The Wine of Angels

lunching with your mother was one thing, sharing a table with the Vicar was something else.

‘Yes, I really think I do.’ Mum patted her ridiculous collar with something Jane was horribly afraid could be pride.

She lowered her eyes. Hell, even a real dog collar would look better, one of those with coloured-glass jewels or brass spikes. People of Mum’s generation apparently used to wear them quite a lot during the punk era. She remembered Dad telling her once that Mum, as a teenager, had been a sort of punk. Not exactly the full safety-pin-through-the-nose bit, but certainly cropped hair and black lipstick. Dad talking in a way that suggested he’d been quite turned on by it. Pretty revolting, really. And the music was embarrassingly awful.

‘Going undercover was never a good idea,’ Mum said. ‘Not in the parish. It only leads to embarrassment later.’

Possibly meaning the guy who’d tried to pick her up in this very bar and had turned out to be head of English at Jane’s new school, the smarmball who could be teaching her A-level next year. Which – him being married to the girls’ PE teacher – Jane would not hesitate to use to stitch him up if the oily git should give her any hassle.

It was OK staying at the pub, because you learned things about people. Things you might not find out for ages if you were banged up in the vicarage. Like that TV-playwright guy, Richard Coffey, moving this youngish actor into his house on a fairly permanent basis. The actor was called Stefan Alder and was really succulent totty. Apart from being gay, of course. Or maybe he just hadn’t met the right woman.

So, yeah, it was good at the Black Swan. Swinging off the school bus and strolling coolly into the bar. On the other hand, there was the question of her apartment. Mustn’t let that one slide.

‘So, how long before they finish de-Alfing the rectory?’

‘That’s what I was about to tell you.’

Mum was taking delivery of a couple of ploughmans-wifh-cheddar from the waitress. Don’t do it, Jane pleaded silently. Please don’t say fucking grace ...

‘I meant to say last night.’ Mum speared a piece of celery. (Thank Christ for that.) ‘The rewiring’s complete, they’ve nearly finished work on the kitchen. And yesterday, apparently, they took out that huge electric fire which is so old it breaks every known regulation. According to Uncle Ted, Alf Hayden must have been getting divine protection to have avoided being fried. Anyway the bottom line is, we could be in by next weekend. Good?’

‘Yeah. Could be OK.’

Give her the whole of the summer holidays to get things together, apartment-wise. She had in mind this kind of Mondrian effect for the main room; you could paint the squares inside the timbers in different colours. Ingenious, huh?

It was Uncle Ted, of course, who’d fixed it for them to stay on at the Black Swan, persuading the diocese to fork out for the Woolhope Suite, a bedroom, bathroom and small sitting room with a decent-sized TV. It was still off-season, so Roland, the proprietor, had been amenable to the kind of deal that people like Uncle Ted prided themselves on making.

Uncle Ted was widowed and seemed to have an arrangement with a widowed lady in Church Street. Ledwardine was really quite liberal and sophisticated. Perhaps the country had always been like that.

To Jane’s horror, the local paper had been along, to get a picture of her and Mum outside the pub. Mum had insisted on wearing the clerical clobber, and the photographer had made them both sit on the pub steps, smiling like idiots. B and B Vicar Holds the Fort, it said. Yuk!

Mum’s only objection was to the word vicar. Priest-in-charge was the correct term. It was a temporary thing; apparently there was going to be this big reorganization and Mum could wind up with about four extra churches, making her a kind of flying minister. That was when they’d give her the official title; meantime it was just the one church, which should have been a piece of cake. Would have been to anyone but Mum, who seemed determined to become some kind of spiritual doormat: people cornering her in the pub all the time, emergency meetings of the Church Council, articles to write for the parish magazine (Dear Friends ... yuk!), four trips to Hereford to see parishioners in hospital.

And three funerals inside a fortnight: mega-depressing, or what?

Well, obviously you’d get used to that – be like planting bulbs after a while. Except, if you were Mum, you felt obliged to spend most of a day and a night quizzing relatives and neighbours about what kind of person the prospective interee was prior to being dead. It’s a life, Jane. You can’t just dismiss a life with a handful of cliches and a couple of jam scones in the village hall. She wasn’t even getting bloody overtime. And she was starting to look seriously knackered.

‘Ah. Merrily. Might one perhaps have a word?’

Jane looked up from her lunch. Yeah, she thought. The word is tosser.

‘Sure,’ Mum said. ‘Take a pew.’

‘Thank you.’

Mr Cassidy, of Cassidy’s Country Kitchen – naff, twee, or what? – parked his tight arse, in pristine stonewashed jeans, on the edge of a stool. He held a glass of white wine. He smiled indulgently down.

‘And how are you, Jane?’

‘Getting by.’

‘We really must arrange for you to meet Colette.’

His snotty daughter, who went to the Cathedral School in Hereford. You saw her posing around the square in the evenings. Sixteen (nearly) and sultry. Jane kept her distance.

‘Super,’ she said.

‘Got a problem, Terrence?’ Mum said briskly.

Mrs Fixit. Why didn’t she just tell him to sod off until she’d finished her lunch?

‘No ... No ...’ Cassidy said airily. ‘It’s simply ... Are you doing anything special tonight?’

Is she ever?

‘Depends which part of the night, really, Terrence.’

‘Mum hates to miss Homicide, Life on the Street.’

The vicar frowned at her daughter. Mr Cassidy smiled thinly. Everything about him was thin, which told you all you needed to know about his bloody awful restaurant.

‘This would be about eight,’ he said. ‘It’s an impromptu meeting of the Festival Committee.’

‘Am I on the Festival Committee?’ Mum wondered.

‘Well, Alf Hayden wasn’t. But we rather thought you should have a say. Especially as we were hoping this year to make more use of the church itself in other than musical areas. To be specific: drama.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it’s seen plenty of that in its time.’

‘Quite. In fact, it’s about that ... You see, Richard’s over from London for the weekend ... Richard Coffey.’

‘With his boyfriend?’

‘Shut up, Jane,’ Mum said.

‘As you may have heard,’ Cassidy said, ‘Richard has agreed to write a short play especially for the festival, to illustrate a lesser known aspect of local history.’

‘Gosh,’ Mum said. ‘There’s prestigious.’

‘We originally had in mind something social. Perhaps showing how the trade in high-quality cider was almost irrevocably damaged in the eighteenth century by the growing fashion for French wines.’

‘Yeah, you could invite the Euro-MP—’

‘Jane ...’

Jane retired behind a smirk.

‘However,’ said Cassidy, ‘Richard’s apparently become fascinated by the story of Wil Williams. Which I suppose also has a social aspect, in its way.’

‘Mmm,’ Mum said.

‘Obviously, it’s not something the village nowadays is particularly proud of.’

‘No,’ Mum said. ‘Quite.’

‘Although I suppose it has its tourist possibilities, in a lurid sort of way. Point is, Richard’s drawn certain