Past Praying For (15 page)

As
he paused in thought, she twitched the letter back from him and read it again, with a shudder. Who was this woman – if Robert was right – who hated her so much?

‘
I know what it is,’ her brother said suddenly. ‘It doesn’t to me express outrage – which was the hallmark of the priesthood debate – as much as spite. The maggot remark would be out of character for the single-issue fanatic. And if this has been sent merely to distress, picking on your particular vulnerability, you won’t be the only victim. I’m only thinking aloud, remember – but you could keep that in mind as you go about your parish business.’

‘
Parish business!’ Margaret suddenly leaped to her feet guiltily. ‘Look at the time! I’ve got a young couple coming to talk to me about their wedding in three minutes, and I haven’t even drawn back the curtains in the study yet.’

***

She had a busy morning with little time for reflection and she and Robert were having a cup of coffee in the sitting room after lunch when the doorbell rang. Groaning theatrically, Margaret went to answer it.

When
she recognized her visitor, her face lit up with surprise and pleasure.

‘
Tom!’ she exclaimed.

The
old derelict who stood on the doorstep staggered slightly in surprise as she threw her arms round him, being unused to rapturous acclaim. It was fully six weeks since someone had made him take a bath, his clothes were ragged and stiff with weathering and old sweat, and his boots broken down and filthy; people usually requested him to move on, or move downwind, at the very least, rather than offering to embrace him. But life had taught him pragmatism, and the dirt-seamed stubbly creases of his face curved in a broad grin which displayed half-a-dozen yellowing teeth.

Margaret
was ushering him inside towards the kitchen, backing off a little from the odious savours of his rich personality. In her pleasure at this relic of her past, spontaneity had perhaps prevailed over wisdom.

‘
Whatever are you doing in this neck of the woods, Tom?’

Shambling
after her, the old man sniffed, passing the back of his half-mittens across his nose, and she noticed that the gnarled fingers which protruded were mauve with cold. But his cheerfulness was unimpaired.

‘
Well, you see miss, this i’nt far off me regular circuit. There’s a hostel over Broadhurst way, not busy this time of year, and at Christmas most folks are happy enough to put a few leftovers the way of a deserving cause.’ He winked conspiratorially.

And
when I heard you was here, and a proper vicar, like, well, I reckoned you wouldn’t want an old mucker to go past your door. Might make it worth me while.’

His
rheumy eyes had cased the room already, and now he rolled them suggestively at the bottle of cooking brandy on one of the kitchen shelves.

Margaret
ignored the hint.

‘
You come here and sit down next to the heater,’ she said, valiantly putting out of her head any consideration of what heat would do to the olfactory assault on her senses. ‘I’ll heat you up some soup, while I sort out something a bit more substantial. Unless you’d like to clean up first? You could have a bath if you like,’ she offered, more in hope than expectation.

He
cackled with laughter. ‘Bath? Not likely, miss. Bad for your health, they are. Open me pores like that, next thing you know, there I’d be down with pneumonia. But I’ll take the soup, miss, God bless you.’

He
had always been a jolly old reprobate, even if he was never sober if he could help it. She wondered sometimes what his history had been before the demons of alcoholism destroyed the fabric of his life, but to ask would be a serious breach of etiquette and he had never been one who dwelt on a happier past. In the summer months he had haunted the graveyard at St John’s, but clearly travelled in the winter, and she was glad to know he had a circuit of hostels which would keep him out of sheds and ditches in the most inclement weather.

As
always, she relished his conversation – he was by way of being a homespun philosopher – and he ate everything she put in front of him with equally hearty enjoyment, and consented to have the disreputable holdall and the plastic bags he carried filled up as well. She did not give him money, knowing all too well where that money would go, but offered him a lift to his hostel destination.

In
her tortured recollections later, she blamed herself for accepting his refusal too readily, wished fruitlessly that she had, somehow or other, insisted. But scenting rich pickings in this fresh field, he had firmly declined, and she had escorted him to the door hoping only that any would-be benefactor would be wise enough not to ply him too liberally with Yuletide cheer.

A
light rain was falling now, and as he stepped out again into the cold, her father’s old umbrella, stuck into the stand in the hall, caught her eye.

She
had meant to throw it out; it had one broken rib, but it was sturdily made in the old-fashioned way, with a solid bone handle.

‘
Tom!’ she called after him, ‘is this any use to you?’

He
came back and took it from her with his gap-toothed grin, touching one finger to his brow in mock salute.

‘
Cheers, miss!’ he said, then drawing himself up to his skinny height put his heels together, doffed his disreputable woollen bonnet and bowed. ‘And the compliments of the season to you.’

Laughing,
Margaret watched him execute a comic, Flanagan-and-Allen caper under the battered gamp, and then he shuffled off down the road.

***

‘Great heavens, do my eyes deceive me? Is that really Lizzie McEvoy buying biscuits? Now I would have sworn that no one in your family would even know what a bought biscuit looks like!’

There
was hardly anyone in the supermarket. It had that wearied, post-Christmas appearance, with the gaps on the shelves left by the Christmas Eve feeding frenzy as yet unfilled, and much of what remained defaced by ‘Reduced’ labels stuck across the improbably merry snow-scenes and the anatomically-challenged robins. It was curious that packaging which days before had looked so festive now seemed as depressing as a shrivelled party balloon.

Elizabeth
had been stowing a box of chocolate biscuits – ‘Price slashed!’ – in her trolley when Patrick Bolton accosted her jocularly from behind.

She
swung round, startled and defensive, and, he noted in horror, with tears in her eyes.

‘
Well, I do try, you know. But a person can only do so much, and there’s been such a lot with Christmas and everything...’

‘
Lizzie, stop, please stop!’

He
caught her hands and held them awkwardly, trying to stop the flood of self-exculpation.

‘
It was a joke, Lizzie, not a criticism, honestly! Stupid, I know, but truly I was only teasing you. It never occurred to me that you would think...For heaven’s sake, you must know that no one would ever reproach you for not taking enough trouble. I thought you would laugh. Oh Lizzie, please don’t cry. It makes me feel awful.’

‘
Sorry,’ Elizabeth sniffed. She freed her hands, feeling frantically in her pockets for a handkerchief and coming up at last with a rather scruffy pink paper tissue, with which she scrubbed at her eyes.

‘
I’m sorry,’ she said again, trying to laugh. ‘What an idiot I am! I don’t know what can have happened to my sense of humour. It’s not you, I think it’s just that I’m so tired, with Christmas and everything, you know...’

He
glanced down at Lizzie, pretty Lizzie, so small and pale and helpless-looking. The tears were still spilling over, and he longed to do something – take a clean handkerchief and wipe them away, put his arms round her in comfort, hit whoever had brought her to this state (as if he didn’t know). It was a long time since he had experienced such a surge of protectiveness; Suzanne needed about as much protection as a porcupine.

He
took charge, enjoying being masterful.

‘
What you need is a sit down and a cup of coffee and one of those appalling sticky doughnuts they have in the café here. No, don’t look at your watch. If someone has to wait for you, it’ll do them good.’

‘
It’s just that the children are with Jenny Cartwright this afternoon – oh well, I don’t suppose she’ll mind.’

‘
Good girl.’

He
walked her off. Their trolleys, abandoned, nuzzled together intimately in the confectionery section.

By
the time they were sitting down, she had recovered her social poise.

‘
Is Suzanne working today?’ she asked brightly.

‘
Yes, and I’m doing the shopping, and we had a splendid Christmas, thank you, and yes, I got all the presents I was hoping for. It was a shame the weather was so dismal over Christmas, wasn’t it, but I do think it’s a little milder today, even if there was some drizzle earlier.

‘
Right, that’s got that out of the way. Now tell me what’s wrong.’

He
smiled at her encouragingly. She had such a soft face, that sweet, slightly drooping mouth and her mermaid’s eyes fringed with silky lashes and still misted with unshed tears.

Her
sigh was so deep that it shook her slight frame.

‘
Oh Patrick, you’re very kind. Much too kind. But I don’t think I could. I think it would be...disloyal to tell you.’

Quite
unexpectedly, he found himself seized by pure rage. This was, without doubt, Piers’s doing, and if the man had walked in at that moment he would have derived considerable pleasure from smashing his habitual self-satisfied sneer right into his face.

‘
You could try,’ he said, struggling to keep his voice even. ‘And eat your doughnut. It’s good for you – full of E numbers.’

He
was rewarded with a watery smile, and she obediently cut a small piece off the heavily-iced bun and ate it.

‘
You’re both so kind, you and Suzanne. I don’t know how either of you has the patience to put up with me. Suzanne’s so good at everything; she never seems to get into the muddles I do, and now I’ve upset her somehow, and I don’t know what I’ve done – ’

Her
eyes brimmed again, and Patrick said roughly, ‘Look, Suzanne’s not angry with you. She’s got one or two problems and she always thinks she can handle them by herself, which is her privilege. But if that’s what’s getting to you – ’

‘
No, no, it isn’t, really. It’s just one more horrible thing. The real problem – ’

She
paused, torn by some sort of conflict.

‘
Oh, it seems so – well, underhand, to go talking to you like this. But I don’t know – perhaps it isn’t true anyway, and if I don’t show it to someone I shall go mad. And I can’t talk to Suzanne, and I can’t talk to Laura either just now.’

She
dived into her capacious shoulder bag and after a few moments’ scrabbling produced a white envelope, badly-typed.

Patrick
took it and withdrew the letter inside. As he read it, his face contorted in disgust.

‘
What a filthy thing. It’s a pity you ever read it. Put it in the bin where it belongs.’

‘
But do you think it’s true?’

He
paused for that fatal extra second. The suggestion that McEvoy might, given the chance, indulge in an affair was hardly what you could term a surprise allegation; Hayley Cutler was famously free with her favours, and in other company he would have observed cynically that sooner or later the muck would stick together at the bottom of the pond.

‘
No, I shouldn’t think so for a moment,’ he said heartily. ‘Anyone who could do something as sick as this wouldn’t worry about truth.’

Her
look was direct, and reproachful.

‘
I know what you’re really saying. And yes, I’m afraid I believe it too. The rest is probably right as well, that I deserve it for being weak and pathetic and useless, but I can’t help it. That’s just what I am.’

The
pink tissue was being picked to shreds now.

He
was ashamed of the disingenuousness of his previous reply, but could be completely honest now.

‘
As far as that goes, nothing could be further from the truth. Deserve it! The trouble with you is that you’re far too good for him. You’ve been a wonderful wife and mother, and he certainly doesn’t deserve you.’

They
were conventional enough remarks, but his sincerity was transparent. She smiled at him through the tears that welled over once more.

‘
Thank you for that,’ she said softly.

He
could not help himself. He reached across the table to smudge the tears away with his thumb, then cupped her face with his hand to make her look at him.