30
Directionality
NOT THAT JANE was fooled or anything. This woman was a former barrister. Barristers defended people they knew were guilty and prosecuted people they guessed were innocent. You didn’t need to watch much TV to know that.
You didn’t trust barristers, you paid them. And if someone else was paying, you’d mean less than nothing to them. They’d take you apart with merciless precision and discard the bits.
OK, Siân was a priest now, but you could still sense this kind of – to borrow a stupid word from one of those hi-gloss US forensic shows – directionality. Focus. Everything she said was coming from somewhere down in the small print of her personal agenda.
Like, when Jane was showing her round the vicarage, entering the nest of rooms around the back stairs, Siân going, ‘It’s awfully large, isn’t it? For just the two of you.’
Translating as, Even in its present condition, we could flog this place for well over half a million and put you in a bungalow.
With no attics and no apartment.
‘Well, you know, I used to think that, too,’ Jane had said, ‘but that was before we had to take people in. Like deliverance cases? People who think they’re mad? Need a big house for that, so nobody can hear the screams.’
Knowing as soon as it was out that, if she’d been in the witness box, Siân would have dismantled her. Having studied all the cases in her capacity as Deliverance Coordinator, she’d know this was not even loosely true. Well, except for …
‘Like, Dexter Harris?’ Jane pointing at the blackened oak beam where a door had once hung at the bottom of the stairs. ‘That was where he … you know …’
‘Yes, I heard about that. Regrettable.’
‘Mum had to do the necessary, for quite a few nights afterwards, to make sure there was no, like, detritus?’
‘Yes, I’m sure she would have felt that was necessary.’
Like, Your mother is a superstitious idiot.
It really hadn’t been easy last night, having to watch what you said all the time, looking for the loaded questions. Now, with dusk and rain seeping in, Jane, in her old parka, airline bag over a shoulder, was standing between the oak pillars of the market hall, looking across at the vicarage, psyching herself up before going home. Except it wasn’t really home at all, right now, was it?
After school, she’d slipped into Leominster in the vain hope that Woolies might have any CD by Sufjan Stevens who, she’d just discovered, was sufficiently like Lol to be interesting. Catching the last bus back to Ledwardine, predictably Sufjanless, she’d realized this had been just an excuse to shorten the evening.
The hardest bit of all was when Mum rang and Jane, taking it from the privacy of her apartment, had been like, Oh, no, fine, she’s really quite nice. We had a long chat about how she’d wanted to be a barrister from the age of about eight.
Mum trying hard to conceal her dismay, Jane going, Hey, Mum, it’s not my fault she wasn’t being a bitch. Knowing that if she’d come out with the truth, Mum would be on edge the whole time, imagining this cataclysmic row exploding, Jane screaming at Siân. Mum imagined her daughter was still fifteen or something and had no subtlety. But Jane was changing. She had to.
During the lunch hour, she’d called the vicarage from the school library stockroom, borrowing Kayleigh Evans’s mobile in case Siân checked. Getting the answering machine and deepening her voice, sounding posh, she’d asked for the time of the wonderfully inspiring meditation service and would it really be all right if someone from outside the parish attended, she’d heard it was always so packed.
A few more calls like that, carefully spaced, would do no harm at all. Maybe a toned-down Scottish accent next time. Go careful, though, because this woman was …
… oops, coming out.
Jane stiffened. It was strange, almost surreal, watching another woman cleric emerging from the vicarage drive. Siân had on a dark belted coat, unbuttoned, over her cassock, the dog collar luminous and her pewter hair gleaming in the lights from the square. Walking purposefully, with directionality, up towards the church through sporadic rain.
On the edge of the square, Siân was ambushed by Brenda Prosser from the Eight till Late. Nobody else was about, so Jane could hear most of what they were saying.
‘Yes, I am indeed,’ Siân said. ‘We couldn’t leave Ledwardine without a priest for a whole week, could we?’
‘Well, you know, I hadn’t seen her since church on Sunday,’ Brenda said, ‘and I thought she might be ill or something. She works a bit too hard, I think, sometimes.’
Well, thank you, Brenda.
‘Merrily is very conscientious,’ Siân said. ‘Now, I know you’re at the shop, Mrs Prosser, and I fully intend—’
‘Oh, quite a few years now, Mrs Clarke. Came over from Mid-Wales, we did, when my husband was made—’
‘Only— I hope you don’t think I’m being terribly rude, but I did arrange to meet someone at the church at six o’clock, and I’ve just realized I’m going to be late.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry—’
‘No, it’s not your—’
Meet someone? Hadn’t taken her long to get her feet under the table, had it? And why not meet whoever it was at the vicarage?
Unsettling as the situation may appear, trust your instincts, listen to your inner voice and by next week’s climactic conjunction of—
Jane’s horoscope in the Sunday Times.
Right. Sod this.
Pulling up the hood of her parka, transferring the airline bag to her left shoulder, she came out from behind the pillar, walking directly towards Siân and Brenda. And then, drawing the fur trim across her face, she was gliding anonymously past them towards the end of the square. Crossing the street, slipping under the lych-gate and running through the spitting rain down to the church, calculating that the lower door would be unlocked because Tuesday night was choir practice.
It always felt better sidling in by the smaller door. OK, she might be coming around to accepting the sense and the structure and the basic morality of Christianity, but she couldn’t imagine ever going the whole way, not even when she was old and scared; it lacked thrills, wasn’t sexy.
And yet its buildings were, somehow. The church yawned around her, that sudden sense of live air you never quite got used to. The secondary lights were on, high in the rafters.
Jane didn’t move until she was sure that all the pews were empty. Then padding down the aisle, listening for footsteps, voices. Sliding into the Bull Chapel. Always a good place to hide; if anyone came in, you could slide around the wooden screen to where the organ was and then out through the chancel.
The effigy on the tomb of Thomas Bull, long-dead squire figure, had a naked sandstone sword by its side and, instead of the eyelids being humbly lowered, the eyes were wide open, part of this self-satisfied half-smile.
Lowering herself into the only pew, Jane smiled back: Don’t smirk at me, pal, your family counts for zilch these days.
Siân’s meeting, she was thinking maybe Uncle Ted. Retired solicitor – maybe he’d even worked with Siân?
Ted in senior churchwarden mode was a hypocritical old sod, suspicious of Mum’s deliverance role, for ever whingeing that she should be devoting all her energies to the parish. Ted would love that the village was getting increasingly upper-middle-class, and given the choice between ancient stones and executive homes in Coleman’s Meadow …