To Love and to Cherish (11 page)

He said, “Do you think I’m weak?” and I thought,
Well, at least I’ve gotten frostiness out of him—something!
I don’t remember how I answered; haughtily, though. (He’s not weak, of course; I’d said it to goad him.) He said, “Do you think I don’t know what they thought of me, Anne? That I sat there and didn’t understand the depth of their contempt?”

“Then why didn’t you react? Even Jesus got mad at the money changers!” As if I knew that story well, as if the Bible were a familiar volume to me, kept at my bedside for easy reference. It was misty on the bridge, or he’d have seen me blush. He laughed a little when I said that, and I deserved it. “The money
lenders
,” he corrected.

By now I was beginning to cool down. We walked to the end of the bridge and went a little way along the bank. Everything was quiet and still except for the sound of the rushing water—such a relief after the smoke and brandy and nastiness inside the house. We stopped under the alder trees, and he said, “I’ve found that one of the hardest things about the ministry is the isolation. You don’t know how relieved I would be if my parishioners would speak frankly about their doubts, the times when their faith fails them and they can’t believe. I wouldn’t be shocked; I would love to talk these things over. I’m smothering in politeness. Faith in God isn’t a debate I have to win, it’s a way we can understand each other.”

No one talks like this, no one in my experience. I don’t know what to say to him when he says these things to me. His simplicity confounds me. I
fear
for him.

He said, “It makes me sad when people can’t see me as a human being. They usually come around eventually, and then it’s annoying to have my humanity made into some minor revelation. Do you understand what I’m saying? I hate being a symbol instead of a person. I’m the minister, I’m Reverend Morrell; and so, depending on what your hopes and prejudices are, that makes me either a saint or a hypocrite. And I can tell you it’s even harder to be adored than it is to be judged a fool.”

I think he was saying he didn’t mind what he’d just gone through as much as I did, because at least Sully and the others were confronting him head-on as
something
, and they certainly weren’t couching it in politeness. Extraordinary. I think he’s lonely.

“You’re angry with me because I was so dense”—No, no, I started to protest—“and you’re right.” (That surprised me; I thought he would maintain that he’d done it all deliberately.) “I kept wanting to engage them, force them into a real conversation. I was naive.” Here I almost nodded, then remembered to disagree politely. He said, “No, Anne, I was a blockhead.”

This was
true
humility. I could hardly believe it when we both laughed, freely and—affectionately; after all that had happened, laughter seemed highly uncalled for. But it refreshed us, and that’s why I told him the truth about myself: that I’m an atheist. Only I didn’t like to shock him, so I cushioned the blow and said I was an “agnostic.”

I don’t know if he was surprised or not. But he was quiet for a minute, and then he said he would pray for me. Well, what had I expected? I didn’t laugh, but I made some sound. I felt bitterness inside, and some strange disappointment in him—altogether inappropriate, of course. He put his hand on me, just a small, comforting touch on my arm. And I thought, what would he do if I made an advance? He finds me attractive, I’ve known that for some time. Last night, when he spoke so openly of his father and mother and his decision to become a priest, I knew I was attracted to him, too. And so, while we stood there with his hand lightly touching my elbow, I wondered what would happen if I said or did something to him—something of a seductive nature. Touched him back or—

But I didn’t touch him and I didn’t say anything to him. Because if I had, it would have been to test him. And then I would’ve been no better than Geoffrey and his wretched friends.

Then I was afraid he would try to convert me, so I said good night rather curtly. Now I can’t sleep. And I wish I had told him that I admire him—for his patience with Sully, I mean. He was right not to react to their taunts; it would have served no purpose, except possibly to vent
my
anger, which is no reason at all. He’s better than I am, is Reverend Morrell. But it’s not because of “God”; it’s because he was born that way.

VIII

“S
O
, C
HRISTY
.” Teapot in hand, Mrs. Ludd stood behind the vicar’s right shoulder, until he had no choice but to stop reading about war in the Crimea and look up at her. “What time did you finally come home last night?”

“Not too late. Something after midnight, I think.”

“Hah! ’Twas half past two, I heard the church clock go not five minutes after you stabled your horse.”

He held up his cup, and she filled it for him with steaming tea. “Why did you ask me if you already knew?”

“To see what you’d say, o’ course.”

Christy shook his head and tried to go back to his newspaper.

“I told Arthur, I said, ‘Wake up, there’s Vicar back from Bonesteels’ this late, the old lady must’ve died after all.’”

“Arthur appreciated that, I’m sure.”

Mrs. Ludd set the teapot down and moved a basket of muffins closer to his plate. “Well? Did she or didn’t she?”

He sighed, laying his newspaper aside. “Mrs. Bonesteel started feeling better about one o’clock this morning. Apparently it wasn’t her heart after all; it was the pickled pilchards she ate yesterday for supper.”

“Well, I must say. After all that. Tsk.” Mrs. Ludd folded her arms across her wide middle and clucked some more.

“Yes, I wish she’d died, too; then my evening wouldn’t have been completely wasted.”

Her mouth fell open. A second later she got the joke, and retaliated by thunking the vicar on the shoulder with a teaspoon. A crafty look narrowed her eyes. “How do you like your raisin muffins this morning, Reverend?”

He bit into one warily. “Fine. Why?”

“I’ll be sure to tell Miss Margaret Mareton you think they’re delicious.” Christy groaned, and his housekeeper snickered. “‘Tis a very
special
recipe she learned from her grandmother, she said to be sure to tell you. Since you like ’em so much, I’ll tell her to bring over a great cartload next time.”

“You know, this isn’t nearly as funny as you think it is.”

That only made her laugh outright. “Oh, but it
is
.” Still chortling, she started for the kitchen, but stopped when she saw, through the dining room window, a figure coming through the front gate. “My blessed saints, Christy, ’tis his new lordship, walkin’ up the walk and fixing to knock on the door.”

“Geoffrey?” He set his cup down and stood up.

“Shall I bring him in here or the parlor?”

“It’s all right, I’ll go myself.” The knock came before he reached the hall. He hastened along, conscious of feeling as if a burden had lifted. He hadn’t seen Geoffrey in almost two weeks, not since the night at the Hall after their horse race. Every day he’d thought he would come and offer some explanation for his behavior. He hadn’t, and as the days passed, Christy had grown increasingly dejected. He’d decided to wait one more day, then confront Geoffrey himself. Thank God, now he wouldn’t have to.

He surprised a worried look on Geoffrey’s face when he opened the door, which he immediately hid behind a mask of facetious amazement. “Why, it’s the vicar himself! I say, things are getting a bit loose when you start answering the door yourself, don’t you think, Reverend? Doesn’t look right. A man of the cloth has to uphold his dignity. Send the servants, man, that’s what they’re for.”

Christy waited patiently. “Geoffrey. I was hoping you’d come,” he said when the fatuous speech was over.

He sobered instantly. “Should’ve done it sooner,” he muttered, clasping Christy’s outstretched hand. “Can I come in?”

He led him back along to the dining room. Mrs. Ludd brought more tea and then left them alone, her silent, awed manner reminding Christy that she was new to Wyckerley—only ten years or so—and hadn’t known Geoffrey as a boy; thus, his status as Lord D’Aubrey cowed her.

The morning sun poured through the open dining room windows, illuminating Geoffrey’s sharp-edged features. Sober and calm, he looked healthier than Christy had seen him since his return. There was no manic glitter in his dark eyes and his hands were steady. A sense of purpose had replaced his restlessness, the cause of which was soon explained.

“My commission’s come,” he said, smiling with satisfaction. “Only a captaincy, but I’m content. And it’s the Rifle Brigade, so there’s no question that I’ll see action.”

Christy nodded as if that pleased him, but in truth, he’d never understood Geoffrey’s enthusiasm for the military. “Congratulations. I’m glad for you; I know it’s what you’ve wanted.”

“Well, it didn’t come any too soon—or this war, either. We’re living in such revoltingly peaceful times, this will probably be my last chance to see real fighting.”

Christy couldn’t help himself. “Why do you like it?” he asked directly. “Is it because of patriotism?”

“Patriotism!” He barked out a laugh. “Don’t be an idiot.” He turned a spoon over and over on the white tablecloth. “I like it, that’s all,” he said without looking up. “I bloody well know what I’m doing. It’s the only thing I’m any good at. Maybe you won’t believe it, but there are some people who respect me for it.”

“Of course I believe it.” He waited, but Geoffrey didn’t explain himself further. “When will you go?”

“I sail on a troop transport from Southampton for the Black Sea in three weeks. All that worries me now is that the Russians might pull back across the Danube before I can get there.”

“Surely that wouldn’t be the end of it.”

“Oh, no,” he said cheerfully, “the allies won’t be content to sit back and wait for the czar to try it again. Take my word for it, they’ll try to smash the Russian fleet at Sebastopol. And I mean to be there when they do.”

“No point in telling you to be careful, I suppose.”

“I’m always careful.” A reckless gleam in his eye belied it, though.

“I’ll miss you.”

Geoffrey looked down again. “Can’t think why. Behaved like an ass the other day. Apologize.”

Christy watched him for a moment. Was it worth it to ask why he’d done it? He decided it was. “Did winning the race mean so much to you, then?”

“No,” he denied—but too quickly. “Honestly, I don’t know how it happened. I mean, I know
how
, but—Christy, I swear I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I believe you. But you did.”

“Well, I can’t take it back. Would if I could. Sometimes the devil gets into me, I guess.” He gave a short laugh, trying to make Christy join in. “I don’t know why I did it,” he said again, more softly. “Stupid. It could’ve been serious. Last thing I intended.” He grinned determinedly. “You have to forgive me, though. It’s your job!”

Christy told the truth. “I was angry with you at first. And confused, and hurt. I couldn’t understand why you’d done it. But there was never any question of forgiving you.”

Geoffrey’s face went beet-red with emotion. Embarrassed, he shoved his chair back and stood up, but before he could turn away, Christy caught a glimpse of the old Geoffrey, the staunch, true friend he’d loved since his boyhood. That image, gone so quickly, warmed him and unburdened his heart; the heaviness he’d been carrying for weeks because his oldest friend was a stranger suddenly lifted.

“Really came to ask you to look after Anne,” Geoffrey said casually, over his shoulder, moving through the house he knew almost as well as Christy did. He paused in the open front door. “God,” he breathed, and Christy looked with him past the oaks and sycamores in front of the vicarage to the quiet village green, unpopulated this morning except for a couple of mothers sunning their babies on the grass. A prosaic sight to Christy, but Geoffrey seemed taken by it. “I could almost envy you,” he said unexpectedly.

“Me?” Christy blinked in surprise. “Why?”

“You’ve got a home.”

“But you’ve—”

“I’ve got a house. And I can’t wait to get out of it.” He waved his arm. “He spoiled all this for me,” he said, his bitterness undisguised. “I couldn’t stay here without going mad. Do you remember the first time I ran away?”

Christy looked at him in surprise, thinking Geoffrey might have been reading his mind. “Yes, I remember. In fact, I was just thinking of it.” He’d have said more, but Geoffrey’s face closed up, indicating that the subject was closed. But the memory was indelible, as clear in Christy’s mind now as on the night, more than twenty years ago, when it had happened. He’d been a child of seven or eight, playing on the floor in his father’s study—his study now—on a cold, rainy evening. A loud knocking at the front door had startled him; his father had gone to answer it, with Christy at his heels.

There stood Geoffrey under the porch roof, dripping wet, rainwater indistinguishable from the tears spilling down his cheeks. Christy could no longer remember the words he’d blurted out in anger and near-hysterical desperation, but he would never forget how Geoffrey had flung himself against his father’s legs and held on like a cocklebur. He was running away from home—he hated his own father and would never go back—he wanted to live at the vicarage with the Morrells. The vicar had finally pried his clinging fingers away and taken him into his study, shutting the door behind them. Christy had lurked in the hall, quaking with fear and excitement. Eventually his mother had gone into the study, too; from the staircase, he’d strained to hear their low voices. Even now he could clearly recall the pattern of the old floral wallpaper at the bottom of the steps, the muddy trail of water Geoffrey’s boots had left on the oak floor; but exactly what else had happened on that rainy night was lost from memory.

At any rate, Geoffrey hadn’t come to live with them. And he’d changed after that. In the nine years that remained of their friendship, Christy had never seen him cry again.

“Listen, Christy, will you take care of Anne for me?”

“Take care of her?” he repeated stupidly. “But you’ll be back.”

“Whether I’m back or not, watch out for her, will you? She’s better off without me in any case, and Holyoake’s as solid as they come as far as advice and all that. But . . . she’ll be lonely. I’ve left her before, God knows, but never in the hands of anyone I could trust. Will you look after her?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Good.” He turned brisk. “Last request. Considering what happened before, you might want to say no to this, and I’ll understand if you do.”

“What is it?”

“Give Devil a run every once in a while. There’s no one else I’d ask but you.”

Christy looked at him for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. After a couple of sheepish seconds, Geoffrey joined him. When they sobered, he said, “You’re a great friend, Christy. It’s not just any man I’d entrust my wife
and
my horse to.”

“The honor’s overwhelming.” He watched Geoffrey saunter down the flagstone path to the street. “I’ll see you before you go,” he called, and Geoffrey waved in assent. “Give my regards to your wife
and
your horse!”

16 June

I hardly ever dream anymore, I don’t know why. Tonight I did, though, and it woke me up. I was walking through a tall thicket of brake fern, the clear green fronds as high as my shoulders. I came to a gate leading into a meadow full of flowers. A man began to walk beside me, and his boots were golden bronze from the yellow pollen of buttercups. I don’t know who he was, though in the dream I think I knew. After a while it wasn’t a meadow anymore, it had become the hayfield Marcus Timms works as a tenant for Lynton Hall Farm, and all around us men were threshing and winnowing the wheat. We wanted to run, but the man kept my hand and we went at a slow, casual pace, always heading toward a tall hayrick at the edge of the field.

Here the dream stopped and started, stopped and started, repeating endlessly until I was nearly wild with impatience—for I knew when we got to the hayrick we would come together—make love. Someone stopped us, William Holyoake, I think, and we had to talk and talk about the harvest and the work, and some convoluted business about how much pay the itinerant workers should receive versus the parish regulars who live on the land. By now I was half-awake and forcing the dream to continue—and, as is the way of these things, it lost its innocence. But not its urgency. At last we reached our hayrick, my mysterious lover and I, and we clung to each other in the stalky, dusty pile, rolling and rolling. Our clothes disappeared. I was nothing but longing and need, I wanted him to fill me, come inside me, I wanted us to merge. It was unbearable. My own yearning jolted me completely awake, no going back this time, no forcing the conclusion. I lay in a damp tangle of sheet and nightgown, seething and boiling, actually weeping a little from the frustration.

Who was the man, I wonder? Perhaps he was no one, merely a symbol of men in general, without whom I seem to have lived my whole life, even when I’ve lived in men’s houses. I suppose dreams like this are natural for women, not too alarming. I’m not very old, after all, and I haven’t enjoyed marital relations in four years. Not since my short-lived “honeymoon.” If I lived in Italy still, perhaps I would take a lover. Here, such a thing seems unthinkably
outre
, even bizarre. Well, well, then I shall have to find something else to do with myself.

21 June

Nearly a month, and no word yet from Geoffrey. But that’s nothing new. I’d thought he might scribble one of his illegible notes to Christy Morrell if not to me, but the reverend says he’s received nothing. I had to look at the globe in old D’Aubrey’s musty library to learn where Varna is: in Bulgaria, on the Black Sea. To the northeast is an island—or perhaps a peninsula, I can’t be sure; the pockmarked globe is as old as the books, i.e., prehistoric—called Crimea, where Geoffrey expects the real fighting to occur. I read the newspapers to keep up. Quiet old England turns out to be a shade bloodthirsty: everyone is dying for a good old-fashioned war again, which they haven’t had since Waterloo. The enemy seems to have been picked almost at random, as far as I can tell. The residents of Wyckerley are puzzled but proud of their new viscount for going off to keep Turkey safe from Russian encroachment (a murky and remote motive to me, but perhaps I don’t understand politics) and never fail to ask me what news I’ve had from my husband. I say the mails are unreliable, which is certainly true, and change the subject.