Missing Joseph

fool enough to marry her. While it was true that she stood to inherit a fortune and she’d already been given that ghoulish monstrosity Cotes Hall in which to retire in connubial ecstasy once the ring was on her finger and the register was signed, Cecily couldn’t imagine how the fortune itself — no matter how great — or the crumbling old Victorian mansion — no matter how distinct its potential for revival — would have induced any man to take on a lifetime of dealing with Rebecca. But now…She recalled her cousin just this morning in the loo, the noise of her retching, the sound of her shrill “Is it going to be like this every goddamned morning?” followed by her mother’s soothing “Rebecca.

Please. We’ve guests in the house.” And then Rebecca’s “I don’t care about them. I don’t care about anything. Don’t touch me. Let me out of here.” A door slammed. Running footsteps pounded along the upstairs passage.

Preggers? Cecily wondered idly at the time as she carefully applied mascara and smoothed on some blusher. She marvelled at the idea that a man might actually have taken Rebecca to bed. Lord, if that was the case, anything was possible. She examined her cousin for telltale signs of the truth.

Rebecca didn’t exactly look like a woman fulfi lled. If she was supposed to blossom with pregnancy, she was adrift somewhere in the prebudding stage, somewhat given to jowls, with eyes the size and shape of marbles and hair permed into a helmet on her head. To her credit, her skin was perfect, and her mouth was rather nice. But somehow, nothing really worked together, and Rebecca always ended up looking as if her individual features were at war with each other.

It wasn’t really her fault, Cecily thought. One ought to have at least a titbit of sympathy for someone so ill- favoured by looks. But every time Cecily tried to dig up one or two empathetic stirrings from her heart, Rebecca did

something to quash them like bugs.

As she was doing now.

Rebecca paced the tiny enclosure below the church bells, furiously twisting her bouquet. The fl oor was filthy, but she did nothing to hold her dress or her train away from it. Her mother did this duty, following her from point A to point B and back again like a faithful dog, with satin and velvet clutched in her hands. Cecily stood to one side, surrounded by two tin pails, a coil of rope, a shovel, a broom, and a pile of rags. An old Hoover leaned against a stack of cartons near her, and she carefully hung her own bouquet from the metal hook that would otherwise have been used to accommodate its cord. She lifted her velvet dress from the floor. The air was fusty in the space beneath the bells, and one couldn’t move in any direction without touching something absolutely black with grime. But at least it was warm.

“I knew something like this would happen.” Rebecca’s hands strangled her bridal fl owers. “It’s not going to come off. And they’re laughing at me, aren’t they? I can hear them laughing.”

Mrs. Townley-Young made a quarter turn as Rebecca did the same, bunching more of the satin train and the bottom of the gown into her arms. “No one’s laughing,” she said. “Don’t worry yourself, darling. There’s simply been some sort of unfortunate mistake. A misunderstanding. Your father will put things right straightaway.”

“How could there be a mistake? We saw Mr. Sage yesterday afternoon. The last thing he said was, ‘See you in the morning.’ And then he forgot? He went off somewhere?”

“Perhaps there’s been an emergency. Someone could be dying. Someone wishing to see—”

“But Brendan held back.” Rebecca stopped pacing. Eyes narrowing, she looked thoughtfully at the west wall of the bell tower, as if she could see through it to the vicarage across the street. “I’d gone to the car and he said he’d forgotten one last thing he’d wanted to ask Mr. Sage. He went back. He went inside. I waited for a minute. Two or three. And—” She whirled, began her pacing again. “He wasn’t talking to Mr. Sage at all. It’s that bitch. That witch! And she’s behind this, Mother. You know she is. By God, I’ll get her.”

Cecily found this an interesting twist in the morning’s events. It held out the tantalising promise of diversion. If she had to endure this day somehow in the name of the family and with one eye fixed on her uncle’s will, she decided she might as well do something to enjoy her act of sufferance. So she said, “Who?”

Mrs. Townley-Young said, “Cecily,” in a pleasant but determined-to-discipline voice.

But Cecily’s question had been enough. “Polly Yarkin.” Rebecca said the name through her teeth. “That miserable little sow at the vicarage.”

“Vicar’s housekeeper?” Cecily asked. This was a twist to be explored at length. Another woman already? All things considered, she couldn’t blame poor old Brendan, but she did think he might have set his sights a bit low. She continued the game. “Gosh, what’s she got to do with anything, Becky?”

“Cecily, dear.” Mrs. Townley-Young’s voice had a less pleasant ring.

“She pushes those dugs into every man’s face and just waits for him to react to the sight,” Rebecca said. “And he wants her. He does. He can’t hide it from me.”

“Brendan loves you, darling,” Mrs. Townley-Young said. “He’s marrying you.”

“He had a drink with her at Crofters Inn last week. Just a quick stop before he headed back to Clitheroe, he said. He didn’t even know she’d be there, he said. He couldn’t exactly pretend he didn’t recognise her, he said. It’s a village, after all. He couldn’t act like she was a stranger.”

“Darling, you’re working yourself up over nothing at all.”

“You think he’s in love with the vicar’s housekeeper?” Cecily asked, widening her eyes to wear the guise of naivete. “But, Becky, then why is he marrying you?”

“Cecily!” her aunt hissed.

“He isn’t marrying me!” Rebecca cried out. “He isn’t marrying anyone! We haven’t got a vicar!”

Beyond them, a hush fell over the church. The organ had stopped playing for a moment, and Rebecca’s words seemed to echo from wall to wall. The organist quickly resumed, choosing “Crown with Love, Lord, This Glad Day.”

“Mercy,” Mrs. Townley-Young breathed.

Sharp footsteps sounded against the stone floor beyond them and a gloved hand shoved the red curtain aside. Rebecca’s father ducked through the gate.

“Nowhere.” He slapped the snow from his coat and shook it from his hat. “Not in the village. Not at the river. Not on the common. Nowhere. I’ll have his job for this.”

His wife reached out to him but didn’t make contact. “St. John, good Lord, what’ll we do? All these people. All that food at the house. And Rebecca’s condi—”

“I know the bloody details. I don’t need reminding.” Townley-Young flipped the curtain to one side and gazed into the church. “We’re going to be the butt of every joke for the next decade.” He looked back at the women, at his daughter particularly. “You got yourself into this, Rebecca, and I damn well ought to let you get yourself out.”

“Daddy!” She said his name as a wail.

“Really, St. John…”

Cecily decided this was the moment to be helpful. Her father would no doubt be rumbling down the aisle to join them at any time — emotional disturbances were a special source of delectation to him — and if that was the case, her own purposes would best be served by demonstrating her ability to be at the forefront of solving a family crisis. He was, after all, still temporising on her request to spend the spring in Crete.

She said, “Perhaps we ought to phone someone, Uncle St. John. There must be another vicar not far.”

“I’ve spoken to the constable,” Townley-Young said.

“But he can’t marry them, St. John,” his wife protested. “We need to get a vicar. We need to have the wedding. The food’s waiting to be eaten. The guests are getting hungry. The—”

“I want Sage,” he said. “I want him here. I want him now. And if I have to drag that low church twit up to the altar myself, I’ll do it.”

“But if he’s been called out somewhere…” Mrs. Townley-Young was clearly trying to sound like the voice of perfect reason.

“He hasn’t. That Yarkin creature caught me up in the village. His bed hadn’t been slept in last night, she said. But his car’s in the garage. So he’s somewhere nearby. And I’ve no doubt at all as to what he’s been up to.”

“The vicar?” Cecily asked, achieving horror while feeling all the delight of an unfolding drama. A shotgun wedding performed by a fornicating vicar, featuring a reluctant bridegroom in love with the vicar’s housekeeper and a frothing bride hellbent on revenge. It was almost worth having to be chief bridesmaid just to be in the know. “No, Uncle St. John. Surely not the vicar. Heavens, what a scandal.”