Unholy Dying (2 page)

But his mind was one that, unlike a train, could travel along several lines at once. The fact that an article on railway catering was in the process of construction did not mean that he had relaxed his habitual alertness, his Autolycus-like knack of snapping up unconsidered trifles—things that to other people, even to other journalists, would have meant nothing. One such apparent trifle penetrated to him now from the table behind him.

“Gone to ground, so they say.”

“Spirited away, more like. The Church takes care of its own.”

At that moment, irritatingly, the food arrived. Cosmo Horrocks began tucking into his Cumberland sausage. It was a perfectly
good and tasty coil of sausage—not much use for his purpose, if he stuck to the truth. The article was for the moment put aside, and he concentrated all his attention on the next table, hoping they would take up the topic once the waitress had finished serving them. The Church was always good for a story, both in the nationals and in the locals. Cosmo's professional life had been punctuated by erring vicars. Sure enough, once the waitress had moved on, the conversation was resumed in hushed tones, but not hushed enough to frustrate Cosmo's journalistic sharpness of hearing.

“Of course the wife clams up, says she'd rather not speak about it. Faithful daughter of the Church and all that. Well, I'm a faithful son—up to a point.”

“Exactly. Up to a point.”

“And I've always been willing to give them financial advice, off the record if necessary.”

“I know you have. It's well known in the parish.”

“I've lost count of the times they've come to me and said, ‘Look, Mr. Leary, you're a businessman, and you know what's what. We've got this parcel of land and we want to do as well from it as we can'—that sort of thing.”

“You've been very generous. Time's money, when all's said.”

“Well, frankly, I'd rather do that than be on my knees every Sunday, let alone racking my brains to remember lustful thoughts to pour into Father Pardoe's ear. Leave that to the womenfolk, that's what I say.”

“Not that they have lustful thoughts.”

“Course not. It's well known they don't. Any more than priests do.”

Cosmo could just imagine the wink they gave each other. He was getting very interested. Priests, eh? Father Pardoe. Catholic
Church, then, rather than Anglican. Better and better. He put aside his knife and fork and took out his trusty notebook. Drawing a line under the previous notes, he headed the new section
PRIEST—SCANDAL
, and underneath entered the names “Mr. Leary” (not very useful, until a parish had been pinpointed) and “Father Pardoe” (decidedly useful). After a pause for mastication, the conversation at the next table (behind Cosmo's back, which made him greatly regret not choosing the seat opposite) continued.

“What do you think it is in this case? Money or a woman?”

There was a pause for thought.

“Frankly, I'm guessing here, but I'd say a bit of both. There's a name that's being mentioned—by the women who talk about it at all.”

“Oh?”

“Julie Norris.”

“Doesn't mean anything to me. Parishioner?”

“Not so you'd notice. Single mother.”

There was a brief, bitter laugh.

“Single mother! We had a better word for it in our younger days, didn't we, Con? And for the child.”

“Little bastard. Aye, we did that. Anyway, there's been women before that he was said to favor unduly. But no one thought there was anything sexual in those relationships. When it comes to a twenty-year-old bimbo . . .”

“You're right. And it's likely there was more to the earlier businesses than any of the parish biddies was willing to admit.”

“Of course you're right, Derek, as usual. But if there was, he was clever about it. It's not all the parish ladies think like my Mary—try to put the best construction on anything connected with any member of the priesthood.”

“Oh, I know that. There's plenty of scandalmongers, for all they ‘Father this' and ‘Father that' them the whole time till it fair makes you sick.”

“Doesn't it ever. I tell you what, it's when the children grow up and fly the nest. There's a big hole in a woman's life waiting to be filled, and it's the Church and the priest that fill it.”

“You said the problem might be a bit of both.”

When he replied, the man called Con Leary, who had kept his voice very low, reduced it to a whisper, showing that in his eyes money warranted even greater discretion than sex. Cosmo strained his ears, something he was used to doing, and managed to get the gist.

“Question of a special fund, a legacy, intended for the poor of the parish. Money gone missing or been misused.”

The man called Derek whistled.

“
Really?
That does surprise me. Seemed a very frugal bloke, Father Pardoe. They call you in?”

“
No
. I tell you, I know no more about this than anyone else. I do pick up the gossip, though.”

“And do they think—the gossips—that the two things are connected?”

“Yes. Whether rightly or wrongly, you can judge as well as I can. But I would say parish gossip is as often wrong as it's right.”

“True enough.” Derek immediately assumed, though, that it was right. “Well, you've certainly surprised me. Not at all what I'd have suspected of Father Pardoe. How long has he been at St. Catherine's?”

“Oh, coming on ten years.”

“That's a while. He was always regarded with a lot of respect, I'll give him that. More than most of these young priests who kick up the dust and start all sorts of things that nobody wants
just to impress the Bishop. No, I had a lot of time for Father Pardoe. Before all this blew up.”

Leary and Derek then went on to other things—things that they could talk about in normal voices. Cosmo ordered a trifle, and then had coffee and a refill, wanting them to go first so that he could get a good look at them. Unfortunately, however, they went back to the first-class carriages, so they did not pass his table. When he realized this he stood up hurriedly, but all he saw were two gray-suited men, one with a bald patch at the crown of his head, with thin hair combed carefully around it, the other with a good reddish thatch, untinged with gray. If he saw them face-to-face again he probably wouldn't recognize them. He downed the last of his coffee refill, then turned to find his way back to Standard Class was barred by the lumpish waitress.

“You realize you haven't paid yet . . . sir?”

That hurdle negotiated, Cosmo Horrocks went back to his seat, with a small part of his brain still fuming at the catering service, but the larger part full of satisfaction at a trail well started. He now had not just the two original names—Leary and Father Pardoe—but in addition, Derek, Julie Norris, and Mary, all down in his invaluable notebook, as well as St. Catherine's. Father Pardoe was the vital one. Cosmo had Catholic contacts whom he could consult about this parish, so he wouldn't have to go through the Leeds diocesan authorities. Once the parish had been identified, the name Julie Norris would be crucial. He had started by thinking that this was going to be a “Vicar elopes with cleaning lady” story, but in fact it was even better: Vows of chastity besmirched; a randy bimbo who could be portrayed as a cruelly wronged ingenue if necessary; and a financial angle to boot. A story like this could make his year.

Cosmo Horrocks was never happy, did not have the innocence or optimism that such an uncomplicated emotion demanded. But as he sat back, eyes closed, for the rest of his journey to Leeds, he felt relish, anticipation, tinglings of excitement—all the familiar emotions of a born muckraker.

Cosmo Horrocks sat at his desk in the newsroom of the
West Yorkshire Chronicle
meditating mischief. In his hand was the first draft of a story by one of the paper's new recruits. That was merely an hors d'oeuvre: it would be so easy to savage it was hardly worth his while. No cub reporter had ever had a kind word from Horrocks, and this one had committed the additional sin of being a university graduate. Child's play. But simultaneously he was meditating his next move in what had begun to be called in his mind the Priest and the Bimbo story. First identification, then establishment of basic facts, then stirring it. Cosmo's ideal story was one in which the very newspaper coverage became part of the story. He was pretty sure this would be the case with the Priest and the Bimbo investigation.

Terry Beale, twenty-two and looking nineteen, left his nook in the darkest and least salubrious part of the newsroom and came toward Cosmo's desk for his verdict on his story with no expectation or anticipation on his face. Terry was bright, ambitious,
and he knew his man: Cosmo boosted his own ego by being contemptuous of everyone around him.

“This headline you suggest,” said Cosmo by way of opening the skirmish, tapping Terry's printout with a long, bony finger:
REPORT SLAMS FAILING SCHOOL
.

“Not very vivid,” said Terry. “But accurate.”

“They're ‘sink schools,' especially in headlines. And when a school is in question they don't slam, they ‘cane.' ”

“I looked up earlier reports on that school. We used ‘cane' then.”

Cosmo sighed theatrically.

“Of course we did, you ape. Product recognition. The reader knows what sort of a story it's going to be even before he starts to read it.”

“Teachers haven't caned pupils for years.”

“What's that got to do with it? People recognize the word, and it gives them a bit of a frisson. You use ‘cane,' or if you want to vary it a bit, ‘thrash.' . . . I don't know. The greenhorns I get landed with. . . . So what's the headline going to be?”

“
REPORT CANES SINK SCHOOL
?”

“You can't cane a school, you dolt! It will be
REPORT CANES SINK SCHOOL HEAD
.”

“It didn't. She only took over three months ago, and the report said she'd done a good job in a limited time.”

“Oh, for God's sake! What's a headline aiming to do?”

“Get people reading the story, I suppose.”

“Exactly. Accuracy's got nothing to do with it.”

Then he started in on the piece, line by line, image by image, word by word. At the end there was practically nothing left of Terry's original piece that hadn't been subjected to Cosmo's withering scorn. But Terry was not a pushover. He kept his
cheerfulness and his humor remarkably well, though his was not a face formed for humor: it was pleasant-looking, but naturally thoughtful and withdrawn. Any jokiness was specially assumed for Horrocks's benefit, and was undented even when he was sent away with a flea in his ear.

“You Southerners think you own the bloody world,” yelled Cosmo at his departing back.

“Midlander,” said Terry, not bothering to turn around. “Birmingham.” Cosmo's geography was as rotten as everything else about him, he thought.

But as he sat down there came over him a depressing sense that when he had gone through his story and done everything Cosmo had said he should, it would make a much better
West Yorkshire Chronicle
report than his own original piece. Less accurate, less responsible, less balanced, but horribly punchy. And it would have nothing in it of him at all. And this led to a very familiar path of meditation: What was he doing here? Did he want to be taught to sink to Cosmo's level? Was journalism of this kind anything but literary prostitution? He cast in the man's direction a look that was full of contempt and disgust, yet tinged with something else too: Disillusion, disappointment, a sense of wasted hope.

The look was received by Cosmo from under his snakelike, hooded lids. His guts gave a silent chuckle. The lad was regretting he'd ever thought of journalism as a career. That was what he liked doing: knocking the stuffing out of them while they were still on the first rung of the ladder. He loved seeing on their faces the bewildered look of a mistreated puppy.

 • • • 

Mrs. Knowsley had made a decision. It showed in the force of her knock on the door of the upstairs bedroom. When she
opened it Father Pardoe was already up and on his way to the little table on which she served his meals. His face showed surprise that she was not carrying a tray.

“Father, please don't get me wrong, but I'd like you to eat downstairs with me today. Just for this once, if it doesn't suit. We needn't talk about anything you don't want to talk about. But we hardly know each other, and we've been living in the same house for three weeks and more. Now, will you come down to the dining room and we'll eat together like Christians?”

Father Pardoe hesitated. It was not the tone of voice in which he was accustomed to being addressed. But the sort of rebuke that he might once have used to reprove it was no longer in him. He turned back to the door.

“Yes. Yes, I'd like that for once. Thank you very much, Mrs. Knowsley.”

He followed her downstairs like an obedient schoolboy.

The dining room was warm from a gas fire and from the midday sun that streamed in the window. The table had been set for two, with a white napkin beside each plate. As Mrs. Knowsley bustled back and forth to the kitchen, finally returning carrying a steak-and-kidney pie, which she set down beside the three tureens of vegetables, Father Pardoe had an agreeable sense of being back in time ten or fifteen years, to the era when priests usually had live-in housekeepers—widowed ladies, as often as not, who treated their employers as if they were incapable of doing the simplest household job. The dailies who had taken their place took a much more robust view of the priesthood. Progress, of course. . . . But still, the housekeepers had got a great deal of pleasure out of mothering grown men.