Last Act of All (3 page)

It
was, on the face of it, a simple enough remark, but it made his wife look up sharply from the chicken stew.

‘
Is Stephanie back?’ she asked, ladling a heaped spoonful on to his plate.

‘
Well, a taxi came in earlier, so I reckon that was most likely her coming home from that posh school. Good news for you, eh Jim?’

His
sister shot him a sardonic look, as the young man flushed a dusky crimson.

‘
Have a heart, Dad, she’s only a kid. It’s the horses that are the attraction, not me.’

‘
Oh, I can well believe that she prefers the horses, but what about you?’ Sally, at eighteen, always had the upper hand in any exchange with her elder brother. ‘Mum, not that much for me! You’re always trying to feed me as if I were baling hay instead of tapping a word processor.’

‘
That’s no reason not to eat properly. We’ll have no slimming nonsense in this house.’ Wagstaff’s response was automatic, but now that his daughter had attracted his attention, his heavy brows came down.

‘
And where were you last night anyway, miss? I didn’t get you that little car so you could come in at all hours.’

Sally
was an attractive girl with her father’s fair hair and high colouring, but her jawline was as squarely determined as his, and now she looked mulish.

‘
Just out,’ she said, meeting George glare for glare.

Dora,
dark and quiet-mannered like her son, hurried as usual to intervene.

‘
That’s no way to speak to your father, Sally. And you might as well tell us, before we hear it in the village.’

The
girl banged her fists on the table. ‘Why does anyone live in this place?’ she cried in fury, then, ‘Oh, all right, if you really want to know. I went out with Len Whitton.’

Jim,
who had taken no part in the conversation, winced. His father’s colouring, heightened already, became a suffused purple, and his bright blue eyes bulged.

‘
Len Whitton!’ he roared, bringing both huge fists down in exactly the same movement as his daughter’s, but shaking the thick pine board so that the terrier, startled, set up a frenzied yapping. ‘You’ve been told before, you’re to have no truck with the village lads. And Len Whitton! By god, if you were a bit younger I’d set to and put you over my knee.’

Tears
springing to her eyes, Sally pushed away her untouched plate and sprang to her feet.

‘
You’re such a snob!’ she cried hotly. ‘Oh, it’s all right for Jim to fancy Stephanie Fielding, because she’s posh and talks proper. But I’ll make friends with who I like – I don’t care what you say.’

‘
Len Whitton’s bad news, Sal,’ Jim said gravely.

She
coloured, but went on. ‘Len Whitton, Will Ede, Dave Thomas – it’s all the same to Dad, whatever they’re like. Just because their parents are working class and we’re farmers, even if we haven’t got our own—’

‘
That’s quite enough, Sally,’ said Dora in the tone that had always meant business. ‘We’re prepared to make some allowances for your tantrums, just the way we did when you were two years old, but you weren’t allowed to be plain nasty then, and you needn’t think you’re going to get away with being nasty now.’

For
a second the girl met her mother’s eyes rebelliously, then, bursting into tears, whirled round and ran out.

Jim
rose. ‘I’ll go after her, see if I can talk some sense into her.’

His
mother, sighing, took his plate over to the Aga to keep warm. George was struggling for control.

‘
Len Whitton!’ he said at last, through clenched teeth. ‘If he harms a hair of her head, I’ll — I’ll kill him!’

Dora
gave him a straight look. ‘Oh, hasn’t there been enough trouble yet for your taste? George, your temper’s going to kill you, never mind anyone else.

‘
Sally’s young still. She’s not taken with Len, and she’ll have done with him soon enough if you don’t go forcing her to carry on, out of defiance. Just let things be.’

Wagstaff
glowered like one of his own bullocks. ‘You wouldn’t want to see her marrying into the village, any more than I would.’

She
sighed again. ‘No, of course I wouldn’t.’ She sat down once more, looking at her cooling plateful without enthusiasm, then said slowly, ‘There’s a bit of a funny mood in the village, the last couple of days, George, have you noticed?’

He
shot her a look from under furrowed brows, but it wasn’t anger she saw there now.

She
had seen that look in the eyes of a stable cat, hunted by the farm dogs. Frightened it might be, but it had been ready to sell its life dear.

In
that moment she realized, for the first time in her life, what they meant when they said, ‘My blood ran cold.’

*

‘Do you know, that woman doesn’t even seem to have heard of recycled loo paper?’

Marcia
Farrell dumped a packet of luridly pink toilet rolls, along with a small jar of jelly marmalade, on to the vicarage kitchen table.

‘And then she said, pointedly, “And will that be
all
, madam?” as if she expected me to pay the fancy prices she charges for the whole of my weekly shop.’

The
vicar, wearing a frayed grey wool cardigan over his clerical shirt and collar, was sitting beside the stove which was failing to heat the draughty, stone-flagged vicarage kitchen. His study was even colder, so he had brought through a pile of books in the so far unrealized hope that they might provide fresh inspiration for Sunday’s sermon.

‘
I suppose she doesn’t have the advantage the big supermarkets have,’ he felt obliged to suggest.

His
wife snorted. ‘They somehow managed to go to Mallorca last year on their profits. And we don’t exactly have the advantage of the salaries other people have. Or even the sort of vicarage that you can heat, or keep clean.’ Her eyes raked the shabby, untidy room disparagingly.

Peter
Farrell winced. He was morbidly sensitive to the sufferings of his wife, who was not an instinctive home-maker, with the old and inconvenient vicarage. The church had tried unsuccessfully to sell it, handicapped by its unattractive nature and the cost of putting right the defects which made the months of November to March almost intolerable.

He
depended so totally on her, on the robustness of her character and her faith, to make up for the shrinking delicacy of his own. It was disheartening that the bishop had not found him a charge where Marcia’s interest in women’s groups and poverty initiatives would be appreciated, and now he felt selfish for having condemned her to being underused, and worse, resented, purely to indulge his vocation.

It
might have been different, if he could convince himself that his was a successful ministry, but in Radnesfield he could never feel that modern Christianity had eradicated another, more ancient creed. And increasingly, of late, he had felt himself powerless against the stealthy advance of evil. He could never tell Marcia, but at times the wings of darkness seemed to brush his own face.

Marcia
had put the kettle on and was continuing her saga. ‘Then she made a fuss about Nathan, when he knocked over some stupid tins, and you know how sensitive poor little Nat is! I nearly lost my temper, but I was given grace just to smile at her and say, “Suffer the little children, Mrs Ede!”’

Her
husband smiled weakly. Oh, he loved his children, of course — that went without saying — but sometimes it did seem to him that suffering was the
mot
juste
. Marcia was wonderful with them, simply wonderful, encouraging them to express themselves, and be real individuals, but without her, he would be totally lost. His face grew sombre at the memory of that nightmare day, Marcia broken and sobbing and threatening to walk out on them all. It had been the death of her hope, so callously engendered by that — he swallowed the word, one which vicars shouldn’t even think of — by Neville Fielding...

Almost
as if she had followed his train of thought, Marcia went on, spooning decaffeinated coffee into Oxfam mugs, ‘I noticed Edward Ridley driving out early, presumably to get Helena. I asked Mrs Ede if she knew if she was getting out this morning, and I’m sure she knew, but all she said was, “I really couldn’t say, I’m sure.” Very helpful!’

‘
Well, you know how they hate being questioned—’

‘
Oh, I know that, all right! You could hardly live in this village for five years without realizing that if you so much as ask them how they are, you get a metaphorical slap in the face. How they expect you to do your job unless they tell you the problems, I don’t know.

‘
Though of course, doing what’s right when it’s easy isn’t really a challenge, is it?’

Then
a frown darkened her mechanical smile. ‘But I must say, it is hard to be treated as a vulgar gossip, when I’m doing my best to help with your pastoral duties. Because if Helena is coming home, you should go up and see her immediately.’

He
became visibly agitated. ‘Oh – oh no, surely not! They’ve asked us to go on Saturday, and at first they’ll want some peace and privacy – they won’t want me to intrude—’

‘
Intrude? Peter, how can her priest
intrude
? That’s like suggesting that a doctor intrudes at the scene of an accident! This is a spiritual emergency, Peter – she must have a desperate need to lay down that burden of sin and guilt! Seeing her at the party will hardly meet the case, now will it?’

She
smiled at him rallyingly, and noticed, with irritation, that he had started that unconscious wringing of his hands again. ‘So misguided – so unwise—’ he muttered.

‘
Well, you could say that a party shows a more frivolous attitude than one might hope – it’s not one of the more usual manifestations of repentance, is it?’ She laughed, but getting no response, went on, ‘Still, being charitable, it may be they see this as a way of putting the whole thing behind her—’

‘
Behind her!’ The words burst from him. ‘How can anyone be foolish enough to think that this will put it behind her? It’s starting something – it’s got everything stirred up again, and you can feel how uneasy people are. So much evil, so many of us drawn to sin! And now it’s all coming to the surface, all over again, like some foul, loathsome —’Stumbling into incoherence, he broke off.

Marcia,
pouring boiling water into the mugs, stopped in astonishment, and some dismay. Impervious to atmosphere herself, she considered her husband’s sensitivity dangerous, and even a little self-indulgent.

She
pursed her lips, then said, with forced cheerfulness, ‘Dear me! You are getting yourself into a state. Look, I’ve just made you a nice cup of coffee—’

He
stared at her wildly. ‘I’m going across to the church,’ he said, and fled.

She
looked after him with a sigh. He took refuge in the church more and more often these days, and while naturally she would be the very last to suggest he shouldn’t, there were times when it might be more constructive to go out and tackle problems head on. She found herself contemplating, not for the first time, the prospects opening up with the ordination of women.

*

She looked so
awful
, that was the thing. And that horrendous artificial voice! Stephanie pulled a battered pack of forbidden cigarettes from her overnight bag and lit one.

She
had managed to say, ‘Hello, Mum,’ while Edward wittered on, trying to paper over the cracks. Then she had mumbled something about having unpacking to do, and fled.

The
puffing was soothing, even if she hadn’t mastered inhaling yet, and wasn’t sure if she liked it much. She needed to feel laid-back and adult, though, and this helped.

She
had almost convinced herself she hated her mother. But she didn’t want to hate her. She wanted to run into her arms, and be safe, and loved, and comfortable, like it had been before her mother became what she couldn’t believe she was, before that dreadful night when she had stolen the newspaper and read that her mother was pleading guilty. She’d insisted she never wanted to see her again, but nine months, when you are fourteen, is a long time.

It
had been wonderful when she was little. Daddy was so much handsomer and more exciting than other fathers, and spoiled her rotten and took her to places where none of her friends had been. He was unpredictable, of course, and when he was cross you felt sick inside, but once he was in a good mood again it was like the sun coming out on a dull day, and he would make Mummy laugh, and they would all be happy together.

Naturally,
as you grew up you stopped thinking your parents were so terrific. You wanted to hang out with your own friends, and then, somehow, Daddy changed.

She
noticed the change around the time they came to Radnesfield. Sometimes she felt it must have a curse — hateful, ugly, unfriendly little place, where people didn’t care about you at all.