The Judgement of Strangers

by Taylor, Andrew

  ‘Of course I do. You’re my daughter.’

  She lowered her head once more, retiring behind her golden curtain. ‘I wish I lived anywhere but here. Anywhere in the world.’

  ‘My dear –’

  ‘It’s all changed since you married Vanessa. You never have any time for me. You talk to Michael more than me.’

  I sat down on the bed beside her and tried to take her hand, but she stood up at once and moved to the window. ‘That’s simply not true. I love you very much and I always will.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ She looked out into the garden, towards the trees of Roth Park. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. There’s no point.’

  ‘Rosie, you really –’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’

  The doorbell rang. My first thought was that it might be Joanna and Toby.

  ‘Go on, answer it,’ Rosemary told me. ‘It might be someone important.’

  ‘We’ll talk later,’ I said, trying to retrieve something from my failure.

  She shrugged. I went downstairs and opened the door.

  ‘It’s only little me,’ said Audrey. Something in my face must have alerted her, for she added almost at once, ‘Is there anything wrong?’

  ‘Nothing at all, thank you.’ I stood back to let her into the house. She surged past me, trailing clouds of perfume and perspiration.

  ‘I’ve a feeling,’ she said gaily, ‘this is going to be our best fete yet.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. Now, if you’ll excuse me –’

  She was between me and the study door, cutting off my obvious line of escape. ‘All the stalls are very well stocked, and we’ve got a really good band of helpers this year. And I think that Toby Clifford’s fortune-telling tent is going to make all the difference. Even the Vintners’ barbecue.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you – what time do you think we should announce the result of the Guess-the-Weight Competition? Last time we left it until the end, and I’m not sure that was a good idea – a lot of people had already left, including the winner, in fact. Do you remember? It was Mrs Smiley, that woman with the poodle who lives in Rowan Road.’

  ‘You must do whatever you think best.’ I edged towards the study door, but Audrey held her ground.

  ‘I thought perhaps we should announce the winner just before tea – at about ten to four. I mean, let’s face it, if anyone’s going to guess the weight, they’re going to do it in the first two hours, aren’t they? Doris told me that they took most of the guesses in the first hour.’

  ‘I’m sure that’ll be fine, then.’

  ‘There was one other thing – the cups and saucers. Last year several of them got broken. The Church Hall Committee were rather upset. If you’re happy with it, I’ll say at the outset that we’ll replace any breakages from our profits so there’s no doubt about the matter.’

  ‘Audrey,’ I said desperately, ‘I’m sure you’ll make all the arrangements marvellously. You’ve already made the decisions. You do not need me to rubber-stamp them for you.’

  It wasn’t so much what I said as the way that I said it. I watched the colour flooding into her face. I saw her mouth trembling and her eyes screwing up. It was as if her features were disintegrating. And it was my fault.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ In my agitation, I laid a hand on her arm. ‘I didn’t mean to snap. You’re doing a wonderful –’

  To my horror she came even closer to me until her body was nudging against mine.

  ‘Oh, David,’ she said between sobs. ‘I hate it when you’re like that.’

  I tried to back away from her but succeeded only in backing into the wall. ‘Now there’s nothing to worry about. Why don’t I make us some tea?’

  ‘Everything’s changed,’ she wailed. ‘You never used to be like this.’

  ‘There, there.’ I patted the doughy flesh of her bare forearm. ‘Everything’s all right. Now, there’s a great deal to do before tomorrow.’

  By now I was sandwiched between Audrey and the wall. It was a ridiculous situation. I could have stamped my feet with rage, irritation and embarrassment. Each of us has a child inside him, and mine was very near the surface and on the verge of having a tantrum.

  ‘It’s Vanessa,’ Audrey whimpered, her voice rising higher and louder. ‘It’s all her fault.’

  At that moment the doorbell rang once again. Relieved at the interruption, I turned towards the door. As I did so, I realized that Audrey and I were not alone and might not have been for some time.

  Rosemary was standing at the head of the stairs, with the light from the window behind her outlining her body and streaming through her blonde hair. In that instant, she looked as beautiful, and as implacable, as an angel.

  The tent was contained in a great canvas bundle, the foot of which rested on the floor in front of the front passenger seat of the Jaguar. The top of the bundle poked through the sun roof. When I followed Toby into the drive, leaving Audrey to compose herself in the dining room, Joanna was disentangling her body from the tiny back seats. The despair and frustration I had felt a moment earlier dropped away from me. In her absence, I imagined Joanna so intensely that the reality was almost more than I could cope with: she was, literally, a dream come true.

  She clambered out of the car by the driver’s door, said hello to me in an offhand manner, and walked round the long bonnet to the passenger door.

  ‘Joanna was once in the Girl Guides,’ Toby told me. ‘So she’ll be able to tell us how to put up the tent.’

  ‘You’re a liar,’ she said over the roof of the car. ‘I was never in the Guides any more than you were.’

  ‘It makes a good story, though. And you’d have looked very fetching in the uniform.’

  Joanna ignored him. She opened the passenger door and tried to lift the base of the bundle on to the seat. Toby and I went to help her. The nearer I came to her the more unsettled I felt.

  ‘How’s the family?’ Toby asked me.

  ‘Fine, thank you.’

  ‘And Vanessa’s research?’

  ‘Quite well, I think.’ I was aware, as lovers are aware, that Joanna was listening. ‘It takes up most of her spare time, though.’

  ‘Odd to think of a dead poet coming between man and wife,’ Toby said with a smile. ‘And Rosemary’s still working hard?’

  I nodded. ‘You’ll probably see her. She’s here. She’s acting as Audrey’s right-hand woman.’

  Toby edged Joanna out of the way. He bent down and hoisted the bundle on to the seat. ‘If I push it upwards, could you sort of guide it out of the sun roof? It’s not as heavy as it looks.’

  We extracted the tent from the car and carried it round to the garden, with Joanna following. I glanced up at Rosemary’s window, but I could not see if she were watching us. I explained where Audrey wanted the tent to go – in the corner of the garden where the churchyard wall joined the boundary wall of Roth Park. I offered to help but Toby said he was better off by himself, at least at first.

  ‘I’ll let you know, though, when I need a second pair of hands.’

  ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ Joanna said, looking at me. ‘For the fete, I mean.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I hesitated. ‘We could ask Audrey. She’s in the dining room.’

  The dining room overlooked the back of the house, and I guessed that Audrey was monitoring developments in the garden. Joanna and I walked sedately across the lawn to the back door, keeping a safe distance apart from each other. We went into the house. The door from the kitchen to the hall was closed. Keeping well back from the window and to one side of it, I turned to Joanna. She put her hands on my shoulders, stared at me for a moment and then kissed me slowly and gently.

  ‘I feel like a bee,’ she said, ‘sucking honey from a flower. Does that sound stupid?’

  ‘No.’ If she had said that the moon was made of solid silver, that would not have sounded stupid either. She
smelt of mown grass and cigarettes. We kissed again, keeping our bodies apart.

  At last she drew away from me. ‘You’d better put the kettle on. And I suppose I’d better go and find Miss Oliphant.’

  ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘No, not yet.’ She watched me filling the kettle and putting it on the ring. ‘David?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘I can’t bear this. Not being with you all the time. Not even making love properly.’

  ‘I know.’ I thought of what the future might contain: leaving the priesthood, divorcing Vanessa, finding some other job – and in that instant all that seemed as irrelevant as an old skin seems to a snake. What did it matter, as long as Joanna and I could be together?

  ‘I’m scared,’ she said.

  I reached for her hand.

  ‘I want everything from you,’ she said slowly. ‘I want your children. That’s why we have to make love before it’s too late.’

  ‘Too late?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Just in case …’

  I played with her fingers. Make love now, just in case we have no future? But we would have a future. Of course we would. But just in case?

  ‘All right.’ My voice was hoarse.

  ‘You mean you will? Properly?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Yes.’

  ‘This evening?’

  ‘We’ve got the Vintners coming round.’

  ‘Tomorrow, then?’

  ‘There’s the fete. I’ll have to be on parade for that. And afterwards there’ll be your party. Won’t you be very busy with that?’

  She shook her head. ‘Toby’s ordered stacks of booze and crisps and things. He’s hiring glasses. It’s not as if there’s any point in our cleaning the house. So there’s nothing to do. We’ll just let people get on with it.’

  ‘It’ll be getting dark by then.’

  Her eyes gleamed; they looked greener and deeper than ever. ‘And if it’s fine we’ll be in the garden as well as the house. I’m sure we can slip away. And if we don’t manage then, we’ll manage afterwards.’

  I nodded. I wanted her now.

  ‘We’ll have to be careful about Toby, though,’ she said. ‘He’s so sharp, especially where something like this is concerned.’

  I felt a spurt of anger: something like what? Did his sister often have clandestine affairs with married men?

  ‘He can be very malicious,’ Joanna went on.

  ‘Then why do you stay with him?’

  My voice was suddenly harsh. I was not angry with her. I was jealous of past lovers, furious with Toby for making his sister afraid, and desperate to have more of Joanna than at present I could.

  She moved away from me. ‘There are reasons.’ It was as if a light had gone out behind her face. ‘I will tell you. But not now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘This isn’t the right time.’

  ‘But you would leave him, wouldn’t you? You would leave him to come with me?’

  She smiled at me and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Yes. If you still wanted me.’

  ‘Is it that bad?’

  She did not speak.

  ‘Joanna. Please tell me.’

  She looked up at me and I saw the tears in her eyes.

  ‘I love you,’ I said.

  ‘David –’

  The door opened and Audrey came into the kitchen. Apart from a reluctance to meet my eyes, she betrayed no sign of the last conversation that we had had.

  ‘Hello, Joanna. Come to help? Are you any good at lettering notices? Oh jolly good! You’ve put the kettle on. I’m dying for a cup of tea.’

  33

  When I woke on Saturday morning, rain was rattling on the windowpane. I drew back the curtains. Black clouds hung low over the green and spread out to the eastern horizon, threatening London. Traffic threw up a fine spray as it passed up and down the main road, and puddles dotted the gravel of the Vicarage drive.

  At breakfast, Vanessa said cheerfully, ‘So it looks like the church hall, doesn’t it?’

  I stared out of the window at the back garden. Toby’s tent stood forlornly in the far corner, its canvas stained with damp. The church hall was Audrey’s contingency plan for wet weather. Some of our attractions, such as the barbecue, would have to be abandoned. There would not be room for many members of the public, either, even if they felt like trekking through the rain across the green from the paddock of Roth Park to the church hall.

  The telephone rang. It was Audrey.

  ‘We shall just have to pray for a miracle,’ she said, her voice shrill. ‘I simply can’t believe this wretched weather.’

  Whether Audrey prayed or not, the miracle duly appeared: by half past nine, it had stopped raining; and by ten o’clock, the dark clouds were receding over London, while blue sky was coming in from the west. By half past ten, the Vicarage felt as crowded as a railway terminal in the rush hour.

  The sun had broken through the clouds and the grass was steaming. Stalls were going up all over the lawn, according to Audrey’s directions. After a while, I realized that I was redundant – in fact, that my presence was actually impeding people because they felt they had to consult me or merely make conversation. I retired to the study, where I angled my chair so I could see out of the window. Joanna and Toby were not due to arrive until after lunch, but there was always the possibility that they might change their plans.

  The room felt alien to me. Joanna had that effect. She had cut me adrift in my old life, made me a foreigner in a country which had once been my home. I looked at the shabby cloak hanging on the back of the door, at the books – rows and rows of theology, at the stack of parish magazines on the windowsill and finally at the crucifix on the wall. All these things belonged to another person in another life; they were no longer familiar.

  Towards lunchtime, Vanessa stormed into the study. I felt a stab of guilt that she had caught me doing nothing. Not that she noticed. She was carrying the tin box in her arms and her face was flushed.

  ‘I’m going upstairs to our bedroom,’ she told me. ‘And I do not want to be disturbed for anything short of an earthquake.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to work in the sitting room, but people keep coming in and asking me for things. If it isn’t Audrey, it’s James; and if it isn’t him, it’s Ted Potter. I may be your wife, but I’m not a parish amenity.’ She grinned at me. ‘I feel better for getting that off my chest. You know where I am if you want me.’

  I heard her footsteps on the stairs. I knew that people like Audrey thought that Vanessa was an unsuitable wife for a parish priest. What would they think of Joanna? My mind filled with the memory of her on Thursday afternoon – naked in the wood, sprawling on the blanket, smiling wantonly up at me. My body began to respond to the memory. This would never do. I got up and went to the kitchen to make myself some coffee.

  James Vintner poked his head through the open window. ‘Got any paraffin?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘I can’t get this damn charcoal to light. Want to have a look?’

  I went outside. ‘I’ve never used a barbecue.’

  ‘Needs to burn well for an hour or so before you can cook on it.’ James sniffed appreciatively, his mind leaping ahead. ‘Nothing like meat barbecued in the open. Irresistible.’

  ‘Perhaps Audrey has some paraffin.’

  He clapped his hands. ‘I don’t see why petrol shouldn’t work. I’ve got a can in the car.’

  He fetched the can and poured some of the petrol over the charcoal. There was a whoosh of flame when he lit the match. For an instant, tongues of fire danced over his hair.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ He slapped his head vigorously and glared at me. ‘No harm done.’

  At least the charcoal seemed well alight. James asked Rosemary to put the can in the garage in case he needed it again. Audrey pounced on me and towed me away to look at the book stall – at the centre of which was a carefully arranged pyramid of The H
istory of Roth, donated by its author.

  ‘I’ve put out thirty-six copies,’ Audrey said. ‘Do you think that will be enough? I’ve got some more under the table.’

  ‘I’m sure that will be enough. It’s very generous of you.’

  Audrey simpered. ‘Every little bit helps. And it’s all in a good cause.’ Her eyes slipped past me towards the tent in the corner of the garden. ‘No sign of Toby?’

  ‘He’s not due till after lunch. Do you need him for something?’

  ‘I’d just like to have more of an idea of what he’s going to do. After all, this is a church fete. One wouldn’t want anything inappropriate.’

  As she was speaking, she walked towards the tent. She opened the flap and we looked into its cool green interior. Despite the rain in the night, it was perfectly dry. In the middle of the tent was a card table covered with a blue chenille cloth. Two kitchen chairs faced each other across the table.

  ‘It might be wise if you were his first customer,’ Audrey suggested. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, that is.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, you could make sure that what he’s doing is all right. And also, if you go and see him, it’ll encourage everyone else.’ She giggled. ‘In fact, I almost think I might try him myself. I’ve never had my fortune told.’ She looked up at me. ‘Of course, I know it’s complete nonsense – just a bit of fun.’ She giggled once more. ‘Still, I suppose one never knows.’

  At first, the only problem was that there was no sign of Toby Clifford – or of Joanna.

  The fete began at two o’clock. The sun shone down from a cloudless sky. Ted Potter directed the cars in the paddock and along the drive of Roth Park. Rosemary sat at a table just inside the Vicarage gates taking the entrance money and bestowing smiles in return. Audrey even persuaded Vanessa to accept a roving commission to sell raffle tickets.

  ‘Many hands make light work,’ Audrey told her.

  Vanessa glanced at me, her eyebrows lifting and her mouth twitching. ‘I thought that too many cooks spoiled the broth.’

  I managed not to laugh. ‘Audrey – are those books quite safe? Couldn’t someone knock the pile over?’