The Rector's Wife

by Joanna Trollope

  There was nothing Ella could do except get on with her job. Practicality, she discovered, was no match for power.

  Luke burned with an inarticulate rage. He was haunted by suspicion and could not bring himself to hunt through Anna’s drawers to find that envelope and have his suspicions confirmed. Instead, he was surly and oafish. He came home on the last possible bus, avoided going round to the Old Rectory and then announced that he was spending a few nights in Woodborough with Barnaby. Neither of his parents seemed to mind at all. Flora said, ‘Oh, good.’ During one of those Woodborough evenings, he got drunk and aggressive, and then tearful, and Alison took him home with her. She lived with her divorced father, who was a salesman and often away. She made it very plain that she would allow Luke to fuck her, but only after he had done to her all the things she required for her own pleasure. This had never struck him as constituting part of the sex deal. He didn’t like it very much. Parts of her tasted soapy and other parts salty or fishy. He came several times, helplessly, during the course of this, and, when he was finally allowed inside her, it was over almost before it had begun. He had slept afterwards as if poleaxed and woken feeling absolutely terrible. Over mugs of instant coffee before school, Alison said that, now he’d had what he wanted, perhaps he’d kindly leave her alone; he was too young for her anyway.

  The day passed in a furious, nauseous daze. Barnaby, who of course knew where Luke had spent the night, behaved with rare tact and simply left him alone. After the lunch break Luke, impelled by instinct rather than conscious thought, cut an English literature class (Hamlet – a discussion of the relative significance of action and inaction in the play) and caught the early afternoon bus to Loxford. Sometimes, after a morning shift at Pricewell’s, Anna caught that bus too. Luke looked furtively round. She wasn’t there; no-one he knew was there.

  He sat slumped across the seat, staring out at the landscape. He knew every tree and hedge, every house and barn. All the things that usually pleased him – a gaunt dead tree alone in a shallow valley, a spire rising above a beech hanger, a secret lane that suddenly plunged downhill off the main road like a rabbit hole – looked as interesting as grey cardboard today. After a while his eyes grew gritty and strained with staring so he shut them. It made him feel slightly sick, but at least that was a diversion. He kept them shut until the bus stopped on Loxford green.

  He went slowly, steadily, across it to the Old Rectory. This time, Ella was in the kitchen, doing household accounts at the table with the bills spread round her in little piles.

  ‘Luke!’

  He shut the door and leaned against it.

  ‘You should be at school—’

  ‘I’ve come to see Patrick.’

  Ella rose. ‘We thought you’d given us up. Revision, I said to Patrick, with A levels only a month away—’

  ‘Sorry,’ Luke said. He dropped his bag.

  Ella came nearer. ‘You look dreadful.’

  ‘Feel it.’

  ‘Luke,’ Ella said, ‘where have you been? What have you been up to?’

  Luke made drinking movements with one arm. ‘I stayed in Woodborough last night.’

  ‘So you’ve come here for me to make you respectable to go home to your mother.’ Ella sounded pleased.

  Luke looked at her. ‘I’ve come to see Patrick.’

  Ella’s expression changed. ‘I don’t think that’s wise. Really I don’t. I’ll make you a sandwich and we’ll chat—’

  ‘No,’ Luke said loudly. ‘I’ve got to see him. Please.’

  ‘But what will it achieve? Just think a moment—’

  ‘It’ll stop it,’ Luke said, ‘that’s what.’

  They stared at each other. Then Ella said uncertainly, ‘He’s in his study. As usual.’

  Patrick laughed. He came round his desk and tried to put his arm round Luke’s shoulders. Luke flinched away. ‘Come on,’ Patrick said easily, ‘no melodramatics.’

  Luke was trembling. He said, ‘Don’t lie, don’t lie, I know—’

  Patrick laughed again. ‘My dear old fellow, you know nothing. How could you? You’re only seventeen.’ He put his hands in his pockets. ‘I like it. Really I do. I like your loyalty, your protectiveness towards your mother. You’re a good lad. I don’t blame you for coming, it does you credit. But you have to believe me when I tell you that you don’t actually understand what you’ve come for.’

  Luke yelled, ‘You’re making a fool of my mother!’

  Patrick stopped laughing. He looked grave and sad. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘that is the last thing I would do to someone who means as much to me as your mother does.’

  Luke lunged forward. Patrick caught him easily and pinned him against a bookcase.

  ‘Don’t be such a bloody fool.’

  ‘You’re a shit,’ Luke tried to say, ‘a shit, a shit,’ but tears were flooding down his face and he could not speak for rising sobs. Patrick propelled him out of the door. Ella was waiting in the hall. She took Luke from him and led him into the kitchen.

  Isobel Thompson had had a trying afternoon. Her car had broken down on the way to her weekly session with the girls at a remand home some ten miles outside Woodborough, so that she was over an hour late and the girls, difficult and truculent at the best of times, were impossible. She felt out of touch and useless, with no spirit even to ignore the repulsive language they were deliberately using for her benefit, let alone rise above it. There was no question of love that afternoon, only of endurance. Isobel endured until four-thirty, and then nursed her complaining car slowly back to Woodborough. The garage had told her they would probably find her a reconditioned engine for five hundred or so, which would give the car another few years of life. Five hundred! And on something so dull. For three years, Isobel had been promising herself a trip to India, a walking trip in the foothills of the Himalayas before she was too old to take it on. She had £700 saved towards it. Isobel set her jaw and drove tensely on.

  At home, the telephone-answering machine was loaded with querulous messages. Unmarried women deacons were, Isobel thought, assumed to have no life of their own worth having, and were therefore bound to be terribly grateful for all the unpleasant bits of other people’s. She wrote down the messages in her notebook, and went out to the kitchen. If she had a pound for every time she put a kettle on each day, either in her own house or anyone else’s, she’d have enough money in six months to go to India and buy the car a new engine.

  She made herself tea. She longed for a biscuit, but she was steadily putting on that kind of solid, middleaged weight there is no shifting, and was trying to resist all the sweet and comforting things, that, if taste were anything to go by, were her natural foods. Her mother, who despised sugar, had always been contemptuous of Isobel’s preference for sweet rather than dry sherry, milk chocolate to plain, a bun instead of a cheese sandwich. In Africa, Isobel had never thought about sugar; in England, if she was honest, she thought about little else.

  She took her shoes off and sat down with her cup and saucer. She looked at her stockinged feet. Serviceable things, no more. When she was a girl, she had been rather proud of her high arches, but these had dropped long since, padding about sandalled in Africa. Oh, she thought, closing her eyes, how much I left in Africa!

  The doorbell rang. Isobel found she would rather have liked to say several of the things those girls on remand had said this afternoon She put down her cup, found her shoes, and went stiffly and wearily into her little front hall. There was a telescopic spy hole in her front door. She put her eye to it and gave a little gasp. She flung the door open, and there stood Luke Bouverie, looking on the point of collapse.

  When she had put him to bed – ‘I’m not discussing anything more, dear, until you’ve had some sleep’ – Isobel rang Anna.

  ‘He’s quite safe. He’s had a bath and he’s asleep. I’m afraid he went drinking with Barnaby last night, and then cut classes this afternoon. He’ll be fine in the morning.’

  ‘Oh Isobel,’ Anna sai
d, ‘I’m so grateful. But I’m sorry too, it shouldn’t have to be you—’

  ‘I’d rather Luke than most of the people who end up in my spare room.’

  ‘He’s, having a bit of a phase, poor fellow. I don’t think the atmosphere here is good for him at the moment.’ She stopped, just before she said, Any more than it is for any of us.

  ‘I’m always here,’ Isobel said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘I do. Bless you. And bless you for having Luke. Did he confess to you?’

  ‘About the drinking,’ Isobel said firmly.

  She put the telephone down, and went upstairs. Luke slept on his side, his dark head deep in the pillow. Isobel stooped and picked up his clothes which he had simply dropped on the floor. When she had put them into her twin-tub washing machine, she thought she would telephone the Archdeacon.

  ‘I think it’s just a bit of nonsense,’ Isobel said to Daniel. ‘Instead of a woman parishioner getting a crush on the priest, it’s a male one on the priest’s wife. But it’s upset the boy a lot and he says he can’t talk to his parents.’

  Daniel was scribbling with his free hand. The other was occupied with the telephone receiver. ‘Do you know the man?’

  ‘Only by sight. He hasn’t been there long. He came from London. And, of course, Anna’s so attractive.’

  ‘Hasn’t she put a stop to it? It isn’t difficult, for a clever woman.’

  Isobel hesitated.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Daniel said.

  Isobel said hurriedly, ‘Things have been so difficult at Loxford recently—’ She wanted to say, Since you got the job Peter wanted, but contented herself with, ‘It’s often the way after ten years in a parish. And the children are growing up—’

  ‘I understand you perfectly,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ve spoken to Anna recently and I know something of her situation. If I speak to her again,’ he said musingly, ‘I’m taking her into a confidence her husband isn’t sharing, and I think he is even more isolated than she, just now. Do you agree?’

  Isobel said, ‘He’s a very difficult man. He knows he is, which makes it worse.’

  Daniel made a resolution. ‘I will go and speak to them together. This is, after all, a difficulty for them both.’

  ‘I never listen to rumours,’ Peter said, ‘I never have. You can’t afford to in the country.’

  ‘But, if your son is distressed—’

  ‘Luke is taking A levels and is not at an age where anything is easy. He gets overwrought.’

  ‘All the same,’ Daniel said patiently, ‘I should like to come out to Loxford and talk to you and to Anna.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Peter said. He sounded as if he were holding the telephone receiver well away from his mouth. ‘I appreciate your concern but there’s nothing the matter. Temporary tittle-tattle. I’m afraid Luke got led astray by friends and overreacted. Isobel Thompson has known him since we came here, so it was natural he should go to her. Perhaps she – she gave more weight to things Luke said than she ought.’

  ‘Peter, may I not suggest even that you and I might meet, just briefly—’

  There was a pause. Then Peter said, ‘Perhaps, when I’m not so committed. In a few months. Thank you for ringing. Goodbye.’

  Daniel replaced the receiver and sighed. He looked out of his study window at the white clouds sailing briskly across a cool May sky.

  ‘Over to You,’ Daniel said, out loud.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Laura Marchant’s television commercial had proved rather a success. Although it hadn’t reached the screens of the nation yet, it was much talked of in the offices of the company that had made it. There was a strong sense that Laura was something of a find. She was put on a retaining fee not to accept work from any rival until the effect of the original commercial could be assessed.

  This made her more comfortable, but it was boring. Like an old hound scenting the chase, the relief and pleasure of acting again had given her a renewed taste for it. While she waited to see whether she and the Irish stout proved to be something – or nothing – of a triumph, she auditioned down at Chiswick for a small part in a new play, and got it. The part was a seaside-hotel landlady and, although she hadn’t many lines, she was on stage a good deal and she intended to make the most of that. Given her dimensions and the exuberance of her personality, she thought her mere presence on stage might be one of those things the audience found they could not ignore.

  She adored rehearsals. She loved the purposeful travelling to them, the gossip and coffee breaks, the reborn contact with the theatre and its people. She became the auntie of the company, the source of consolation and liquorice allsorts. All thoughts of selling St Agatha vanished from her mind since not only could she now squirrel away weekly sums to help Luke and Flora, but St Agatha was clearly the cause of her new-found success. All those years of confiding in the saint, of treating her as a true companion, had reaped their reward. On St Agatha’s painted plaster face, despite the scars and chips of her arduous life, Laura was now sure she could detect a faint but unmistakable animation.

  The play in Chiswick was not admired by the critics or by the public; the only person to get even reasonable notices was Laura. After its allotted three weeks it closed, with no mention of a West End transfer, and Laura went back to St Agatha, determined to audition for something else as soon as possible. Mutely and powerfully, St Agatha indicated that, perhaps, before she started to badger her agent once more, Laura should pay a little attention to matters closer to home. The word ‘Loxford’ emanated from St Agatha as powerfully as if she had spoken it.

  ‘My dear girl,’ Laura said, ‘you are perfectly right.’

  St Agatha made it very plain that that was what saints were for.

  Laura telephoned Loxford. Peter answered. He sounded polite and a little formal. He said that Anna was out – in such a way as to make it plain that Anna was always out – and that Flora and Luke were at school. Laura proposed herself for the weekend. Peter said he was sure that would be fine and that he would get Anna to confirm the arrangement that evening.

  ‘Darling boy,’ Laura said, ‘I don’t like the sound of you. What is the matter?’

  Peter said he had rather a cold, thanked her for telephoning and rang off. Laura dialled Kitty, in Windsor. Kitty’s employer had started a tea shop for the summer months and Kitty’s duties now included making scones and showing people to their tables, as well as selling souvenirs in the shop, and taking the Pekinese out to spend constant, minute senile pennies. She’d had a pay-rise too, and had booked herself a holiday in Jersey, a week in October, her first holiday in years. She was going with her employer who knew a lovely hotel where they did all their own baking . . .

  ‘And have you heard from the family, Kittykins?’

  ‘The—’

  ‘Do concentrate, darling. Life isn’t all lardy cakes. Have you heard from Loxford?’

  ‘I ring every week, dear. Just for a little word. Flora loves her school—’

  ‘Kitty,’ Laura said, ‘I spoke to Peter just now and he sounded perfectly morbid.’

  ‘He never could rise above knocks, not even as a little boy. I remember—’

  ‘No,’ Laura said, ‘no reminiscences. Have you spoken to Anna?’

  Kitty rather thought Anna was overtired. Of course, shopwork was terribly tiring, she ought to know, and Anna’s standards were so high, always had been, whereas hers had got lower and lower until she realized, before her job came along, that she was simply never cleaning the bath, because no-one saw it but her, and she didn’t care . . .

  ‘I am worried,’ Laura said emphatically.

  ‘Are you, dear?’

  ‘I don’t like the atmosphere. I shall go down this weekend.’

  ‘You’re so decisive,’ Kitty said. ‘I do admire it. I’ve found that if you dust the tops of scones with flour before you put them in the oven they come out as light as air.’

  Laura put the receiver down sadly. As light as air. As light as Kitty�
��s heart and head. Scones! Laura dialled the number of a national, long-distance bus company and, in an exaggerated German accent for her own amusement, asked the times of the service to Woodborough, on Friday afternoons.

  In the garden of Woodborough Vicarage, Anna and Jonathan Byrne sat on a bench in the sun. It was a wooden bench, on whose back had been carved ‘Our God Himself is Moon and Sun’. Jonathan said it was a quotation from Tennyson. Above the bench hung a few branches of white lilac, and in front of it a lawn stretched in a neat oblong to a solid border of hostas beneath the boundary wall. Anna thought it a dull garden, but she was very contented to be sitting in it, in the late May sunshine, with Jonathan Byrne.

  He had come into Pricewell’s at the end of her shift, and dissuaded her from the errands she was then intending to do. She had said, automatically, ‘Why?’ and he had said, ‘Because I need to see you.’ In Anna’s present bemused state of mind, this had seemed as good a reason as any for obliging him. Daniel had gone to London for the day, Miss Lambe was having her weekly afternoon off at the Wednesday Club (an outing, this week, to nearby water gardens followed by tea in St Paul’s Parish Room) and the Vicarage was empty and quiet. Anna followed Jonathan docilely out into the garden, as she had followed him from Pricewell’s. He sat her on the bench, and then he went back into the house and returned with a tray bearing a loaf, a piece of cheese, two apples and a jug of cider. Anna took off her shoes and sank her grateful bare feet into the grass.

  While they ate, Jonathan told Anna about his and Daniel’s childhood. They had been brought up in York. Their mother had been a Baptist, simple and stern, and their father a most unlikely mate for her, a ranting and eloquent Scot who ran a timber yard. Daniel was born ten years before Johnathan and had, from his birth, treated his younger brother with peculiar tenderness.

  ‘So how old is Daniel now?’

  ‘Fifty.’

  ‘So you are younger than I am.’

  Jonathan looked at her. ‘Not by much. And not to judge by appearances.’