The Rector's Wife

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘I saw them all right.’ Trish peered at Ella. ‘What’ll we do?’

  Ella sighed. ‘I suppose I have to go and talk to the Rector.’

  ‘I’ll come—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? I saw them—’

  ‘Because it will be easier for Peter if he thinks only I know. If he doesn’t think it’s general village gossip.’

  ‘Soon will be—’

  ‘It needn’t be,’ Ella said with emphasis.

  Trish hesitated. ‘Of course, I wouldn’t say a word—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s she got to complain of? Tell me that. How many vicars’ wives get the help she gets, I’d like to know? Gives her all the time in the world to mess about with her fancy man—’

  ‘Shut up,’ Ella said.

  ‘I beg your pardon—’

  ‘Go away,’ Ella said, ‘I’ve got to think. And keep your mouth shut. If I hear any rumours, I’ll know where they started.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’

  Ella looked at her. ‘Peter’s.’

  ‘Me too,’ Trish said.

  Flora brought a note home with her from school. It was from Luke. He had delivered it to St Saviour’s at lunchtime. It said, ‘Dear Mum, I’m going to live at Barney’s for a while. Till the exams are over. Mrs Weston says it’s fine. I can give her a bit out of my savings to help with food. Take care. Love, Luke.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Peter sat alone in Snead church. He had gone to take the midmorning Thursday communion service to which almost nobody came, but which was clamorously defended whenever he suggested dropping it. He liked Snead church. It was the simplest of his five churches, a Norman nave with a single shallow transept in which the wheezing organ lived. There was no coloured glass in the windows and the Parochial Church Council of Snead preferred sisal matting in the aisle to the red carpeting favoured by the other four churches. The restraint appealed to him.

  He sat in the north side of the choir stalls and looked out at the waving plumes of a willow tree in the churchyard. He did not really see it, any more than he saw the sky beyond it, or the greyish stone window that framed it. He was conscious of very little except the quiet and his unhappiness, which filled his whole being like cold, still water. It was water he was afraid to disturb, to dive into, because he couldn’t bear even to begin to analyze why he felt as he did. He shrank from his thoughts, just as, these days, he shrank from Anna. If their limbs brushed each other in bed, he could feel his withdrawing, flinching. In the same way, his eyes turned away from meeting hers when they spoke. He was terribly afraid that he was going mad. Long ago, as a theology student, he had had a crisis about prayer, a period of alarming doubt. His tutor, a man of enormous experience in ministerial matters, had simply counselled him not to struggle. Throw out the idea of God, he had said, just forget it. Think instead about something about which there can’t be personal anguish, something more abstract, like a desire to be good or kind, or the wish to love, and voice that wish in your mind, over and over. After a while, try saying it to Christ, but only when you feel you want to. This had been sound advice. When things were difficult, he had thought about the qualities necessary to ease those difficulties; but of late, he had only thought of how to endure. All softness in him seemed imperceptibly, involuntarily, to have hardened. He didn’t feel in the least interested in love Or goodness or kindness; the only thing that stirred him was a determination not to give in.

  He sighed, and slipped automatically to his knees. Footsteps sounded in the porch, and the heavy iron latch on the door was lifted. A slice of sunlight fell in and a woman said, ‘Oh, I’m ever so sorry, Mr Bouverie, I’d no idea—’

  He looked up. It was Emma Maxwell’s mother, clutching a dustsheet.

  ‘I just came to clear away last week’s flowers. But I can easily come later—’

  He got stiffly to his feet. ‘No, no, please come in. I was just going.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Quite,’ Peter said. He smiled at her. She was plump and pink and her hair curled cheerfully, exactly like her daughter’s.

  ‘We’re so pleased Emma and Flora are such friends,’ Mrs Maxwell said, encouraged. She advanced up the aisle. ‘St Saviour’s is a lovely school. So kind.’

  ‘Flora seems very happy.’

  ‘She makes us laugh. What an imagination!’

  ‘Too vivid, sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Most children never use theirs, because of television, so it’s lovely to see a child like Flora. The nuns are dears.’

  ‘I only—’

  ‘So tactful,’ Mrs Maxwell said, rushing on, pressing her dustsheet to her bosom in her enthusiasm. ‘I mean, if you don’t mind my mentioning it, they make no distinction between the fee-paying children and the free-place ones. I shouldn’t think the other children even know. Emma certainly doesn’t know about Flora.’

  Peter came out of the choir stalls. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Mrs Maxwell blushed. How clumsy and stupid to bring it up! Probably little Flora didn’t even know herself.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve no tact. Please forget I ever said such a thing.’

  A small light was dawning in Peter’s comprehension. He said quietly to Mrs Maxwell, ‘Please don’t worry. Don’t think of it.’

  She nodded. She said quickly, wishing to make amends, ‘I hope you know that Flora is welcome any time, at our house. Very welcome.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Peter said, ‘thank you.’ He smiled again. ‘And now I’ll leave you to your flowers.’

  He drove home in a very different mood. The paralysis of unhappiness had abruptly given way to the energy of anger. He left the car in the drive and hurried into the house. The telephone number for St Saviour’s was written up, in red, on the emergency list that Anna had stuck to the wall. Peter dialled it. He stood up straight by the telephone, almost to attention, looking out of the window. The school secretary answered.

  ‘This is Peter Bouverie speaking, the Reverend Peter Bouverie, Flora’s father. I wonder if I might speak to Sister Ignatia?’

  At lunchtime, Peter made himself a sandwich and a cup of coffee. After he had eaten, he washed his cup and plate, and then he had a good look in all the cupboards. There was nothing in any of them that wasn’t familiar, nothing new, or exotic, only a virgin cheese-grater still in its plastic film and an untouched, sealed tin of shortbread.

  He went upstairs, quietly, as if he were a burglar. He looked in the bathroom; same towels, same toothglass that the Quindale garage had given away at Christmas with every twenty gallons of petrol, same cracked and charming Victorian soap dish. He crossed the landing to his and Anna’s bedroom. Methodically, one by one, he slid out drawers and opened cupboards. Anna’s colourful and wayward clothes lay and hung there in absolute familiarity; her shoes were in the tumble on her wardrobe floor that had always so exasperated him and were all, in any case, unquestionably well worn. There were no new books beside her bed, no scent bottles on the chest of drawers, no evidence anywhere that Anna had spent a single penny of her earnings on herself or her house.

  So where were those earnings? They wouldn’t be much, but there would be, Peter reckoned, at least £500. Why had she concealed Flora’s free place? Why was she hoarding? In all their married life, anything she had earned he had thought of as pin money, holiday money, money for violin lessons for Charlotte (a failure) or a school trip to Venice for Luke (a success). He believed she had thought of it in the same way, that they were well-suited in their approach to money, that she had grown accustomed to frugality, adjusted to it. Of course, being an archdeacon would have brought in substantially more and of course it was only human to regret that; but why deceive him? Why take this attitude of secrecy and defiance?

  He went downstairs again, and into his study. He was not going to conduct this war Anna had started using her own guerrilla tactics; he was gong to act decisively and openly. Sister Ignatia had, unsurprisingly,
been much startled to hear Peter’s question, and, although she had said nothing even faintly condemning of Anna, her tone of voice had been unmistakable. Sister Ignatia was the first step. The next two seemed to him perfectly plain. When he had taken those, Anna could not but confront the reality of her actions. What would happen after that, Peter chose not to think.

  Peter said to the supervisor on the checkout that he would like to see the administration manager. The supervisor hesitated. Peter had no appointment, and there were rules in Pricewell’s about appointments, but he had a dog collar and was therefore in an unusual category of visitor. After a moment, she asked Peter to follow her and led him up the aisle between pet foods and washing powders to the staircase to the office.

  Even though he knew Anna’s shift was over, and that she was on the bus back to Loxford, Peter kept his eyes on the supervisor’s back. He followed her up the gaunt staircase and along a corridor to Mr Mulgrove’s office. Mr Mulgrove was very startled. The sight of Peter gave him the same sensation as being visited by the police.

  He offered Peter a chair in his tiny office. When he resumed his own seat, their knees almost touched, which horrified him as it seemed so disrespectful. He thought Peter had probably come to ask Pricewell’s to make a donation to some local cause, and, as Pricewell’s had a charities policy, he had his patter all ready for that. But Peter said nothing of the sort. He said that his name was Peter Bouverie, the Reverend Peter Bouverie, and that he believed that his wife worked part-time in the shop.

  Mr Mulgrove stared. ‘Anna!’

  ‘Yes,’ Peter said, ‘my wife.’

  Mr Mulgrove’s eyes strayed to Peter’s dog collar. A vicar’s wife! Anna, a vicar’s wife! He started to say that Anna was one of their best staff but of course she was really management calibre only he couldn’t persuade her – but stopped himself. It didn’t seem, somehow, an appropriate observation to make in the circumstances, with Peter turning out to be a vicar, sitting there almost in Mr Mulgrove’s lap.

  ‘Were you unaware that she came from a rectory?’

  ‘Why, yes, I mean, I knew her address, of course, but so many people now live in old rectories I didn’t think. I knew she was, well, not exactly what we usually—’ He stopped.

  ‘No,’ Peter said. He wasn’t smiling.

  Mr Mulgrove had a flash of loyalty for Anna. ‘She wanted the job to send her daughter to St Saviour’s. My sister went to St Saviour’s.’

  ‘My daughter has won a free place at St Saviour’s.’

  They looked at each other in silence.

  ‘She’s a good worker,’ Mr Mulgrove said, and then, ‘This is a good company to work for.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. But there isn’t any need for her to work here any more.’ Peter had a brief battle with the precise truth, and lost it. ‘Not now that St Saviour’s has given Flora a free place.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So from the end of this month, my wife won’t be working for you any longer.’

  Mr Mulgrove hesitated. When he had first begun at Pricewell’s, as a school leaver of sixteen, it was quite common for the husbands of women with jobs in the store to organize their wives’ working lives for them, accompanying them to interviews, complaining to the manager about poor working conditions or low pay. But things had changed now. Mr Mulgrove doubted that any of his female workforce even consulted their husbands about where or when they should work. He supposed that vicars were a bit old-fashioned. He said, ‘She’s said nothing to me.’

  ‘No. I think she preferred it that I should speak to you.’

  ‘I’ll have to confirm it with her—’

  ‘Of course.’ Peter got up with difficulty.

  Mr Mulgrove stood too. He was taller than Peter, and younger, and it struck him that Peter was not just old-fashioned but stuffy. He couldn’t somehow see Anna as Peter’s wife. Looking down at Peter before he performed the necessary contortion to open the door, he said, ‘We’ll be sorry to lose her. She’s very popular.’ He paused and then he said, with just the faintest hint of aggression, ‘We’re proud to work here, you know. We’re proud of this company.’

  Anna was not on the bus to Loxford. Anna was lying on the headland of a sweet-scented bean field in flower, five miles out of Woodborough, with Jonathan. They had started to make love but it had been terminated by Anna’s sudden violent distress at recalling Luke’s going off to live with the Westons. It had shaken her dreadfully. She had been to see Mrs Weston, who had been kind and ordinary and talked sensibly about exam pressures. She said she’d fill Luke up with bread, and in any case she was glad to have him; his presence made Barnaby less truculent. Luke would clearly be safe and well provided for with the Westons, which was bearable, but the probability that he would also be happier was hardly bearable at all.

  Jonathan was very comforting. Anna said sternly to him that he mustn’t feel he had to comfort her because her family troubles were hers and she certainly wasn’t about to offload them on to him. He held her in his arms and told her she was a perfect fool; didn’t she realize that he loved the whole package of her, not just the bits and pieces that related directly to him? He said he would go and visit Luke, that he would like to.

  ‘To my amazement, I like adolescents. You’d think, after fifteen years of teaching them, that I’d have developed a violent antipathy. But I really like them. They interest me. I don’t at all mind that they haven’t got their acts together, I like all that passion and confusion.’

  ‘Luke has all that,’ Anna said, sniffing, ‘and he’s so loving.’ Her voice shook.

  Jonathan began to kiss her face. ‘So am I.’

  ‘Jonathan – have you told Daniel?’

  ‘About us? No.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘In time. Have you told Peter?’

  ‘No.’

  They looked at each other. Jonathan traced the outline of her mouth with his finger.

  ‘All that’ll come soon enough, you know.’

  She caught his finger in her teeth. ‘I quite want it to. I want action—’

  He burst out laughing. Then he swooped down on her. ‘Then you shall have some!’

  Flora lay in bed. It was late, but it wasn’t dark. She hadn’t pulled her curtains because there was, tonight, a romantic view of a new, pale moon which would do very well as the subject of a poem for her newspaper. (This was not going well. Emma was becoming restive at the lowliness of her role, but anyone with half an eye could see that Emma had no vision.) ‘Oh moon of May,’ Flora began. She didn’t seem to feel like poetry. She wished Luke was there, through the wall, with his thudding music. She’d thought she’d love to be at home without him, but she found that she didn’t at all. She felt lonely, and it was dull.

  She got out of bed and peered out of her window. The garden was all shadowy and mysterious in the gleaming, dark-blue light. She could see the line of sticks Anna had put up for the sweet peas, and the neat clumps of the new-potato leaves. It was very quiet. She tiptoed across the room and out on to the landing. She thought she would just go into Luke’s room and smell his smell for a bit. He might even have left a Twix bar somewhere.

  The landing, however, was not quiet. From downstairs came the sound of voices, cross voices, behind a closed door. Flora went to the banisters and peered over. The hall was dark, but there was a line of light under Peter’s study door. Behind it, her parents were quarrelling.

  ‘You can have it,’ Anna said, ‘take it. I don’t want it.’

  ‘I don’t want it,’ Peter said. He sat at his desk, staring down at his green blotter, furiously rolling two pencils.

  ‘I was going to tell you about Flora’s place. When – when you seemed a little more approachable. But I knew if I did you would insist on my leaving Pricewell’s, which I didn’t want to do because I like it. I like the people, I like the ordinariness, I like being out of Loxford. The money isn’t for myself, anyway. I’ve bought a few things, a few wickedly, sensationally extravagant things
like a jar of chocolate spread for Flora—’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’

  ‘But you are implying that I’m hoarding for myself. The money was for the children, for you if you wanted it. It’s sitting tamely in a building-society account. Take it. I said so.’

  ‘And give you the evidence you want that I don’t provide adequately for you?’

  ‘Peter!’

  ‘Well, what else is all this about?’

  Anna took a controlling breath. ‘It’s about my not telling you that Flora had a free place at St Saviour’s.’

  ‘About your concealing from me—’

  ‘God!’ Anna said, ‘you’d try the patience of a saint! Well, you know now, so that’s all over. I’m going to make some tea.’

  ‘One more thing—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I am not remotely interested in how much money you have or what you’ve done with it or do with it. But there won’t be any more from Pricewell’s.’

  Anna leaned towards him. ‘Oh my dear, don’t always kick me when I’m down. If it upsets you so much I will try and get a more prestigious job, but not yet. Just let it ride a bit, just let me get Luke a little launched . . .’

  He did not look at her. ‘I went to see the administration manager today. There will be no more work for you from the end of this month.’

  Anna stood up and leaned against the end of his desk. She closed her eyes for a moment but the swirling angry darkness behind them made her feel dizzy, so she opened them again and looked at Peter. He seemed to her all at once as familiar as herself and an absolute stranger.

  ‘You went into Pricewell’s and you cancelled my job.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘After you had spoken to Sister Ignatia.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you didn’t think of speaking to me.’

  ‘You would have refused.’

  ‘I do refuse,’ Anna said. She held the rim of the desk in both hands. She was so angry she was afraid.

  Peter said, ‘So you will make our – difference – plain to Mr Mulgrove?’

  There was a pause while Anna struggled with herself. Peter didn’t look at her. She said at last, ‘Peter, I’ve asked you this before but I’ll have to try once more. What is it that you want of me?’