CHAPTER 13

The Organist’s Welly

 

 

The organist was giving it some welly this morning, Cass noticed, as she stood at the doorway of St. Peter’s Church on Sunday morning saying goodbye to each member of her congregation as they left the church. Her cassock was blowing out in the biting wind that swept across from the moors. The smell of winter was in the air and the odd tiny snowflake swept into her face, stinging her cheeks.

Today she had lit the second red candle on the advent wreath; one more week closer to Christmas, and the children in her congregation today – all three of them – were already starting to get overexcited. She had already heard one complaint from a childless member of the congregation about the noise, which she could add to the earlier complaint about the dying floral display beside the pulpit - it was advent, so the flowers which were still there from two weeks ago should have been removed by now, but no-one had done it. Charles would no doubt have something to say about that – when his wife had been in charge of the flower rota, apparently, there had never been any complaints about inappropriate flowers in advent. Cass knew it was time that she found somebody else to take over the flowers – she had never known a parish where people got so upset about flowers – but nobody was rushing to volunteer. She sighed.

Now she was probably going to get complaints about the organist’s rousing rendition of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer as the congregation left the church. She really ought to have a word with the organist about some of her more eclectic choices of church music which were bound to offend at least one of the Parochial Church Council members - but as she watched one of the children dance her way down the aisle, full of the joys of Christmas, Cass knew she couldn’t do it. It almost made her feel festive herself.

Graham was just tidying away the prayer books as she came back into the church having said goodbye to her congregation.

‘June will be happy to have got her house back to normal after I left!’ Cass said to him in passing.

‘You’d think,’ Graham said, ‘but she liked having you to stay. Likes to have people to look after, does June. Since her mam died, she’s never really been the same. It’s a shame that by the time poor old Lilian died it was too late for us to have children. We missed the boat, you might say. But we keep ourselves busy, you know and she loves the house – always buying something or other to keep it nice - and she’s got her job and she loves that too. I think she’ll miss it when she retires.’

‘Is she retiring soon?’

‘In the spring.’

‘It will be nice for the two of you to spend a bit more time together,’ Cass said as Graham put the last few hymn books back on the shelf. June would have been beside herself as he put a stray Hymns of Praise and Joy in with the Hymns Ancient and Modern instead of on the top shelf where it belonged.

‘I don’t know that we will, really. Never been much of a one for village life, our June. Happiest in her own little house. And I’ve never been much of a one for sitting at home. I like to keep busy, you see.’

‘I see …’ Cass echoed.

Cass thought of the underwear neatly arranged in the drawer for her, the best doormat and the sparkling cleanliness of the washing machine – it was more than just being house-proud. Perhaps she should visit June again, have a chat to her - it was the least she could do after June’s kindness to her. Graham told her that he was going to be busy repairing a broken tap in the ladies’ toilets once all the congregation had gone, so Cass thought that now was as good a time as any to call on June, who never came to church.

Graham and June’s house was only a short walk from the church, and she called round at the corner shop first to buy some ridiculously overpriced chocolates for her. How some of the older people, who relied on the little shop for their day-to-day shopping, managed with these astronomical prices she couldn’t imagine – but it was better than having no shop at all.

‘Oh! Vicar, hello. How can I help you?’ June had answered the door quickly as if she had been waiting for someone to knock.

‘I just came to thank you again for all your kindness. Here. These are for you.’

‘Thank you. I’ll tell Graham you’ve called,’ she said and was about to shut the door.

‘They’re not for Graham, they’re for you!’ Cass said quickly. ‘Just for you.’

‘Oh, there’s no need.’

‘Yes, there is. Twiggy pooed on your doormat after all! And I don’t think that kind of thing bothers Graham.’

‘No, perhaps not so much. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea, Vicar?’

Cass soon found herself perched on the edge of June’s very white sofa, with her cup of tea on one of the best coasters. It was Sunday, after all. They made polite conversation – the weather, Christmas, the benefits of living up in New Rawscar rather than down in the village of Old Rawscar – until Cass managed to turn the conversation to June herself.

‘So, I hear you’re going to retire in the spring?’

June laughed, though there was no warmth in the laugh, it sounded a little forced, a little desperate.

‘Yes, yes I am. Getting my pension! Imagine that!’

‘And what will you do when you retire? Spend more time with Graham? Is he retiring soon too?’

‘Oh, Graham will never retire, he loves his work too much – loves the village. Sometimes I think he’s married to Rawscar, not to me!’

‘Perhaps you could get a little …’ cat Cass had been going to say, but remembering her dislike of Twiggy, she changed it to ‘…dog?’

‘Oh no! All that hair all over my carpets! No, a dog would never do.’

‘Perhaps a hobby you could spend more time on?’

‘I don’t really have any. It might have been nice to go to an evening class – learn something new – but there aren’t any here. I’d have to go over to Saddleton, and I don’t drive so that means I’d have to ask Graham to take me. But I’ve got so much to do! Busy, busy, busy! Looking after the house, keeping it clean, takes all my time. There’s always so much to be done. Graham needs a nice tidy, clean house to come home to …’

Anyone less likely than Graham to worry about whether he came home to a spotless house was difficult to imagine.

‘You could spend more time with friends, perhaps?’

‘My friends are mostly in Saddleton and I don’t drive. I don’t see much of them any more, not since we moved here.’

‘But you’ve lived here for twenty years, have you no friends in the village?’

‘Well … not really. Plenty of acquaintances, lots of people come into the shop … but I’m not so good at making friends, and I’m an incomer.’

‘Even after twenty years?’

‘Even after twenty years.’

‘So why not move back to Saddleton?’

‘I wish I could. I wish we’d never left, but Graham would never do it. Rawscar is in his blood.’ She pronounced it like Cass did, Roar-scar. ‘I couldn’t ask him to move away again; he hated it when we had to live near my mum. No, I married him for better or for worse, Vicar, and, whether I like it or not, Rawscar is part of him.’

It was not just that Rawscar was part of Graham but that Graham was part of Rawscar. Cass could no more imagine Rawscar without Graham than she could imagine it without the sound of the waves, or the seagulls circling above, or the tourists in the summer.

June pursed her lips tightly together, placed her gleaming china cup neatly on her Sunday best coaster, straightened the tray-cloth and smiled a precise, practised smile.

‘More tea, Vicar?’

 

Cass headed home, down the hill to the cottage in the cold, grey morning, thinking about June.  She was passing the window of “Stargazers” when her attention was drawn once again to the beautiful window display. This week instead of red and gold, there was a silver and white theme, and lined up all along the front of the little bay window was a line of silver-coloured mercury glass candlesticks of various sizes and shapes, filled with tall white candles flickering in the grey of the winter’s day. She could picture a group of these candles on the empty, un-curtained window at the top of the stairs, looking out towards the sea. A good vicar wouldn’t set her heart on trivial possessions, but Anna would like it, she told herself as she bought three of the candlesticks and some candles to go with them.

Anna was hard at work on her jewellery when Cass got in; she had the big Christmas market at Saddleton to prepare for next weekend and she had been working most of this weekend to finish some more expensive pieces. She worked right through lunchtime and wouldn’t come and share the soup that Cass had offered her, so Cass took a bowl up to her, for her to eat while she worked. Thinking of June’s neatness Cass made a cursory effort to tidy up the kitchen after her lunch. Cass’s clutter was starting to creep out of the cupboards and onto the worktops – but it was better to have the teabags to hand, and the chocolate biscuits couldn’t be stuck away in the cupboards when she needed them so often, could they? Anna brought down her soup bowl after an hour or so, and Cass was pleased to see that she had eaten some of it – she really didn’t seem to have much appetite at all. Hopefully she wasn’t sickening for something.

When it started to get dark Cass put the silvered candlesticks onto the windowsill, enjoying the effect of their reflections in the tiny, old window panes with their watery glass; she left them lit when she went out to evensong and as she came back into the alley afterwards, chilled from the night air, she was pleased to see them still shining out to greet her, misted with condensation that had formed on the window. She went to check that they were still burning safely, which they were, and she wiped away some of the condensation.

Then she saw something.

‘Anna? Anna come here!’

Anna’s face appeared in the spare bedroom doorway.

‘What’s the matter?’ She sounded concerned and her pale face was pinched with worry as she came to the door.

‘Nothing to worry about. Look, here on the glass. There’s something written!’

‘So there is!’ Anna crossed the landing.

It was the way the candlelight was catching it from below, the electric light from a distance above didn’t strike the lettering in quite the same way. It was very faint and very thin.

‘I can’t read it,’ Cass gave up. ‘You must be good with old handwriting if you spend all day working with archives. Can you read it?’

‘It’s old. Looks like a Victorian hand, and not a particularly good one. It’s not been done with a diamond, that would have left a deeper scratch. There’s a couple of intertwined hearts, look.’ She traced over them with the tip of her finger.

And indeed, there were; two tiny hearts, like the ones carved into the pew up at the church.

‘I wonder if this was where someone used to sit and watch for their husband’s boat coming in?’ Cass thought out loud. ‘You can see right down to the harbour from here.’

‘Or,’ Anna added, ‘where someone used to sit and remember her lover who had been lost at sea.’ There was a strange note to her voice.

‘You mean the Maiden?’

‘Well, it could be, couldn’t it?’ She touched the glass, wiping away some condensation below the two hearts.

‘But I’m sure the Maiden is nothing more than a legend. Otherwise somebody would know who she was, there would be something in the history books; a name,’ Cass tried to tell her.

‘There is a name,’ Anna said, still sounding strange. ‘There is a name here. There are initials scratched on the window.’

‘Initials? What are they?’

Even as Cass asked the question, she knew exactly what the initials were going to be. The drowned sailor on the memorial and the maiden’s garland up at the little old clifftop church; it had to be the same. Anna looked up at her with wide eyes.

‘P.A. and H.T.’

Polly Allinson and Henry Thorburn. Of course it was.

‘So, I can find out, now, can’t I? It will be there in the records up at the museum; all the parish records are there. I can find out who they were and I can find out when – and how – they died, then I’ll know why she’s haunting this place.’

‘Anna, I’ve seen those names before.’ It crossed Cass’s mind that she should keep what she knew to herself, but Anna was going to find out one way or another.

‘What do you mean you’ve seen them before? I mean, I know Hal’s full name is Henry Thorburn, obviously. This must have been one of his ancestors. But there aren’t any Allinsons here these days.’

‘No, Anna, I’ve seen the names up at the church. At St. Stephen’s. But it could just be a coincidence; there are lots of Thorburns and Allinsons up there.’

‘Is there a grave?’

‘I don’t know. But Polly Allinson is one of the names on the maiden’s garlands.’

Anna stared up at her.

‘Of course. So she is. I remember now. And Henry Thorburn?’

‘On the storm memorial. Their names are carved into one of the pews with hearts like this. That’s how I noticed them – because the name was the same as Hal’s. It’s such a coincidence, isn’t it?’ Cass was aware that Anna had become very quiet and that she was chattering to fill the silence.

‘She was real. There actually was a Maiden, it’s not just a ghost story.’ She said it with a quiet certainty.

‘Possibly. There’s no proof, it’s only a guess, you shouldn’t -’

‘But if I find her in the records, and she drowned, then we’ll know, won’t we? Maybe that’s what she wants. Maybe that’s why I keep dreaming about her, and why I saw her. Perhaps she wants somebody to know about her; who she was and what happened to her.’ She was gazing at the faint scratches and out beyond them into the darkness as if the Maiden was out there. Polly. Polly Allinson.

‘Or perhaps it’s simply that her story resonates with you – because of the storm and the cliff fall – it preys on your imagination, that’s all. Heaven knows, I feel like that myself some nights.’

‘It’s not my imagination.’ She turned her big, dark eyes on Cass and Cass could see the fear there. ‘Those dreams are not mine, and that figure I saw in the alley outside the window wasn’t in my mind. It was there. A shawl wrapped around her, long hair, pale skin. I saw her there. I saw her. And she wanted something.’