Chapter 26

Call-me-Ken Again

 

 

The shortest day of the year, and the darkest, and Cass was trying, and failing, to pray on her knees in front of the altar rail of the little church by the sea on Monday morning. The greenery still hung from Sunday’s service, the mistletoe above her head decorating the ships wheel chandelier, a pagan touch in a Christian place, today it seemed to mock her.

She had tried once again to pray, one last chance to ask God to help Anna and to pray for her lost unborn child, but once again the silence of the little church mocked her words. This had gone on long enough, she couldn’t take the Christmas services feeling like this, it wasn’t right, so there was something she would have to do this morning. She was going to have to phone the bishop.

 

Later that morning she had been pacing the floor in the parish office for twenty minutes, one moment picking up the phone, and then putting it down again. She had even tidied several piles of paper and sorted out the paperwork for a funeral rather than ring him, but this time she was going to do it. She dialled the bishop’s office, and waited to be put through to good old Call-Me-Ken.

‘Ah, Cassandra, how good to hear from you.’

‘Bishop. Hope you’re not too busy.’

‘Never too busy for you. How is the hunt for new vicarage going? Have the property office or the Parochial Church Council come up with anything for you?’

‘It’s proving somewhat difficult with the property market as it is in Rawscar. I’m currently sharing a house with Charles Dawnay’s daughter.’

‘Ah, the lovely Anna. I remember her as a tiny baby, when I was the vicar at Rawscar, back in the old days.’

‘You were a vicar here?’

‘Indeed I was; it was my first parish. That’s why I have such a fondness for the place – and why I knew you’d be such a good person to send there.’

Cass for a moment considered being polite, but given everything else she had to tell him, she thought she’d start as she meant to go on, with brutal honesty.

‘But I’m useless here. I’m not doing anything worthwhile, faffing about with flower rotas and parish politics.’

‘Look around you Cassandra. These small, isolated coastal communities have as many problems as their inner-city counterparts. I didn’t ask you to apply for the parish at Rawscar because it would help you, you know. It was never as simple as that. I thought you might be able to help them!’

He was even more removed than she thought from the realities of life.

‘I don’t see drug abuse or prostitutes or the homeless on the streets here.’

‘Then you haven’t looked hard enough. But you must persevere, Cassandra, and I have no doubt that you can help. Faith and prayer will bring you -’

‘Bishop, there’s something I need to tell you.’ She couldn’t let him continue, she had to speak now. ‘Faith won’t show me anything. It’s all gone.’

‘You’ve lost your faith?’ he said, slowly, ponderously. He didn’t sound shocked or angry, simply thoughtful. She had been expecting an argument, possibly even an instant dismissal from her post. She walked to the window and back again as she waited for his response. ‘Then you have to wait, and trust and hope. God will show you the way back in time, if you trust Him.’ His voice was smooth, measured, practiced.

‘But -’

‘You are not the first nor will you be the last. Many in the church lose their way. Just wait, Cassandra. Don’t do anything hasty, just trust in God.’

‘But I want to resign. I shouldn’t be an ordained minister if I don’t believe.’ She kicked the edge of the desk with her toe, wanting him to be angry, wanting him to punish her for her failure.

‘After Christmas I think we should consider sending you on a retreat. Until then, you wait, and you hope and you work – and you pray.’

‘I can’t pray.’ She kicked the desk too hard and her toe started to hurt.

‘Then you will try and pray.’

He didn’t understand. She had to make him understand.

‘But it’s Christmas! All those services? How can I take all those services without faith in my heart?’

There was a slight pause at the other end of the phone line. ‘You’ll have to rely on the faith of your parishioners, my dear. If they believe in their hearts what you are saying, then that is the important thing. Don’t worry, Cassandra, I shall pray for you and all will be well if God wishes it.’

Cass wished that she could believe him.

 

Anna came in late that evening after a day at work at the museum and Cass was beginning to worry about where she might have got to. After years of pleasing herself and not worrying about anyone else, now the routine of a housemate’s working hours had become strangely comfortable; Cass liked the predictability of when Anna would arrive and leave, the little rituals of morning and evening, when for Cass every day was different. It made her realise how much she liked regularity and control. It was Wednesday, Anna’s last day of work before a week-and-a-half off over Christmas when the archive section of the museum was closed, and she came in late, pale and shivering.

‘Oh Anna! You look awful.’

‘I feel awful. I’ve got a bit of a temperature; I think I’ve got a cold coming on. Going to bed. I finished digitising that journal, the one written by the old vicar, and I’ve downloaded it to my tablet to read through in bed.’

‘I’ll make you a hot water bottle,’ Cass offered, and half an hour later Anna was tucked up with her bottle, some tablets and a cup of hot chocolate to keep the cold out. Cass was downstairs checking through the service sheets for the upcoming Christmas services, when she heard a sudden cry upstairs. Maybe Anna had taken a turn for the worse, perhaps she needed a doctor?

She found Anna, paler than ever, sitting up in bed staring at the screen in front of her.

‘Are you OK?

‘It was here all along.’ Anna looked up ahead of her, not looking at Cass, not looking at the tablet in front of her, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond the window.

‘What do you mean?’

‘In the vicar’s journal. Polly Allinson; the Reverend Parker saw it all. Read it for yourself.’

Cass picked up the tablet and sat on the edge of Anna’s bed. She had difficulty making out the old-fashioned handwriting and it took her a while to decipher, Anna had to help with some of the words:

2nd day of January, Year of Our Lord 1887.

Today I buried one of the fairest maidens of Rawescar, and the procession behind her garland of weeping girls was a sad sight to behold. Polly Allinson, the younger daughter of my church warden, was drowned in the bay. She was affianced to Henry Thorburn, the promising young sailor who drowned in the Great Storm of October past, and though all thought that she had recovered from the great Shock of his Loss, it seems that poor Polly had been pining for her lover all this while. I was up on the cliff top at the church on St. Stephen’s Day when the girl met her watery death.   I saw all but was powerless to do anything, without throwing myself from the cliff itself in an attempt to preserve the poor soul.

Her death, though I hesitate to record it, was no accident. I shall write it down in the registers as a simple drowning, and all else is between her soul, mine and the Lord above, for Polly did not drown by accident as I have given out. I told the simple folk of the village that I saw her stumble and fall, the waves sweeping her out to sea, weighted down by her heavy skirts. I saw nothing of the kind, I saw Polly Allinson take great stones in her hands and walk into the water. If I speak true a great shame will be added to her family’s grief, so I have said nothing, and have buried her as I would any other young maiden of the Parish. If it is a sin to do so, I will seek my absolution from the Lord.

But there is another truth, which shall go with me to the grave that the doctor has told me. Young Polly’s maiden’s garland was not truly won, for young Polly was no maiden and was with child when she died. The doctor had been able to offer her no remedy, so he told me, and the time was coming when the child would start to show. The poor soul has joined our Father in the Kingdom of Heaven where we shall all come at last and all sins shall be forgiven. May she rest in Peace.

 

‘She committed suicide because she was pregnant, probably to hide the shame of it from her family. There was no chance Henry Thorburn would have married her because he had died, presumably not long after she became pregnant by him. She must have been desperate.’

Cass was thinking out loud and Anna was silent, still looking out of the window over the rooftops to the sea.

‘So now I know,’ Anna said quietly. ‘She wants me to follow her because I’m just like her.’

‘No! No, Anna, you’re not. None of this is … it’s not real, it’s just …’ She wanted to say that what Anna had found out was just a coincidence, but suddenly the words stuck in her throat. ‘Times have changed, things are different, and what happened to you is in the past. You need to look forward, not backwards.’

‘I can’t. I look forward and there’s nothing there but darkness. I can’t look forward any more.’

‘You’re feverish Anna, you need to get some sleep. It’ll seem better in the morning, I’m sure.’

‘Don’t go quite yet Vicar, please would you sit with me a while? I feel really strange …’

So Cass sat beside her bed for a while until Anna finally drifted off into a feverish sleep and then she made her way to her own bed.

It can’t have been more than two o’clock in the morning when something woke Cass. She thought she had heard a voice – Hal’s voice – calling out Don’t let her go, but when she woke properly and sat up to listen the house was silent and still. A dream, nothing more.

She had woken Twiggy when she sat up, and the cat padded over to the door with a hopeful “meow”. Cass wearily followed her. Two o’clock in the morning on Christmas Eve, the busiest days in the church calendar to follow, and she was up with a cat who insisted that NOW was feeding time. All was quiet as she passed Anna’s room; Cass went as quietly as she could to avoid waking her. She tiptoed down the stairs, to be greeted by a blast of cold air coming up them, and a wave of fear flooded over her. The front door stood wide open, moonlight flooding into the living room through the open door.  Was there somebody in the house? Had someone broken in?

Downstairs seemed fine and everything was as she had left it. Twiggy gave up on the idea of being fed and went back upstairs to bed as Cass raced up the stairs to see if there was anybody up there. Anna still had a fair amount of cash in the spare room from the Christmas markets but it was still there, the cash box undisturbed. Perhaps they had somehow left the door unlatched, perhaps the wind had opened it; the wind or … No, she was being ridiculous. Ghosts couldn’t open doors. Even if they existed, they were just shadows, incapable of moving things. But all the same …

Perhaps she should check on Anna. The door of her room was firmly shut and there was no crack of light showing – Anna must be asleep - but it wouldn’t hurt to make sure. Cass tapped softly and pushed the door ever so slightly to look inside. The curtains were open; the light from the moon, which had been full only a couple of nights ago was illuminating the room which made it easy to see that Anna’s covers were thrown back and Anna’s bed was empty.

‘Anna? Anna!’ Cass shouted, hoping that she was in the bathroom, but that was empty too.

No-one had come into the house so Anna must have gone out. Where was she? What was she doing? Perhaps she had gone to see Hal? It seemed unlikely but it wouldn’t hurt to check. She closed the door, casting a quick glance down the alley.

Hoping that she wasn’t disturbing him, with shaking fingers she phoned Hal. It took him a while to answer and when he did, she had obviously woken him.

‘What is it, Vicar?’ he said, not as kindly as he might have done.

‘Is Anna with you?’

‘No.’

‘She’s not here. The front door was wide open and she’s not in her bed.’

‘Oh shit. I’m coming down.’ Suddenly the sleepiness had gone from his voice, and urgency replaced it. ‘Go out and see if you can see her. She sleepwalks.’

Cass pulled on her coat over her pyjamas and shoved her feet into her wellies. At the last moment she grabbed the throw from the sofa, and ran out of the house, not even bothering to lock the door behind her. Anna wasn’t in the yard. What had she been wearing? Those furry pink pyjamas? Cass clattered down the yard, not caring if her footsteps disturbed those in the holiday cottages around her.

‘Anna!’ she shouted ‘Anna, are you there?’

But wait a minute; she had a feeling that you weren’t meant to wake a sleepwalker. Shouting wouldn’t do any good. A curtain flicked at Windrush Cottage but nobody else was stirring. Cass came out on the quayside. The market stalls had been dismantled now, and it was empty; nothing and no-one there. Nobody sleepwalking in pink pyjamas. Where should she try now? If Hal was coming down Quay Street, he would find Anna if she had gone that way. Might she have gone onto the beach? Up towards the pub? There she was. She was standing on the harbour wall apparently looking out to sea. Her feet were clad in only a pair of fluffy bed socks and her pyjamas offered little protection from the wind. The harbour wall did not have railings on the harbour side, only on the side closest to the open sea and it was not very wide. How had she got there? Was she still asleep?

Cass knew that if she woke her suddenly, if Anna was confused, there were only a couple of footsteps between her and the steep drop into the harbour.

If only Hal was here …

She started out along the harbour wall, going slowly and cautiously as she approached Anna. As she got closer, she could see that although Anna’s eyes were open, they were focussed on nothing. She was still asleep, but she was saying something, and tears were running down her cheeks.

‘I don’t want to … let me go …’ she kept repeating. ‘Let me go, I don’t want to. Let me go!' over and over. She took another shuffling step forwards, one step closer to the end of the harbour wall and the steep drop into the harbour. Cass thought that she had better put herself in between Anna and the drop, then at least she could stop her if she tried to step off the harbour wall. Although if she stopped her and woke her and Anna panicked, or tried to fight her off, they might both end up in the icy water of the harbour.

If only Hal would come …

She had to do something. In the end she decided that wrapping the blanket around Anna was the best thing that she could do, and trying to guide her back along the wall to the safety of the quayside. She spoke softly and gently to Anna all the time, as if she was talking to Twiggy, hoping that even if Anna was not awake sufficiently to understand that the tone would get through to her.

‘Here we go, Anna. Let me wrap this around you. There, that should be nice and warm.’ She wrapped the red blanket around her shoulders, keeping her arm there to guide Anna gently back along the wall towards safety. ‘There we go, let’s keep going, let’s get you back inside, out of the cold. You’re poorly, Anna, you’ve got a temperature and you need to go back to bed. Hal’s coming down, he’ll make you safe, here, one foot in front of the other, that’s right.’

‘No. No. No. No,’ Anna started to say. ‘I don’t want to. Let me go. No, no, no …’

She was strong and kept trying to turn around. Every time she did, Cass steered her back in the direction of safety and she would turn again.

Where was Hal? Why didn’t he come?