The Fabric of Sin

were put off. This one, definitely.

You often heard clergy wives talking like this, their scepticism deepened by living day-to-day with a so-called Man of God, all his doubts, all his weaknesses and failings.

‘Teddy know you don’t believe in God?’

‘We’ve never talked about it. He doesn’t care one way or the other. I was a good source of money when he needed some. Big house to sell. Silly me. When I think back, I thought I was playing him, like a fish on a hook.’ Beverley drank some coffee. ‘He was playing me. I didn’t see it. He can be so charming. And needy, in this selfless, stoical, noble way. I bet you saw through it right away. I bet you’ve been mauled by the best.’

‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘Actually … no.’

‘He didn’t make a move on you?’

Merrily looked into Mrs Murray’s flushed face. Maybe this was paranoia, after all.

‘Silly of me. Of course, he wouldn’t with you. He wants you out of here, done and dusted, quick as possible. When you left the other morning, he laughed. Women in deliverance, he said, that was never going to work.’

‘He said that?’

‘I watch, you know. I’ve been watching for some time. Thinking why are we here on this bleak bloody hillside? Why do we stay here? We have no real friends, no roots. At least, I don’t.’

‘He has?’

‘He’s found something. It’s like he owns the place, now. Comes in from his walk, it’s like he’s had sex. Actually …’ Short, bleak laugh ‘… I’m sure he has, sometimes.’

‘Beverley …?’

‘Sometimes we get lone women staying here. Of a certain age — divorced, bereaved — here to come to terms with something. And he’ll take them out for a walk. Talk to them in his vicarly fashion. Balm for the soul. They’ll go out for walks together. Balm for the soul, balm for the body. He ministers to them.’

‘You really think that? Where would he take them?’

‘In the grass, in the woods. I don’t know where he takes them. It’s therapy, isn’t it?’

‘So when … when you talked about going with him if he ever went to get treatment from Mrs Morningwood —’

‘Very sexy woman, isn’t she, for her age? Not like me.’

‘Beverley, you’re—’

‘Goes through periods when he hardly looks at me. Hardly seems to know I’m there. We even have separate bedrooms when there are no guests. Oh certainly, if it helps you get a better night’s sleep, Bevvie …’

Beverley looked away, out of the window. Almost dark now.

‘Other times — phases — he becomes almost frighteningly demanding. Rough. Animal. Well, I was quite flattered at first. This gentle, diffident clergyman. As if it was me bringing something out. I’ve never been very … you know. Men found me passably attractive, but not …’

A wind was rising, leaves blown against the glass.

‘And then, you see … at some point …’ Beverley swallowed too much coffee, choked, slapped her chest hard. ‘Don’t know how it took me so long to notice. Me with my genteel, suburban … At some point, after we’d been here a while, it became obvious that at … at those times … it wasn’t anything to do with me. Wasn’t me at all. Sometimes, I’d see his eyes above me in the moonlight. His wild, enchanting blue eyes. Wide open. And somewhere else.’

Merrily looked into Beverley’s eyes and saw loneliness.

Thinking back to Beverley begging her not to involve Teddy in whatever she was planning for the Master House. Not taking it in as well as she might have, self-pity taking over instead.

She’d been ill that night, and desperately tired. Missing the whole point. It wasn’t Teddy who was overstressed, vulnerable …

His workload was becoming ridiculous, poor man. Four large parishes in Gloucestershire, and the phone never seemed to stop ringing.

Didn’t tally with the man she’d first met in the shadow of Garway Church who’d said he’d never been a particularly pastoral sort of chap. You could get away with a lot in the Church, ignore things. Especially if you were a man. Men were seldom doormats.

‘Beverley … when you said he was playing you like a fish …’

‘Seems all too clear to me now. Although I don’t want to believe it. The implications of it are more disturbing than I can bear to think about for long. I lie in my bedroom and I stare at the ceiling, and I think, you’re wrong … you have to be wrong. It’s all too … elaborate. Machiavellian.’

The final straw … a wave of absolutely awful vandalism … desecration. Gravestones pushed over, defaced, strange symbols chiselled into them. And one night someone broke in and actually defecated in the church, which was horrible, horrible, horrible …

Merrily had begun warming her hands on her coffee cup, the implications forming like a numbness on her skin.

57 The Turning

Half a mile or so out of Garway village, Jane slowed right down: roadside cottage lights up ahead, a row of them curtained by a tingly kind of mist. This place was called The Turning, Mrs Morningwood said. She was winding down her window, annoyed.

‘Rather thought it would still be fully light when we arrived, but you’re a more careful driver than I expected, Jane.’

‘A lot of people have accidents in their first year on the road.’ Jane held the Volvo on the footbrake at The Turning, flattening the clutch. ‘You still want me to go down here, or what?’

‘Don’t think I said anything about going down here, did I?’

‘Well, seeing you nicked the key to the Master House from the rack at home, I just thought …’ Jane turned to her. ‘Like, was it something I said? About the green man or the Baphomet behind the inglenook? You have an idea what that’s about?’

‘I would have liked to see it,’ Mrs Morningwood admitted. ‘I’m not too sure about going now, though.’

‘Would you go if I wasn’t with you?’

‘Possibly. However … Look, Jane, don’t hang around, there’s a vehicle behind you. Keep going.’

‘Right. OK.’

Jane thought, Sod it, turned left into the downhill lane that led to the church, Mrs Morningwood sighing down her nose and mumbling something about thanking God she’d never had a child.

‘You want me to pull in by the church, so we can can follow the footpaths, like we did on—?’

‘No, that would take for ever. There’s a track a few hundred yards further on that leads to within a stone’s throw of the place. Broken white gateposts. Bit rough, but you should be all right, if you go carefully. You have a torch anywhere?’

‘It’s behind the seat at the back. Ah!’

‘Jane, for—!’

A rabbit had appeared up ahead in the dipped headlights, Jane slamming the brakes on, Roscoe falling into the well between the seats, and there was a tortured scream. Not Roscoe, not the rabbit … this was somebody’s brakes right behind them.

The Volvo stalled.