CHAPTER 8

The Vicar’s Knickers

 

 

‘Evening, Vicar. How are things in Dibley today?’ said Jack Thorburn – who else could it have been – from behind the bar of the Ship Inn as she entered the pub. If there was one thing that irritated Cass it was that bloody television programme. It irritated her nearly as much as being offered sweet sherry in pubs; one of the few points of reference for non-church-goers when it came to female vicars, and she was sick of it. And she was sick of Jack constantly having little digs at her. Why did he need to do that?

‘I don’t know, Jack, you’d have to ask Dawn French,’ Cass replied, trying not to let her irrational flash of anger show. ‘I’m here for the meeting. Upstairs, is it?’

‘Ay. In the function room. Hal’s up there on the bar if you want a drink. He’s got something of yours as well!’ Jack laughed to himself, a wheezy little laugh, ‘You ask him!’

‘Thanks, Jack, I will.’

Cass assumed that it had something to do with yesterday afternoon – had she left her little bottle of holy water behind at Anna’s cottage?

She climbed the stairs to the function room. The floor of the “Captain Cook Room” was covered with a dark red carpet that had seen better days, and the walls with a geometrical textured wallpaper – the room was utterly lacking in the traditional charm that characterised the downstairs rooms of the pub. It had a small bar in the corner and chairs were set out for the meeting in rows. Many of the seats were already filled with people from the village; some faces that she recognised from her own congregation and some that she didn’t. She was pleased to spot that Julia, the Methodist Minister, was already there; she waved and motioned Cass to take the seat next to her. On the seat beside Julia, Cass put her coat down. She must go shopping soon, the one coat she owned never dried out. Such a shame that all the shops in the village were more likely to sell candlesticks shaped like cats or hand-printed scarves than a new winter coat. She’d have to go to Saddleton for that.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ she offered, but her Methodist counterpart already had an apple juice in her hand – at least, Cass assumed that it was apple juice – so she crossed to the bar. She caught Hal’s eye instantly and he came straight across, smiling.

‘Evening, Vicar,’ he said, sounding just like his father.

‘Hi, Hal. Your Dad said you had something belonging to me?’

‘Oh, um, yes, some other time perhaps?’ Hal said awkwardly, instantly changing the subject. ‘What can I get you, Vicar?’

‘Call me Cass. And I’ll have a pint of bitter, please.’

‘A pint of bitter?’ He sounded surprised.

‘I don’t really drink sweet sherry, you know, Hal. That’s just your Dad’s little joke with me.’

‘I’m sorry about that – he can be an ars … an idiot, sometimes,’ Hal said as he picked up a pint glass from the shelf and filled it from a bottle. ‘You shouldn’t take it personally; it’s just the way he is.’

‘Don’t worry; I try not to take anything too personally. It’s one of the hazards of this job, I guess, sometimes people just see the dog-collar, not the woman underneath it.’

‘Not a mistake I’m going to make,’ he said as he finished pulling the pint. ‘A pint of bitter it is!’ he said with an approving glance in her direction as he handed over the pint glass. Cass took a deep drink – it had been yet another long day. ‘I never saw you as a beer drinker,’ he added.

‘Always have been a beer drinker, since I was a student.’ She leant on the bar; there was nobody waiting to be served right now so Hal was free to talk to her.

‘Didn’t know they let student vicars drink at priest school, or wherever it was you went!’ He was wiping up some spilt beer from the bar as he talked.

‘I went to the University of East Anglia. I wasn’t at theological college back then anyway, I didn’t train until I was in my mid-twenties. I did music at Uni.’

‘Oh, so you did other things before you were a vicar?’

‘Yes – back then the church liked you to have a bit of life experience before ordination. So, I worked in a secondary school for a while, but I always wanted to be a vicar, like my father was.’

‘It runs in the family, does it?’

‘Yes – like you and the pub, I guess.’

‘Oh, I never wanted to work in the pub,’ he had stopped cleaning, and leant towards her on the bar, only inches away from her, talking quietly so that the whole room didn’t hear the conversation. If she leant across the bar a little further their foreheads would have touched. ‘Still don’t. I wanted to get as far away from it as I could. I was a musician. But it didn’t work out. I’ve tried all kinds of things since. And yet, here I am, where I have always been; stumbling along behind my father, in this back end of nowhere village.’ There was a bitter edge to his voice.

‘There’s still plenty of time for you to do whatever you want to Hal. You can’t be more than, what, thirty at the most?’

‘Thirty-three,’ he replied. ‘And still stuck here wiping my father’s bar.’

‘Could be worse,’ Cass said with a grin. ‘You could be stuck wiping his arse!’

Sometimes she said things like that purely for the reaction it caused when a vicar used bad language. The bishop wouldn’t approve, but it had the desired effect, and Hal laughed with her.

‘You’re not like any of the other vicars we’ve had in Rawscar!’ He pronounced it as “Rasca” like Graham did, but he had to turn away from her just then as a group of the blokes from the sailing club had come up the stairs for the meeting and they wanted a round of drinks.

Cass caught sight of Jack Thorburn coming up the stairs behind – no show without Punch - leaving Marian in charge of the bar downstairs no doubt. Cass excused herself and went over to join Julia. She had only just sat down and the Methodist minister was commiserating with her over the loss of the vicarage when Jack’s voice rang out, loudly across the room.

‘Did you get your lost property back from our Hal then, Vicar?’

She saw Hal discreetly trying to silence his father. Then she heard him tell his dad in no uncertain terms to shut up. His dad ignored both.

‘Another time, perhaps, Jack?’ Cass said politely and turned back to her conversation with Julia.

‘No, no, let him get you them now. Wouldn’t like to think of you going without them!’ He laughed raucously and a few of his regulars joined in.

What on earth was it that Hal had?

‘Dad, please will you leave it? I wish I’d never bloody well said anything to you!’ Hal looked harassed as he tried to sort out the large round of drinks.

‘Go and get them, then Hal!’ Jack’s voice boomed out across the room. ‘Go and get the vicar’s knickers! Found them in the back of his car, he did. I’d love to know how he got hold of them!’

He gave a great guffaw of laughter, and a lewd wink in Cass’s direction. The whole room had heard and Cass could hear muffled laughter. He was expecting her to be embarrassed and ashamed. If Hal did have a pair of her pants in his car they could only have come from the day that the vicarage had fallen over the cliff and he’d moved some of her things down to Graham’s. Jack must know that, so why did he take such a great delight in trying to humiliate her in public like this?

‘Dad, can’t you shut up?’ Hal said with an apologetic glance in her direction. ‘Just leave it!’

Well, two could play at that game, she thought, turning towards Jack.

‘You know, Jack,’ she said sweetly, ‘it must have been that time that Hal and I had rampant sex all night in the back of his car, I expect. I wondered what he’d done with them,’ Cass said without turning a hair. ‘The red crotchless pair was it, Hal? I’ll get them back next time. What were you saying about the children’s advent procession there, Julia?’

Jack turned as red as her imaginary knickers and fell silent, as Hal burst out laughing, and half the room joined in with him. One point to me, thought Cass, watching Jack stutter as he tried to find a come-back that just wouldn’t come.

Thankfully, at that moment, Charles Dawnay called the meeting to order.

Most of it was boring. The Victorian Christmas Festival was a long-standing tradition, dating back thirty years or more, when the village had decided to cash in on its Dickensian connections (Dickens had stayed in a long-demolished pub for one night in 1861). In the late 1970s the inhabitants of Rawscar had put on their shawls and their top hats and welcomed the public to watch Morris dancing on the fish-quay, buy mince pies and mulled wine from a bonneted waitress in the café and listen to a reading of A Christmas Carol in the old fisherman’s shelter. These days it was a much bigger affair; a Christmas market filled the fish-quay, visitors as well as stallholders turned up in Victorian dress and most of the restaurants and cafes along with the pub put on Victorian themed entertainments in the evening. It was already well established and well organised, and as the Methodists already had most of the carol singing sewn up there wasn’t much left for Cass, so she suggested holding an old book of common prayer evensong by candlelight in the little old church of St. Stephen’s on the Sunday of the fair, and that had seemed to go down quite well with the committee, but that was her sole contribution.

‘And now, the Blessing of the Boats. First Sunday in Advent, that will be the 29th November this year,’ Charles announced to change the subject. ‘Sunset will be at about four o’clock, so ceremony at four? Followed by the lighting up of the village?’

The Blessing of the Boats had been introduced about five years ago by Cass’s predecessor as vicar, Reverend Steele, Graham had told her all about it. The idea was that the harbour was filled with boats which were decorated with lights for Christmas – there were still a few boats resident in the old harbour; tourist trip boats, crab and lobster boats, and the sailing club would bring out a few for the occasion, even the little inshore lifeboat participated. Once the boats had been blessed, then the signal went out, starting from the Ship Inn, and every shop and house in Old Rawscar lit up their Christmas lights in a wave going right up from the quayside to the top of the hill. Apparently it brought in increasing crowds of visitors every year and secretly Cass was looking forward to her role in it bringing her, and the church, right into the centre of village life.

‘Sounds fine to me,’ Jack Thorburn added from his seat directly behind Cass. ‘I’ve already started on getting the pub’s decorations ready. Or, well, let’s be honest here, Marian has!’

There was a murmur of agreement from around the room, others who had begun to plan their own decorations.

‘I’ve got the blessing service that Gideon Steele used last year, he left that for me,’ Cass spoke up. ‘I’m ready to go with that -’

‘I’m sorry, Vicar,’ Jack Thorburn broke in with a tone of voice that implied that he was anything but sorry, ‘But you won’t be doing no blessing. That’s down to that Reverend Steele.’

‘But he’s retired now.’

‘Charles got him to come back, didn’t you, Charlie?’

‘Yes, it was decided last year. It’s all in the P.C.C. minutes from last January. You have read them, haven’t you?’ Charles added. Of course she hadn’t read the P.C.C. minutes from last January, she had still been at her old parish in Ormsborough back then. Cass felt foolish, as no doubt they had intended her to. ‘But I’m sure Gideon would be more than happy for you to assist him,’ Charles added, formally.

Assist him. Great.

‘Well, it would seem that’s already been arranged, so of course I will be glad to help Reverend Steele in any way he needs,’ Cass said as graciously as she could.

‘It’s not a job for someone like you,’ she heard Jack add quietly with a note of hostility from close behind her. Enough was enough and she spun round to face him. She wasn’t going to let him carry on like this, she had to say something.

‘When you say “someone like me” you mean a woman, don’t you?’ She challenged him directly. ‘You don’t like me because I’m a female vicar – you’ve never liked it, have you? You don’t want me to give the blessing because I’m a woman.’ She spoke quietly; she didn’t want to involve the whole room in the dispute.

‘No. I don’t want you to do it because you’re an incomer.’ Flat and harsh, a simple statement of fact. ‘Gideon’s family are Langbarnby folk from way back.’

‘Oh, come on Jack!’ She was stung by his words. ‘Just because I wasn’t born here!’

She saw something in him snap, a sudden fire in his eyes that came from behind the jovial façade that he always wore. He spoke quickly and quietly, to her alone as the meeting went on around them.

‘It’s more than that, Vicar. We’ve been here since the Vikings, so they say. Us old Rawscar families can trace our blood back to then. Now you lot come in with your holiday houses and your second homes, playing with the sea and “isn’t it so quaint,”’ he spoke in a mocking approximation of a posh accent, ‘and our sons and daughters are driven away because they can’t afford to live in the bloody houses that their own ancestors built! How many Randalls live in Randalls’ Yard these days? None. All holiday houses. How many Brands are left in the village?’ His voice was getting louder and louder, people around them were starting to stare. ‘None. I remember when there were two dozen big trawlers in that harbour! Not a one now. Not a single one. Just painted pirate ships for rich kids to go for rides on.’

‘Jack, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset -’ Cass began to say. By now Hal had noticed what was going on and came out from behind the bar, crossing the room towards them.

‘No, you never do, do you? Your lot? You know NOTHING about us! I mean, what kind of fool would have lived in that bloody vicarage to begin with? Anyone who knew this area knew it was only going to end up in the sea. And our folk risking their lives to save your stupid cat and your sodding knickers! Could have killed them, all of them! That’s always the way with you lot, isn’t it? We have to suffer for your mistakes.’

By now, half the room was listening to what Jack was saying to her rather than attending to the meeting.

‘But I didn’t ask them to do that!’ Cass protested. ‘I wasn’t there!’

Hal crouched down beside his father.

‘Come on, Dad, it’s not the vicar’s fault. Leave her alone! We knew what we were doing when we went into that house.’

‘Ay, Hal, I know what you were doing; chasing a bit of skirt, no doubt. Only reason you ever seem to do anything, some woman or other. Pretty little thing, that Anna, isn’t she?’

‘Shut up, Dad!’ Cass could see Hal getting angry now. ‘You’re disturbing the meeting.’

‘I’d do a damn sight more than disturb it if I had the chance. But we’ve got to play their game now, haven’t we? Bring in more and more tourists to allow us to continue living here. Well, I might have to do it, but I don’t have to like it. Why can’t they all just go back to London, or wherever they come from and leave us alone?’

By now the entire room was listening. Jack looked around him at their faces and stood up. ‘I’m going back to the bar now. You can tell me whatever I need to know.’

He left the room. Everyone looked at everyone else.

‘Don’t worry, Vicar, he blames incomers and tourists for everything; he’s been like that since Rob was killed. He blamed them for it, you see. Don’t take it personally. It’s nothing you’ve done,’ Hal said, briefly resting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. A thrill of an entirely unprecedented nature ran through Cass’s body at his touch. She didn’t want him to take his hand away.

‘I shouldn’t have antagonised him,’ She whispered. ‘I’m sorry, Hal.’

‘You don’t need to apologise. He does, but he won’t. He’s stubborn like that.’

And Hal was away back to the bar, she watched him cross the room away from her. He hadn’t got half way across the floor, when the function room door opened again, and Anna came into the room, tears streaming down her face and the bottom inches of her velvet coat soaked with water. She ran straight into Hal’s protective arms.

‘Hal, I’ve seen her. I’ve seen her!’ she sobbed, and around her, the meeting descended into chaos.