Evil Intent (4 page)

‘How about an early pizza? Say, seven o’clock?’

‘That would be perfect.’

They made arrangements to meet. This time, when Callie put the phone down, she was smiling.

Later on Monday morning, Frances Cherry was at the hospital, making her rounds. Walking down a corridor between wards, she was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn’t see Leo Jackson until he boomed her name.

‘Frannie, my love!’

Her head jerked up and she found herself engulfed in a bear hug,
acknowledging his greeting against a massive chest. ‘Hello, Leo,’ she said, muffled.

He released her, grinning in delight. ‘Just imagine. I talked to you
earlier,
and now I have the pleasure of seeing you in the flesh. That’s amazing!’

‘Leo, I work here,’ she reminded him, returning his grin.

‘And so, sometimes, do I. One of my parishioners is in for a little op, and needed a bit of hand-holding. In spite of your wonderful
ministrations,’
he added.

Frances took a step back and looked at him, altogether larger than life. He was, as usual, wearing a clerical collar and black stock under a wildly coloured African tribal dashiki, looking like an exotic tropical bird – albeit a gigantic one – amongst the hospital greens and drab hues of the rest of the people in the corridor. Leo was like some primal force, pulsating with energy. Seeing him always made her smile; being with him invariably made her feel better about life in general.

‘Are you busy, pet? Come for a cup of coffee,’ he urged.

‘I was on my way to the caff for a bite of lunch,’ Frances said.

Leo took her arm. ‘Better yet. I’ll come with you. If you don’t mind being seen with me, that is,’ he added with a twinkle. ‘People might talk.’

‘Let them talk,’ Frances laughed, falling into step beside him.

They must be quite a sight, she thought: the enormous black man, and the petite, slender woman with red hair and the very fair skin that so often goes with hair of that colour. Both in clerical collars, and neither fitting in any way the traditional stereotype of the British clergy. This, though – like it or not – was the Church of England in the twenty-first century.

Together they went through the queue and then, in the midst of the busy lunch hour, found a table which had just been vacated. Frances sensed, as they settled down with their food, that Leo had something he wanted to tell her. She also knew that he would do it in his own time; it would be counter-productive to rush him.

So for the first part of the meal they talked about the Deanery.

‘You probably don’t realise what an uproar there’s been about the curates,’ Leo said, sighing.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, in the first place, there’s your friend Callie Anson.’

Frances frowned. ‘How is Callie a problem?’

‘That should be obvious,’ Leo said wryly. ‘She’s a woman. You of all people ought to know that this Deanery hasn’t been very woman-friendly.’

‘So why is she here?’

Leo paused as he conveyed a forkful of an unidentifiable curry mixture to his mouth. ‘Because the Bishop and I wanted her here. Brian Stanford kicked up a bit of a fuss about it – he’s not been known as a strong
supporter
of women priests.’

‘Then why did he agree to have her?’

The Area Dean wiggled his eyebrows at her and grinned wickedly. ‘Because we told him it was Callie Anson or no one. Take her or leave her. And at the end of the day, Brian Stanford wanted a curate more than he
didn’t
want a woman, if you know what I mean.’ He added, ‘I’m not saying that he’s bone idle, but our Brian doesn’t like to do any more work than necessary. He’s been coasting for years.’

‘Callie will be all right,’ Frances said stoutly. ‘She’s a hard worker. And she’s more strong-minded than she seems.’

‘She’ll need to be, with that other lot baying for her blood.’

Frances scowled.
‘Father
Vincent, you mean.’ Her emphasis on ‘Father’ was deliberate and ironic.

‘And Father Jonah. Our local chapter of Forward in Faith.’

‘Backward in Bigotry, more like,’ Frances muttered. ‘I don’t know how they have the nerve to use the word “forward” when all they want to do is hang on to the past for dear life, and pretend that women priests don’t even exist.’

‘In their books,’ Leo reminded her, ‘they
don’t
exist. You remember that famous – or infamous – remark by one of their lot: that it was no more
possible
to ordain a woman than to ordain a pork pie. A woman may
believe
she’s ordained, and other people may believe it, but that doesn’t mean she’s a priest. Not as far as they’re concerned.’

Frances stabbed her fork at a lettuce leaf. ‘It makes my blood boil.’

‘You can almost understand where someone like Vincent Underwood is coming from,’ Leo said thoughtfully. ‘He’s a dinosaur. An old-fashioned
Anglo-Catholic, who’s been surrounded by “Father knows best” all his life, and doesn’t know any different. He just can’t accept that today’s Church isn’t the Church he’s always known. There are times when I almost feel sorry for him.’

‘Not for very long, I hope,’ said Frances with another savage stab.

‘The one I don’t feel sorry for is Father Jonah,’ Leo grimaced. ‘He’s young enough to know better.’

‘I haven’t had much dealing with Father Jonah,’ admitted Frances.

‘Best to keep it that way. Jonah loathes everything that you stand for – I don’t suppose he would throw you a life preserver if you were drowning. And he doesn’t have much use for me, either,’ he added.

‘Because you’re …’ Frances caught herself in time, and left the sentence dangling.

‘Because I’m West Indian,’ Leo stated. ‘“Son of a slave”, he calls me in his more charming moments.’

Frances lowered her fork and stared at him. ‘But he’s…’

‘Nigerian. And thus pure-blooded and vastly superior. Which he never lets me forget.’

For a few minutes Leo was silent, applying himself to his curry, and Frances didn’t know quite what to say. She picked at her salad, then
ventured,
‘You said there had been an uproar over the curates. Plural. I can understand why the fuss about Callie, but…?’

‘Adam Masters,’ Leo said. ‘With him, it was a question of money.’

‘Money?’

‘You know how desperate our finances are in the Diocese. Everywhere in the C of E, in fact. And the Deanery’s resources couldn’t stretch to two new curates in one year.’

‘Then how…?’

Leo gave a rumbling laugh. ‘The only ones in the C of E who have any money are the Evangelicals. Apparently, with Richard Grant’s guidance, the people of Christ Church prayed about it, and God told them that they were meant to have a curate, so the congregation put their hands in their
pockets
and are paying for him themselves.’

‘But doesn’t that go against everything?’ Frances frowned. ‘Against the
structures and the discipline of the parish system?’

‘Of course it does. But they don’t care.’ A note of bitterness had crept into his voice. ‘It’s God’s will, they say. You can’t argue against that. Even if that sort of thing ultimately brings the Church down.’ He shook his head. ‘Who’d ever want to be Area Dean, I ask? It’s a thankless job.’

‘It must be difficult for you, holding everything together,’ Frances
sympathised.
‘No end to the problems. Not to mention dealing with the great range of Churchmanship.’

‘I don’t know which are worse,’ grumbled Leo. ‘The bloody Evangelicals, or the bloody-minded Anglo-Catholics.’

‘And you in the middle.’

‘No one knows what to make of me.’ He had regained his equilibrium, and gave her a sly grin across the table. ‘Liturgically High Church. Theologically liberal. In favour of everything that both sides hate: inclusive worship, women priests.’

‘You’re a real trouble-maker,’ Frances said with great affection.

‘I suppose,’ he chuckled, ‘that’s why they made me Area Dean. Just to get up everyone’s nose.’

‘That, and the fact that you’re brilliant at it.’

Leo threw his head back and laughed his booming, full-throated laugh. ‘Tell
that
to Vincent Underwood, pet. Or Richard Grant.’

It wasn’t until they had finished their meal and gone back through the queue for coffee that Leo got round to what he’d really wanted to tell Frances. The lunchtime crowd had thinned out a bit by then, and they were able to find a table with no immediate neighbours.

Leo tore open a sachet of sugar and sprinkled it over his coffee. ‘One of these days I’ll give it up,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘I know it isn’t doing me any good.’

Frances waited, sensing that he was working himself up to it.

He stirred his coffee, took a sip, then leaned forward and announced, ‘Frannie, I’m in love!’

‘Oh,’ said Frances carefully.

It was an open secret, at least amongst those he counted as his friends,
that Leo Jackson was gay. Indeed, he had never particularly tried to hide his orientation. On the occasion of Frances’ first meeting with him, many years earlier, he had told her that he had felt impelled to join the fight for women’s ordination because of his own circumstances: as a gay black man, he had said, who knew everything there was to know about marginalisation, he had no choice but to stand beside his sisters at the barricades.

But as far as Frances knew, at least in the years they had been friends, Leo had never had a partner. She had always assumed that he was celibate, or if not that, at least extremely discreet.

That was what had protected him, as far as the Church was concerned: though official Church policy was clear in its condemnation of homosexual acts, especially amongst the clergy, it was more understanding on the
matter
of orientation. People couldn’t help what they
were,
the Church seemed to say, but they could help what they did about it. In practice, of course, things were quite different, and the unofficial policy of ‘turn a blind eye’ was prevalent throughout many quarters of the Church of England, not least in the Diocese of London. Still, Leo would almost certainly not have found preferment, would not have been made Area Dean, if he’d been living
openly
with a partner.

‘Aren’t you happy for me, then?’ Leo said, beaming at her.

She took a deep breath. ‘Yes, of course I am.’

Then it all came out in a rush. His name was Oliver Pickett. Leo had met him some weeks earlier, when Oliver had turned up at church. ‘A
seeker
after truth,’ Leo said. ‘He was looking for something, looking for answers.’

Apparently he had found them.

He had asked Leo if he might come round to see him at the rectory, to discuss some questions about the Christian faith. It had gone on from there.

‘We fell in love,’ said Leo simply, his face shining with a touching
wonder
. ‘I’m not sure how it happened. But it did. I love him. And he loves me. That’s the most amazing part of it, Frannie. He loves
me
.’

Her heart ached for him, anticipating the problems that he, blinded by love, couldn’t foresee. ‘Leo, you
are
being careful, aren’t you?’ she had to say.

‘Careful?’ he countered defensively. ‘If you mean safe sex, then of course we’re being careful. I’m not stupid, you know.’

‘That’s not what I meant. I meant…careful. Discreet.’

The smile returned to his face. ‘Oh, that. Yes, we’re being careful. He hasn’t moved in or anything. We don’t go out in public together. And I haven’t told anyone. Not a soul, till now. But I just had to tell someone. And I knew I could trust you, Frannie my pet.’

‘You can trust me,’ she assured him. ‘I just want what’s best for you.’

Leo leaned across the table and took her slender white hand in his large black one. ‘Oliver is what’s best for me,’ he stated with a radiant confidence that almost convinced her. ‘He makes me happy. Happier than I ever thought I could be. He’s made me realise that, after so many years of
self-denial,
I really can have it all. I don’t have to give up the Church for love, or deny myself the love of another human being for the sake of the Church. I can have both.’

Frances swallowed and squeezed his hand. ‘Then I’m very happy for you, Leo.’

‘I want you to meet him,’ Leo said impulsively. ‘I want you to see how wonderful he is.’

Frances realised that he was asking her to compromise herself, but for the sake of their long friendship, she didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘I’d like to meet this paragon.’

Leo responded to her smile with a dazzling one of his own. ‘Come to tea tomorrow. Before the Clergy Chapter meeting. You can meet him then.’

Callie hadn’t had much opportunity, in her scant few days in the parish, to familiarise herself with much more than the location of the shops, so she welcomed Brian Stanford’s suggestion that she should accompany him on his weekly Monday afternoon round of home communion visits. She would meet a few more of Brian’s flock – now hers as well – and it would give her a chance to learn a bit more about her new territory. And besides, it was a beautiful early October day, sunny and warm.

The parish of All Saints Paddington was a diverse one, encompassing a quantity of very grand Georgian terraces, some of them still single-family dwellings while others had been broken up into flats or bed-sits or
converted
into upmarket nursing homes; in addition there was a council estate, albeit a well-maintained one.

The parishioners who merited a weekly visit from the vicar were in
various
stages of decrepitude which prevented them from coming to church; some lived alone, while others were in nursing homes or care facilities. Brian and Callie went round the parish on foot, and in between each visit he filled her in on the circumstances of the person they were about to call on.

The first few visits were to people of some means and social standing, people who had once been forces to be reckoned with in the church, and still exerted influence through their stewardship cheques.

Elsie Harrington, though, Brian explained as they walked towards the council estate, was quite a different matter. She and her husband Dennis had been members of the church for years, but their contributions towards its life were largely in the form of labour – time and talents – rather than money. Elsie had cleaned the brasses weekly, polished the eagle lectern till it gleamed, washed and ironed the altar linen, even scrubbed the stone flags of the floor. Dennis’s stewardship had been exercised outside of the
building:
he had kept the tiny bit of grass in the churchyard mown, and had planted and tended the flower beds with loving care. He’d made sure the railings and steps were in good repair, and the gutters and drains clear of leaves. Dennis continued to provide those services; Elsie was no longer able to do her part, nor was she able to get to church at all. While not totally
bed-ridden, she was incapable of negotiating the stairs to and from their second-floor council flat, and the council had not yet managed to re-house them on the ground floor. Therefore every Monday afternoon Brian took her the sacrament and stayed for a chat. He tried to make it the last visit of the day, he explained; the Harringtons could always be counted on for a good cup of tea and a slice of cake.

Callie was fairly winded by the time they’d climbed the two flights of stairs to the flat. While Brian rang the bell, she admired the profusion of pot plants on the narrow exterior landing.

‘Dennis has real green fingers,’ Brian said. ‘There’s nothing he can’t grow, if he sets his mind to it.’

‘What a shame he doesn’t have a garden.’

‘All the better for
us
,’ grinned Brian. ‘He’s made the churchyard his garden.’

The door swung open; Callie took in a compact, wiry elderly man with scant hair plastered to his skull, very prominent ears, and wearing a
well-darned
cardigan of pale green. He smiled at Brian, then his face fell. ‘Hello, Father,’ he said with something less than enthusiasm, narrowing his eyes in Callie’s direction.

‘Afternoon, Dennis. I’ve brought the new curate with me. Callie, this is Dennis.’

She smiled and put out her hand; he ignored it. ‘Not meaning to be rude, Father,’ he addressed Brian, ‘but I didn’t shake her hand yesterday, and I’ll not shake it today.’

Stung, she withdrew her hand, though she made an effort to keep the smile in place.

Dennis Harrington stepped aside to let them into the flat. ‘You may as well come in,’ he said grudgingly to Callie. ‘But I’ll not have you bothering my Elsie.’ To Brian he said, ‘It’s one of her bad days, I’m afraid. She’s in bed. She’ll be glad to see you, Father.’

Callie followed Brian into the flat. ‘You go straight through to see her, Father,’ directed Dennis. ‘I’ll bring some tea through directly.’ Then he turned to Callie. ‘You can come in here.’ He led her into a tiny lounge, neat as the proverbial pin. The windows gleamed, the net curtains were
scrupulously
clean. With its magnolia walls and neutral carpet, the room might
have seemed quite sterile, were it not for the colourful array of lush African violets and pelargoniums on a shelf in front of the window, and the rather gaudy pattern of the upholstery on the three-piece suite which dominated the room, taking up most of the available floor space.

Dennis gestured to the chair. ‘Have a seat,’ he said. ‘I’ll make some tea.’

Callie sat, still a bit bemused by her reception. In his absence, she looked round the lounge. Its furnishings comprised the three-piece suite, a set of stacking occasional tables, a television set on a stand, and an electric fire. A shelf above the fire displayed several framed photographs, and
surmounting
that, on the wall, was a large reproduction of Constable’s Haywain.

There were no books in evidence. It was almost the first thing Callie noticed, and it unsettled her nearly as much as Dennis Harrington’s
hostility.
She was used to making a quick assessment of people based on the books they chose to display in their public reception rooms; here the absence of books was in itself the only clue.

She rose and looked more closely at the photographs. One, in sepia tones, was a formal wedding portrait of some years past, the groom – with Dennis Harrington’s unmistakable ears but a good deal more hair – in uniform, the bride in an elaborate confection of creamy satin and a veil of fine lace. Another photo showed a willowy young man wearing an Edwardian
frock-coat,
his hair in a Beatle cut. This, also, was a studio portrait; there were no informal snapshots, and none of the generic school photos of grandchildren which she had dutifully admired in the sitting rooms of others.

Callie returned to her chair almost guiltily when she heard the approaching rattle of tea paraphernalia, as though she were about to be caught out doing something naughty. She needn’t have worried; Dennis delivered tea to the bedroom before coming through into the lounge, so she had plenty of time to compose and prepare herself. In spite of her efforts to relax, she felt tense, unsure how to deal with a man who clearly did not want her there.

Dennis arranged the occasional tables, then busied himself pouring the tea. The pot was a workmanlike brown stoneware, but the cups and saucers were made of fragile bone china, garlanded with garish red and yellow
roses. ‘Sugar?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Would you like a bit of cake?’ he offered. ‘My Elsie’s best fruit cake.’

Callie didn’t really want any cake, but felt it would be churlish to refuse. ‘That would be lovely,’ she said. ‘Just a small slice, though. I need to watch my figure.’

That, at last, elicited a ghost of a smile from Dennis Harrington. ‘Your figure looks just fine to me, girl,’ he said, handing her a plate.

Callie relaxed slightly; perhaps it was going to be all right, after all. She broke off a corner of the cake and nibbled at it. ‘It’s delicious.’

Dennis nodded complacently. ‘My Elsie is known for her cakes.’

‘I’ve never been very good at baking,’ Callie admitted.

‘Maybe because you don’t spend enough time doing it.’ Dennis put his cake plate down and fixed her with a baleful squint. ‘Maybe if you spent more time in the kitchen, where you rightly belong, instead of trying to do a man’s job…’

Callie shrank back into her chair. ‘I take it you don’t approve of women clergy,’ she said with all the bravado she could muster.

‘It’s not right,’ Dennis stated. ‘Not proper. Not at all.’

In spite of herself, she was curious about what was behind his
opposition.
‘But why?’ she asked.

‘Jesus was a man, wasn’t he?’ He glared at her triumphantly, as if he’d just delivered the ultimate, unarguable answer.

‘Well, yes.’ She waited for him to elucidate, and after a moment he did.

‘Father John, as was here before Father Brian, he didn’t hold with women priests at all. He said that women couldn’t be priests, because Jesus was a man, and the priest represents Jesus.’

Callie searched for the right words. ‘Jesus was a human being,’ she said. ‘He came to earth in human flesh. He had to be one thing or the other – either a man, or a woman. There weren’t any other choices, if he were going to be here as one of us. But the significant thing was that he was
human,
not that he was male. It’s Jesus’s
humanity
that the priest represents, not his gender.’

Dennis considered that for a moment, taking a thoughtful sip of his tea. Then he renewed his attack. ‘It’s the Bible, too, isn’t it? In the Bible, Jesus
goes out and gets himself some disciples. The twelve apostles. And they were all men. All twelve of them.’

It was an argument that Callie had heard before. ‘You have to consider the culture,’ she said, trying to sound conciliatory rather than embattled. ‘It just wasn’t the sort of thing that women did in those days. It was a pretty rough life the disciples led, after all.’

‘My point exactly,’ the old man stated. ‘There are some things women just aren’t suited for. There’s men’s work, and there’s women’s work. Our Lord knew that.’

Callie was beginning to accept that she was on to a loser: she would never change Dennis Harrington’s mind. Instead she changed the subject. ‘This cake is wonderful,’ she said, extending her plate. ‘Do you think I could have a tiny bit more?’

‘Of course,’ he said, then added with a sly smile, ‘And if you like, I’m sure that my Elsie would write out the recipe for you.’

She laughed, and the atmosphere eased.

‘I’ll just go and offer Father Brian another slice,’ Dennis said. ‘Father Brian has always been very partial to Elsie’s fruitcake.’

During his brief absence, Callie finished her tea, stashed the rest of her second helping of cake – which she didn’t really want to eat – in a tissue in her handbag, and rose once again to look at the photographs.

This time, when he returned, she was emboldened to ask about the
photos.
‘This is your wedding?’

‘That’s right. We married in the war.’ He moved to her side and gazed at the photo with a fond smile. ‘Doesn’t my Elsie look beautiful?’

‘She looks amazing,’ Callie said. ‘What a fantastic dress. I thought that it was difficult to buy dresses like that during the war, with rationing and everything.’

‘Difficult? It was impossible!’ snorted Dennis. ‘You think my Elsie could buy a dress like that, girl?’ Shaking his head, he looked at her with something approaching pity for her naïvety.

‘Then how…’

‘She borrowed it, didn’t she? From Gainsborough movie studios. They had all those beautiful costumes from their pictures, and they’d loan them
out to girls for their weddings. As long as they were in uniform, that was – women in the forces, and nurses. My Elsie was in the ATS. That’s how she qualified. And she looked a dream in that dress, if I say it myself.’ He sighed reminiscently. ‘Had to give it back the next day, of course, but we have the photo to remember it by.’

‘And this?’ Callie indicated the photo of the young man in the trendy garb of the sixties. ‘Is this your son?’

Dennis nodded. ‘That’s our Stu. Our one and only.’ His voice was warm with pride as he took the frame in his hands. ‘He’s done well for himself, has our Stu. Back in them days, he was mad for music – all that rock and roll rubbish, as I used to call it. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones. Hundreds of bands, it seemed like, and London was the place to be.’

Callie, who had not yet been born when the Beatles broke up, knew about London in the ‘Swinging Sixties’ only as an abstract concept. ‘So what did he do?’

‘Oh, he followed them bands around till one of ’em gave him a job. A “roadie”, they called it. Not much of a job, if you ask me, but it was what he wanted. It was hard work – don’t get me wrong. Hard graft. And after that he worked his way up. All the way to the top!’

‘The top?’

‘Now he’s a big record producer. In California, USA. Los Angeles. Hollywood, no less.’ Dennis’s chest expanded. ‘Our Stu, in Hollywood!’

‘Do you get out to visit him very often?’

Dennis deflated a bit, but he continued to smile as he shook his head. ‘No. We went out there once, years ago. He sent us plane tickets and
everything.
Treated us like visiting royalty, Stu did. Nothing too good for his mum and me – posh hotel, fancy food. But all them palm trees and cars – it just wasn’t for us, like. I don’t mind telling you, girl, that we couldn’t wait to get back home to our nice little flat, where we could put our feet up and have a decent cup of tea!’

Callie couldn’t help smiling at the mental picture. ‘Well, I suppose he must enjoy coming here to visit instead, if only for his mother’s cakes.’

‘Not very often.’ As soon as he’d said it, Dennis looked as if he wished he hadn’t. ‘Not that I’m complaining,’ he added quickly. ‘He’s very busy, is
Stu. Well, somebody as important as that would be, wouldn’t he? He can’t just go off and leave it to some assistant. It’s a hands-on business, he says.’

She judged it a good time to change the subject. ‘Do you have
grandchildren?’

Dennis sighed. ‘No, we haven’t been blessed. Stu…well, he just never found the right girl. Makes for a lonely life for him, I always think, and his mother does worry about him, being on his own like that. But he says he’s happy.’

‘And I suppose it still isn’t too late,’ Callie said. ‘Lots of men marry when they’re a bit older.’

‘That’s right.’ Dennis gave her an approving look. ‘Maybe he’ll find the right girl yet. One of them Hollywood starlets. They could do a lot worse than our Stu, believe me.’

‘He’s very handsome,’ Callie said, thinking that at least he had been, all those years ago. By now he was probably bald and paunchy.

‘He gets that from his mum,’ Dennis grinned. ‘Not from me, you can be sure of that.’