The Bad Samaritan (2 page)

Paul Sheffield looked very unhappy. The uncharted territory that seemed exciting to Rosemary only bewildered him. He had always been a consolidator rather than an explorer.

It was certainly an odd experience going to church that evening. As usual, there were far fewer there than at Holy Communion—fewer to notice, Rosemary thought. She sang the hymns enthusiastically: she was a would-be choral singer who could imagine no joy greater than singing in the
Messiah
or the
Sea Symphony
but had somehow always failed in her attempts to learn to read music. But for the rest it was going through a charade—quite empty. She occupied her mind with thought: had it been going towards this for some time? Had religious observance gradually had its significance drained out of it for her? She had certainly not been conscious of it if so. There seemed all the difference in the world between her participation in Holy Communion the Sunday before and the pantomime performance which was all she could manage now—like an actor playing his part in an empty theatre.

But the thing that struck her most was that she did
not
feel empty, did not feel a sense of loss or deprivation. She felt good; she felt stimulated; she felt free. Have I been living a lie all these
years, she wondered? Can one live a lie without knowing it? Can one think one believes when in reality one doesn't? What was she going to say to Paul about the service? She imagined him asking her, “How was it for you?” and had to suppress a giggle. She looked round to see if anyone had noticed, and rather suspected that Mrs Harridance had.

After the service she waited for Paul by the car. He stood in the porch exchanging pleasantries, parish small talk and gossip with the members of his congregation. In the past she would normally have stopped with him and participated in the chat, but tonight she felt awkward. He's a good parish priest, thought Rosemary, looking at him. I hope this doesn't spoil things for him. Of course logically there was no reason at all why it should, but logic wasn't always operative in parish affairs.

Paul freed himself from his little knot of admirers and came over to let himself and her into the car. He put it into gear and drove off towards home.

“Did the service do anything for you?” he asked. Again she had to suppress a giggle.

“Absolutely nothing. Do you realise you're sounding like a doctor again?”

“Sorry. It's obviously going to be a long process.”

“If there is a process at all. I think it's something I and everyone else are just going to have to accept.”

Paul looked genuinely upset.

“Oh, I hope not.”

“I'm beginning to feel
observed
—do you know what I mean?”

“Not entirely.”

“Beginning to feel that people—you mainly, of course, but the sharper-eyed parish members as well—are observing me, as if they know I've got something terminal and they're watching for symptoms of my approaching demise.”

“You're being absurd. Nobody knows. And who's talking in medical terms now?”

“I know I am . . . . Still, I think I
might
go away after all.”

That cheered Paul up.

“I do think it might be a good idea. We can afford it.”

“Oh, I wouldn't go to anywhere grand. But I could think things out without any of the people I know watching me.”

“The Lakes?”

“Hmmm. I don't think so. I'd feel Auntie Wordsworth looking over my shoulder and telling me to experience God through nature. I think the sea would suit me better. Brid or Scarborough. There wouldn't be anyone much there at this time of year.”

“What will you do?”

“Walk on the beach, walk on the cliffs, sew, read a detective story, put flowers on Anne Brontë's grave.”

“Scarborough, then?”

“Yes, Scarborough, I think. There's more to do there if the weather is vile.”

“And you'll . . . think things over?”

She patted his arm.

“Yes, I'll think things over. But you can't
think
yourself into a faith, you know.”

“I'm sure many people have done just that.”

“Not me. That wouldn't be my kind of faith.”

He left it there. They had a cosy, joky evening together, with television and music. When they went to bed Rosemary was afraid she was going to get the feeling that Paul was praying for her, but if he did he did it discreetly. They made love and he was as warm and tender as he had ever been. In the morning Rosemary looked in her address book and rang a guesthouse they had stayed at three summers before on St Nicholas's Cliff in Scarborough. She felt perhaps she ought to feel cowardly, as if making
a strategic withdrawal. Instead she had an exhilarating sense of going off to pastures new.

•   •   •

“Have you ever known anyone have a mystical experience?” Charlie Peace asked his superior Mike Oddie, as he slogged his way through a mountain of paperwork in the CID offices at Leeds Police Headquarters the next morning.

“Can't say I have. What does a mystical experience consist of?”

“I'm not sure I know.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I saw a woman in the park yesterday, and it looked as if that was what she was going through.”

“What did it look like?”

“Like she'd had a revelation. Like she'd suddenly discovered God.”

“Bully for her,” said Mike

“Only I don't think it was that.”

“Why?”

“Because I think she's a clergyman's wife.”

R
osemary walked from the Scarborough station to her guesthouse. The journey had been uneventful, except that on Leeds station she had bumped into Dark Satanic Mills, who had leered at her as if he knew something about her—a knowing, conspiratorial look that she had tried to freeze but failed. Her case was not large or heavy because she did not see her holiday as an opportunity for a display of fashion, even had she had the wherewithal for one, so walking the short distance was no problem. She did notice as she loitered along that there were shops in Scarborough that sold the sort of clothes that she liked. She wondered whether she might take the opportunity to branch out into an entirely different sort of clothes, but she decided it was too late. It was not a change of
life
she was embarking on, but a change of
thought
. Anyway, now was hardly the time to start feeling uneasy about what she was wearing.

Scarborough was mildly bustling in a watery, uncertain sunshine, and Rosemary congratulated herself on picking it. Bridlington would have been dull at this time of year. Brid was dull at any time of year. At Scarborough there was usually plenty going on.

It was lunchtime when she arrived at the Cliff View Guesthouse,
set in a commanding position on St Nicholas's Cliff opposite the bricky horrors of the Grand Hotel. The proprietress welcomed her as someone she already knew, said she'd given her one of the bedrooms with a sea view, and asked if she would be taking lunch. Rosemary had had a tasteless sandwich on the train and shook her head.

“I expect I'll generally have dinner as my main meal,” she said, having booked half board. “It fits in better with my husband's work to have the main meal in the evening, so that's what I've got used to.”

“Isn't your husband a clergyman?”

“That's right.”

“Awfully demanding on their wives, I've always thought.”

“Yes . . . . Yes, I've never thought about it, but I suppose it is. Restricting, certainly.”

“Anyway, you can forget it for a bit and enjoy yourself, can't you?”

“Oh, I expect I'll have a very quiet time.”

Rosemary took her case up to her room, which did indeed have the most splendid view out to sea. That was the joy of coming out of season: you got the best rooms. She unpacked everything and set out things as if she had come for a long stay.

Once she had freshened up she went out to the shops. She just browsed in the clothes shops, but in the bookshop she bought a biography of the Sitwells and a detective story set in ancient Rome. “I'm here to think, not to shop,” she chided herself. “No I'm not,” the other side of her mind said, “I'm here to get away from people.” No part of her said, “I'm here to regain my faith.” She took the funicular down to the beach and had a long walk along the headland. She must have been thinking as she walked but, oddly enough, when she got back to the Cliff View Guesthouse she had no idea what it was she had been thinking about.

She took a book in to dinner that night. It was the sort of place
where you could, and eating alone is never easy. You wait, try not to look around, and hope the other diners aren't feeling sorry for you. She was just beginning to enjoy the manifest impossibility of the Sitwells' father (as one does enjoy on the printed page people one would run a mile from in life) when she felt a shadow at her shoulder.

“You like the meat or the fish? The meat is pork fillet and the fish is salmon. Is also a veg'tarian dish, but is not nice if you not veg'tarian.”

“I can imagine,” said Rosemary. “Or even if you are one, probably. I'll have pork.”

He smiled, as if that was what he would have advised if he had been allowed to guide her choice. When he came with the meal Rosemary found it was indeed the sort of meal she might have cooked herself at home. She put aside her book and looked around her. The dining room was sparsely peopled: two middle-aged couples and three elderly ones, three other single ladies and one single man. The waiter was managing to cope on his own, banging happily in and out of the swing doors leading to the kitchen.

After she had enjoyed the pork, Rosemary took up her book again and managed to continue reading while eating a remarkably boring fruit salad. She congratulated herself on choosing a place where you could do the kind of thing that you did when you were at home without disapproving eyes being fixed on you. Rosemary was just finishing her coffee when the waiter darted up to her from the foyer, a question in his dark eyes.

“You Meesa Sheffield? There phone call for you. Thees way.”

Rosemary followed him, thinking it must be Paul, then realised he would be at a Parochial Church Council meeting. When she picked up the phone in the foyer it was her daughter's voice she heard.

“Hello Mum. We wondered how you were.”

That medical metaphor again, as if spiritual and physical health were inextricably muddled in everyone's mind but her own. How much did Janet know?

“Hello Janet. Lovely to hear from you. Who's ‘we'?”

“Kevin and I, of course. And Mark is here as well.”

“Good Lord.” Her daughter and her son Mark never fought, but they had never seemed to have much in common and seldom got together except at home. “What are you two cooking up?”

“Just got tickets for
Carousel
, that's all. Mum—Dad says you're going through some kind of crisis.”

“I'm sure he told you exactly what kind of crisis, dear, so there's no point in beating about the bush. Actually I'm not sure I regard it as a crisis at all.”

“Well, it's your life, Mum. I hope you manage to think things through. We wanted you to know we're right behind you.”

“That's good of you, dear.”

“Mark wants a word.”

Why did her heart sink?

“Mum?”

“Hello, Mark dear. I do hope you all enjoy
Carousel
.”

“I'm sure we will. Mum—you've really got to work at this thing, you know.”

Rosemary was conscious of a sharp but not unexpected twinge of irritation. It wasn't just being told what to do by her son. It was the quality and tone of her son's voice: the quality was plummy and the tone was—what? Condescending? Forbearing of human frailty? Parsonical in the worst sense?

“Oh?” she said coldly.

“You mustn't think your faith will just return, you know. You've got to work at it—pray hard, think things through, try to work out where you've gone wrong to make God leave you in this terrible way.”

“Thank you, Mark. I think I have things under control. I should have thought even you would have realised that it's not easy to pray when you have no one and nothing to pray to. Don't let me keep you from
Carousel
.”

And she put the phone down, feeling angrier than she had done in years. What had she and Paul done to produce a sermonising prat like Mark, and him only twenty-two years old? She retrieved her book from the empty dining room and wandered into the lounge.
The Bill
was on, watched by a bored and uncomprehending elderly guest. She sat down, but found the television did nothing to soothe her fuming mind. Drug trafficking on a run-down and violent Council estate was not a restful subject. There was a bookcase in the corner with a lot of old Companion Bookclub books in it, and a few standard classics. She didn't feel like starting a new detective story—she always read fiction before she went to bed—so she went over, inspected the stock, and took out
A Tale of Two Cities
. She hadn't read it, to her recollection, since she was at college. It wasn't as soothing as a Jane Austen, but she felt she wasn't cool enough for sly Jane.

On the landing she was caught up with by the slim waiter, bounding up the stairs.

“You have nice telephone call?”

“Yes thank you,” she lied. “It was my son and daughter.”

“Very nice.” He paused, and then said: “I have a little girl—back in Bosnia.”

“Oh dear—how awful for you. Are you Bosnian?”

He shrugged.

“Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian—what does it matter? I thought I was Yugoslavian.”

“Do you get news from your wife?”

“I not talk to her for many weeks—months. Is no lines. Sometimes I have letter from my wife, but not often.” He patted the
breast pocket of his jacket. “I not talk about my problems no more. You here on holiday.”