much rather take you out and talk to you.’

  She looked flustered. ‘I can’t leave until five-thirty—’

  He held out his wrist. ‘Twenty minutes.’

  ‘Then I catch the bus to Loxford—’

  ‘I’ll drive you.’

  ‘Mr Byrne—’

  ‘Jonathan.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Anna said primly, ‘that my life doesn’t allow for impulses.’

  He stared at her. She looked down.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘what hours do you work tomorrow?’

  ‘Until three. Then I collect Flora at four.’

  ‘Three o’clock tomorrow then.’

  She looked up again. ‘Is there something specific? That you want to talk about?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘should there be?’ Then he said, to help her, ‘I’m a total stranger here, you see. Daniel’s very busy.’

  ‘But you are writing a book—’

  ‘Not all the time.’

  She seemed to give herself a little shake. ‘Tomorrow then. Thank you.’

  He nodded and turned away and, on the way out, bought himself a loaf which called itself Lincolnshire Plum Bread, from the bakery section, because it reminded him of the poacher’s song he had so loved when he was small.

  Long before, Jonathan Byrne had married a fellow undergraduate, the moment he came down from Cambridge. She was ferociously clever, cleverer, he knew, than he, and with a singleness of purpose that he had imagined would give them both freedom. In fact, it gave them no shared goa
l since Jonathan was not sufficiently emotionally mature to understand the necessity for his own contribution. They had stayed married for three years, and had divorced with brisk friendliness, acknowledging that there was no point to their shared existence because they did not, in fact, share it or wish to. Stephanie had gone to America and a distinguished academic life which now included, Jonathan heard, a veteran Hollywood actor old enough to be virtually her grandfather. After a few cursory and reactive affairs, Jonathan grew out of the habit of fulltime women, assuming, with a certain resignation, that he had not much aptitude for them. When Daniel came out of his monastery and looked about at life, he had asked Jonathan why he hadn’t married again and Jonathan had said because he hadn’t wanted to. Now, both brothers were conscious of the unmistakable companionable warmth of having one another in Woodborough Vicarage.

  Miss Lambe laid supper for them each night at the inadequate dining-room table – inadequate, that is, for the proportions of the room. They ate early, to allow her to escape to her burrow and her wireless – she was disconcerted by television. She left covered dishes and plates on the sideboard, and then hovered in the kitchen until they had eaten because it would have distressed her immeasurably to think of an archdeacon – even a modern archdeacon – washing up. She cooked safe, dull food, but at least Jonathan’s presence had broken her habit of cutting up Daniel’s meals as if he were a toothless invalid. To be obliging, they ate their chops or ham or sausages at breakneck speed, and then took cups of coffee into Daniel’s study. Behind them, in the dining-room, Miss Lambe mourned over an abandoned potato, a half-finished apple crumble. Anything left could only mean that there had been something the matter with it.

  The telephone in Daniel’s study constantly interrupted them. Jonathan wondered if the Church of England and City of London foreign-exchange dealers had almost comparable telephone bills. The interruptions made sustained conversation difficult, but there was at least time to tell Daniel about his foray into Pricewell’s and his stiff little interview with Anna.

  ‘She was very disapproving. I felt I was behaving improperly. It was only an impulse.’

  Daniel said, spooning far too much sugar into his coffee, ‘It was improper. For her, I mean. It isn’t the kind of thing that happens to her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because almost no-one treats clergy wives as if they were human beings.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘Not at all rubbish. I didn’t see it so much in Manchester because I think cities are much more socially liberal and the hierarchy doesn’t exist to the same extent. But out in the country, the vicar’s wife is the vicar’s wife, and she is required to remember that.’

  ‘That’s status—’

  ‘No,’ Daniel said, ‘it is not. It is an assumption – and not a generous assumption – that not only is a clergy wife expected to live by almost exaggerated standards of rectitude, but that she is somehow immune to the devices and desires of all other human hearts. It isn’t just Anna Bouverie. The wife of the priest out at Mumford Orchus was shut in her sitting-room this afternoon with the curtains drawn and the television on. The husband made me a cup of tea in the kitchen and I couldn’t help noticing a whole basket of pill bottles on the table. Nice fellow, bit smug, but I don’t suppose he knows what on earth is the matter, or why it has come to be the matter.’

  ‘Doesn’t all this apply to men?’

  Daniel drank his coffee.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘The men have chosen God.’

  ‘Haven’t their wives?’

  ‘A great many of them have. They aren’t the problem. The problem lies with the wives who discover, quite legitimately, that, although bowing to the will of God of your own free will is one thing, bowling to it as translated to you by your husband, who has somehow assumed a monopoly on the first place with God, is quite another. This is not pure Christianity, I know, but it is pure human observation.’

  The telephone began. Jonathan got up to answer it. ‘Yes? I think so. Who is it speaking?’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Terry Bailey. From Dummerford.’

  Daniel looked pleased. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘my pet misfit. A full-blooded evangelical who preaches like a Welsh Baptist, stuck in a village made up entirely of retired admirals and genteel widows.’ He seized the receiver. ‘Terry? What can I do for you?’

  Jonathan went out of the room and quietly closed the door. He crossed the hall, and climbed the stairs, past Miss Lambe’s shut door through which the wireless clucked comfortingly, and up to his new study. Before he went to bed, he would fill the shelves with books.

  Anna led Jonathan to a coffee shop attached to a delicatessen whose window was full of ostentatious Italian machines for making pasta. This was not because it crossed her mind as being more suitable for his mildly eccentric appearance, but because she knew that the inhabitants of Loxford, when they came into Woodborough to shop, preferred their refreshment (according to class) at either the jolly red plastic hamburger joint in the market-place, or the Country Kitchen, whose décor was refined rural and whose motto was ‘home-made’. The delicatessen coffee shop was used chiefly by the young bookbinders and jewellers and leathersmiths who rented workshops in Woodborough’s former brewery. It was evident at once that Jonathan only noticed his surroundings if that was what he happened to be concentrating on at the time, which was not, at this moment, the case. He collected coffee for Anna and himself, and then pulled an ancient paperback copy of André Maurois’ Ariel out of his pocket and laid it beside her cup.

  ‘Have you read that? It’s about Shelley.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do. It’s dated, but there’s something there. And it’s relevant. To what I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘Oh,’ Anna said, relieved. ‘So there is something.’

  ‘I want to talk to you about subversion.’

  ‘Heavens—’

  ‘Does that interest you?’

  She spread her hands. ‘I don’t know. I’m not quite sure of the rules of this kind of conversation—’

  ‘You mean because it isn’t orthodox. Or shows signs of becoming unorthodox.’

  She said, looking straight at him, ‘I imagine, I can’t be sure, being rather out of practice at talking like this, but I imagine it is perfectly possible to long for and dread the same thing.’

  ‘Like unorthodoxy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh good,’ he said, ‘this is exactly what I was hoping for. Are you hungry?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  He settled himself over his coffee cup. ‘Don’t you think,’ he said, ‘that it would be exhilarating to feel a rush of liberating energy?’

  ‘What has that to do with subversion?’

  ‘Aren’t they linked? Isn’t the desire to undermine the status quo and to mock pretension and apparent unassailability tied up with feeling that after they are overthrown there will be a wonderful, energetic freedom?’

  She drank her coffee. She looked at him. She said boldly, ‘Are we – you – talking about me?’

  He smiled. Like his brother, he had a charming smile. ‘I am absolutely fascinated by your situation.’ He waited for her to reply that he wouldn’t be if he was in it but she said, without heat, ‘I’m not up for discussion, Mr Byrne.’

  ‘Jonathan. Haven’t you talked to Daniel?’

  She looked indignant but said, ‘That’s quite different.’

  ‘Because he’s a priest?’

  ‘Because,’ she said, her face softening, ‘because he really does understand the dilemma.’

  ‘How do you know I don’t?’

  Anna thought, briefly, of Patrick O’Sullivan. ‘You are a man, but not a priest, so I don’t trust you.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said candidly. ‘You can’t imagine how little chance I have had to form close relationships outside my family. I have seen how people behave, but I haven’t experienced it.
I’ve experienced a lot of very unpleasant things that I don’t suppose will ever come your way, but I haven’t, personally, intimately, been in the thick of human things because, as a priest’s wife, I can’t be. Are you married?’

  ‘Not now,’ he said. He wanted to look at her with admiration, but controlled himself.

  ‘In that case,’ she said unexpectedly, ‘I assume you know a good deal more at first-hand about women than I know about men. You’ve probably noticed that there is often a kind of aura of – of unworldliness, almost innocence, about clergymen and their wives. I suppose it is partly lack of money but I think it’s partly what I’ve been saying, too.’ She stopped.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  She shook her head. ‘I never talk like this,’ she said severely.

  ‘I want to know more about this detachment, this sensation of being in a separate category—’

  ‘I have to go. I have to collect Flora.’

  ‘Don’t you like this? Don’t you like a little mental exercise? Don’t you want to be talked to as if you had never heard of the Church of England?’

  She looked up again. She looked quite distraught. He was horrified, remorseful.

  ‘Oh my dear girl, I’m so sorry, I’m so clumsy—’ He pulled a huge navy-blue handkerchief out of his pocket and proffered it. ‘I meant to be sympathetic, not challenging, I meant to be generous, if that doesn’t sound patronizing.’

  She nodded, round the handkerchief. ‘I know—’

  He said, ‘I was too sudden.’

  ‘I think I was rather priggish—’

  He leaned across the table towards her. ‘Is it very imprudent to ask if you believe in God?’

  ‘I think I do. Very occasionally I am almost sure I do. But it is not a God who seems to bear much relation to—’ She stopped. She had been going to say, Peter’s God.