He was not in jail. The thought gave him no satisfaction as he mounted the chancel steps and turned to face the congregation. In fact, he felt rather more martyred here in St. Gabriel’s than he would have done had he been condemned to spend the morning at Cannon Row police station.
The organist struck the first note of the hymn and the choir stood up; the congregation remained seated while the organist played the introduction, then it, too, rose shuffling and rustling throughout the first line of the hymn. Ralph Kimberley gazed down, trying to regain his usual gently amused detachment. What very naughty children they were! He had asked them so often to stand at the same time as the choir. He studied the individual members of his flock. Some were simply forgetful, others were definitely obstinate. The obstinate ones maintained that they had always stood when they were required to sing and not before, and while they did not mind accepting a suggestion from the vicar now and then, it would be a mistake to give way too often in case he got the idea that he ran the church. Ralph could see this attitude personified in every line of the small, square figure of Rutledge, his warden; an arrogant, strutting little cockerel, chest puffed up and behind sticking out jauntily. Ralph allowed himself the luxury of a moment’s irritation with Rutledge.
Rutledge was frowning. Ralph felt guilty, as though his thoughts had been read. Then Rutledge turned to look behind him and Ralph, following the direction of his gaze, realized the cause of his annoyance. The Nigerian family had come in late and Spencer was shepherding them to a pew half-way up the north aisle instead of allowing them to slink quietly into the back row. Why must Spencer demonstrate his usefulness in this obtrusive way? Ralph remembered that he had promised to see Spencer after the service. What could the man want? He hoped that it was something to which he could say ‘yes’: it was so very exhausting and time-consuming to say ‘no’ to Spencer. Spencer, Ralph acknowledged, was one of his failures.
He was rather shocked at this point to discover that the congregation was kneeling while he led them in the General Confession. This lack of concentration must be due to weariness after his long vigil yesterday. ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts . . .’ Perhaps weariness also explained his uncharitable thoughts? Yesterday had been so inspiring—that heart-warming moment when the fog lifted; today, surrounded by the pettiness of church routine, the exaltation gave way to an ignoble querulousness of spirit. There was something else, too; an uneasiness which had a tinge of guilt in it. It was a feeling with which he was not entirely unfamiliar and it usually meant that he had left something undone which he ought to have done. The choir dragged behind the organ in the singing of the Venite and the leader of the Sunday School stumbled over the reading of the first lesson. Ralph tried not to notice these things. Doubtless there would be those among his congregation who would be watching to see how he had survived yesterday’s events. It would not do at all if he were to present a picture of a tired, ill-humoured man who would have liked a day in bed. A day in bed . . . He remembered that just as he had been dragging himself out of bed Myra had reminded him of something that she wanted him to do.
‘O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord . . .’
Extreme exasperation comically distorted Rutledge’s face and Ralph chided himself for not mentioning to his warden that he had agreed to the choir master’s request that the Benedicite should be sung at least once every month.
‘O ye Waters that be above the Firmament, bless ye the Lord . . .’
How interminable it was! Rutledge was perfectly right. And Perkins, the choir master, had chosen one of the more laborious settings, which was too bad of him.
‘O ye Showers and Dew, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever . . .’
What was it that Myra had wanted him to do? His only recollection was of a vague resentment.
‘O ye Winter and Summer, bless ye the Lord: praise him. . .’ After a time he began to feel as though he were going to fall forward; it was a feeling he had often when he was very tired. He tried to count the congregation to steady himself and keep his mind alert. There was Inspector Pym’s wife, cheerful and aggressively pregnant. He must remember not to say to her that it was a long time since he had seen her husband, otherwise she would answer as she had last time: ‘That’s because you keep him working overtime, Vicar.’
‘O Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever.’
At last it was over. The congregation buckled at the knees and seemed to prepare for sleep. During the second lesson, read much too dramatically by the people’s warden, Ralph remembered what it was that Myra had asked him to do. ‘You must telephone Percy Nicholls and get him to arrange a special interview at the Labour Exchange for Wilson. Otherwise he’ll get into that dreadful man Brooker’s hands.’ She had first mentioned this while he was having his supper late last night, so tired that he could hardly eat. ‘After all,’ she had pointed out. ‘It was your idea that he should come here. He’s your responsibility now.’
Ralph looked down at the second pew where his responsibility sat nervously attentive between Myra and Sarah. He looked forlorn and defenceless; it would be a pity if he were to be confronted with a dry, inhuman man like Brooker. But was he really so defenceless? Wilson, Ralph reflected on a closer scrutiny, did not look so simple and straightforward as he had seemed in prison. They never did, of course, once they came out and collected their identity along with their civilian clothes. What did this mean in Wilson’s case? Confidence had undoubtedly been undermined, the features lacked firmness; yet this indecisiveness, one suspected, was not habitual and the face was not weak. That was not necessarily a good thing: the strong cannot always reconcile themselves to injury. All Ralph’s uneasiness culminated in a feeling of extreme inability to deal with this new demand on his energy. For a moment, Wilson and his problem seemed more important than anything else and Ralph was surprised to find how heavily he had to draw on his reserve of strength to pull himself free of this particular snare.
He raised his head and looked beyond the young man. Spencer had not turned the lights on at the back of the church and there was an impression of twilight, as though the last of the day were dying out while it was yet morning. He stared into the twilight area over the heads of the congregation, searching for something that lay beyond the little pricks of pain and guilt and despair, the small-change of humdrum lives. Gradually, his face grew calm, the lines smoothed out, the muscles relaxed at last; but although there was a nobility about him now, serenity eluded him. Perhaps weariness accounted for the harshness in the eyes; otherwise one might have thought that their intensity revealed a hint of fanaticism.
In his seat in the third pew from the front, Rutledge nudged his wife.
‘Vicar’s off!’ He glanced at his watch. ‘If he goes on longer than a quarter of an hour, I’m going to speak to him about it.’
The vicar paused for some twenty seconds, partly to collect his thoughts and partly to satisfy his sense of drama. Sarah shivered in the solemn hush. The church with its alcoves and shadows was full of menace and the brass candlesticks glinting darkly on the altar aroused emotions which Sarah suspected were not holy. She concentrated on her uncle. This morning she would listen very carefully to everything that he said and perhaps, because she was opening her heart to His words, God would save her. Her friend Sukie had been saved, and so had most of the other girls who went to the Bible group. So far, however, God had not called Sarah. This worried her because it seemed to indicate that she was less acceptable than the others. Once or twice she had tried to work herself into a state in which she would imagine that God was calling her, but there was some part of her that remained aloof and disapproving so that the experiment always failed.
Today the experiment failed for another reason. After Uncle Ralph had been speaking for a few minutes, Mr. Wilson picked up one of the hymn-books and began to turn the pages with quick, nervous movements as though exercising his fingers rather than exploring the book. Sarah, who had found it necessary to do this sometimes herself when the atmosphere in the church was particularly oppressive was not surprised to see that he was moistening his lips and swallowing with difficulty as though his throat were sore. After a moment, he put the hymn-book down and sat gripping the seat so that the veins stood out on the backs of his hands. She knew how he felt; his heart was thumping and there was something stretched tight as elastic across his forehead that was going to snap at any minute. Her body understood, but the understanding did not produce sympathy. She hated him. How dared he force his ugly pain on her? Would he faint, or scream, or get up and run out? And why did no one else realize that something dreadful was going to happen to him at any moment? There was a funny little tick beneath his left eye. She watched, fascinated. How horrible he was! Suddenly, he turned and looked at her. To defend herself, she crossed her eyes and made one of her particularly hideous faces at him.
Aunt Myra must have been watching, because she drew in her breath in a sharp, disapproving way. But Mr. Wilson seemed better; his lips quivered and he had to press his fist against them to keep back the laughter. The laughter went on for a long time, embarrassingly uncontrolled in a grown-up. Sarah hated him more than ever. If God had called her, she had certainly not heard, and Aunt Myra was cross and would say something when the service was over. Sarah prayed that her uncle would go on and on and on, but he finished a minute short of the quarter-hour.
The congregation sang the last hymn, knelt for the blessing, stood again as the choir filed out singing, as it did each week:
‘For the beauty of the earth,
For the beauty of the skies,
For the love which from our birth,
Over and around us lies’
The procession reached the vestry. The congregation knelt briefly and then began to file towards the door. As they walked down the nave, Aunt Myra whispered:
‘If you’re not careful your face will stay like that one of these days. You looked like a constipated frog.’
By this time, Uncle Ralph was standing at the door with Spencer hovering behind him.
‘Have you telephoned Percy Nicholls?’ Aunt Myra asked.
‘I’ll do it the minute I get in,’ he promised.
He shook hands with Mrs. Plummer and asked after her father.
‘You’ll be too late. He’ll be playing golf,’ Aunt Myra interposed quickly between the going of Mrs. Plummer and the coming of Mrs. Thomas.
‘No, no. Spencer and I will be through our business very quickly.’
Mrs. Thomas joined Aunt Myra. She was wearing one of the hats that everyone except Sarah thought so smart, an inverted flower pot the colour of a geranium.
‘A beautiful sermon of the vicar’s,’ she said. ‘Not that I understood it. But I suppose it’s good for us. I always say to Bill, at least the vicar makes us work hard every Sunday.’
‘I like your hat, Joan,’ Aunt Myra said. ‘But doesn’t it quarrel with that scarf?’
They had reached the path now. Sarah lingered behind them, making her constipated frog face because she did not like Mrs. Thomas who was loud-voiced and ‘good with children’. She dug her toe into the grass at the side of the path and looked at the gravestones; they were very close together, there would not be much room for Joanna Dove. A shadow moved across the grass. Spencer had come out of the church. Aunt Myra was introducing Mr. Wilson to Mrs. Thomas and Spencer was watching them. He looked Mr. Wilson up and down, an odd, knowing expression on his face as though he had just found a clue in a treasure hunt.
‘He’s been staying the other side of London,’ Aunt Myra was saying.
Spencer turned away and spat.