Power on Her Own

by Judith Cutler

  ‘You could choose.’

  She liked his voice. Admired his cheek. And fingered the wad of fifty-pound notes that her aunt had given her and meekly agreed to play for the morning service.

  Chapter Four

  Whenever their shifts had let them, Kate and Robin had luxuriated in Sunday mornings. Often – if the kids hadn’t been round – they’d enjoyed nice relaxed sex, and then the papers over coffee. Then brunch, with the whole cholesterol works: bacon, egg, sausage, though no fried bread latterly. As if looking after his health had helped Robin.

  Kate pushed away her plate. Suddenly she didn’t want even the modest bacon sandwich, though she’d tried to work up an appetite with an early morning run round Kings Heath Park. A jog to warm up and cool down, but a good brisk run for a mile. The knee had stood it remarkably well. It was good to be getting control over her body again. Except for the matter of Graham Harvey’s herbal tea, of course. He still looked at her with disconcerting kindness each time he came across her in the office or along the corridors, as if wanting to ask if she was settling in, but being too tactful to do so. When she’d asked if he could spare her so she could play the organ this morning, he’d insisted that she should take the whole day off.

  ‘All day on computers,’ he’d said, smiling, ‘your eyes and shoulders’ll need a break. Not to mention your brain!’

  With the young men, he was more often in schoolteacher mode.

  ‘Thing is,’ Sally said, ‘he’s straight. Straight as a die.’

  Or was it straight as a Dai?

  She liked Sally and was getting on well with Colin. Only Selby still seemed to think that honours had to be evened. Best not to think of him on a Sunday before chapel.

  Pecking at dry bread she looked at her watch. Ten. Time to get dressed, and in something appropriate, too. With most of her clothes still in Croydon or in suitcases, to avoid all the mess, her choice was limited. The suit she wore to court might be the best thing, except it wasn’t, now she came to hold it up, wide enough in the skirt for working the organ pedals. She grabbed the next best, a bottle-green pleated affair in which she always looked hung over.

  It would have been nice to get the feel of things first, of course, but there’d really been no time. So it would be in at the deep end with a strange organ, a strange choir and a strange acoustic.

  She’d cut it slightly fine and had to go into the chapel as if she were simply one of the congregation. She was intercepted at the door by a stringy woman aged anything between fifty-five and sixty-five – a deaconess whose job it was to welcome the congregation and pass them hymn books. Kate smiled. Maybe the woman smiled back: it was hard to tell. Her handshake was perfunctory, to say the least.

  Kate tried again: ‘Hello. I’m Kate Power. I believe Mr Elford is expecting me. I’m your temporary organist.’

  The woman’s nose thinned. ‘You’ll find him in the vestry.’

  ‘Which is where?’

  She was treated to a curt sideways jerk of the head. My God, not another case of the deaconess being in love with the minister? Such relationships, if that was what they ever were, had enlivened her Sunday-school classes and later her time in the chapel choir. Smiling the neat, undimpled professional smile she’d learned, she pushed open the door to the chapel. And stopped short. She’d never seen anything like this. Not your usual plain wood-panelled building, with a big central block of pews and a smaller one each side. No. This was – heavens, it was like a mini Sacré Coeur! All stained glass and polished tiles. There was a central aisle, like in the church where they’d buried Robin. A few deep breaths.

  ‘Is there a problem, Miss – er –?’

  Kate spun round. It was the deaconess. ‘Power. Kate,’ she repeated. ‘No, I was just – taken aback – by this.’ She gestured.

  ‘You’ll find the Minister through there.’

  ‘Thanks. I don’t know any of your names yet. You’re –?’

  ‘Mrs Walters.’ There was a certain emphasis on the title.

  Kate knocked on the vestry door, waited a moment, and went in. All she could see was the back of an academic gown, as someone struggled into it. She gave it a firm hitch, and waited for the owner to turn.

  He was too busy shifting the gown’s weight more firmly on to his shoulders to take in who had rescued him.

  ‘Hello. I’m Kate Power.’

  When he finally looked up and round, she could see nothing but puzzlement on his face. But when it cleared, it was transformed: no wonder Mrs Walters wanted to defend Mr Elford from all comers. Half the women in the congregation must be in love with him. He was classically handsome, with the sort of bones that would go on looking elegant until he died. Since he couldn’t have been much more than forty, this might well be a long time in the future.

  Mr Elford’s smile faded. ‘You can sight read, can’t you?’

  Kate had probably expected, if she’d thought about it, effusive thanks and apologies, which she would have laughed aside. As it was, she felt put out. It was like being interviewed belatedly for a job she didn’t even want.

  ‘Yes.’ Perhaps her irritation showed. Perhaps she didn’t at this moment mind if it did. ‘As long as you stick to the old Baptist Hymnal and don’t want anything trendier – syncopation’s never been my strong suit – we might just get through. Prayer seems entirely appropriate, all things considered.’ She found herself laughing away her bad temper.

  He joined in. ‘We’d better have a word with Him then: the lady who organises the choir – Mrs Pritchett, that is – tends to rewrite the hymns somewhat.’

  It was possible after all that she might like Mr Elford. ‘How much rewriting?’

  ‘Just enough to get them into the choir’s range, I believe. It’s a very small choir.’

  ‘Reedy tenors, one bass and loads of sopranos?’

  ‘They all work very hard.’ He lifted his voice so it would carry. ‘Ah, Mrs Pritchett. Margaret. This is Kate Power, who’s so kindly agreed to play for us for a few weeks.’

  A few!

  Mrs Pritchett was a top-heavy woman, to whom middle age was not being kind. While her body had thickened, her hair had not, and although a talented hairdresser might have done something, Mrs Pritchett was currently displaying an area at the front almost bald. The bags under her eyes suggested chronic sinusitis. When she had swept Kate from head to toe she nodded briefly. Another one in love with Elford, presumably. Kate caught herself wishing that Elford was gay, just to confound the predatory women.

  ‘Of course,’ Mrs Pritchett began, ‘our last organist was BMus, Durham.’

  ‘I’m B Soc Sci, Manchester. With an MA in Criminal Psychology.’ So why was she stung into such a silly boast? Normally she never spoke of her qualifications. It wasn’t what you had on paper that counted: it was how good you were at your job. Clearly she had gone too far: Mrs Pritchett’s nose, with its rather long tip, reddened.

  Not an auspicious start, then. The service was long and enthusiastic, but the choir, for all Mrs Pritchett’s training, dawdled badly, dragging the lovely tunes into dirges. And they sharpened and flattened at will. Despite the nice Mr Elford, she’d made a bad mistake – or rather, Aunt Cassie had made one for her. She was too irritated to be uplifted, and the thought that she could have stripped a whole roomful of wallpaper during the sermon alone made her irritation worse.

  She was slipping out of the chapel when Elford intercepted her. ‘Are you in a terrible hurry, Kate? Because I was hoping you’d join us for a pre-lunch sherry. I’d like you to meet the deacons – see the sort of community we are.’

  Her first impulse was to refuse: but she straightened her shoulders and accepted. If it provided nothing more, it might afford a few moments’ grim comedy.

  The manse was a modern house, clean and cheerfully decorated. There was a clutter of toys in the hall, and the sweet smell of roasting lamb.

  ‘Let me have your coat,’ Elford said, reaching for it. ‘Maz! Maz, love.’

  If Kate h
ad been one of Elford’s fan club, she’d have given up. Maz, taking off her apron and stashing it behind an out-of-control Swiss cheese plant, was a couple of inches taller than her husband, slender and blonde. No wonder she hadn’t gone to the service: the elderly women who dominated the front pews would have spent their time praying for her instant death.

  ‘Maz, this is Kate. Our temporary organist.’

  ‘It’s good to meet you. Come along in! Giles: get in there! They’re all waiting for you. Hang on, Kate – you’ll need a glass. I only put out the usual number.’ She grinned as if they were accomplices in something.

  And then there was a yowl from the kitchen. Maz turned tail, and Kate followed, running. Two or three children were doing something with apples. One of the girls – she must have been about six – was screaming as blood oozed from her clenched fist.

  ‘My God! Let Mummy look, love.’

  ‘Here, let me. Get me a clean tea towel, will you?’ Kate uncurled the fist. There was a long slice across the thumb. ‘No, it’s not deep. There’s a large flap of skin there. Have you some sharp, clean scissors?’ She snipped before the little girl knew what she was doing, and squeezed the tea towel. ‘Just hold that, tight as you can. Tighter! What’s her name? Jenny? Good girl, Jenny. Got a first-aid box? We could do with those adhesive strips – butterflies. Excellent. Come on, sweetheart, we’re just going to put these strips across here – there, you can see it’s bleeding less already. Another one just there. Good girl. Now, we’ll just clean you up a bit and you’ll be as good as new.’ She swabbed and dabbed till the thumb was clean, and then rooted through the first-aid box. ‘Non-stick dressing, that’s what we could do with. Yes, we could cut a bit off there. And some adhesive. And then it’s just a matter of getting the rest of the blood up and Bob’s your uncle.’

  ‘Or even, in these enlightened days,’ said Maz, ‘your aunt. Golly, Kate, that was all very brisk and efficient.’

  ‘First-aid, training. And not being involved.’ Then she thought of Mrs Mackenzie’s work on her leg: ‘Hey, has she had anti-tet?’

  ‘Last month.’

  ‘Come on, sit down. Head between your knees. You look as if you could do with a drink.’ Not as much as Kate herself could do with a drink. She’d meant to turn down even sherry – no true Baptist would be surprised to find a tee-totaller in their midst. But she’d have killed for a drink. As it was, she hunted for the kettle. ‘Stay there. Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Gin,’ Maz said. ‘It’s in the fridge. Unless you’re –?’

  ‘Gin sounds great. But mostly tonic: I’m driving.’ And I’m halfway down the road to being a lush. She turned to the children, so no one could see how much she wanted that drink.

  ‘But you must stay to lunch. Apple pie if I can find enough apples without blood. What did you cut yourself on, Jenny? I said no knives.’

  ‘I was trying to take the core out.’ Jenny held up an old-fashioned potato peeler.

  ‘Ah! What you have to do is pull the blade off here, turn it round and use this round end. Pour that gin, Kate, there’s a dear. See, that’s how you do it.’

  Kate busied herself with the fridge, finding ice cubes and a tired lemon. ‘Tonic?’ she prompted.

  ‘Cupboard under the stairs. On your right, as you go in. Mind how you fall over the empties. Haven’t been to the bottle bank for a few weeks.’

  That was quite obvious. Clearly these Baptists weren’t total abstainers, nor did Maz seem to feel guilty about drinking. At last she managed to unearth a couple of new bottles of tonic, so she rescued one and carried it back in triumph to the kitchen.

  ‘Now you see how I keep the place tidy. Shove everything into cupboards and slam the doors tight. Only problem comes when you open the doors and there’s this avalanche,’ Maz said, rolling out pastry she’d conjured from somewhere. She’d found another apron, this one with teddy bears all over it. ‘Cheers.’ She grabbed the glass with a floury hand and drank extravagantly. ‘Hell, you’re not supposed to be here! Thank God gin doesn’t smell too much on the breath. Sherry’s OK. It’s genteel, you see. Off you go: second on the right. Here, swig that down and put some orange juice in your glass. What the eye doesn’t see …’

  ‘Right! Over the top!’

  ‘Good luck. But I said lunch and I meant it. See you in a bit.’

  The room must have been light, airy and welcoming, but someone had arranged dining chairs around the edge of the room, punctuated by stools or easy chairs. It had the air of a dentist’s waiting room. Silence snapped into place as soon as Kate entered. She had a choice between a stool and a big leather wing chair, old enough to be an heirloom. She made brazenly for the wing chair.

  Before she could sit, Mrs Walter coughed. ‘That’s Mr Pugh’s chair.’

  There was no sign of him. Kate looked at the door – had he gone to the lavatory?

  Elford shifted in his seat with embarrassment.

  ‘I’ll remember for next time,’ Kate said at last, sitting down.

  Mrs Walters’ mouth shrank. Robin would have said it looked like a hen’s backside.

  The silence became embarrassing.

  Elford coughed and smiled: ‘We were just agreeing how well it went this morning, weren’t we? Mrs Pritchett was saying how the choir appreciated a good lead.’

  Kate and Mrs Pritchett smiled at each other. They both knew Mr Elford was lying: so for that matter did everyone else in the room. What Mrs Pritchett’s smile said was that the organ had forced the choir out of its habitual funereal pace. The congregation had had to struggle to keep up.

  Mrs Walters and Mrs Pritchett rose to their feet like a double act. No time for Elford to introduce anyone else. Two tall, well-dressed men – middle-aged father and son – came sharply to heel. Walters or Pritchetts? And once they were moving, the two or three others had to abandon ship too. A sweet-faced old woman smiled and said something, but her Birmingham – no, not Birmingham – accent was so strong Kate couldn’t understand. Two elderly men, one as straight as the other was bowed, shook her briefly by the hand. Lastly, a strong-shouldered young man grinned and said, ‘Paul Taylor.’

  That gin seemed a long time ago.

  She followed them all out into the hall, wondering how to tell Elford that she wasn’t leaving with the others without offending them. In the event – so promptly she might have been listening for the right moment – Maz appeared.

  ‘Kate, could you have just one more look at your patient? And Paul, if you go off without seeing the kids, there’ll be hell to pay.’ She smiled equally at the others. ‘Sorry I couldn’t join you earlier. There was a bit of domestic crisis. Lots of blood. Kate saved yet another visit to casualty. I think we should take up residence there, don’t you? Tim last week, Lynn the week before that.’

  Probably before they knew it, the others were smiled outside.

  Paul turned to Kate: ‘What’s been going on?’

  ‘Just an incident with an vegetable peeler. Nothing major.’

  ‘Major enough,’ Maz said, coming back into the hall and dithering. ‘Rain any moment. Won’t be too many at the evening service, I should think. And my poor Giles has prepared a knock-out sermon.’

  ‘He can always recycle it,’ Paul said. ‘How major? They’re my flesh and blood, Maz!’

  ‘Let’s just say that there’s still the same amount of flesh but rather less blood, in Jenny at least,’ Kate said.

  ‘What –?’ He frowned, apparently more stressed than Maz had been.

  Maz laughed. ‘Kate flew in like Superwoman. Giles, come and kiss Jenny better. And – both of you – remember that a bandage is a fashion item.’

  Giles’ shirt was spattered with rain. ‘Why do people always find it necessary to talk when they get outside?’

  ‘Because they’ve got coats on. Come on, all of you. The table’s laid, the soup’s bubbling and I’m afraid the lamb will dry out.’

  Kate discovered over the soup – carrot, but with something extra – that Paul was
Maz’s brother. They were a striking looking pair, though neither had the classic good looks of Giles. The children were seraphic-looking: Kate hoped they wouldn’t behave like little Lord Fauntleroys. Lynn was the oldest: she’d just taken her eleven plus.

  ‘I’d no idea such an exam still existed!’

  ‘It’s alive and kicking in Birmingham, all right. All the bright kids are creamed off so what they call comprehensives are really –’

  ‘OK, Paul. It’s my day for sermons, not yours,’ Giles said. ‘Any more meat anyone? No? Does this mean we shall have one of your cold lamb curries, love?’

  ‘Are you a teacher, Paul?’ Kate asked. She liked people with passions.

  ‘I’m in FE. Further education. So we see the effect on the kids of this so-called comprehensive education. It’s no more comprehensive than – OK, Giles. What about you, Kate? How do you earn a crust?’

  How would his expression change when she told him about her job? Sometimes she would pussy-foot: ‘I work for the police.’ Or she could aim to shock: ‘I’m a detective.’ But whatever she said, a glimmer of fear? suspicion? challenge, even? flashed momentarily in the questioner’s eyes. This time she went for the middle ground: ‘I’m in the CID. Based in the city centre.’ And she could have sworn she saw fear in Paul’s eyes. Just for an instant. Less. Within a second they were interested, amused, even. And she knew he’d come out with the line about not expecting to see good-looking women like her in uniform.

  He did.

  ‘I’m not in uniform. Plain clothes.’ As she was sure he knew. ‘Come on,’ she laughed, ‘you must have seen The Bill often enough.’

  Maz, laughing with her, shook her head. ‘To be honest, Kate, I doubt if he ever watches TV. He’s doing something every night of the week.’

  Giles nodded. ‘He’s a bastion of the Boys’ Brigade apart from anything else.’

  ‘Boys’ Brigade? You’re a bit grown up for that, surely.’ He’d deserved that after his silly quip.

  ‘People often find themselves making a lifetime commitment,’ Giles said gently. ‘You join when you’re a kid for the uniform. It gives you somewhere to go and people to meet when you’re in your teens. Many people want to repay what others have done for them.’