The Reaper Page 10

  "Why me?" she pressed him.

  He turned aside, clearly reluctant to say more. "This job doesn't really require a professional. What matters is how it's handled. The right touch."

  She wished she had waited until after the wine to ask that question. She might have got the answer she was fishing for.

  She said the eats should be ready and he said he hadn't expected anything, but he sprang up and offered to help with the carrying.

  "Wine?" he said when she gave him the tray with the glasses.

  "You do drink red, I hope? I thought you must, so I opened it before you came."

  "An act of faith."

  "You do drink it?"

  "When I get the chance."

  The savouries smelt delicious. She took them from the oven and followed him in from the kitchen and reclaimed her place beside him on the sofa.

  He was sitting further back, slightly more relaxed. "Let's drink to your success."

  "Yours," she said. "You talked them into it."

  "Ours, then." They touched glasses and drank. "Hey, this is a cut above, isn't it? What are we drinking?"

  "Chateauneuf-du-Pape, ninety-six."

  "Papist? Doubly wicked." He reached for a filo-wrapped bite. "You shouldn't have."

  "It's a treat for me. Gary's a beer drinker. I don't buy wine normally. One or two glasses and I get bosky."

  "Bosky. That's an old-fashioned word."

  Old-fashioned situation, she thought, a man and a woman sharing a sofa, sitting up primly like this. "I expect you're very level-headed."

  "I wish. I'm not a regular drinker either. Can't afford it. There's a cellar in the rectory where Waldo Wallace made his beer, but now it just has cobwebs and old copies of the Church Times."

  "It must be difficult being a priest. At certain times, I mean."

  He gave the wrong answer. Totally off message. "Not at all. I wouldn't change it for the world. It's a real high being a front man for God."

  "Yes, but there must be times …"

  "You can't compare it with ordinary jobs, Rachel. I could earn more cleaning windows, yes, but what I do is immensely satisfying. Even if you put aside the spiritual highs, I have the status, the dressing up, the preaching, the sense of being needed. I get invitations all the time. I can't say I always strike lucky as I have tonight-your hospitality, I mean-but I meet people, lovely people."

  "They can't all be lovely. There must be some you'd rather not spend time with."

  "Not many." His eyes flashed. "And if I play my cards right, I can get the PCC to outvote them."

  She had another try to get him off this topic. "Being good all the time must be a strain. Everyone knows who you are."

  He laughed. "I'm not good all the time. Good at covering up. That's the first thing you learn."

  She smiled back, doing all she could to fan this faint spark. "I expect your sins are very tame compared with other people's."

  "Don't count on it. But I never talk about them. Bad public relations. May I have another of these? They're yummy."

  "And a drop more wine?"

  "Only if you join me."

  "I'll fetch the bottle."

  "No. Let me." He was definitely lightening up.

  When he sat down again he was closer to her. Their faces almost touched when he turned to speak. "There's one more thing I'd like to mention."

  "Yes?"

  "About the books."

  The bloody books. She couldn't believe it. "Oh, I thought we'd-"

  He talked across her, as if he hadn't a clue what she was leading up to, or trying to. "An arrangement I had with Stanley that I hope you'll go along with. It's to do with the quota we pay to the diocese. Did I tell you about the quota?"

  "I know what it is."

  "A large chunk of our income, that's what it is, Rachel, and they've hiked it up in recent years. I don't mind shelling out what I think is fair, but small country parishes like ours pay way over the odds."

  "Shame." Flippant she may have sounded, sarcastic even, but she didn't need church politics at this stage of the evening.

  "That's putting it mildly." He missed her reaction completely. "And the more successful you are in fund-raising, the more they penalise you. So I talked it over with Stanley and we opened a new account called the contingency fund. I use it for my expenses-which is why they're so modest."

  "The what fund?"

  "Contingency. A sort of hedge against the unexpected."

  "I didn't notice it in the books," she said, beginning to pay attention.

  "No, you wouldn't. That's the point. It's separate from the bank stuff. A building society account."

  "And it doesn't go through the books?"

  "Exactly."

  "Is it legal?"

  "All above board, yes. It's in my name. They tax the interest at source."

  "But if it's church money …"

  "It goes on church expenses."

  She wasn't at all sure about this. "But where does the money come from?"

  "Extras. There are always dribs and drabs that come in late after something like the fete. Instead of inflating our bank account I put them into the contingency fund."

  She was alerted to something irregular now. "There must be a statement to show how much is in there."

  "Among these things? No. We don't want the diocese making waves and putting up the quota, do we?"

  "Is that certain to happen?"

  "Certain as the Creed. Some churches have been forced to close because they can't pay their way. People have worshipped in St. Bartholomew's for a thousand years. We can't let it go just because in the twenty-first century the Diocesan Board of Finance is too grasping." It was a passionate speech. Not the one Rachel had hoped to hear, but strong in emotion.

  She was uneasy. She didn't like the sound of this contingency fund. She would be treasurer, and treasurers carried the can.

  She must have sighed, or perhaps her face gave too much away, because he placed his hand over hers. "Rachel, you see the point of this, don't you?"

  She turned to look at him, responding to his touch.

  Those amazing eyes of his were wide in anticipation, melting her.

  She nodded, telling herself sometimes you have to go with the flow. "Yes, I see."

  And now their faces were so close that it seemed the most natural thing for their lips to meet lightly, as if to seal an understanding, and so they did.

  The hell with the contingency fund.

  As they drew apart she grabbed the back of his neck with her good arm, pulled him towards her again and kissed him with passion, pressing her lips hard against his. He responded by leaning towards her, pushing her firmly back into the corner of the sofa. Their mouths relaxed and found a better position. His fingertips were on her face, stroking her cheek, a light, sensuous touch that thrilled her. Then the fingers moved across her neck and over her breast.

  This is it, she thought. I'm seducing a priest. I'll pay for this on Judgement Day and I don't give a toss.

  There was a crash. Not the gates of Heaven being slammed. Just his leg or hers nudging the coffee table and knocking over the wine bottle.

  He drew back and looked behind him.

  "Oh, no!"

  He sat right up and so did she.

  The bottle was on the floor, on its side. He grabbed it up. A large stain was spreading over the mushroom-coloured carpet.

  She said automatically, "Oh, Jesus!" Then: "It's all right." It wasn't. She ran out to the kitchen and fetched a sponge and warm water.

  When she came back he was trying to clean splashes off the account books with a handkerchief. She knelt and rubbed at the carpet with her one good hand. The stain was the size of a saucer.

  "I think I'm only making it worse."

  "Want me to try? There must be something you use for wine stains. Salt?"

  She shook her head, attacking the stain past the point when she was making any difference. She was putting off the moment when they faced each other
again. They'd messed up in every sense.

  He suggested she let the stain dry and use a commercial stain-remover. He'd stopped trying to clean up the books.

  "They're not too bad," he said. "It can't be helped. I'm really sorry about the carpet."

  "My own fault," said Rachel. "Made a right idiot of myself."

  "Don't say that. Don't say anything. Let's have a pact. No blame, no regrets, no thoughts of what might have been, right?"

  That would be impossible, but she murmured something.

  "Above all, no talking about it to anyone else."

  "Agreed."

  He said, "I've got to go. You understand why?"

  "Mm."

  He smiled faintly. "Potent wine."

  "Yes."

  "It doesn't mean we can't work on the books again. In fact we must. You're going to need help. I'll just have to stick to the one glass in future."

  "Me, too."

  She went to the door with him. Before leaving, he put his hand lightly on her forearm and said, "Thanks."

  She watched him to the gate and up the street. From first to last it had been a cringe-making mistake. And when she closed the door and went back inside and saw the great box of account books and the stain on the floor she made a sound deep in her throat that was nothing less than a howl.

  Ten

  New Orleans had been paradise. Gary was back, red-faced and triumphant, keen to talk about his great adventure, but in a way that put Rachel down. "You've never heard anything like it and never will. Jeez, those long, hot nights in Preservation Hall and the Palm Court Jazz Cafe. We were cutting it up until dawn usually."

  "Which was why you didn't get to the phone."

  "I called you."

  "Once in three weeks."

  "Sure, honey." He'd taken on some outdated Americanisms that irritated her even more. "By the time I was waking up most days, around two in the afternoon, I needed to eat, and when I got to thinking of calling home it was always too bloody late over here, with the time difference, so I didn't disturb you. There wasn't much I could tell you anyway. It's a blur, but, man, what a blur."

  The Southern cooking-even in the inexpensive places Gary and his friends had patronised-had suited him better than he expected. Glaring at the pork chop and two veg Rachel served up, he talked with relish about delicacies she could only imagine, gumbo and po-boys, black-eyed peas and jambalaya.

  He was so high from the trip that he didn't notice the wine stain on the living room carpet. Rachel had tried glycerine and a carpet shampoo and got some of the colour out. It was still an eyesore. She'd brushed in talcum powder and made a small difference, but not enough.

  He said, "I can't think why I left it so late in my life to make a trip like this one. You can keep your holidays in Buddleigh Salterton. I'll be jetting to the jazz spots in future."

  The cosmopolitan Gary was a new infliction. Practically every statement he made about America downgraded England-and, by association, herself.

  Later the same evening he said he wasn't feeling so good.

  Rachel said it was probably the jet-lag.

  "I don't think so."

  "How do you know? You've never been on a jet before."

  "Neither have you. I've got this pain across the chest. Can't shift it."

  "Could be something to do with the way you were sitting in the plane."

  "Hope it's not my heart." He'd always insisted he had a heart murmur, whatever that was. Just an excuse for not helping with the garden, Rachel always thought.

  "If you're worried, let's call the doctor.";

  He didn't want the doctor, but after another hour of groaning and self-pity he thought better of it and let her phone. Old Dr. Perkins was on duty that evening and he was at the cottage inside twenty minutes. After pressing the stethoscope to Gary's chest, he said that the beat was a little irregular, but nothing to be alarmed about. "You say you've just had a long flight from the United States-and some over-indulgence there, am I right? It's a big effort for the body, bigger than we appreciate, flying for hours and then having to adjust to another time. This may well be a touch of angina."

  "Angina? At my age?" Gary was horrified.

  "What are you-mid forties?"

  "Only forty-two," Gary said, and the hurt at the doctor's overestimate sounded in his voice.

  "It's better than a full blown heart attack, I can assure you. If you're sensible, it needn't hamper you unduly. Some of my patients have had angina for years and lived well into their eighties." He produced a nitroglycerin tablet for Gary to chew and told him it should relieve the pain rapidly. It would still be necessary to have some tests on the heart function and he would arrange a hospital appointment.

  The tablet worked, and Gary was still asleep when Rachel left in the morning for her appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon.

  The bliss! It had been worth an 8:30 hospital appointment to be released from that horrid, heavy, grease-stained plaster. Now she was in the front garden making up for lost time, attacking some of the most vigorous weeds. Festoons of bindweed had taken over while she'd been unable to work out there, and when she tugged it away in satisfying armfuls she revealed other horrors, ground elder, couch grass, creeping buttercups and sticky groundsel. Some wild flowers she was willing to tolerate in a cottage garden. Harebells, columbines, the pink foxgloves, the purple monkshood and the dog rose hedge coexisted with the expensive plants she had bought from nurseries. The majority of the weeds had to go. Just about everything needed attention. If it wasn't overgrown, it was ailing. But she enjoyed being out there.

  Cynthia Haydenhall rode unsteadily up the village street on her bike with bulging carriers dangling from both handlebars and a pair of marrows in the wire basket between them. She spotted Rachel and came to a rasping halt and jumped off the saddle. A couple of onions fell out of one of the bags and rolled across the road. Rachel stepped out of her garden to retrieve them.

  "You're a bit overloaded, aren't you?"

  "Harvest supper on Saturday. It's all left to the WI as usual."

  "I'd forgotten."

  "You're coming, I hope?"

  Rachel hesitated. "I'm not sure. I may give it a miss this year."

  "You can't do that. It's for church funds. Now you're the treasurer, it's a must."

  "It doesn't mean I have to turn up to every event."

  "You always have." Quick on the uptake, as usual, Cynthia peered at her friend. "Something upset you, did it?"

  "I'm fine. Just busy."

  "Tell you what, darling. If you come, I'll reserve the seat next to Otis for you."

  Rachel felt the blood rush to her face. "No, don't."

  "You're a big wheel on the PCC now. You're entitled to sit beside the rector."

  "You sit beside him."

  "Be like that," said Cynthia. "Last time we spoke you'd have given your eye teeth for an offer like that. What's up? Is Gary back from the States?"

  Rachel glanced up at the curtains, still across the bedroom window. "He is, as it happens, but that's got,nothing to do with the harvest supper. You know he never comes to anything like that."

  "He's smelt a rat, has he? Bad luck."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Your fling with Otis."

  For a moment she was flustered, and it showed. How on earth had Cynthia found out? She made a show of denying it. "Cynthia! Leave off, will you? There's no fling, as you put it."

  "Joking," said Cynthia.

  "People will get the wrong idea."

  "He picked you for treasurer."

  That was all she meant, thank God. "Because no one else wanted the job." Purely to divert Cynthia from the subject of Otis, she said, "I wouldn't mind helping out in the kitchen."

  Cynthia assessed the offer. "No, I can't upset my team. Daphne, Joan and Dot do the cooking every year. Besides, you're not WI."

  "They'd be glad of some help. They all know me."

  "You want some credit for helping out." Satisfied that she unde
rstood what this was all about, Cynthia unbent. "I suppose I can stretch a point and find you a job if it's the only way we'll get you to come."

  It was agreed that Rachel would help with the preparation and serving. Cynthia eased back onto the saddle and wobbled to her next engagement.

  On the same September morning Peggy Winner was shopping in Warminster and decided to treat herself to a coffee in Rosie's, a teashop located in a whitewashed cellar below the high street. Peggy had a special affection for the place. Years ago, under different management, it had been Chinn's Celebrated Chophouse, perfect for intimate trysts with the tall Mauritian evening-class teacher she had for conversational French and much more. Alain had long since returned to his own country and surely forgotten all about suppers in Warminster, but Peggy still felt a sense of adventure going down the steps and through the stone passageway, if only for an innocent coffee and scone.

  The interior was divided into three. You came first to the cooking area where you could inspect the cakes on offer, and, dipping your head to avoid the beam, progressed to the two rooms where the tables were. Peggy usually went right through to the back where it was quieter.

  This morning someone was at the table she thought of as her own. Silly to be like that, only she was. She stared at the young man as if he was something she had trodden in, and then did a double-take. It was Burton Sands, from the village, in his business pinstripe and drinking black coffee. Their eyes met and she couldn't very well sit at another table. Blast him, she thought.

  "You don't mind?"

  He shrugged and shook his head. She might as well have been a stranger, and it seemed she was to him.

  Peggy had enough charm for both of them and decided to help him out. "Funny, two Foxford people meeting down here. I'm Peggy Winner. I decided to reward myself for doing the shopping. It's so snug, isn't it? What's your excuse?"

  "I work here."

  "What as?"

  "I'm a chartered accountant. We have an office over the road, above the newsagents."

  "Yes, of course, you were up for treasurer. I'm on the parish council."

  "I know," said Sands without animation.