stored the communion wine and a few of the church valuables. It was always kept locked.
'Ah, now, Catherine, this is a latter-day misnomer. The records show that it was specifically constructed as emergency overnight accommodation for priests. Did you know, for instance, that in 1835 the snow was so thick that the Bishop himself, on a pastoral visit, was stranded in Bridelow for over two weeks? When he was offered accommodation at the inn he insisted he should remain here because, he said, he might never have a better chance to be as close to God.'
'Sort of thing a bishop would say,' said Cathy.
'Ah, yes, but…'
'And then he'd lock himself in and get quietly pissed on the communion wine.'
Avoiding her father's pain-soaked eyes, but happy to stare blandly into Joel Beard's disapproving ones, Cathy thought, I really don't know why 1 say things like that. It must be you, Joel, God's yobbo; you bring out the sacrilegious in us all. The digital wall-clock in the admin office at the Field Centre said 14.46.
'Er…' Alice murmured casually into the filing cabinet 'as it's Friday and Dr Hall's not likely to be back from that funeral and there's not much happening, I thought I might…'
'No chance,' Chrissie snapped. 'Forget it.'
Alice's head rose ostrich-like from the files. 'Well…!' she said, deeply huffed.
Done it now, Chrissie thought. Well, bollocks, she's had it coming for a long time. 'I'm sorry, Alice,' she said formally, 'but I don't think, for security reasons, that I should be left alone here after dark.'
Alice sniffed. 'Never said that before.'
'All right, I know the college is only a hundred yards away and someone could probably hear me scream, but that's not really the point. There are important papers here and… and petty cash, too.'
She'd caught one of the research students in here when she returned from lunch. The youth had been messing about in one of the cupboards and was unpleasantly cocky when she informed him that he was supposed to have permission.
'Nothing to do with him, of course.' Alice smirked. 'Because you're not silly like that, are you?'
'I beg your pardon?'
'Him! In there. The one with no… personal bits.'
'Don't be ridiculous,' Chrissie mumbled, head down so that Alice would not see her blush. How stupid she'd been the other night, thinking…
'It was just a thought,' Alice said. She opened the bottom drawer of the smallest filing cabinet and brought out her make-up bag.
… when obviously it couldn't have been… what you thought. You were just more frightened than you cared to admit, going in there on your own…
'Going anywhere tonight?'
… it was just the way the thing was lying, and the projecting… item was just some sort of probe or peg to hold it together…
'What? Sorry, Alice…'
'I said, are you going anywhere tonight?'
'Oh, I thought I'd have a night in,' Chrissie said. 'Watch a bit of telly.'
She didn't move. She was still aching from last night. Roger had taken her to dinner at a small, dark restaurant she'd never noticed before, in Buxton. And then, because his wife was on nights, had accompanied her back to her bungalow.
Roger's eyes had been crinkly – and glittering.
His 'stress', as experienced at the motel, had obviously not been a long-term problem. Gosh, no…
'I wonder,' Alice said, 'if Mrs Hall will be with him at the funeral.'
'I think he likes to keep different areas of his life separate,' Chrissie said carefully. Lottie said, shaking out her black gloves, 'To be quite honest, I wish he was being cremated.'
Dic didn't say anything. He'd been looking uncomfortable since the undertakers had arrived with Matt's coffin. For some reason, they'd turned up a clear hour and a quarter before the funeral.
'I don't like graves,' Lottie said, talking for the sake of talking. 'I don't like everybody standing around a hole in the ground, and you all walk away and they discreetly fill in the earth when you've gone. I'd rather close my eyes in a crematorium and when I open them again, it's vanished. And I don't like all the flowers lying out there until they shrivel up and die too or you take them away, and what do you do with them?'
Dic, black-suited, glaring moodily out of the window, his hands in his hip-pockets. Lottie just carried on talking, far too quickly.
'And also, you see, in a normal situation, what happens is the funeral cars arrive, and they all park outside the house, with the hearse in front, and all the relatives pile in and the procession moves off to the church.'
'Would've been daft,' Dic said, 'when it's not even two minutes' walk.'
'Which means… I mean, in the normal way, it means the coffin doesn't leave the back of the hearse until it reaches the church door. Not like this… it's quite ridiculous in this day and age.'
The two of them standing alone in the pub's lofty back kitchen.
Alone except for Matt's coffin, dark pine, occupying the full length of the refectory table.
'But I mean, what on earth was I supposed to say to them?' Lottie said. 'You're early – go and drive him around the reservoirs for an hour?'
The relatives would be here soon, some from quite a distance, some with young children.
'I keep thinking,' Dic said, his voice all dried up, 'that I ought to have a last look at him. Pay my respects.'
'You had your chance,' Lottie said, more severely than she meant to. 'When he was in the funeral home. You didn't want to go.'
'I couldn't.'
Her voice softened. 'Well, now's not the time. Don't worry. That's not your dad, that poor shell of a thing in there. That's not how he'd want you to remember him.'
God, she thought, with a bitter smile, but I'm coping well with this.
Of course, half the Mothers' Union had been round, offering to help with the preparations and the tea and the buffet. And she'd said, very politely, No. No, thank you. It's very kind of you, but I can look after my own. And the old dears had shaken their heads. Well, what else could they expect of somebody who'd turn down Ma Wagstaff's patent herbal sedative…
Yes. She was coping.
Then Dic shattered everything. He said, 'Mum, I've got to know. What happened with that nurse?
Lottie dropped a glove.
'At the hospital. The night he died.'
'Who told you about that?' Picking up the glove, pulling it on, and the other one.
'Oh, Mum, everybody knows about it.'
'No, they don't,' she snapped.
'They might not here, but it was all round the Infirmary.
Jeff's girlfriend knew, who's on Admissions in Casualty.'
'They've got no damn right to gossip about that kind of thing!'
Dic squirmed.
'God, you choose your bloody times, my lad.'
'I'm sorry, Mum.'
'Not as if she was hurt. She had a shock, that was all. He didn't know where he was. He was drugged up to the eyeballs. She was a young nurse, too inexperienced to be on a ward like that, but you know the way hospitals are now.'
'They said he attacked her.'
'He didn't attack her. God almighty, a dying man, a man literally on his last legs…?'
Dic said, unwilling to let it go, 'They said he called her, this nurse, they said he called her… Moira.'
Lottie put her gloved hands on the pine box, about where Matt's head would be, as if she could smooth his hair through the wood, say, Look, it's OK, really, I understand.
'Leave it, will you, Dic,' she said very quietly. 'Just leave it.'
