LOOK, STRANGER Page 15

  He looked at her in surprise, he had not thought her a superstitious person. Her eyes were like dark bruises in the powder-caked face. She bent her head and flicked fastidiously at a tealeaf in her cup. ‘It was about the fete that you came, was it?’

  ‘Zoe Lindsay told me you called about it the other day. I should be very interested to know your ideas.’ Whatever was at the root of Miss Draisey’s trouble, it was plain that she needed compensation: the arrangements for the fete were hers for the asking.

  Miss Draisey took a small cream bun, popped it in her mouth and swallowed it as if it was an oyster. She wanted, it seemed, to revive the medieval fair which had at one time been held on the island and which had lasted for a week. While she told Vereker about this she swallowed three more cream buns. Vereker promised to think about the medieval fair.

  He was glad to get out of the house. It was very hot in the street, but at least the air was fresh and there was a slight breeze coming up from the sea. The tide must be on the turn; he knew quite a bit about the tides now. He met Donald Jarman outside his office and they talked for a few minutes.

  Nancy was in the kitchen when Vereker returned to the vicarage. ‘I’m glad you’re back,’ she said. ‘I’m going to make us real, dainty cucumber sandwiches for tea and you can cut the bread.’

  ‘That’ll be nice.’ She was easily discouraged and he hadn’t the heart to tell her he had already had tea.

  ‘Mrs. Anguilo wants to see you.’ She passed the breadboard and knife to him. ‘But I made it fairly clear you weren’t going to be available until we had had tea.’

  Nancy was protective. This was becoming a habit with her; if she wasn’t careful she was going to get addicted to it. Ever since Tudor had told her his secret, she had felt that he needed her protection. And now, here was her father looking harassed and instead of yelling at him that she had her own troubles, she was being protective and talking cheerfully when she did not feel at all cheerful. Only two months ago, it would never have occurred to her to hide her feelings from him.

  ‘Mrs. Anguilo is worried about Milo.’ She picked up a serrated- edged knife and began to slice the cucumber. ‘But I told her there’s no need for her to worry. He’s a reformed character.’

  Milo came to church sometimes now and Vereker saw his face, beautifully carved as a Michelangelo sculpture, gazing out from the blur of the congregation, brilliant, sensitive to the point of unbalance, yet with a certain toughness which suggested that the will to survive was strong.

  ‘He may be a reformed character, but I’m not sure that means there is nothing to worry about.’ He paused to count the slices of bread and then asked, ‘You understand him better than I do; how do you feel about him?’

  Nancy thought about Milo as she sprinkled salt on the cucumber. ‘Meg Jacobs says Mrs. Anguilo is a stone around his neck. But I don’t see Milo drowning. If you ask me, the one bit of scripture Milo has assimilated is the bit about hating your father and mother and being about your own business.’

  Vereker looked at her, his head a little to one side as if some unfamiliar note had sounded in his ear. His smile was droll, half-way between gladness and sadness, which was probably the effect she had on him at this time. Nancy began to butter the slices of bread. Panic fluttered in her stomach. She wanted to fling her arms around him and off-load these wretched secrets so that he could take the burden from her; but when she stole another look at him he was concentrating on cutting the bread very fine, his dear face intent, and she knew she could not hurt him by telling him. She had always been able to hurt him before, and now that she could not do it any more they were slipping apart, which was even more hurtful. It didn’t make sense. Even so, she changed the subject and asked him if he had had a good day.

  He finished the sandwiches and brought the teapot to the table before he answered. ‘I went to see Miss Draisey. She has some plans about a fair.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘I think so. I met Jarman on my way home and had a chat with him about it. He isn’t enthusiastic; but he’s going to let me play with the idea because he hopes it will keep me quiet and prevent me from doing anything irresponsible.’

  Nancy poured tea. ‘But why should he think you irresponsible?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He thought about it, his eyes narrowed as though he saw something in the grain of the wooden table that did not entirely please him. Nancy looked at him, studying his face as she might have studied the face of a stranger. The features were not arranged in the regular pattern which constituted her idea of masculine good looks; in fact, the nose which fluted out above the wide quirk of the mouth had always seemed to her to be quite disastrous. But she saw now that the features, though regrettably unorthodox, were nevertheless finely, almost fastidiously, wrought; and over the years, while she hadn’t been paying attention, they had grown together to form a face that would not easily yield up its deepest truths. But then, what truths could he have stored away out of her, his beloved daughter’s, reach?’

  ‘Why?’ she persisted, ‘Why irresponsible?’

  ‘I get the feeling he thinks I’m a little mad.’

  ‘You were never mad in Coopers Town.’

  ‘No, well, there you are . . . I seem to be mad in Helmsley. Something to do with priorities, perhaps.’ Like letting Miss Draisey organize the fair, even if it wasn’t a financial success, because Miss Draisey needed resurrection more than All Hallows needed money.

  ‘Perhaps we’re both mad,’ Nancy said.

  He looked at her, waiting for her to go on, while she waited for him to prompt her. The gas whined under the kettle and the cheap little clock on the shelf ticked noisily. Nancy took another cucumber sandwich and said, ‘Did you remember to send a postcard to old Annie Schultz?’

  ‘No, I forgot. I’ll do it after tea.’

  When Vereker went into the library, he did not look for the postcards they had bought to send to people in Coopers Town. He sat at the desk with one hand shielding his eyes from the sunlight, his face tired. Nan was growing further away from him each day and he was frightened for her. It was not the question of the damage to the church that mattered; the police now had doubts as to whether Milo could have done it, and it looked like remaining one of those unsolved crimes. But it was unlike Nan not to off-load her troubles and he realized that for the first time she was trying to pick her own way through a problem. Once she had done this, however badly, she would not retrace her steps. But where would she go from there on? He wished he felt more hopeful for her. What distressed him was that she didn’t seem to have the right instincts, let alone common sense; without thought for herself or others, including Milo, she had jumped in the dark and jumped the wrong way. He hoped she wasn’t fundamentally incapable of judgement. He prayed that she might not come to any harm; although this was the kind of prayer which he did not advocate when advising others. ‘God,’ he had been wont to say, ‘has hazarded His creation and we are all subject to the chances of life; it is our response to what befalls us that matters.’ He still believed this to be true, but it was immeasurably harder to accept when applied to one’s own child.

  The telephone rang and Nan went to answer it. Soon, the door opened and a glowing face looked at him. ‘You’re not writing that card even now!’ she accused him gaily. ‘I’m going for a swim with the youth club folk. We’ll probably go on somewhere afterwards, so don’t wait up for me.’

  She looked so happy that he thought perhaps he had been foolish to be so worried about her. He raked through the drawer, found the postcards, and began to write, ‘We are having beautiful summer weather. . . .’ He felt better when the cards were written. It was indeed a beautiful evening and he sat in a deck chair on the paved area outside the french windows and watched the sun going down behind the distant trees in a splendour of rose and saffron. Gradually, the shadows lengthened and he was beginning to feel some refreshment of spirit when the nearer shadows wavered and took more definite shape.

  ‘I’m worried
about Milo,’ Mrs. Anguilo said in the soft, helpless voice with which she was wont to inform him that the kitchen sink was stopped up or the lavatory pan cracked.

  Vereker stared at the ground between his knees. Perhaps Mrs. Anguilo thought he was gathering his forces to offer comfort, in which case she was mistaken. He wanted a rest from worry, his own and other people’s. ‘I’m so worried about him, I don’t know what to do. Father.’

  As far as Vereker knew, Mrs. Anguilo was not high church, she just called him Father whenever she wanted to remind him of his duty. Vereker said crossly:

  ‘What seems to be the trouble?’

  ‘He’s changing. Father. He’s so moody and he goes off for long walks on his own.’

  ‘I can’t see that that is any reason for you to be troubled about him.’

  ‘He’s had a vision.’

  Vereker digested this in silence for a moment or two; he did not look as though he found it very palatable. ‘Has he come home yet?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘No.’

  Vereker eased himself wearily out of his chair. ‘Don’t worry. I think I know where he is. I’ll go and find him.’

  ‘And please talk some sense into him. Father, and make him come back here.’

  Vereker took the footpath from the churchyard. He guessed that Milo had joined in the battle of the bulldozer and was soon proved right. The battle was over and most of the combatants had departed. The main casualty appeared to be the bulldozer itself; it had come to grief just inside the priory grounds, its nose buried in a fairly considerable cavity. Two cows were examining it curiously, and Milo and Zoe were gazing into the cavity.

  ‘You’ve missed the excitement,’ Milo told Vereker. ‘There must be an underground tunnel here.’

  ‘It may just be the cellars.’ Zoe had a sketch pad with her and she had drawn some objects which had been laid out on the grass.

  ‘What are these?’ Vereker bent down and picked up what looked like a rudimentary knife. ‘It’s very clumsy, isn’t it, even for those days?’

  ‘That wouldn’t have been used by the nuns,’ Zoe said. ‘There were people here before they came.’

  ‘Iron age man,’ Milo said.

  ‘Later than that,’ she protested.

  ‘There was a settlement here long before the nuns came.’ Milo spoke with certainty. They were both, Vereker noted, possessive about their forebears.

  ‘At any rate, this will put a stop to Wenfield’s activities,’ Zoe said. ‘The archaeologists will put up a stronger fight than the Friends of Helmsley Island.’

  ‘How long would they have had a settlement here?’ Milo wondered. ‘Hundreds of years? Then the English came and drove them out. A new people with a new religion. . . .’

  ‘We don’t know any of this,’ she protested.

  Milo leaned against the bulldozer and wiped his hands on his thighs. He was pale and there were smudges beneath his eyes; either the excitement or the heat had exhausted him. He looked at Vereker and said, ‘I had a vision about the nuns.’

  Vereker said, ‘You have upset your mother with this talk of visions.’

  ‘My mother wants me to be a schoolteacher. She says they have long holidays and good pensions.’

  Vereker looked away across the fields; he smelt the freshness of the evening air and the tang of salt on the incoming tide. Milo waited until eventually Vereker said, ‘What is all this about a vision?’

  ‘The Word of God came to me in your church.’

  ‘Did it?’ Vereker was neither incredulous nor very impressed. Zoe said, ‘Tell us about it, Milo.’

  Milo, too, looked beyond the priory ruins to where the field dissolved in the evening greyness of the marshes. Perhaps it was just that his timing was very good; or perhaps he was trying to absorb himself in this hour when all colour has been thinned out of the day and the drama of the night has not yet taken its place. He spoke quietly, when eventually he began. ‘Do you remember that meeting you had in the church hall? I listened outside one of the windows and I heard you talk about Christ the tiger.’

  ‘I was angry,’ Vereker said, ‘I wanted. . . .’

  ‘Let him tell it his way.’ Zoe sat on the ground looking up at Milo.

  The two cows were still observing the bulldozer from a distance of about four feet and a pale honey-coloured cow was leading the rest of the herd towards them. Vereker stared at the cows, biting his lip, finding it difficult to control his irritation.

  Milo was saying, ‘I thought you were splendid. Most preachers nowadays talk about Jesus apologetically as if he was a little man they had to defend. You made him challenging. It was all a bit loony, too; I liked the looniness. I wanted to do something to celebrate how I felt so I took off my clothes and went into the church. I felt the Church had got it all wrong and I wanted to show how little I cared for it; I danced about and made obscene gestures. Then something went wrong. I felt deflated and a bit sick; I seemed to be standing outside myself, watching, and I thought, “Oh, you silly bugger!” I stood there in front of the altar, thinking I’d have to grow up. It was very quiet. . . .’

  Vereker spread out his hand in front of him in the twilight; he ran a finger of the other hand soothingly across the outstretched palm. Zoe plaited stems of grass, head bowed.

  ‘That was when this other person came rushing in.’ Milo was silent for a moment, remembering. It had been a shattering experience and he had run out of the church; he had put on his clothes and gone down to the priory grounds almost without knowing what he was doing. ‘I sat against that pillar over there, where the valerian is growing.’ He pointed and they turned to look. The pillar was tall and hooked at the top.

  Although he knew the person who had come into the church, at the time it seemed as though it was a spirit he had conjured up; his first real success in necromancy and he had not liked it. He was the more horrified because for a moment, standing in front of the altar, he had felt something like peace descending upon him – at least, he supposed it was peace, he hadn’t much experience of peace and before he could get the feel of it this dreadful thing had happened.

  As he sat beneath the pillar, shaken by this first encounter with the forces of darkness, he realized how much more shattering it must have been for the nuns when they came to this place. Hitherto, he had been too uninterested in the nuns to bother about whether their “appearances” were real or not. But now he saw quite clearly this group of women riding into a wild, unfriendly country where a new priory had been built and where they would spend the rest of their lives. It was a dark, alien place and the old gods watched and waited their moment. He saw the nuns over the years making painful inroads into superstition and barbarism, being driven back so often that it seemed that for every step forward they were forced to take two backwards. The nuns died and others took their place. It was never easy; always there was fear, danger and suspicion. Then, when at last they seemed to have established their presence, there arose a new kind of barbarism with the coming of Thomas Cromwell and the sacking of the monasteries. How bitter it must have been for them! No wonder they haunted this place, waiting the time when the long defeat should be turned into victory.

  Suddenly, he saw that victory, as though he was there after the event. ‘It was so beautiful it stopped my heart,’ he said. ‘Quite literally, stopped my heart. I don’t know for how long; but when I was myself again, I knew that I was the one who would bring about that victory.’

  Vereker rubbed at the palm of his hand in silence and Zoe poked at the earth with one of the iron age implements.

  ‘God told me to found my own church,’ Milo said.

  As simple as that! Vereker said, ‘I can’t see, from anything you have told us so far, why that should be necessary.’

  ‘Because the established churches have failed.’ Milo was surprised at the question. ‘They haven’t anything to offer because they don’t really believe any more. Wasn’t that what you were saying the other night?’

  Vereker wanted to s
ay, ‘And who are you that you should be singled out in this way?’ But he bit back the words. The prophets had been awkward, unlikely people; he had always been afraid he might have been one of those who stoned them.

  Zoe had no such inhibitions. She stood up and shook the grass out of her skirt. ‘You had a bad shock in the church,’ she said, ‘and then you came down here and your imagination did the rest.’

  Seldom could Milo’s magic so totally have failed to work. He took it well. Perhaps he welcomed his first taste of incredulity. He said, as though acknowledging a reasonable response, ‘I know this is going to be hard to accept and it will take time.’

  ‘You’re being very self-indulgent, relating everything to yourself.’ She was as angry as though the nuns could still be hurt. ‘Do you really think that for centuries they have been waiting around for you?’

  ‘What do you think they have been doing?’ He looked at her, his head a little on one side; he seemed to enjoy provoking anger.

  ‘The ones that we see are prisoners. They are the ones who never managed to live, so it’s hardly surprising they couldn’t cope with their dying, either.’