Love for the Lost

By Catherine Fox

Isobel Knox is happy and confident in her new job and likes her single life, free as it is from confusing and complicating entanglements. Supressing her emotions and burying painful memories has become second nature to her, but it seems to work; after all, why should letting it all out necessarily be good for you?
But there are two men who could shatter her calm, brittle world: Davy, a young policeman, who, despite Isobel’s distance, falls in love with her, and Johnny Whitaker, a charismatic priest with a troubled marriage. As Isobel’s feelings for Johnny become stronger and deeper, her façade begins to crack, and the memories and emotions of years before come back, overpowering her with feelings she had thought long past and dealt with.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marylebone House
• Release date: Oct 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781910674048

Catherine Fox

Catherine Fox is Academic Director of the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. An established and popular author, her debut novel, Angels and Men (reissued in 2014) was a Sunday Times Pick of the Year. The first in her Lindchester series, Acts and Omissions, was chosen as a Guardian Book of 2014 and two subsequent volumes, Unseen Things Above (2015) and Realms of Glory (2017), were rapturously received. Catherine is married to the Bishop of Sheffield and has a judo black belt.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

When she was ten years old Isobel Knox was put in charge of lost property. If she found some stray item lying about the classroom it was her job to find the owner. One day she came across a pencil-sharpener on the cloakroom floor.

‘Mr Woodford, can I ask the class whose this is?’

The teacher eased himself back in his chair. ‘Go on,’ he invited her.

After a suspicious moment Isobel waved the sharpener and called out in her clear voice: ‘Whose is this?’

‘You mean,’ interrupted the teacher, ‘To whom does this belong?’

Isobel turned and stared at him as though unable to believe she had heard correctly. He was waiting for her to repeat it, but she simply couldn’t.

‘I was never taught to say that.’

‘Don’t get uppity when I’m correcting you!’ roared the teacher suddenly.

Isobel’s mouth fell open. What? What had she done now? It was true! Her mother had been an English teacher. She would have told Isobel if you were meant to say ‘To whom does this belong?’

But Mr Woodford was still bellowing, his big face getting redder and redder. ‘You think you own this class! Queen Isobel! You have to be right all the time, don’t you? Well, nobody’s right all the time, madam! Not even Isobel Knox.’

‘I know,’ said Isobel. Some of the other children were sniggering.

‘And you don’t know everything!’

‘I know I don’t,’ agreed Isobel in desperation. She was gripping the pencil-sharpener so tightly it was digging into her palm. Her own face was burning as hotly as the teacher’s. But she could not bring herself to say those stupid words. ‘To whom!’

‘Does this pencil-sharpener belong to anyone here?’ she tried.

On the way home from school she let herself cry at last. She sat on the stile in the middle of the barley fields and wept at the injustice of it all. Mr Woodford had not accepted her compromise phrasing. He had raged all the louder. She had given up trying to explain. Instead all her efforts went into not crying. If you lifted your chin and stared fiercely up at the ceiling the tears had to drain back into your tear ducts. It was a scientific fact. But he thought she was trying to be insolent and had moved her to a desk on her own away from Tatiana.

‘Well done!’ Tatiana had whispered, when hometime finally came and they were getting their anoraks. ‘You were looking at him as if you really hated him.’

‘I do.’

‘Oh, he’s just a great fat sack of wobblified jellified blubber.’ She gave Isobel’s arm a squeeze. ‘Mr Fatty Jellybelly Blubberbum. I’m glad he couldn’t make you cry.’

Tatiana was her only true friend. She was moving away at the end of term. Mr Woodford knew this. Isobel hated him.

‘We won’t let him spoil our last few weeks,’ Tatiana had promised. ‘We won’t give him the satisfaction.’ They’d cantered across the playground to a new version of the William Tell overture: Blubberbum, blubberbum, blubberbum-bum-bum!

But Tatiana would make lots of new friends in Yorkshire.

And it wasn’t as if Isobel had done anything wrong, even!

One summer afternoon, twenty-three years after the pencil- sharpener incident, Isobel left her vestry and strode through the churchyard. It was too hot for striding, but she needed to get on. She passed the narrow space against the north wall of the church that the sun never reached, where Agnes the anchorite was enclosed in 1329. Isobel had researched thoroughly and discovered that at some point Agnes had left her cell and ‘wandered again in the world, torn to pieces by the Tempter’. Happily, she had repented, and the Bishop, in his mercy, had commanded that she be thrust back into her enclosure and guarded there.

Charming view of God’s grace, thought Isobel. She had no time for medieval piety with its visions of dripping blood and so forth. Thank heaven women could play a full role in church life nowadays. They could take their place at the altar at last, and not be immured in the church wall in homage to some warped idea of femininity. She strode on, a tall, slim figure, slightly androgynous-looking in her mannish trousers and black clerical shirt.

The afternoon was heavy with the scent of lime blossom. The trees rose up in a green wall along the opposite side of the road, raining nectar on the streets and pavements all around. The air throbbed with myriad insect voices in busy rapture among the blossom. Now and then a bee staggered drunk up into the blue. Down below, Asleby-on-Tees lay strung out, long and narrow, between the railway and the meandering river. Beyond it were fields, factories in their fuggy haze, and, low and blue on the horizon, the Cleveland hills.

The anchorite’s cell was an excellent symbol of the Church’s attitude towards women, Isobel decided as she marched home. Brick them up where they can’t get into mischief. But the walls were down now. Isobel was one of the first women who had passed unhindered through theological college into the ministry. She had not endured the heartache of waiting years and seeing wave after wave of her male colleagues enter the priesthood without her. She reminded herself how fortunate she was. Not many people were able to spend their time doing the thing they most enjoyed. Isobel was one of the lucky few. The ordained ministry provided her with everything she needed. There were those who looked at her and thought it a shame that such a good-looking girl should still be single, but she was reconciled. If she was honest, she had never been particularly interested in sex, although a great deal of her twenties had been devoted to the futile search for Mr Right. It was clear now that God had been calling her to celibacy all along.

Isobel raised her hand to lift the hair from the back of her neck. She stopped short and smiled. The heavy coils had gone, of course. Just before her priesting a week earlier she had had all her hair cut off. Thirty-three was a bit old for flowing blonde locks. Everyone had been horrified, as though it were a violation of nature, but she had found it a wonderfully liberating experience. In some curious way it was bound up in her priesting, which had been as momentous as a wedding for her. No bride walking down the aisle could have been filled with purer joy. Let them call it sublimation if they would. Sublime was the word for it – to be the right person in the right job at the right time.

She came to a stop outside her house and took out her car keys. Yes, she was fortunate. There were still plenty of things she must work at, however. The longer one went on in the Christian life the more aware one became of one’s failings. Isobel knew she had an impatient, dismissive streak in her nature. Her daily life was full of sources of irritation. She saw herself as a vigilant gardener, rooting out any seedlings of annoyance the minute they sprouted. Some days she was on top of the job, but on others weeds ripped through the soil until she was a bristling thicket of giant hogweed. But, God willing, these intruders would be finally kept at bay by the hardy perennials of self-control and generosity.

Isobel looked at the gouge on the smart red paint of her car where she had scraped it on the garage door. A great deal of weeding in the spiritual garden had been needed here. So unfair! She was a good driver. On this occasion, however, she had not only misjudged the angle, but a voice in her head had said fatalistically, ‘Oh, well, the damage is done now,’ so instead of stopping and reversing she had continued and scratched the full length of the wing. I’ll have to sort it out before it gets rusty, she reminded herself. The can of red paint accused her from the passenger’s seat.

She got into the broiling car and set off for the supermarket. Shopping was a weekly irritation. Isobel was not a domestic creature, although her obsessive tidiness led everyone to assume she was. But one had to eat. Besides, a friend from theological college was stopping off on his way up to Scotland. Edward was the sort of man who grew restive if not fed and watered at frequent intervals.

Isobel took her usual short-cut along the deserted road, which crossed a patch of industrial wasteground. The landscape shimmered in the haze. Bindweed scrambled untidily over bushes and fences. The acres of dry grass were broken up by clumps of ragwort and rosebay willowherb. Their yellow and pink clashed, and Isobel wondered peevishly why God had ordained that they should grow next to one another. She wound down the window, only to let in hot gusts of Teesside air, thick with the sweet, sickly, chemical smell that hung over the area. Doing goodness knew what damage to everyone’s respiratory systems. She leant forward and unstuck her shirt from her back.

The car rounded a bend. There ahead of her was a source of irritation so large it bordered on outrage. Every time she passed it angered her. Some imbecile had sprayed a message on the disused railway bridge: STAMP OUT AIDS. KILL A PUFF TODAY.

Suddenly Isobel braked. The can of paint shot forward and landed on the floor. She retrieved it, got out of the car and climbed up the grassy bank. Rattle rattle rattle, went the bead angrily, as she shook the can. She pulled off the cap and, reaching up, sprayed a neat line through the word ‘puff’ and wrote ‘poof’ above it.

She experienced a moment of towering satisfaction. Then a police car drove past. It stopped. Reversed. Stopped again. A young officer got out. He was tall, red-haired, and there was a faint swagger in his walk. Isobel’s face blazed. Instinct urged her to toss away the can or pull out her clerical collar, but it was too late. He stopped at the bottom of the bank and beckoned sternly. She was forced to slither down to where he was standing. He put out his hand, for all the world like a physics master confiscating a Jackie magazine. She surrendered the can. Criminal damage, she thought. Magistrates Court. Community Service. Sweat formed on her face. She felt it starting to trickle down her back and between her breasts.

He was waiting for her to meet his eye. Isobel was tall and seldom looked up to any man, but today she had no choice. She saw that he was not only taller but considerably younger than she was. Is something amusing you, Officer? She bit it back. He tilted the can gently backwards and forwards. She heard the bead sliding up and down. Now then, now then, it seemed to say. He looked up at the graffiti. ‘Why did you not cross the whole thing out?’ he asked at last.

‘I – I –’ stuttered Isobel, looking back at the wall aghast. Why hadn’t she?

The policeman was turning and walking away, taking the can with him. She opened her mouth to call him back and justify herself, but he got into his car and drove off.

Isobel sat down abruptly on the scorched grass. She felt like a child again. All through her school career teachers had tried to take her down a peg or two and she’d never been able to work out why. Was this it? She was the sort of person who would correct the spelling on an offensive slogan without challenging the offence itself. People were dying of Aids. Homosexuals were being vilified and witch-hunted. What was a spelling error to this? She was guilty of straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel, as our Lord had said. She had ignored the weightier matters of justice and mercy. In short, she was a Pharisaical hypocrite. By crossing out the whole thing she would have been allying herself with the outcast as any minister of the Gospel should. Even that smirking policeman had seen that. No, she reproved herself. I mustn’t take it out on him. I’m the one in the wrong here.

Isobel sat for a long time on the bank praying. The blond grass waved slightly in the breeze. The sky was rippling with larksong above the occasional clash and grind from the nearby iron foundry. In the end she sighed and got up, dusting off the seat of her smart black trousers. This wasn’t getting the shopping done. She got back into the stifling car and drove to the supermarket.

He’d be here soon. She looked around her house and felt thwarted. It was clean and tidy, but it wasn’t home exactly, and it was never going to be. There was so much about it one would never have chosen. The carpets, for instance, while serviceable, were patterned. And all those acres of woodchipped walls. Better than a frenzy of florals, she kept reminding herself. It was only for three years, in any case. Yet there were still times – now, for instance, when she was viewing the place afresh in anticipation of a visitor – when she was galled by the gulf between her vision of ‘home’ and the space she actually inhabited. Admittedly, Edward never noticed interiors unless something like a low door frame impinged directly on his consciousness.

In her mind’s eye she lived in a calm environment of bleached wood, gleaming chrome and expensive neutral fabrics; but this house did not belong to her and it seemed pointless to waste too much money on improving things. It was worth hanging on till she was in a position to buy a little bolt-hole of her own. This wouldn’t be for a few years, since she didn’t know which part of the country she’d be in next. In the meantime she saved her money, doing without those little treats others indulged in routinely on the grounds that she would one day have the best treat of all: a nice house and money to spend on it. She had good taste, but fretted that someone looking round her dining room wouldn’t discern this. The room contained one or two lovely pieces in a wasteland of busy brown lozenged Axminster.

She laid the table with her white bone-china dinner service. She’d never be able to afford such good quality now on a curate’s stipend. Indeed, it had made quite a hole in her librarian’s salary, but there was no point buying cheap rubbish. Provided one was careful it was an investment. She’d had it four years and there wasn’t a single chip or crack anywhere.

‘Isobel!’ boomed Edward, getting out of his car. ‘Your hair!’

‘Edward!’ responded Isobel. She kissed him crossly on the cheek. ‘What’s wrong with my hair?’

‘Your crowning glory!’ he mourned. ‘What possessed you? It looks awful!’

‘Honestly, Edward, you can be so rude.’ She snatched the bunch of roses he was holding out. ‘Come in.’

He followed her into her house. ‘Gosh, sorry, Iz. It’s just a shock.’

‘A drink?’ she asked threateningly.

‘You could always say it was brain surgery, I suppose,’ he said, as she poured him some wine.

‘I like it.’ She spaced the words out. ‘Behave, or I won’t feed you.’

‘You’re a hard woman, Isobel.’

They settled into their usual routine of mild bickering as she prepared some salad. He had that boisterous public-school masculinity that expanded to fill the space available. She felt crowded by his big voice and bellowing laugh, although she was fond of him in an exasperated way.

Over dinner he began lamenting the number of teenage girls who turned up at his house with spiritual dilemmas for him to resolve.

‘I need a wife to protect me,’ he said. ‘I know, Iz – if we’re both still single when we’re forty, let’s get married.’

‘No. Let’s not, Edward,’ she replied firmly. ‘More wine?’

‘Better not. Shooting up to Bishopside for the night. Thought I’d better pat my godson on the head and all that.’

‘Give Annie and Will my love,’ said Isobel.

‘Certainly shall,’ agreed Edward heartily.

There was a silence. Perhaps they were both remembering how Annie had left theological college pregnant, unmarried, disgraced. When the small quiet ceremony belatedly took place and the happy couple were waved off into wedded bliss, Edward and Isobel had gone for a drink. He had blurted out something like, Well, what could one do, when the girls one fancied skedaddled with one’s oldest friends? It had been a case of mutual chagrin, as it happened, for Isobel had been nursing quite a serious interest in Will. She hadn’t mentioned this to Edward, of course. No point.

They turned to the subject of holidays. Isobel admitted that she had no plans; she had not been able to see beyond her priesting. Edward had been invited by friends to share a gîte in Normandy and wondered whether he might drag Isobel along too.

‘Well,’ began Isobel cautiously. She felt that this invitation followed a little too swiftly on the heels of a proposal of marriage, albeit a jesting one. If there were any hopes burgeoning in Edward’s bosom they needed squashing.

‘Oh, go on, Iz,’ urged Edward, construing her uncharacteristic hesitation as a good sign. ‘The Andersons are super people. Bound to be fun. Loads of cheap plonk, local cider. Masses of culture,’ he added, veering in a new direction as her frown deepened. ‘Norman architecture and whatnot. Come on. Give it a whirl.’

‘Do they have any children?’

‘Oh, a few,’ he said. ‘Three or four.’

‘Four?’

‘Or is it five, actually? But what’s a couple of sprogs here or there? Not our problem.’

‘Hmm,’ said Isobel. ‘I’m not going as an unpaid au pair, you know.’

‘I’m sure they wouldn’t dream! Cordelia’s terribly competent.’

‘Hmm.’

He continued to badger her and in the end she agreed to think it over.

‘Well,’ said Edward, some time later, ‘better make tracks.’

She went with him to his car.

He ruffled her cropped hair. ‘Actually, I think it’s rather sexy in a dykey kind of way.’

‘Well, I might be a dyke, for all you know, Edward,’ she responded, in an effort to jolt him.

‘Nonsense. You’re a damned attractive woman, Isobel.’

Honestly! she thought, as he drove off. Edward was the kind of man who thought there was no such thing as a lesbian, just a woman who hadn’t done one-to-one Bible study with him. She raised a hand and waved pointedly at the house across the street where she knew Kath Bollom, the cleanest housewife on Teesside, would be positioned behind her net curtain. Isobel had offended Kath in week one by dispensing with her services as cleaner. All her predecessors had employed her. But for goodness’ sake! I’m quite capable of tidying up after myself. Privately she regarded paid help as a sign of feebleness, and had been glad to learn that the vicar did his own housework, too.

She went through to her kitchen and stood on the back step with a glass of wine, looking out at the summer night. It was the evening she usually phoned her parents, but she couldn’t face it, for some reason. Why was she feeling so rattled? Was it Edward’s company? That half-acknowledged tug of attraction, despite his utter unsuitability?

Bats were flickering and darting across the rooftops where the last swallows had been hunting an hour before. Isobel could hear the occasional cry of a peacock in the park. ‘Peacocks!’ visitors would cry. ‘You’re so lucky!’ Huh. Sometimes in the mating season the wretched things came and roosted on her roof and spent the night honking and yowling and keeping her awake. She would see them the next morning, strutting up there against the sky, their gaudy tails trailing across the slates.

A spicy wave rose from the honeysuckle that grew along her fence. At some stage she was going to have to prune it back. Long tendrils swung and bowed across the narrow path beside the garage, and she had to swipe them aside every time she wanted to use the back gate. But gardening took time. The previous curate’s wife had kept the garden immaculate, and the neighbours – Kath, in particular – were not backward in making comparisons between Jackie Davenport and Isobel. Just because I’m a woman I’m expected to keep everything perfect! snorted Isobel to herself. She was compared unfavourably with Andy Davenport as well – because she was a woman. But as Harry, the vicar, wisely pointed out, curates always come into favour retrospectively. Andy had been nowhere near as popular when he was actually in the parish.

Isobel smiled. Dear Harry. She was lucky to have a boss she could respect. Not all curates were so fortunate. He treated her as a colleague, not as a pretty woman. Plenty of male clergy were incapable of professional behaviour, felt obliged to compliment her on her appearance or, worse, pat and squeeze her. Harry was never guilty of such offences. He wasn’t even bothered by the fact that she was a full inch taller than him.

Yes, her life was good. God was gracious. She was just beginning to feel content when she remembered the policeman. A sense of her own meanness swept over her again. She shut the door on the perfumed night and went up to bed.

CHAPTER 2

Isobel is helpful and has a keen sense of responsibility. She is always eager to advise other pupils and contribute to class discussion. She is diligent and her work is neat and of a high standard. Her sense of superiority is mellowing and I am sure she will continue to do well when she begins grammar school in September. Mrs J. M. Peck.

Isobel’s mother and father let her read this end-of-year report because that was the liberal Guardian-reading sort of parents they were. Isobel was pleased with it, although she was puzzled by the part about her mellowing sense of superiority.

The year had not been easy. She had missed Tatiana terribly. They wrote to each other every week, but that was small compensation. The other children had always tended to admire rather than like Isobel, and half the time they scarcely did that. She had joined, by default, the group of big, grown-up eleven-year-old girls. It was a sort of loose affiliation of early bra-wearers. They stopped playing elaborate imaginative games and took to loitering in the toilets in sullen groups with their arms folded, talking about boyfriends and pop music. Isobel hated them. She hated bras, she hated boys. She knew nothing about pop music because her family didn’t have a telly. But what could she do? She was one of them. Her body had betrayed her. She had the biggest bust in the school. Her surname, which had been lying dormant all her life, burgeoned malevolently. Isobel Knockers. She shot up in height, but her bosoms gleefully kept pace. By the time she was fourteen she would be six feet tall with a bust out of a Carry On film. At eleven she was already five foot eight and bursting out of the broderie-anglaise teen bras her mother had bought her. The boys would chant at her from a safe distance:

Sunshine girl I’m looking down your bra,

I see two mountains, I wonder what they are.

If you’ll invite me, I’ll squeeze them tightly.

Not bloody likely! my sunshine girl.

It was not until she’d had corrective surgery at the age of twenty-two that Isobel knew what it was for a man to look her in the eye when he addressed her.

It was going to be another scorching day. Isobel woke intending to be in a better mood. Perhaps yesterday’s irritation had had a simple physical cause – she had been too hot. Today she laid aside her black and put on some pale linen trousers and a light blue silk clerical shirt. She’d had it made specially, because she couldn’t abide those ridiculous puffed-sleeved clerical blouses the outfitters deemed appropriate for women clergy. As though we were vicarettes, for heaven’s sake! scoffed Isobel. Besides, the ready-made ones were all poly-cotton. It was worth paying a bit extra to get natural fibres. She went downstairs for a quick bite of breakfast, then took her little cafetière and a coffee cup through to her study for a time of private prayer and Bible study.

Before she began praying she couldn’t resist looking once more at the white envelope that lay with her Bible and Alternative Service Book. ‘Diocese of Durham,’ said the black type. ‘Letter of Orders. PRIEST. The Rev. I. M. KNOX, B.A.’ Isobel pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘Know all men by these presents . . .’ began the Bishop, in Gothic script. She rubbed her thumb over the embossed seal. ‘. . . Did admit and ordain Our Beloved in Christ Isobel Mary Knox (of whose sufficient learning and godly conversation We were assured) into the Holy Order of Priest.’ She folded it up and slid it back into the envelope, feeling a little too like a bride gloating over her marriage certificate.

But surely it was all right to rejoice? She thought back to the previous Sunday and her first celebration of communion. As an Evangelical one didn’t make a song and dance about one’s first mass, but the occasion had been special all the same. She had approached it with reverence and humility, deeply aware of the privilege of saying the words that Christ Himself had uttered on the night in which He was betrayed. The office of deacon was theoretically an important one, but the way things had developed historically it was difficult to view a deacon as anything but a priest manqué. Thank goodness women were no longer confined to such roles.

Some of the words of the ordination service came back to her: ‘You are to search for his children in the wilderness of this world’s temptations and to guide them through its confusions, so that they may be saved through Christ for ever.’

She prayed for grace to carry out this commission. ‘To seek for Christ’s sheep that are dispersed abroad’, as the old Prayer Book put it. Like a loving shepherd. But then an unhappy thought sprang to mind – she was more of a sheepdog, snapping at the heels of the flock and steering it relentlessly into the fold. The sheep didn’t really like her. She wasn’t one of them. This is not a helpful analogy of ministry, she told herself firmly. She turned to a hymn for inspiration:

Lord, speak to me, that I may speak

In living echoes of thy tone;

As thou hast sought, so let me seek

Thy erring children lost and lone.

She was humming the tune when she emerged half an hour later. She paused in front of the hall mirror to slip in her clerical collar (Isobel would not have them called dog-collars), apply some of her discreet lipstick and set off to church for morning prayer.

A swift glance across the street reassured her that Kath Bollom was not poised to pounce. Isobel had learnt that it was quicker to take the back route than get caught up in the toils of one of Kath’s monologues. The pavement was sticky with lime nectar. She passed the same people she usually did: Doris in her nylon overall and tabard coming back from her office cleaning job, the doctor’s wife finishing her morning jog, and Stan out walking his Jack Russell. Stan gave her a raffish grin, which revealed his three remaining teeth, and cackled out some obscure sentence, to which Isobel gave a smile and vague assent. She never understood a word he was saying. At times she was haunted by the thought that he was playing a trick on her and spoke perfectly coherently to everyone else. The local accent seldom presented her with problems any more, apart from giving her the constant urge to correct its bad grammar. It was, roughly speaking, a cross between Yorkshire and Geordie, and she could follow all but the oldest and drunkest of her parishioners.

The church was dim and cool after the bright morning outside. The big door echoed as she shut it. She walked up the aisle and saw that Harry was already sitting in his stall in the chancel. He looked up and smiled as she sat in her own stall opposite him. He, too, was in summer clothes, and exuding his normal aura of faint helplessness. This was utterly misleading, but very useful in parish life. It ensured that the women were ready to do anything for him and the men saw him as no threat. He was in his early forties and single.

The church clock chimed eight. Harry waited another moment or two to see whether they would be joined by any parishioners. As usual, they were not. Isobel secretly preferred it this way. She found the psalm and Bible readings for that morning. Gladys Porter had been in already. Buckets of flowers were standing by the pulpit, lilies, carnations, freesias, ready for tomorrow’s wedding. Their scent was already filling the chancel.

‘ Blessed be the Lord, who day by day bears us as his burden, ’ began Harry, picking a sentence from the psalm to start the service. ‘ God is our salvation. ’ He left a pause. Outside, the morning traffic into Stockton and Middlesbrough was building up. It sounded distant and muffled. Here in the church they might have been becalmed in eternity. ‘ O Lord, open our lips. ’

‘ And our mouths shall proclaim your praise, ’ responded Isobel.

That morning they used the Easter anthems. ‘Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us, so let us keep the feast.’ Isobel was surprised by a sudden pang of feeling. Most of the time her faith was more a matter of intellectual assent than emotional response. Perhaps the familiar words, with their grand theme of salvation, had touched a chord in her soul.

After the service was over Harry allowed a few more moments of silence before crossing to Isobel.

‘We seem to have had another break-in,’ he murmured.

‘Oh, no! Serious?’

‘Not really.’

She followed him to the vestry. Books and papers were strewn across the floor as if a small, impatient tornado had flung them about. Harry and Isobel stood gazing at the chaos.

‘This is the third time,’ said Isobel at last. ‘Have you called the police?’

‘No.’ Harry rumpled his dark hair absently. ‘Is it worth it, do you think? There’s no sign of forced entry this time, either. Half the parish has got a vestry key. The police must be getting sick of us.’

Isobel remembered the red-haired policeman. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Has anything been taken?’

‘Actually, I forgot to check.’ Nothing had on the other occasions. Isobel opened and shut a few drawers. The communion wine and silverware were always locked in the safe. There wasn’t much else worth stealing, apart from the photocopier, and that was still there.

‘No!’ exclaimed Harry in horror. Isobel whirled round. ‘They’ve trashed the cupboard!’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Isobel. ‘You know it’s always like that.’

They both looked in at the shelves full of bursting carrier-bags and tubs of crayons. There were piles of crumbling Hymns Ancient and Modern dedicated to the memory of someone long forgotten, and a bunch of dusty teasels. One of the Magi from the crib set knelt in homage to a biscuit tin, waiting for his broken hand to be glued back on.

Harry sighed. ‘I suppose it needs tidying out . . .’

‘I suppose it does,’ agreed Isobel, immune by now to the helpless-Harry act.

They smiled at each other and something darted between them that might have been attraction, had Harry not been gay. Or, at any rate, one assumed he was, although nothing had been said and Isobel wouldn’t dream of asking. One had no problems with homosexuality these days. Provided those concerned were celibate, of course. She was standing close enough to catch a whiff of his aftershave. Eventually she’d find the right moment to ask what it was called. It had always intrigued her, for she liked to think of herself as something of an amateur nez. A smell once learnt was never forgotten and she could identify a great many scents, to the amazement of their wearers.

She shut the cupboard doors on the mess and they began picking up the scattered papers. It was an order of service for the next Churches Together evening.

‘Who do you think can be doing it?’ she asked.

‘Maybe it’s Agnes.’

‘No,’ said Isobel, who considered herself an expert on the anchorite. ‘Agnes is reputed to run wailing through the churchyard.’

‘Well, I give up, then.’ He shrugged and stacked the sheets together. ‘Unless it’s someone harbouring a grudge against ecumenical services,’ he suggested. ‘Me, for instance.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly.’

He turned away to hide a smile. She suspected he derived an obscure pleasure from provoking her to say this all the time. He was a man of serious principles held frivolously. She feared she might be the reverse and that he was prodding her gently to help her see this.

When the tidying was done they left the church and walked through the graveyard towards the main road. An expensive car pulled out of a driveway and glided away.

Harry watched it go balefully. ‘That’s my house!’ he muttered.

‘What are you on about?’

‘I only joined the Church for the eight-bedroomed Georgian rectory,’ he complained. ‘And what do I get? Some ticky-tacky parsonage dwarfed by the shadow of the old vicarage! Look at it. They probably knocked down the outdoor privy to make room for it. Give me back my glebelands!’ he shouted.

‘It was only rectors who had glebelands, not vicars,’ she corrected him. ‘And, anyway, who wants to live in a draughty old ruin without the money to maintain it?’

‘Me,’ he replied simply.

There was no point arguing with him when he was in this kind of mood. They parted company. She couldn’t resist calling after him, ‘I think it’s a very nice house!’

He caught the implied reproof and smote his breast, grinning, before disappearing into his drive.

It was true, the house was wonderful; but she had to admit this was only because Harry had a flair for interior design. Without his genius it would have remained little more than a box. He was rumoured to have a four-poster bed, but no parishioner had ever been upstairs in the vicarage. She could see why he hankered after a house with more character, but having survived her teenage years in her parents’ ‘dream house’, dubbed ‘The Old Wrecktory’ by her brothers, Isobel was grateful for her creature comforts.

She found herself thinking about Harry later in the morning as she went out visiting. Perhaps it was time she learnt to tease him back; but it was an art she’d never really mastered. She couldn’t strike Harry’s playful note and her jests sounded clodhopping in her ears. Her Youth Group complained that she’d had a sense-of-humour bypass. It wasn’t that she didn’t get jokes: she just didn’t find them particularly funny. All too often she was the last to laugh and the first to stop; a little left out, a little on the edge of any group. She knew people found her standoffish and that her presence made everything twice as funny for everyone else. Fresh gales of laughter would burst out when she left a room, making her wonder if she hadn’t got the joke after all. As a teenager she had found this desperately hurtful, but by now had made peace with herself. She was what she was. If people couldn’t accept her, well, that was their problem.

And anyway, she thought as she turned down the lane that led to the Goodwills’ farm, what was inherently amusing about breaking wind? Perhaps her two older brothers had wrung the last ounce of humour from the common fart when she was growing up. Deliberate farting was banned when the Youth Group met in her house on Sunday nights, which had precipitated the latest craze of burping and speaking simultaneously, the challenge being to say ‘The Most Reverend and Right Honourable the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury’ in a single protracted belch. Well, it had been mildly amusing the first hundred times, but Isobel had now banned this game as well. They weren’t bad kids, really. They came from nice homes. The rough ones – except one wasn’t supposed to say rough – came from the council estate on the outskirts of Asleby, and showed up at the open youth club not the Bible study. While not having the remotest insight into the mind of the modern teenager, she managed a reasonable rapport with both sets and knew how to roar like a sergeant major and exact instant obedience if that rapport broke down.

She opened the gate and entered the farmyard. The goose that acted as guard dog saw her, lowered its head and charged, hissing. Isobel continued walking calmly to the door. It was not her custom to be intimidated by anyone or thing. She thrust the bird aside with her foot and rang the doorbell. The goose, an equally determined creature, clamped itself to her trouser leg and clung there grimly until Walter Goodwill opened the door and beat it off.

‘Well, you’re here,’ he observed, as though he had not himself summoned her. ‘You’d better come in.’

She followed him into the best room. Old Walter was a wedge-driver, a species well known to the clergy. His only apparent religious concern was to sow seeds of strife between vicar and curate and divide the parish into warring factions. He had fallen out with Harry six years earlier. The issue had been a ludicrously large marble plaque commemorating his departed wife in language so florid it would have startled the poor woman. Harry had been unable – regrettably – to get a faculty to allow it to be erected in the church. ‘The Archdeacon,’ he had murmured, with a helpless gesture. ‘Archdeacon be buggered,’ old Walter had shouted. ‘I know who’s behind this, and I’ll not come to that church again while you’re vicar!’ He’d been as good as his word. Harry told Isobel privately that he saw this as one of the triumphs of his ministry. ‘If the Church is the body of Christ, then Walter Goodwill is the appendix,’ he’d observed. ‘No known function except to grumble and make life hell for the rest of us.’

The visit began with Walter’s customary airing of old grievances, starting with Harry’s iniquitous treatment of the Freemasons. Drummed them out of the congregation, he had. The church would never prosper now. Lost some of its best members. Isobel tried to let it wash over her, although it was a great trial to her to sit mute while Harry was slandered. She knew that he had touched on the matter only once in a sermon, which scarcely constituted a drumming out. And the church had prospered. It had doubled in size since then. However, she knew better than to attempt to reason. The grumble must run its course. Afterwards she would declare her loyalty to the vicar, as she always did, and Walter would say, Aye, aye, she was a good lass. He understood. She had to side with the vicar. When this exchange was out of the way he would give her a rundown on his health – he was a diabetic – and then they would get to the real business.

Today it turned out that his granddaughter wanted her bairn baptized in Asleby church.

‘You’re a great-grandfather! Congratulations.’

He grunted.

‘However,’ she continued, ‘I’m afraid that as the family lives in Herefordshire, it won’t be possible to have the ceremony here.’

‘Eh? Why not? All the Goodwills are baptized in Asleby church,’ countered Walter. ‘Always have been.’

‘Only if they live in the parish,’ said Isobel firmly. ‘That’s the policy.’

This wasn’t strictly true, but she wasn’t going to waste casuistry on Walter. For a second she thought he was going to explode and bar her from his house along with the vicar, but then he seemed to reflect on her usefulness as a pawn.

‘Well, I’ll not ask whose idea that is. Parish policy? I’ll give him parish policy!’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Isobel, ‘but there it is.’

‘Aye, well. I don’t blame you, pet – Father.’ He coughed, never quite certain of the right way to address her. ‘You do your best. You do your best.’ There was a ruminative pause. Foolishly Isobel didn’t seize the moment and escape. ‘He never could keep a curate, mind. They never stay. That first curate of his. Canny lad. Johnny, they called him. Should never have let him go.’

Walter maundered on in praise of her predecessors, affecting to believe that Harry had driven off curate after curate.

‘You’ll be next, mark my words,’ he mourned.

‘Well, that’s life,’ said Isobel brightly. ‘Shall I say a prayer before I go?’

‘Aye, aye. If you must,’ he muttered.

He pressed a cold, heavy carrier-bag into her hands as she left. She crossed the yard, wrenched her trouser leg out of the goose’s beak and shut the gate. The bag contained a joint of lamb. Walter believed that in being generous to her he was somehow slighting Harry. Isobel tutted. She was always being punished or rewarded on the grounds of not being someone else. She hadn’t been in the parish a month before learning she would always be a disappointment to everyone for not being Johnny Whitaker.

Hah! thought Isobel. She had met this paragon on a couple of occasions – the first had been when he took Annie and Will’s wedding – and quite frankly couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. It was as though the Rev. J. Whitaker was