In the end I talked to David about Janet. He didn’t like it and nor did I. I was beginning to feel like an interloper in their marriage, in more ways than one.
It was after breakfast the next day, Sunday, which happened to be the fifth anniversary of my marriage to Henry. No one else remembered this and I did my best to forget it. David came back from celebrating the early communion service full of the joys of this world and the next. While he worked his way through two cups of coffee, two boiled eggs and several rounds of toast, Janet pecked at a slice of bread and butter. After I’d washed up I cornered him in his study where he was reading a book and making notes.
‘Janet’s not well,’ I told him. ‘She needs to rest.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘She tired herself out yesterday killing the fatted calf. And she was tired beforehand. And then there’s her condition.’
His eyes were drifting back to the book on his desk.
‘She’s pregnant, David. And in the first three months women are particularly delicate. If she works too hard there’s a danger she might lose the baby.’
That got his attention. ‘I hadn’t realized. In fact …’ His voice tailed away and I laid a private bet with myself that he had been about to say, In fact I’d forgotten she was pregnant. He looked at me. ‘What do you advise?’
‘I think she should go back to bed. She’s getting ready for church at present. Tell her you think she ought to rest. It’s what she needs. I can do lunch. There are plenty of leftovers.’
‘Do you think she’ll be well enough to have tea with Canon Osbaston?’
‘She’s not ill, David. She’s just tired and I really think she needs a day off. Rosie and I can come if you want.’
In one way it worked out very well. Janet spent most of the day in bed and the rest of us muddled along reasonably happily. In retrospect, I think Rosie may have been withdrawn. Usually she enjoyed being with her father but when we walked to the Theological College for tea with Canon Osbaston, it was my hand she decided to hold. None of this seemed significant then and even now I wonder if I’m reading too much into it. That’s the trouble with trying to remember things – you end up twisting the past into unrecognizable shapes. I just don’t know what happened the previous evening. If anything.
I do know the weather was wonderful that afternoon. I haven’t imagined the feeling of sun on my arms as we walked through the Close and down to the Porta. Ink-black shadows danced along the pavement. We passed Gotobed planting pansies in his window box. He pretended not to see us. He was a large man who hunched his shoulders as if trying to make himself small. His face was delicate, with big ears and a tiny nose and chin. I thought he looked like a mouse and perhaps felt like one too. He would talk to me when I was by myself but I think he was scared of David. He was certainly terrified of the head verger, a swarthy man named Mepal who rarely spoke, but I think everyone was a little afraid of Mepal, including the dean.
Immediately outside the Porta was Minster Street, which ran along one side of a small green before plunging down Back Hill to the station and the river. On the other side of the green stood the Theological College, a large redbrick building surrounded by lank shrubberies like coils of barbed wire.
David guided us up the drive and round to the lawn at the back. Four pink young men were playing lawn tennis. A little further on, four more were playing croquet. The Principal’s Lodging, a self-contained wing of the main building, was beside the croquet lawn.
Canon Osbaston was dozing in a wing armchair in front of open French windows. The room behind him was long, high-ceilinged and densely populated with large brown pieces of furniture. He must have heard our footsteps on the gravel because his eyes flickered open and he struggled out of the chair.
‘Must have nodded off. Meant to have the kettle on before you arrived. Is Janet with you?’
‘She’s a little unwell,’ David said.
‘Nothing serious, I trust. Such a pleasant evening.’ He leered at me. ‘I wonder if you would give me a hand making the tea, Mrs Appleyard? I’m afraid it slipped my mind yesterday evening, in the – ah – heat of the moment, that Mrs Elstree has Sunday afternoons off. She visits her widowed sister, I believe.’
‘Perhaps Rosie can help as well,’ I said. ‘Many hands make light work.’
In the end, all four of us went into the kitchen. I felt as though I’d awakened a Sleeping Beauty. I wished I could find a way to send him to sleep again. We found that Mrs Elstree had left everything ready for us in the kitchen. Ten minutes later, we were sitting in deckchairs on the lawn.
We drank lapsang souchong and ate most of a Victoria sponge. It was warm in the sun and I felt pleasantly tired. Osbaston found Rosie some paper and a pencil and once she had finished her cake she sat on the lawn in the shade of a beech tree and drew.
The young men played croquet and tennis, and watching them gave me something to do with the forefront of my mind. Occasionally some of them would wander over to have a few words with Osbaston or David. More than one of them looked at me in a way that gave me pleasure. I might have no taste for elderly clergymen but after the dreariness surrounding the end of my marriage it was nice to be admired again, even by theological students.
David and Osbaston were talking about the syllabus for next year – something about the pros and cons of increasing New Testament Greek at the expense of Pastoral Theology. It was one of those lazy conversations full of half-sentences which happen when people know each other very well, so much so that each is usually aware what the other is about to say. I looked at David through half-closed eyes.
Before I knew what was happening, I found I had drifted into a daydream in which I was married to him and Rosie was our daughter. That was enough to make me sit up with a jerk. I hate the way the mind plays tricks when you’re relaxing. I went into the house to powder my nose. By the time I came out the tennis and the croquet were finished and it was time to go. The men were turning their thoughts towards evensong.
‘You must come and meet Mrs Elstree some other time, Mrs Appleyard,’ Osbaston said. ‘In the meantime I found something else which might interest you.’ He pottered through the French window into his drawing room and came out a moment later with a hardback book bound in blue cloth. ‘I thought I’d seen something about that fellow Youlgreave recently, and I was right. I looked it out after breakfast this morning. Do borrow it, if you’d like. I’ve put a marker in.’
I took the book and opened it automatically to the title page. The Journal of the Transactions of the Rosington Antiquarian Society 1904.
‘I think it may be what gave him the idea for that judgement poem,’ Osbaston said. ‘You remember, the story about a heretic being burned? Take it with you, my dear, and study it at your leisure.’ He edged a little closer to me. ‘Perhaps we could discuss it when you come and meet Mrs Elstree.’
I smiled at him. ‘Thanks.’ I looked around for a diversion and found Rosie. ‘What a nice drawing. May I see it?’
With obvious reluctance she gave it to me. David and Osbaston came closer and together we looked down at the sheet of paper in my hands. It was a child’s drawing with no sense of perspective or proportion. After all, Rosie wasn’t yet five, though in some ways she was very mature for her age. The pencilled figures were like stick insects with a few props attached. But you could see what Rosie had been getting at. A man wearing a white dress and a pair of wings was about to plunge a sword shaped like a cake slice into a small person with long hair cowering at his feet.
‘Let me guess,’ said Canon Osbaston, his head swaying towards Rosie. ‘Could this be the sacrifice of Isaac?’ He frowned and a heavy forefinger stabbed the man with the sword. ‘But in that case this must be Abraham, despite the wings. After all, it can hardly be the Angel of the Lord.’