Sacrament

'Don't do this,' he said, pinching the tears from his eyes. He could not afford to indulge his grief today. Tomorrow, maybe, when he'd met with Steep, and played out whatever grim game lay ahead, then he could take the time to be weak. But not now, in an open field, where his frailty might be witnessed.

He looked up and scanned the hills and hedgerows. Perhaps it was too late. Perhaps Steep was watching him even now, like some carrion bird, assessing the condition of a wounded animal; waiting, as Will had waited so many times, for the moment of truth, the moment when, in tears of desperation, the subject of study revealed its final face. Searching for a title for his second collection, he had made a list of words relating to the business of death, and had lived with the alternatives for a month or more, turning them over in his head so often he had them by rote. They were in his head now, coming unbidden.

The Pale Horse and the Totentanz, Cold Meat and Crowbait, A Bed of Clay, A Last Abode, The Long Home

This last had been a contender for the title: describing the grave to which his subjects were about to be delivered as a place of inevitable return. It was distressing to think of that now, standing as he did within a mile of his father's house. It made him feel like a condemned man.

Enough of this creeping despair, he told himself. He needed relief from it, and quickly. He climbed over the gate, and without a backward glance returned along the road with the determined stride of a man who had no further business in the place behind him. He was out of cigarettes, so he made his way into the village to pick up another pack. The streets were busy, he was pleased to see. There was no little comfort to be had in the sight of people about their ordinary lives: buying vegetables, making small talk, hurrying their children along. In the newsagent's he listened to a leisurely conversation on the subject of the Harvest Festival, the woman behind the counter (plainly the daughter of Mrs Morris, who'd run the place in Will's youth) opining that it was all very well trying to bring folks in to church with fancy tricks, but she drew a line at services being fun.

'What's the problem with a bit of fun?' her customer wanted to know.

`I just think it's a slippery slope,' Miss Morris replied. 'We'll have dancing in the aisles next.'

'That's better than sleeping in the pews,' the woman remarked with a little laugh, and picking up her chocolate bars, made her exit. The exchange had apparently been less jocular than it had seemed, because Miss Morris was quietly fuming about it when she came to serve Will.

'Is this some big controversy?' he asked her. 'The Harvest Festival, I mean?'

'Nooo ...' she said, a little exasperated at herself, '... it's just that Frannie always knows how to stir me up.'

'Frannie?'

'Yes.'

'Frannie Cunningham? I'll be back for the cigarettes-'

And he was out of the shop, looking right and left for the woman who'd just breezed by. She was already on the opposite side of the road, eating her chocolate as she strode on her way.

'Frannie?' he yelled, and dodging the traffic raced to intercept her. She'd heard her name being called and was looking back towards him. It was plain from her expression she still didn't recognize him, though now - when he saw her face full on - he knew her. She was somewhat plumper, her hair more grey than auburn. But that look of perpetual attention she'd had was still very much in place, as were her freckles.

'Do we know each other?' she said as he gained the pavement.

'Yes, we do,' he grinned. 'Frannie, it's me. It's Will.'

'Oh ... my ... Lord ...' she breathed. 'I didn't ... I mean ... you were ...'

'In the shop. Yes. We walked straight past one another.'

She opened her arms, and Will went into them, hugging her as fiercely as she hugged him. 'Will, Will, Will...' she kept saying. 'This is so wonderful. Oh, but I'm sorry to hear about your Dad.'

'You know?'

'Everybody knows,' she said. 'You can't keep secrets in Burnt Yarley.

Well ... I suppose that's not quite true, is it?' She gave him an almost mischievous look. 'Besides, your Dad's quite a character. Sherwood sees him at The Plough all the time, holding court. How's he doing?'

'Better, thank you.'

'That's good.'

'And Sherwood?'

'Oh ... he has his good times and his bad times. We still have the house together. The one on Samson Street.'

'What about your Ma and Pa?'

'Dad's dead. He died six years ago this coming November. Then last year we had to put Mum into a hospice. She's got Alzheimer's. We looked after her at home for a couple of years, but she was deteriorating so fast. It's horrible to watch, and Sherwood was getting in such a depression about it.'

'It sounds like you've been in the wars.'

'Oh well,' Frannie shrugged. 'We battle on. Do you want to come back to the house for something to eat? Sherwood'll be so pleased to see you.'

'If it's not going to be an inconvenience.'

'You've been away too long,' Frannie chided him. 'This is Yorkshire. Friends are never an inconvenience. Well. . .' she added, with that mischievous twinkle. '... almost never.'

CHAPTER V

It was only a fifteen-minute walk back to the Cunningham house, but by the time they arrived at the gate they'd already lost any initial tentativeness and were talking in the easy manner of old friends. Will had given Frannie a quick summary of the events in Balthazar (she'd read about the accident, as she called it, in a magazine article Sherwood had found), and Frannie had prepared him for the reunion with Sherwood by filling in a little of her brother's medical history. He'd been diagnosed with a form of acute depression, she explained, which he'd probably been suffering since childhood. Hence his see-sawing emotions: his sulks, his rages, his inability to concentrate. Though he now had pills to keep it manageable, he was not, nor ever would be, entirely cured. It was a burden he would bear to the end of his life. 'It helps to think of it as a test,' she said. 'God wants us to show Him how tough we are.'

'Interesting theory.'

'I'm sure He approves of you,' she said, not entirely joking. 'I mean, if anyone's been through the mill, it's you. All those terrible places you've had to go.'

'It's not quite the same if you volunteer though, is it?' Will said. 'You and Sherwood haven't had any choice.' 'I don't think any of us have got much choice,' she said. She dropped her voice. 'Especially us. When you think of what happened ... back then. We were children. We didn't know what we were dealing with.'

'Do we now?'

She looked at him with a gaze suddenly shorn of joy. 'I used to think - this probably sounds ridiculous to you - but I used to think somehow we'd met the Devil in disguise.' She laughed nervously at this. 'That does sound stupid, doesn't it?' Her laugh disappeared almost immediately, seeing that Will was not laughing with her.

'Doesn't it?'

'I don't know what he is,' he replied.

'Was,' she said quietly.

He shook his head. 'Is,' he murmured.

They'd reached the gate. 'Oh Lord,' she said. There was a little quaver in her voice.

'Maybe I shouldn't come in.'

'No, you must,' she replied. 'But we shouldn't talk about this any more. Not in front of Sherwood. He gets upset.'

'I understand.'

'I think about it a lot. After all these years, I turn it over in my head. I even did a bit of research a few years ago, trying to get to the bottom of it all.'

'And?'

She shook her head. 'I gave up,' she said. 'It was bothering Sherwood, and it was churning everything up all over again. I decided it was better to leave it alone.'

She unlatched the gate and started down the path, which was edged on either side by sprays of lavender, towards the front door. 'Before we go in,' Will said, 'can you tell me what happened to the Courthouse?'