Chapter 23

Marilyn Monroe Is Dead

 

 

I think we should forget all about it. That’s what he had said, but somehow, Cass didn’t think it was going to be that easy. She had never been in this kind of situation before but Hal probably ran into reminders of his past mistakes every day if he really had slept with half the women in Rawscar. That must be why he could carry on as if nothing had happened but the shame of how she had behaved still burned through her; the shame and the longing for his touch, which would not go away, no matter what she told herself. She took a deep breath as she made a vow to herself that she would use the humiliation of her mistake to make a new start.

But right now, she had a concert to prepare for.

Hastily they arranged a set list, sitting at a table in the meeting room next to the kitchen under the watchful eye of Jack. It was practical and swift – she listed all the songs she could think of that she could remember the words to, and he told her which ones he knew well enough to accompany her. The resulting list was the set list – plenty of Christmas standards – and then she told him what keys she required them in. That was all they had time to do, as she had to go home and do a vocal warm up and change into clothes more suitable for a performance than her black jeans and clerical shirt. She was going to need something that might pass as Victorian and her wardrobe was rather thin on period costumes, to say the least.

She raced across the quay, past the empty Christmas market, and up the yard. No sign of the Maiden’s Ghost tonight, as she crashed in through the front door.

Anna was sitting in the kitchen beside the Rayburn working on her accounts; Cass could see her through the kitchen door.

‘What’s up?’ Anna looked up, concerned, her face thin and pinched.

‘Nothing serious. Marilyn Monroe hasn’t turned up - hardly surprising as she’s been dead since the sixties - and I’m singing in the concert.’

‘With Hal?’ Anna asked with a raised eyebrow.

‘Yes, Hal offered to accompany me,’ she said, trying to sound as if it wasn’t a big deal. ‘And now I’ve got to go and find something to wear.’

‘I’ll help you,’ Anna said with a sudden decisiveness.

‘But I couldn’t ask you!’ Cass protested.

‘You’re not asking. I’m offering,’ Anna replied, much as Hal had done earlier.

They found a skirt, which would probably pass for Victorian in Cass’s wardrobe, a long black velvet that had been part of her choir uniform when she was in her twenties. It didn’t fit as well as it had once done, but a safety pin anchored it in place when the button didn’t do up.

‘Now, a top,’ Cass began, gazing at the row of clothes in her wardrobe. A couple of summery tops, which would have been perfect, had been in the spare room of the vicarage when it went over the cliff, and they had not been saved.

‘I’d lend you one of mine but …’ Anna said.

‘Nothing of yours would fit me, you’re about four sizes smaller than me!’ Cass exaggerated, but Anna couldn’t be more than a slim size 10 and Cass was a generous 14.

‘Your waist’s small though – it’s just …’

‘It’s my boobs, you don’t need to be polite about it!’ Cass laughed and Anna managed a smile.

‘I know – I’ll lend you a waspie.’

‘A what?’ It sounded like an instrument of torture or something a member of a rugby team should be wearing.

‘A waspie – like a cross between a belt and a corset. I wear them all the time. I’ve got a couple that are quite adjustable.’

Cass heard the word corset and panicked.

‘It’s got to be something suitable for a vicar – I can’t go out there in anything too daring.’

The last thing she wanted to do today was repeat her mistakes. No low-cut tops, nothing to make her look provocative. Anna grinned.

‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. You can wear it over the top of a plain high-necked shirt – and I’ll give you a bit of velvet ribbon and a brooch to finish it off. Nothing revealing at all, just a little bit more elegant than your usual clothes.’  Anna pulled a plain white shirt from the wardrobe and handed it to Cass. ‘Here, this one. I’ll be back in a minute. You’re very hard on yourself, you know, Cass. You’re a fine-looking woman – those cheekbones and that figure! You shouldn’t hide it the way you do.’

She slipped out of the door and Cass could hear her opening drawers in her bedroom downstairs. Anna was being so kind. She didn’t need to, Cass didn’t expect it. She was meant to be here to help Anna, not the other way around.

She put on the white shirt, looking at her reflection in the mirror critically. She didn’t see a “fine looking woman” she just saw herself, drab and increasingly middle-aged, in her plain shirt and ill-fitting skirt. Had she always been drab? She had never really thought about it before, it had always seemed sinful to think about her own appearance.

Anna came back with what looked like a wide black-and-gold belt, and laced Cass into it. She moved to have a look in the mirror, but Anna stopped her.

‘Not yet. You’ve got to put some make-up on first. Come over here and sit down.’

‘I don’t wear make-up,’ Cass protested.

‘You do tonight,’ Anna said firmly, opening a large box of make-up that she had brought upstairs to Cass’s room.

‘But I couldn’t -’ Cass started to say.

‘I’d like to help,’ Anna cut her short. ‘I’ve thought since I first saw you how much better you would look with a bit of make-up and some less - well, less religious clothes. You’re a beautiful woman, Cass.’

‘I don’t deserve your help,’ Cass said miserably.

‘And I don’t deserve yours, but the other night you were there when I was feeling so low. You helped me then – so now I’ll help you.’

She was already deftly applying some foundation to Cass’s face. Cass felt like a fraud accepting Anna’s help when she didn’t know what Cass had done – or tried to do – with Hal last weekend.

‘Look, Anna … there’s something I haven’t told you. I did something … I mean I nearly did something … the other night … the night of the storm … Anna, I’ve been such a fool, I thought … and I don’t deserve your help,’ Cass tried to keep her face still as she talked as Anna continued to work.

‘It’s alright, Cass, I know,’ Anna said matter-of-factly, as she finished the foundation with a flourish.

‘You know? What do you mean you know?’

‘Hal told me today on the quayside. After you were so odd with him this morning, I asked what was going on and he told me everything.’

‘Odd? Everything?’ Cass echoed weakly. Now Anna had a little palette of eye shadow and Cass had to shut her eyes. She felt ridiculously vulnerable as Anna worked on her upturned face and they talked.

‘He told me that he saw you home from the pub. That you’d both had a few drinks and that things got a bit, well, a bit overheated, shall we say?’

Cass could feel her face getting a bit overheated below the foundation that Anna had just applied, but Anna’s hand was steady and sure.

‘I’m so sorry …’

‘But he also said that you both realised it was the wrong thing to do, and that nothing happened. That’s right isn’t it?’ Cass nodded silently. ‘Please try and keep still, I’m just going to put some eyeliner on.’

‘Nothing happened. That’s quite true,’ Cass said, trying to talk without moving her mouth.

‘Well, I blame myself. I never expected when we were talking about it the other day and you said you had never been with a man – I didn’t think you took me seriously about Hal. I shouldn’t have said that.’

Cass swallowed hard and tried not to move her face as Anna applied some velvety liquid black eye-liner around her eyes.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Cass said again, wishing the ground would open up – but then again, given what had happened to the vicarage, perhaps the possibility of the ground opening up was a little too vivid in her mind. ‘It was the mulled wine …’

‘It doesn’t matter, really. Hal and I are friends, that’s all. You don’t need to apologise to me, honestly. Friends, nothing more. There, that’s your eyeliner done! No, no, you can’t look yet.’

‘Nothing too gothic …’ Cass suggested. ‘I don’t want to look -’

‘You’re going to look stunning. Those cheekbones of yours are amazing, and you’ve got such a lovely complexion, that pale skin with that dark hair.’

‘But I thought … that night when we saw the northern lights, I did wonder if you and Hal were more than just friends.’

Anna picked up a hairbrush and a pot of wax, and started working on Cass’s hair.

‘Look, Hal and I are close,’ Anna continued quietly as she stood behind Cass, working on her hair ‘and maybe there was a time … I don’t want to lose him, to lose the friendship we have between us … but I want him to be happy, he deserves to be happy, and if I can’t make him happy then I don’t want to be the one to stand in his way. And you deserve some happiness too.’

She took a sparkling, dark red flower from a bag of hair accessories that she had brought down, and placed it in Cass’s hair, pausing to admire her handiwork, and then adjusting the shape of Cass’s hair again.

‘Hal feels sorry for me because of Rob, he feels he needs to look after me. I know that’s all he feels. And it’s time I let him go,’ she said with a little sigh. ‘There. Done! Have a look in the mirror, you look stunning!’

Cass barely recognised the woman looking back at her when she looked in the bathroom mirror. The way Anna had done her hair made her look elfin rather than plain, the waspie cinched her waist in and gave her a classic hour glass figure and the make-up accentuated her dark, sparkling eyes and high cheekbones.

‘Now, go on! You get over there, I bet half your congregation won’t even recognise you!’ Anna said as they went down the stairs into the living room, Cass holding up her long skirt.

‘Are you going to come?’ Cass asked on impulse. She would like it if Anna came, she realised, she would like Anna to hear her sing.

‘I don’t think I’ll be very welcome, my Dad will be there.’

‘I wish I could help you work things out with him, Anna.’ Cass said softly.

‘Well, you can’t. He’s the only one who can do that, and he never will. You go, Vicar. Oh, one more thing …’ she bent down to search under the sofa, ‘… here you are, put these on.’

The beautiful Victorian boots that Anna had been wearing this morning and that she had so admired. Anna held them out to her.

‘Are you sure?’

Anna nodded.

‘Thank you. You’ve been so kind.’

‘I want Hal to be happy, that’s all. And if I can’t be the one to make him happy, I think maybe you can.’

‘Oh! Oh, no, Anna, I couldn’t! I can’t make him happy in that way, I’m a vicar, I couldn’t … I mustn’t  … I mean, I shouldn’t … look perhaps I should wear something less -’

‘Just go, Vicar!’

 

 

Hal didn’t know where to look and neither did Cass. Anywhere but at each other, it would seem; for their entire set Hal looked down at his guitar and Cass looked over the heads of the audience to the fire exit sign above the door. The concert went well, but there was none of the connection that they had felt that evening at the pub when they had sung together – hardly surprising as they couldn’t even look at each other, let alone connect, musically or any other way. At the end of the concert compliments poured in and whilst a blushing Cass thanked the appreciative crowd, Hal had slipped away into the night.

Cass offered to help Charles clear up. He was busy ticking off things from his list as she approached and offered her assistance with stacking the chairs.

‘Dressed like that, Vicar? I hardly think so.’ The tone of disapproval in his voice was hard to miss. ‘Anna’s work, I expect? Hardly suitable for a vicar, is it? Reverend Steele would never have done anything like that.’

Cass bit her tongue and didn’t point out that Gideon Steele was a seventy-year old man and would have looked more than foolish in a waspie and high-heeled boots, but his words stung.

‘I’m sorry you feel like that. I wanted to make a bit of an effort for the concert.’

‘Concert, eh? Is that what it was for? I think not, Vicar.’

A surge of panic rose – what did he mean?

‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you’re getting at,’ she said more calmly than she felt.

‘It’s all round the village, Vicar; so don’t play the innocent with me. I’ve heard that you and Hal Thorburn carried on like a pair of teenagers on the night of the storm in that pub, making eyes at each other. I’ve heard Hal Thorburn walked you back home, and I’ve no doubt that with that young man there were other motives. I hope you didn’t fall for any of his nonsense.’ He carried the rubbish over to the big dustbin in the corner of the room and dropped it in with a flourish.

Cass was appalled, both at the accuracy of village gossip and the tone of scorn in her churchwarden’s voice. It hadn’t been Hal’s fault; the least she could do was to defend him. She was the guilty one; she was the fool.

‘No! Hal’s a decent man!’ she said. ‘He helped me home because the mulled wine was rather stronger than I expected. Hal did nothing wrong.’

‘A decent man? Not from some of the outrageous tales I’ve heard about his shenanigans,’ Charles said with a sniff.  ‘But maybe even Thorburns have scruples when it comes to inappropriate behaviour with a woman of the cloth. The first scruples that man will ever have shown with women, but even he knows that some things are sacred.’

She was set apart. Untouchable. God’s property. A woman of the cloth. Sacred. She felt a sudden rush of anger. She no longer wanted to do what the church and Charles told her that God demanded. She didn’t want to be saved, she didn’t want to be set apart, she didn’t want to be sacred. She wanted to be treated like any other woman; she wanted Hal to treat her like any other woman.

And tonight, she was stone cold sober.