The Rector's Wife

by Joanna Trollope

  Anna surveyed her feet. She said calmly, ‘I love Daniel.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know.’ He waited for her to say something more, but she didn’t, only sat and stared at her feet in the grass. So he said, ‘Could you love me?’

  Very slowly, she turned to look at him. After what seemed like a very long time, she said, ‘I think so.’

  ‘Only think?’

  She said seriously, ‘I have to be honest. I love Daniel and that’s one kind of love. I believe I love Peter, and that’s another. I’m being besieged by a parishioner with yet another brand. But when I’m with you I feel that, in a way I can relax best, I’ve come home.’

  He didn’t touch her. He bent down to the tray and refilled their glasses. He held Anna’s out to her. She said, ‘I’ll go straight to sleep.’

  ‘Not straight—’

  The hand she had stretched out for the glass shook a little. She withdrew it. He said, ‘I’m in love with you. I had thought I wouldn’t say it because the words are so weary, so overused. But I want to be quite plain with you, I want you to be quite sure of what I’m saying.’ He leaned towards her and kissed her mouth lightly. Her eyes were full of tears.

  ‘Oh Anna. What is it?’

  She gave herself a little shake. ‘Relief,’ she said.

  Jonathan stood up. Then he bent and took Anna’s hand and led her after him back to the house. She felt heavy and peaceful. They crossed the cavernous hall – the Victorian tiles, patterned with crude imitations of medieval designs, were cold and smooth under Anna’s bare feet – and climbed the gaunt staircase to the first-floor landing where narrow strips of brown carpet led off down various dark passages, like arrows. Jonathan led Anna along one of these to his study, to which he had now become so attached that he had moved a divan in, and started sleeping there. He opened the door. Anna burst out laughing.

  ‘What a funny room!’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes.’ She was enchanted by it. ‘So mad and so exuberant and so grim—’

  He seized her. ‘Too grim to be seduced in?’

  She stopped laughing. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘and anyway it isn’t a seduction.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It would only be a seduction,’ Anna said, leaning into his embrace, ‘if I wasn’t as willing as you are. Which isn’t, as it happens, the case.’

  When Anna got home, there were, as usual, several telephone messages (Peter had said that the parish group were going to raise money to give them an answering machine and Anna had said, ‘Are you sure Celia wouldn’t rather just sit here and take the messages herself?’). There was one from Sir Francis Mayhew about the honey rot he had spotted in two beech trees in the churchyard, one for Luke from Barnaby, and one from Laura. At the bottom of the list, Peter had written, ‘Out until 6.30. P.’

  Flora said, ‘Sarah Simpson at school says Barnaby takes drugs.’

  Anna put her arms round Flora. She wanted to hold her, to feel the great warmth she was full of spreading into Flora. Flora squirmed.

  ‘Do you mean he smokes pot?’

  Flora wriggled free. ‘Much worse.’

  ‘Barnaby’s mother is a pillar of rectitude. And his father likewise. What do you know about drugs, anyway, Flora Bouverie?’

  ‘Heaps,’ Flora said.

  Anna wrapped her happy arms about herself instead. ‘I think you just like gossip.’

  ‘I do not like Barnaby Weston.’

  ‘I see,’ said Anna.

  Flora went pink. ‘I don’t!’

  ‘No, darling. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Starving—’

  Anna unwrapped herself, and delved into a carrier bag. ‘There.’

  Flora’s eyes bulged. ‘Chocolate hazelnut spread! We never have that!’

  ‘We do now.’

  Flora looked at her. She appeared to Flora to be sort of – shining. Flora said fervently, ‘Thank you.’

  Anna smiled, ‘Not at all. Don’t eat too much at once. It’s for sandwiches, not spooning. I’m going to telephone Ga.’

  ‘Is she coming?’

  ‘For the weekend,’ Anna said, turning to the telephone. Behind her back, with infinite stealth, Flora extracted a teaspoon from a drawer and unscrewed the lid of the chocolate jar. What, after all, was the point of a treat in half-measures?

  Laura decided at once that she didn’t like the look of any of them. Peter looked withdrawn and offended, Luke looked ill and Flora was thoroughly out of hand. As for Anna . . . What was the matter with Anna? She looked fine really, better than Laura had expected, but it wasn’t somehow a reassuring fineness. Her eyes were full of energy, a quick, restless energy. It was, Laura decided, as if some bright inner life were both firing and alienating her. Was her behaviour, Laura wondered, just a little mad?

  She tried to corner Anna. Saturday was hopeless. ‘You know Saturdays here,’ Anna said, ‘almost worse than Sundays. Definitely Rabbit’s Busy Day.’

  In the afternoon there was a sad, amateur, little fête at Snead Hall, where the headmistress prided herself on insisting that the girls use their own initiative. As they were aged between eleven and sixteen, and were spending these precious years of their adolescence being irrationally disciplined and indifferently taught, most of the pupils at Snead Hall either had no initiative or were damned if they were going to use any. Under a lowering sky, a scattering of stalls had been set out on the ruined lawn of what had once been a beautiful garden. The five villages, drawn to the fête by the same instinct that drew them to jumble sales and carboot fairs, poked about among the secondhand paperbacks and lopsided offerings from the cookery room, and obligingly guessed the name of a giant, pink, plush teddy bear, donated by the husband of the school secretary, who was a traveller in soft toys. Laura said, ‘Satan.’ The child detailed to write down the suggestions (10p a time) wrote the name down without a glimmer of comprehension.

  It was obligatory for Anna and Peter to visit every stall. Laura, discouraged by her anxiety out of almost all her natural ebullience, trailed after them. She bought a gloomy little bag of melted-together fudge, a paperback of a historical novel about Joan of Arc and a pair of curiously lumpy oven gloves from a craft stall, whose holder explained breathlessly that she’d had to use old tights in them as their needlework teacher had run out of wadding. Flora brought a stout pink child with spaniel’s ears of brown curls to meet her, a child called Emma something, but they didn’t stay, being too much occupied with showing off to the poor prisoners of Snead Hall. Clutching her purchases, and feeling the fudge soften unattractively under her fingers, Laura resolved that, before night fell, she would tackle Anna.

  However, Luke got to her first. He came into Charlotte’s bedroom which she was as usual occupying, while she was repinning up her luxuriant dark-grey hair before supper. First he said it was great of her to have given him the money for India but he didn’t know if they’d be going now, it was all a bit difficult and Barnaby’s mum was anti the whole thing, he’d have to see. Laura said did he have to go with Barnaby and Luke looked shocked and said there wouldn’t be any point otherwise. Then Laura said, ‘Is that why you look so awful, darling? Or is it looming exams?’ and Luke ducked his head and muttered that it was Mum.

  ‘Mum?’

  Luke said, ‘Well, not Mum, really, her and Dad. And this bloke—’

  ‘What bloke?’

  ‘The one I worked for, the one with the Daimler.’

  Laura put down her combs and pins. She came over to the bed where Luke had slumped and sat down beside him. He smelled sad and unwashed.

  ‘Darling, tell me all you know.’

  ‘I don’t know anything—’

  ‘Then—’

  Luke turned on her. ‘That’s just it, I don’t know anything, nobody says anything, but the atmosphere’s awful, I hate it, they’re hardly speaking—’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘Ga,’ Luke said, ‘Dad makes it hard, you know, hard for all of us. And
Mum . . . This bloke fancies her.’

  ‘The Daimler bloke?’

  ‘Yeah. He wrote to her. This letter—’

  ‘You never saw it—’

  ‘Not the words.’

  ‘And Mum. What does Mum think of Signor Daimler?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Then what does it matter?’

  ‘I don’t like it!’ Luke shouted suddenly.

  ‘Why?’

  He glared at her. Couldn’t she see? Couldn’t she see that he was full of love and loyalty and confusion, none of which could possibly be explained? Could she not also see that, by doing something wrong, or clumsy, he might unwittingly break some magic rule and lose the thing he loved?

  ‘Sorry,’ Laura said, ‘sorry, darling. I shouldn’t have asked. I’ll talk to her, I’ll talk to Mum.’

  ‘No! No!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want to squeal on her,’ Luke said, ‘not on her.’

  ‘No. Of course not. Though I don’t see how I can help if I stay silent.’

  Luke looked at her. ‘That’s the problem,’ he said in exasperation.

  On Sunday, Laura accompanied Anna to church. It was a sung eucharist. The church looked very bright and clean and there were horrible stiff triangular flower arrangements on the altar and by the chancel steps. ‘Freda Partington,’ Anna hissed. ‘Fields full of cow parsley just now and she buys, actually buys, chrysanthemums.’ There were not many communicants. Sir Francis Mayhew limped round with the collection bag, having first put in his Own five-pound note, in full view of the congregation. Laura watched her son-in-law and reflected that, however difficult and unapproachable he was in real life, he still took services with grace and dignity. Beside her, Anna thought much the same thing.

  Anna also thought about Jonathan. What astonished her was not so much that she had been to bed with him – and was now an adulteress – but that it should have been so natural to do so, and even more, so natural in its doing. Her every dealing with the Byrne brothers had been characterized by sheer ease, from that first drive to Loxford with Daniel, to Jonathan saying into her shivering skin, ‘And do you like this? And this? But not that?’ She had slipped along in her relationship with them like a fish in a stream, seeing at last, because of them, her passage clear to the sea. She was perfectly certain that she would continue to go to bed with Jonathan and that her love for him would grow until – she looked at Peter’s surpliced back before the altar – until she saw unquestionably what she should do next. For the moment, she would just gratefully draw strength from this astonishing new source. A thought shot into her mind like a bolt from the blue. Had Jonathan actually been offered to her?

  Going out of church, she and Laura were accosted by Patrick. He shook hands fervently.

  ‘I’d adore you,’ he said to Laura, ‘to see my garden.’

  ‘Dear boy, I’m hopeless at gardens.’

  He said, ‘Hopeless?’

  ‘Can’t see the point of them. But mountains! Ah now, mountains—’

  Patrick, sensing he might be being made fun of, stepped back a little. ‘Can’t offer you those, I’m afraid.’

  Anna hadn’t looked at him. Nor had she replied to his letter. Both omissions gave him heart. He said, rallying, ‘Perhaps I can manage a mountain for your next visit—’

  Laura smiled at him. He was very attractive. ‘Do try.’

  At the lich-gate, Miss Dunstable paused to say, ‘Terrible flowers,’ to Anna.

  ‘I quite agree. But you’ll have to complain to the parish group about them. They’ve taken over the rota.’

  ‘Let them try taking over my altar frontal!’

  Later, in the Rectory kitchen, making coffee, Anna said with no self-consciousness, ‘I’m being besieged by Patrick.’

  Laura affected outrageous surprise. ‘Darling!’

  ‘I expect Luke told you.’

  Laura deflated. ‘Actually—’

  ‘Poor Luke. There’s nothing for him to worry about. I feel nothing for Patrick except temper.’

  ‘Sure?’

  Tiny pause.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You must make that plain to Luke.’

  ‘Does he think—’

  ‘He’s afraid to think. Anna, I had one golden rule for affairs. No teasing.’

  ‘I’m not having an affair,’ said Anna with her back to her mother.

  ‘But Patrick thinks you soon will. He’s blazing with that caveman certainty of incipient conquest, simply blazing. You must tell him once and for all. It’s perfectly easy to make yourself quite plain.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘For Luke,’Laura said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘One last meeting. Face to face. Finish.’

  ‘There’s nothing to finish.’

  ‘Oh yes, there is,’ Laura said. ‘In Patrick’s mind, at least.’ She looked at Anna, leaning against the sink, her dark head bent. Poor darling, Laura thought, poor wasted darling. What a life! And Peter. What had withered Peter? ‘Anna,’ Laura said, holding a hand out to her daughter, ‘oh darling,’ and felt as if her heart would burst.

  That night, Anna attempted to comfort Luke. She explained that Patrick had developed an infatuation which she didn’t in the least return, and that she was angry and sorry that such adult foolishness had spoiled his own relationship with Patrick. She said she was going to put a stop to everything. It was, she said, very easy for a woman to make sure a man never tried anything again. (Remembering Alison, Luke could at least believe that part.) She said he was not to worry any more and that she felt most remorseful that he should have worried in the past over something so silly and fantastic. He allowed her to kiss him. He wanted her to stay a bit, but not to talk any more, but he didn’t say so, so she went. When she had gone, he lay on his bed and felt worse than he had done before she came in.

  Two days later, she caught the early afternoon bus back to Quindale. Jonathan had put her on it, having walked with her from Pricewell’s to the bus station. He said he was in such a frame of mind and heart at the moment that he was inclined to walk into walls. When he had found her a seat on the bus, he put an envelope in her lap and said, ‘I’m afraid there’ll be a lot of this. Letters and poems. I’m bursting with the need to communicate with you.’

  She read the letter in the bus. It described Jonathan’s sense of joyful recognition at meeting her. She read it several times. Then she put it away in her skirt pocket and leaned her head against the shaking glass of the bus window, and uttered a mute and fervent prayer of thankfulness.

  It took a quarter of an hour to walk from Quindale to Loxford. The lane between the two villages was only travelled by local people, and ran between peaceful fields used for grazing cattle and sheep. They were, at the moment, full of lambs, as raucous as a primary-school playground. Anna walked along the verge – the lane twisted a good deal and the hedges made visibility difficult – and looked at the lambs and the new, soft, bright growth on the trees and thought of her letter and her good fortune. One field, brilliant with buttercups, seemed to her to be almost a symbol. She stopped in the gateway to gaze.

  When, half a minute later, Patrick drew his car into the gateway behind her, she felt a mixture of irritation and relief. It was exasperating to have her reverie broken, and yet this was clearly an excellent chance to say what she had to say, a chance that avoided all kinds of disagreeable contrivings. All the same, as he got out of the car and came round it towards her, she felt suddenly nervous.

  ‘Anna.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘What a chance. I was going to pick up some new greenhouse glass.’ He leaned on the gate beside her. ‘Why haven’t you replied to my letter?’

  ‘There is no reply,’ Anna said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘there is. And you know it.’

  She was silent, resolving exactly what she would say.

  ‘I asked you to come away with me. I’m asking you again now. I’ll ask you
until you come because I know it is what you want.’

  A car was coming along the lane, Immediately, Anna moved away from the gate to put a prudent distance between herself and Patrick, but he leaned forward and seized her wrist.

  ‘I love you,’ Patrick said.

  The car passed. Anna dared not look at it. She said, as contemptuously as she could, ‘Let go.’

  He dropped her wrist. ‘Please,’ he said.

  ‘This is the last time we shall have anything to say to one another.’

  ‘Why, what do you mean—’

  ‘I despise you,’ Anna said. ‘I despise your arrogance and your insensitivity. I was a fool to believe you wanted to help Luke.’ She turned and began to walk hurriedly along the lane towards Loxford. After her, Patrick called, ‘But I did! I do.’ She didn’t hear him. She began to run, dreading to hear the Daimler’s sleek purr behind her, catching her up. But it didn’t come, nobody came, except Mr Biddle, pedalling slowly on his creaking bicycle, never looking at her but simply shouting at her as he went by.

  ‘Want to get yourself a bike, Mrs B!’ Mr Biddle bellowed. ‘Want to get yourself modernized, you do!’

  ‘It’s true,’ Trish Pardoe said. She stood in the Old Rectory kitchen, confronting Ella. She had driven straight to Ella even though it would make her late for picking up her mother at the Woodborough Pop-In Club.

  Ella, who knew all too well it was true, simply nodded.

  ‘They were holding hands,’ Trish said. Her voice shook. ‘In a gateway. Broad daylight. I nearly crashed the car.’

  Ella said, ‘It’s been going on some time. He got a bee in his bonnet about her the minute he got here. I thought it was just a fad. He’s like that.’ Unaccountably, she found she wanted to defend him, to say that he was a romantic, that he saw himself rescuing a princess from a tower, that he wanted to give her all the things she had plainly never had. But Trish Pardoe’s expression was not conducive to any defence of Patrick.

  ‘It’s disgusting. That poor vicar.’

  ‘I suppose she’s a human being, like the rest of us—’

  ‘Ella!’

  Ella said sadly, ‘Perhaps it’s a good thing it’s come to a head. That you’ve seen them—’