The Chorister at the Abbey (7 page)

12

I became a reproof among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbours.
Psalm 31:13

Edwin Amstrong was settled behind his desk. He had given up on Quaile Woods for another evening. It really wasn’t coming and he worried that creatively he was at a standstill. He turned to another project.

He was struggling to write a modern setting of Psalm 110, the
Dixit Dominus
made famous by Handel. It would be impossible to improve on that, but after singing it with the Abbey Chorus Edwin had been fascinated by the words. Like many psalms they were brutal, he thought, yet humanistic in a way that transcended the centuries.

Years ago, on one wet night, feeling grotesquely alone after Marilyn had left him, he had forgotten to eat yet again. Consumed by the indulgence of misery, he had found himself at evensong in the Abbey. He was following the words as well as the music of the intermingled voices.

It had been Psalm 102, and suddenly he had heard,
my
heart is smitten down and withered like grass so that I forget to
eat my bread
. . . Yes! At last, someone who wasn’t trying to jolly him out of his gloom. His ‘emotionally induced eating disorder’, as his patronizing doctor called it, was a real response to misery in the heart. It was almost comforting to know he was going through the same despondency as another man in despair, thousands of years ago.

And how about the next bit? –
thou hast taken me up and
cast me down
. . . That was exactly how he felt. What sort of God could give him Marilyn, just to take her away? He had loved Marilyn so much that it had transformed his life, and when she had gone he had felt both black rage and a sense that something so wonderful couldn’t possibly have lasted. The psalmist too had hated God for what had happened. But he had found relief in being just one tiny bleeding bit of a huge creation.
They all shall wax old as doth a garment,
and as a vesture shalt thou change them and they shall be
changed, but thou art the same and thy years shall not fail
.

Hardly Wanda Wisley’s cup of tea! But he loved it. There was something about the psalmist’s grumpy, egotistical, almost teenage belly-aching – ‘It’s not fair’; ‘It’s their fault’; ‘Stuff you, God!’ – which seemed profoundly normal to Edwin.

Take Psalm 41:
if he come to see me, he speaketh vanity. . .
Yea, even mine own familiar friend, whom I trusted, who did also
eat of my bread, hath laid great wait for me . . .
My best friend hates me! It was adolescent petulance, and the final
world
without end. Amen
was almost a throwaway reminder of the greatness of God and the smallness of man.

And even now, it fitted the way Edwin felt about his own fate at Norbridge College. He had wanted to be head of department, but someone had ensured that it didn’t happen, and his own resentment made him feel small. It was so good to know the psalmist was huffy too.

Edwin looked up from the keyboard and faced an unwelcome thought. There was another line in Psalm 41 which made him ponder:
and now that he lieth, let him rise
up no more
. Of course it didn’t mean what Edwin wanted it to mean, but there was a finality about the cadence which made him smile grimly.

Morris Little! He just wouldn’t lie down, would he! Edwin put the thought aside, and bent over his computer screen.

At the Prouts’ house, Reg poured Alex Gibson yet another drink. She’d never known him so generous. It was strange to be suddenly listened to with respect again. She managed to get the glass of whisky down, while dragging out the story of the body.

‘It was quite appalling; you know, he was still warm . . .’

‘Oh, how ghastly!’ breathed Pat Johnstone.

‘Of course it was ghastly, woman.’ David Johnstone looked as fascinated as his wife. ‘But you didn’t see the Frost kids? Or anyone else?’

‘Nobody. The place was deserted. There was only me.’ Alex was aware she was showing off slightly. ‘And the boy, of course.’

‘How awful for you, Alex.’ Christine sounded genuinely concerned.

She basked in their sympathy. After all, she’d seen more of the gore than that poor lad who had stumbled over the body. He was on the other side of it, further away from Morris’s crushed lips and smashed teeth. Alex had started by hamming it up for her audience, but after a while the memory made her feel sick. Best to get some food down . . .

After this, dinner was a fairly blurred affair. Alex was beginning to feel really ill. Her head had started to pound and her nose was totally blocked up. She lurched into her sister’s neat little downstairs loo and tried not to make huge retching noises. When she came out, Reg was waiting with her anorak. She was being bundled out as an embarrassment.

Chris had moved on down the tidy garden path as if to encourage her to leave while Reg had hurried forward to the car. Alex felt herself weaving slightly, and halted abruptly in the porch to get her balance.

‘Fancy meeting someone who found that body!’ she heard Pat whisper behind her to her husband. ‘No wonder she’s drunk so much. Can you imagine what it must have been like?’

David Johnstone muttered harshly, ‘Reg says she drinks all the time.’

Oh, he does, does he, she thought. But when Reg came hurrying back to support her on the walk down the path, Alex needed his arm. As he drove her home, the dark fells seemed to whizz past the window at double speed.

Reg said, ‘David Johnstone’s all right, you know. Bit of an eye for the girls but a good businessman. There’s nothing going on in Norbridge he doesn’t know about. Some of it a bit under-the-counter, but Johnstone’s a wheeler-dealer.’ Reg was patting his naked head. ‘This body business must have shaken you up. You could do worse if you were thinking of selling . . .’

‘I’m not.’ The words sounded slurred. And if I was going to sell, she thought, it wouldn’t be through a bastard like David Johnstone, smart operator and complete creep. She felt the world wheeling around.

‘Would you like me to stop?’ Reg asked in a particularly patronizing voice. All she could do was shake her head. She knew her body was going to collapse in a spectacular way, but she would not let it happen in front of her brother-in-law. He pulled up beside the bungalow.

‘Shall I come in with you?’

‘No. I’m fine.’

‘Can you manage your keys?’

‘’Course. G’night.’

She stood and waited on the dark doorstep until he pulled out of the drive. When she was sure the car had gone, she fumbled for the lock. She knew she was crying.

Oh God, she thought, I used to be the one person you could always rely on at parties. I said all the right things, everyone wanted to talk to me, and I made sure everyone was happy. I was an ideal guest. Now, I’m pissed out of my skull with the strain of talking to a horrible couple from Reg’s bloody golf club! And how disgusting, to make a ‘turn’ out of talking about Morris’s death like that! I’m gross.

Her front door swung open and bounced madly against the wall. Alex tumbled into the hallway. She kicked it closed behind her, and fell headlong on her hall carpet. Her big glasses toppled off. With her face in the pile, she smelt mud and earth and long-dead cat pee. It was vile and her nose was right in it. She groaned, and then crawled into the cloakroom. She lay down on the cracked linoleum floor, head on the skirting board.

Morris Little must have fallen against the wall, just like this, she thought.

And in drunken clarity she recalled something else. Morris had been holding a book, but she hadn’t been able to see the title. Reliving the scene for Reg’s friends had made her remember the odd shape of the slim volume. But what was it?

Oh God, she thought, my head feels as if all my ears and eyes are falling out. There’s a band of pain from my neck right over my skull and down my nose. I haven’t got the strength to move. I’m going to die too, she thought. So what? In the past, she had wanted to die through self-pity. Now she wanted to die through self-loathing. And good riddance to life, she thought.

13

Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips, that they speak no guile.
Psalm 34:13

Robert looked greyer when Suzy arrived back from Manchester, the evening before school resumed. It was hectic getting the kids’ stuff unpacked, and sorting things out for the morning. At half past nine when Jake disappeared up to his room and Molly was asleep, Suzy and Robert sat down in the living room.

Suzy closed her eyes. She was exhausted. Seeing old friends and relatives with Nigel over the last few days had been tiring and dislocating, and the drive back up north in the fading light had been shattering, with rain and sleet sweeping down off the fells on to the windscreen as if to repel her. Robert handed her a cup of coffee.

She was dreading the stress of going back to work and felt that while Christmas had been good, New Year had been awful and she was more confused than ever.

‘I’ve missed you,’ Robert said.

‘I’ve missed you too . . . well, actually life has been non stop and most of my time has been taken up with arrangements.’

‘How was Nigel?’ He leant forward slightly. ‘How did he get on with Jake?’

There was something about his instant questioning which made her angry. She wanted to relax, not to be interrogated.

‘Do you have to start talking about Jake and Nigel the moment I get to sit down? Is it that stepfather business again?’

Suzy could feel her voice rising. How was this happening? She was no sooner home than a row was brewing, with Robert of all people, the calmest person she’d ever met. But why had he brought up the question of Nigel and fatherhood and who was best for Jake the moment she had walked in the door?

Robert was aware he had mistimed things. But Suzy had been racing round with the children, seeing old friends and relations, spending time with Nigel, while he had been sequestered in Tarnfield, trying to write again, getting nowhere, and worrying about the future.

‘I never mentioned the stepfather issue, Suzy!’

‘But that’s what you’re thinking about, isn’t it? How you should marry me in order to provide a role model for my son. The perfect husband strikes again!’

Robert was not easily provoked but he heard himself saying angrily: ‘Well, at least I never walked out on my wife like Nigel did!’

‘So if Mary wasn’t dead, you’d still be married to her. In love with her, even . . .’

‘Yes, of course I would. I would never have left Mary.’

‘So where does that leave me? Am I the default option?’

‘No! That’s not it. It’s you, Suzy. I love you. And I want to live with you.’

‘So what’s wrong with this?’

‘Nothing,’ Robert said miserably. He felt rebuffed, and it hurt more than he could ever have imagined. Suzy was independent financially and emotionally, and all he knew of marriage was the symbiosis he had had with Mary for two decades. Maybe Suzy was right and he was craving that old insularity. It was important not to be controlling, he could see that. That’s what Nigel was. Robert wanted to be cool and not clinging.

‘OK, Suzy. Maybe you’re right and I’m forcing the issue. If it hadn’t been for all the drama in the village bringing us together . . .’

‘We might never have been here? Yes!’

So had Robert become involved just because she and the children were in a mess? The suggestion that he had fallen for her because she was vulnerable hurt Suzy deeply. She knew that what she was going to say next was cruel but she still said it.

‘Well, you’re not the only person who has sensitivities about marriage. Technically I’m still married to Nigel and he’s the kids’ real father. And he loves them. He’s not all bad.’

Robert stared into the empty fireplace. Suddenly The Briars seemed dreary, and the Christmas decorations dusty and forsaken.

‘OK, Suzy. Perhaps we both need to cool it.’

Suzy felt the pit of her stomach lurch. They had been so compatible, the odd couple on the outside, but, to their own secret joy, best friends and lovers inside the warmth of The Briars. The thought of losing him made her feel sick, but she was too proud to say so.

Oh bugger, thought Robert. How has this happened? Even though he had suspected it, he had been knocked sideways by the thought that Nigel might really be back in Suzy’s emotional life. It made him feel somehow immobilized, incapable of doing anything.

That night lying beside her, not touching, Robert thought, what a pain pride is! Why do I always come over as so smug? ‘
I would never have left Mary!
’ How sanctimonious that sounded. Robert Clark, a template for reliability. Suddenly he had a shaming memory which made him blush in the dark.

Mr Perfect. What a joke – and what a mess.

‘Mr Armstrong?’

It was the first day of the so-called spring semester, but winter was in total control. Edwin hated the time between Christmas and Easter. He had been hurrying along the corridor to a meeting of the Inter-Department Committee on Module Changes, one of the many jobs delegated to him by Wanda Wisley. He half recognized the voice, but was surprised when he turned round to see Tom Firth following him, looking agonized but determined.

‘Tom! Do you want to see me?’

‘Yeah.’ Tom rolled his eyes. He would hardly be lurking, calling ‘Mr Armstrong,’ if he didn’t want to see him, would he? Adults were idiots.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ Edwin asked. Pastoral care was much more important than Module Changes. And this might be a chance to talk to Tom about transferring to Music.

Tom looked even more appalled. ‘No, I’m not thirsty. And anyway . . .’ He glanced over his shoulder.

‘You don’t want to be seen with me?’

‘Too right!’ Tom muttered.

‘You’d better come to my room.’ Edwin turned back towards the Music Department. Tom followed him warily, a few yards behind.

The office Edwin shared with two visiting lecturers was tiny but dominated by a carved Victorian bookcase stuffed with volumes of church music, his colleagues’ tribute to Edwin’s full-time status. Tom slumped into the battered easy chair under the window. His body language said that this wasn’t to be a teacher–pupil type meeting and Edwin felt disappointed.

‘So what can I do for you, Tom?’

Tom twisted and looked out of the window. It was starting to snow in sleety wet streaks on the glass. The weather had suddenly turned very cold after New Year’s Day. It was the first day back after the holiday and the building slowly steamed to combat the icy conditions. Tom wrenched his face back to stare at Edwin. His eyes looked huge. He seemed to have become even thinner.

‘Did you have a nice break . . .?’ Edwin suddenly stopped. What a stupid question to ask a boy who had found a body, days before Christmas.

But Tom said enthusiastically, ‘Yeah, brill. Mam got me a laptop.’

‘Very nice!’ And very pricey. Mrs Firth must have been working hard on her son’s behalf.

There was a long pause.

‘So why did you want to see me? Is it about the choir? Or the Music Department?’ Edwin asked hopefully.

‘Nah. Neither. Look, it’s about, you know . . .’ The boy drew his hand across his throat in an unmistakable sign.

‘Ah, yes. The murder. Very sad. As I said to you at the time, if there’s anything I can do . . .’

Tom stared at him. Edwin shifted in his seat. He felt that the balance of power was moving away from him to the strange intense youth. But then, Tom’s harsh adolescent voice and staccato manner, not so very different from the Frost brothers’ grunts, broke the spell.

‘There was summat weird-like about him. Mr Little, that is.’

‘Well, yes, Tom . . . he was dead!’

‘You can say that again!’

‘So what was weird? Apart from the hole in his head?’

Suddenly, they both started to laugh, each horrified at his own reaction. Edwin felt his whole body rock with a release which spread to Tom, whose laughter rippled through the office and set them both off, until tears filled Edwin’s eyes and Tom was reduced to wiping his nose on the sleeve of his tatty sweatshirt.

When the laughter faded away they looked at each other in embarrassment.

‘Look, Mr Armstrong . . .’

‘Call me Edwin.’

‘OK, Edwin.’ Tom coughed awkwardly. But his accent softened and his eyebrows came together in concentration. ‘I’ve gone over and over this in my head, but I’m sure that Mr Little was carrying a psalm book. You know, verses and chants. A psalter.’

He hardly paused to register Edwin’s look of surprise, and then the words came flooding out. ‘I was sure that was what it was. But then I thought, why would he want to bring a psalter across from the Abbey? But it wasn’t one of theirs, honest. It was different. It was flopped open and the first page was missing. Why would the Frosts want to do that?’

‘Why do vandals want to destroy anything?’

‘No, Edwin, you don’t get it. The first page was torn out properly, not in the way the Frosts would have done it. I knew it was missing because the book opened straight on to a psalm. No introduction.’

‘So it wasn’t just torn and wrecked. You mean the page was deliberately taken out?’

‘That’s it exactly. And you could tell it was a special book. Not just the Parish Psalter that we use. I wondered if maybe it was from the college library, or something?’

‘We don’t have that sort of book in the library here. In fact the only books on the Psalms are here, in my bookcase.’ Edwin jumped up and unlocked his glass-panelled bookcase. All his books were there, beautifully sorted and in order. Among them were a few nineteenth-century books of music.

‘Was it like this?’ he asked, taking out a psalter from about 1890.

‘A bit . . . I don’t know why. I don’t know anything about books.’

‘But you know about music.’

‘Yes, I do. It’s my hobby.’

Edwin stroked his chin. ‘Why did you want to tell me?’

‘I told you, because it was weird. And what happened to the book? If anyone should have it, it should be you and not the police. What would they want with a psalter?’

Edwin felt a sudden protective urge, which shocked him. Teenage church music enthusiasts were few and far between. In Tom’s gauche and guarded isolation, he recognized something of himself twenty years earlier.

He said earnestly, ‘Look, Tom, I’ll find out about the book. It was probably taken away with Morris’s body.’

‘And you’ll let me know what happened to it?’

‘Of course I will.’

Tom shrugged, and edged toward the door. ‘And sum-mat else . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘That woman who found me, no one has said owt about her. I asked in the Finance Office yesterday. She’s not been back to work.’

Edwin was taken aback by the boy’s concern. He hadn’t given Alex Gibson a second thought since the night Morris was killed.

‘I’ll call her,’ he said lamely. ‘And Tom . . .’ Edwin wasn’t sure why he was saying this or what good it would do. ‘. . . don’t tell anyone else about the psalter, will you?’

‘Are you doolally? Like who?’ Tom said, curling his lip up. Then he left the office, banging the door behind him.

A few minutes later, the telephone rang and rang in Alex Gibson’s bungalow in Fellside. There was no reply.