She mustn't let it get to her. She'd done everything right up to now. All she had to do was hold her nerve and make sure Cynthia held her tongue.
She sat up, put on the light and took one of the sleeping pills Dr. Perkins had prescribed for her. Sensibly, she forced her thoughts onto another track: her future life with Otis after they married. Some drastic updating would be necessary in the rectory and she hoped Otis was generous with money-one aspect of his character she knew nothing about. Starting with the kitchen, which was hopelessly old-fashioned, she began planning the changes she would make.
When she finally drifted into sleep, she had totally reorganised the kitchen and was mulling over colour schemes for the main reception room.;
At lunchtime the next day a stranger walked into the Three Golden Cups in the North Wiltshire village of Old Mordern and asked for a lemonade. The five or six local men in the bar turned and stared. Sometimes a driver would ask for low alcohol lager or a shandy, but lemonade, for a man, was pretty unusual. Yet this stranger had the look of a lemonade drinker, a humourless, freckled face, a rigid don't-even-ask stance and carroty hair out of the nineteen fifties, short back and sides with a parting. He was in a blue pinstripe with waistcoat and striped tie. A doorstep evangelist, maybe.
He was Burton Sands, taking a day from his annual holiday allowance in the hope of discovering more about Otis Joy's relations with women. He was confident that a history of philandering was behind the appointment of Rachel Jansen as PCC treasurer. So the visit wasn't about evangelism, but it was a mission. His grudge against the rector of Foxford filled his mind. He had no clear idea at this stage how he would use any information he acquired. He just needed it like some people need affection.
"Nice day," he said to no one in particular.
"Anything to eat, sir?" asked Ben, the landlord. "The specials are on the board."
"Eat? 1 don't think so."
"Pies are good," said a bearded man known locally as Nelson through some small seafaring experience he'd once unwisely revealed to this sarcastic bunch. "Mary in the kitchen is famous for her pies."
"Just the lemonade, thank you."
It was becoming clear that this stranger to the pub was good value. Nelson said, "You shouldn't drink on an empty stomach." He could be just as sarcastic as the rest. "Got far to go, have you?"
"I'm from Foxford."
"Foxford down Warminster way?" said Ben. "Our last vicar went there, didn't he?"
Someone confirmed it.
"Popular young chap," added Ben. "Name of Joy."
Burton couldn't have wished for a better lead-in. "The Reverend Joy. Yes, I know him. He's quite popular in Foxford," he said as if he couldn't fully understand the reason.
"Church was full here when he were vicar," said Nelson. "Are you a church-goer, young man?"
"Yes, I am."
"I thought so. You'll pardon me for saying so, but you have the look of one of the faithful."
"I don't know how you tell," said Burton naively, ignoring the sly smiles and wanting to get the conversation back to Otis Joy. "He's an excellent preacher."
"Helped my business on a Sunday lunchtime," said Ben the landlord. "They came here after the service, thirsty from singing all they hymns."
"Different story now," said Nelson. "The new bloke is a dead loss."
"Your loss is our gain, then," Burton commented, keeping them on the subject, and wittily, he thought. Then he dangled some tasty bait. "He's well liked, specially by the ladies."
Disappointingly, no one was interested.
He was compelled to add, "I suppose he would be, with his good looks."
No response.
"And his lively personality, of course."
He was not good at this. They started talking among themselves about last night's football on the television. Personally, he knew nothing about football. He tried to get the landlord back on track. "Of course, you'd have seen another side of the man. He was married while he was here, was he not?"
A nod.
"She died, I heard. His wife."
"Correct." There was a guarded note in the voice that told Burton he wasn't going to get much more from this source.
"How very sad."
"Yes."
"She must have been quite young."
"True," said the landlord. Then, addressing the others: "That was never a goal, that third one. It should never have been allowed."
Burton Sands picked up his lemonade and took it to a table. After ten minutes he got up and left.
He walked up the street in the thin October sunshine and paused to watch a squirrel tightroping across a power cable with a nut in its teeth. Halfway over, it spotted Sands and froze for a second before completing the crossing, when it transferred to a tree and streaked upwards and out of sight. That squirrel seemed to sum up Old Mordern. Burton already disliked the place. It had darker stonework and less thatch than Foxford. The church at the top of the street was obviously Victorian, the tower topped by an ugly saddleback roof and a square stair-turret.
He strolled as far as the church gate. Nobody should object if he wandered among the gravestones; in these days when so many people were researching their family histories it was nothing unusual for strangers to walk up and down churchyards studying every inscription.
The stone that interested him didn't take long to find. It was close to the church building on the west side, a simple memoriaclass="underline"
Claudine Joy
1975–1998
Beloved wife of Rev. Otis Joy
Vicar of this Parish
He did the mental arithmetic, worked out that she had been younger than he was now, and moved on, into St. Saviour's.
His first impression was of the cold interior. Then of another sort of bleakness, a sense of neglect, or at least austerity. The velvet curtains that were meant to act as a draught excluder over the door had lost the nap in patches where hands had drawn them across. He was standing on a strip of plain cord matting worn thin by years of use and fraying in places. It linked with another strip along the length of the aisle. He was puzzled. Lively, well supported churches replace fabrics when they get shabby. Even the altar cloth wanted replacing. The linen looked clean, yet it had obviously been laundered a few times too many. In structure this was a fine church with some strikingly beautiful stained windows. All it wanted was some redecoration and some money spent on the soft fabrics. True, there were some nicely worked kneelers hanging under the pews, but they would have been donated by the women who made them. The things that were the responsibility of the parish council were crying out for replacement.
He heard a movement. A woman was at work arranging white and yellow chrysanthemums in a large, chipped vase below the pulpit.
She spoke a greeting and Burton responded and offered to turn on the lights. The chance of a civilised conversation about the former vicar was surely better here than in the pub. He wished he'd thought of it earlier. Of course he couldn't have relied on anyone being inside.
"You should have seen it last weekend when we had the Harvest Festival," the woman said. "It looked a lot more homely then." She was tall and slim, in her sixties, and wearing a green apron and gardening gloves. "Do you know the church?"
"My first time," answered Burton.
"It doesn't have much of a history compared to some in the area, but we like it to be seen at its best."
"You've lived here some time?"
"Over twenty years. We came from London originally. You can probably tell I'm not local."
"Seen some vicars come and go, then?" This was the height of subtlety by Burton's standards.
"That's for sure. They're listed on the board by the door. I've known four different ones in my time here."
He walked over to the board and said aloud, "Otis Joy. There's a fine name." This time, he was going to pretend he hadn't even heard of the man. He would learn more that way. The people in the pub might have said more if he hadn't revealed that he was from Joy's present parish.