The Judgement of Strangers Read online

  Usually the building itself had a calming effect on me, but not this evening. At times I found my mind drifting away from the words of the office and had to force myself to concentrate. Afterwards I simply sat there and stared at the memorial tablets on the wall opposite me. It was as though my will had abdicated.

  Vanessa and Ronald, I thought over and over again. I wondered if I would be invited to the wedding and, if so, whether I should accept. By that time, perhaps it would no longer matter. I was aware, of course, that I was making too much of this. On the basis of two short meetings, I could hardly claim to have become deeply attached to Vanessa. The real problem was that, quite unintentionally, she had aroused my own long-suppressed needs. At the bottom of my unhappiness was a feeling of profound dissatisfaction with myself.

  Time passed. Slowly the light slipped away from the interior of the church. It was by no means dark – merely less bright than it had been before. The memorial tablets were made of pale marble that gleamed among the shadows. Gradually there crept up on me the feeling that I was being watched.

  I stared with increasing concentration at the tablet directly in front of me, which belonged to Francis Youlgreave, the poor, mad poet-priest. Everything led back to Vanessa. How odd that she should be interested in him. I remembered the lines that she had quoted to me at lunchtime. I could not recall the words exactly, something about darkness, I thought, and about whispers that defiled the judgement.

  Defiled. It suddenly seemed to me that I was irredeemably defiled, not just by the events of the last few days, but by the active choice of someone or something outside me.

  At that moment, I heard laughter.

  It was a high, faint sound, like the rustle of paper or a whistle without a tune. I thought of wind among the leaves, of beating wings and long beaks, of geese I had seen as a boy flying high above Essex mudflats. Sadness swept over me. I fought it, but it turned to desolation and then to something darker.

  ‘No. Stop. Please stop.’

  I was on my feet. The paralysis had dissolved. I stumbled down the church. The sound followed me. I put my hands over my ears but I could not block it out. The church was no longer a place of peace. I had turned it into a mockery of its former self. Defiled. I had defiled the church even as I had defiled myself.

  I struggled with the latch of the south door. I was in such a state that it seemed to me that someone on the other side was holding it down. At last I wrenched it up and pulled at the door. I almost fell into the porch beyond.

  Something moved on my right. Audrey’s cat, I thought for a split second, her wretched, bloody cat. Then I realized that I was wrong: that a person was sitting on the bench in the corner by the church notice board. I had a confused impression of pale clothing and a golden blur like a halo at the head. Then the figure stood up.

  ‘Hello, Father,’ said my daughter Rosemary. Her voice changed, filling with concern. ‘What’s wrong?’

  5

  At half past nine the following morning there was a ring on the doorbell. I was alone in the house. Rosemary had caught the bus to Staines to go shopping. I had managed to shave, but the only breakfast I had been able to face was a cigarette and a cup of coffee.

  I found Audrey hovering on the doorstep, her body poised as if ready to dart into the hall at the slightest encouragement. I kept my hand on the door and tried to twist my mouth into a smile.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, David. I just wondered what the verdict was.’

  ‘What verdict?’

  ‘You’re teasing me,’ she said in an arch voice. ‘The verdict on the book, of course.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Indeed I was, though not for the reasons Audrey assumed. ‘I’ve not been able to talk to Mrs Forde about it yet.’

  She stuck out her lower lip, which was already pinched and protuberant, and increased her resemblance to a disappointed child. ‘I thought you were going to phone her yesterday evening.’

  ‘Yes, I’d hoped to, but – but there was a difficulty.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘I’ll try to talk to her today.’ I smiled, trying to soften the effect of my words. ‘I’ll phone you as soon as I hear something, shall I?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ She turned to go. She had taken only a couple of steps towards the road when she stopped and turned back to me. ‘David?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thank you for all you’re doing.’

  My conscience twisted uncomfortably. Audrey smiled and walked away. I went back to my study and stared at the papers on my desk. Concentration demanded too much effort. I had slept badly, with dreams that hovered near the frontier of nightmare but did not actually cross it. One of them had been set in a version of Rosington, where Rosemary and I had lived before we came to Roth – when my wife Janet was still alive. I had not dreamed of Rosington for years. Vanessa had unsettled me, breached the defences I had built up so laboriously. (And I had been all too willing to have them breached.)

  Audrey’s visit reminded me that I still had the problem of contacting Vanessa. I should have phoned her, as arranged, the previous evening, but I had spent much longer in the church than I had intended. By the time I had returned to the Vicarage the last thing I had wanted to do was talk to anyone, let alone Vanessa. I had persuaded myself without much trouble that it was too late to phone.

  On the other hand, I could not run away from Vanessa for ever, or at least not until I had sorted out the business of Audrey’s wretched book. I did not want to phone her at the office, however, because that would mean having to run the gauntlet of Cynthia. I remembered that Cynthia worked only in the mornings. In that case, I thought, I would phone Vanessa this afternoon.

  Now that I had made the decision, I felt slightly happier. I returned to the accounts I had abandoned the previous evening. But I had not got very far when there was another ring at the doorbell. I swore under my breath as I went into the hall. I opened the door. There was Vanessa herself.

  I stared at her, fighting a rising tide of disbelief. She was wearing her dark suit and she had the envelope containing Audrey’s typescript clamped to her chest.

  ‘Hello, David.’

  ‘Vanessa – do come in.’

  ‘I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’

  ‘Only the accounts. And I was about to make some coffee, in any case. But I hope you haven’t come all this way to bring me back the book?’

  She shook her head. ‘I had to visit a bookshop in Staines this morning. I’m on my way back.’

  She followed me into the hall, and I led her through to the sitting room.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t phone yesterday evening.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ She looked out of the window, not at me. ‘I didn’t expect you to phone me back so late.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  She turned from the window and looked at me. ‘Didn’t you get my message?’

  ‘What message?’

  ‘I phoned last night. I had another phone call, and I – I thought you might not have been able to get through. I left a message saying I’d phoned.’

  ‘I didn’t receive it.’ I thought of Rosemary waiting for me in the porch of the church. ‘You must have spoken to my daughter. I expect it slipped her mind.’

  She smiled. ‘Young people have more important things to think about than relaying phone messages.’

  ‘Yes.’ I did not know what to say next. I knew I should make the coffee, but I did not want to leave Vanessa. I cleared my throat. ‘I saw Cynthia yesterday afternoon. She brought those things round for Rosemary.’

  ‘I know. She told me … I think she may have misled you about something.’

  I stared at her. We were still standing in the middle of the room.

  Vanessa picked at a piece of fluff on her sleeve. ‘I believe she gave you to understand that Ronnie and I are engaged.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, that’s not true. Not exactly.’

  I patted the pockets of my jacket
, looking for the cigarettes I had left in the study. ‘There’s no need to tell me this. It’s none of my business.’

  ‘Cynthia and Ronnie were very good to me when Charles died.’

  ‘I’m sure they were.’

  ‘You don’t understand. When something like that happens you feel empty. And you can become very dependent on those who help you. Emotionally, I mean.’

  ‘I do understand,’ I said. ‘Only too well.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She bit her lip. ‘Ronnie told me about your wife.’

  ‘It’s all right. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘One gets so wrapped up in oneself.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Listen, two weeks ago, Ronnie asked me to marry him. I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t say no, either. I said I needed time. But he thought I was eventually going to say yes. To be perfectly honest, I thought I was going to say yes. In a way I felt that he deserved it. And I’m fond of him … Besides, I don’t like living on my own.’

  ‘I see. Won’t you sit down?’

  I was not sure whether she was talking to me as a man or as a priest – a not uncommon problem in the Anglican Church. When we sat down, somehow we both chose the sofa. This had a low seat – uncomfortably low for me. It caused Vanessa’s skirt to ride up several inches above the knees. The sight was distracting. She snapped open her handbag and produced a packet of cigarettes, which she offered to me. I found some matches in my pocket. Lighting the cigarettes brought us very close together. There was now no doubt about it: as far as I was concerned, the man was well in ascendancy over the priest.

  ‘Ronnie hoped to announce our engagement on Friday evening,’ she continued. ‘I think that’s why he wanted the dinner party – to show me off. I didn’t want that.’ She blew out a plume of smoke like an angry dragon. ‘I didn’t like it, either. It made me feel like a trophy or something. And then this morning, Cynthia told me she’d been to see you, told me what she’d said. I was furious. I’m not engaged to Ronnie. In any case, it’s nothing to do with her.’

  ‘No doubt she meant well,’ I said, automatically clinging to the saving grace of good intentions.

  ‘We all mean well,’ Vanessa snapped back. ‘Sometimes that’s not enough.’

  We smoked in silence for a moment. I glanced at her stockinged legs, dark and gleaming, and quickly looked away. She fiddled with her cigarette, rolling it between finger and thumb.

  ‘The book,’ I said, my voice a little hoarse. ‘What did you think of it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She seized the envelope as if it were a life belt. ‘There’s a good deal of interesting material in it. Particularly if you know Roth well. But I’m afraid it’s not really suitable for us.’

  ‘Is it worth our trying elsewhere?’

  ‘Frankly, no. I don’t think any trade publisher would want it. It’s not a book for the general market.’

  ‘Too short,’ I said slowly, ‘and too specialized. And not exactly scholarly, either.’

  She smiled. ‘Not exactly. If the author wants to see it in print, she’ll probably have to pay for the privilege.’

  ‘I thought you might say that.’

  ‘She’ll probably blame my lack of acumen,’ Vanessa went on cheerfully. ‘A lot of authors appear to believe that there are no bad books, only bad publishers.’

  ‘So what would you advise?’

  ‘There’s no point in raising her hopes. Just say that I don’t think it’s a commercial proposition, and that I advised investigating the cost of having it privately printed. She could sell it in the church, in local shops. Perhaps there’s a local history society which would contribute towards the costs.’

  ‘Is there a printer you could recommend?’

  ‘You could try us, if you like. We have our own printing works. We could certainly give you a quotation.’

  ‘Really? That would be very kind.’

  Simultaneously we turned to look at one another. At that moment there was a sudden movement at the window. Both our heads jerked towards it as if tugged by invisible strings, as if we were both conscious of having done something wrong. I felt a spurt of anger against the intruder who had broken in on our privacy. Audrey’s cat was on the sill, butting his nose against the glass.

  Vanessa said, ‘Is that – is that yours?’

  ‘No – he belongs to Audrey, in fact – the person who wrote the book.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked relieved. ‘My mother was afraid of cats. She was always going on about how insanitary they were. How they brought germs into the house, as well as the things they caught.’ She glanced sideways at me. ‘Do you think these things can be hereditary?’

  ‘Phobias?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not a phobia. I just don’t particularly like them. In fact, that one’s rather dapper. It looks as though he’s wearing evening dress.’

  She was right. The cat was black, except for a triangular patch of white at the throat and more white on the paws. As we watched, he opened his mouth, a pink-and-white cavern, and miaowed, the sound reaching us through the open fanlight of the window.

  ‘He’s called Lord Peter,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘As in Dorothy L. Sayers. Audrey reads a lot of detective stories. His predecessor was called Poirot. And before him, there were two others – before my time: one was called Brown after Father Brown, and the first of the line was Sherlock.’

  ‘I can’t say I have much time for detective stories.’

  ‘Nor do I.’

  I repressed the uncharitable memory of the time that Audrey had lent me Sayers’s The Nine Tailors, on the grounds that it was not only great literature but also contained a wonderfully convincing portrait of a vicar. I stood up, went to the window and waved at Lord Peter, trying to shoo him away. I did not dislike cats in general, but I disliked this one. His constant intrusions irritated me, and I blamed him for the strong feline stench in my garage. Ignoring my wave, he miaowed once more. It occurred to me that I felt about Lord Peter as I often felt about Audrey: that she was ceaselessly trying to encroach on our privacy at the Vicarage.

  ‘David?’

  I turned back to Vanessa, ripe and lovely, looking up at me from the sofa. ‘What is it?’

  ‘To go back to – to Ronnie. It’s just – it’s just that I’m not sure I’m the right person to marry a clergyman.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not a regular churchgoer. I don’t even know if I believe in God.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, knowing that it did, though not perhaps in the way she thought. ‘In any case, belief in God comes in many forms.’

  ‘But his parish, the bishop –’

  ‘I am sure Ronald thought of all that. I don’t mean to pry, but surely it came up when he asked you to marry him?’

  She nodded. ‘He said that God would find a way.’

  There was a silence. Lord Peter rubbed his furry body against the glass and I wanted to throw the ashtray at him. I felt a rush of anger towards Ronald, joining the other emotions which were swirling round the sitting room. If I stayed here, they would suck me down.

  I moved to the door. ‘I’ll make the coffee. I won’t be a moment.’

  I slipped out of the room without giving her time to answer. In the hall I discovered that my forehead was damp with sweat. The house seemed airless, a redbrick coffin with too few windows. I went into the kitchen and opened the back door. While I was waiting for the kettle to boil I stared at my shrunken garden.

  It was then that the idea slithered like a snake into my mind, showing itself openly for the first time: if anyone was going to marry Vanessa Forde, why shouldn’t it be me?

  6

  Vanessa did not linger over coffee. It was as if she were suddenly desperate to leave. We made no arrangement to see each other again. During the afternoon, I called at Tudor Cottage and relayed her opinion of The History of Roth to its author. Audrey’s reaction surprised me.

  ‘But what do you think, David?’
/>
  ‘I think Vanessa’s opinion is worth taking seriously. After all, it’s her job. And it’s true that The History of Roth is rather short for a book.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps it would be simpler to have it privately printed. And then we wouldn’t have to share the profits with the publisher. I wonder how much it would cost?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Would you mind asking Mrs Forde on my behalf? I’d feel a little awkward doing it myself. I haven’t even met her.’

  Audrey continued to play the unwitting Cupid. After discussing the pros and cons exhaustively with me, she entrusted Royston and Forde with the job of printing The History of Roth. Audrey asked me to – in her words – ‘see it through the press’ for her. The typescript provided a reason for Vanessa and me to see each other without commitment on the one hand or guilt on the other; she was doing her job and I was helping a friend. We spent several evenings editing the book, and several more proofreading it. Usually we worked at her flat.

  Vanessa cooked me meals on two occasions. Once I took her out to a restaurant in Richmond to repay her hospitality. I remember a candle in a wax-covered Chianti bottle, its flame doubled and dancing in her eyes, a red-and-white checked tablecloth and plates of gently steaming spaghetti bolognese.

  ‘It’s a shame there’s not more material about Francis Youlgreave,’ she said on that evening. ‘And why’s Audrey so keen to avoid giving offence?’

  Because she’s a prude and a snob. I said, ‘When she was growing up, the Youlgreaves were the local grandees.’

  ‘So you had to treat even their black sheep with respect? That may have been true once, but does she need to be so coy now?’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s her book, I suppose.’