Bodies and Souls

by Nancy Thayer

  Bodies and Souls is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  2014 Ballantine Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 1983 by Nancy Thayer

  Introduction copyright © 2014 by Nancy Thayer

  Excerpt from Nantucket Sisters by Nancy Thayer copyright © 2014 by Nancy Thayer

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Originally published in hardcover by Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House in 1983.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Nantucket Sisters by Nancy Thayer. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  Author photograph: copyright © Jessica Hills Photography

  eBook ISBN 978-0-553-39108-4

  Cover design: Eileen Carey

  Cover image: © Stanislav Solntsev/Photodisc/Getty Images

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  An Introduction from the Author

  Epigraph

  Part One Peter Taylor

  Judy Bennett

  Liza Howard

  Wilbur Wilson

  Suzanna Blair

  Reynolds Houston

  Amanda Findly

  Peter Taylor

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Nantucket Sisters

  An Introduction from the Author

  A lascivious young widow is one of the main characters in Bodies and Souls. She’s joined by a minister, a teenage girl, a seventy-year-old man, a “perfect” wife and mother, an imperfect divorcee, and an austere academic. They all attend the same church in Londonton, Massachusetts, and their lives intertwine in unexpected ways. According to my first publisher, Doubleday, this is a serious, thoughtful book about “the shocking secrets of a small town.” But there is humor here as well, and death, sex, sin, redemption, and all kinds of love.

  I’m delighted that my early novels are being made available to my readers as ebooks. My style has changed slightly, as the world has grown faster, but my subject, family life, remains as mysterious and fascinating to me now as it was in these early books: falling in love, raising children, friendships and betrayals and forgiveness.

  I hope you enjoy these early novels and discover some new friends there.

  Nancy Thayer

  Here is the church

  Here is the steeple,

  Open the door

  And see all the people …

  Part One

  Sunday morning

  October 18, 1981

  Peter Taylor

  This Sunday morning the first chill of fall had risen from the land like the delicate silver frost on a plum. The grass was etched with rime; the sky foamed it. It seemed the sun had moved a crucial degree all at once, overnight, and there was a change in the air.

  The Reverend Peter Taylor knelt alone in his church office to ask the Lord to give him the wisdom and strength to minister well to his congregation. Over the years he had established a ritual. In his mind’s eye he envisioned the vast arc of space, the churning galaxies, that most beautiful of planets, the blue Earth, the continent of North America, this New England town with its white colonial and collegiate stone buildings, and finally, his own modest white Congregational church with its storybook steeple. In his way, he supposed he was using magical thinking: by funneling his view of the world in toward himself and his church, perhaps he could also help God focus toward this minute segment of the cosmos. “Look, God, right down here—here we are.”

  His knees hurt; he wasn’t used to kneeling. No one knelt in church anymore, and he thought it a pity, another sign of the continual division between mind and body. He was old-fashioned and believed that it would do his congregation good to compose their bodies in an attitude of worship and supplication, if only for a few minutes a week. Heaven only knew what positions those bodies got up, down, and into the rest of the week. He believed that it was man’s spirit that made him godlike, but there was no getting around the fact that as long as men and women inhabited corporeal bodies, it would be those bodies, that flesh, which told them what was important to the spirit. Beauty was not abstract; it was in a concerto by Bach, and came to humans through the delicate organs of the ear; it was in the sight of a naked body or the New England hills in autumn, and came to humans through the fastidious complexities of the eye; it was in the water after thirst, laughter after loneliness, embrace after absence. Messages came to the human spirit through the body. Peter Taylor believed that a few minutes of kneeling would do more to convince his congregation of God’s supremacy than all the words of his sermon.

  But he was old-fashioned, and his congregation, for the most part, was not. Most of his parishioners were attractive and educated and affluent; many were chic, facile, even lecherous. Life was too easy for some of them. Sometimes he wanted to ship them all off to live for a year in Harlem or India. But mostly he loved them, and he knew they had their share of sorrows, and more than their share of sins. They were a continual challenge to him: there was always something going on, even in this small and comfortable town, which brought him to a full test of his intellectual and ecclesiastic abilities. For he was a modern minister, and he knew there were seldom simple answers to human questions.

  The bells were tolling; it was time to begin. He rose, brushed his knees, and crossed the room to glance at himself in the mirror. He had been told, often and with varying degrees of subtlety, that he was a handsome man, and although he tried to fight vanity, it was a help to him to know just how he looked before he faced his congregation. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and if he had put on weight here and there, the general effect was to make him seem massive, influential. His black hair was graying at the temples, and the lines his face had gained with age were a help. When he was younger, his blue eyes and symmetrical English features had made him seem too young, too untested, for such a position. But he had gained some wisdom with his forty-eight years, and this showed. He looked like a minister, and this gave him the confidence to take on the complicated crew who awaited him now. He left his office and walked down the hall and into the chancel.

  Through the years the exterior of the First Congregational Church of Londonton had graced as many calendars as Marilyn Monroe because of its simple architecture, its classic steeple spiring toward the sky. But Peter preferred the interior of the church. He believed no one on earth could enter this sanctuary without feeling an exultation of spirits, and an attending leap of faith, if not in the reality of God, at least in the reality of grace. The walls of the church rose up around him for sixty feet, and were crowned by an oval ring of ceiling that was lightly vaulted to make the most of subtle domes. The walls and ceiling were soft white in color, simply ornamented by a rim of wood painted gold. The sanctuary was slightly longer than it was wide, with six long, high, narrow windows on each side. These windows were matched by six columns with composite capitals which were set in the semicircle of the chancel itself. The pews were hardwood painted white; the floor was covered with a deep red carpet that spoke more of old and dignifi
ed elegance than expense. The beauty of this church was not in any superficial decorations but in the basic architecture itself. It rose up and curved into itself with complete simplicity, as if it had been built by men with peaceful hearts.

  The building was situated so that on cloudless days the sun streamed into the first three windows on the right-hand side, making the burled cherry wood of the altar and the flowers on either side of it lustrous with light. Many members of Peter’s congregation complimented him on the beauty of that delineated radiance, as if he were personally responsible for the focused beam of light. But he knew how they felt; bright sunlight came through those windows with the benevolent force of a blessing. Still, Peter preferred the church on cloudy Sundays. Then all the windows were equally illuminated by a silvery-white glow, and Peter felt that they were all at one together, drawn together and encompassed by that gentler light.

  Today was so cool and cloudy that for the first time in months, Peter’s congregation sat before him arrayed in sweaters, wool blazers, and heavy coats. Liza Howard was already wearing a fur coat, though she was probably wearing it more for the effect it had on others than for the warmth. People would just have to get used to sitting through church with their coats on, Peter thought, for with the rising cost of fuel it would be impossible to keep the church really warm. Perhaps the slight chill in the air would provide that edge of discomfort which kept people alert and awake. He gazed out at the congregation for a moment, counting the house, then bowed his head in prayer.

  This prayer was the same as always: Dear Lord, now that they were all actually here, let what I have to say make sense to someone.

  A man came up the four steps to sit across the chancel from him, and Peter raised his head and nodded. It was Reynolds Houston, the lay reader for today. Reynolds would read the Call to Worship and later, the Scripture lesson, and he would do it beautifully. In fact, no one in the world looked more like a minister than Reynolds Houston, who was so tall and slim he would have seemed ascetic, were it not for the sensuality of his hair. Few men in their fifties have beautiful hair, but Reynolds did, and although he wore it cut fairly short, there was no mistaking its abundance.

  Reynolds was a conundrum of a man to Peter. His long stringy body seemed mismatched with his voluptuously handsome face; and it was unusual that a man with his cold, intellectual competence should speak with such a sonorous and soothing voice. Reynolds taught Latin and Greek at the local college and served on many committees for both the college and the town. One could often see his lanky body stalking across the grounds on one mission or another. He was seldom accompanied; he was the sort of man who preferred his own company. Peter knew very little about Reynolds’s private life, and so he had been surprised, earlier this morning, when Reynolds had asked if he could speak with him after church regarding “a matter of grave concern.” Peter could not imagine what sort of problem it could be that this reserved man would want to confide. He studied Reynolds for a moment, admiring the cut of the gray flannel suit which must have been specially tailored to fit such a gawky body so elegantly. Reynolds was leaning forward in his chair, his head bowed, his arms resting on his legs, his hands folded in prayer; and Peter noticed the awkwardness of his very long fingers and hands, delicately embraced by the cuffs of an expensive cotton shirt, set with silver cuff links. Reynolds was an immaculate man, and his face was equally smooth just now; Peter could read no emotion there, no clue to his problems.

  The choir began to sing the Introit, which announced that the service was beginning, and Peter’s mind turned to broader contemplations.

  Reynolds rose and went to the pulpit to lead the congregation in the Call to Worship, then returned to stand by his chair as Mrs. Pritchard, the organist, pounded out the introductory stanzas of the first hymn of the morning. As Peter sang “When Morning Gilds the Skies,” he did not look down at his hymnbook, but out and around him at his congregation.

  The church was full today. He was glad to see that the wealthy Vandersons, who were always off vacationing in some exotic place, were here today; but he was equally glad to see Norma and Wilbur Wilson in their usual place at the back of the church. The Wilsons were an older couple, neither wealthy nor sophisticated, but they had their own special prestige: they were old Londontoners. Their parents had been born here, and their parents before them, and Norma and Wilbur had lived in this town for over sixty-five years; they had been married in this church by another minister long ago. When Peter had moved to Londonton to take the position as pastor of this church several years back, he had been acutely aware of the Wilsons’ quiet skepticism, and it was a point of pride to him that they had retained their membership in the church and continued to attend faithfully—even though Wilbur’s frosty eyebrows raised defiantly now and then when Peter’s liberal political beliefs showed up too blatantly in his sermons.

  Well, the Wilsons were here today, and the Moyers, and the Bennetts, and all the rest of the regulars. Peter sometimes thought this was the best moment of the Sunday morning. Everything seemed fresh and new, ready to begin: his congregation gathered hopefully before him, not yet restless from sitting. His flock. Perhaps, after all, he could do them good. Hadn’t they gone to the trouble this crisp October morning to climb out of their beds, dress, and come to church, when they could be doing any number of other things—staying by the first fire of fall, sipping hot coffee and reading The New York Times? Or they could be out raking leaves, or stacking wood, or hiking through the mountains—they were by and large athletic and energetic people. But here they were, like children, offering their faces up to him, willing him to say the words that would change their lives, if only by bringing a few minutes of peace into the flurry of their days. He wanted to comfort them, enlighten them, uplift them, and perhaps even bring them closer somehow to God.

  Peter had become a minister in part because of his secret belief that he might be the only happy man on earth. He had been raised on a large farm in Vermont which had been handed down by three generations of Taylors to his father, John, and which was in turn handed on to Peter’s older brother, John, Jr. The farm was mostly given over to apple orchards, and the beauty of those orchards in all seasons had filled Peter with a durable joy. His parents were both gone now; they had died within ten months of each other, but while they lived they had cared for each other with such steadfast affection that Peter grew up completely assured that such a thing as love existed on the earth. Against the horrors of the outside world he could hold up the example of their personal goodness, and this made it possible for him to be an optimist. He had not married until he was thirty, but he had married happily, and loved his wife not only with an enduring fondness but with an enduring lust. He was a fortunate man, and he believed in God, in the innate order and goodness which he thought must surely operate at the core of the universe, and in the ultimate perfectibility of human beings and the world they made. He really did have faith, and his congregation was able to sense that in him. They trusted him, as one who has been blessed, to pass blessings on.

  Because he was an intelligent man, he also had his share of doubts about the messages he preached. But his greatest fear was not that he was all wrong and there was no God; he was not afraid of dying into oblivion. His greatest fear was that if there really was an afterlife, and if there really was a God, at the ultimate confrontation God would accuse him of failure. He could imagine God’s wrath, God’s words: “You fool! I gave you everything, and you did nothing of any real value! You were no help at all!” What would Peter do then?

  Peter thought ministers were, even more than average professional men, prey to crises of confidence, of faith. It wasn’t a purely personal problem, either. Much of it had to do with changing standards and beliefs, which in turn altered the very foundation of the Church, and the way the Bible was interpreted. Peter was now forty-eight. Things had changed drastically since he was a small boy trembling on the edge of a pew as the pastor of the North Alton, Vermont, Methodist Church threatene
d him with hellfire and damnation. The idea of Hell was unpopular these days, and ministers were called upon to talk about charity more than righteousness. It was an attitude Peter felt quite comfortable with, given his temperament: he would always much rather forgive than castigate. Anyway, he had been so lucky, who was he to condemn anyone else? He would prefer to bring God into his parishioners’ lives through the doors of hope and wonder rather than through the doors of fear. But what if he were getting it all wrong? What if he were misinterpreting everything? What if, by his tolerance, he was committing sins of omission—and making it possible for his congregation to slip into Sin? It was passé now, he knew, the idea of Sin, yet it all the same existed, as alluring as a cool blue lake on a hot summer’s day. He felt as though he were leading his flock near that lake, when he should perhaps be angrily shooing them away; that he was consciously turning his back while certain of his congregation dabbled their toes or waded in, or even went for long swims.

  Liza Howard, for example. Now Peter really did worry about the state of her soul. There she sat, just three rows from the front, wrapped in her mink coat. She was one of the wealthiest members of the congregation, and one of the worst. It was not just that she gave so little of her wealth to the church—although of course that irked Peter greatly. His poor church needed so many things and Liza Howard gave so little. Also, he secretly felt that her lack of generosity was a reflection on his preaching. If someone better were in the pulpit, surely Liza would give more? But money was not the main issue. He was not angry with her or worried about her simply because of selfish reasons. He was worried for Liza herself. In his most extreme moments, he believed that if there were a Hell after death, it was to be her inescapable destiny. More often and more rationally, he simply thought that anyone as dreadful as she was must secretly be miserable.