by Pam Rhodes
“She’s starving…” Beryl mouthed silently, catching Neil’s eye from where she stood behind the woman’s chair. The two of them looked on as the woman demolished practically the whole plateful, hardly stopping for breath. As the food disappeared, Neil picked up the pot to pour two mugs of tea, pushing one of them over towards her as she ate. She shovelled in two sugars and gulped down a whole mugful as quickly as the piping hot tea would allow. It wasn’t until she’d finished the lot that she seemed to become aware that Neil was still sitting beside her.
“Will you tell me your name?” he asked.
“Why?”
“Because we’re having tea together, and I’ve already told you my name is Neil. It would be nice to know who you are.”
She considered for several seconds before lowering her voice to answer.
“Maria.”
“Maria. Nice to meet you. Do you have another name too?”
“No,” was the short reply.
“When did you last have something to eat, Maria?”
She didn’t answer.
“And you live in Dunbridge?”
Another shrug.
“You’ve got friends or family here, have you?”
Suddenly, she was pushing back her chair, grabbing for the handle of her wheeled basket.
“Must go…”
“Where?”
“Just go…”
“Let me take you. Where do you live?”
She was struggling to get to her feet.
“Maria?” Neil’s voice was still soft, his expression gentle and curious as he looked at her.
Slowly, she sat down again, burying her face in her hands.
“You haven’t got anywhere to stay, have you?”
She shook her head miserably.
“Where have you been sleeping?”
“Little house at railway.”
“In the builders’ yard?”
She nodded again.
“Where is your home, Maria? Where are your family?”
“Romania.”
“And do you have any friends in this country?”
“When I came. No room for me. I left.”
His heart lurching with sympathy for her, Neil’s mind was racing as he thought about what to do next.
“Would you let me help you?”
She said nothing, as if she was beyond hoping for help from anyone.
“In the next town, there’s a place called a hostel, where someone who needs help like you can find a bed to sleep in,” explained Neil as slowly and clearly as he could. “The people there can help you. I’d like to ring them. Will you let me do that?”
Panic flashed across her face again.
“Police?”
“No.”
“They tell police?”
“If you have done something very wrong, they might have to, but that’s not what they want to do. They need to know about you – where you come from and why you’re here. They will ask why you have no home, why you’re hungry and why you were stealing clothes from us here today.”
Maria said nothing, as if she was too tired to protest.
Neil beckoned to Peter, then stood to give him a brief explanation of Maria’s situation before Peter disappeared towards the church office where they kept the twenty-four-hour number of the homeless hostel.
Almost an hour later, Jim from the hostel arrived at the hall. Several months previously, Jim had come over to speak at a Sunday morning service at St Stephen’s. The organization he worked for had a Christian ethos, and most of the team members there gave their services as an expression of their own faith. Many of the residents who passed through their doors would never have known that, though. Whoever needed their help, and whatever they were able to offer, the team did what they could.
“Thanks, Jim,” said Neil, while Beryl helped Maria to her feet, laying a warm coat from one of the stalls over her shoulders.
“That’s OK. I’m glad you called.”
“It’s good that she found her way here and we noticed her.”
Jim turned to smile at him. “What does it say in the Bible about us not always recognizing Jesus when he’s right here with us in the form of someone who is hurting, hungry, dirty or shouting the odds? When we walk away without doing anything, we never know who we’re turning our back on, do we?”
And as Maria looked over her shoulder to give Neil the slightest of nods, Jim put his arm around her and led her out towards his car.
CHAPTER 13
Claire’s step-father David came down with her mother Felicity for a short break over the late holiday weekend at the end of May. The couple enjoyed the fact that, with only one connection, they could hop on a train from Dunbridge straight into London. That meant they could catch up on exhibitions and shows that rarely made it up country as far as their home town of Scarborough. Claire was fond enough of David to think of him as her dad. She had no memory at all of her real father, who’d been in the navy when he married Felicity back in 1980. All too late, Felicity had discovered that Trevor lived up to the sailor’s reputation of having “a girl in every port”. Soon after Claire was born, he disappeared up to Scotland to join the other woman, who understandably thought he was all hers, as she already had two children by him.
Felicity had brought up Claire alone until she met David, a financial advisor she’d come into contact with through her work as an account manager for a local insurance company. Claire was nineteen and living independently when the couple married in 2005, and only twenty-two when she met Ben, Sam’s father.
On the second evening of their visit, Felicity called Claire up to their bedroom, where she had laid out some papers on the bed. Scrutinizing them carefully, Claire realized that she was looking at details of a savings account opened in Sam’s name, into which generous payments had been made every month since August the previous year.
“What’s this?” demanded Claire.
“It’s from Ben. I told you he intended to start making regular payments for his son.”
“My son! Sam is my son!”
“His too, Claire. You have to acknowledge that.”
“Just as he acknowledged his son when he disappeared back to Australia without a word the moment he knew I was pregnant? He gave up any rights he had towards Sam then!”
“He hasn’t given up on his responsibility, though, as these payments make clear.”
“I don’t want his money!”
“Maybe you don’t want it, but I know you need it – and why not? You have a son to bring up on your own. Children cost money.”
“Ben doesn’t even know him. How could he, when he lives five thousand miles away? He’s nothing to us; nothing!”
“Well, the way he’s set up this account, he’s given you the option either to change the arrangements so that you can administer the account yourself and use it as you need to, or you can simply leave it in Sam’s name so it provides him with a nest egg for when he’s older.”
“And what’s the price we have to pay for that? Does he want photos of his son, so that he can drool over them and show them to his friends so they can see what a wonderful dad he is? Is he going to start asking for Sam to spend time over there with him – a stranger Sam doesn’t know from Adam? This is blackmail, Mum, and I don’t want anything to do with it!”
“Well,” said Felicity, her voice calm and reasonable, “you can’t stop him placing his money wherever he wants to – and this account is most definitely set up in Sam’s name, there for him any time he needs it. You can’t stop that, and why should you? You’ve made your feelings and terms very clear. I’ve passed that on to Ben as clearly as I can whenever he’s been in touch…”
“What do you mean, in touch? I know you showed me that one letter from him a while back, but just how often have you been in touch with him?”
“Every three months or so over the past year and a half.”
“I had no idea it was so often. How could you, when I’ve made it perfec
tly clear how I feel about him knowing anything about my son?”
“I don’t mean to upset you, Claire, but in all conscience I believe it’s the right thing to do.”
“And what else have you sent him, along with your opinion of how I feel? Photos? Stories about my son that he has no business knowing?”
“Occasionally, yes.”
“So why didn’t you send nice little photos and stories to my real dad as I was growing up, then? When it was you in this position, you didn’t want to share anything about your child with the man who’d walked out on you, did you?”
“The difference,” answered Felicity stiffly, “is that your father not only never asked about you, but moved house without ever letting me know his whereabouts. I can tell you that regular payments from Trevor would have made life a great deal easier for both me and you. I didn’t have that option. You do – and for Sam’s sake I think you’d be wise to get off your high horse and allow Sam the extra benefits his father’s money can buy.”
Claire fell silent, her cheeks flushed with anger, but seconds later she softened as she saw the genuine concern behind the curtness of her mother’s words. Without a word, Claire stepped into Felicity’s arms, which tightened around her.
“Sorry,” muttered Claire, her voice muffled by her mother’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry too. Sorry that you ever had to go through all this on your own. I understand you feeling betrayed. Ben behaved appallingly. But he seems to have matured over the last six years, at least enough to realize that bringing up children is an expensive business.”
“So you think I should just take the money for Sam’s sake?”
“I do. Detach your own feelings from this. Do it for Sam.”
“Nothing else though. You don’t tell that man anything! Promise me.”
“I promise that from now on I will pass any letters on to you. You decide what you want to do with them.”
The tension in Claire’s body softened as she snuggled further into her mother’s shoulder.
“I love you, Mum.”
“I love you too, my darling, very much.”
* * *
Graham and Debs never did go to the counsellor Neil offered. It quickly became clear that the couple were both so entrenched in their own opinions that neither the love between them, nor their baby due in a few months’ time, could sway them enough to prevent their relationship plummeting to disaster.
As regularly as his extra-busy workload would allow, Neil met up with his friend in the evenings, growing steadily more concerned by Graham’s increasingly gaunt face. His body seemed to be shrinking, along with his confidence that there was any way at all to save his failing relationship.
Debs looked little better. As her pregnancy advanced, she gradually stopped attending rehearsals for the church music group, preferring to sit in a pew at the back on the few occasions she came along to services.
One Sunday, when the later service at St Gabriel’s was being taken by Hugh, the retired local minister, Neil suggested to Debs that they didn’t join the rest of the congregation for coffee in the hall, but instead put the kettle on for the two of them in the church office, where they could have a quiet chat.
Reluctantly, Neil had to admit that just as he could see the logic in Graham’s argument, he also had real sympathy with Debs’s point of view.
“I’m a Christian, Neil. Oh, I know Christians aren’t supposed to start living with the man they love, and get pregnant by him before they’re married, but there you are; that’s what’s happened, and I’ve got to deal with it. It would be hypocritical to pretend I regret any of that. I’ve loved Graham since we were kids. I couldn’t wait to set up home with him. I’m proud to be having his child. I just can’t live with him any more.”
“Do you still love him?”
“Very much. But after everything that’s happened, I wonder whether he loves me – or actually knows me at all! I think children should be brought up in a family where the parents are married. And I think that marriage should be blessed by God, because we need God to be part of it if we’re going to have any chance of making it work for the whole of our lives, till death do us part.”
“Why does Graham have such a downer on marriage? Do you know?”
“His father ran out on his mum when he was quite young.”
“Well, that must have made a very painful impression on him.”
“And several of the teachers he works with are either having affairs or getting divorced.”
“That won’t help either…”
“But that’s not going to happen to us! We’ve known each other all our lives. There’s no one for me but Graham. He might have taken a very long while to realize it, but he’s always been my man.”
“And I know he loves you. He talks about nothing else.”
“So why doesn’t he realize how important this is to me? Now I’m going to have his baby, we need to be married. It’s a simple fact. It’s the right thing for all of us. Why can’t he understand that? And even if he does have some illogical reason to hate the whole idea of marriage, why is he prepared to put our future together in jeopardy rather than have a reasonable conversation with me so that we can try to work it out? I just don’t get it…”
“He does seem very set against the idea – but more than that, he seems to think that if the two of you do get married, it would have to be a big fancy affair that really isn’t him at all.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way, Neil. You know that.”
“But what about your mum? Graham thinks she’d never let you get away with anything less than the fairytale wedding.”
“That’s ridiculous. He can’t blame Mum for this. There’s no one to blame but him.”
And so it was that on one Friday evening two weeks later, Neil kept Graham company in the Wheatsheaf while Debs moved out of the home they shared. Wendy and her brother Darren helped her to strip the house of the furniture she’d bought, and all the bits and pieces that added a woman’s touch to the place. When Graham walked back in at eleven that night, he realized the four walls he was left to live in were simply a house, no longer a home. Neil watched helplessly as the big man slumped down on the stairs, doubling up in pain as he sobbed.
* * *
The month of June was manically busy for Neil, especially with marriage ceremonies for couples who realized that the old porch gate outside St Stephen’s would provide a picturesque backdrop for the wedding photo they would eventually choose to take pride of place on their mantelpiece. Pastoral visits to elderly parishioners who couldn’t get to church, regular services at residential care homes, chaplaincy at the hospital and the hospice, along with confirmation classes and parish business meetings, not to mention morning and evening prayers – they all combined to more than fill his time, and that was before he got anywhere near the constant stream of paperwork and arrangements needed to run a parish as complex as St Stephen’s. Peter, Val and Cyn were absolutely wonderful, each taking on as many extra responsibilities as they could. Cyn had even offered a home to the dreaded Archie, Margaret and Frank’s grumpy cat, whose opinion of Neil had clearly not changed since their first meeting when the huge feline had taken an instant dislike to the nervous young curate! But even with all the support he received from many members of the congregation, in the end Neil knew they were just kindly volunteers, whereas he was the one in the paid job. His curacy seemed to have disappeared into the ether. To all intents and purposes he was the vicar, and in that role he was very alone.
True to his word, Bishop Paul kept in close touch, and over the weeks that followed Margaret’s move, Neil came to realize that the bishop had meant what he said about always being available if Neil felt out of his depth or in need of advice.
“Have you heard anything from Margaret?” Neil ventured to ask during one of their frequent phone calls.
“I’ve rung her daughter several times, but I’ve only recently managed to get a word with Margaret herself,�
� admitted the bishop.
“How was she?”
“Not very chatty, but she did sound a lot better than when I last saw her.”
“Do you think it would be appropriate if I went to see her?” asked Neil. “I’m not sure what the protocol is here, but I’m very fond of her. We’ve got to know each other well over my time here.”
“Of course you can go, if you’d like to. In fact, that’s probably an excellent idea, because you’re more likely to get an honest response from her than I am.”
“I could go next Monday, on my day off.”
“With my blessing, Neil – and feel free to claim the cost of your mileage, because I consider this a diocesan duty. Ring me, won’t you, on your return?”
It was with some trepidation the following Monday that Neil found himself turning his car into the spacious drive of Sarah and Martin’s home in Beaconsfield. Sarah had the front door open before he’d climbed out of the car, giving them the chance for a quiet word before he went into the house.
“How’s she doing?”
“Physically much better. She’s eating more now, and sleeping reasonably well. But it’s not her physical health that’s worrying me most.”
“What does the doctor say?”
“That grief takes its own time; that he’d expect nothing more from someone who’s just been widowed after forty years.”
“Does she miss Dunbridge? Because I can tell you we all miss her! We’re longing for her to come back.”
Sarah hesitated before she spoke again.
“Look, come on in. She knows you’re here. She’s in the front room. I’ll bring you both a cup of tea.”
There was real welcome in Margaret’s face when she saw him, and she got up from her armchair to put her arms around him and hug him closely. Her body was trembling, and he wondered if she was crying. He just held her without saying anything until she seemed a little calmer.
Sarah came in carrying a tray laden with a pot of tea, bone china mugs and a jam sponge cake.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” she suggested tactfully, closing the door behind her.
