The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories (22 page)

Sophie has relented and made tea. ‘You've been practising so hard for Sunday's service,' she says to Eunice.

‘Yes. Yes, I have.'

‘I'm sure it'll be lovely.'

‘I'll do my very best.'

‘But of course you will. You're not nervous, dear? No, of course not. There, will you pour the tea?'

‘It's just that he sounds such a remarkable young man … Sophie, there is no tea in the pot.'

‘Oh my dear, how silly of me, there it is in the china pot. You see, I polished all the silver today.'

‘Of course. I should have thought.'

‘I polished it ever so hard. Look how bright it is.'

‘It's beautiful. You keep things so nicely, Sophie.'

‘La, old habits. Look, I can see you, Eunice, reflected in the teapot. What a strange shape you have. Coo-ee. You've got a big head. And little arms. Ooh. Now, you've got bosoms.'

‘Don't.' Eunice's voice is sharp, and suddenly wary.

‘Oh dear, you're cross. My little joke. Why not be light-hearted? I've worked hard for his coming too, you know.'

‘It's hot,' says Eunice, ‘it's so hot.' She walks to the window, stands looking out. She sees
Jeremy but does not signal to him. She savours the moment of watching him, unaware that he is being observed. ‘But it may rain before night.'

Behind her the phone shrills. She hears Sophie pick it up, but her end of the conversation passes over her.

When Sophie has replaced the receiver she calls in a frightened
peremptory
way to Eunice. ‘It was him, Forrest Fleming. He is calling here this evening. He has asked to stay the night.'

‘But he is not due until the weekend.'

‘He wants to start planning the campaign straight away, he says he can't wait to begin now that he has finished in Justville. He'll be here in a few hours.'

‘Oh Sophie. Will you manage all right?'

‘Of course. Of course I will. I must breathe deeply. I must think of father.'

‘Indeed.'

‘But you must help me, Eunice.'

‘And so must you,' she tells Jeremy when she has summoned him. ‘I'll give you a list to take to the shops.'

‘I haven't got time,' he says. ‘The hole's got bigger. I have to get the ladder up.'

‘You must,' she repeats impatiently, as if he is a child. ‘Did you not hear what I said? You don't have to worry any more. He's coming tonight.'

‘Tonight? Our friend Mr Fleming will fix the hole in the church roof tonight?'

‘Well not exactly. But it's the beginning.'

‘If we get a real storm and it gets under the tiles … there won't be any church left to save. I have to do something.'

He runs up and down, distractedly plucking a raincoat from its peg on the hall door and banging in the kitchen cupboard where he keeps a hammer and some nails.

‘You can't go up there now.'

‘I need some pieces of wood to block up the holes.'

‘I'll go to the shops,' says Eunice.

‘But I need a whole ham,' says Sophie. ‘Now that things are underway. Who knows, I may need to cut sandwiches. Well, you can't carry a ham in your bike basket.'

‘I'll get some slices, and the rest can be delivered tomorrow,' says Eunice.

The rain has still not come; the cicadas still sing; the air presses close upon them. The feverish sound of wood being sawn assails the air, a harsh scratch and rasp, and something else, what might be taken as an oath if one did not know that this was the house belonging to a man of the cloth.

Jeremy has cut his finger and it is bound with a flapping length of bandage that he has rushed in and seized from the first-aid kit in the bathroom. He saws backwards and forwards at the wood but he is getting nowhere.

Sophie moans quietly to herself as she concocts a pastry. She knows that the best puff pastry should be rolled seven hundred and thirty times on a marble slab and takes at least a day to prepare but there is no time for that. Thanks to Julia Child she acknowledges that in an emergency
feuilletage
rapide
will suffice though even that takes time and its toll.

‘We should ring Dash McLeavey, he could help.' Eunice has returned from the shops, and stands transfixed at the windows. An ugly wind is stirring; it suddenly whips the marigolds backwards and forwards, catches Jeremy's trousers and tugs them against his knees.

Sophie lifts haggard eyes towards her, and shakes her head.

In the garden, Jeremy thinks, will I or will I not ask Dash McLeavey to help me. As he swipes through the wood again with his bent and buckling saw, attempting to quadrate some forms that will match the roof tiles, he has a vision of Dash's thin face, a face so toughened by the weather as to suggest that he is a man without feeling. Yet it is Dash who has comforted him when, kneeling before Jeremy he has said in agony, dear Lord, why me, upon the death of a son, and Jeremy, considering himself a man without concept of the death of children, though he has been called upon often to confront the subject, has said, I do not know, Dash, I do not know.

There is a splash of rain on his face and the air chills. But then the rain stops.

‘He doesn't think I understand anything,' Sophie says.

‘What does he want you to understand?'

Sophie turns the pastry again and sighs without answering. There is still naked butter gleaming against the pastry's fold.

‘I'll go,' says Eunice abruptly. ‘I'm poor company'

‘No don't,' cries Sophie, as if suddenly afraid to be left by herself. ‘Look, this campaign was all your idea. I'm not really much use, you know. I polish silver and arrange flowers, prepare food. I'm not a person of ideas,' she admits.

She does not say, although it is clear what is on her mind, that without Eunice's support Jeremy cannot be relied upon to continue with the
campaign
, or show sufficient enthusiasm to Forrest Fleming to convince him that it is worth his while.

‘I pray, Eunice,' says Sophie. ‘You know I do pray'

‘I cannot imagine what he will be like,' says Eunice, speaking of Forrest Fleming. ‘I feel such a sinner.'

At this Sophie laughs. ‘You a sinner? Oh no.'

‘It's true. I need to confess.'

‘Oh not that again.' It is a source of private embarrassment to Sophie, particularly when she recalls her upbringing, that Jeremy has so embraced the reformation. Sometimes she secretly genuflects when she goes into the church. It pleases her when some of their parishioners call him Father, as Eunice sometimes does. But Jeremy is determinedly and utterly Low in his approach to ecclesiastical matters. He does not believe in confession. She sometimes wonders why he is Church of England at all when the options are so clearly laid out.

Still, she says to Eunice, when she has recovered herself, ‘I'm sure you don't need to confess, dear, but if you're troubled you can always talk to Jeremy.'

‘Oh no.' Eunice's face flushes. ‘No, I couldn't do that.'

‘Why, what have you done? Tell me. No one tells me anything.'

‘I'm sorry.

In the garden there is silence. Eunice strains to see what has happened to Jeremy but he has disappeared from view.

‘What are you sorry for? Have you sinned with my Jeremy?' She gives another chirping little hiccup of a laugh. ‘Oh that's good.'

‘I'm sorry no one tells you anything.'

Sophie's pastry is done. She wraps it in a cold cloth and puts it in the fridge.

‘Yes,' she says, when the pastry is away. ‘Yes, so am I. President of the Mother's Union. Do they tell me when the Smiths' baby is sick? No,
she
has no children. President of the Wives' Group. Do they tell me when Harry runs off with Mary? No fear, I won't know what it's like. And the bishop's daughter and all. A good day when he met me, Eunice. They said it was ambition, you know, but Jeremy's not ambitious. It'll be easy, he said, you know the drill, and nobody needs to teach you how to pray. So I listen. I listen and watch all around me. And hear nothing, see nothing. I turn on the radio, the television. Blood, death, pollution, riots, war. I pray God to stop them, but what are they really, Eunice? What do they mean? No one tells me.'

Eunice speaks in a choked voice. ‘It is a small price to pay for a pure heart.'

‘Tell me.' Sophie comes around the kitchen table wiping her hands on the enveloping blue apron she is wearing, and takes Eunice by the arm, shaking her a little. ‘How did you sin?'

‘Pride. Vanity.'

‘You? Oh I don't believe that. I'm vain. Jeremy says I am. Look, how do I look, I say to him. Smooth? You like my hips, my skin, is my colour good? Vain, he says. Well, it is something to know one has sinned. It is worth knowing that one deserves forgiveness.'

But Eunice has stopped listening to her. ‘After that last dress I made for Mrs Moreland, I went down to the city. Remember that time?'

‘Oh yes, I remember now. What did you do?'

‘First I went into a hotel.'

‘A hotel?' Suddenly this game has gone far enough. The weight of what Sophie is about to hear oppresses her.

‘I felt a little faint. The crowd, you know. I had a little brandy. Well, I needed some courage.'

Sophie holds the edge of the table.

Eunice is inexorable. ‘I went into a shop and bought a set of underwear. A brassiere.'

‘Uh, a brassiere. You said a brassiere?'

Eunice nods.

‘You are rather slight, but goodness everyone, well I would have thought. My dear Eunice, that is no sin.'

‘It was black lace, they were all black lace. French. They cost me a month's rent. You see? When there are so many in need.'

But if Sophie does see she cannot express herself except in hysterical laughter. She bends over the table wheezing and crying with laughter, Oh uh huh huh, she weeps, wiping her eyes and smudging her face with flour.

Then she stops as if she had never begun. ‘Jeremy,' she says, and looks at him standing in the doorway.

Eunice swings around. ‘You heard?' she says to him.

‘Yes,' he says. ‘I heard.'

‘It is funny, really it is,' Sophie remarks, as if to convince them all.

Eunice has gone very pale. ‘Listen,' she says urgently to Jeremy, ‘afterwards I was ashamed. I put them in the mission box. For the blacks, you know. To cover their nakedness.'

‘It is so funny, isn't it, Jeremy?' says Sophie.

‘No. It is not.'

When Jeremy has gone, Eunice turns to Sophie. ‘Don't you know why no one ever tells you things?'

‘Where are you going? Don't leave me,' wails Sophie, but it is too late.

At the door Eunice relents a little. ‘Oh I'll come back. And so will he. Don't we always? But I cannot bear it in here. I cannot bear it.'

They are all gone, and Sophie is alone. She begins to clean the kitchen with systematic care. She has a sauce to make. Then she is shaken with laughter again, but this time of the silent helpless variety. She recalls the black lace underwear she has discovered in the mission box. The set sits tastefully packed in tissue in her own bottom drawer. It is funnier than they think.

There is a chord of thunder. The sky is electric with lightning. Jeremy struggles with the ladder against the wall.

‘Mr Ordway, Father Jeremy, what are you doing?' cries Eunice. She tugs after him as he ascends the ladder, and succeeds only in untying his shoelace.

He puts his hand tentatively over the guttering and pulls himself up level with the eaves. Everything holds. The rain has started in earnest.

‘You'll slip,' calls Eunice.

‘Be a good woman, dear Eunice, and go and collect some hymn books from inside,' he replies as he swings his leg up on to the roof. He reaches hand
over hand, inching towards the bell tower. When she stares back, without moving, he calls out impatiently. ‘Nine tiles today, you see, and four yesterday, two the day before. Fifteen, I need fifteen hymn books.'

Now Eunice sees the abandoned pile of wood that he has been trying to saw, barely scratched from his exertions, and understands.

‘To fill the holes? You can't.'

‘Don't worry. They know it without the books. We must shore up the breaches. And hurry, the storm's breaking.'

Soon she is at the bottom of the ladder with an armful of books. He inches back across the roof, and comes halfway back down the ladder. ‘No, you must not try to climb up, here hand them to me, good, very good Eunice. Now … if you'd be kind enough to … hold the ladder. Splendid.'

‘Are you all right?'

‘Ye-es. But things are getting a trifle slippery. Could you sit on the end of the ladder my dear while I climb up? Good, yes that is good.'

‘Shall I come up too?'

‘Good grief no, what should I tell the parishioners on Sunday if I had dropped their organist through the roof?'

‘I'll wait for you to come down.'

‘No, it won't take long. Go and keep the peace with my wife. And don't tell her I'm up here. All right?'

‘All right.'

‘They fit perfectly, I am mending the roof beautifully. Now go on out of the rain.'

He sings in his light baritone worn smooth by years of intoning. The wind is lifting small objects on the ground, last spring's fallen birds' nests, and papers brought too late for the church drive, a gust of confetti from a recent wedding, and an armful of Michaelmas daisies which he has cut back in his search for the wasps' nest. There is something exhilarating about being up here alone against the elements.

‘There you are, God,' he remarks loudly, ‘that's quite a nice job. Aren't you pleased with that?' For the hymn books are such a snug fit in the holes where the tiles have been that it is as if they had been made for the purpose of mending roofs alone. But at that moment a howl of wind whips across the sky, nearly knocking him from his feet.