The Bad Samaritan

Part I: Rosemary

Chapter One: A Loss

Chapter Two: A Friend

Chapter Three: People Talking

Chapter Four: Homecoming

Chapter Five: The Other Cheek

Chapter Six: Place of Safety

Chapter Seven: Whispering Campaign

Chapter Eight: Party Going

Chapter Nine: An End and a Beginning

Part II: Charlie

Chapter Ten: Local Body

Chapter Eleven: The Little Wife

Chapter Twelve: Liars

Chapter Thirteen: Partners

Chapter Fourteen: Terrible Good Cause

Chapter Fifteen: Talking about Rosemary

Chapter Sixteen: Scenarios

Part III: Dorothy

Chapter Seventeen: Getting at the Truth

Chapter Eighteen: Envoi

For
Margaret Burton,
who knows the problems

R
osemary Sheffield backed her husband's car out of the garage and through the gates, then parked it by the side of the road pointing in the direction of St Saviour's. She got out, blinking in the early spring sunshine. Feeling rather silly she dabbed with a cloth at the door handles. For some reason she could not fathom, her husband was fussy about the appearance of his car when he went off to take service. It was presumably a form of vanity, since in other respects he had no illusions about cleanliness being next to godliness. Anyway, there it was waiting for him: clean, sleek and shining.

Her husband sailed out, clerical collar gleaming white over pale grey, folder clutched in his hand. From time to time the folder exploded, scattering all over the driveway, and when that happened, and they scrabbled together on the driveway bumping heads, Rosemary had to tell herself she wouldn't have wanted an orderly husband. Today the folder remained intact. Her husband pecked her on the cheek.

“I'll be there tonight, Paul,” Rosemary said, and he nodded, put the car into gear and drove smoothly away. He loves that car,
Rosemary thought, though without any feeling of jealousy. The sun felt warm on her cheek, wonderful after the long, bleak winter months. She felt she ought to go indoors and get down to things, particularly as she had told Paul how busy she was. Instead, relishing the clear morning light, she crossed the road on to the grassy open spaces of Herrick Park.

The turf felt good under her thin-soled shoes. There were the usual dog-walkers, and she thought again it was time to get another dog: getting a puppy immediately after Bo'sun had died had seemed wrong to her, a sort of unfaithfulness, though everyone had said it was the only way to get over her grief. She still missed him, missed their walks and games together. If it had happened when the children were still young, there would have been more to take her mind off it. She looked over to the tennis courts, where two students were playing a strenuous, rough and ready game. In the distance she saw one of the usual Sunday morning joggers approaching.

And suddenly, in the warmth, surrounded by shimmering light, she felt something lift from her, leave her. It was as if a worry had suddenly evaporated—she could almost physically feel herself being rid of it. She said to herself: “I do not believe.” There was no need to add to the sentence. There was nothing to add. Suddenly she knew that she no longer believed. She had lost her faith. She stood there feeling free and happy—feeling, indeed, almost lightheaded. She no longer believed in God: not the Christian God, not any God. She felt she ought to feel desolate, deprived, but she didn't: she felt liberated, joyful, full of the most enormous potential. The road ahead of her seemed suddenly wider, taking her through an entirely different landscape.

The jogger approached down the path from the woods. It was a young black man she had seen often in the park. She raised her hand and he raised his in return. As he passed her she was conscious
that he was looking at her curiously. She ought to feel bad about that: clergymen's wives should not do anything that made people look at them curiously. But she did not turn and go back into the house. She stood there in the godless sun, savouring her new freedom.

When she thought about it later in the morning, going about her accumulation of tasks, she realised that her loss of faith could not have come suddenly, as it had seemed. It must have been led up to, must have been the culmination of a process involving worries, niggling doubts, shifts in patterns of thinking. But, puzzle as she might, she could not remember any occasion when doubt had tried to force a way into her mind and had been repressed. There had been no incident—no accident or massacre, no personal loss—where she had questioned whether a benign God would allow such a thing to happen. So then and later Rosemary saw her loss of faith as a sudden thing, a quite unexpected
lifting
, as if she was standing on a mountain and suddenly the cloud had gone, revealing wonderful new perspectives.

As usual she timed the Sunday lunch for two. Paul sometimes went off for a pint with some of his male parishioners after the service, or liked time for a sherry at home with her—something, anyhow, to relax him after the tensions of taking the service, for tensions, even after all these years, there still were. As she peeled and scraped she meditated the totally unexpected questions: When would she tell him? How would he take the news? The first question was easily answered: not until after he'd enjoyed the pork, his favourite roast. The second question was not easily answered at all. She felt she simply didn't know. That was odd, after all these years of marriage, parenthood, and the usual vicissitudes of modern life. She felt she knew her husband very well, but this was a totally unexplored terrain, and she lacked a compass. She trusted Paul and loved him, but this . . .

The pork was tender, the roast potatoes crisp as he liked them, the peas just like frozen peas always are. Even with just the two of them there was an air of well-being hovering over the table. After pudding, a bread-and-butter one, and when she had put cheese and biscuits on the table, Paul said he could do no more than toy with them.

“Wonderful meal,” he said. “I would say I've had an elegant sufficiency, but I've had a good deal more than that.”

Rosemary smiled, her mind working away.

“Who went along to the Game Cock with you?”

“Oh, Jim Russell, Arthur Beeston and Dark Satanic Mills.”

“What did
he
want?”

Her husband smiled tolerantly.

“You always ask that. The poor man's been coming to church for nearly fifteen years and you still suspect his motives.”

“I certainly do. I won't say ‘You've only got to look at him' because I know how you'll react.”

Paul Sheffield nodded.

“I'll say you have a conventional as well as a suspicious mind.”

“Questioning, anyway . . . . A funny thing happened to me today, Paul.”

“That sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.”

“No, it's not . . . . Or I don't think so.” She swallowed. Now for it. “After you drove off to service I went for a little walk in the park, it was so nice.”

“It
was
nice, wasn't it? Lucky you.”

“And I suddenly realised . . . that I don't
believe
any longer.”

Her husband's mouth dropped, just as he was about to pop a piece of crumbly cheese into it.

“You're joking.”

“Not at all.”

He put the cheese down and swallowed.

“You mean you've lost your faith?”

“Yes.”

“Rosie, how awful for you.”

She left a pause before she answered.

“Maybe. But oddly enough it doesn't feel awful.”

“How does it feel?”

“Liberating. As if a cloud has lifted.”

Paul frowned. He's quite bewildered, the poor lamb, thought Rosemary.

“But your faith and the Church are so important in your life, so central. Surely you must feel . . . empty?”

“I would have expected to, if I'd thought about it, but I don't.” She added carefully: “perhaps it was the Church that was central, rather than the faith.”

“We must all try and help you as much as we can.”

“I won't have you publicly praying for the return of my faith, Paul.”

“No, of course not, if you feel like that,” he said hurriedly. Then he added, with a quick glance at her: “perhaps it would be better not to say anything at all about it for the moment.”

Rosemary considered.

“Maybe you're right. I don't want to make it a dark little secret. On the other hand, to announce it does seem to give
me
a lot more importance than I actually have.”

“A lot of people in the parish will be very upset. And the children will be.”

“Oh, the children are tougher than you think—children have to be these days. Janet will probably imagine it's my time of life, knowing her, and Mark certainly will pray for me. I only hope he keeps
quiet
about it, that's all.”

“Perhaps you need time off—time away.”

She frowned at him.

“You're not trying to get rid of me, are you, Paul?”

“No, of course I'm not.”

“Shuffle me out of the way, so that people don't
talk
. You're horribly afraid of people
talking
.”

“I don't like people talking nonsense, which you are now.”

“Because eventually the parish is going to have to know, and then they're going to talk.”

“I'm sure everyone will be very sympathetic.”

“Golly yes—that's what I'm dreading. And those will be the nice ones, not the troublemakers.”

“But you're talking as if it's gone for good and is never going to come back.”

“You make it sound like a skin disease.”

“Well, is it gone for good?”

Rosemary pondered.

“I really don't know. How could I know? How could anyone? It
feels
that way, that's all I know. I suppose it may
descend
on me again as suddenly as it lifted. But I have to say I don't expect it to.”

“Will you come to church?”

“I'll come tonight, as I said I would. I'll see how it feels. I'm not sure I want to
pretend
to pray.”

“You could just close your eyes.”

“That
would
be pretending to pray. Anyway, people know how I pray. People notice me—as the vicar's wife. More's the pity. One of the things I hate about Dark Satanic Mills is the way he looks at me.”

“What about the Harvest Festival Committee and the Mothers' Union meeting?”

“Oh, I won't have any problem with the social side. Why should I? They're all quite useful activities, or pleasant enough. I'll do them as your wife, as I've always done.”

“That's a relief. I do think you ought to keep coming to church as well. It might help.”

Rosemary laughed.

“You show a touching confidence in your own powers as a spiritual leader,” she teased him.

“You know I don't mean that. I mean the experience—the prayers, the hymns, the communion.”

“Of course I'll have to stop taking communion. Then everybody will know.”

“Yes, they'll know then.”

“And
won't
there be whispering!”