Twelve Drummers Drumming (31 page)

“I think we’re sinking into small talk,” he said finally.

Julia deposited the sherry glass on a table by the window. “I’ve been thinking about what you said in the vestry earlier.”

“Which bit?”

“Several bits, really. You’re not my priest. But perhaps you can be my rabbi of a sort in this instance.”

“Why don’t I simply be—at the very least—your brother-in-law?”

“Priestly garb lends detachment.” She traced a finger along his dog collar and looked into his eyes. Tom started. Lisbeth would make this same gesture from time to time, at odd moments, and her eyes would crinkle, as if marriage to a priest were both deliciously preposterous and utterly wonderful. Such was usually a prelude to a kiss. But there could be no such thing here. This was no flirtation. Julia, the more serious of the sisters, wore a wan expression which tugged at his heart.

“Do you think it would be rude if we went outside?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer, pushing open the French doors and stepping out onto the partially glazed pergola that overlooked the pool garden. Tom set his plate down and followed. They walked in silence past the ornamental pool, then down a soft grassy path through a garden of shrub roses towards a bank of beech trees. Julia plucked a chaste white bloom from a heavy stem that blocked their way. A thorn grazed the flesh of her finger. She licked at it, then held the ring of petals to her nose and breathed deeply as they passed into green shadows.

“You know,” she said at last, “about the child Alastair and I lost three years ago.”

“Of course, yes.” The news had come via Johanna, his mother-in-law. Deeply saddened, Lisbeth had phoned Julia, heralding a thaw in the sisterly glaciation, but the gesture had not been well received. Perhaps Julia was too addled by grief, Lisbeth had concluded when she set the phone back in its cradle. But she had behaved as though Lisbeth, the mother of a healthy child, had called to gloat.

“We did try again.”

“I didn’t know.”

“No one did. It was too heartbreaking.”

“Julia, I’m so sorry.”

“In fact,” Julia continued, head bent, “Alastair and I can’t have children. Or, rather, we mustn’t. We’re genetically mismatched, you see. I’ll miscarry any child we have together.”

“You were tested, I presume.”

“Alastair can be very thorough when he wants to be.”

Tom released a moan. “I’m lost for words.”

“Lisbeth chose wisely. If she had married Alastair, the same thing might have happened to her, the same genetic mismatch.”

“Now there are no words.”

“I’m not being bitter. I’m simply stating a fact—or at least a very strong possibility.”

Julia turned away and moved through untrimmed grasses towards the crest of land over the river estuary. Here, the breeze was constant, filled with clouds of gulls coiling and twisting into the sky. But Tom paid scant attention to their noisy flight. His eyes were on Julia’s slender figure, on her shoulders sagging in the black suitcoat, on the way the rose, held by the end of its stem, trailed along her leg.

“There’s more,” she said when they’d reached the cliff edge. High on the hill opposite, between the seams of hedgerows, defined against the skyline, a crop sprayer travelled a steady course. “I did become pregnant.” She tossed the rose over the cliff’s edge. Tom watched it absently as it floated in the air then tumbled against a hollow in the cliff, his mind racing ahead. There could only be sorrow here.

“And you had a termination,” he intoned as he watched a gust of air lift the rose again and dispatch it further down.

“Yes. Of course.”

“Well,” he began gently, “I know it’s a very sad thing, but I can’t see you would have had any other choice, Julia, given the likely outcome.”

She shot him a quick glance, then looked away. “It wasn’t Alastair’s,” she said, her tone flat.

“Oh” was all he could think to say. He wasn’t shocked; no novelty
attended disclosure of adultery to a priest, but he was dismayed to his very bones that Julia was complicit in this most tawdry of human failings. One question burned in his mind, but he put it off. Gently, he asked instead, “Did this happen recently?”

“No, though it feels like yesterday. I had the termination shortly before your visit with Miranda last year.”

“Julia, you should have put us off.”

“And what excuse would I have given? What excuse would I have given to Alastair? He was actually looking forward to Miranda’s arrival. He likes children, you know. He wants children. And …” Her voice dropped. “I can’t give them to him.”

“And he knows nothing of this?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

There was a heartbeat’s hesitation. Tom turned to her. “You
are
sure.”

“Yes … absolutely. Well, I had one worrying moment. I went to a private clinic in Exeter, just off Queen Street. The appointment was for Saturday morning, which seemed the best time, since Alastair would think I had gone up for synagogue. However, when I stepped out of the clinic afterwards, I crossed paths with Tamara Prowse—Jago’s eldest—and Sybella.”

“Sybella?”

“I taught Tamara at school. She’s a lovely girl, and so we chatted for a bit. She’d gone up to look around the campus, since she was going to be attending the University of Exeter in the autumn. I guess Sybella had gone along for the ride, since her driving licence was still restricted then. I’m not sure the two were really friends. Anyway, Sybella didn’t have anything to say, but I could see her peering at the clinic’s sign and giving me one of those cunning looks of hers. But the clinic has a wide range of women’s services and its name declares none of them, so …”

“She might have looked on the Internet.”

“And found I may have been there for a Pap test. Anyway, nothing
came of it. Sybella never said anything to me. And if she said anything to anyone else, it didn’t get back to me.”

“I can almost imagine her saying something to Alastair. I feel she fancied herself a bit of a slyboots.”

“Then he would have said something to me. I know he can brood, but if he knew I had gone to some private medical clinic, he would have worried. He would have asked me about it.”

“And what would you have told him?”

Julia fell silent. Tom glanced down at the sun glinting off the waters of the estuary and let the light dazzle his eyes for a moment. “I said something in the vestry to that reporter about letting sleeping dogs—or sleepy villages—lie. Perhaps I should suggest the same thing to you, Julia. Are you wanting to confess to Alastair? Is this why you’re telling me this, now?”

“Good God, no! I don’t want him to ever know. I am … fond of him, Tom.”

“Only ‘fond’?”

“I don’t know. Our first years together were wonderful. I know Lisbeth always thought there was something insidious about our alliance. But there wasn’t, really. I had just ended a relationship when I ran into Alastair. He had just finished with Lisbeth. I suppose it was misery loves company, but we fell in love. Our marriage only began to fall apart after the second miscarriage. He was very supportive and understanding after the first.” Julia paused. “It’s hard for Alastair, in a way. He’s always had this perfect life mapped out for himself, and I’ve as much as thrown him a googly. He doesn’t take to googlies. Cricket was never his game. I don’t know why he sticks me really.”

“Because, like your sister was, you’re beautiful and full of life.”

Julia smiled wanly. “He could find another woman to have a child with. We hardly seem to live together as man and wife anymore. I’m sure you noticed the sleeping arrangements when you were here last year. They haven’t changed.” She shrugged. “We go about our routines. If he isn’t working, he’s golfing. I busy myself
with school routines. We have the occasional meal with his golfing mates and their wives. Earlier, we had talked about other solutions—adopting, egg donation …”

“Sperm donation?”

Julia demurred. “I rather think Alastair is certain he would want it to be
his
child. Anyway …” She trailed off, setting her eyes on the Totnes ferry, which had come into view on the water below. Someone on the top deck spotted them and raised a hand in greeting.

Tom waved back robotically, his heart constricted by anguish for his sister-in-law. “As commonplace as this sounds,” he began, despairing of his inadequacy, “could I suggest professional counseling?
I
can’t really counsel in this situation, if that’s what you’re thinking. You being family—”

“I know. That’s why I’m talking to you in your ‘rabbinical’ role. Yes, I have a rabbi in Exeter, but I haven’t been going to synagogue long and I don’t know him very well. Besides, he’s a little forbidding, and I need to talk to someone. I’d been able to keep a lid on things, but the events of this week … and then that reporter stirring things up. I’m frightened about what might happen.”

“Julia …”

“Who can you talk to in this village without it being someone else’s business within hours? Who is most likely to keep his counsel?” Her eyes beseeched him. Then she looked sharply away. “That’s why I confided in Peter in the first place.”

Tom started. “Peter?”

“I was wretched after the second miscarriage. He could see I was miserable when I came to choir practice. He was very sympathetic. One evening, after practice, we sat in a pew and talked … and it all came tumbling out.” She glanced at him miserably. “You might imagine the rest.”

Tom did. It was an old story. A marriage falters and a woman hears warm, affirming words from a priest. A hand squeeze or a genial hug follows. Sometimes the priest is unaware of the effect he is
having. But from what Tom had gleaned, the late Reverend Peter Kinsey had not been marked by naïvety. He asked:

“Whose decision was the termination?”

“Mine, of course.”

“Yes, Julia, I am aware of women’s views on these matters, but what I meant was, how was the decision arrived at? Did you tell Peter you were having his child?”

“I was such a fool.” Even in profile he could see the grim set to her mouth. “I so misread him. I thought he was in love with me. We talked about my divorcing Alastair—in my mind I rationalised that this would give him a chance to remarry and have a child—then, after a decent interval, Peter and I would marry. But I realised
I
was the one making all these silly plans. I was fantasising. He was being agreeable, simply to keep me sweet. When I told him I was pregnant, he was horrified. Clearly, I had to be either unstable or untrustworthy or manipulative. There was no question I was to get rid of it.”

“And that was the end of the affair, I expect.”

Julia nodded. “And I couldn’t very well go through a charade of passing the child off as Alastair’s. Since the second miscarriage, we had hardly been sleeping together. And since my chances of carrying his child to full term were so unlikely, he would be suspicious.”

Tom watched the Dartmouth-bound ferry round the bend and fade from view. He brimmed with grief for Julia’s losses, but just as much he abhorred Kinsey’s cowardly default to self-preservation, an attitude reprehensible in a priest.

After a moment Julia continued: “I suppose one could ascribe irony to this. Me, falling for a priest—just like my older, smarter, stronger sister. It must be a family pathology. Celia would be able to run with this.” She laughed mirthlessly. “I caught her talk at the WI on the psychology of sibling relationships. She said those second born often accept second place. They emulate their older siblings because it’s comfortable. Someone else has already sort of carved out
the path—haven’t they?—and you simply follow along. Look at who I married. He was Lisbeth’s first, wasn’t he?”

“Sometimes,” Tom responded, jolted by Julia’s observation, for the sisterly parallel outside of their shared love of music had not crossed his mind, “a cigar is just a cigar. Birth order isn’t fate.”

“Perhaps.” Julia looked up at him with wet shining eyes. He felt a terrible urge to take her in his arms, to comfort her, poor suffering creature—and sensed that she, too, sought comfort, for the air between them had become feverish. But what surged within him was another feeling, one on the unholy side of the ledger. Julia’s vulnerability and her physical attraction—her resemblance to Lisbeth—were dangerously alluring. He half smiled and turned away, feigning an interest in the crop sprayer now vanishing over a rise in the field it had worked. After a moment, he said:

“I wonder how you could bear to be near Kinsey after …”

“If I abruptly resigned as assistant organist and choirmaster, it would have been a signal that something was amiss—”

“Something
was
amiss.”

“—and Colm was taking his family to Mauritius for a week for a getaway. It was early April. And then a day or two before the Parrys returned home … Peter vanished, though we didn’t know what had happened at the time, did we? You were there at the start of it all.” Julia paused. “There was a moment, after some weeks had gone by and Peter hadn’t reappeared, that I thought he’d run off because of me. I was torn what to tell the police who were investigating his disappearance. But it hardly seemed in character—Peter was so adept at
appearing
caring. He was an extremely good actor, really—and Sebastian suggested I keep it to myself.”

“You talked to Sebastian?”

“He’s the one person—layperson, I mean—in the village who can keep a secret.”

“He has secrets of his own, I daresay. But why would you confide in Sebastian?”

“He knew Peter. They had some past association.”

“Good heavens! Are you sure? What was it?”

She shrugged. “I did ask. But Sebastian wouldn’t say. You know what he’s like. And Peter was simply … smug about it, whatever it was. Simply wouldn’t tell. I thought perhaps they’d been at the same school or something. Anyway, like most in the village—except your Mrs. P.—I long ago stopped being curious about Sebastian. In any case, I confided in Sebastian because … well, because he knew about Peter and me. You see, we would sometimes meet at the verger’s cottage.”

“Where Madrun happened to see you.”

“And got the wrong end of the stick. Of course, if she had guessed correctly—that I was meeting Peter there—then it might have come out when the police were looking into his disappearance.”