Having followed directions to the lavatory (and found it, and used it), I then followed directions on how to flush it. These were handwritten, and gummed up on the flaking ballcock: ‘Pull the chain very slowly downwards, sustain your grip on it’s handle, wait at least a minute, then release. Then tug it sharply. Repeat ‘til sucess is your’s!’
I rinsed my hands under the arctic trickle of the basin, dried them with Bronco toilet paper, and retraced my steps, past gumboots, detergents, groundsheets, a broken hockey stick, a child-scale tin bathtub, a stringless tennis racket…
‘…no Jews or Muslims or Buddhists,’ said Phoebe, trailing off.
‘It seems, Dallen,’ said Father Gabriel with amused regret, ‘that “ecumenicism”, among the young, has come to stand for a kind of metaphysical BYOB. Whereas all it’s ever meant, my dear Phoebe, is good relations between Christians. To avoid such setbacks as for example the Thirty Years War. Gustavus Adolphus…’
As he talked on I marked him, I tried to grade him, the very white whites of his clean blue eyes, his full, lineless, and studiously barbered face (Sir Graeme, hunched over at his side, seemed physically benighted, almost medieval, with his craters and orbits and the divots sprouting from his ears and nostrils)…Also, Father Gabriel was the only ecclesiarch I’d ever come across who had no twinkliness in him, no unconscious theatricality, no offered excuse for his lifelong commitment to something so elaborate and so flimsy (and so intellectually null)…The outward man was worldly, serious, decided, intent.
‘Now Grae,’ he said, ‘before I go, which I must, I want to help you through the uh, the purely formal aspect of our gathering here today. Forgive me, but Romans are such ninnies when it comes to their daughters’ care. And I –’
‘It’s all right!’ cried Sir Graeme, wagging an agitated finger while he chewed and swallowed. ‘I trust him! It’s all right!’
‘You trust him – that’s good. But tell us, Martin, is Sir Graeme being…wise?’
‘Uh, yes.’ I sat up and said, as I’d intended to do if it came to it (but now feeling as coldly fraudulent as I always did whenever I set foot in church). ‘Certainly. It’ll be as if she’s my best friend’s sister. An honourable friend, one I’d be ashamed to sadden. She’s safe with me.’
Father Gabriel said, ‘Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply.’
And Dallen leant forward and said pleadingly, ‘Ah now, and I’m sure he’d be knowing that the girl’s a little frailer than she –’
‘Oh, Mum. Don’t start.’
Father Gabriel rose to his feet. ‘Well I’m off – to visit a woman. And before you set the tongues flapping in the village, she’s a spinster of ninety-three.’ He went around the table, impressing his goodbyes on everyone including me, and saying, ‘Unfortunate word that, spinster. With none of the festive associations of bachelor. She keeps a “spinster pad” in town? A “gay” spinster?’
Phoebe stood and offered her cheek. ‘Well I’m a, I’m a “confirmed” spinster.’
‘I know you are, my dear. I know you are.’
During the hour that remained Sir Graeme finished the gull’s eggs and the potted shrimps and the beef sausages and the huge game pie and the second bottle of claret, and then went and rocked on his heels with his back to the room’s only source of heat. Comfortably muttering to himself, he rocked and twanged away – the one-bar electric fire, the slimline shirt, the shiny old flares.
—————
‘Of course it’s uninhabitable in winter,’ said Phoebe. ‘Really terrifyingly cold.’
‘Why don’t they sell it and get a nice little flat?’
‘Sell it? It’s worthless. Negative equity. Mortgaged to death.’
‘…Who was the first Sir Phelps?’ Placed in the passenger seat (no better for drink than Graeme), Martin thought of the baronets in Trollope. ‘Some soldier or bureaucrat, I suppose, under Queen Victoria…’
‘Rodney Phelps was uh, semi-ennobled in 1661. By Charles II. Sir Rodney’s the only one who ever did a stroke or earnt a bean. His son, Sir Reginald, pissed it away. And all the others inherited nothing but debt.’
‘Has he got any income, your dad?’
‘Yes. He rents out his name for letterheads. Pools firms, casinos. Payday Loans Inc., chairman – Sir Graeme Phelps. Don’t imagine the baronetcy helps. It doesn’t. It’s a deadly secret. He wants people to think he actually got it for something. Services to this or that.’
‘What did Sir Rodney get it for in 1661?’
‘He ran a plantation in Barbados. He got it for services to slavery…Uh, how did you hit it off with Father Gabriel? Did you take to him at all?’
‘Mm, I did, quite. He has a certain, I don’t know, a certain persuasiveness.’
‘Yes. He does.’
Dallen – not long before they left (Phoebe was in the lavatory and making the ballcock honk and bray) – laid her hand on Martin’s arm and said, ‘Phoebe’s sisters, they’re like Grae. They take the world as it comes. Phoe, though, she’s more like myself. It happens sometimes that her mind…it goes away, you know? The dear help her, but it does.’
That was all. And it came just as he was warming to the realisation that for the last span of time (with its encumbrances and its patches of awkward new ground) Phoebe had at no point seemed less than sane.
The night of shame: Foreplay
Morning.
On the day of the night of shame all was innocent. And all would remain innocent – for as long as the light held.
‘Good morrow to you,’ she said, opening her eyes as he brought in her tea. ‘Milk! What’s this?…I hate milk.’
‘No you don’t.’ He assessed her glare, which contained sincere reproach (as if saying, Don’t you even know that about me by now?). ‘Not first thing. It’s in the afternoon you like it black.’
‘…I hate milk. But never mind.’ She drank her tea. ‘Ah, that’s better.’ She lay back. ‘Mart…Give me your hand.’*3
Having woken around nine, they were washed and dressed by ten. They then made their way to Normann’s, the local café. Here he had the still-reliable pleasure
