Such Men Are Dangerous (20 page)

“Well, if you’re fully determined—which I can see you are—won’t you phone Geoff while I’m here?”

Again he shook his head. “No, I really do need to pray about it first. But now I think I’ll do that here, despite my mother’s happy spring-clean from above. So I may not phone him for another hour.”

She glanced at her watch. “Then don’t leave it any later. Already they’ll be working out what goes in and what…” She broke off, aware of how contagious was his faith in the impossible. And how forlorn.

But even knowing of the urgency she couldn’t just get up and go.

“May I say how much I like your painting? I would have mentioned it last night.”

“Strangely I’d only hung it in the afternoon. Before I went to Lincoln.”

“Really? Who is the painter?”

While they stood in front of it he told her, briefly, about Jerry Turner. He’d given Sharon fifty pounds for the picture.

“I don’t want any charity,” she’d said, trying to push the money from her.

“Sharon, I promise you it’s not charity. The only thing that worries me…it could be theft.”

It was significant he should have used that phrase: the one thing that had really worried him was the thought of the kind of future Jerry Turner might have had in front of him. And Sharon and the children, too.

“Knowing our vicar,” had called Alison through the open doorway (she’d been kneeling on the lino in the kitchen, cleaning the cooker), “it’s almost bound to be theft.”

Sharon said: “He did that picture the time we went on holiday. We went to Cornwall, had a whole week.” She’d seemed more rested than before. More forthcoming, as well.

“Then, Sharon, I obviously can’t take it from you.”

“Oh, it’s all right. He did a lot of others, mostly of the same thing. We had a really lovely time. He’d get on with his painting, I’d be on the grass nearby, reading my magazines.”

“
A Beacon in the Mist
,” he’d said. “I like its title.” Which wasn’t wholly true: he’d have preferred it didn’t have one.

“There were half a dozen flaming beacons in the mist.” He’d received the impression it might have been a little joke between them, her and Jerry, that adjective in this context. It was a small sign but definitely encouraging. He’d silently thanked God for it.

Geraldine found it hard to assimilate, emotionally, that the fingers which had swung the rope over the branch, tightened the knot, had earlier worked so lovingly upon this strong yet tranquil picture. The frightening transience of life, its total lack of certainty: these sounded so banal while you struggled for the words in which to communicate them afresh. After a further moment she turned from the painting and sought relief in bathos.

“I also like your dog. He looks all bright and happy.”

“Petticoat.”

“I beg her pardon.
She
. A slightly unusual name?”

“Given to us one Sunday in Petticoat Lane, along with…well, several other things.” But he didn’t dwell on that. “Anyway, in all of this, there could be something else we ought to be considering. That whatever your editor is going to decide in response to my phone call—it possibly doesn’t matter.”

“No?”

“Well, isn’t this conceivable? That at much the same time our two were having their revelation here in Scunthorpe, others were having a similar experience in some other part of the world? Or
parts
of it. Not necessarily boys, or even children. And probably not white-skinned either, nor Christian. But why assume God would put all his eggs in one basket? Indeed—knowing us as he does—it becomes hard to believe he would.”

“And, presumably,” she said, “knowing in advance just what’s going to happen to each egg?”

“Oh, well,
there
,” said Simon, “we could be wading out into deep waters.” But now it was he who glanced at his watch. “And this isn’t quite the time to try to plumb them. Though I’m sorry if it looks like I’m wanting to hasten your departure.”

“Which you are,” she laughed. “
Again
! And rightly so. Truly, I’d only meant to stay a few minutes.”

“I’ll run you back to the Royal.”

“No, you’ve enough to be getting on with. Besides, I shall enjoy the walk. It’ll give me an opportunity to think.” She felt conscious she was making a sacrifice: she would have liked more time in his company. “Incidentally…What was the connection of ideas between Jerry Turner’s painting and God not putting all his eggs in one basket?”

“His wife said he painted the same thing time and again—to give it every chance of growing as perfect as possible.”

“Right.”

“When do you go back to town?”

“This afternoon.”

“Shall we be seeing you here again?”

“Oh, yes.” As he walked with her to the road, she added, “And say hello to your mother for me. Thank her for the Horlicks.”

“I will.”

“By the way, something else I meant to ask. The Bishops of Grimsby and Lincoln. How did
they
react?”

“One very encouragingly, with wonder and hope and excitement. The other—well, he’s a chap who tends to try to explain things away. Not only is that his natural disposition, he happens to be married to a psychotherapist.”

“Josh Heath implied it might have been
your
natural disposition, as well.”

“And he did so with complete justice.” He laughed. “All the more reason, then—wouldn’t you say—to be impressed by my present attitude? But it follows that Josh Heath doesn’t
always
get things wrong! In fact I feel this strongly: that if he were only fighting for the world’s true causes he’d be very much a force to be reckoned with…more so, maybe, than most of us. And now, quite definitely, Miss Coe, I
am
speaking of myself!”

At the moment he told her this she didn’t entirely take in what he was saying, because they had now reached the highway and while he was talking he had stooped to pick a snail off the pavement, a large snail that had not simply left the shelter of a grass verge but seemed intent on crossing the very busy road. He cupped it gently and restored it to the safety of the garden wall, lightly wiping off his palms on the sides of his trousers.

“Goodbye,” he said. “I still appreciate that offer.”

“Good luck,” she answered. They shook hands. “And if anyone can manage it I’m sure it must be you.”

“Oh, something else,” he called out after her. “That girl you were wondering about last night…Ginny. She was my wife. She died. She died in childbirth. Goodbye,” he repeated, and gave a quick wave.

She started walking away again and looked back and saw that he was closing the front door. And she felt desolate.

28

That evening, when he got home, there was wine on the table.

“That’s my girl,” he exclaimed, kissing her zestfully. “Let’s go to bed!”

“And I suppose you’d never guess that there’s a chicken in the oven? ‘Great heavens, now that’s what I
do
call an appetizing smell!
Cordon Bleu
, even in these cramped, impossible conditions! How on earth do you do it?’”

Momentarily, he put his hand to his head.

“Ginny, what were you saying? Sorry—I didn’t hear—I was suddenly knocked speechless by this incredible smell that came wafting towards me…What I can never understand is—I think you must be a sorceress—how on
earth
do you ever do it?”

“Funny you should ask me that.”

“What a truly extraordinary woman!”

“That’s better.”

“Let’s go to bed.”

“That isn’t. Don’t you know that the way to a man’s heart is supposed to be through his stomach?”

“I was under the impression it was through his underpants.”

“How crude. Tonight I have no wish for crudeness. Tonight I wish for glamour and romance. Me in a filmy evening dress, you in a dinner jacket. Candlelight and crystal goblets. Rose petals strewn across the floor.”

“Rose petals? We could conjure up some wilted chrysanthemum leaves.”

But this time his kiss was more determinedly persuasive. She let him keep his hand beneath her blouse. “Well, maybe I could spare you just a very few minutes,” she conceded. “But after
that
we shall be civilized. I mean to hold a celebration.”

“And what finer way to celebrate?”

“Since you’ve hardly tried any other, aren’t you speaking from a position of almost total ignorance?”

They undressed in front of the sputtering gas fire and knelt to embrace on the new fluffy rug (machine-washable) which Simon had bought at least partly for this purpose. It was early December. With the curtains drawn and by the light of a rather pricey table lamp (another recent acquisition, thanks to the staff discount at John Barnes) the room had grown quite cosy.

She put his hand to her stomach; held it there a moment.

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

The eagerness of the question matched the eagerness of the answer. “Yes!”

“My God!” he said. “My
God
!” She gathered from the look on his face that these were cries of praise rather than profanity. “But why didn’t you
say
? How many…?”

“Three-and-a-half months. And what do you think I’m doing now, you numbskull? But I wanted to be sure. It was only at lunchtime I became so.”

“You should have phoned me.”

“Why? This is much better.”

“But all the time that you must have suspected…”

“Well, don’t you feel that it teaches you right, a little? For simply not having noticed. For just taking those healing powers of yours so very much for granted. Besides, I somehow wanted to keep it all to myself, miser-like, until I really
knew
.”

“Selfish beast.”

“Pots and kettles.”

He put his arms around her and held her to him, very close.

“Next summer, then?”

“Start of June.”

They stayed for a while in silence, and in stillness, cheeks together.

“You know, you’ve got such lovely skin. Ginny by gaslight. Do you think our baby will have skin as soft as yours?” He was now holding her away from him. “A family…That’s what I can’t get over. I always wished I’d been one of a large and very
noisy
family. Constant comings and goings. Open house. More like a commune.”

“Me, too.”

“Terrific at Christmas!”

“Drive the old folks scatty!”

Eventually, after they’d made love, they had some wine as an aperitif, still sitting on the rug and making lazy conversation.

“‘Your young men shall dream dreams,’” he said. “I wonder if this was what Isaiah or whoever it was had in mind when he wrote that: back to back in front of the fire. I’d like to think so.”

“I thought it was your old men who were going to dream dreams. Weren’t your young men going to see visions?”

“Well, okay. He must have had you in mind.”

She nuzzled her head, appreciatively, against his shoulder. “If he was thinking of this precise moment, as you claim, then I hope he supplied you with eyes in your elbows.” She laughed, and shivered. “Oh, how off-putting! Salvador Dali might enjoy it but otherwise
not
what the well-undressed young man is wearing this year!”

She sipped her wine, a little thoughtfully.

“And actually too, my whiz-kid hero, I don’t believe it was Isaiah.”

Simon rose lightly to his feet and took down Ginny’s concordance from the mantelshelf. “Joel, would you believe? Who ever heard of Joel?” He closed the book in some disgust.

“I did.” With her arms encircling her legs and her chin resting on her knees, she said suddenly, “Darling, if it’s a boy, let’s call him Joel, shall we?”

He considered. “Okay, that’s nice. If by June, that is, you haven’t thought of a dozen different things you’d like to call him.”

“No. If it’s a boy that’s the name I know I’ll want. Joel. To remind me of tonight. And of you. And of—”

“I’ve got no plans to go away.”

“I mean, idiot, of you as you are this minute, simple and funny and kind and strong. Full of warmth. Don’t change too much. Don’t stop being the loveliest man that ever was.
Please
. I couldn’t bear it. Oh, hold me, Simeon; I suddenly feel cold.”

After their meal, although they took a fair time over it to do justice to the fact of its being civilized and
Cordon Bleu
, it was still early enough (if they left the washing up to the scullery maid) to think of going out. So they caught a tube down west to look at the Christmas lights. Yet because it was a fine night, cold but dry, Regent Street was more crowded than Simon had expected. “Try not to let anybody bump into you.” He walked with an arm protectively around her and a ready glare for anyone who actually happened to be looking up at the illuminations. When they had a cup of coffee in a snack bar off the main route, however, he received a salutary lesson. Rather a pretty woman sat at the next table, evidently in the final weeks (days) (
minutes
?) of pregnancy. Yet with perfectly good-humoured unconcern she had a toddler repeatedly pulling himself up into what was left of her lap; and she was playing a game with him whenever he did get settled for a minute or two—walky-round-the-garden-like-a-teddy-bear—that made his arms and legs flail rapturously in the anticipation of anguish.

Simon grinned at Ginny. “Us in a few years’ time?” He suddenly leaned towards the woman and said: “My wife’s expecting, too!”

“
Is
she? That’s nice. I bet you’re pleased.”

“If only because, as yet, they don’t know better!” put in the husband. His voice was surprisingly educated and he had strikingly white teeth. “I take it, of course, this
is
your first?”

Ginny laughed. “And you’re the first to hear of it, as well.”

“Now don’t you listen to him.” The woman patted Ginny’s arm. “He always makes these silly jokes but what matters is he’s a really good dad, same as
your
hubbie’s going to be. Sorry,” she said quickly, colouring a little and glancing sideways as she did so, “I mean husband. For instance…he didn’t think we ought to come out tonight but I’d have been really sad to miss them angels—those angels; just felt I had to see them. So he brought us, even though he didn’t want to.”

“Are
you
enjoying seeing the lights?” Ginny asked the very appealing child of five or six who sat at the table demurely sucking at her fizzy drink.