The Bad Samaritan (4 page)

“Rosemary Sheffield,” she said cautiously.

“Rosemary, it's Florrie here. Florrie Harridance.”

She needn't have given a name. The wheeze and the slow, somewhat threatening delivery identified the caller.

“Oh yes,” said Rosemary neutrally. “Hello Florrie.”

“Well, we've heard about your problem in the parish, and we're all very sorry,” the voice laboured on. “There's a lot of sympathy for you, but there
is
something odd about a clergyman's wife who doesn't believe—there is in my book, any road.”

The voice was pure Lancashire, and seemed to spin out the long O in “book” to eternity. Rosemary pictured her at her phone, with her whiskery face, her voracious expression, and her enormous bosom stretching out before her like some kind of personal continental shelf.

“It's certainly not an ideal situation,” she said, to say something.

“It certainly is not! Coming at a time when we need a new chair for the Mothers' Union.”

Oh yes, thought Rosemary. Now we're getting there.

“Is Mrs Munson really giving up this time?” she asked.

“She is. No question. The arthritis has got her so bad—crippled, she is. Tragic! Oh no, this time she's really going. And of course with you being the vice-chair . . .”

“Oh, I've never regarded myself as Mrs Munson's successor, necessarily,” said Rosemary truthfully. “There's many others could do the job. I know Mrs Macauley would like it.”

“Hetty Macauley!” This was not at all the name Florrie Harridance wanted to hear, as Rosemary well knew. “Hetty Macauley hasn't got the energy, she hasn't got the vision, and she hasn't got the common touch . . . .”

Well, if it's the common touch that's needed, you've got it all right, Rosemary thought. She sank gratefully into a chair thoughtfully placed near the reception desk.

“Now you know me, Rosemary: I'm North Country, and I'm blunt with it.” Brutal more like, and totally insensitive to others' feelings, Rosemary thought. “I
don't
think it would be suitable for a nonbeliever to take the chairperson's job, and I don't think Hetty Macauley's the person for it either. Now this is going to look like pushing myself forward . . .” It is, Florrie, it is. “ . . . but there is a body of opinion in the Mothers' Union that wants me in that job. I'd call it a sort of current of opinion. And since in the present circumstances, if rumour is correct, you couldn't take the job, not in my opinion, then I don't think I'd be doing myself justice if I didn't let my name go forward. And if you found you could support me, nobody would be happier than me . . . .”

And so it went on. Through the wheezy display of Florrie's
heavy artillery Rosemary interjected the odd banality, and when the whole business drew towards a close she said briefly that she would think over what Florrie had said and put the phone down without giving her any further chance to draw out the process of self-aggrandisement. She reminded Rosemary of a heavily armed tank advancing into a country where there is no opposition to the invasion.

She sat on in the foyer for a while, thinking over the phone call. So Florrie knew, and was using her knowledge to further her ambitions to take over the Mothers' Union. Others would use the knowledge, doubtless, to further their aims and schemes. Fine by me, Rosemary thought. All the formal positions she held in the parish she had taken on because pressed to or because no one else wanted to take them on. She set much greater store by the more informal aspects of her life as vicar's wife—visiting, helping, cheering.

But she wasn't happy at the knowledge that her present godless state was known to Mrs Harridance. Because if it was known to her that meant it was known to the parish as a whole. The twenty-four hour news service that the BBC has for so long wanted to set up nationally had been anticipated locally by the service provided for St Saviour's and Abbingley generally by Mrs Harridance.

How had she heard? Not from Paul, that was certain. Behind his civilized, concerned facade he was embarrassed and upset by the turn of events. He didn't know how he would cope with the sort of comment that inevitably would follow news leaking out. And if not Paul, who? Rosemary's suspicion immediately fixed on her son. Either Paul had not warned Mark strongly enough or Mark had deliberately gone against parental instructions out of some obscure sense that he knew best how to bring his mother back into the Christian fold. If the latter, he very much mistook his mother's nature. She could not be tricked or badgered back
into the faith. Opposition merely aroused her to greater obstinacy. She told herself sadly that children often think they understand their parents but really know nothing about them at all. Perhaps that was because the parents had a life
before
parenthood which remained submerged but waiting to come up once the more arduous duties of being father or mother were over.

Then another thought occurred to her. Florrie had referred to her loss of faith, and had implied that it was generally known. But she'd also said “if rumour is correct.” In Florrie's mind rumours went from possibilities to probabilities to facts with the speed of lightning, and in this she did not greatly differ from many other men and women in Paul's congregation. Had her sudden departure from Abbingley sparked off rumours in the parish? She was in no doubt that the rumours would have to be sexual. Rumours were always sexual or financial, and since she had no connection with anything financial beyond managing the tiny bit of money she had inherited, sexual it would have to be. Who might she be thought to be having an affair with?

The only figure who sprang to her mind was Dark Satanic Mills, and as the image of his saturnine good looks, his small-town Clark Gable handsomeness, came to her mind her mouth screwed into a pout of distaste. She would hate her name to be coupled with his. She wondered whether to ring her husband, and her hand had strayed towards the telephone when she thought again. Paul was always the last to hear rumours: even the most eager bearer of ill tidings to the one most affected would be abashed by his patent decency. She'd give it a day or two: by then someone would have summoned up the courage or the effrontery.

In the event, she rang Paul the next evening, Monday night. She was just too curious to know what was being said in the parish to wait any longer. After some friendly preliminaries she said, “How did Mark's visit go?”

“Oh, fine,” said her husband, a touch of constraint in his voice. “I didn't see all that much of him because he was around visiting old friends much of the time. But we did, I'm afraid, have a long talk about you. He insisted upon it.”

“That boy is becoming a moral steamroller,” said Rosemary, aware of an unmotherly sharpness in her voice. “Couldn't you try to dissuade him from going into the Church?”

“You only say that because you've lost your faith.”

“On the contrary: it's the good of the Church I'm thinking about.”

“Now you are being unfair.”

“No I'm not. It's not clergymen who go off with other men's wives or who collect pornography who do the Church harm—well, it
is
, but more harm is done by pompous prigs like Mark who act as if the Church still had the central part in people's lives that it had in 1850. He thinks he's going to be an important man by going into the Church, poor silly boy. In fact the Church is hardly even marginal any more.”

“Well,
I
know that.”

“Of course you do. I wish you could get it across to him . . . . Paul?”

“Yes?”

“Did you make clear to Mark that this—this about me—was to be kept under his hat?”

“Ah . . . well, yes I did but . . .”

“Go on.”

She could just picture him swallowing and stuttering.

“Well, I got in a bit late. And when I made it clear to him a sort of shifty look came into his eyes.”

“I know it well.”

“You see, he got here while I was at evensong, and he walked to the Church, and when I came out he was talking to—”

“Florrie Harridance. All right. That explains how she knew. I gather it's all over the parish by now. I rather got the impression there might be other rumours as well.”

“If so I haven't heard them. What kind of rumours?”

“Don't know. Maybe that I'm having a mad, passionate affair. Whether this is seen as a reason for or a consequence of my loss of faith I don't know.”

“I think you're imagining things. Anyway, you can't blame Mark for
those
rumours.”

“He's a blabbermouth. I don't know why he thinks his mother's spiritual state should be the concern of the whole parish.”

“Well you
are
a clergyman's wife.”

“Don't I know it!”

There was a brief pause.

“Nothing's er . . . ?”

“Happened? No pretty pink cloud of faith has descended? No, Paul, I'm afraid it hasn't. I think that's something we're going to have to live with.”

She was being uncharacteristically brutal, and she heard Paul sigh at the other end.

After the phone call she did something unlike her. She left Cliff View, found an off-licence and bought herself a chilled bottle of white wine. She felt oddly embarrassed about it and was glad it was well disguised in an anonymous plastic bag. The phrase “secret drinker” kept coming into her mind. It was still early evening and, once in her room, she poured herself a glass, sat thinking, then sipping, reading a little, and thinking again. Soon after nine she finished
A Tale of Two Cities
and slipped down to the TV lounge to get a replacement. There were three old people in a comatose state watching a sitcom. Wasn't it fun in the old days when we actually
laughed
at the comedy programmes on television, Rosemary thought? There wasn't much joy in the
shelf of classics either, but she selected
The Prisoner of Zenda
and took
Adam Bede
just in case the Hope book, which she had never read, proved too awful.

Outside, going up the stairs, she found Stanko, out of his white jacket and black trousers, in the sad and shoddy civvies he wore in the evening. She caught him up.

“Tired?”

“A little. A little bit sad.”

“Do you feel like a quick drink? I went out and bought a bottle and I couldn't possibly drink it all.”

He smiled the little-boy smile which was his off-duty one and nodded, but put a finger to his lips. At her door he said, “Goodnight, then, Meesa Sheffield,” and went to his obscure staircase. Then he came back, treading only on the floorboards he knew did not creak. Rosemary shut the door behind them, not sure whether she felt schoolgirlish or immoral.

“Not approved of?” she asked, fetching a second tooth-mug and speaking quietly.

“I think it would not be,” said Stanko carefully. “Is no need to speak quiet. The next rooms is empty.”

“You mustn't think I sit here drinking every evening,” said Rosemary, pouring. Stanko shrugged. “Well, whether it matters or not, I
don't
. But I felt like it tonight.”

“You have problems?”

“No. Well—nothing important like your problems. I just wanted to think something through.”

“And you have?”

“I've thought
about
it. I don't think I've thought it through. It's just a little difficulty, really.”

“With your husband to do?”

“With Paul? Oh no. Well, not as you mean it. More to do with his job.”

“You told me he was a—a priest. What is your word?”

“Clergyman. Priest sounds too grand, though we do use it in the North.”

“So what is your husband's problem?”

“Me. I suddenly . . . lost my faith. Or suddenly realised I didn't have it any more. I really can't describe how or why it happened. But I find I don't believe in God any more.”

Stanko leaned forward, his liquid eyes warm and concerned. He looked like a spaniel who has realised his master is in pain.

“Is very sad.”

Rosemary hedged.

“Would you be sad if you lost your faith?”

“Of course,” he said, surprised. “Is what I . . .
hold
. What I—I have not the word—”

“What you cling to?”

“Yes. Cling to. I lose everything, all I own, all the peoples I love. Is what I cling to.”

“Yes, I suppose it would be.” In her new mood Rosemary found his words sad and pathetic, where before she would have been moved and admiring. “I hope you will always have it.”

“But you do not feel sad?”

She decided to be honest.

“Not at all, I'm afraid,” she said briskly. “I sometimes tell myself I will be when my loss sinks in, but so far I haven't felt sad in the least.”

“But what is your husband's problem? He has not lost his faith?”

“Oh no. It's not catching. But there will be problems—with his parishioners, and so on.”

“What is that word par—?”

“Parishioners. The people who go to his church.”

“Why don't he tell them to mind their own businesses?”

“Good question. I wish he would. But Paul's not like that.”

“So what will you do?”

“Go home and face them, I suppose.”

“You could pretend.”

“I could. On anything else I might, but the thought of pretending to be a Christian rather shocks me. Anyway, from what I hear, my dark secret is out.”

“I will miss you when you go.”

“I shall miss you, Stanko. I wish you had had news from your family while I was here.”

“Sometimes I wish . . .”

“Yes?”

“I wish I had
any
news. Even bad.” He looked at her to see how she was reacting. “You understand? That it is almost better to know something terrible has happened than to be . . . like this. Uncertain. Knowing nothing.”