Widows & Orphans (5 page)

‘I think someone’s a little smitten.’

‘Rubbish!’

‘You could do a lot worse. She’s attractive and smart and excellent at her job. Rose adores her.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it. But she’s only just moved here; she’s still settling down. She has two teenage children and, Lord knows, I find it hard enough to communicate with my own son. And … why are we even having this conversation?’

‘Because I worry about you. You’ve been on your own too long. Which isn’t surprising, given what’s available in this town. Ellen’s a breath of fresh air … I shall have to get the two of you together.’

‘I’m not sure that it sends the right signals to have your ex-wife playing Cupid.’

‘Who else knows you as well? You’re a good man, Duncan. You deserve someone in your life.’

‘I deserve you.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t say that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Duncan said. ‘Was I thinking out loud?’

‘No worries. But I really should go.’ Duncan scanned the room, which was rapidly emptying. ‘I’m afraid Derek may be sneaking a crafty fag on the steps.’

‘Just as long as he’s not giving one to Jamie.’

‘He’d never do that,’ Linda said. ‘Whatever you may think, he’s highly responsible.’

‘Of course. It’s just … I suppose it’s inevitable that Jamie should play us off against each other. Good dad, bad dad. Laid-back dad, uptight dad.’

‘Derek’s not his father.’

‘But Ellen wasn’t mistaken about what he called him, was she?’ Duncan asked, achingly aware that, as of last July, Jamie had lived longer under Derek’s roof than his. ‘I know a genuine blush when I see one.’

‘It’s about Craig, not Derek. Jamie idolises him. Getting close to Derek is a way of getting close to Craig. It’s like saying he’s my real – not just my step – brother.’

‘Thank you,’ Duncan said, wanting to believe her. ‘Though I don’t think I’d pick Craig as anyone’s role model.’

‘Nor me. But it won’t last. In two years’ time, he’ll be off to uni and Jamie will have to move on. That’s if he hasn’t already.’

‘Not that there’s much I can do anyway. I try to talk to him but he switches off. He’s either hostile or sullen.’

‘He’s thirteen years old. That’s what he’s like with everyone. You just get it in concentrated doses … No, thanks very much,’ she said, as Carolyn Blunt, the children’s librarian, approached them with a bottle of wine. She turned back to Duncan. ‘Boys need to distance themselves from their fathers; it’s part of growing up.’

‘I thought it was from their mothers.’

‘Maybe it’s different when your parents are divorced. But if you want my advice, cut him some slack. He grumbles that you’re always on his case.’

‘That’s nonsense. I spend half my time biting my tongue.’

‘Maybe that’s what he means. He said you gave him a really hard time about quitting the clarinet.’

‘My mother had just bought it for him. And it meant so much to her to have another musician in the family.’

‘Yes, I know all about that,’ Linda said. ‘But Jamie’s his own man. He won’t be forced to follow in anyone’s footsteps.’

‘Especially not mine.’

‘Now you’re being silly,’ Linda said, squeezing his hand with hollow intimacy before walking away.

Duncan made a final circuit of the room, congratulating two of the younger entrants, commiserating with the rock-pier maker’s father on his son’s failure to be placed, shunning any discussion of the causes of the fire, checking that Ken had all the information he needed for his article, and noting with surprise that Craig had opted to stay with Geoffrey rather than leave with Derek. He finally escaped outside, where the sight of two large families piling into their cars reinforced Derek’s odd-man-out gibe. Feeling as neglected as the sour-faced statue in front of him, he shrank from the prospect of another kitchen supper. He decided instead to go to Vivien’s, a café where he was assured of a warm welcome ever since his intervention had persuaded the Francombe Hospital Trust to fund an operation to correct the owner’s granddaughter’s misshapen breasts.

Threatened with a ‘Teen’s Life Ruined by Heartless Hospital’ headline, the Trust had reversed its initial decision not to license the surgery, and Sharon, who for years had refused either to go swimming or do PE and been convinced that she would never find a boyfriend, let alone a husband, was now a happily married mother of three.

‘How’s the family?’ Duncan asked Vivien, as they chatted in the otherwise deserted café.

‘We’re in the pink,’ she replied. ‘My blood pressure’s too high and I could do with more customers, but Sharon’s expecting again. And it’s all thanks to you.’

A bald, middle-aged man, wearing nothing but a rucksack and hiking boots, strode up to Duncan and Henry as they walked along the windswept beach. Duncan watched anxiously as, having introduced himself without inhibition, he leant over to stroke Brandy, Henry’s snappish fox terrier, who, either out of respect for another naked creature or a refusal to be distracted from the pungent pleasures underfoot, submitted to being petted before scurrying into the gorse. After delivering a paean to the virtues of sea air, during which Duncan allowed his eyes to stray no lower than the stippling of hair on his scrawny chest, the man strode on. Wordlessly, Duncan drew Henry’s attention to the imprint of pebbles on his chafed buttocks.

‘Why do they do it? It’s barely above freezing,’ Henry said.

‘It’s his religion. Like any true disciple, he’s out in all weathers.’

‘I could do with him at St Edward’s. Most of my congregation wilt at the first sign of drizzle … Here, Brandy!’ Henry picked up a piece of driftwood, flinging it away with unusual vehemence, as if at the thought of the empty pews.

Henry was vicar of St Edward’s, Salter, popularly known as the Cliff Top Church. While loath to use the word to describe a clergyman, Duncan regarded him as the closest thing to a soulmate that he had in Francombe. His mother had introduced them when Henry moved to the parish six years ago. They had discovered a mutual passion for chess, at which Henry was the more proficient, and Bach, about whom he was the more knowledgeable. After sounding him out on subjects from Genesis to genetics, Duncan asked him to write the ‘Notes from the Pulpit’ column in the
Mercury
, which he was keen to revive after a gap of several years. Henry agreed, turning in fortnightly pieces of real substance, which, despite several surveys showing them to be the least popular section of the paper, Duncan continued to commission, arguing that, whatever the truth of its doctrines (about which he himself
was agnostic), the Church played a unique role in community life.

‘Brandy, come here boy!’ Henry shouted, as the dog darted out of the bushes with a slither of rubber clamped in his jaws. ‘What have you got there, boy? Oh God,’ he said, uttering the casual blasphemy that Duncan took to be a diversionary tactic. ‘A condom!’

‘Do you have any gloves?’ Duncan asked, conscious that Henry was soon to give his mother Communion.

‘Don’t worry, there’s no risk. Drop it, you disgusting animal, it’s not a game!’ Brandy, who with his white coat and floppy brown ears was the spit of the dog on the old HMV logo, evidently disagreed, emitting a playful snarl as Henry swung him to and fro in an attempt to wrest the condom from him. Despite the resilience of the rubber, he finally succeeded, leaving Brandy, tail wagging furiously, to trot off in search of new adventures.

Duncan, for whom disposing of the condom was the essence of post-coital ennui, watched Henry warily clasping the fetid rubber between forefinger and thumb. There were no litter bins on a beach from which the Council was eager to discourage visitors, yet he could scarcely drop it on the pebbles where another dog or, worse, a child might pick it up. He might take it away, but that risked misconstruction if he were to fall and break his leg or be knocked down by a joyrider on the cliffs and have his possessions logged in hospital or even the morgue. It was easy to picture the headline in the local paper – at least one that was not edited by a friend.

‘I’ll chuck this away later,’ Henry said, wrapping the condom in his handkerchief and slipping it in his coat pocket.

‘It’s bad enough when it’s sweet papers,’ Duncan said, seeking to portray the problem as one of hygiene rather than morality. He was hesitant to discuss the clandestine goings-on in the cove with Henry, not because he was a vicar but because he was gay. While the closest he had come to a
public declaration was a ‘Notes from the Pulpit’ in which he expressed support for a lesbian couple turned away from a seafront B&B by its Christian owners, in private he was more forthcoming, speaking of his lifelong conflict between faith and desire. Rebutting Duncan’s contention that the more fulfilled the man, the more effective the priest, he claimed that, in line with Church teaching, his only course was to marry or remain celibate. Duncan even wondered whether, for all the craggy beauty of its setting, the chief attraction of St Edward’s to its incumbent was the absence of the carnal temptations rife in metropolitan livings. So he must have found it both a shock and a threat to discover them in his own backyard.

They crossed a patch of scrub to reach the rickety steps that led up to the lane. As he scrambled over the first few cracked stones, Duncan gazed sceptically at warning notices, which, while they might deter the casual visitor, gave the determined adventurer the illusion that he was safe from detection. For as long as he could remember, Salter Cove had been a haven for nudists. As a young boy, walking in the woods with his mother, he had broken free and dashed down to the shore, to be greeted by an array of old and young, male and female, firm and flaccid flesh. He had failed to find the words in his six-year-old vocabulary to question his hotly pursuing mother who, clasping her hand over his eyes, placed him on his honour never to go near the beach again. She explained that the people he had seen were too poor to afford bathing suits and it would be wicked of someone more fortunate to make them feel ashamed. For years he had believed her until, stung by the mockery of more knowing friends, he had accompanied them to the cove, first to jeer and then to ogle. Now, the harmless
Health and Efficiency
world of his childhood had been replaced by the sexual free-for-all to which Dragon had taken exception.

Thoughts of Dragon came to the fore when they left the steps for the brambly track that snaked round the cliff. Its mossy handrail was broken in several places where illicit
paths had been beaten through the bushes, on one of which a strip of chequered crime-scene tape fluttered in the breeze.

‘Any news of Dragon?’ Henry asked, as they passed the tape.

‘You mean you haven’t checked on our website?’

‘Should I have?’

‘You’ll increase our traffic – I think that’s the word – by fifty per cent. Brian’s posting regular updates. From what I gather, Dragon’s out of the woods – sorry! – but it’s unlikely he’ll ever be able to come back here.’

‘Especially now the Council’s demolished his home.’

‘That fast? I knew it was on the cards. On the bright side, at least they’ll have to rehouse him. It can’t have been much fun, stuck in that musty shack with no human contact for days on end.’

‘Put like that, it holds considerable appeal.’

‘Are clergy allowed to be such cynics?’

‘It’s in the contract … Brandy, come here!’ he called, as the dog wandered off into the undergrowth. ‘All in all, Dragon and I have a lot in common.’

‘How do you make that out?’ Duncan asked, struggling to spot the least resemblance between the wild-eyed recluse, hair unkempt, beard matted and skin crusted with grime, and the urbane priest, immaculately turned out even after scrabbling up the rutted path.

‘We’re both loners, sickened by so much of what goes on in the world. But at least he was brave enough to turn his back on it. Whereas I…? You know what’s the most unconscionable of the many unconscionable things I do?’ Duncan shook his head. ‘Offering marital advice to newly engaged couples. What on earth can they hope to learn about sustaining a relationship from a man whose closest companion is his dog? Brandy!’ he yelled in a voice that belied any claim of affection. ‘Pay no attention, I’m just an old grouch! There’s nothing like being the vicar of a small seaside parish to make you despair of your fellow man.’

‘I’d have thought it was quite the opposite,’ Duncan said, disturbed by the new edge to Henry’s disenchantment. ‘Here, people have the space to see the bigger picture. In a city there are too many distractions.’

‘Have you taken a look at my congregation lately?’ Henry asked, as they traipsed beneath a vault of interlaced branches and out into the empty car park. ‘Don’t worry, that’s not a dig.’

‘Not lately, no,’ said Duncan who, now that his mother received Communion at home, only accompanied her to the Easter Vigil and Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

‘A few old ladies currying favour with the Almighty. The odd young man struggling to sublimate his passions. A handful of pushy parents desperate to get their kids into the nursery school. I’m starting to think that the most honest service we provide are the weekend teas for cliff walkers.’

Brandy tumbled back to them as they entered the home stretch.

‘What you need is a holiday,’ Duncan said, prescribing a remedy that he himself had failed to take. ‘When was the last time that you had a complete rest?’

‘Where would I go? Who with?’ For an anxious moment, Duncan feared that he had laid himself open to an invitation.

‘How about a pilgrimage to the Holy Land?’

‘You are joking?’ Henry said, stopping short.

‘Yes of course,’ Duncan replied, blushing.

‘Maybe what I need is a complete change? Mine’s one of the few remaining jobs for life, barring madness or scandal and, come to think of it, not always then. What I admire about you, Duncan, is that you genuinely believe in what you do. You put your heart and soul into that paper. But what about me? Do I believe in the Church or am I simply too old and scared and jaded to move on?’

‘I can see why you’d have doubts about the Church, but surely you believe in God?’

‘Do I? Or am I spouting the same cosy formulas I learnt
as a child? I moan about my workload but, really, I should be grateful since it keeps me from having to think. Every day we learn more about mankind and our place in the universe. Religious experience itself has been linked to some kind of brain dysfunction. And here am I, clinging to a belief system that hasn’t changed in two thousand years!’

‘Isn’t that the point, if you think its truths are eternal?’

‘I have to think they’re eternal or how else could I justify them? Yet all I see are people tailoring God to their own needs: I’m lonely, so Christ was an outcast; I’m suffering, so He heals my pain; I’m poor, so I’ll reap my reward in heaven. How is that any different from a sun- or rain- or fertility-worshipping pagan?’

Emerging from behind an overgrown hedgerow, they found themselves facing the north wall of St Edward’s, a fourteenth-century flint rubble church with a slate roof and a crenellated bell tower that might have been transplanted from the ruins of Francombe Castle. The round-arched porch was the sole vestige of an earlier Saxon structure, although its celebrated gargoyle, reputed to date from the tenth century, was now so weather-worn as to seem almost benign.

‘Maybe there’s no difference,’ Duncan replied. ‘But when I gaze up at this glorious church, there seems to be all the difference in the world.’

‘Be warned, I have as little time for guidebook Christians as for biblical literalists.’

‘No, it’s not the building itself that moves me – though I agree it’s spectacular – but the tradition. I look at it and see all the people who’ve worshipped here down the ages, dedicating the best of themselves to God.’

‘What I see is a church that’s in urgent need of repair: a church built on a rock which, after centuries of subsidence, is at risk of collapse. If I were Matthew Arnold, I could turn it into a metaphor, but I’m not, so I have to live with the inconvenient facts.’ Henry opened the lychgate and they entered
the churchyard. ‘I’ll just pop into the vestry. I need to clean myself up and fetch my communion set before we go to your mother’s. Are you coming in?’

‘I’ll wait out here. Muddy shoes.’

Giving him a quizzical look, Henry walked up to the porch where he struggled with the high-security locks, newly installed after a spate of ecclesiastical burglaries. Brandy, showing rare disloyalty, remained with Duncan as he climbed over the gravestones, challenging himself as he had done since childhood to decipher inscriptions so eroded that they might as well have been written on sand.