A Finer End

Nick translated the Latin as the words began to form. Deo juvante … With God’s help … you shall make it right.… Did that, he wondered, apply to him as well? Could he somehow set right what he had done?

In that instant, Nick knew why he had come to Glastonbury, and he knew why he had stayed.

Faith Wills rested her forehead against the cool plastic of the toilet seat, panting, her eyes swimming with the tears brought on by retching. She had nothing left to throw up but the lining of her stomach, yet somehow she was going to have to pull herself together, go out, and face the smell of her mother’s breakfast.

It was a bacon-and-egg morning—her mum believed all children should go off to school well fortified for the day. They alternated cooked eggs, or porridge, or brown toast and marmite; and on this Thursday morning in March, Faith had struck the worst possible option.

A whiff of bacon crept into the bathroom. Her stomach heaved treacherously just as her younger brother, Jonathan, pounded on the door. “You think you’re effing Madonna in there or something? Hurry bloody up, Faith!”

Without raising her head, Faith said, “Shut up,” but it came out a whisper.

Then her mother’s voice—“Jonathan, you watch your language,” and the crisp rap of knuckles on the door. “Faith, whatever’s the matter with you? You’re going to be late, and make Jon and Meredith late as well.”

“Coming.” Unsteadily, Faith pushed herself up, flushed the toilet, then blew her nose on a piece of toilet tissue. Easing the door open, she found her mum waiting, hands on hips, and beyond her, Jon, and her sister, Meredith, all three faces set in varying degrees of irritation. “What is this, a committee?” she asked, trying for a bit of attitude.

Her mother ignored her, taking her chin in firm fingers and turning her face towards the wan light filtering in from the sitting room. “You’re white as a sheet,” she pronounced. “Are you ill?”

Faith swallowed convulsively against the kitchen smells, then managed to croak, “I’m okay. Just exam nerves.”

Her dad emerged from the bedroom, tying his tie. “How many times have I told you not to leave studying until the last minute? And you know how important your GCSEs—”

“Just let me get my books, okay?”

“Don’t take that tone with me, young lady.” Her dad jerked tight the knot of his tie and reached for her. His fingertips dug into the flesh of her bare arm.

“Sorry,” Faith mumbled, not meeting his eyes. Tugging free, she escaped to the room she shared with her sister and, once inside, leaned against the door, praying for a moment’s peace before Meredith came back. It was a child’s room, she thought, seeing it suddenly anew. The walls were covered with posters of rock stars, the twin beds with bedraggled stuffed animals. Her hockey uniform spilled from her satchel; the sheets of music for that afternoon’s choir practice lay scattered on the floor. All things that had mattered so much to her—all utterly meaningless now.

She wouldn’t be fine, she realized, closing her eyes against the tide of despair that swept over her. Nothing would ever be fine again.

And she couldn’t tell her parents. In her mother’s perfect world, seventeen-year-olds didn’t start the day with their heads in the toilet, and her dad—well, she couldn’t think about that.

She had promised never to tell, and that was all that mattered.

Faith hugged herself, pressing her arms against the new and painful swelling of her breasts. Never, never, never. The word became a litany as she swayed gently.

Ever.

CHAPTER TWO

Glastonbury is the one great religious foundation of our British forefathers in England which has survived without a break the period of successive conquests of Saxon and Norseman, and its august history carries us back to the time of the earliest Christian settlement in Britain.

— FREDERICK BLIGH BOND,

FROM AN ARCHITECTURAL HANDBOOK

OF GLASTONBURY ABBEY

ON A SOFT evening in late June, Gemma James stood beside Duncan Kincaid in the pew of St. John’s Church, Hampstead. They had come to hear Kincaid’s neighbor, Major Keith, sing in the choir at St. John’s Evensong service.

Brought up in the spare tradition of Methodist chapel, Gemma had not learned to feel at ease in the Anglican Church. She watched Kincaid closely, standing when he stood, kneeling awkwardly when he knelt, and envying the ease with which he made his responses. Her mum would be horrified to see her here, she thought with a small smile; but Gemma was used to her mother’s dismay, given her choice of career.

The music, however, made up for her discomfort with the order of service. Gemma avidly followed the program in her leaflet: first the lovely opening prayer, then a Psalm, then the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis.

Then, with a rustle of movement, the choir rose again and began to sing, the voices coming in one after another, each more joyous than the last. The sound struck Gemma with a force almost physical; so rich was it, so full, that it seemed as if it displaced the very air. She shivered, blinking back tears.

Kincaid glanced at her, eyebrow raised, and put his arm round her shoulders. “Cold?” he mouthed.

Shaking her head, she found the piece in her leaflet. Ave Maria, by Robert Parsons. Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, read the English translation.

Gemma closed her eyes, letting the soaring, pulsing sound carry her with it, and the rest of the service passed as if in a dream.

“You all right?” Kincaid asked as they filed out afterwards. The sun, low in the sky, cast the gnarled trees in the sloping churchyard into deep shadow.

“The music …”

“Lovely, wasn’t it? Good choir at St. John’s.” He whistled under his breath. “I promised the Major we’d buy him a drink. The Freemason’s Arms, you think? It’s a nice enough evening to sit outside.”