Churches, solid Norman towers, sky-scraping spires and ancient Saxon round towers stand tall on Norfolk’s damp earth, and they haunted Patrick. Walking through dark medieval woods a mile from Mildney he found the scrambled walls of a ruined chapel, its columns and figures scattered among brambles, untouched since vandals plundered it. He took the children there, and they clutched his coat and hid when they came to a hidden lake. Patrick pointed to the tips of beech trees, bursting out at knee-height. The rest of the trees had been swallowed by the lake. The pagan spell of the woods, where a gibbet displayed a gruesome tally of weasels, rabbits and the red smear of a fox, terrified and enchanted Va Va, and the sight of a stone head rolling in dead leaves by the chapel fuelled bedtime stories for weeks afterwards.
Driving along narrow, mud-brown lanes, Patrick used churches to guide him through the countryside. When he reached the coast he parked the car on the edge of the cliff and Va Va, Brodie and Flook rushed to buy ice lollies, their chemical red, blue and electric pink the only colours in a panorama of iron skies and steel-dark sea. Teeth turned the colour of the lollies as Patrick told the children sea stories: of Harold Hardrada and Sir Cloudesley Shovell; of a church bell ringing still in the deep North Sea, the ghostly peal commemorating the terrible day when the church of Dellingford and its congregation slipped off the crumbling cliff and perished beneath the waves.
Va Va loved the Jewel Church best. The round flint tower had windows like arrow slits at the top, and a tomb of marble stood alone in the empty nave. The tomb was decorated with a huge polished stone; Va Va thought it was a rare jewel, bigger than any other ever mined. Eleanor had told her a story about a Blue Prince, and she imagined him buried there, sleeping for ever, wrapped in glamorous ossified youth, a fit bridegroom for Sleeping Beauty.
Va Va was deep in a religious phase. Every Sunday she went to church, alone or with a weekend guest she had cajoled into accompanying her. She loved the orderliness and ritual of the church; the neat rows of pews with tapestry hassocks plump and square beneath them; the crimson hymn-books which never had pages missing, so that it was a joy to turn to the page announced on white cards on the wall. The vicar was boring. Each Sunday he read a different sermon in the same grey monotone. Va Va didn’t understand why he read such dull texts. At home, Patrick told her stories about the saints and made her laugh with silly voices and faces. In church everyone fidgeted and some even slept.
Patrick and Eleanor were relieved when Va Va’s interest in the Sunday service waned and she no longer pestered Eleanor to iron her dress, or Patrick (in the absence of someone less used to her wiles) to go with her.