Such Men Are Dangerous (2 page)

Such men, such books, succeed in shaking us out of our apathy, out of the “lack of concern” condemned by the Tiffany angel. And such things can only be positive.

Prudence Hope,

May 2010.

Part One

1

When the call came Simon had been changing a light bulb. For a modern house the landing was unusually high and his mother had insisted on holding the steps.

With one foot still pressing on the bottom rung, one hand still firmly in position, she reached out and fumbled for the switch.

“Let there be light,” she proclaimed.

“I always knew you wanted to play God,” he said.

“Then that makes two of us. But yes. Let there be light. Let there be peace. Let there be tomatoes with a bit of flavour. Let there be repairmen who actually turn up on the day they say they will.”

She went on—as the telephone rang in the study—“And let
that
be something unutterably lovely. Like, for instance, a pools win or a wrong number.”

Her son jumped down from the ladder, well-built, good-looking, as darkly blond as she’d once been; she was now brunette. He took the stairs two at a time. “Anyway,” she called out after him, “we could do with a female God for a change. I may think of standing at the next election. Fight you for it!”

He glanced up at her quizzically before hurrying on.

“On second thoughts,” she added quietly as she followed him downstairs en route to strain spaghetti, “I’m not so sure. You’d fight too single-mindedly.” Her tone contained an element of pride. “And in any case…Isn’t it enough for the time being to have a female
prime minister
? One who
thinks
she’s God.”

He picked up the telephone. “St Matthew’s Vicarage.”

“Oh, Simon, I am glad you’re home! I’ve something wonderful to tell you! Can I pop round?”

Dawn Heath spoke with even more than her customary zeal and because Simon often doodled on his blotter, reducing life to a clichéd absurdity, he no longer needed a pencil in his hand for silly captions to occur to him.
It was Devotional Dawn on the blower. Sinful Simon felt his heart sink
.

“Dawn, I’ve got to be at the youth club at six. And I’ve a meeting after that. Can’t you tell me now?”

“If you’re having your tea,” she said, “that’s perfectly all right. You mustn’t think I’ll mind you eating.”

Yes, I just have to do it sometimes, he wanted to confirm. Sorry. Sometimes I even have to shit. He wondered how she might react.

“Somehow it wouldn’t seem proper on the telephone,” she said.

Simon raised his eyes to the ceiling; then let them, on their way down, dwell briefly on the crucifix above his desk. “Fine. See you shortly.” He went into the kitchen.

“Friend or foe?” asked Mrs Madison. Her look suggested that anyone who rang at this hour could only be the latter.

“Dawn Heath. Coming round to talk.”

“What? Now?”

“She says she’ll watch us eat.”

“That’s extremely kind of her. I shall stay in here, however.
You
can take a tray into the sitting room.”

“Thanks.”

“But what in heaven’s name can suddenly be so all-important—?”

“Well, yes,
of course
!” he exclaimed. “Her husband’s found a job! In that case she can peer at every forkful, count my chews and wipe my mouth. Let her spread the news in any way she wants.”

“Oh, do you think that’s it? Then how fantastic! No wonder she’s excited!” His mother’s words were heartfelt and she touched his hand. “But even so. I think I’ll stick with my Ross Macdonald.”

The doorbell rang after barely five minutes.

“Dawn, you must be in training for the Olympics!”

“No. But I was all ready to come, you see, when I phoned you from the neighbours’. And it doesn’t take a jiffy on the bike.”

He helped her off with her anorak and she removed her headscarf and shook out her brown curls. She wasn’t yet forty but looked older; despite the cycling she was overweight. She never wore makeup and was often shiny-faced. The hair remained her best feature.

“I’m taking you at your word and going to eat my supper whilst we speak. Would you like some coffee?”

“No thanks. But thank you anyway.”

He showed her into the sitting room. She sat down gingerly, waiting for him to do so first, but already he realized there was something new about her: an air of confidence more gentle than her normal determination to bear witness to the Lord. He smiled. He could understand it. In a steel town such as Scunthorpe, in the nineteen-eighties, a man’s finding a job was very nearly proof of divine intervention. Comparable to the kind of career guidance Joseph got in Egypt.

Simon twirled a forkful of spaghetti.

“You do that like an Italian!” she remarked.

This, too, seemed untypically relaxed.

She went on: “You’re never going to believe this.”

“Good.”

“You’ve met my boys, of course.”

“Your
boys
? I know I’ve met your husband.”

He tried to think back: to the early weeks of his incumbency, about three years previously, when he’d visited the home of every member of his congregation.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “In the past they haven’t been to church a lot but you’d certainly have seen them every Christmas and Easter.” She laughed self-mockingly. “At those times they didn’t have much choice!” Dawn herself attended twice a week. “From now on, though, it’s going to be different!”

“Great,” replied Simon. He was having to adjust his expectations.

“You don’t remember them, do you?” A strange mixture of disappointment and mild accusation suffused by tolerance and joy.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Well, William’s nearly sixteen, Michael’s a year younger. They’re good boys, both of them, not too noisy, helpful round the house.” (Flat, wasn’t it? One of those awful high-rise buildings near the town centre?) “Oh, sometimes they squabble a bit; I’m not saying they’re perfect. But they don’t tell lies. No. They never have.”

These last words came out sharply—oddly—cutting a swathe through her serenity.

“Has anybody said they do?”

“Not yet.”

He looked at her more curiously.

“Usually, you see, they don’t come home together.”

He thought
you see
, if intended to convey a sense of logical progression, might be overoptimistic.

“You mean, after school?” he asked. “Well, I imagine that each has his own friends.”

“But today it was different.”

It occurred to him he would have liked a glass of wine with his
Bolognaise
. Yet he supposed he oughtn’t to let it seem he began to drink at half-past-five.

“They always walk the same way,” she said. “Along Doncaster Road. Past Tiffany’s. You know? That disco place that used to be a cinema? Big car park behind?”

He’d have thought Tiffany’s, with its strident shades of blue and yellow, was garish enough for anyone to notice. Anyone. Even a vicar.

Yes, I often go there looking for girls
. Again he wondered what sort of response this might elicit.

“Well, then. Something made them go round the back.”

“What do you mean, something?”

“That’s just it. They said they didn’t know they’d done it. Not until afterwards.”

He felt his stomach tighten. She was staring at him with eyes which were wide and challenging and gave the faint impression of a squint. He knew he wasn’t a patient man. Let him at least remain a courteous one. “Dawn, I’m sorry. What are you trying to tell me?”

“Well, you see, it’s like this. At the back of Tiffany’s my two boys saw an angel.”

Her tone was almost matter-of-fact. There hadn’t been any slight pause for effect. And yet those last three words in some way glittered.

“Saw an angel?” Simon said.

Count up to ten, he advised himself. Count slowly up to ten. He counted up to five.

Dawn Heath leant back in her chair; ceased playing with her wedding ring; now gazed at him with more than just her earlier assurance. Now gazed at him in wonder.

“And he spoke to them,” she added.

Without haste, Simon put his tray on the floor, the food unfinished. He wiped his napkin across his mouth, scarcely aware of doing so. He sent off a silent prayer for assistance.

“So what did he say?”

“That we were heading for disaster.” The expression in her eyes was more suggestive of delight. “And how we’d have to mend our ways.”

“Heading for disaster and needing to mend our ways?” Again Simon had resorted to unhurried repetition in the hope this might provide a moment for reflection. “Anything else?”

“Well, the boys will be able to tell you better than me. I mean, I made them repeat it several times but I couldn’t take it in.”

“And what did he look like?”

“Oh, like you’d expect. Wore a white robe. Was all bathed in light.” And she opened her arms to indicate the spreading radiance she was sure there’d been.

Simon stood up.

“Listen, Dawn, it strikes me it isn’t you I ought to hear this from. Supposing I come round tomorrow after the boys are home from school?”

“Tomorrow?”

“If your sons have truly had a vision,” he pointed out gently, “it’s not going to evaporate by then.”

“But you don’t really think they have, do you?” Now her tone came as something of a shock: the very flatness of it. “You don’t believe they have.”

“Dawn, at this stage how can I possibly say?”

“You think they might have made it up.”

“There could be other explanations.”

“How could there? They
both
saw it.”

“There’s a thing called shared fantasy,” he said. “The mind can play strange tricks.”

“Why should it? Why suddenly like that?”

He shrugged. “On the other hand, of course, there’ve been plenty of similar experiences in the history of the Church.”

They stood regarding each other in silence. She half turned towards the door. Sullenness gave way to supplication.

“Please can’t you come tonight? Otherwise they won’t sleep.”

“I don’t suppose they’ll sleep much anyway. Nor you either. But all right.”

He paused.

“Expect me around ten.”

2

His mother was reading
The Zebra-Striped Hearse
. “Help yourself to pudding,” she said. “I’ve just come to a good bit. Has her husband got a job?”

For a stupid moment he imagined this the current point of interest in her book. “No.”

“What did she want, then?” She again directed his attention to the fruit salad.

“To tell us that her sons have seen an angel.”

“What!”

“That her sons have seen an angel.”

“Holy Moses!”

“No,” he said. “Holy Gabriel.”

“She isn’t serious?”

“Never more so.”

“And since it’s Dawn Heath we’re speaking of, that certainly does mean serious. I forgive you now for having left your tray.”

He stared down at the table; pursed his lips; shook his head.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“God knows.” Finally he stirred himself. “For the moment, go to play Ping-Pong.” He kissed her. “I shan’t be back till late. See you at breakfast.”

“Bless you, my love. All part of life’s rich pageant. Win the tournament.”

After he had gone, she finished clearing up then watched the end of an old Frank Capra comedy:
Mr Deeds Goes To Town
. She liked films in which you knew good was good, bad was bad and right would be triumphant. And for vaguely the same reason—although the issues here were less clear-cut—she enjoyed books by Chandler and Simenon and Macdonald. The fictional private eye, Simon considered, was part of the apostolic succession reaching down from Sir Galahad.

These days, indeed,
he
reminded her of someone like Lew Archer: bent on doing good, at times almost fanatically so, despite his occasionally appearing a shade too cynical, a shade too detached. And yet she herself knew (who better, still living?) of the capacity he’d once shown for deep emotional involvement and unashamedly romantic belief. He was thirty-three. She wished he would get married again—or at the very least find a really good friend.

After the film she put on a cardigan and walked briefly in the garden. It was mid-September and the twilit air smelled fragrant. She was proud of her dahlias and roses and chrysanthemums, proud now of the garden as a whole. When they had come, this new vicarage had only just been built, with the land around it mainly mud and hillocky grass—though blessedly there’d been a few good trees. It was a mile or so from the church, which Simon regarded as a disadvantage since it clearly made him less accessible; but she herself felt grateful for the distance. Also, St Matthew’s stood in the poorer—poorest—section of the town; and
there
they might have had little more than a back yard. The very thought could make her shudder.

Mrs Madison didn’t like Scunthorpe. Granted, it wasn’t nearly so bad as those who’d never been there had relentlessly implied. The town was far more open and green than she’d expected, with pleasant parks and in many places wide and tree-lined roads. But she had much preferred their time in Bournemouth where Simon had worked as a curate before opting to move north. She had preferred it not simply because the climate had been softer and she had liked the sea but because she had felt closer to the people who lived there; life had seemed more civilized with its nice little tearooms and bookshops—here, there were no bookshops, except for Smith’s. Maybe all these factors were superficial. Simon had certainly reckoned them so. But…well, the truth was, she supposed, she had grown into a snob.

“Sally Madison, you’re a snob!”

She said it aloud and gave a little laugh.

“An unmitigated, unregenerate snob!” And yet her laugh was only partly an acceptance. It was also a reminder she’d once blamed her own parents for precisely the same thing. She had met Henry Madison in 1948 when he had first served her at Francis Edwards’.

“But, Sally, the book trade! How far will he ever go in that?”

She stooped and put her nose to one of the warm pink flowers of a
Wife of Bath
. “Though that—my sturdy, aromatic friend—wasn’t really the heart of it. Oh, not at all. Henry was illegitimate! Adopted at the age of four! An errand boy when he was twelve! A factory hand soon after that! But a factory hand who went to night school and who even managed to go on learning as a soldier in the war. And if only…oh, if only…!” But now she wasn’t talking any longer to the rose bush; she had straightened up and put her hands into her cardigan pockets and was walking abstractedly across the grass. “If only he were still here, how proud he’d be of Simon’s progress: his knowledge and his position in life! Oh, my darling one,” she smiled—and this to her husband, not her son—“you certainly did work for it!”