CHAPTER 2
My Vicarage Fell Into The Sea
‘Evening, Vicar. Saved any souls for Jesus today?’
Jack Thorburn, the bearded landlord of the Ship Inn down on the quayside of Old Rawscar was always ready with a quip and a wink for the regulars. Cass was not one of his regulars and his quips were often at her expense for some reason that Cass had never understood.
‘No. My vicarage fell into the sea,’ Cass said bluntly, hoping that for once that would stop his barbed witticisms. She watched him flounder, mouth hanging open as he tried to decide how to respond to her statement of the awful truth. Just for once, Jack Thorburn was silenced.
Even as she had said it, Cass knew how ridiculous it sounded, as if it was one of those phrase-book sayings, grammatically correct but making no sense in translation: My postilion has been struck by lightning. On the tram, Hans is making butter. My vicarage fell into the sea.
‘Oh. What can I get you, Vicar? It’s on the house - no pun intended, like. Would you like a nice sweet sherry? Or a cup of tea, our Marian will make you a cuppa, won’t you Marian?’ His wife had come in from the kitchen to stand beside him as he gathered his wits about him. If there was one thing Cass hated it was the assumption that all she might want to drink, because she was a vicar, was either sweet sherry or sweet tea. It was kind of him to offer her a drink but sweet sherry would never be her drink of choice - a brandy was exactly what she needed right now.
‘Brandy. Would you make it a double, please Jack?’
‘Yes, of course, dear.’ It was Marian who sprang into action, short, neat and with curly hair of an improbable shade of red for a woman in her sixties. ‘Here you are, dear. Sit yourself down. Ray, give the vicar that seat by the fire will you, love?’
Obediently, one of the regulars got up from the prized spot on the old oak bench seat by the hearth, and Cass sank down with a nod of thanks as the room closed in around her. The Ship was an old, traditional pub with a bar, a lounge and a snug, each with their own clientele; locals in the bar, tourists in the lounge and families in the snug, though on nights like tonight, out of the tourist season, only the bar was open and staffed.
The pub looked as if it had barely changed in the three hundred or more years it had served the people of Rawscar; low crooked doorways, solid stone fireplace and small windows stained with the salt spray from the sea. The panelled walls were hung about with souvenirs of the past; flotsam and jetsam. A brass light that had once hung from the masthead of a trawler. Sepia photographs of smiling, broad-shouldered lifeboat-men in their cork lifejackets and fisher-girls with rough hands and jaunty smiles. Name plates from boats long ago sunk, carefully knotted ropes with the name of each knot displayed beside them, sextants, glass floats and oars all hung on the walls or from the rafters. Beside the bar was an old brass ship’s bell, saved from a wreck in the bay, ready to sound last orders - ‘Temperance’ had been the name of the ship that had gone down with all hands.
Cass had to wait here for Graham who was going to come and get her in half-an-hour, when his wife, June, had got everything ready for her.
The thought of her little tabby cat, Twiggy, kept coming back to her. Twiggy had been a stray who had adopted her in her last parish; Cass had found her on the doorstep one morning, bedraggled and thin with a torn and bleeding ear. She would never have chosen to have a pet, but Twiggy had left her with no option. Poor old Twiggy, all alone in the vicarage as the cliff crumbled …
Cass downed the brandy in one gulp, gasping as the spirit caught in her throat. Marian sat down in the winged chair at the other side of the fire, offering her the cup of hot, sweet tea which she had thought that she didn’t want, only now she found that it was remarkably comforting.
‘We heard the noise when the cliff fell, of course. Even down here,’ Marian was saying. The harbour wall kept the village safe from the worst of the storms but Cass’s vicarage, up on the top of Rawscar Nab, had not been so well protected.
‘It just went,’ Cass said with a shudder. ‘I saw the vicarage go over, they wouldn’t let me back in to get anything. If they had, I probably wouldn’t be here now; I’d have gone over the cliff too,’ Cass was suddenly grateful for the stubbornness of the young policeman who had saved her from sharing Twiggy’s fate. ‘It doesn’t seem real, somehow.’
‘Your house isn’t the first, of course.’ Marian’s voice, warm with its soft Yorkshire accent, was comfortingly normal in a world that was spinning too fast. ‘The lighthouse up there had to be taken down in the fifties, the lighthouse keepers’ cottages went in the sixties - there used to be a fog-horn up there too, that went over about twenty-five years ago now. It’s why the church got that old coastguard cottage for the vicarage at such a bargain price, of course. Nobody else wanted it, ‘cos it was just a matter of time – it’s lasted longer than Jack reckoned it would, twenty years or so that’s been the vicarage, since they sold the Old Vicarage to Charles Dawnay.’ She leaned over, stirring up the coal fire with the poker that leaned against the stone fireplace. ‘Widows’ Row’ll go next, and a couple of those are ours. Our Hal was up there this afternoon, getting some of our stuff out, just in case.’
Cass remembered that as well as the pub the Thorburn family rented out holiday cottages in the village. Hal must be the Thorburns’ son who ran the holiday cottage office. She had seen him a few times around the village but had never had a reason to speak to him – Hal didn’t look much like the church-going type.
‘Oh, that reminds me, Vicar.’ Jack had been listening from behind the bar and Cass swivelled round to him. ‘Our Hal was looking for you earlier. I’ll try and phone him, let him know you’re here.’
‘Thank you,’ Cass said politely, though secretly hoping that Graham would arrive before she had to find out what “our Hal” wanted. She wasn’t in the mood for polite conversation with near-strangers right now; everything felt so weird and she couldn’t stop her cold hands from shaking. She folded them around her cup of tea to try and keep them warm and steady but neither the hot drink nor the smouldering fire seemed to be able to warm her through.
She heard the door swing open behind her, and felt the rush of cold sea wind on the back of her neck, but she didn’t turn around until she heard a noise that could not be mistaken. A yowl. An angry, feline yowl that sounded like, but couldn’t be…
A Viking in a waterproof coat stood inside the doorway, cursing. In his arms, wrapped in a blanket, struggled a meowing tabby-coloured bundle. From within the bundle a set of sharp teeth had left their mark on the man’s hand.
‘Dammit!’ he said, shaking the wounded hand. A warm voice, with a strong hint of a local accent.
‘Twiggy!’ Cass exclaimed.
‘This little bugger is yours, I think, Vicar!’ Hal said, crossing towards her with a mischievous grin on his face that made him unmistakably Jack’s son, but with a glint of warmth in his blue eyes that made him equally unmistakably Marian’s.
‘Twiggy! I thought she was … how did you … Thank you!’ Tears of gratitude were rising in her eyes as she took the scrawny old cat, wrapped in her blanket, from Hal. ‘How did you find her?’
‘It was Anna – you know Anna, who lives on Widows’ Row?’
That must be the young woman who lived at number one, Cass thought, a striking girl with a penchant for pale make up and black velvet clothes.
‘I was helping Anna get her stuff out of the cottage this afternoon,’ Hal continued, ‘and she saw the cat on your windowsill. Wouldn’t let us leave her there. Graham got the spare vicarage key and we all went in and got her out. Hid under the bed, little bugger, and wouldn’t come out until I wrapped her up in the blanket. She’s got sharp teeth, that one!’
He held out his hand to show her the mark that Twiggy’s teeth had made, and Cass noticed his strong, capable hands. Real fisherman’s hands, she thought – not that there were any working trawlermen left in this picture-postcard village.
He sat down in the chair that his mother had vacated, stretching out his long legs in front of the fire. Twiggy began to settle and purr now on Cass’s knee, finding herself in a warm spot by the fire, and Cass stroked her. Comforted by Cass’s presence Twiggy stopped wriggling and trying to get out of the blanket and Cass could take a better look at her cat’s rescuer. He had the fair hair of many of the Rawscar locals and his face, softened by a short beard, might have been straight out of the sepia pictures of lifeboat men that hung on the wall beside the fire. He would have been exceptionally handsome when he was younger – even now with a slightly crooked nose that looked as if it had been broken once or twice, and a face that was maybe not as thin as it had once been, he was still an undoubtedly attractive man. He could have been any age between about thirty and forty; his face was timeless – and he looked exhausted
‘Can I get you a drink?’ she offered, not knowing how else to show her gratitude.
‘You’re all right. Mam’s already getting me one.’ He nodded in the direction of the bar where Marian was filling a pint glass with beer for him.
‘When did you get Twiggy out?’
‘Well, it was after that first fall. There was still about half your garden left when we went in.’
‘And the police let you?’ Cass was amazed.
‘Police hadn’t arrived.’
‘Oh Hal, you should never have gone in! What if the house had fallen then?’ Marian brought Hal’s pint over and stood beside him, hand on his shoulder, pride and worry written on her face at the same time.
‘Don’t worry Mam. We were careful!’
‘I’ll go and get a crisp box for this cat of yours, Vicar. Put a few holes in the side and you can take her wherever it is you’re staying tonight. Mind, you can stop here if you need to, there’s plenty of guest rooms empty.’
‘Graham and June Howard have offered me their spare room. But it’s very kind of you,’ Cass said. Marian bustled off to find an empty box for Twiggy, who surveyed the bar warily from inside her blanket.
‘Graham’ll be down in a while. He’s at his house right now,’ Hal continued, ‘Just unloading the rest of your stuff from his van.’
‘What do you mean, the rest of my stuff?’ Her hands started to shake again; she hardly dared to hope what his words might mean.
‘Well,’ he said, taking a deep mouthful of his pint, drawing out his story, ‘the rest of the stuff that we took out of your house. Graham knew some of what you would want, and we guessed at the rest. I’m sorry if we didn’t get the right things.’
‘You mean you got other things out of the vicarage? Not just Twiggy?’
‘Yes, loads of them,’ he said in an almost casual manner. ‘Me and Graham packed up your books, he thought you might want them, and your laptop and a whole load of stuff from the sitting room: candlesticks off your mantelpiece, photo albums, things like that. We’ve got your jewellery boxes and Anna grabbed your clothes. Don’t worry, me and Graham haven’t been going through your underwear!’
‘How many of you were there?’
‘Just the three of us. Me, Graham and Anna.’
‘So you went into my house and packed up my things for me, all the time knowing that the house might fall over the cliff?’
‘Well, it didn’t, did it?’ he said, looking up at his mum who had returned with the box for Twiggy. ‘You should have seen me, Mam. Blanket full of the vicar’s books in one hand, bloody cat in the other, trying to bite me all the time!’ He turned back to Cass. ‘It was after that that the Police showed up and stopped letting people through; think they thought we might try shifting that huge desk of yours next!’
‘Thank you so much. I don’t know what to say.’
‘Pray for me or something,’ he said with a smile, draining the last of his pint. ‘I’m going to be off, getting Anna settled in one of our other cottages for now. Graham’ll be down in a minute. Glad I caught you though, Vicar, didn’t want to have to take that vicious cat of yours home with me tonight!’
‘I’m really grateful.’
‘No problem, Vicar,’ he said and he smiled at her again, his grey-blue eyes catching hers for a heart-stopping moment.
‘Please, call me Cass,’ she said, but she was talking to his departing back, and he was away, pub door banging shut in the wind behind him.