The Reaper

brewed his own beer and supplied the pub. Believe it or not, tithes were still being paid in those days. Each year at harvest time, good old Waldo gave a tithe dinner at the rectory, a jolly for the whole village.'

'With beer?'

'His home brew. It was a real bender. And a midnight firework display. Said he waited all year to hear the ladies crying 'Ooh!' and 'Ah!' as the rockets went up.'

She giggled. 'You made that up.'

'No, Waldo said it. Pre-Freud and quite innocent, I'm sure. He never married.'

She didn't know what to say.

'Anyway,' Otis Joy added smoothly, 'he wouldn't have wished this on you.'

She said Waldo Wallace sounded a sweetie.

'Oh, sure. But on the other hand,' he said, 'we all get our kicks some way. If Waldo liked to hear the ladies going 'Ooh!' and 'Ah!' maybe he had something to do with you tripping over his grave.'

'All he heard from me was 'Ouch!' I hope I said nothing worse.'

'He must have heard some ripe Anglo-Saxon in his time. We clergymen do, you know.'

'Not from a woman, surely? Waldo was never married, you said.'

'He would have had a housekeeper, and I bet she dropped a plate occasionally and said something stronger than 'Oh, my word.''

Rachel was called for the X-ray. There would be a further wait while they processed it and showed it to a doctor. She was feeling guilty about taking so much of the rector's time on a Sunday.

'Don't you have Evening Service soon?' she asked when she returned to the waiting area.

He looked at his watch. 'Oceans of time.'

'It must be hard, trying to find space for your own life.'

'This is my own life,' he said. 'I don't think of it as a job. True, there are fixed points in the week, services, PCC meetings, choir practice, and so on, but I make time for other things when I feel the need. Wouldn't be much use to anyone if I never relaxed.'

'So what do you do?'

'In my spare time? Fresh air and exercise. I like to get out. Music.'

'What sort? Classical?'

'Catatonia.'

'You're kidding?'

'There's some very good bands about these days.'

'I'm surprised.'

'I grew up with pop. Didn't you?'

'I thought you were going to say Mozart.'

'Can't fault him, but I hear a lot of solemn music in church. Give me something with a heavy beat and grunge guitars.'

'My husband thinks it's cool to listen to jazz, Benny Goodman and stuff. To me it's more dated than Beethoven.' She felt a small stab of conscience for knocking Gary (not to say Beethoven), but it didn't trouble her much because she also felt the hurt of the proposed New Orleans trip. 'His jazz crowd like warm beer and late nights.'

He grinned. 'Thick, floppy sweaters.'

'Old jeans and sandals. And cigarettes. Not many women go for jazz, unless they sing with a band.'

'How does a jazz musician wind up with a million pounds?' he asked suddenly.

'I don't know.'

'By starting off with two million.'

She was called to see an orthopaedic specialist. The X-ray showed she had a fracture above the wrist, a common injury known as a Colles' fracture, the doctor explained. The lower end of the radius had broken off and displaced backwards. There was damage to a ligament, but this was normal. It would require some manipulation.

Forty minutes later, she came back with her forearm encased in gleaming white plaster. 'What do you think?'

'I think you should get straight on the phone to your lawyers,' he said. 'Sue the Church of England. Take them to the cleaners. They're not short of a few bob.'

'You'll get the sack, talking like that,' she told him, speaking with a freedom she wouldn't have dared to employ an hour ago.

'I'm a disgrace.'

On the drive back to Foxford, she said, 'You've been so kind. I don't deserve such treatment.'

'Why not?'

'Well, I'm surprised you talk to me at all after that time I knocked at your door and you were only half- dressed.'

'Less than half,' he said, and she thought, Oh my God, why did I bring this up?

But he was amazingly untroubled. 'It reminds me of the vicar who called on one of his parishioners and got no answer, so he took out his visiting card and wrote on the back, Revelation, 3, 20. When the lady checked the verse she found: 'Behold I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him, and will sup with him, and he with me.' On the following Sunday the lady in question dropped a card of her own into the collection plate. It read: Genesis, 3, 10. And when the vicar checked, he found: 'I heard thy voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.' '

Relaxed again, Rachel said, 'Well, after that, I'd better make it clear I can't offer you supper, but I hope you'll come in for coffee when we reach my house.'

He wouldn't this time, he said, and she understood why, considering it was his busiest day.

'One day in the week?' she said, and boldly added, 'After all, we do have some unfinished business.'

'What's that?'

'Whatever it was you asked me to wait and see you about after church.'

'Oh,' he said. 'Slipped my mind. Just an idea. In view of the accident, it may have to wait.'

Next morning she received a spray of pink, yellow and white carnations. The message inside read, 'Sorry about the break. Get well soon. Love Waldo.'

'Who the hell is Waldo?' demanded Gary.

She was tempted to say he was someone she'd fallen for, but Gary wouldn't see the humour in it. Already he was suffering hardships because she couldn't use the arm properly to make breakfast. Any sympathy had been short-lived. So she explained whose grave she had fallen over and said the flowers were obviously a joke.

'Bloody expensive joke,' said Gary. 'Some people have more money than sense.'

Four

The treasurer of the Parish Church Council was Stanley Burrows, a retired headmaster. He had taken early retirement at fifty-six, when Warminster reorganised its education system and created a Sixth Form College (a disaster, in Stanley's eyes). He was now approaching his seventy-fifth birthday. Overweight and inclined to wheeze after getting off his knees in church, Stanley was a sober, honest and God-fearing man, treasurer to the last three rectors. Each year he reminded the PCC of his age and suggested a younger person might be willing to take over, but no one else did anything about it. The feeling in the parish was that while Stanley Was up to the job he should continue. Why not, when the accounts were always up to date and never questioned by the auditor? The diocesan quota was paid by standing order. The verger, the cleaner and the organist received their cheques. The rector was given his expenses. Stanley had an excellent relationship with Joy, who urged him not even to dream of giving up.

'But it doesn't give me the satisfaction it used to,' Stanley confided this year. 'It's more and more difficult to