A Blessing In Disguise (23 page)

Alas, it's a feeling not to last! I'm back at home, in the kitchen. When I got back from Brownies Becky was downstairs, glued to television. ‘I'll tell you what,' I said, ‘I'll make a Welsh rarebit and we'll have it on our laps, in front of the TV. Would that suit you?' I know Welsh rarebit is one of her favourite meals.

She nods, which I take to mean thank you Mummy, that will be delightful.

So here I am, and I've no sooner started to grate the cheese than the telephone rings.

‘St Mary's Vicarage,' I say. ‘Venus Stanton!'

‘Good!' a pleasant male voice says at the other end. ‘I'm the Bishop's secretary. He'd like a word with you. Would that be convenient?'

‘You mean now?'

‘If you could.'

‘Of course!' One does not say ‘No' to one's bishop. What can he want? Is he going to pay St Mary's a visit? I doubt it, but it would be wonderful if he were.

‘I'll put you through,' the secretary says.

‘Ah, Venus!' the Bishop says. (If I were one of his male priests he'd probably call me ‘Father'. As it is, he calls me Venus.) ‘Are you well?'

‘Very well, thank you, Bishop,' I say. ‘I hope you are?'

‘Thank you, I am,' he says – and then gets down to business. ‘Now I don't want you to be worried,' he says, ‘but I've had a letter from a Miss Amelia Frazer. You know her, of course?'

I should have guessed, shouldn't I? ‘I have taken steps,' she said, didn't she? I didn't stop to think what steps she might have taken.

‘Yes,' I say.

‘Well then, you'll know she has a strong aversion to women priests, and that's what this is all about. More about that, I hope and believe, than about you personally.'

I am not too sure about that. I think she probably hates me personally but I can't help that. I don't reply, I wait for him to continue.

‘I think we should have a chat, you and I,' he says. ‘Much better than me writing to you, don't you think?'

‘Whatever you wish, Bishop,' I tell him. I wonder if he's going to summon me to the Bishop's Palace.

But no, he isn't. ‘I have to be in your area for a meeting on Friday,' he continues. ‘Perhaps I could come and have a cup of tea with you?'

‘Certainly!' I say. ‘Would you like to tell me . . . ?'

‘No,' he interrupts. ‘I'm not going to bother you with the contents of the letter on the telephone. We can talk it through on Friday. And please don't worry. I'm sure everything's going to be all right!'

Which is more than I am, though I'm determined not to let it get me down.

‘I've never met Miss Frazer,' he says, ‘but there are those here who have. I shall have my secretary acknowledge her letter and I'll reply to it later, after I've talked to you. But please don't worry. I rang simply to make a time to see you.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Otherwise, everything all right at St Mary's?' he asks in a cheerful voice.

‘It seems to be,' I tell him. ‘I've just got back from Brownies.' Why would he want to know that, for heaven's sake?

‘Good! Good!' he replies. ‘Well, I'll see you on Friday.'

How can he ask if everything's all right when he's got a letter from Miss Frazer in front of him? But ‘otherwise' he said, didn't he? And otherwise it is, at least churchwise. I doubt the Bishop is the one to talk to about my daughter.

I sit down for two minutes, to think, then I continue with the rarebit. It looks good when I serve it but neither Becky nor I eat much of it.

It's Wednesday morning and I'm seeing Becky off to school. To say she is unwilling is a total understatement.

‘I think it's cruel of you to send me to school when you know I'm not well!' she storms. ‘You're doing it just to get me out of the way!'

‘I'm doing no such thing,' I say as calmly as I can. ‘Why would I want you out of the way? You know Doctor Baines said you were well enough to go to school and I happen to agree with him. You can't stay off school just on a whim.'

But it isn't a whim, and I don't know what it is but I shall have to get to the bottom of it, though now is not the moment. We have to have a long talk – that is if Becky will take part in a long talk, if she'll confide in me, which she shows no sign of doing. When she comes home this afternoon we absolutely must try to sort it out.

I move to give her my usual good-bye kiss but she turns away and rushes out of the house. I stand at the window and watch her walk down the road.

Of course Becky is my chief concern but I have to admit that the Bishop's call is nagging at me, even though he sounded quite kind and has told me not to worry. But how can I help worrying? Who knows what Miss Frazer has said? And I can be sure, can't I, that she's slanted everything in her own favour and I'm the villain of the piece. I reckon she has influence, partly because she's been here so long and done so much, but also because of her financial contribution. No church, no diocese, can afford to sneeze at substantial financial support. They are all worried about money. Sometimes I get the feeling that it's the most important thing on everyone's mind. I wish I knew what line the Bishop was going to take. Will he reprimand me severely? But Miss Frazer was the prime mover, wasn't she? I just wish I didn't have to wait until Friday afternoon to see him.

Should I ever have come to Thurston, I ask myself? After all, they didn't really want me, I wasn't what they'd have preferred and I was well aware of that. But what else could I have done? There was no other opportunity for me in this diocese and I wouldn't have been in the front running in any other diocese. When it came to the crunch it was a straight choice between remaining at Holy Trinity and coming to St Mary's, Thurston. Perhaps I should have stayed put, not uprooted Becky from her friends, her school, her grandparents? I did think about it, long and hard. I did pray, I did ask the Holy Spirit to guide me, I did think in the end that I had the right answers. So here I am, and there's no going back on it.

But wait a minute, I don't want to go back on it! Here I am, and here I will stay, as long as need be! So pull yourself together, girl, I tell myself. Stop whinging! Get on with the job.

And it's in that new, fighting mood I decide I'll actually walk along to the church to say my Office. Saying it right here in the kitchen would be every bit as valid but I have this feeling I want to do it in the church. So off I go, taking my burdens with me but ready to cast them off.

I feel lighter after that. My problems are unchanged. The Bishop is probably going to give me a wigging, Becky is still bloody, but who said it was all going to be easy? No-one. I go into the parish office and do some jobs, including my letter for the November issue of the church magazine, and then I go home and I'm back in the Vicarage by noon ready to face whatever's thrown at me. I haven't been there more than ten minutes when the phone rings.

‘St Mary's Vicarage,' I say.

‘Good-morning, Vicar,' a rather pleasant, deep voice says. ‘You won't know me. My name's Bob Chester and I keep the newsagent's in the village. I deliver your newspaper – or rather, one of my lads does.'

I've been in his shop – it's much more than a newsagent's, he sells stationery, a few paperbacks, children's toys, soft drinks, and a large selection of sweets and chocolates. I think he also sells milk, but then several shops in the village sell milk even though it has nothing to do with their trade. No-one need ever go without milk in their tea in Thurston.

‘So what can I do for you, Mr Chester?' I ask. A wedding? A baptism? An advertisement in the parish mag? It seems it's none of these things.

‘I wanted to talk to you,' he says.

‘That's fine,' I tell him. ‘My time's yours!'

‘Not on the phone,' he says. ‘There's people in and out of the shop and I'm short-handed so I have to be on duty myself.'

‘So you'd rather come to the Vicarage – or do you want me to come to you later on?' I enquire.

‘It would be better to come to the Vicarage,' he says. ‘It's half-day closing, I shut up shop at one o'clock, so I could be with you soon after that.'

I agree with that.

‘See you then,' he says. ‘And don't worry!'

Why do people keep telling me not to worry? I know I've got a few things to worry about, but does it show in my face? And why would Mr Chester tell me not to worry? I don't know him, he doesn't know me. Is it a phrase people in Thurston use to each other, like the ubiquitous ‘Take care!'?

At one-fifteen there's a ring at the door and there stands Mr Chester. I remember now having seen him in his shop. He's not very tall, he has a round, pink face – well, he's sort of rounded all over in a rather pleasant way – and he has wispy grey hair which at the moment is all over the place because there's a stormy wind blowing from the south-west.

I take him into my study and we sit in two chairs opposite to each other. Now I can see that he doesn't look a very happy man and I wonder what it's about. It doesn't look like a wedding or a baptism. Could be a wedding with complications? In-laws at each other's throats? An awkward relative ready to throw a spanner in the works? None of that would be new.

‘So what can I do for you?' I ask.

At first he seems reluctant to speak, and then he says, ‘Well, it's about your daughter, Vicar.'

‘My daughter? Becky? What . . .'

‘I don't quite know how to put this . . .' he says awkwardly.

‘She's at school right now,' I tell him.

‘I know. Or I expected she would be. That's why I wanted to see you now, I mean when she wasn't here.'

I haven't the faintest idea what he's talking about, but suddenly I get an uneasy feeling, a horrible feeling, and I don't know why. Mr Chester fidgets in his chair. He doesn't seem sure how to go on – and then in the end he finds his voice.

‘I'm afraid your daughter has been stealing from my shop.' He says it quietly, which somehow makes it more real than if he'd shouted it.

‘Stealing? Becky stealing? Oh no, Mr Chester, Becky wouldn't steal! She can be all sorts of things, she can be naughty, but she'd never steal! Never!' The words are pouring out of me, my voice raised, and he keeps quiet until, because I don't know what to say next, I come to a stop.

‘I know it must be a shock to you, Vicar, but I'm afraid it's true. You see I saw it with my own eyes – and not just once.'

I sit there, staring at him.

‘There must be some mistake,' I say in the end. ‘What do you think she stole?'

‘I don't think, Vicar,' he says. His voice is gentle now. ‘She stole chocolate bars.'

‘Well, there you are then!' I say quickly. ‘It couldn't have been Becky. There's some mix-up here. You see, she doesn't even like chocolate!' That's it, I'm thinking. He's got her mixed up with some other child. It's not Becky at all!

‘I'd better tell you the whole story,' he says, sighing. ‘I know it's Becky, because when she came into the shop the first couple of times she bought chocolate bars. I didn't know her, and I know most of the children in the village, so I asked her name, like you do. “Becky,” she said.' He points to a framed photo on my desk, one I took of her just before we left Clipton. ‘That's her, isn't it?'

‘Yes it is,' I agree. ‘But I still don't understand, Mr Chester. Why would she buy chocolate bars when she doesn't like them? In fact chocolate brings her out in a rash. I would have seen if she'd had a rash. Mothers do.'

‘I don't know
why
,' he says. ‘But I can assure you she did. I was surprised because they cost around thirty pence each and she was buying two a day. That's a lot of money for a little girl.'

It's the word ‘money' which does it, hits me hard. Money! Money box. An empty money box which shouldn't have been empty.

‘Go on,' I say. I can hardly get the words out.

He hears the change in my voice. ‘Well,' he says, ‘for the first few days she bought them, and then after that she bought one and stole one. And then towards the end of last week she began to steal outright. My guess is she'd run out of money. I already had that thought when she bought one and stole the second one and I'm afraid I set up a little trap.'

‘A trap? What do you mean?'

‘Not for my sake, Vicar. For hers. I just knew she had to be stopped. I have a mirror fixed on the wall in the back room, for when I have to leave the counter. I only have to glance in it to see what's going on in the shop. Oh, I've had it there for years – you wouldn't believe what people try to get away with – and grown-ups quite as much as children. And I deliberately left Becky at the counter while I went out to the back room. So you see I saw her. Twice towards the end of last week, then again yesterday afternoon. She wasn't in on Monday.'

‘She didn't go out on Monday. She wasn't well and I kept her at home.' I say it automatically. Everything is falling horribly into place, except
why
? Why would she do this? But there's something about Mr Chester himself, an air of integrity, which makes me believe that he's telling the truth, even if everything, except why, didn't fit so exactly.

I simply continue to look at him. I don't know what to say.

‘I'm not going to do anything,' he says. ‘Nothing at all. I just thought you needed to know. You're the one to deal with it, Vicar, not me. And I'm sure you'll know best how to do that.'

‘I'm far from sure that I do, thank you,' I say. ‘Of course I'll pay you for the chocolate.'

He dismisses that with a shake of his head.

‘No way! A few chocolate bars don't matter. And let me tell you, Vicar, because I know, or I reckon I do, how you must feel, let me tell you that it's not the end of the world. It's not new to me after twenty-five years of selling sweets. It's happened before and it'll happen again.'