The weekend is the busiest time of the week for the average clergyman, especially poor Theo, with so many churches to keep an eye on. Of course he had support: there were a couple of people called lay readers who were allowed to read services and even give sermons, but not to give Communion. There was also a priest who’d retired from Bradford but now lived free in a house in the furthest flung village; in exchange for his accommodation he gave up three or four days a week to parish work. I’d devised a simple program for Theo to work out who was at which church at any given service.
I hardly saw him on Sundays, when he had to take at least three services; I simply had to accept that for parsons Sunday was the opposite of a day of rest. I still found it disconcerting, however, after a life involving concerts, opera and theatres every weekend, to be on my own on a Saturday evening, and I longed for Theo to be able to sit and share an hour’s peace with me. Was it acceptable to pray for the phone to remain silent? I was always embarrassed to ask for something that would benefit me; in any case, my prayers would rarely have been answered. Tonight it rang just as Theo had picked up a glass of wine. The sound of the voice at the other end made my stomach clench: clearly someone was desperate. It turned out to be a young parishioner whose husband had just announced their marriage was over; he hadn’t, he said, signed up to being the father of a disabled child who simply took over every aspect of his mother’s life. Kissing Theo as I waved him off, I reflected that Merry would have had a pie or cake for him to take with him for the harassed mother. When he’d tried to counsel and pray with the couple, he said he’d drop in on a lonely old lady in one of the alms houses in the same area of the village. But he wouldn’t be late home.
Back home in St John’s Wood, Saturday evenings were the most convivial of the week. If I wasn’t involved with music, I’d be eating with friends at the latest trendy restaurant. If for some reason I found myself alone, I’d simply have donned my running gear and pounded round well-lit streets with lots of CCTV to keep an eye on me. But after last night’s incident, however much I’d played it down, I was a little jittery. It would be an evening in for me. On my own. Did I dare admit I was lonely?
Come on. I was a grown woman. Self-sufficient.
I checked my iPod. Beethoven? Mozart? But how could I luxuriate in an evening of my favourite music when Theo was working his pastoral socks off? I tried to shut out the nasty, niggling voice of conscience, but halfway through the slow movement of Brahms’ D minor Piano Concerto I had to give in. Work for me too. And that meant parish work. But not till the end of the movement: no one could leave Brahms’ Requiem for Schumann half-heard.
Unable to face cake-making in the user-unfriendly kitchen, I went for another form of punitive homely activity. I’d been cajoled into making fabric bags, some forty centimetres by thirty, to fill with things that would keep children quiet during a service. Had there ever been any children young enough to enjoy the contents it would have been a really good idea. But nothing loath (actually, that’s quite wrong: I hated the chore), I accepted the job, and was supposed to have bought up some remnants from a shop in Canterbury. Needless to say I’d forgotten. I was sure Merry would never have been so remiss. In any case, if one of the kitchen drawers was any indication, she’d probably had a whole bag of scraps of material that might just come in useful one day.
I hadn’t, of course. Or had I?
I’d brought down to the village a couple of dresses that I’d hoped to wear at suitable social gatherings. So far there’d been a big round zero. In desperation I’d organized a supper party myself, only to find people turning up in trainers and fleeces and staring at my London gear as if I was a sideshow. Furious with myself for having the wrong expectations and making such a mess of everything, I dragged the dresses from the back of the wardrobe where I’d shoved them and cut them up. Then I settled down with Merry’s old electric machine. There were, I have to say, at the end of my evening, some very grand-looking bags indeed – even if none of the corners was quite a right angle. No wonder I’d been banned from domestic science at school. Still burning with undirected anger, I stuffed each one with scribbling paper, crayons, and a couple of puzzle games, all from pound shops. I’d also raided charity shops for cuddly toys, each of which I’d washed to within an inch of its life. A row of twelve hopeful-looking bears, depressed lions and even a baleful hippopotamus regarded me from their new lodgings, temporarily on the long and fiendishly uncomfortable sofa that dominated the living room. At last I managed to laugh – at them and, more importantly, at myself.
At last I heard Theo’s key in the lock. But his face told me he’d find nothing to amuse him in the sight.
Monday morning saw Theo back at the old lady’s, with a casserole I’d made; I was better with savoury food than sweet, which wasn’t saying much, of course. There was also one for the newly-single mother.
Then I spent half an hour online, striking while Theo’s conscience was still warm. If he now thought I needed a car, I could indulge in something – ah, something that wouldn’t attract Mazza’s keys or vociferous condemnation from Mrs Mountford. So no Porsche. On the other hand, I wanted a little more oomph than the poor Focus possessed. What sort of cars parked here for PCC meetings? I discounted the huge environmentally unfriendly four-by-fours immediately, and a couple of elderly Fiestas. But there were no fewer than three mid-range Audis, if that’s not an oxymoron. So I could have something similar, preferably one that looked mid-range but actually had more under the innocent-looking bonnet than you thought.
And according to the Internet there was one apparently sitting waiting for me in Ashford, though its twin exhausts would give the game away to anyone in the know. Within minutes I’d fixed a test drive for Wednesday: much as I wanted that jolly red A3 now, now, now, I didn’t want to load Theo with further pressure, and I certainly didn’t want to sacrifice our free day.
When Burble arrived, not long after ten, which was pretty early for him, I joined him in the garden, hoping to make a final assault on the brambles. In the fine drizzle he made no more than a half-hearted effort; had he not looked so ill and careworn, I’d have snarled at him. At last, as damp as he was, I brought out a mug of drinking chocolate apiece and a packet of biscuits from Violet’s. He helped himself almost mechan-ically, while I asked him if he knew anything of the valley building developments. He cocked a half-closed eye at the horizon, as if seeking inspiration, finished the chocolate and declared the green wheelie bin too full for anything else. Since I’d already been told off by the binmen for trying to get rid of bags of green refuse, bags with sharp prickles moreover, I could do little more than agree. He made to leave, but turned back.
‘This here website, the one Mazza’s on about – what would it have on it?’
‘The sound of the church bells for a start – background music. A list of village activities—’
‘Blank page there, then,’ he snorted.
‘Announcements about things like the fête. An appeal for funds for the church repairs.’
His interest was clearly waning, and why not?
It was time to think on my feet and come up with something I should have thought of at the start. ‘And a montage of photos of people and places. Not just the pretty-pretty cottages and the ducks. Real people. Mazza’s phone’s got a camera. Has yours?’
‘Mine’s run by a hamster on a little wheel,’ he snarled, clearly thinking of his peers’ superior models.
I laughed at the image. Reluctantly, but nonetheless sincerely, I think, he joined in.
‘How about you borrow my camera?’ I asked, as casually as it’s possible to ask when offering a piece of kit worth – well, probably more than Theo’s poor old car. ‘It’s pretty straightforward. It’s not point and shoot, but you’d pick it up pretty quickly.’
He tried to look bored and insouciant, but the inner little boy won hands down. ‘You sure, Jode?’
‘Let’s see how you get on with it. Leave your shoes by the back door, will you?’
Shouldn’t have asked that. He had trainer foot in spades.
His eyes rounded when I produced the camera, putting it on the table in front of him. ‘Telephoto lens and all? I mean – bloody hell, Jode.’
‘Let me just change the memory card – there, that’s a couple of gigabytes for you to play with.’
He picked it up tenderly, but put it back down again. ‘Worth nicking, that.’ He looked me in the eye, having, I guessed, assessed its value to within a hundred pounds. ‘What if someone thinks I robbed it?’
‘Stole,’ I said, automatically. ‘Easy. I can write a note on a bit of paper saying I’ve lent it to you and you can take a snap of it. That way you’ve got evidence you didn’t steal it.’
‘Bloody hell. Never have thought of that.’ He stared at the note I wrote, on a piece of rectory-headed card. But his hands seemed paralyzed.
‘It won’t start till you take the lens cap off.’ I talked him through the various obvious functions. ‘Now, snap that card. Ah, it may want extra light – can you work out how to get it? Good. It’s often better than flash because you don’t finish up with people with red eyes.’
‘But doesn’t pressing that get rid of red eye?’
It didn’t take him long to work his way round it. All my years in computers and this undereducated kid picked things up more quickly than I did.
At last he wound himself up to ask a couple of salient questions. ‘Are you really sure, Jode? I mean, what if someone nicks it off me? Or I drop it or something?’
‘Insurance,’ I said blithely, but wished I hadn’t. What if I was leading him straight into temptation and a chance to make money for drugs? ‘But it won’t come to that, will it? Got a lot of sentimental value, that little beastie.’ I patted it as if I was telling the truth.
At last he took himself off, but he doubled back. ‘Green bin,’ he said, tenderly putting the camera back in my hands while he trundled the bin round to the front of the house.
When Theo came back, much later than I expected, he was quietly furious. His bicycle, which was pretty well as old as he was but which nonetheless occasionally, when he felt the need for exercise, got him round the village for house calls, had disappeared from outside the old lady’s bungalow. As instructed by Ted Vesey, wearing his Neighbourhood Watch hat, he reported it to the police before he even sat down, but his announcement was greeted with little more than a sigh. ‘Of course I’d locked it,’ I heard him say. ‘I’d chained it to a lamp post. But someone simply smashed the padlock.’
Time for a cup of tea, I’d say, and a suggestion that on Wednesday we might nip into the nearest Halfords en route to the Audi dealership. But as soon as I turned my back, the sound of voices snarled in from the garden. It seemed Theo’d taken it on himself to do a spot of detective work, with a loudly objecting Burble having his hands checked for oil. What on earth was Theo doing? Even vicars aren’t supposed to demand the truth in that sort of voice. He was clearly about to threaten the kid with divine retribution. But Burble could always make a counter claim of common assault. I must step in, with cups of drinking chocolate.
‘I tell you, Vic, I was helping this poor bastard biker. Leathers and all. BMW, for your info.’
‘And I’ve been helping the Queen of Sheba!’
Burble’s voice squeaked with indignation. ‘Big bloke. Bigger than you, Vic. Looks like a bloody great badger,’ he persisted. ‘Said he was looking for Jodie, like. Only he’s got to wait for someone to pick up his bike. Imagine, a fucking Beamer going belly up. Asked me to bring one of his panniers for him,’ he added, his spotty face aglow with righteousness as he pointed to the proof of his story.
‘A biker? Looking for Jodie?’ Theo repeated bitingly.
‘Right. Over by the Pickled Walnut he was. He’s probably heading this way now. Dead slowly. Not dressed for walking.’ Then his voice got quite tight. ‘Hey, Vic, what’s all this about the missus getting run over? She never said nothing this morning. Look here, anyone hurts her, I’ll make sure the bugger never walks again.’ He was so incensed he forgot he wasn’t supposed to swear in front of Theo, and used a plethora of words I’d expressly forbidden. But before I could run out and chew his ears off, I realized his voice was cracking. So much for the macho and offhand image he liked to project. At this point there was a thunderous knock on the front door. The tall dark stranger, no doubt.
Tall and dark he might have been. But he wasn’t a stranger: he was my cousin, Dave. Dave was the sort of man who’d make even our living room sofa look small. He was not only taller than Theo, he was broader too, though probably with muscle rather than fat. We soon worked out that we’d not seen each other for all of two years. It wasn’t that we’d argued or anything; we just weren’t that sort of cousin. We were the wedding and funeral type of cousin, retiring to a quiet corner to exchange sardonic family gossip and to wonder aloud why we didn’t keep in touch a bit more often.
Dave grabbed the morning’s Guardian and, turning to a page of ads, spread it out and sat on it. Theo passed him a wad of kitchen towel for his oily hands and he gave them a cursory wipe before absent-mindedly accepting some of Theo’s truly awful coffee. He left black prints all over the mug, which almost disappeared in his hand. The other tugged at a piece of expensive material that had sunk between two cushions. It was a leftover from my bag-making activities, but it was clear he recognized it from the last time I’d worn it, at a snazzy wedding for his side of the family, though he merely raised an eyebrow in my direction.
Editing the episode very heavily lest I worry Theo, I explained that I’d recycled some clothes I no longer needed.
Possibly Dave saw through me. ‘I didn’t think vicars’ wives had to be Lady Bountifuls these days. Thought they were supposed to have independent careers. Especially high-flyers like you.’
‘They clipped my wings, Dave. Made me redundant.’
‘Not that you couldn’t have pulled in a few quid here and there as a freelance consultant,’ he observed, before adding more sombrely, ‘It’s getting quite fashionable, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, Dave – surely not you too!’
Theo said, ‘I didn’t think the police were allowed to make people redundant. Not front-line officers, that is; I know they’ve been getting rid of swathes of back-room staff.’
‘They don’t call it “making redundant”. They simply enforce the thirty-year rule, which says you can retire when you’ve done thirty years’ service. In this case can equals must. So it was thank you, DCI Harcourt, and goodnight.’ The bitterness in his voice suggested he needed Theo’s counselling skills rather than my simple sympathy. ‘I took the money and ran, of course – any day now I can see the government abolishing lump sums, can’t you? Since then, I’ve actually been all round the world on that old bike. I come home – and it dies here.’
‘Round the world?’ My eyes widened. Dave had never been one for adventure, but this was embracing freedom with a vengeance.
‘And back again. That lad who says he works for you – fancy you having outdoor staff, eh, Jode! – did his best, but in the end I had to get a BMW dealership to cart it off for radical surgery.’
‘We’ve got a spare room and a washing machine at your disposal, Dave, if you care to stay until the bike’s back on the road,’ Theo said. ‘You and Jodie have obviously got a lot of catching up to do, and I don’t suppose she’d object to a bit of company anyway …’
‘I’d be very grateful for some,’ I confessed, hoping I sounded sociable, not needy. ‘Theo works six days a week, from breakfast to late supper. And sometimes after that too. Theo’ll show you the guest room. While you clean yourself up, I’ll get some lunch. Are you still vegetarian?’
To my relief he shook his head. ‘Devout carnivore these days.’
But there was a snag, wasn’t there? Monday was our night off. We wouldn’t be here tomorrow. First there was lunch with an old friend I wanted to wheedle into providing the equipment we needed to record the peal of bells for the website. And in the evening we’d got tickets for an LSO concert at the Royal Festival Hall; fond as I could become of Dave, I didn’t want to sacrifice them on the altar of family unity.
In the event, Dave, registering the fact that we only had one bathroom and a bitterly cold downstairs shower-room, declared himself quite happy to have sole occupancy of the house for thirty-six hours. Having mastered the washing machine, and expressed horror at the absence of a tumble dryer, he even promised to help Burble – or perhaps compel Burble – to finish off the bramble for good, motivating him with the promise of a bonus.
‘I liked the kid,’ he declared through the game pie I’d forced myself to make with Burble’s birds and had frozen for just such an unexpected lunch as this. ‘Did his best with my bike, though I’m not convinced he learned all his skills honestly. What’s his background?’
‘Anything and nothing. I’d say his main problem is lack of stickability, which probably has a proper psychiatric name. He learns quickly, but just when you think you’ve pressed all the right buttons, you don’t see him for a couple of days.’
‘Don’t you indeed? We’ll see about that.’