THAT was a beastly winter—my wife was very ill and I was distracted by many things. There was a good deal of work in the parish, and twice a week I went to London, where I was the unpaid secretary of an organization raising money for the relief of flood victims in Burma. Altogether I was working very hard and not getting any younger, and I found myself exhausted by the end of the day. But a vicar’s work is in his own parish or it is nowhere: a priest’s first duty is to his people. And that winter I was failing in my duty to the people of Cartersfield. Day after day of icy wind and rain kept me at my desk—where there was plenty to do, in all conscience—and for a month or two I rather let things slide as far as the town was concerned. Local gossip has always been one of my chief means of measuring my success as a vicar. Everything gets to one eventually in a small place and moral failings are usually quick to be reported. But through January and February I wasn’t really listening.
Thus it was not until March that I registered that Lindy Badham was beginning to be talked about. Lindy was a good girl—a regular member of Sunday School when she was a child, and later a useful if not very tuneful member of the choir. She was cheerful, and, though not very bright, she did her best: and how I wish I could say that of men and women with better mental equipment. Lindy, however, had one failing of which she and everyone else was extremely conscious. She was ugly. Not merely ugly—though even as a very young child she was never pretty—but painfully ugly, for she had a terrible scar on her face, the result of an accident when she was six years old. She had run out across the street after a ball. In those days we had no by-pass, and the main road ran through the middle of the town. A heavy lorry ran over her. It was not the driver’s fault—he had braked as hard as he could, but she was under his wheels almost before he saw her. The poor man was very upset indeed about it, and of course completely exonerated. But no amount of regret could save Lindy’s face. She was taken to the hospital, where they did what they could, but the cut ran from her chin to her temple, and it was not a clean cut, but a series of gashes, gouging across her cheek. From the left side her face looked like a field torn apart for a building site. Nothing could be done to conceal it, for in those days plastic surgery was in its infancy, and anyway the Badhams could not possibly have afforded it. On top of this misfortune, Lindy wore glasses, and they had broken in the accident, cutting her cheek still further and badly damaging her left eye. As a result, Lindy’s usual expression was one of pleasant vacuousness, as she smiled blindly and lopsidedly at whomever she spoke to. Yet, as I say, marked out as she was from her girl friends, she remained cheerful and popular. Though her popularity did not, of course, extend to the boys.
In a town like Cartersfield this might seriously be considered a moral advantage. As everywhere else, it is extremely difficult here to keep boys and girls away from each other between the age of thirteen or fourteen and the time of their marriage. Fornication, I regret to say, is not uncommon among mere children, (for how else can one consider such young people?) I have had many discussions with the schoolteachers of the town as to what can be done, but the general consensus of opinion is that the answer is nothing. And though I strongly opposed the introduction of classes on so-called ‘sexual education’, I now think I may have been wrong. It is better, surely, that the children should be fully aware of what they are doing, biologically speaking, than doing it anyway in the dark, as it were. And though I am fully aware of the moral decadence this implies, I am grateful that contraceptive devices do at least save such children from the full consequences of their acts—though their acts remain, I must insist, wholly reprehensible. Of course it is only a small minority that begins to indulge in sexual activity so young. But this minority remains a constant threat to decency. Some years ago there was a great deal of scandal at the Grammar School when a girl became pregnant, and she and the boy had to leave. I have never been able to make up my mind whether the scandal served to increase or decrease the amount of immorality. The example worked both ways, in a sense. But in either case illegitimate births are very few, though the number of babies born less than nine months after their parents’ marriage is significantly high. Here, as elsewhere in the British Isles, lip-service is paid to morality, but little else.
Lindy was not, as I have said, a girl much sought after. In fact she was never sought after at all. Being ugly and half blind, it was not, perhaps, very difficult to be virtuous. But if her belief in God was simple we should remember what Christ said about suffering little children to come unto Him, and that Lindy’s faith was genuine. She was, too, a great help to me in many ways. She was always ready to volunteer for any little chore that needed doing in the church—she arranged the flowers, clumsily but adequately, she swept the church once a week, she looked after the younger ones on church picnics, and she never complained that life had cheated her by giving her an ugly face. Lindy was very willing. Her mother, Mrs Badham, while not a churchgoer, was a good woman in her way, too. She was large and strong, and her physical appearance, accompanied by a loud voice, gave her an air of authority. She worked for Mrs Hobson, supplementing a widow’s pension, her husband having been killed in the war. Lindy was an only child, and Mrs Badham spared nothing to have her well dressed and neat, and to give her those small things which are luxuries to a child and which make childhood a pleasure to look back upon.
Thus it was that I was surprised by the rumour. They were building the by-pass that spring—it took them something like six months to complete, in all—and Mrs Badham gave bed and breakfast to a man of forty or so: William Johnson, who worked on the construction. He came from the north of England, and had a wife and three children. Very often he would go home at weekends. There are many such men, I believe, moving from one big labouring job to another, earning excellent money, usually far from home, and boarding out near their work. Others live in caravans. There was a small caravan village established on the other side of Chapman’s Wood, in fact, while the by-pass was being built, and when the job was finished a few caravans stayed there, the men, having found work locally, deciding they liked the neighbourhood. We have been making efforts recently to get this hamlet of caravans—it is very small now—removed or destroyed as insanitary, but so far we have been unsuccessful.
William Johnson, however, preferred the small comforts of Mrs Badham’s semi-detached villa to the more adventurous life of the caravans, and he moved in about the end of February. Johnson was a big man, broad-shouldered, with large hands and an appearance of great physical strength. He would have made a splendid partner for his landlady. But he seemed very quiet and respectful, in fact a thoroughly decent working man. He was, I was told, a foreman. But within a month I began to hear rumours.
It is traditional, I suppose, that a lodger should make advances to his landlady’s daughter, and even if he doesn’t that he should be suspected of doing so. Thus, when Miss Spurgeon came up to me after Matins a Sunday or two before Easter and asked for a private word, only to tell me that she had reason to believe that Lindy and Johnson were misbehaving together, I felt inclined to be short with her. Miss Spurgeon was inclined to exaggerate the faults of others and to minimize her own.
‘Come now,’ I said, ‘we mustn’t gossip, Miss Spurgeon.’
‘I am not gossiping, Mr Henderson,’ she said. ‘You know me well enough, I hope, to know that I detest gossip.’
‘But you haven’t given me a shred of evidence.’
‘Sometimes one can sense things, Mr Henderson. And I tell you that I sense that something is going on between Lindy Badham and that Mr Johnson.’
Miss Spurgeon’s senses frequently told her that Something Was Unquestionably Going On.
‘I don’t think you should go round spreading a rumour like that, Miss Spurgeon, unless you can prove it. And I think you might try to be a little more charitable towards your neighbour.’
‘I am only telling you what I suspect,’ she said. Her features were set, unforgiving, and confident of rightness, if not righteousness. Miss Spurgeon is an old lady, and argument is wasted upon her.
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid I must ignore what your senses tell you, Miss Spurgeon. It is my duty to guard the morals of my parishioners, you know, not to encourage tittle-tattle.’
‘You are the best judge of that,’ said Miss Spurgeon. ‘But I know what I’m saying, Mr Henderson, and if you really wish to guard the morals of the parish you will listen when you are warned of goings on.’ She walked away with great dignity, leaning on an elegant black stick. All conversations with Miss Spurgeon tended to end like that. Both of us thought we had authority: I as vicar, she by virtue of her age. We sharpened each other, I think. But as a gossip she lacked consistent accuracy, being correct only about once in ten times, and even when I thought she might be on to something I made a point of telling her that I would ignore whatever it was she had newly ‘sensed’.
And this time I did ignore her. I glanced once or twice at Lindy during Evensong, and she seemed as demure as ever, sitting placidly in her choir-stall with her normal expression of contented blankness. With her scar and her ugliness and her glasses it was difficult to know what she might or might not be thinking, but I felt sure that she was not lusting in her heart after Mr Johnson while she listened to my brief sermon on the Wise and the Unwise Virgins.
Some days later my wife, who was now a little better and came down after lunch every day, entered my study and said: ‘Raymond, I think you should have a word with Lindy.’
Lindy, I should have said, worked for us, coming in every morning to help Isobel clean the house and get the lunch. Since Isobel’s illness we had come to depend very heavily upon her.
‘What is it, Isobel?’
‘She’s been late every morning this week. She’s never done it before. I wonder if you would mind having a word with her. I really don’t feel up to speaking to her myself.’
‘Of course. I’ll see her tomorrow.’
Isobel went and sat by the window. ‘Thank God the winter is nearly over,’ she said.
‘I hope we’ll have you out and about by the middle of May,’ I said.
‘So do I.’
Isobel looked wan. Her illness had been obscure and dangerous, one of those slowly wasting diseases that doctors don’t like to talk about, since their tests fail to show anything actually wrong. Yet the patient grows sicker and sicker. In spite of specialists—who had been extremely expensive—we still didn’t know what was really the matter with her, though both of us feared, without ever saying so, that it might be cancer. But she had picked up a little, and we hoped that a warm summer might put her right again.
‘If you’re not better by July,’ I said, ‘I’ll send you off to your sisters. There’s no telling what a change of air might do.’
‘I don’t expect Farnham’s air is very different from this,’ she said. ‘I should love to go abroad again. To Switzerland, say, to see the flowers.’
‘You know we can’t afford that.’
‘Yes, I know. But there’s no harm in thinking about it, is there?’ She thought for a moment, then got up and said: ‘But perhaps there is. I thought it might be nice to go and post the letters, Raymond. Do you have any?’
‘You’re not supposed to go out yet.’
‘I know. But I hate being cooped up like this, day after day. It’s not very far.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
We wrapped up well, for though it was fine, it was cold and crisp, nearly April, but with a threat of frost in the air. The post-box was only a few hundred yards away, but even that distance was an expedition for Isobel.
On the way we met Evangeline Hobson, who stopped us to complain about the by-pass tearing up one of their fields. We expressed our sympathy, though we did not really feel it, delighted as we were at the prospect of living without the thunder and danger of lorries day and night. Then she said: ‘I don’t want to seem nosy, Raymond, but all these labourers do represent something of a threat, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t even know what you mean, Evangeline. Just because many of them seem to be Irish there is no danger of my parish turning Catholic.’
She laughed. ‘I didn’t mean that. I was thinking, frankly, of the parish’s morals rather than of its denomination. The girls have never been so popular, it seems. What with all these men with nowhere to go in the evenings.’
‘I’m sure the local youths can handle that,’ I said.
‘Mrs Badham has been telling me that they’re furious. The labourers are getting too much attention.’
‘A change of faces can’t harm anyone,’ I said.
‘Mrs Badham seemed to think it was funny, I don’t know why.’
‘I agree with her,’ said Isobel. ‘It is quite funny. It should put all the boys on their mettle.’ Then she added: ‘I wish I could see a few new faces sometimes.’
The two women discussed Isobel’s illness and convalescence. I wondered briefly whether Mrs Hobson might not have a point, but soon dismissed the idea. It wasn’t as though the labourers were an invading army, after all.
When we got back to the vicarage Isobel felt tired and I helped her to bed.
‘It’s so silly,’ she said, when she was settled with a hot-water bottle. ‘Here I’ve been lying all this time, listening to the radio for months and months, and I can tell you exactly what’s being talked about in Mrs Dale’s Diary, but I seem to have lost all touch with Cartersfield.’
‘I’m a little out of touch with it myself.’
‘Mrs Badham,’ said Isobel, and laughed. ‘What a splendid woman she is. She could scrub kitchens all day and still be ready for a little weight-lifting.’
This was hardly fair. Mrs Badham was big and strong, certainly, but hardly a giantess. I said as much.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean it literally,’ said Isobel. ‘I just meant that she gives the impression of being huge. Morally huge. Can you imagine anyone tweaking her bottom?’
Indeed I could not. Mrs Badham was the sort of woman whose bottom by its very majesty forbade any levity of that kind. Thinking of that, and of what Miss Spurgeon had hinted, I felt sure that Lindy would never dare to misbehave beneath her mother’s roof. I told Isobel about the gossip, and she agreed with me.
‘It’s unthinkable,’ she said. ‘What is the man like?’
‘I’ve only seen him a couple of times. He doesn’t come to church. He’s quite good-looking, in a burly sort of way, but too old for a girl of Lindy’s age to be interested in him. Besides, he has a wife and family, I’m told.’
‘Who told you that?’
At first I couldn’t remember. Then it occurred to me that it was Lindy herself. After my talk with Miss Spurgeon I had mentioned casually to Lindy that I’d heard the Badhams had a lodger, and she had given me the information quite without hesitation. It was yet another reason to refuse to credit the gossip.
I forgot about the whole thing for several weeks, being extremely busy with Easter and the Burmese flood relief. The Christian festival seemed to unleash a great deal of Christian charity, in a satisfactory way, and contributions suddenly began to pour in. It was not, in fact, till the middle of April that I thought about Lindy Badham again, though I saw her often enough at the vicarage and in church, and had chided her about being tardy. When I did so she hung her head and said she was sorry, and that it wouldn’t happen again. According to Isobel, it hadn’t.
One morning, as I was on my way to the station, I saw Mrs Badham bicycling down the road. Like an elephant in a circus, I thought to myself, so comic did a woman of her bulk look on a bicycle. She wore a black hat over her greying hair, and a shortish skirt, her bare legs pedalling in stately fashion. She waved as she passed me, but did not stop.
While waiting for the train I chatted with Bob Ransome, a porter. He leaned against a pillar, drinking tea from a large tin mug, looking, from time to time, at the signals.
‘How is your father?’ I asked.
‘He’s pretty well, thank you,’ he said.
‘I think he’s a marvel at his age.’
‘He does pretty well,’ said Ransome. ‘There’s many younger with not half the strength.’
‘I wish I was younger,’ I said. ‘I’m getting to the age when a bad winter is a real hardship.’
‘It’s been bad,’ he said. Then he turned to someone standing a few yards up the platform and said: ‘’Morning, Bill.’
It was William Johnson. ‘’Morning,’ he replied. He was burly, as I have suggested, and had grey eyes and straight black hair, with just a brush of silver in it. If he had dressed himself up he might easily have passed as a business man. But he was wearing overalls.
‘Mr Johnson,’ I said, going up to him, ‘I don’t think we’ve ever met properly. My name’s Henderson. I’m the vicar here.’
‘How d’you do?’ he said, giving my hand a gentle shake. Somehow this surprised me. I was expecting one of those bone-crushing grips which labouring men seem to enjoy imposing on those in sedentary occupations.
‘I believe you’re staying with Mrs Badham.’
‘I am that,’ he said. He had a distinctly northern accent.
‘I hope you’re enjoying your stay in Cartersfield.’
‘It’s a nice little place, sir.’
‘Good, good.’ I couldn’t think of anything further to say.
We stood smiling at each other for a moment, then I asked some trivial question about how long the by-pass would take to finish, and he answered it politely. Then the train came in, and he excused himself, explaining that he had come to collect something of urgent importance being sent in the luggage van. As I settled into my seat I decided that he was a thoroughly nice man, and that I did not need to concern myself any more with the problem of Lindy and the lodger. He seemed, I thought, almost too gentle to be a labourer, and certainly highly respectable. And so I forgot about the whole thing again. Miss Spurgeon, though she questioned various other people’s behaviour, never raised the matter after that first time. Lindy was, if anything, early for work at the vicarage. Isobel began to get about more. Soon it was summer.
If the winter had been foul, the summer was almost worse. One expects winter to be awful, but one feels cheated by a wet June and July. People become morose, the atmosphere is one of continual disappointment. ‘Praying for rain, are you, Vicar?’ people would say to me, jokingly, but the joke sounded rather laboured. One can ask God to bless the crops, but one can’t rationally expect Him to answer. Prayers for good weather seem to me an obvious example of that paganism incorporated into Christianity in the early years of the Church. Yet I offered them up Sunday after Sunday, and no doubt vicars did so in every other parish church in the country, but all to no avail. Gloom became widespread. Archie Ransome, a man no one thought would ever die, was buried in May. Towards the end of June there was to be a fête in the Hobsons’ garden, but it was reduced to a huddle of bedraggled women in a barn, on account of rain. Dispirited members of the cricket club could be seen about their ramshackle pavilion, drinking beer with equally dispirited opponents. ‘Even the ducks are getting fed up with it,’ someone said to me one day, and there was an edge of real bitterness in his voice. Work was held up on the by-pass. Originally we had hoped to see it opened by the Lord Lieutenant in time for the August Bank Holiday, but now it seemed that we would be lucky to have it by the middle of September.
On one of the very few fine days we had, at the beginning of July, I went for a walk along the canal and across some fields by an old bridle path. Isobel wasn’t feeling too bright, so I walked alone. As I got away from the town, I looked back at it from the small rise of Long Acre, an old, still open, field, belonging to Ponting. The church spire looked strong enough from there, though I knew how soon it would require repair if it wasn’t going to fall down. There were a few clouds about, but the sun shone quite bravely. It was Saturday afternoon, and I was thinking about the sermon I would write that night. I gazed at the town, and thought how it hardly deserved the name, how it was little more than a large village. Our population is slightly over five thousand. We are not growing at all. We have no industry, no factory, no newspaper. As a market town we have lost custom steadily to bigger and better-equipped towns near by. In fifty years, I dare say, we shall have become completely forgotten by the rest of the world, particularly now that the main road has left us on one side. I cannot help regretting this. Cartersfield’s history has been quiet but not ignoble. There was a skirmish here during the Wars of the Roses. The Civil War saw Cromwell stabling his horses in the church. We welcomed William of Orange. As a rotten borough in the eighteenth century we had the honour of being represented by a distinguished member of Pitt’s Cabinet. There were some Luddite demonstrations here in the 1830s. In a small way we have seen the history of England pass through our streets. And now we seem to be sinking out of sight.
I pondered a little on these things. I thought about the qualities that had made England great, how much they sprang from the solidity, the certainty, of life in such places as Cartersfield. If we are now in our dotage as a great power, Cartersfield, and the thousands of towns and villages like it throughout England, do not care. From the same sources a new greatness will spring, in the course of time, and with God’s will. I was only one in a long succession of vicars of Cartersfield: it was my duty, I felt, in a very real sense to keep things going, not to be distracted by the superficial changes, to hold fast to those things which endure in the English spirit, and to nurture them. It was a good theme for a sermon.
I was meditating on all this as I continued my walk, and was turning over various possible texts in my mind. My head was down, my eyes on the path. The ground was still very damp. There were buttercups among the rain-spoiled hay. When I came to the stile I decided to pause a while, to sit on it and survey the view. I manoeuvred myself into a comfortable position, still ruminating on history and the English spirit, my eyes on the roof-tops of Cartersfield.
I don’t know what it was that attracted my attention, but I suddenly noticed something in the grass just a few yards away. For two or three terrible seconds visions of murders too horrible to mention passed through my mind. For what I saw looked very like a human foot. I sprang from the stile and went to see. It was indeed a foot. In the hay, beaten down by wind and rain, lay Lindy Badham and William Johnson, both stark naked, on a mackintosh. Johnson lay on his back, one foot on top of the other, which is why I saw it. She lay with her arms about him, apparently asleep. His eyes, too, were closed, but one of his hands suddenly moved to brush a fly off his thigh.
I don’t know how long I stood there, too shocked to move. But at last I summoned my feet to move back. I walked on tiptoe till I could no longer see them. Then I hurried away. I don’t think they ever guessed how I knew about their sinning together. I went straight home, and at once told Isobel what I had seen. Isobel was usually a great comfort to me on such occasions.
She was as astonished as I. ‘How could they!’ she kept repeating. ‘How could they!’
‘It’s appalling,’ I said. ‘And to show such a lack of shame. Such a lack of elementary prudence.’
‘Prudence! We can thank God, Raymond, that they were not prudent or we might never have known.’
We looked at each other in silence. Isobel, I noticed, was not looking at all well. She was very pale, and her breathing seemed too shallow and fast. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ I said.
‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I am so shocked that Lindy of all people should do such a thing.’
‘What are we to do?’
‘I really don’t know. It is simply appalling.’
‘I think Mrs Badham should be told at once, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’
The prospect filled me with alarm. Mrs Badham did have, as Isobel had said, great moral authority. She expressed opinions with great force and confidence.
‘I hope she won’t turn Lindy out of the house.’
‘Well, we shall certainly have to turn her out of ours. I shall speak to her first thing in the morning. Then I shall send her to you, Raymond. You must read her a very stern lecture. And we shall have to look for another girl to do the housework.’
‘What will the poor girl do for a living?’
‘That’s no concern of ours, Raymond. I expect she will go on the streets.’
‘Really, Isobel. Besides, she’s not pretty enough.’
‘Raymond, we simply cannot have her here. You are the vicar. You have a standard to set. And I won’t have the girl in the house after this disgraceful conduct.’
Isobel looked iller and iller. Her cheeks were grey, her eyes very dull. I wondered whether I had been unwise to tell her.
‘I shall have to dismiss her from the choir,’ I said.
‘Of course.’
‘But don’t you think it would be better if we kept her on here—where we could keep an eye on her?’
Isobel got out of her chair and spoke with great vehemence. ‘No, I do not. I don’t ever want to see the creature again after tomorrow morning. I shall tell her things then that she’ll never forget.’ She looked more and more ill. ‘The idea of having that whore in my house, Raymond! That Lindy should do such a thing!’ She put one hand out to support herself against the wall, but continued more and more hysterically: ‘A girl I have looked after myself. I have done everything to help her to lead some kind of normal life! With her hideous face. That she should turn against us now!’
She began to sob, great gulpings for air. I tried to calm her. I led her to a chair, but she wouldn’t sit down. She became more and more excited, she began to scream, to shout obscenities against Lindy. Then she collapsed completely. I got her to bed and gave her a tranquillizing pill. Briefly I wondered if I shouldn’t take one myself. Isobel’s sickness had never taken a course like this before. Lindy’s behaviour couldn’t possibly be the only cause. As I have said, fornication was not uncommon in Cartersfield, and we were both used to disappointments such as this. Sometimes we had been still more gravely disappointed. Five years before a young man who had notions of becoming a member of the clergy had to be sent away in a great hurry. And however angelic their appearance on Sundays, we both knew that few choirboys or choirgirls were actually angels on weekdays. Isobel’s hysterics must be due to something much more serious.
I telephoned Dr Nye and asked his advice. He said he would come round at once. When he arrived I explained the exact circumstances of her apparent attack. Isobel was calmer now, but the greyness had given way to an unhealthily high colour. Nye did various obvious things, found her temperature was very high, and then asked me to leave the room with him. Isobel watched us go, and I knew she was afraid. So was I.
‘I have no idea what it is,’ said Nye. ‘But I think it would be better to get her into a hospital.’
‘I’d rather not do that,’ I said. ‘You know I can’t afford a private room, and Isobel would never be happy in a public ward.’
‘I know all that. But you’ve got to face it, Raymond. Isobel is an extremely sick woman. It may even be affecting her mind if she’s really behaving in this strange way. God knows what’s wrong with her, but it’s something serious. I’ll tell you what I can do. I can arrange a small room with only one or two other women in it for her. Just for a few days. Tell her she must go in for observation. I don’t think she should be here, alone half the time.’
‘Do you think she’s going mad?’
‘No, no. It’s simply a fever. Her temperature is a hundred and four, you know. That’s dangerously high. I’ll send an ambulance.’
‘I’ll go and tell her.’
‘And by the way,’ said Nye, picking up his bag, ‘you needn’t worry about Lindy Badham. I fitted her with a device some months ago.’
For a moment I didn’t see what he meant. Then I said: ‘But she’s not married.’
‘My dear Raymond,’ said Nye, ‘it is not my duty as a doctor to inquire into the legal status of all the girls who come to me asking for obvious necessities.’
‘I think you should have told me.’
‘I have already broken the code of my profession in telling you now. The ambulance will be round in about half an hour, I hope.’
He saw himself out, and I went and told Isobel that she was to go into hospital for observation. She looked at me out of her fever and said with great calmness: ‘I’m going to die. I know I’m going to die. That girl has killed me.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Isobel,’ I said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘It’s simply for observation. Nye says your temperature is extremely high.’
‘Very well,’ she said, smiling slightly. ‘But I know I am going to die.’
She directed me to pack a small bag for her. Since her illness had begun we had used separate bedrooms and she had to tell me which drawers everything was in. From time to time she asked me to show her some garment she didn’t want to take with her, but which she wanted to see. ‘I am going to die,’ she repeated again and again, always with that slight smile. ‘That girl has killed me.’
‘Listen, Isobel. You simply have a high temperature. You are not going to die.’
‘Oh yes, I am. We all are. Everyone dies in the end.’
I became seriously worried that her mind might indeed be affected. I felt very relieved when the ambulance came. I went with her to the hospital and saw her into bed. Nye put her under sedation immediately.
‘She’s not going to die, whatever she may think,’ said Nye. ‘Not yet, anyway, unless I’m very much mistaken. I’ve always thought that she probably has milk fever or one of those things. But I must tell you, Raymond, that I don’t think that’s all she’s got.’
‘Well?’
‘The tests may still be negative, but it looks to me like a clear case of cancer. I haven’t told you before, because it’s not certain.’
‘I have suspected it myself.’
‘Her present condition isn’t caused by cancer, of course. But if she has it it won’t make things any better.’
‘Yes.’ I had a momentary vision of my beloved wife as a body falling apart with various diseases. I shuddered.
‘Has Isobel ever had malaria? Anything like that?’
‘No, never. Her sister and nephew have both had it.’
‘It can’t be that, then. I don’t know.’
Next day was Sunday, and for the first time in my life I did not write a new sermon but repeated an old one. Miss Spurgeon looked suspicious but said nothing. At the hospital the nurses told me that Isobel kept talking about someone called Lindy. Nye suggested that I dismiss the girl, if that was what I was going to do, and tell Isobel I’d done so in one of her moments of calm.
I wasn’t at all sure that I was doing the right thing when I summoned Lindy to my study next morning. But events had made me their puppet, I felt, and I had no choice but to dismiss her.
‘It has come to my notice, Lindy, that you have been behaving—badly—with Mr Johnson. I’m afraid I cannot possibly continue to employ you.’
She looked at me quite blankly.
‘You know very well what I mean, Lindy. Fornication is a very serious sin.’
She smiled feebly and blushed. ‘But I haven’t, sir.’
‘That is a lie, Lindy. Don’t make things still worse by telling me lies. I happen to know that you and Johnson are guilty of fornication. In his case adultery, too. It is a very serious matter.’
She blinked at me, but did not look in the least put out. If anything she looked smug.
‘Do you realize what I am saying, Lindy? Your conduct is absolutely disgraceful. Here are a month’s wages. And I may as well warn you now that I am going to tell your mother.’
Lindy began to sniffle. But she took the envelope and fingered it. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘It’s not enough to be sorry, Lindy. You don’t seem to be in the least repentant. Don’t you know that you have committed a grave sin?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The sniffles continued, but they were not, I thought, very convincing.
‘And, besides that, I cannot tell you how disappointed both Mrs Henderson and I feel. We have done a great deal for you, Lindy, and you have let us down very badly.’
‘I’m sorry, sir, really I am.’
‘I don’t believe you’re in the least sorry. Will you promise me that this will never happen again?’
She stopped sniffling and looked up at me. ‘I don’t know, sir. He’s so kind.’
‘Really, Lindy, this is too much. Have you no sense of decency? Mr Johnson is a married man. Have you thought of the misery you are causing his wife?’
‘No, sir.’
I gave up. She simply wasn’t listening to me. Or, rather, she was listening to my words, but paying no attention at all to my meaning. I had a moment of depression, wondering how many of my parishioners ever understood a word of my sermons, not because they were difficult sermons but because, if Lindy was any guide, they chose to ignore them.
‘I shall not require your services any longer in the choir, Lindy. I can’t tell you how disgusted I am by your apparently total lack of moral sense. You, who have been such a useful person in the community, who have done so much for the church, and for me, too. I am very disappointed indeed.’
Lindy did not say anything at all. She wiped away her perfunctory tears and went home. She had seemed, I thought, basically indifferent to everything I had said. I dare say I wasn’t very impressive that morning, as a matter of fact. But I had more important things on my mind.
That afternoon, however, I went as I had promised to see Lindy’s mother.
‘Hello,’ she said, opening the door.
‘I wonder if I might have a few words with you, Mrs Badham.’
‘Come in, then, sir.’
I followed behind the bottom Isobel had thought so unpinchable into a dark parlour, full of old furniture and the smell of disuse. There were lace curtains at the windows.
‘It’s about Lindy, I dare say,’ said Mrs Badham, crossing her massive arms.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Well?’ She looked formidable indeed.
‘I have been obliged to discharge Lindy, Mrs Badham. You may not know that she and Mr Johnson, your lodger, are carrying on an affair together.’
‘I know that,’ said Mrs Badham.
I was taken aback. ‘You know? And you’ve done nothing about it?’
‘What should I have done, sir, may I ask?’
‘You should have stopped it, Mrs Badham. I am very shocked to hear you speak so calmly about it.’
‘Well, sir, I don’t see that I should have stopped it.’
‘But Mrs Badham, Lindy is your daughter. What kind of a reputation do you think this will get her? Do you want her to be known as a—as a prostitute?’
‘Don’t you say that, now,’ said Mrs Badham. ‘Lindy’s a good girl, and I won’t have anyone using words like that about her. I don’t care who it is.’
‘How can you call her good when you know what she’s been doing? It’s a disgrace.’
‘Now you listen to me, Vicar.’ Mrs Badham spoke with her usual authority. She emphasized her points by wagging her whole forearm at me. ‘What chance to lead a decent life do you think Lindy has? She’s terrible-looking. None of the boys here would ever look at her, would they? What I say is, this is her one chance, and she’s right to take it.’
‘But, Mrs Badham, it’s immoral.’
‘Oh, immoral,’ she said with a sweeping gesture. ‘I dare say it is. But there’s a lot worse things going on in the world than Lindy and Bill going to bed together.’
‘That may be true in a sense, Mrs Badham, but it’s not the point. Lindy’s behaviour is a disgrace, and you seem to be condoning it. As her mother you should know better.’
‘D’you think I want Lindy getting a bad name?’ she said. ‘Of course I don’t. I wouldn’t let her carry on with anyone, you know. Bill’s a good man.’
‘But he’s married.’
‘So much the better. No one would ever want to marry Lindy, now, would they? There’s no point in giving her false hopes.’
‘But what of Mr Johnson’s wife?’
‘There’s no reason she should know about it, is there?’
It was a warning as well as a hint. I continued to argue for several minutes, but Mrs Badham was immovable. She was sure she was right, she was not interested in what the world might think, she was scornful that God could disapprove of her. I went away deeply disturbed. There seemed to be no sense of morality in her at all. Isobel had called her ‘morally huge’ but to me she seemed immorally a giantess. Yet, as I thought about it, it seemed to me that in a sense she was unanswerable. If one were to live in a non-Christian morality her position was certainly tenable, and she obviously did live in such a morality. I felt that I was a great failure if so loyal and dutiful a girl as Lindy remained a pagan at heart. The Christian values were no more than a superficial veneer on the life of Cartersfield.
Isobel’s fever remained high for several days, and for some time she was on the danger list, though she raved about other things after I had told her that I had sacked Lindy and seen her mother. Altogether it was an awful summer. Whenever I saw Lindy or Mrs Badham or Johnson I felt obliged to cross the road. To my intense irritation Johnson would sometimes touch his cap as he passed. I employed a new girl to look after the house, but she was most unsatisfactory.
Suddenly, in October, our months of prayer were answered. The nights were chilly, but we had a succession of perfectly lovely days, hazy but warm, and England suddenly seemed unbearably beautiful again, as it so often does after one has given up all hope. The by-pass was finished. Johnson went home to the north, or to another job and another Lindy—I did not inquire which, though I suspect the latter. Isobel came home again, and got so much better that she could laugh about herself raving that she was going to die. But she was going to die. It was cancer without any doubt now, and though it was kept from her I think she knew it herself. I would find her standing abstractedly in the middle of a room, lost in thought, or going round the house touching various objects, and I could easily guess what she was thinking.
One day she brought me tea in my study and said: ‘Guess who I met in the street.’
‘No. Lindy Badham. I was thinking that perhaps it would be right to take her back now that that man has gone.’
‘But, Isobel, you objected so strongly.’
‘I know I did, dear, and I was right in a way. But one shouldn’t remain unforgiving. Does she have any kind of job at the moment?’
‘I really don’t know.’
‘She needs one. She’s going to have a baby.’
‘No!’ I was really shocked.
‘She’ll need the money while she can get it, dear.’
So we took Lindy back again, though she showed as little emotion at being taken back into the fold as she had at being dismissed from it. But I drew the line at taking her back into the choir. It seemed to me that it was hardly setting an example to have a girl pregnant with an illegitimate child working in a vicar’s house, and really carrying charitableness too far. But I wished to give Isobel what I could in her last months, and I made the sacrifice of principle without a whisper from my conscience, though with several heated words from Miss Spurgeon. It gave me not a little pleasure to irritate that old maid.
One day I asked Lindy why she had been so careless.
‘Careless?’ she said.
‘In having a child.’
‘I wanted to have one,’ she said, looking as ugly and blank as ever. There didn’t seem to be anything at all for me to say.
After Christmas Isobel hardly ever left her bed. In February Lindy’s child was born. It was the usual healthy bawling creature that Cartersfield girls produce, a boy, and called William Johnson. It was with some difficulty that I persuaded Lindy not to call him simply Bill. Against a good many principles I christened him in March. Isobel urged it. She even became rather fond of the baby, making Lindy bring it with her in the mornings, for she was soon back at work with us. It was one of Isobel’s last wishes. She died shortly after Easter.
The end, so long expected, came as a release for her, as people say, but it was a great blow to me. Isobel had stood with me for over twenty years, and I grieved for her for many months. My personal loss was combined with a great sense of failure, a failure of which the presence of Lindy’s baby in my own house was symbolic. For some time I confined myself to routine work and reading, a pleasure I had denied myself for many years. I lived mostly in my study. One of my few solaces, curiously, was hearing the gurgles and screams of William Johnson. I was, after all, only one in a succession of vicars, and no doubt many of my predecessors had gone through similar periods of despondency and known exactly the same sense of failure when they heard the cries of newly born bastards. Indeed, my scanty researches into the past seem to show that at least one early vicar of Cartersfield had some illegitimate children of his own.
Sometimes Mrs Badham would come to collect Lindy after lunch, and I would hear her authoritative voice trying to coo over the baby. Then all three would parade proudly down the High Street, William in an old pram, Lindy pushing, Mrs Badham like a policewoman beside them. It was a spectacle which gave me much pleasure, though of course I could not approve it conscientiously. But my conscience tended to be quiet.
Miss Spurgeon enjoyed a couple of Sundays’ protesting absence from church after William Johnson’s christening, but after a few months she was gossiping with as much malice and inaccuracy as ever, though with a new gleam in her eye that meant, unmistakably, ‘I told you so’. However, I gave her as little credence as before, and our brushes continued to sharpen both our spirits.
It is autumn as I write, and I feel particularly strongly tonight that I was right that day, which now seems a long time ago, when I felt that my duty was to the things that are traditional to Cartersfield and to the English spirit. There is, after all, no telling what William Johnson may not grow up to be.