by McNeir, Leo
“Valerie!” she cried, reaching for her arm. At last Valerie seemed to realise what was happening. Abruptly she stood up and rushed out of the room, leaving splashes of blood on the desk and on the floor.
*
The wound was still painful when Valerie stood at the sink in the kitchen that evening, putting a fresh plaster on her thumb after doing the washing-up. Her husband came in from emptying the waste bin and looked at the old plaster lying on the draining board.
“That’s a nasty cut, love,” he said. “Don’t you think you ought to see the doctor? You might need stitches in that.”
“I’ll see how it is in the morning.”
“You don’t want to get an infection.”
“I’ve put Savlon on it. It’ll be all right, I expect. It was a stupid accident. Mrs G probably thinks I had it coming. She’s always going on about my paperknife.”
“Looks like she’s got a point, love. Can’t you get one of those plastic letter-openers? Safer.”
“All right, all right! Don’t you go on as well. It’s bad enough knowing what the Head thinks. The two of them must have had a right old gossip about me when I was in the loo with my hand under the tap. It was because of them bursting into my office that I stuck the knife in my thumb, making me jump like that.”
“So you’ve met Rev. Petrie, then,” he said, trying to change the subject.
“Rev. Petrie,” repeated Valerie.
“What’s she like? Nice?”
“Euphoric!”
“Sorry?”
“That’s what she’s like, euphoric. Full of herself. She’s like a child at a party that’s just won pass-the-parcel.” Her husband began pulling off his shoes, the usual prelude to putting his boots on before going out to do ‘a bit in the garden’.
“Probably excited at having her own parish,” he said. Valerie did not reply and stood staring out of the window, remembering how it used to be. Her husband stepped into his boots and pulled open the back door. He looked at the plaster on the draining board, with its thick brown stain. “First blood to the new vicar,” he said without spite and went out shaking his head. Valerie stared after him, wondering what on earth he had meant, what on earth he knew.
*
Wednesday 5 July
“Good morning, Mrs Walker. The Head won’t be long. She’s on the phone at the moment. Would you like a seat?” Valerie indicated a chair in the opposite corner of her office. The room was filled with the unmistakable school smell, a compound of chalk, bookshelves, children and plasticine.
“Thank you,” said Marnie. “That must make typing difficult.” Valerie looked at her thumb, encased in a fingerstall.
“I keep hitting three keys at once. It’s hopeless.” Marnie gave her a sympathetic smile. There was the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside, hurried and business-like. Valerie looked towards the door and Marnie noticed her expression cloud over for a brief second before resuming its impassive stare. A soft tap on the open door and in came Toni Petrie, smart and brisk in clerical black.
“Sorry to interrupt, Valerie. I was going by and I thought I’d just pop in to see how you were after the accident.” Valerie flushed and glanced over to the corner where Marnie was sitting. The vicar noticed her for the first time. “Oh, good morning. Didn’t see you there.” Marnie stood up and sensed that the vicar was torn between her concern for Valerie and meeting a parishioner. Toni leaned forward and lightly touched Valerie’s wrist in a gesture of comfort. The effect was startling. Valerie stiffened and rose awkwardly to her feet.
“Would you excuse me a moment.” She picked up a bundle of registers from her desk and left the room. The two women looked at each other and the vicar held out her hand.
“Toni Petrie. I don’t think we’ve met.”
“We haven’t, but we were about to. My name’s Marnie Walker.” They shook hands. “Your predecessor asked me to help him with the porch.”
“You’re an architect?”
“Not quite. An interior designer, but I have links with my old firm and one of the partners deals with churches. Of course, you may decide that you want someone else to handle it. There’d be no problem with that.”
“Perhaps we can get together to talk about it,” said Toni. “Is your architect nearby?”
“No, London, but he could come up at the weekend if you’d like to see him.”
“Bring him to the church open day on Saturday,” said Toni. “Let’s get it done.”
“Don’t you want to think about it first?”
“No. Let’s get on with it. I don’t like things hanging round. Life’s too short.”
“Okay. That’s fine. Saturday it is.” The vicar turned towards the door. “What was that about an accident?” said Marnie.
“I’m afraid it was partly my fault. The head and I surprised Valerie and she stabbed herself with the paperknife. Sounds funny, I know, but it’s quite a vicious thing.”
“I’ve seen it,” said Marnie. “I think it’s rather a bone of contention in the office.”
“What you might call a ‘sore point’!” Toni guffawed at her own joke and stopped abruptly. “Sorry. I ought not to laugh. It was a nasty wound. Bled all over the place. Anyway, I must be off. Visiting the flock and all that. See you on Saturday.” Marnie looked at her watch and walked over to the window. The vicar was striding across the playground. Small and slight and purposeful. Literally a woman with a mission. Focused. One of the modern breed of women. Marnie wondered if that was how people saw her. In her line of business women were accepted on equal terms. But what did people want in a vicar? Was the argument about women priests all over now, or did it still simmer below the surface? I bet I can guess, thought Marnie. The inner door clicked open behind her.
“Mrs Walker! Please forgive me. I always seem to be keeping you waiting.” The Head looked around the office. “And no-one to look after you. I’m so sorry. Have you been here long?”
“A few minutes. No problem. I’ve just met the new vicar and arranged a meeting, so my time has been well spent.”
“Good. Come in, come in. Coffee’s all ready.” Just then, Valerie returned. Her expression made it clear that she knew the vicar had gone and was ready for any criticism of her absence from the office. “Ah, Valerie. Will you hold any calls, please, while I’m talking to Mrs Walker.”
“Right.”
“I gather the vicar was here.” It was a statement that expected a reply.
“Yes, she came to see me.”
“To see you?”
“Yes. Aren’t I a lucky girl? She came to ask how my hand was.” There was a prickly silence. “It makes a change, doesn’t it, for someone to come to see me.”
“In a way, I suppose,” said the Head. “A pleasant change, I hope. It was a kind thought.”
“Yes.” Valerie breathed the word out like a long sigh. “We’ve had a lot of changes lately, not all of them for the better.” She walked round the desk and sat down, pulling the keyboard of her computer towards her to mark the end of the conversation. The Head turned towards her office and Marnie made to follow. “Our vicar,” Valerie began again. “Our real vicar was a wonderful man, whatever people may say behind his back. He was an inspiration to us all.” She looked down to concentrate on hitting the right keys.
*
Saturday 8 July
“What are you up to, young lady?” Marnie looked in through the open door of the office barn.
“Just tidying up,” said Anne, crawling out from under her desk. “I’m re-arranging the plugs on my computer. I’ve been wanting to do it all week, but we’ve been so busy, I didn’t get a chance.” It certainly had been busy, with their designs progressing strongly and the Glebe Farm building works showing real development. They had even received their first cheque for fees.
“You’re a bigger workaholic than I am. Eight o’clock on a Saturday morning is a time when most people are glad to take things easy. Are you coming for breakfast?”
“I’ll be over in five minutes. Promise. I want to give your friend a good impression, so he’ll tell everybody in your old office what a smart outfit you have up here.”
“And what a great team,” added Marnie. For ten minutes they knocked the office into shape before walking back through the spinney. “Well, he’ll be impressed with that,” she said. “Mike’s one of those artistic types who always works in a mess. He’s also usually rather scruffy, a sort of curly, unkempt charm, I suppose, but his drawings are wonderful and his handwriting’s a work of art.”
“When’s he coming?”
“About noon, in time for a chat and a bite before the big event.”
“I think the vicar’s very brave to have an open day so soon after arriving,” said Anne. They stepped on board Sally Ann and walked through to the galley.
“It was already arranged,” said Marnie. She relit the gas under the kettle and took the croissants out of the oven.
“She could have put it back to another day,” said Anne, loading crockery onto the tray.
“Yes, she could have, but I don’t think it’s in her nature. Life’s too short, she said. She strikes me as rather impulsive. The sort who likes to rush in.”
“Where angels fear to tread?” said Anne. Marnie smiled and measured ground coffee into the cafetière. Anne picked up the tray.
“I expect she knows more about angels than I do,” said Marnie. “It is part of her business after all. No, I’m not suggesting she’s a fool. But she makes you feel there’s something bubbling away inside her, loads of energy bursting to come out.”
“The same goes for that kettle, I think,” said Anne indicating the steam billowing from the spout.
“Right on cue. Let’s go for it.”
*
Anne was taking photographs in the middle of the yard when the Sierra estate pulled up by the barn. She was making a careful record of the conversion of Glebe Farm from a cluster of ruins into a living complex. The man who climbed out of the car, removing his sunglasses, was just as she imagined him from Marnie’s description: late thirties, tall and broad-shouldered with smiling eyes and a boyish face under a mop of dark curly hair. He wore putty-coloured slacks with a country check shirt of blue and green and a petrel blue sweatshirt slung casually over his shoulders.
“Hiya! You from the tabloids?” An unmistakable Welsh accent.
“I’m Anne. I’m from the firm.”
“Me too. Mike Thomas.”
“Have you come alone? I thought your family were coming too?”
“That was the plan. Unfortunately Zoë – she’s two and a half – is running a temperature, so Stephie has had to stay at home with her.”
Anne led the visitor towards Sally Ann, but not before he had given the buildings a quick inspection. Anne insisted that he saw the office barn and, pronouncing himself impressed with the whole set-up, they made their way chatting easily together through the spinney. Over lunch Marnie outlined the problems with the porch and they decided to visit the church before Mike met the vicar.
This was Anne’s first involvement with an architect on a project. Armed with a clipboard and notepad, Mike inspected the porch at close range, running his hand over the stonework, peering at the pointing where it abutted the main structure, examining it inside and out.
“What do you think?” said Marnie.
Mike shook his head. “I don’t know what all the fuss was about, really.” He pointed at the base of the porch. “Look at this. It’s built on solid rock and they’ve made a good job of it. I know loads of so-called builders who couldn’t touch this. If this was done by apprentices, they had a pretty good idea what they were about.”
“Then why was the diocesan surveyor so worried?” said Marnie.
Mike shrugged his broad shoulders. “Hard to say. Probably covering his own back, trouble with other buildings, maybe, wanting to show he was taking action.”
“Have you seen enough for now?”
“Yes. I’ve got the picture. It’s a lovely church, beautiful stone.”
“Come inside. There’s something I want to show you.” Marnie led the way into the church and Anne put a coin in the box. She took a history booklet and gave it to Mike. They crossed the nave to the tower door at the foot of the sanctuary steps and Marnie tried the handle. It slid open noiselessly.
“In the Civil War the vicar was murdered in this tower,” said Anne. “You can read about it in the booklet. They never found out who did it.”
“How was he killed?” said Mike.
Anne frowned. “I’m not really sure. He fell to the bottom of the steps.”
“I don’t think the booklet tells how he died,” said Marnie. “I thought perhaps he’d been shot. I don’t know why.” They began to climb the narrow steps. At the first window, Marnie turned to Mike. “What do you think of the mullions here?” Mike stood on tiptoe to inspect the detailing.
“Nice work. You’re not going to tell me the apprentices built the tower, are you?”
“Is it possible?”
Mike shook his head. “This is real craftsmanship. People just take old churches for granted, part of the landscape. But men built them with fairly simple tools and they’ve stood for centuries. Look at this stonework.” Lovingly, he ran his broad palm down the wall. “They took extra care with churches, you know, a matter of pride. Only the best was good enough.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Marnie. She resumed the climb, leading the way up to the ledge where the wooden partition was fitted, covering the space where the mechanism of the medieval clock had hung. The ledge was in shadow and Marnie leaned to one side to let Mike take a closer look.
“It’s very dark,” he muttered. Craning forward, he touched the surface. “Timber. What is it, oak?”
“How do you know that?” said Anne.
“That’s what they used round here.” He passed his hand over the stonework. “That’s odd.”
“What’s odd?” said Marnie.
“Not sure,” said Mike. “You find a lot of strange things in ancient buildings.” He thumped twice with his fist on the wood as if it was a door. The hollow sound was loud in the confined space of the stairway. Anne shuffled uneasily.
“Hallo!” The voice, a woman’s voice, echoed all around them in the tower, an unexpected reply to Mike’s banging on the screen. Anne gasped. Mike turned in a split second and caught her wrist as she slipped from the step, bracing himself against the stone wall and dropping his clipboard so that he could grasp her shoulder. The board clattered down the steps into the gloom below.
“Hallo! Hallo! Who’s up there?” The voice was louder now and Marnie, who had reached forward to put an arm round Anne’s back, called out in reply.
“It’s me, Molly, Marnie Walker. We’re coming down.” She turned to Mike and Anne. “All okay?” They groped their way carefully down the steps, Mike leading, with Anne in the middle. The clipboard had fallen all the way to the bottom. Molly Appleton was waiting for them by the door.
“I didn’t know it was you,” she said. “I heard a banging and thought it might be kids. It can be dangerous in the tower, easy to fall.” Marnie made the introductions and explained Mike’s presence. She noticed that Anne was quite pale.
“I thought it was only the porch,” said Molly. “Don’t tell me the new vicar wants to rebuild the tower as well.”
“Just getting the feel of the place,” said Mike.
“Mike’s a specialist in this sort of building,” Marnie explained. “He worked on the restoration of York Minster.”
“Oh, I hope we can afford you,” said Molly with a smile.
Mike looked at Marnie. “I expect we’ll do this on a … friendly basis,” he said. “A sort of favour to Marnie to help her settle in to the village.” All around them people were bringing in displays of flowers, arranging them in groups under the direction of an elderly lady who stood with a plan in one hand, leaving the other free to command.
“We always used to h
ave a Flower Festival in the summer,” said Molly. “Then it grew to an open day, but flowers still play a big part. Mrs Grainger has been in charge of it for as long as I can remember. You’ll have to excuse me now. I’m helping her and she doesn’t like it if things don’t go according to plan. I’ll just lock the tower door. Don’t want anyone else going up. You never know what might happen to them up there.”
The three of them walked slowly down the aisle and Marnie put her arm round Anne’s shoulder.
“Sorry about that,” said Anne. “Thanks for catching me, Mike.”
“How are you feeling?” said Marnie.
“Okay. Not bad. I just got such a shock.”
“Me too,” said Mike. “I should have warned you I was going to bang on the partition. I wanted to see how solid it was. I didn’t expect an answer.”
“What shall we do now?” said Marnie, changing the subject. “It’s about an hour before the opening.”
“Well, it’s a warm day,” Mike began. “We could go over the …” Before he could finish, Marnie interrupted him.
“I think there’s the answer to our question.” Toni Petrie, in a light grey cassock, neat brown hair shining in the sunlight, stood in the entrance waiting for them to emerge. She was wearing a silver chain and cross, in the style of a Celtic wheel cross, the size of a child’s fist, with matching silver ear-rings.
“Good god,” muttered Mike under his breath. “You’ve only been here five minutes, Marnie, and you’ve installed a designer vicar!” Anne nearly choked trying not to laugh and Marnie smiled sweetly up at Mike. Through clenched teeth and without moving her lips, she spoke softly.
“You wait till I get you outside.”
