Permissible Limits

by Hurley, Graham

  We walked around the south side of the church. Beyond the trees I could see glimpses of the sea.

  ‘Well, what do you make of us?’

  The vicar had found a little pool of sunshine beside a row of mossy gravestones. Ralph had obviously had a word or two because he seemed to know about Adam and the accident. I told him I was glad I’d come. The service had been very high church, incense and lots of candles, an experience so novel it had almost felt like watching a play.

  ‘It’s theatre,’ the vicar agreed, ‘with one tiny exception.’ ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We all know the words. And that, believe me, makes a difference.’

  Ralph chuckled. I could tell that the two men were friends. The vicar was still looking at me.

  ‘But what about the setting? The feel of the place? That’s important, too.’

  I hesitated long enough to give myself away.

  ‘To tell you the truth -’

  ‘You hate it?’

  I stared at him, amazed.

  ‘Not hate it, no. That’s much too strong. It’s just… a bit…’

  ‘Too dark? Too gloomy?’

  ‘Yes.’ I could feel the blood pinking my face. ‘And to be honest that’s not quite right. Not for what I have in mind.’

  The vicar nodded and took me gently by the arm. We walked back down the path to the gate and waited for a bus to go past before crossing the road. A child on a bicycle had appeared, pedalling furiously towards us, and she braked to a halt at the kerbside. She had curly black ringlets and the vicar’s eyes.

  ‘Mum says it’s nearly ready,’ she panted.

  ‘Tell her half an hour.’ The vicar turned back to me. ‘Can you spare a couple of minutes?’

  ‘Of course.’ I was still looking at the child. ‘But shouldn’t you be…’ I gestured helplessly down the road,’… going home?’

  ‘Absolutely. And so I will. Come with me.’

  Ralph had beaten a tactful retreat, disappearing back inside the church. The vicar and I began to walk again. A hundred yards or so down the road a gap in the hedge led to a path. I had time to glimpse a signpost, then we were walking upwards, our bodies bent against the gradient. As the path steepened and steepened, conversation died. Privately, I’d always considered myself pretty fit but after a minute or so I was struggling for breath.

  The vicar glanced down at me. He was smiling again.

  ‘It’s worth it,’ he said, ‘I promise you.’

  At the top of the path, quite suddenly, we were standing beside an old stone wall. At the far end of the wall was a wooden gate, waist-high, immensely sturdy. Inside the gate, a flagstoned path skirted one of the loveliest churches I think I’ve ever seen.

  Back home, down in the Falklands, our picture of England had been built piecemeal from a jumble of chocolate-box images that I’d realised only later had absolutely nothing to do with contemporary Britain. The England exported in the pages of Country Life is a pretty fib, a confection. It doesn’t include the grimmer bits of the West Midlands, or Portsmouth, or inner London, and where it exists at all it tends to be the preserve of the rich. This, though, was something very different, a tiny little church, tucked away at the end of a path you’d hardly notice, a glorious secret, shared just now by myself and this immensely patient cleric I was keeping from his Sunday lunch.

  ‘It’s twelfth-century,’ he told me. ‘We call it the Old Church.’

  I pulled the gate towards me. The wood felt smooth and warm to my touch.

  ‘May I look inside?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The path led between a jumble of headstones towards a tiny porch. The names and the dates on the headstones had been weathered away and I had to stoop to peer in through the narrow windows along the side of the church. I stepped back, hearing voices. The vicar was talking to a passer-by at the gate. He saw me out of the corner of his eye, saw my uncertainty, and told me to take my time. Lunch today was cold. He’d lost his reputation for punctuality years ago. Everything would be fine.

  I took him at his word, circling the graveyard, pausing to examine the church from every angle. Its very smallness lent enchantment. The steep pitch of the slate roof. The little stone belfries at either end. The jigsaw of gravestones in the hummocky grass. The way the overhanging trees framed every view, every perspective. Just being there bred an instant peace, a blessing so tangible it made me smile.

  I picked my way between the gravestones. Steps led down to an extension, a kind of terrace that reminded me a little of Mapledurcombe. There were more headstones here, tucked up against a beautifully trimmed hedge, and there were a couple of young trees, flowering cherries, in early bloom. I looked around, taking my time.

  Up beyond the graveyard was a steep fold of downland, the smooth sweep of the ridgeline broken by a single tree, while behind me, beneath the clouds of milling seagulls, lay the undercliff and the blue, blue waters of the English Channel. I walked slowly on, reading the names on the newer headstones, knowing that for Adam this little church was perfect, and I paused beside the smaller of the flowering cherries, looking up again at the swell of the down. I wanted the Mustang to appear up there, cresting the down. I wanted a slow pass, a dip of the wing, and then a new course, a new heading, out to sea.

  I turned round. The Channel stretched away towards the horizon. I’d come back with a map and a compass, I told myself. I’d phone Grover, the man from the AAIB, and I’d get the precise location of the accident, the spot where Adam dropped off the radar screen, and I’d have the Mustang vectored exactly there. Adam’s family would be with me here in the graveyard, and his friends too, and every one of them would be bonded to him by that single moment. It would, in the vicar’s phrase, be a piece of theatre. Except that, on this occasion, we wouldn’t need any words.

  The vicar was waiting for me by the porch. We ducked our heads and stepped down inside. The interior of the church was tiny. Nine rows of wooden pews, simple whitewashed walls, grey flagstoned floor, little vases of fresh flowers brightening the deeply recessed windows. At the far end, beyond a wooden rail, lay the altar and - inset in a deep arch - a single stained-glass window. I stood at the back of the church, wondering whether I should offer a prayer of thanks. As a place to say goodbye to Adam it was - quite literally - a godsend.

  The vicar was standing beside me. He, too, was looking at the altar and his expression was almost childlike. To look at his face, you’d think he’d never been up here before.

  ‘Isn’t it marvellous?’ he whispered at last.

  I agreed that it was. When I asked whether it was still used for services, he nodded.

  ‘Whenever we can,’ he said. ‘It’s too precious to become just a photo-opportunity.’

  I smiled. I liked this man a great deal. I liked his innocence and the hint of steel that lay beneath that simple phrase. Photo-opportunity summed up the bits of England I’d been thinking about earlier. So much better, I thought, to have a living, breathing church. Old stones. Young hearts. Real needs.

  ‘You know about my husband,’ I said. ‘I think Ralph told you.’

  ‘Yes. And I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I ducked my head. Simplicity again. Balm for my broken heart.

  I explained about the lack of a body, and the difficulties I faced in the real world.

  ‘Real world?’ The smile was back on his face, inquisitive this time, the skin around his eyes creased with a hint of mischief.

  I told him about my exchanges with the police and the official view that Adam wouldn’t be dead, not properly dead, for at least a year. He listened with his head bowed, his long white fingers intertwined in the folds of his cassock. At length, he frowned.

  ‘And how about you?’ he asked. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About your husband, Adam.’

  I took my time trying to frame an answer, something that would exactly define the way I felt.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I said at last
. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To mark his going?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then that sounds real enough to me.’

  I looked up at him, almost in wonderment. All my anxiety, my pain, had gone. Adam’s death, in some infinitely mysterious way, had suddenly become something I could cope with, no longer jagged and discordant and horrible, but wholly natural, an episode in a much, much bigger story.

  I tried to share the thought, develop it a little, look for bearings on this new bit of the map. I wasn’t a practising Christian. I couldn’t claim the help of dogma or faith. I didn’t believe, for a single second, in miracles. Yet it had happened, all the same.

  The vicar laid a hand on my arm. I half-expected the line about God moving in mysterious ways, but he simply told me he was glad. Later, when I felt the time was right, I could drive back over and have a bite of tea with himself and his wife and then we could discuss how best to arrange the service. The church itself could hold about seventy people. With a microphone and a couple of loudspeakers, there was room for maybe a hundred extra mourners outside. When I mentioned the Mustang, and the possibility of a fly-past, he said it was a lovely idea. Earlier in his ministry, in a parish in the north, he’d done something similar. A local lad had killed himself skydiving. To mark his passing, at the end of his memorial service, six of his mates had staged a memorial drop. One had even landed in the churchyard, narrowly missing the church spire.

  The vicar chuckled. We were back in the porch.

  ‘And you don’t mind?’ I asked.

  ‘Mind what?’

  ‘Mind that I don’t normally go to church? Mind that… you know… when it suits me I come asking like this? You don’t think that’s…’ I frowned, hunting for the right phrase,’… a bit feeble?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  He pulled the door shut behind us. I could hear the clang of the iron latch echoing inside the church. I paused, suddenly struck by another thought.

  ‘One thing -’ I began. ‘What happens if I’m wrong about Adam? Say he isn’t dead. Say he turns up, way after the service. What then?’

  The vicar smiled again, shepherding me up the steps and into the churchyard. We walked back down the path in silence. Only by the wooden gate did he answer my question.

  ‘Then we’ll have a celebration mass,’ he said. ‘And a glass or two afterwards.’

  Andrea was in the kitchen when I got back to Mapledurcombe. I could see her as I got out of the car. She was in jeans and a check blouse, busy in front of the Aga, and the moment I opened the front door there was a smell of olive oil and rosemary and garlic, indescribably wonderful. I ran down the hall. The doors were open everywhere, and the rooms on the south side of the house were flooded with sunshine. Andrea had the radio on and I could hear her chasing the lyrics. She’d had a passion for Queen ever since I could remember. Is this the real life? she sang. ‘Is this just fantasy?’

  I stepped into the kitchen. Andrea was laying the table now, wiping a handful of knives and forks with a dishcloth. She’d conjured up a huge bowl of salad from somewhere or other, and there was an open bottle of red wine beside it. I glanced at the label, grinning. Marques de Riscal. A lovely Rioja. Perfect.

  I began to tell her about my morning in church, how gloomy the first place had been, how I’d more or less abandoned any notion of a memorial service, then about my little conversation with the vicar, and our long trudge up the path, and how guilty I’d felt about his lunch, and then this old stone wall, and this lovely wooden gate, and best of all the half-hour or so that lay beyond it.

  Andrea, for once, was listening.

  ‘Brilliant,’ she kept saying. ‘Wonderful.’

  I explained about the little terraced graveyard, and how many guests we could have, and how the down overlooked the church, and how you could smell the sea, and I’d got to the bit about the Mustang and the fly-past when Andrea handed me a wine glass and began to fill it. I was standing by the window, looking out. The kitchen ran the whole depth of the house and on the south side the views were beautiful.

  ‘Flaps down, the Mustang stalls at eighty-five knots,’ I mused. ‘That’s the only problem.’

  ‘Why problem?’

  ‘It would be nice if it was slower.’ I was visualising the moment when the aircraft suddenly dropped over the ridgeline behind the church. ‘It’s a memory you want to hang on to. The Moth would be perfect. You can take her down to forty knots.’

  ‘Use the Moth then.’

  ‘I couldn’t. It’s mine. This is going to be Adam’s day. He’d die if I used the Moth.’ I began to giggle, knowing that Adam would be laughing too. My little joke wasn’t black at all. Not today. Not the way I was feeling. I lifted the glass to my lips, anticipating the soft, oaky kiss of the wine. Then a hand came into view. I stared at it. It was a man’s hand, brown, sinewy, mottled with liver spots. I turned round. Harald was standing behind me, smiling. God knows where he’d been hiding.

  ‘Your sister’s invited me to lunch,’ he said. ‘I called up from the airfield.’

  For the first time I took a proper look at the table. Harald was right. Andrea was laying up for three.

  ‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘Do you mind if I have my wine?’

  ‘I think not.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’ He reached for my glass and replaced it with a tumbler of sparkling Badoit. ‘Busy afternoon. Things to do.’

  ‘Like?’

  Harald studied me a moment, then reached for his own glass of mineral water.

  ‘Remember us talking about you flying the Mustang?’ He touched his glass to mine. ‘No time like the present.’

  All three of us drove over to Sandown after lunch. I’d eaten barely anything, partly excitement, partly anticipation, and partly something else more difficult to define. After the worst week of my life, I’d finally won a little peace for myself, and Harald - whether he knew it or not - was putting it in jeopardy.

  I’d walked him into the study before we’d left and shut the door behind me.

  ‘I’m not altogether sure this is such a great idea.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit hasty? A bit soon?’

  Harald had shaken his head. The one accusation I could never lay at his door was indecision. He always knew exactly what he wanted to do. And why.

  ‘The weather’s perfect,’ he pointed out, ‘but it ain’t gonna last. They’re calling a front for late this afternoon and after that it’s anyone’s guess.’

  ‘But what about next week? Or the week after?’

  ‘I’m away. Back in the States for a coupla days. Then Australia and the Far East.’ He nodded at the door. ‘Andrea’s been telling me what you’ve decided. I think it’s a great plan.’

  ‘Decided?’

  ‘The business. Who does what. As I read it, Andrea’s the home body while you do the flying. Isn’t that the way it shakes down?’

  I frowned, trying to fight a feeling of mild irritation. Harald had a way of accelerating events, of taking the merest hint of a decision and turning it into a fait accompli. Andrea and I had certainly discussed how we might organise ourselves over the coming season but I wasn’t aware that anything was set in stone.

  ‘I might not be in the mood,’ I said, changing tack. ‘Have you thought about that?’

  Harald laughed.

  ‘Mood? This is flying, Ellie. Not sex.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

  ‘Sure you didn’t. Hey -’ He reached forward, touching me lightly on the arm. ‘No offence but I really think you should try and hack this thing. I’ve talked to Dave. He’ll have the ship ready for two thirty. Like I say, perfect weather.’

  ‘Dave Jeffries?’ I was getting annoyed now. What right did this man have to part my mechanic from his Sunday off?

  ‘Sure. And he’s happy to oblige, since you ask. In fact he
thinks it’s long overdue.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Talk to Dave and he’ll tell you Adam should have been taking you up round the back end of last year.’

  ‘He did. Twice.’

  ‘To learn to fly. Not to cab you to some fancy restaurant.’

  Harald stared me out. You could almost feel his contempt for the nicer things in life. Like surprise trips across the Channel. And intimate a deux lunches. In Harald’s world there were lists of things to do, and a schedule to make sure they got done. Very seldom, it seemed to me, did he draw anything but the straightest of lines between two points.

  ‘Be careful, Harald,’ I said quietly. ‘I’d like us to stay friends.’

  He looked at me a moment longer, his eyes very black, then -abruptly - he softened. There was a folded slip of paper on the desk. He picked it up and gave it to me.

  ‘I saw Dennis last night,’ he said. ‘I was staying over.’

  ‘Dennis Wetherall? In St Helier?’

  ‘Sure. I deposited the money. He gave me a receipt.’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘The payment for the Harvard. We discussed it. Remember?’

  I was looking at the receipt. Old Glory’s bank balance was healthier to the tune of £160,000.1 glanced up. Harald was opening the door.

  ‘Mind if we take your car?’ he asked. ‘I came over by cab.’

  Dave Jeffries was waiting for us at the airfield. The Mustang was out on the ancient rectangle of hardstanding in front of our hangar, parked beside Harald’s Yak, and Dave was perched on one wing, his head buried in the cockpit. Hearing the estate car, he slid down the wing and walked across to meet us.

  Andrea was second out of the car after Harald. She’d changed into a rather striking trouser suit - bright yellow with big, fabric-covered buttons - and she was wearing a huge pair of sunglasses. Sandown airfield isn’t the centre of the fashion world and I think she was a bit disappointed at the boxy little control tower and the nearby wooden shack - the Touchdown Cafe - that served hot drinks and a variety of filled rolls. There were a couple of local flyers sitting at one of the tables outside, men I knew well, and they lifted their mugs in salute when I waved.