It was mid-morning, shortly before that Christmas that would always be remembered as the last in the village when it actually snowed on Christmas Day, and the Reverend Freemantle was in his study with a Handel flute sonata crackling and clicking on the record player, as he flicked somewhat despairingly through his collections of sermons for one that he might plagiarise for the family service. The composition of sermons was a weekly torment to him, as he was conscious of never having in all his life as a minister come up with something fresh or original. He was tired of repeating himself, but lacked the nerve to go to the pulpit unprepared. The Church of England was not an extemporising institution. What made it worse was that he often found God a difficult customer to deal with, and at this time was fresh from wondering what God could possibly have been up to when He let poor pretty Mrs Rendall die horribly of cancer while she was still so young. He wondered if God realised how difficult it was for him to keep making excuses on His behalf.
As he browsed a sermon on the True Meaning of Christmas, it suddenly occurred to him that he had not for some weeks seen Sir Edward at Holy Communion. The thought alarmed him.
Sir Edward Rawcutt (pronounced Rawt), fifth baronet, was not the squire of the village, although he performed that function to some extent, simply by being the only resident who was a baronet. The manor itself was occupied by an eminent musicologist, who was rumoured to drink tea and write about baroque music all day, emerging only in the evening, with his chamber pot perilously brimming. Few people had ever seen him, but his only daughter caused some comment by being dark-haired, passionate, black-eyed, beautiful, and always dressed in romantic white dresses, even for her forays to the village shop to buy mentholated Du Maurier cigarettes. The musicologist was to come into his own quite suddenly at the time of the great hurricane, when it transpired that it was the duty of the manor house to keep the pathways of the common land clear. He and his son took on the monumental task with amazing alacrity and efficiency, and thereafter the son never lost his interest in it.
Sir Edward Rawcutt occupied a late-Victorian Surrey farmhouse. It was substantial and imposing, with numerous low sag-roofed annexes attached to it at the back in a somewhat arbitrary fashion. Its croquet lawns were kept in immaculate condition by young Robert from the council houses, who often mowed with his pet rook resolutely perched upon his shoulder. He was paid five pounds a time, plus unlimited peanut butter sandwiches. The marvellous rose beds were tended by Lady Gemma Rawcutt herself, who was never without a pair of secateurs secreted somewhere about her person. She was a notoriously nimble-fingered and furtive snipper of cuttings from all the great gardens of southern England, from Great Dixter and Bateman’s to the Royal Horticultural Gardens at Wisley. There were many in the gardening club who dreaded her yearly visits to their own homes when it was their turn to act the host. So adept was her pilfering that she had never actually been caught, even though everyone knew that it was she who was responsible for their mutilated shrubs and bushes. She was, despite this almost unforgivable personality defect, well loved on account of her graceful figure, her crisp accent and her charmingly spontaneous peals of laughter. She was a regular member of the team of ladies who arranged flowers in the church by rota, and this also was taken into consideration as an extenuating circumstance.
Sir Edward himself was an affable and energetic gentleman approaching his middle sixties. His energetic and reckless youth had been followed by a raffish and adulterous middle age, and this in turn had recently been succeeded by the unexpected return of the simple piety that had been his most remarkable trait before the onset of adolescence. Conscious, no doubt, of the beat of death’s drum, he had taken to attending every possible communion in the village church, and was fond of comparing the relative merits of various sung Eucharists which he had attended in cathedrals as far apart as Wells and Peterborough. There were those who considered this preoccupation a harmless eccentricity, and others who felt a warm glow in their hearts at the thought of such a prodigal’s wholehearted return.
The Reverend Freemantle himself was unconcerned as to why Sir Edward had returned to the fold; if God moved in mysterious ways, it was clear that many others did also. What concerned the Rector was that he had not seen Sir Edward for some time, and the latter had not yet responded to his note asking him if he would read one of the lessons in a forthcoming service. He had a feeling that something must be wrong.
He was on the point of picking up the telephone when he was startled by an urgent knocking at the door. One of his predecessors had installed an enormous brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head, and he had never ceased to be shocked when its percussions suddenly reverberated through the house.
He heard someone go to the door, and shortly afterwards his oldest daughter appeared, and said, ‘Daddy, there’s an old lady here to see you.’
‘Who is it?’
‘I don’t know, Daddy, she didn’t say.’
‘Oh well, you’d better send her in, then.’
‘She doesn’t want to come in, she says she’s in a hurry. She’s waiting at the door.’
‘Oh hell’s bells.’
‘Not a very godly attitude, Daddy.’
‘Oh drat, I suppose I’d better come out. Tell her I’m coming straight away.’
‘She’s a bit strange.’
‘Is she? Oh lor’; as if I didn’t have enough to worry about.’
The Rector put down his address book, stood up and stretched. He came out into the hallway and went to the front door, where he beheld an elderly woman dressed in black, who was anxiously rubbing her hands together and biting her lip. The Rector thought that she looked very familiar, but he was quite unable to put a name to her. His forgetfulness was one of the problems that he still had with this parish even though he had been there for nearly twenty years, and it caused him little pangs of shame from time to time. He always dreaded having to make introductions, and even had some difficulty with recollecting the names of some of the more mousy ladies of his Bible Study Group on Tuesdays, who were grimly but steadfastly reading their way right through the entire New English Bible, from the first word of Genesis to the last word of Revelation. They were at present reading with some horror of the numerous divinely inspired atrocities in the Book of Judges.
‘Do come in,’ he said, ‘it’s really quite cold out there. I think we might be in for some snow.’
‘I prefer to stay where I am,’ said the old lady, ‘if you don’t mind. I have something of great urgency to tell you, and I will require only a moment of your time.’ She spoke with precision, and some hauteur.
‘Oh dear,’ said the Rector, ‘has something dreadful happened?’
‘Not yet, sir, but I have to tell you that Sir Edward is very seriously ill and is in need of communion. You know how much comfort he derives from it. I must ask you to come as soon as you possibly can. He’s not long for this world, I am sorry to say.’
The Rector felt a pang in his heart; he was really very fond of Sir Edward, and the thought of him being at death’s door, or even very ill, was particularly painful. ‘Tell him I’ll come right away,’ he said.