Vincent held the phone a little way from his ear as Mrs Owens talked. She didn’t want to interfere, it wasn’t in her nature. She had been in agonies about it all week. Agonies.
The telephone flex had lost its neat regular curls and become a stiff tangle, destroyed by hours of fiddling. Vincent let his gaze drift out of the kitchen window, where the sun was still gathering power, a low-wattage light bulb labouring in a dark room. The window faced south, framing the edge of the wood that skirted the drive and offering a shadowy view towards the broken horizon beyond the vicarage’s wide sprawling garden. It was the point where the South Downs fizzled out, tailing off into a few last low ridges; giant, distant waves breaking on a flat shore.
Vincent allowed the cleaner’s voice to come back into focus. She didn’t think it was right that his girls had been left on their own while Mrs Keating was seen in town. She didn’t blame the vicar, he had been laying poor Tony Mossop to rest, God bless his soul, but the thought of those little girls…
‘Thank you, Mrs Owens. I value your concern. Really, I do. It was just one of those complicated days – the girls were left briefly, it is true – Connie was organising a surprise for Katherine’s birthday. Nothing that is likely to arise again. I had no idea you had telephoned. I hope Eleanor was helpful. She’s very grown-up for her age. Pardon? No, I don’t think your gloves have turned up. But I’ll double-check with Connie, of course. Hopefully, we won’t be needing gloves much from now on, not with the weather getting so much warmer… Oh, they were rubber? Extra-large pink? I’ve got it now. Yes, have a nice holiday. And thank you again, for your concern.’
Vincent glanced back out of the window. The tops of the silver birches were on fire suddenly, just for a few seconds; a miraculous combination of light and angles. He could feel his soul swelling. It always helped to see the sun.
Vincent knew people talked. They had in South London and they would in Sussex. That Broughton was not only a much more scattered but infinitely less hectic community than his Wandsworth parish made no difference. It was still a goldfish bowl. Parishioners watched and judged, with expectations that were not only high but also unashamedly proprietorial. How a priest comported himself was their business. Connie was a Belisha beacon, even when she kept her head down; even when she didn’t do stupid things that she had promised never to do again.
In the early days, scrutiny had been an aspect of his calling that Vincent welcomed. After all the years of false starts, the twists and turns of dead-end jobs, the failed relationships, it had been a joy to emerge from the purging of the seminary at the grand age of forty-one and embark on a life that was contrastingly singular and transparent – both to God and to those whose spiritual health he had vowed to serve.
Then, God bowled him a googly. He sent Connie. Of course, God sent Connie, because, Vincent reasoned, even as he edged into the maelstrom of the feelings that she stirred in him, being human could still be a highly complicated business and God had every right to remind him of the fact.
As with so many momentous things, it had happened quietly, unexpectedly, on a Wednesday afternoon. It was the first Wednesday of the month, which in those days had come to mean a visit to the flagship property of the Home for Hope project, a scheme Vincent was pioneering to wrest some of the large dilapidated houses in his parish back from squatters and convert them into volunteer-run refuges for the homeless. It was an ambitious project, launched on good faith rather than good economics. Local government had promised support and then withdrawn it. Five months in and the energies of the volunteer team, not to mention the wherewithal to keep even this first home open, were flailing badly.
Mulling over the problem, Vincent had taken his time covering the half-mile between the paint-peeling front door of his own run-down accommodation and the newly restored gleaming black entrance gates of the refuge. He walked with his head down and his arms clasped behind his back, preoccupied for the first time in a while by chipped paving stones and the ugly smears of spat chewing gum rather than the glories of the world. He had envisaged opening several more homes across South London, each a pearl of succour and hope for those most in need; a working testimony to the force of God’s love on earth. He had seen it so clearly that just to contemplate the possibility of failure made his skin crawl with shame.
Since his last visit, a thick, splintering crack had appeared across one of the panels of coloured glass set over the refuge’s main entrance. The result of a thrown bottle or stone, Vincent guessed sadly. Almost worse were the empty crisp packets and beer cans blowing around the splitting folds of two bulging black plastic rubbish sacks which had been propped carelessly against the overflowing dustbins. The rubbish men must have driven past without stopping. Again. Such details mattered. It would have to go on the agenda that afternoon. Again.
He braced his shoulders, punched in the new-fangled security code that had sucked up too much of the Hope Project funds and pushed open the door. And there was Connie, swabbing the tatty lino of the front hall. She was barefoot, wearing a red T-shirt and faded blue flared jeans with straggling hems. Her feet looked muscled, as if they were used to being shoeless. Her long, astonishing curly, white-blonde hair was swept back into a plain ponytail with a brown elastic band, the sort one might put on a parcel. Strains of some music were coming out of a room down the corridor and she was very subtly moving the mop and her body in time to it. ‘I’m so tired of being alone, I’m so tired…’ Vincent would only register the tune later. At the time, he wasn’t able to take in much beyond the fact that he had forgotten what a woman could look like; the sheer power of female physical beauty. It was like being blown off his feet.
‘Hello there.’ He offered his hand, glad of the priestly mask of his clothes, careful to behave exactly as he would towards any of the residents or volunteer employees. ‘You must be new. I’m Father Keating, in charge of this place and the whole Home for Hope project.’
‘Oh, reverend… but I am Connie.’ There was a soft trace of upper-class refinement in her accent. Home Counties, public school, ponies, twin sets and pearls – unappealing, clichéd associations skidded across Vincent’s brain. But it was her use of the word ‘but’, sounding so like an apology for existence, that snagged on his already shredding heart. How did such a creature get to be so uncertain? She had fresh skin and the most piercing translucent blue eyes he had ever seen. They sought his and then dropped quickly, back to the sopping strands of the mop-head and the task at hand. After the squalor of the bins, Vincent could have loved her for that alone. He wondered how old she was. Thirty? For a few moments he felt like some creature in a fairy tale, literally rooted to the spot. All he wanted was to make her look at him again.
‘Not reverend,’ he corrected her, finding his voice at last and speaking much more gruffly than he intended, ‘…Father Keating is fine,’ he added hurriedly, seeing the trace of panic scud across her face and recognising it as no moment to start explaining the business of ecclesiastical adjectives and nouns. ‘You’re doing a great job on that floor. Thank you.’
The meeting flew by. For every agenda point, Vincent had an answer – an inspired answer, inspirationally delivered. The world not only glowed again, it was full of solutions. His ears strained for sounds in the hallway – the swish of the mop, a light footstep.
And who was the new helper, he asked at last, once issues of bin-collection and social service involvement and fresh fundraising had been dispatched. He let the question out slowly, steadily, like a lungful of held-in air.
‘Oh, that’s Connie,’ he was told. ‘A real treasure. Turned up last week, needing a place to tide her over till she gets a new job. Problems in the past with alcohol. Estranged from her family, from what we can make out. Came with good references though, from St George’s, where she’s been working for the last year as a part-time receptionist. She’s so willing to help out, she puts everyone else to shame.’
It wasn’t until much later, in the deep quiet of his own bed, fighting unseemly thoughts, that Vincent referred the matter to God. He waited, expecting scolding, warnings, suggestions for hair-shirts, but none came. Instead, the voice in his heart, the one Vincent had learnt to trust and listen out for, told him to be patient and follow his instincts and see what mysteries lay in store.
Connie started appearing in his church soon afterwards, always sitting quietly at the back, her vivid hair peeping out of the edges of a headscarf. Vincent would feel her eyes on him as he performed his duties and when he stepped into the pulpit to deliver his sermon. It made him pull his shoulders back and stand taller. It made him speak with greater fluency, finding ever better ways to set the hearts and minds of his small, growing congregation jangling with awe and understanding.
Soon, Connie was giving more and more of her time to helping run the home. Schemes for raising money proved an impressive forte – bring-and-buy sales, renting the church out for concerts and keep-fit groups, bombarding the council with begging letters – she was tireless in her efforts to support not just the parish, but Vincent himself. He needed looking after, she would scold, arriving on the doorstep of his small, shabby church house with a basket of food, her long ponytail swinging as she dodged past him and his remonstrations in order to turn the contents of the basket into a meal. Vincent would follow, helplessly, a stunned rabbit in the glare of her radiance, all the more hapless for doing his best not to appear so. After she had gone, he would remember each detail of her clothes, every pleat and crease, every hemline. For, as Connie’s confidence grew, so her wardrobe had smartened, to tight-fitting skirts, dresses and tall shoes; outfits which presented the added complication for Vincent of making her lithe, ballet-dancer body even harder to ignore.
He stopped sleeping. Connie might have been a heaven-sent inspiration, but Vincent wanted to have sex with her. More exactly, he wanted to tear her clothes off with his teeth and crush his mouth against hers until the thick red lipstick she had taken to wearing was gashed into smears across her cheeks and chin. He wanted to bury his face in every crevice of her body; to smell her, taste her, drink her, consume her. He prayed feverishly for guidance. The Anglican priesthood required no vow of celibacy, but Vincent had made one with himself anyway. He did not want to want Connie. He did not want to want to serve anyone but the Lord.
Vincent took three days off and went on a retreat. By the last morning, he was longing to leave; longing to see Connie again. He drove back to London in a trance. The traffic, the world, streaked past. He did not see it, he saw Connie. The words he wanted to say to her tumbled round his brain. God had sent Connie. Not as a test but as a gift. Even more importantly, there was something in Connie that needed saving. She could not say it – no one who needed saving ever could. It was difficult enough to get her to speak about what she had been through; all he had gleaned were a few heartbreaking details – the family banishment, the blackouts, the mortification, the endless men who had let her down, the final brief terrifying period on the streets that had led to the rock bottom of a police cell and the decision to get proper help. The subsequent slow grind of sobriety and temporary jobs. She had endured so much and shown such strength, but the fear in her eyes was plain to see; the need to be properly cherished, kept safe.
Twelve years on, Vincent could still summon, at will, the mounting, joyous certainty of that day; the peace that at long last re-entered his heart, the sense that God was watching, as, of course, he always had been, not laughingly, but tender and glad. The sight of Connie on his doorstep in her rumpled black overcoat, her face grey with fatigue, and the strain of having missed him, as she immediately, shyly confessed, almost came as no surprise. Of course Connie had been there, waiting for him. Of course. This was his path in life, requiring only that he acknowledge and commit to it. Four months later they were married.
‘Vincent?’ Connie’s eyes blinked slowly.
‘Hello, my darling. I let you lie in.’
Vincent approached the bed, Mrs Owen’s clumsy words of interference still ringing in his ears. He marvelled at the calmness of his wife’s face in repose, at how little change over a decade and two children had wrought. Her looks astonished him still, the dusting of freckles across the high bridge of her cheekbones, the violent blue of her irises, the neat indents of her knees and ankle bones. But she had got thin. That in itself was a bad sign. Quite apart from the other signs, the ones that had propelled him to get them out of London.
‘Did you?’ She struggled upright, digging her knuckles into her eyes. ‘Oh no. What’s the time? Where are the girls?’
‘The girls are fine. I have given them a job in the garden. The veg patch. I found an old trowel and fork in one of the sheds. They are digging, clearing the weeds. Eleanor is in charge, as she likes to be.’ He smiled, sitting on the bed and crossing his legs. It felt good to be free of the cassock for once, in jeans and an old grey sweater. It was one Connie had patched at the elbows during the early days, using squares of leather and tight neat stitching, which she said she had learnt in Domestic Science at school. ‘I’m keeping today simple,’ he said. ‘A visit to Tony Mossop’s widow this afternoon – otherwise I’m taking it off. I thought I might get some paint.’
‘Paint?’
‘For Eleanor’s new bedroom.’
‘Oh that. Yes.’ She flopped back against the pillows. ‘Are you sure she wants it?’
‘Of course she wants it. Look, I made you some tea.’ He nodded at the mug he had left on the bedside table, watching with satisfaction as she grabbed it with both hands and drank deeply. The lilac smudges under her eyes were growing darker, Vincent observed. She had never been an easy sleeper, not even during the good years, fighting the bedclothes, taking trips to the bathroom. It was one of the things he had hoped the countryside might improve, fill her up with good health, good air. ‘We need to talk, Con.’
‘Oh really? What about?’ She swigged more tea, half hiding her face.
Vincent’s heart twisted at the sight of her absorbing his challenge. Though motherhood had initially provided an anchor, it had gradually lost its purchase, so gradually that it had taken him a very long time to notice. Too long, and for that he blamed himself bitterly. She was so adept at concealment, that was the trouble, hiding not just the bottles, but the wherewithal to buy them. Even now, safely away from all her old haunts and under his greater control, she somehow managed. She was canny, calculating, strong-willed, her own closest ally, as well as her worst enemy. Vincent wished Connie could understand how such contradictions only made him love her more. He was her rock, Vincent reminded himself. Without him she would be adrift.
‘You can’t leave the girls on their own.’
‘On their own?’
‘Con, I’ve just had Mrs Owens on the phone. Last Saturday she rang the house and got Eleanor. I was doing Tony Mossop and you were seen in town. I knew anyway because Eleanor told me, but hadn’t wanted to make a fuss.’
She slammed the mug down on the bedside table, slopping tea onto her pack of contraceptive pills. ‘I needed… some space.’ She bunched up her knees, hugging herself.
‘Connie.’
‘Fuck off, Vincent.’
‘Connie, look at me.’
‘I said fuck off. You’re getting people to spy on me now, are you? Nosy neighbours? The girls? And all you are really worried about anyway is whether I am screwing anybody else. Isn’t that right? I could drink myself into oblivion and you wouldn’t mind. It’s my body you care about, isn’t it? Not my health.’ She tore back the sheets and threw herself out of bed, fighting off Vincent’s efforts to put his arms round her. ‘I need to fucking pee.’
‘Okay, my love, okay.’ Vincent stayed where he was, studying the backs of his hands. The veins bulged. He waited for the clank of the loo flush, a long chain, ancient like all the vicarage fittings. ‘Better?’ he said when she returned, but she didn’t smile.
‘I need to get dressed.’
‘Con.’
‘And I don’t require an audience, thank you.’
‘Con, talk to me.’
‘I’m not some poor sod in a confessional box, Vincent, needing to spill their miserable innards for absolution… Hey – stop it. Stop it. Let me go.’
Vincent had taken hold of her shoulders. ‘No, I am not your confessor, Connie,’ he whispered urgently, ‘nor anyone else’s for that matter.’ He squeezed her slender frame more tightly, aware of his own strange excitement, building as it always did. ‘I am your husband. Your husband. And if the worst stuff is starting again, then I need to know the extent of it, so that I can help—’
She swung at him, elbows and fists. It took all his strength to keep her in the vice of his arms. For her safety, he told himself, for her safety. Somehow, in spite of the squirming, he swivelled her round to face him. She was so small. He always thought that when he held her tightly. The fight went out of her suddenly and she stared up at him. The specks of black in her eyes had spread, darkening the blue. Like a cat’s, Vincent thought, when steadying itself to pounce.
‘Help me?’ she said quietly. ‘Help me? Like the way you helped me by bringing me to this godforsaken place.’
‘It was time for me to try a new parish—’
‘Like hell it was. It was time to get me out of London, more like. Wasn’t it? Lock me up and throw away the key.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous—’
‘To make me your prisoner.’
‘You are not my prisoner. There is a good life for you here, if only you would see it. Connie, I’ve been… I am… so worried about you.’
‘Worried that I might have a good time? Too good a time? Because that’s what you mean by the “worst stuff”, isn’t it? The danger that I might remember how to enjoy myself. Maybe even talk to other men?’ Her black-blue eyes glittered.
‘I don’t call drinking yourself stupid having a good time.’ Vincent spoke slowly and heavily, doing his best to imbue the words with the weight of his sorrow rather than admonition. At the back of his mind meanwhile hovered images her accusations had conjured, the ones that cut as deeply as she intended: her nakedness in the embrace of another man. Such imaginings came at him all the time, searing his brain. There had been evidence of such goings-on in London, the bruised look to her lips, the times in the night when he woke to find her gone, just to the spare room she said, and he had never caught her out. But he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything.
‘Oh, well thanks for the hot tip,’ she sneered. ‘I’ll bear it in mind, oh Wise One, oh Servant of the Lord who has all the answers.’
‘Connie, don’t talk to me like that. Stop this, please.’
She had started twisting again and he had to hold on harder, more roughly. He tried to call on God, to ask the voice for help. When no answer came, he wondered suddenly if Connie’s taunts were justified; whether all he had was the desire for faith rather than faith itself. Connie certainly had lost faith in him. He was a sham, she liked to claim now, a control freak masquerading as a priest. Her own show of early religious zeal had shrunk to the occasional charade, for the sake of the girls, she said, rather than the outside world. During one of the recent late-night arguments, triggered by his plea that she attend church, she had snarled that the outside world could go fuck itself and then taken the eiderdown and her pillows into the bathroom for the night, sliding the bolt across when he tried to come in.
‘You are not yourself,’ Vincent said hoarsely as one of his elbows caught her chin, knocking her head back. If only she didn’t fight so hard. ‘I know you are not yourself.’
‘Oh yes I am. This is me, Vincent. Me.’ She spat the word, flinging specks of spittle onto his cheeks and eyelids. His elbow had left a small red mark on her jaw. ‘The woman you married.’
Vincent flinched but clung on. They became one creature, locked and wrestling. He used his greater strength to steer her towards the bed. When it was behind her, he pushed with all his might, falling heavily on top of her as she hit the mattress. ‘Connie.’
She thrashed her head from side to side. He had to wait for the right moment to kiss her, biding his time, like a boxer watching when to throw a punch. When his mouth found hers, she fought more fiercely, pushing upwards with her hips, but then relented suddenly as he had known she would. He put his knee between her thighs, forcing her legs apart. She fell silent and he knew he had won, that she was his again, for that morning at least.