CHAPTER 6

Are You Local?

 

‘Not on my doormat!’ June’s voice rose in near hysteria from the direction of the utility room. ‘My best doormat!’

Who on earth had a best doormat?

June, so it would seem.

It was six-thirty in the morning and Cass had been woken by June’s cry of despair. Twiggy had disgraced herself, unused to the hasty replacement litter tray consisting of a garden plant tray full of soil, and she had used June’s mat instead. It was not Cass’s ideal start to the day, scrubbing cat poo off a doormat.

Cass sighed as she scrubbed. She knew that today she was going to have to go down to St. Stephen’s for Morning Prayer. She was accustomed to starting every day with a short service - but how could she go through with it now she didn’t believe anyone was listening? But she had to do it; she had to go, she felt that daily prayer was a duty to her parishioners and her church – even if no-one came. That wasn’t strictly true. Graham often called in to keep an eye on her, working alone being seen as an official hazard by the church authorities, particularly for female clergy, but Cass didn’t mind it. In fact, quite often she preferred it when she was alone in the church, no matter what the guidelines said.

There were two paths that led to the little old church of St. Stephen, the longer one - known to everyone in the village as “The coffin path” - had a gentle incline more suitable for pushchairs and the less able but the most direct route was a flight of well-worn steps up from the fish-quay, not far from Maiden’s Yard. She climbed up through the mist to where St. Stephen’s sat on the top of the cliff, looking out over the sea as it had done for hundreds of years. Legends told of lanterns lit at the top of the tower in times of storm – but the legends disagreed about the purposes of the light: some said it was to guide the fishing fleet home to port, other more sinister stories told of merchant ships lured to destruction on the rocks beneath the church. This morning it would have been impossible to even see the square, grey tower of the church from the bay down below; the mist was so thick around it. The weather-beaten gravestones in the churchyard loomed out of the mist as Cass followed the path towards the low, arched north porch. On days like today Cass felt like she was stepping right out of time. Sounds of the modern world faded away; the noise of the cars on the coast road was smothered in the mist and all she could hear was the invisible pulse of the sea down in the bay below and the eerie calls of the gulls in the mist somewhere above her.

She fitted the heavy old key into the lock, as so many of her predecessors must have done before her, and turned it with a creak and a clunk of metal, the heavy door swinging open when she shoved it with her shoulder. Inside the church door a list of vicars painted onto a board went back as far as the Restoration in the 1660s, but this little church was older still. How many of the vicars, she wondered, had graves there in the clifftop churchyard? The stones were so worn now that names could not be made out on most of them, were the previous incumbents buried here, where they had preached, or as Charles Dawnay had suggested yesterday, did they all lie elsewhere?

She pushed the salt-whitened oak door that creaked as it swung open and the damp sea-air smell was replaced by the instantly recognisable smell of the church. It was a smell that had become familiar to Cass over the years in every church that she had known, right back to earliest memories of her father’s parish church back in Nottingham. It was a mixture of ancient, damp stone, polished wood pews, candle smoke – and an unmistakable whiff of heating oil. Graham must have filled the portable heaters recently.

On a day like today, a foggy November morning, the church was dark. Electricity had never come to St. Stephen’s as the new church, with its sensible interior and all mod cons, had been built in the late 1880s and the old church on the clifftop had been put to one side, forgotten for many years – and preserved. The plain, un-stained-glass windows, the cramped west gallery up above the main body of the church and the wooden boards bearing the Ten Commandments in old spellings all remained where they had been for nearly 150 years. Nobody had ever bothered to replace or repair the old dark wooden box pews with the stencilled names on the side – Randall, Brand, Allinson, Howard, Nelson, Thorburn – and nobody had ever removed the graffiti of a bygone generation carved into shelves where the prayer-books once sat; ships and horses and the names of long-lost lovers.

Cass had never looked that closely at the graffiti before, something this morning drew her to investigate – perhaps it was merely prevarication, as she didn’t want to try and pray. She sat down in the Thorburn pew, towards the back of the church, looking towards her normal position at the altar. There was a great three-masted ship, and next to it a pair of names carved deeply beneath a pair of intertwined hearts – Henry Thorburn and Polly Allinson.

Cass wondered who they had been, and started spinning herself a story in which a handsome sailor had fallen in love with a beautiful young fisher-girl, but their cruel families had torn them apart, all that was left of their love was this single, heartfelt carving.

She was avoiding the altar and she knew it. She should have started the service five minutes ago and here she was sitting in the Thorburn pew making up stories. It wouldn’t do. Her father would never have approved.

Just then she heard the north door creak and someone entered. She stood up from the pew, half hoping to see Hal Thorburn, so rapt had she been in her own imaginings. It wasn’t Hal, it was Graham, wearing his work clothes.

‘Morning, Vicar.’

Graham was the only other regular attendee at midweek eight o’clock service. He liked the peace and quiet, he had told her in the past, and now she understood why. The quietly forgotten antique clutter of the little old church was completely at odds with the white, bright cleanliness of June’s living room.

‘I was just going to start with …’ Cass began.

‘I expect it seems a bit difficult today, does it?’ Graham said, coming over to where she sat.

Cass sighed. ‘It does, Graham. It seems …’ She didn’t know how to begin telling him how she felt right now, because vicars shouldn’t feel like that. Vicars should be the ones providing the answers and the comfort in times of need, not the ones seeking it.

He sat down in the pew in front of hers, the one with “Howard” stencilled on the door, his own surname. For a moment neither of them said anything.

‘Sometimes,’ he said eventually, ‘I come and sit here on my own. I think how many of my ancestors must have sat right here, in this pew over the years. I’m the last Howard in the village, you know and once I go, that’ll be it. There’s a couple of cousins up at Langbarnby, on the moors, but I’ll be the last Howard in Rawscar.’

Graham always pronounced it the local way, “Rasca”.  Cass preferred the more conventional “Roar-scar”, she could never bring herself to say “Rasca”, it sounded false and contrived coming from her mouth.

‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘I’ve been thinking about something Charles Dawnay said to me yesterday. About how my name would never be in the village history, how I don’t belong here.’

‘Well, he’s a one to talk!’ Graham suddenly exploded. ‘He’s a fine one! His mother was born over at Saddleton, he no more belongs here than you do!’

He no more belongs here than you do.

‘I didn’t mean …’ Graham realised what he had said. ‘Of course, you’re part of the village now. An important part of the village!’

But still, he had said it, and it was true. There was a divide in the village between the old inhabitants and the incomers, Rasca folk and the people of Rawscar. Cass was most definitely on the wrong side of that divide, only just better than the tourists and the second-home owners.

She traced the carved names with a fingertip - Henry Thorburn, Polly Allinson.

‘Henry Thorburn. Hal Thorburn,’ she said aloud, changing the subject. ‘Can I ask you about Hal Thorburn, Graham? I don’t know him at all, and he was very kind to me.’

‘He’s got a good heart, Hal, despite his reputation. Do anything for anyone – perhaps that’s the trouble.’

‘What do you mean, his reputation?’

‘Well …’ Graham looked at her awkwardly, ‘… they say he’s a bit of a ladies’ man.’

‘Oh, I see …’ She could easily see how a lot of women would be attracted to a man like Hal with his fair hair, his muscular build and those capable hands of his.

‘He never seems to settle to anything though; does a bit of this, bit of that. Helps his Mam and Dad out at the pub and runs the holiday cottage business. Used to be a musician, but that all went wrong, few years back.’

‘What, a professional musician?’ Cass asked, sitting more upright in the pew. They were quite uncomfortable pews, narrow and high backed.

‘Well, he used to be. It didn’t work out. He’s been in a few bands – one, a while back; they got quite well known – played at Glastonbury and everything! But they split up and he tried to make a go of it on his own. Played with a couple of other bands, but always ended up back here in the end.’

‘So,’ Cass asked, looking up at the window behind the altar, ‘is he married then?’

‘No. Divorced. Twice. That never seems to work out for him neither.’

‘Really?’

‘Married a local girl when they were both far too young. She left him after only a year or two. Then he married the lead singer of his band, then the band split when they did. He’s had more than his share of girlfriends,’ Graham said quietly, as if he was taking care not to shock her. ‘But they don’t seem to stay around for long, from what I hear. I still think he’s just not found the right woman.’

Cass couldn’t exactly even say why she wanted to know. He had intrigued her, that was all, and then seeing his name carved in the old church like that - suddenly Hal Thorburn seemed to be turning up wherever she went.

‘I suppose this Henry Thorburn will be one of Hal’s ancestors?’ she asked after a while.

‘Ay, that’s right. There’s always a Henry in the Thorburn family. Henrys and Roberts, the Thorburns all down the ages. Hal had a younger brother, Rob - died, poor lad. Drowned, he did. Very sad.’

Cass knew all about that, there was a bench to his memory down by the beach where his mother laid flowers. Robert Thorburn, drowned aged 17, saving the life of a little girl and her mother.

‘I suppose there have been lots of local lads lost at sea over the years.’

Cass felt a shiver go down her spine; losing things to the waves was close to her heart right now.

‘Ay. There’s another Henry Thorburn on the memorial up here,’ he stood up and walked over to it, footsteps echoing in the empty church, Cass following him. ‘The great storm of October 1886. Thirty men lost that day, there were. Some of them from a collier brig that was wrecked out at the point, and those two trawlers that were lost, “Perseverance” and “Emily Mary”. It’s probably the same Henry Thorburn as carved his name there, when you think about it, the new church was built about that time.’

He pointed out the names on the memorial, a carved stone tablet with a list of names. There was more than one Howard on the list, Cass noticed, and an Allinson too.

‘I wonder what happened to Polly Allinson then?’ It was a rhetorical question, but Graham turned to her.

‘I think I can tell you that,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’

He was off to the back of the church and the glass-fronted cupboard under the west gallery where the maiden’s garlands were kept. They were an odd little collection, rare survivals of an ages-old custom, hoops that had been decorated with ribbons and strips of material hanging down, intertwined with paper gloves and rosettes. All would once have been bright and cheerful but the material and ribbons had faded to brown and beige and the paper was grey with age. Withered, tattered and forlorn the maidens’ garlands hung in their display case like ghosts, like seaweed floating in the waves. Each garland had a name and a date underneath it; Althea Brand 1837, Lizzie Randall 1841, Mary Cooper 1872.

A faded sign explained that each maiden’s garland had been carried to the church with the coffin of an unmarried girl, ribbons and material that should have graced a bridal gown gracing a funeral procession instead. The last one in the case bore the name Polly Allinson and the date 1887.

In the midst of life, we are in death, thought Cass and she shuddered.

‘Are you Ok there, Vicar?’

‘I think I should be starting Morning Prayer now,’ she said.

‘Best get it over with,’ said Graham, as if he knew.

In the end, it wasn’t that hard. She picked up her copy of Common Worship, and the words came as they had always done, she knew what to say and when to say it; the pattern of the week had not changed, though how it felt to her was different now.

‘Do not forsake me, O Lord …’ she read out loud, but she didn’t feel it in her heart as she used to do. She wasn’t praying, she was merely saying the words, by rote, without meaning or understanding and God had forsaken her. Could Graham tell? Would everybody be able to tell at church on Sunday?

Graham waited for her at the north door after the service so they could talk as they locked up the church together. She had been wondering if Graham could tell her any more about Anna.

‘What did happen between Anna and her father, Graham?’ The wood was swollen in the damp mist, and the door was sticking so Graham pulled it shut for her.

‘We all have our suspicions, but nobody really knows.’ He locked the door and handed her the heavy old key, which she put away in her coat pocket. They walked through the churchyard together. ‘You’re best just leaving well alone. Plenty of people have tried to help before now, but it makes no difference.’

Cass let the gate swing shut. They had to have gates on each entrance to the churchyard because in the summer they borrowed a few sheep from a local farmer to use as woolly lawnmowers. Several foggy mornings like this the sheep had scared her, looming out of the fog like walking gravestones.

‘It’s a shame,’ Cass said. ‘Anna always looks lonely, a bit sad.’

There was room for them to walk side by side now, down the steps in between the cottages, great stone flags down the centre of the path, cobbles down the sides.

‘Ay. She was a bright young thing when she was in her teens. Always up to some mischief or other. But somehow, the light seems to have gone out of Anna a bit. All that gothic stuff doesn’t help her, dressing up like a vampire.’

He stopped to pick up a pile of flowerpots that had spilled down the path from one of the cottage doorways.

‘I just like to understand about my parishioners,’ Cass said quickly, as she helped him stack up the flowerpots, in case he suspected her of an un-vicar-like interest in gossip. ‘That’s why I want to know more about Hal and Anna.’

‘Of course, Vicar. Would never have thought otherwise!’ he said with a grin. ‘But I’ll give you this, for all his reputation he’s a good man, Hal Thorburn. He only needs to find the right woman. You could do worse!’

Oh, good lord! Was that what he thought? That she was interested in Hal Thorburn in that way?

‘No, no, that wasn’t what I …’ she stuttered, feeling her face flushing bright red, though there was no truth in what he was suggesting at all. None. Not a bit.