The Rector's Wife

by Joanna Trollope

‘Come and sit down.’ He opened the door to the room where he had taken her before, and given her brandy. The fat chairs beckoned like pillows. She longed to sit in one.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Just innocent tonic water, then. Why do you treat me like Bluebeard?’

  Anna did not want to encourage him by saying that all conversations with him immediately seemed to flicker with danger, so she simply said primly, ‘I treat you like any other parishioner.’

  He grunted. He poured tonic water into one of his extravagantly cut tumblers and added ice and lemon. ‘About Luke.’ He handed her the glass.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I want to help him.’

  ‘I believe you already are—’

  ‘No. More than that. I want to get a bit involved in this fearsome trip they’re all planning, see they have a roadworthy vehicle and so forth, and then, if you’ll agree, help him with the next stage of his life, the right art school, that sort of thing.’

  Anna said with distaste, ‘A patron.’

  ‘If you like. Why should that matter? I’m rich and childless and I like Luke. There wouldn’t be any sinister strings.’

  Anna shook her hair back. ‘I’m terribly sorry. I was disagreeable and rude. It’s exceedingly kind of you to want to help and heaven knows, Luke could do with a guardian angel like you. May I mention it to Peter? And then – and then, perhaps talk some more?’

  ‘Anna,’ Patrick said, ‘I do genuinely want to help Luke. But I must confess, I’d do anything on earth to get you to talk to me some more.’

  She stared at him. He took a swallow of the drink he had poured himself and then put the tumbler down on the tray where all the bottles stood. Then he crossed the few feet of carpet between them, removed her glass from her hand, set it down, put his arms firmly about her and kissed her. He kissed her hard and competently. Anna, who had been kissed by no man but Peter for over twenty years and had come to assume that she was surrounded by some cordon sanitaire, was so entirely startled that at first she did nothing. She simply stood in his embrace. Then panic set in; not the indignant panic of outrage at being kissed but the hysterical panic of realizing that she did not dislike it. She brought her arms up sharply and shoved hard against his chest.

  He said, ‘And now you can say, “How dare you!”’

  She stepped away from him crying, ‘But I don’t want to be seduced!’

  He said, ‘Do you know, for a second I could have sworn you did?’

  She ran for the door. He ran after her, and seized her wrist. ‘Don’t go!’

  ‘What I hate,’ Anna said, swinging on him, eyes blazing, ‘is this assumption that I’m easy game, that I’m some sort of imprisoned innocent who will be grateful to you for releasing me. You are a stupid, arrogant, insensitive man.’ She wrenched her wrist free. It hurt. She cradled it with the other hand. ‘Just because I’m inexperienced,’ she said furiously, ‘doesn’t mean that I lack perception or native wit. I’m not a fool,’ and then she flung the door open and vanished across the hall and through the outer door, letting it crash shudderingly behind her.

  Slowly, Patrick moved to the hall in her wake. Ella came out of the kitchen, holding an oven glove. She looked at Patrick. Without uttering a word, she communicated to him that she was pleased to see he had at last met his Waterloo. He said, without returning her look, ‘I haven’t finished yet.’

  Chapter Twelve

  In the sixth-form college’s boys’ lavatory, companionably peeing side by side, Luke said to Barnaby that home was really weird just now. Barnaby, who had always hankered after more weirdness than his mother’s strong sense of order could stand, said how come? Shaking himself and then zipping up his jeans, Luke said kind of furtive.

  ‘Furtive?’ Barnaby said. ‘Like hassle?’

  No, Luke said, not like hassle, in fact no-one was hassling him at all. It was more a sort of atmosphere, people not saying things when they were dying to, Mum and Dad kind of pretending the other wasn’t there.

  Barnaby considered this very briefly and abruptly lost interest in the whole topic. ‘Want a smoke?’

  Later, on the last bus to Loxford, Luke’s mind returned reluctantly to the subject. He wasn’t much surprised, since his mind, just at present, lurched between the disagreeableness of home, and sex. Sex usually won. Luke was horrified and fascinated to find how much he thought about it and longed for it and was afraid of it. He couldn’t see, usually, how he was actually going to do it for the first time but he feared that if that first time wasn’t soon he’d probably explode. This state of affairs had come upon him quite suddenly and he was entirely at its mercy. He got erections all the time, without warning, and had fantasies of a slightly brutal kind about a girl in his art-history set, a girl called Alison with long, rough red hair and sneering eyes, like a cat. She was reputed to have slept around since she was fifteen. Luke’s imagination returned constantly to what, if this were true, she might know that he did not. The power that she would have in possessing such knowledge made him almost sick with excitement. It also made this daily departure from Woodborough, where Alison lived and where she lounged about in the evening with Barnaby and a group of others, almost unbearable. Add to that the atmosphere in the Rectory, and Luke sometimes thought he couldn’t take any more.

  And yet . . . There was some little haunting thing about his mother that sang in Luke’s mind. Ever since she’d come back from Oxford, she’d seemed secret, shut away, but the secret clearly wasn’t a thrill like the secret of Alison, it was something sad, as if something had got broken. Luke didn’t want to talk about it because he didn’t really think he could cope with being confided in, but the look of her made him uneasy and sorry. His conscience drove him home, and then his feelings of being helpless and disconcerted drove him out again, to the Old Rectory, to cut the edges of Patrick’s lawn, and polish Patrick’s car and rake Patrick’s gravel and to feel, as he did so, the healing balm of Patrick’s prosperity and assurance.

  When the bus got to Loxford, Luke found that he simply could not face the Rectory yet. He got off at the far side of the green, and was immediately ambushed by old Mr Biddle from behind his garden wall.

  ‘’Ere,’ Mr Biddle said. He beckoned Luke over. He wore a cap, winter and summer, and a sagging tweed jacket, and he had filthy fingernails and bright, sharp old countryman’s eyes. ‘What about ’im?’ said Mr Biddle in a conspiratorial, screaming whisper.

  ‘Who?’ Luke said.

  Mr Biddle seized Luke’s sleeve. He gestured at the Old Rectory. “Im. O’Sullivan. Does he ’ave wimmin there?’

  ‘All the time.’

  Mr Biddle licked his lips. ‘Wimmin from London?’

  Luke nodded. ‘Belly dancers.’

  ‘Cor,’ Mr Biddle said. He let Luke go. He sketched huge breasts on the front of his jacket and grinned. ‘In the war—’ began Mr Biddle.

  ‘I’m late,’ Luke said. ‘I’m supposed to be working for him. Got to get the spuds in.’

  ‘Spuds?’ Mr Biddle said. He gave a little cackle.

  Luke did not, despite lurking thoughts of Alison, want to know what spuds reminded Mr Biddle of. ‘Gotta go,’ he said.

  Mr Biddle nodded. He took a step back, his glance suddenly clouded. Belly dancers! In Cairo, in 1942, he’d been offered a little girl, she couldn’t have been more than ten. He hadn’t remembered that for twenty years; he wished he hadn’t remembered it now. He squinted at Luke. ‘You take care.’ His voice wavered a little. ‘You take care around that O’Sullivan. Money ain’t to be trusted.’

  Luke walked briskly away across the green, hoping that his air of purpose would prevent anyone else from accosting him. Patrick had not in fact asked him to come in this evening, but, as there was always things to do, Luke assumed it wouldn’t matter. He went round, as usual, to the kitchen door and knocked. No-one came. He opened the door cautiously. The kitchen was empty and tidy and faintly fragrant with baking. A row of Ella’s loaves
– she was now highly proficient at bread-making and, to her scornful pleasure, in demand for demonstrations to local women’s groups – stood on racks on the table under blue-and-white cloths. Luke’s mouth watered.

  He crossed the kitchen and knocked on her sitting-room door. No reply. He opened the door. Like the kitchen, the room was empty and orderly. Luke went back through the kitchen and out into the hall and listened. It was very quiet, but clearly someone was at home because the back door had been unlocked. He knocked softly on the door to Patrick’s study.

  There was a pause, and then Patrick called, rather absently, ‘Come!’

  Luke put his head in. Patrick was sitting at his enormous desk, writing. This was most peculiar. Patrick never wrote, he only signed things. But now, he was writing what looked like a letter, in a very neat black hand on the stiff white paper he had had specially printed for the Old Rectory. He looked startled to see Luke, as if Luke had woken him up.

  ‘Luke!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Luke said, ‘I just wondered, I mean, d’you want anything done?’

  ‘It’s Wednesday.’

  ‘I know. I just wondered—’

  ‘No,’ Patrick said, ‘no. Nothing. Tomorrow, as usual.’ He looked down at the half-filled sheet of writing paper, and then at the hand holding his pen which seemed to hover with eagerness to get back to writing.

  ‘Sorry,’ Luke muttered. He withdrew his head and shut the door. Patrick hadn’t even smiled. There was nothing for it but to go home.

  Only his father was at home. Flora had gone to tea with the Maxwells, which she liked to do because she was conscious of adding glamour and colour to their tidy lives, and Anna, said Peter, had gone to Brownies.

  ‘But she doesn’t do Brownies.’

  ‘Trish Pardoe is ill. Mum said she would step in.’

  A sudden childish misery settled on Luke. He wanted Anna to be there, as he had wanted Patrick to welcome him. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said, ‘starving—’

  Peter looked at him. He said, ‘You know where the bread is.’ Luke’s face was sullen. Peter felt, as he often now did, that he was too tired for his children, that he was so worn out by inner emptiness and the need to show outer confidence that he had nothing left over. He had never quite known what to say to Luke, had come to regard communication with Luke as Anna’s business; now, he was bored by Luke, bored by his age, his unfinishedness, his mixture of obstinacy and apathy. Flora, luckily, was both more outgoing, and still a child. Peter said, ‘Make yourself a sandwich.’ He tried to sound helpful.

  Luke sighed. He let his bag fall with a thud. He would have liked, with a sudden mindlessness, to have lashed out, to have slammed his fist into something – the wall, the closed sitting-room door, his father’s face. Muttering, he turned away, and slouched into the kitchen, where he made himself a heavy crude sandwich, not bothering to put away the bread, and leaving the knife stuck in the butter. Then he went upstairs and shut himself into his bedroom, and turned his music on so loudly that downstairs in the study objects danced on Peter’s desk and the furniture shuddered. Peter, writing a piece on ‘The Church in the Nineties’ for the diocesan magazine, put his hands over his face, and despaired.

  Two days later, Anna found a stiff white envelope in one of her Wellington boots. It was long and smooth, and it had ‘Anna’ written on it in black ink. She took it down the garden with her, on her way to unpeg the washing, and opened it the far side of a screen of several sheets, two towels and a surplice.

  It said, ‘Anna, I have to write because you will never allow me to speak. You are determined that I am unscrupulous, that I am amusing myself, that I am playing a seduction game. You are so wrong. I am in earnest.’ The ‘earnest’ was underlined.

  Anna’s mouth was dry. What she held in her hand was a love letter. A love letter! Extraordinary. Being kissed had been strange enough – though not, she had told herself with rigorous insistence on the truth, unexpected – but a letter was even more unmanageable, because it prolonged what might have been just a mad moment into a mad situation.

  ‘You accuse me,’ Patrick wrote, ‘of wanting to release you. Of course I do. Of course, because of admiring you as well as being in love with you (in love with me, Anna thought, in love with me. Dear heaven! What is happening?), I wish to rescue you from a life where you are neither valued nor fulfilled. If you were less determined to write me off as a bastard, you’d see that my intentions are gallant, not patronizing. I want to give you clothes and books and travel. I want to give you comfort, even luxury. I want to give you money. I want to take you among people who will appreciate you – not as my possession, but because I absolutely cannot stand to see you wasted here. You aren’t just wasted as a person, you are wasted as a woman.’

  The letter was signed simply ‘Patrick’. Anna folded it and put it back in its envelope and put that in her pocket. A few heralding drops of rain were beginning to fall. Anna turned to the washing line and began to tear the laundry down rapidly, thankful for any action that might calm her incipient hysteria. A man I hardly know, she thought, holding pegs between her teeth while she folded a sheet, a man I hardly know has asked me to leave Peter and come away with him so that he can shower me with glittering things and company. It’s daft. It’s not just daft, it’s silly and ludicrous and not what happens in life. It’s a stupid fairy story. It might even be a particularly disagreeable joke. She touched her pocket. She thought of Patrick’s armchairs, his carpets and decanters, his hair, his clothes, his voice saying, in her own kitchen, ‘Now, what is a woman like you doing in a place like this?’ If this was temptation, Anna thought, holding Peter’s surplice against her unheedingly, then it had all the subtlety of a charging bull. Yet it also, undeniably, sang a soft and siren song. To exchange what she had for what she might have! She blushed for herself. ‘You must never,’ she told herself sternly, picking up the laundry basket, ‘make the mistake of underestimating what you don’t have. Thinking that way shrivels the soul. But, oh—’

  Back in the kitchen, Luke was sitting on a tilted back chair talking to Barnaby on the telephone. When Anna came in, he dropped his voice to a mutter. He waited for her to say don’t be long – the parish paid only half the telephone bill, as he was sick and tired of being told – but she didn’t. She didn’t really seem to take him in at all, just put the clothes basket down on the table in a dreamy kind of way, and then went over to unplug the kettle before filling it. Luke watched her. She was wearing an Indian skirt Laura had given her, of rough russet cotton with big pockets, and round the hem darker russet embroidery encircling tiny moons of mirror. Something stuck out of the top of one of the pockets, something white and oblong. Anna turned from the sink. Luke could see it was an envelope. For no reason he could think of, Luke felt abruptly horrible; sick and sweaty. ‘Yeah,’ he said to Barnaby, gripping the receiver tightly, ‘Yeah.’

  Ella had several broken nights. Being a person who prided herself on competence, this was annoying enough in itself (when you are flat in bed, my girl, you are there to sleep) but was made worse by anxiety. Patrick had accustomed her over the years to what she termed his ‘scrapes’, but this present business was another matter altogether. Ella was a fast learner. She might not have cared for the look of village life at first glance, but as it appeared to be her future she had decided to accept it. It had not taken her long to realize that what could pass invisibly in Fulham or Notting Hill Gate was laid bare for all to see in such a place as Loxford. In Ella’s view, it was only a matter of days, rather than weeks, before all five villages knew that Patrick O’Sullivan was laying siege to the Rector’s wife.

  Ella had made friends. She had found in Celia Hooper and Sheila Vinson and Elaine Dodswell just that practicality that she rejoiced in in herself. They shared with her, too, a small but steady resentment of the upper classes as represented by the Mayhews, the Richardsons and Miss Dunstable – Patrick was exempt from this social disapproval because he was a bachelor, and approachable, and had clearly
made his money himself, quite recently. Conversations between the four women fell only just on the right side of bitching. They were very confidential with one another, but Ella felt instinctively that Patrick’s current adventure had to be kept to herself. This was hard, with her new-found companionship.

  What troubled Ella was not only that Patrick was about to create a scandal, but that Anna Bouverie might help him. Ella quite sympathized with her new friends’ view that Anna didn’t pull her weight and that she was guilty of wearing an expression of separateness – almost of superiority. Country parishes, they were all agreed, were very different from urban ones, and most priests’ wives would think it a privilege to live somewhere as friendly as Loxford. Anna’s job at Pricewell’s was, Ella considered, pure exhibitionism. It was this element in Anna that Ella feared might make her revel in the limelight of an affair with Patrick. It was all of a piece with that terrible purple cloak.

  Then there was Luke. Ella, who did not like boys, liked Luke. Whatever Anna’s failings in other directions, she had done a good job on Luke. He had nice manners, worked hard, and was clearly very fond of his mother. Ella showed her approval by treating him as she did Patrick, and by feeding him. He ate relentlessly. It was almost a luxury, Ella thought, to watch her excellent loaves and fruit cakes and scones disappear into Luke like coal into a furnace. She found that she felt very troubled indeed about Luke when she thought of Patrick and Anna Bouverie.

  There was nothing to be gained by speaking to Patrick. He knew without question that she thought his behaviour both stupid and wrong. He believed himself to be thoroughly in love this time and was, as he had become accustomed, determined to have his own way. Ella had nothing to threaten him with. If she told him she was leaving, he would simply ring up an agency for a temporary housekeeper. Putting a kipper down in front of Patrick one breakfast, she said, ‘Well, if you haven’t the sense to think of yourself, at least think of that poor boy,’ and Patrick had replied, in his genial way that contained just a hint of menace, ‘Mind your own business, my dear.’