A Talent For Destruction (14 page)

‘But what was the girl's name?' said Tait impatiently.

‘His Mum's deaf, and didn't ever catch it. I wouldn't be surprised if the love affair was mostly in Michael's imagination. He was a pathetic little sod, still living at home, still doing the same clerical job he'd had ever since he left school, too shy and too much of a stammerer to attract girls.'

‘But did you say that this girl was a foreign student at Yarchester?' asked Quantrill. He turned to Tait. ‘I suppose it couldn't have been –?'

‘I think it was,' said Tait, his voice tight and eager. ‘He was at the Rectory when I met Janey Rolph. He was obviously besotted by her, hanging about hoping for a look or a kind word. Not that she seemed to give him any encouragement, but as Wigby says it could have been all in his mind. It certainly fits as far as timing is concerned. I know that Janey was due to leave this country at the end of July. Michael Dade killed himself in October. That means he spent three months waiting and hoping to hear from her before he gave up. Yes, it fits.'

‘Holy cow,' said the Chief Inspector slowly, though without attempting his son's impression of an Australian accent. ‘So one young man who visited the Rectory last year has died in unexplained circumstances, another has committed suicide. The parson and his wife are feeling and acting guilty, their friend Reynolds is obviously supporting them, Gillian's father is being as obstructive as they are – and there's not a damn thing we can do about it because we've no idea what really happened. What in heaven's name
did
go on at that Rectory last summer?'

Gillian Ainger had been married for nearly sixteen years, and during the whole of that time she had never once thought to ask herself whether her marriage was happy. Over the years she had come to have increasingly frequent private doubts about her role as a parson's wife, and about the faith she professed, but none at all about her husband. Quite simply, she loved him.

That he – handsome, strong, clever, much admired – should choose to marry her rather than a prettier, livelier girl was for Gillian a continuing source of wonder. They had met as students at King's College, London. Robin Ainger, then twenty-three, was completing a post-graduate theological course, and Gillian had just begun her pre-clinical medical training. She was eighteen. She knew herself to be shy and plain, and she couldn't understand why Robin sought her company in preference to that of the more attractive girls who vied for his attention. Having gone to university with no thought, let alone expectation, of acquiring anything other than her medical qualifications, she was dazzled to find herself, a year later, with a newly ordained parson for a husband.

It was idealism that had made her choose medicine as a career, but she gave up her course without any misgivings in order to accompany Robin when he went as curate to a large Hertfordshire parish. She had never been more than conventionally religious, but love, coming to her as a revelation, had so heightened her perceptions and liberated her senses that it seemed to her that it must, in its widest interpretation as the gospel of Christianity, be the answer to everything. Accordingly she didn't abandon her idealism, but merely changed its course. She had always wanted to do something worthy with her life, and helping Robin with his cure of souls seemed to her a vocation every bit as valid as devoting herself to the cure of bodies.

‘You'll make an ideal parson's wife,' Robin had assured her when at first she voiced her doubts, and she had gradually come to believe that this must be true. Why else should he want to marry her?

‘Because I love you, of course.'

‘But
why
do you love me, Robin?'

‘Because you're good and kind and sweet … and impossibly innocent. You need someone to look after you.'

That was what he believed. But his unacknowledged motive in marrying her, rather than one of the pretty girls who clustered round him like wasps round a jampot, was in fact more fundamental. Robin Ainger was afraid of wasps.

Pretty girls – competitive, insistent, demanding girls – terrified him. His mother had spoiled him, and had encouraged a self-centredness that made it essential for him to marry someone who would bolster his feeling of superiority, and at the same time cosset and protect him. Young as she was, Gillian made a perfect mother-substitute, and Robin loved her for it; not so much for herself, as for herself in relation to him.

But he was not a man who attempted any self-analysis, and so this aspect of his relationship with Gillian escaped him. Instead, he prided himself that in choosing her he had looked beyond superficialities and recognized Gillian's true worth. This made him feel strong and protective. He failed to acknowledge, because he failed to realize, how much he needed her and depended on her. And Gillian, enslaved by his good looks and grateful for his love, prepared to devote her life to helping him in his work without understanding that she was by far the stronger and abler of the two.

The first twelve years of their marriage were happy, chiefly because they instinctively avoided introspection and discussion. They were content simply to live and work together, moving from one benefice to a better as the opportunity arose. Their only disappointment in those years was the non-appearance of children, but their sorrow was more expressed than real: Gillian was quite busy enough coping with Robin, and the moves, and parish affairs, without having babies; and Robin wanted no rivals for her attention.

The demands of a large parish were greater than either of them had realized. Robin, whose father was a scholar by inclination, had been brought up in a quiet country rectory. No scholar himself, and anxious for preferment, he had deliberately sought busier and more important benefices without at first appreciating how total his dedication would have to be. And Gillian, anxious as she was to involve herself, was alarmed to find that as the parson's wife she became in effect parish property. She had not expected to be so universally recognized, so much observed and discussed, so frequently in demand and yet so often criticized.

At first, this front-line feeling strengthened their marriage. After twelve years they were still very much a partnership; still prepared, whenever the pressures became too great, to say ‘Drat the lot of them!' and sneak out of the parish like truant schoolchildren for a day off. Occasionally they would lock the doors, take the telephone receiver off its rest, and go to bed for an hour or two in the afternoon. There were, they agreed, so many disadvantages about working from home that they might as well make the most of the benefits.

But by the time they made their fourth move, to Breckham Market, their sense of partnership had begun to disintegrate. Had they been able to admit their personal difficulties and discuss them, instead of confining their conversation to domestic and parish affairs, they might have been able to help each other. As it was, they each tried to find their own solution without reference to the other.

For Robin Ainger, the problem was his faith. He had gone into the church not because of any sense of vocation but because his father and grandfather had been clergymen. It was the only way of life he knew. He had assumed without question that he had faith, but over the years it had diminished until it hardly existed at all. The words and phrases he uttered in church became increasingly meaningless to him.

The guilt this occasioned made him feel like a criminal. His instinctive response was concealment. He refused to think, let alone talk to his wife, about his loss of faith. The church was his livelihood and he enjoyed the status it gave him; as long as he continued to go through the motions, no one needed to know that he no longer believed in what he was saying.

And so he threw himself into the life of the parish and town, deliberately exhausting himself with overwork so as to avoid the leisure for thought. As for the church services, he got through them by putting increasing emphasis on form rather than content. While most churchmen were busily trying to make services more relevant by adopting modern forms of worship, Robin Ainger clung to the Authorized Version of the Bible and to the Book of Common Prayer. And while many believers, clerical and lay, spoke out in favour of allowing divorcees to remarry in church, Robin ducked the issue by adhering rigidly to the traditional Anglican discipline that Christian marriage is for life.

But while he expatiated on the sanctity of marriage, and believed himself to be setting a domestic example to his flock, his wife felt increasingly isolated. Her own religious faith, so radiant when she first married, had dimmed in a way that she felt to be totally unacceptable in a parson's wife, and she knew no method of reviving it. Going to church and listening to Robin's confident sonority made her feel wretchedly guilty. She longed to opt out, but that was impossible; the parish would be scandalized.

For herself, she wouldn't have cared. Her idealism had turned to disillusionment. Gillian was sick of the parish. Sick of the Mothers' Union and the Young Wives and the Sunday School, of arranging the flower-arrangers and organizing choir treats, of inspiring fund-raising events and sorting out catering problems. Sick of petty controversies, of bickering, and of the appallingly un-Christian lack of charity manifested by some of the most faithful members of the congregation. Sick of the procession of callers at the Rectory, of the sound of the telephone bell, of the absence of privacy.

But she had to keep going, because of Robin. He was working so hard that she couldn't worry him with her personal problems and uncertainties, let alone lay any extra burdens on him by neglecting her parish duties. After all, she loved him.

It was, though, becoming increasingly difficult to talk to him. Tiredness made Robin irritable, and when he was irritable he would slap down any attempt she made at conversation, ridiculing her into silence. Disagreement infuriated him. She did not side with him on a number of issues – divorce, for one – but she knew that he resented any intervention in what he believed to be his province, and so she kept quiet. The confidence that, over the years, she had of necessity acquired in dealing with parishioners did not extend to her relationship with her husband. She tried to avert his displeasure by being apologetic, not realizing that this only made him more overbearing.

And the trouble was that she had no one else to talk to. She knew scores of people in Breckham Market, but because she was the wife of the Rector there wasn't a single person in whose company she felt she could let her hair down. Gillian Ainger was intolerably lonely.

In the sixteenth year of her marriage, she could bear the isolation no longer. She made up her mind that – in defiance of her husband if necessary – she would set about finding herself some friends.

‘But why Yarchester? Why waste petrol by going all that way? There are plenty of evening classes you can join here in Breckham Market.'

‘Yes, I know … but that's just the trouble, Robin, don't you see? I feel that I want to get away from the parish sometimes.'

‘Do you think that I don't feel the same?' he demanded. ‘I'd be only too glad to get away for one evening a week, if I could spare the time.' He sliced the top off his breakfast boiled egg. ‘Try one of the local classes,' he instructed her. He poked with his spoon at the semi-liquid contents of the eggshell. ‘Cookery or something.'

‘Isn't it done enough? Oh, I'm sorry, Robin. I'll boil you another –'

‘Never mind. Leave it, for goodness'sake, I'll swallow it somehow.

Your father will be down in a minute and I want to have at least one meal a day in peace.'

The habit of placating her husband had become so deeply ingrained that at any time before this morning Gillian would have taken his hint and said no more. Now, although her heart was beating faster than usual, she persisted.

‘The thing is, you see, that I want to do sculpture and there are no classes for it at Breckham. I started it when we lived in Bedford, don't you remember? I modelled a head, and I've still got all the materials up in the attic –'

He looked up irritably. ‘The circumstances then were different. We were only ten minutes'walk from the art school. Going to Yarchester would take all evening – and supposing I want the car?'

‘The sculpture classes are on Tuesdays. You don't use the car then because you're taking confirmation classes here at the Rectory.'

Robin Ainger glared at his wife, his irritation mounting. They had almost always spent their leisure time together, and he resented her sudden bid for independence. ‘You've got this all planned, haven't you?' he accused her.

She went pink. ‘I've tried to anticipate the possible snags, that's all. I don't want to make things difficult for you.'

‘What about your father, then? What am I supposed to do with him while you're gadding about in Yarchester?'

‘He's no trouble in the evenings, as long as you let him watch his favourite television programmes. I can leave a cold supper for you both –'

‘Thanks very much.'

‘– or I could cook you a high tea before I go, scrambled eggs or something. Whatever you like, Robin. Only you won't mind if I go to these classes, will you?'

His handsome face was dark with annoyance. ‘Frankly, Gillian, I'd have thought you could find enough to do here without wasting time and money by going to Yarchester to play about with clay.'

He would have been a great deal angrier, Gillian reflected guiltily, had he known her real reason for wanting to go to Yarchester. She could hardly believe that he didn't know, because she was planning what he – and she – regularly counselled lonely parishioners to do. Get out more, they both advised: if you want to meet people, the best way to do it is to join a club or take up a hobby.

She had often wondered, as she trotted out the conventional wisdom, whether in fact it ever worked on any but the most superficial level. Did the exchange of platitudes that passed for conversation at all the Breckham clubs, from the Mothers and Toddlers to the Over-Sixties, really make lonely people feel befriended, or did it merely emphasize their sense of isolation? And could communal participation in yoga or cookery or clay modelling possibly be expected to ensure a meeting of kindred spirits?