Chapter 25

The Vicar Meddles

 

 

The last of the parishioners to leave the church was of course Charles. As they stood in the church porch bidding each other a formal farewell and a merry Christmas, she thought of him going back alone to that huge empty house next to St. Peter’s Church in New Rawscar and sitting down to Christmas dinner on his own. There wasn’t much merriness evident in his eyes right now. He needed Anna, she thought, as much as Anna needed him. Perhaps this was her chance to do a little bit more meddling; it had worked for June and Graham after all; this would be harder, but it didn’t mean that she shouldn’t try. She took a deep breath, and began:

‘Can I pass on any good wishes to Anna? It’s the time of year for forgiveness, and maybe -’

Charles made a strange noise that might loosely have been interpreted as a snort.

‘I think, Cass suggested gently, ‘that she needs you right now. I know you could help her and maybe it would be good for you -’

‘She may need me, Vicar, but she doesn’t want me. She hasn’t wanted me for a very long time.’ He took a step out of the church porch, away from her as if she was poisoning the very air around him by merely mentioning Anna.

‘I think that she both needs and wants you, Charles. She just doesn’t know how to ask you for help, that’s all. I’m worried about her. She doesn’t sleep well, she imagines terrible things and she hardly eats anything.’

Just for a moment Cass thought she saw a flicker of something like compassion in his eyes – but no sooner had she seen it than he had looked away from her.

‘I can’t help her. I can’t. I can’t do it.’ He sounded almost as if he was trying to convince himself.

‘But why, Charles?’ Cass took a step towards him, out of the shelter of the porch into the cold wind that made her cassock flutter around her legs.

‘Too much water under that particular bridge. Things have been said and done that mean we can’t go back, even if we wanted to. But she doesn’t want to, does she? She won’t admit she did anything wrong, she isn’t sorry, and until she can look me in the eye and tell me that she made mistakes, then there’s no way forwards. No way back, no way forwards.’ He sounded sad and lost as he said it – he sounded like Anna.

‘Couldn’t you try? Please?’  Cass tried to hold the skirts of her cassock down, battling with the wind from the sea.

‘It’s not worth it. We’ve been here before, Vicar and unless she asks me to help I can’t help her. It has to come from her, now, Vicar. It’s up to Anna to ask my forgiveness for what she did, the heartbreak that she and she alone caused - and no amount of mindless do-gooding from you is going to make that happen!’

 ‘Jesus tells us -’ Cass began, hoping to appeal to his religious sensibilities.

‘Never mind that!’ He took a step back towards her, his composure suddenly shattered into shards. ‘I haven’t believed in Jesus for twenty years!’

For a moment there was silence, he watched her, waiting for her to respond. Surprised, she let go of the cassock, which billowed and flapped.

Questions filled Cass’s mind. If he didn’t believe, why did he persist in coming to church? He was glaring at her, but this time in his eyes she didn’t see anger – she saw pain.

‘But why?’ she said lamely.

‘Perhaps that’s what I should ask you!’ he returned, crisply.

Oh Lord, how did he know? How had he been able to look into her heart and know that she didn’t believe either?

He took her stunned silence as an opportunity to leave and turned away from her.

‘How did you know?’ she gasped, stepping back into the church porch for protection from the wind, which buffeted her. ‘How did you know I’d lost my faith?’

He stopped and turned towards her again, the light cast out by the large candle-lantern in the church porch highlighting his features strangely in the winter night.

‘I didn’t.’

‘But you said – ‘

‘I said I should ask you why I had lost my faith. Not that I should ask you why you had lost yours. Though that’s an interesting admission for a vicar. Well, I shall wish you a happy Christmas, Vicar.’

She stumbled back into the church and the door banged shut in the wind; several candles flickered and went out with the breeze.

‘Oh shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT!’ Cass yelled at nothing and nobody.

‘Everything all right, Vicar?’ came Graham’s voice as he came out of the vestry. She had quite forgotten that he was there.

 

 

He pretended he hadn’t heard anything, Graham was good like that. She never had to worry about Graham; he knew how to keep secrets. He was putting on his coat, carrying a bag containing the collection money in his hand to take up to the safe in the office at St. Peter’s in New Rawscar.

‘So how are things, Vicar? Since the cliff fall, you don’t seem to have been quite yourself – is there anything I can do?’ he asked as they started checking that everything was tidy.

‘Me? Oh Lord no, there’s nothing the matter with me!’ Cass said, turning off the little oil heater that stood beside the altar rail. ‘I suppose that I have been worrying about Anna a lot recently,’ Cass said as she went around the church making sure that all the candles were extinguished. She didn’t want to burn down this church. ‘But I don’t know how to help her. I tried to talk to her father but it didn’t do any good.’

She turned back to him after putting out the last little flame.

‘Now, Vicar, you won’t be the first who’s tried to help,’ Graham said, as they walked the short distance in between the wooden box pews to the door. ‘So I wouldn’t be too hopeful.’ Graham held out her coat, which she had hung up beside the church door, for her to put on. She still hadn’t had the chance to go shopping for a new coat and this one was just as wet and cold as ever. ‘They’re as stubborn as each other, those two, and they’re very private people.’

‘There must be something I can do. If only I knew what had gone wrong …’ she said, hoping he would pick up the hint and be able to tell her more.’

He sighed. ‘I wish I knew, Vicar. We’ll probably never know the truth, we don’t know if he’s right, if she’s right, either, neither. But I do know this much - neither of them will admit to being wrong.’ He held the door open for her.

‘I can’t let them go on like this when they both so obviously need each other.’

‘You don’t have any option, Vicar. They won’t thank you for interfering and they’ll find their own way in the end. Perhaps you should concentrate on your own problems first?’

‘My own problems?’

What did he know, what had he heard? Had he also heard about her attraction to Hal? About her attempted seduction of him? What did he know? She found she was holding her breath.

‘Yes – the vicarage falling over the cliff?’

‘Oh, that!’ she said with a smile and a huge exhalation. ‘Yes. Perhaps you’re right. I should think about that.’

Compared to everything else that was going wrong at the moment, the loss of the vicarage began to seem like the easiest problem to deal with.

She shut the old oak door behind her.

 

‘How did your evensong go?’ Anna asked as Cass walked into the cottage. She was sitting on the sofa in front of the fire with an old leather-bound book, looking like a character from a Bronte novel in her high-necked blouse, dark green waistcoat and long black velvet skirt.

‘I saw your father. I tried to speak to him about you.’

Anna’s face fell and for a moment Cass saw her father’s expression on her face. Closed, hard, silent. She shut her book and put it down on the seat beside her, making sure that Cass would not try and sit down next to her.

‘He’s very good at talking, my father, but not so good at listening,’ she said in the same clipped, cold tones that her father had been using. Cass hung up her coat on the hook beside the door.

‘I don’t think there’s much point in going over all that old ground again,’ Anna picked up her book as if to end the conversation, sounding so uncannily like her father that Cass nearly laughed out loud at the irony of it all.

‘Anna, can you tell me, what is it that came between you and your family? What went wrong? Because if I knew, perhaps I could help.’ She sat down in the fireside chair, giving the fire a quick stir with the poker.

‘No-one can help,’ she said sadly. ‘It’s all gone too far.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, watching Anna carefully. She saw her thinking hard about what she should do in a moment of silence and in the end, Anna made up her mind and took a deep breath. Cass leaned forwards to listen carefully. ‘Why?’ she prompted.

‘He blames me for my mother’s car accident,’ she said, not looking at Cass, but instead her eyes fixed on the fire, the glow of the flames reflected in her face.

‘Why would he do that?!’ Cass asked, making sure her tone was calm and non-judgemental.

‘In a way, it was my fault, I suppose. She was driving too fast on the moor road, trying to get over to Ormsborough. She overtook a tractor, but there was a motorbike coming the other way, she hadn’t seen him in time and she swerved off the road.’

‘But how was that your fault? Were you in the car with her?’ Anna still gazed at the fire, seemingly mesmerised, as if she was seeing everything in the flames.

‘No, I was in Ormsborough. She was trying to get to me, to stop me.’

‘To stop you doing what?’ Cass asked gently, prompting her to continue.

‘I was at the clinic there. She came to try and stop me.’

‘I don’t understand. Stop you doing what?’

Anna looked up from the flames, and straight at Cass.

‘Stop me having the abortion.’