Missing Joseph

village like Winslough poisoning and accidental constituted a sure invitation to gossip and an indisputable contradiction in terms. So Polly had stayed in her place at the vicarage, arriving at half past seven each morning, expecting, hoping day after day, that the case would reopen and that Colin would return.

Wearily, she dropped onto one of the kitchen chairs and eased her feet into the work boots she’d left early that morning on the growing pile of newspapers. No one had thought to cancel Mr. Sage’s subscriptions yet. She’d been too caught up with thinking of Colin to do so herself. She’d do it tomorrow, she decided. It would be a reason to return once more.

When she closed the front door, she spent a few moments on the vicarage steps to loosen her hair from the scarf that bound it. Freed, it crinkled like rusty steel wool round her face, and the night breeze shifted it the length of her back. She folded the scarf into a triangle, making sure the words Rita Read Me Like A Book In Blackpool! were hidden from view. She put it over her head and knotted its ends beneath her chin. Thus restrained, her hair scratched her cheeks and her neck. She knew it couldn’t possibly look attractive, but at least it wouldn’t fly about her head and catch in her mouth as she made the walk home. Besides, stopping on the steps beneath the porch light, which she always left burning once the sun went down, gave her the opportunity for an unimpeded look at the house next door. If the lights were on, if his car was in the drive…

Neither was the case. As she trudged across the gravel and plunged into the road, Polly wondered what she would have done had Colin Shepherd actually been at home this evening.

Knock on the door?

Yes? Oh, hullo. What is it, Polly?

Press her thumb against the bell?

Is there something wrong?

Cup her eyes to the windows?

Are you needing the police?

Walk direct in and start up talking and pray that Colin would talk as well?

I don’t understand what you want with me, Polly.

She buttoned her coat beneath her chin and blew grey steamy breath on her hands. The temperature was falling. It had to be less than five degrees. There’d be ice on the roads and sleet if it rained. If he didn’t drive careful coming round a curve, he’d lose control of the car. Perhaps she’d come upon him. She’d be the only one near enough to help. She’d cradle his head in her lap and press her hand to his brow and brush his hair back and keep him warm. Colin.

“He’ll be back to you, Polly,” Mr. Sage had said just three nights before his death. “You stand firm and be here for him. Be ready to listen. He’s going to need you in his life. Perhaps sooner than you think.”

But all of that was nothing more than Christian mumbo-jumbo, reflecting the most futile of Church beliefs. If one prayed long enough, there was a God who listened, who evaluated requests, who stroked a long white beard, looked thoughtful, and said, “Yesssss. I see,” and fulfilled one’s dreams.

It was a load of rubbish.

Polly headed south, out of the village, walking on the verge of the Clitheroe Road. The going was rough. The path was muddy and clogged with dead leaves. She could hear the squish of her footsteps over the wind that creaked above her in the trees.

Across the street, the church was dark. There would be no evensong till they got a new vicar. The Church Council had been interviewing for the past two weeks, but there seemed to be a scarcity of priests who wanted to take up life in a country village. No bright lights and no big city seemed to equate with no souls needing to be saved, which was hardly the case. There was plenty of scope for salvation in Winslough. Mr. Sage had been quick to see that, especially — and perhaps most of all — in Polly herself.

For she was a long time, long ago sinner. Skyclad in the cold of winter, in the balmy nights of summer, in the spring and fall, she had cast the circle. She had faced the altar north. Placing the candles at the circle’s four gates and using the water, the salt, and the herbs, she created a holy, magical cosmos from which she could pray. All the elements were there: the water, the air, the fire, the earth. The cord snaked round her thigh. The wand felt strong and sure in her hand. She used cloves for the incense and laurel for the wood and she gave herself — heart and soul, she declared — to the Rite of the Sun. For health and vitality. Praying for hope where the doctors had said there was none. Asking for healing when all they promised was morphine for the pain until death finally closed all.

Lit by the candles and the burning laurel’s flame, she had chanted the petition to Those whose presence she had earnestly invoked:

Annie’s health restor-ed be. God and Goddess grant my plea.

And she had told herself — convinced herself utterly — that her every intention was wholesome and pure. She prayed for Annie, her friend from childhood, sweet Annie Shepherd, darling Colin’s own wife. But only the spotless could call upon the Goddess and expect response. The magic of those who made the petition had to be pure.

Impulsively, Polly traced her steps back to the church and entered the graveyard. It was as black as the inside of the Horned God’s mouth, but she needed no light to show her the way. Nor did she need it to read the stone. ANNE ALICE SHEPHERD. And beneath it the dates and the words Dearest Wife. There was nothing more and nothing fancy, for more and fancy were not Colin’s way.

“Oh Annie,” Polly said to the stone that stood in the even deeper shadows where the wall of the yard skirted round a thick-branched chestnut tree. “It’s come upon me three-fold like the Rede says it would. But I swear to you, Annie, I never meant you harm.”

Yet even as she swore, the doubts were upon her. Like a plague of locusts, they laid her conscience bare. They exposed the worst of what she had been, a woman who wanted someone’s husband for her own.

“You did what you could, Polly,” Mr. Sage had told her, covering her hand with his own large mitt. “No one can truly pray away cancer. One can pray that the doctors have the wisdom to help. Or that the patient develops the strength to endure. Or that the family learns to cope with the sorrow. But the disease itself…No, dear Polly, one can’t pray away that.”

The vicar had meant well, but he didn’t really know her. He wasn’t the sort who could comprehend her sins. There was no absolution saying go in peace for what she had longed for in the foulest part of her heart.

Now she paid the three-fold price of having invited upon herself the wrath of the Gods. But it wasn’t cancer that they sent to affl ict her. It was a finer vengeance than Hammurabi could ever have wrought.

“I’d trade places with you, Annie,” Polly whispered. “I would. I would.”

“Polly?” A low, disembodied whisper in return.

She jumped back from the grave, her hand at her mouth. A rush of blood beat against her eyes.

“Polly? Is that you?”

Footsteps crunched just beyond the wall, gumboots snapping on the icy dead leaves that lay on the ground. She saw him then, a shadow among shadows. She smelled the pipe smoke that clung to his clothes.

“Brendan?” She didn’t need to wait for confirmation. What little light there was shone itself on Brendan Power’s beak of a nose. No one else in Winslough had a profile to match it. “What’re you doing out here?”

He seemed to read in the question an implicit and unintended invitation. He vaulted the wall. She stepped away. He approached her eagerly. She could see he held his pipe in his hand.

“I’ve been out to the Hall.” He tapped the pipebowl against Annie’s gravestone, dislodging burnt tobacco like ebony freckles on the frozen skin of the grave. He appeared to realise the impropriety of what he had done in the very next instant, because he said, “Oh. Damn. Sorry,” and he squatted and brushed the tobacco away. He stood, buried the pipe in his pocket, and shuffled his feet. “I was walking back to the village on the footpath. I saw someone in the graveyard, and I—” He lowered his head and seemed to be studying the barely discernible tops of his black gumboots. “I hoped it was you, Polly.”

“How’s your wife?” she asked.

He raised his head. “The renovation at the Hall’s been tampered with again. A bathroom tap left on. Some carpet’s got ruined. Rebecca’s worked herself into a state.”

“Understandable, isn’t it?” Polly said. “She wants a home of her own. It can’t be easy, living at her mum and dad’s, with a baby on the way.”