Is There Anything You Want? (22 page)

The wood was dense. He hadn't realised how dark it would be inside, the sun failing to do more than prick through the tightly packed trees. But the path was still easy to follow even when fallen tree-trunks occasionally blocked the way. The sound of his own feet was loud – twigs snapped, stones were disturbed and, though he had always thought of himself as nimble, he felt like an elephant charging through the undergrowth. Once out of the wood, the path became grassy and he no longer advertised his presence with every step. He couldn't imagine how this path could have become so smooth – it was as though someone had taken a lawn-mower to it – or so even, 2 feet across all the way. There was an unexpected satisfaction in gaining height so rapidly, and a sense of definite achievement in the physical effort involved. He thought that in spite of his sedentary life he must be quite fit because he was hardly out of breath until he reached the last stretch before the summit. Here the path narrowed and became stony, and there was some scrambling to be done but he enjoyed it. And then at last he was on top, where there was a cairn to which he added his own rock, taking pleasure in choosing a stone whiter and rounder than the ones already piled up. It was windy up here, and he was glad he'd kept his jacket on, buttoning it to the neck and turning the collar up.

Settling himself against the cairn, he ate his cheese sandwich and his apple, and drank half the coffee. Far off, the sea was a stretch of silver light below the dark outline of more hills on the other side. He was looking, he supposed, at an estuary. The first settlers must have come up it – from where he didn't know, his ignorance shamed him – and then followed the river until they found the valley with its fertile land and the shelter it promised. The scene below was not, he realised, an empty one. Everywhere he looked, he saw the work of man. There was evidence of human endeavour all around, not just in the cottages and farmhouses and barns, but in the stone walls and the roads and the fences and hedges. Arriving, on that first day, he had not been aware of this. A conviction that this was a
desolate land to which he had been condemned had filled him, and the loneliness he'd experienced had overwhelmed him. But up here, where truly he was alone, he did not feel lonely. He felt master of himself – it was being down there that made him feel lonely.

Reluctant to descend, he took his time, pausing often to admire the view. Then, half-way down, before he once more entered the wood, he saw a figure standing by his car. He couldn't be sure – the distance was still too great – but he thought it was a woman, waiting for him. At once, the contentment he had been feeling vanished. The owner of the other car, almost certainly. But why was she waiting for him? What did she want of him? He immediately felt anxious and suspicious, and wondered if he could delay going down, even hide, until this person grew tired of waiting. But she would have seen him, he was sure that he stood out on the path at this point. And he couldn't delay indefinitely, with evensong to think about. He had to get back. All the way down through the wood he was rehearsing what he would do and say. He would climb briskly over the stile, a man in a hurry, and rush at once to his car, avoiding eye contact. Maybe he'd shout, ‘Hello! Must dash, lovely day', so as not to cause offence. He wished he had a clerical collar on so that his status would make it easier to add, if necessary, that he had a church service to take and shouldn't have been climbing at all. This person would not know him, they were strangers to each other, which might make things less difficult.

His panic was foolish. Just before he left the sanctuary of the wood he paused to scold himself. It was always the same, he dreaded these kinds of encounter, and there was no need to. He could see the waiting person clearly now. It was indeed a woman, a young woman. She let him climb the stile and then, as he stepped backwards off it, she said, ‘Hello. I'm so glad to see you. I thought I'd be stuck here for ever. Not another car has passed since I got back half an hour ago.' She pointed at her own car and he saw the flat tyre. ‘Ah,' he said, ‘I see. I'm afraid I won't be much good to you. Dreadful admission, but I don't know how to change a tyre, terribly sorry.' She would ask for a lift. He would have to give her a lift to the town, to
a garage, which would mean a longish drive and having to talk to her – oh, stop it, he told himself, this attitude is unchristian and absurd. But she didn't want a lift. What she wanted was to borrow a jack, if he had one, claiming to be perfectly capable of changing her own tyre. To his own surprise, he did find a jack in the boot of his car, though he had no recollection of having put it there. He was about to say that she could keep it, and that he must go, but then she would be bound to want to return it and would need his address and might turn up . . . No, he would have to wait. So he stood watching the young woman, her deft performance making him feel more incompetent than ever. She had the job done quickly, and handed back the jack. He felt obliged to say how he admired her ability to change a tyre, more to prove that he was not boorish as well as unskilled at such tasks. And then he found himself actually asking her a question. It was only a simple, obvious inquiry, but he was startled at his own daring.

‘Do you live near here?' he asked. She said no, and named the town thirty miles away. ‘I'm a solicitor,' she volunteered, and then stopped abruptly, and blushed, as though startled at what she'd told him, ordinary piece of information though it had been. She said she belonged to a gliding club, and that after her lesson she had gone for a walk. As she finished speaking, a glider came into view and they both stood in silence watching it soar higher and then float away in the distance. ‘So graceful,' he murmured, and then ‘Do you fly alone?' She said she hadn't yet done so, that it would take her another six months before she would be able to, but that she was longing to reach that stage. It was she who said goodbye first, and got into her car with another expression of thanks. No names had been exchanged. Too late, he regretted not introducing himself, but then as he drove home decided he was glad this had been a brief meeting of strangers, one of whom had helped the other. There was something pure about the interchange which appealed to him.

He tore up the sermon he'd prepared as soon as he got to the vicarage. Making some rapid notes first about his climb and his feelings during it and then about the young woman and the changing of the tyre, he went on to weave all the topics
together until he felt he had an original and uplifting new sermon to deliver on the subject of chance and how God allowed for it and valued it. His argument took cunning twists and turns – he had to admit that there was some forcing of connections – but the end result was, he judged, powerful. He strode across to the church inspired in a way he had not been for a long time. There were only twelve people in the congregation but this did not depress him. In a clear, strong voice he delivered his sermon and was for once sure that he held everyone's attention and that he had been understood – there was no coughing, no fidgeting, and he had a strange impression that if this had been a theatre and not a church then applause would have followed.

He went to bed almost happy.

*

He slept well that night, the first time for ages that he was not plagued with dreams in which he was forever stretching out his arms and begging to be held. Refreshed, he dressed carefully for his visit to St Mary's Hospital, choosing his one good dark suit, though he disliked wearing it. At the end of his convalescence, he had gone for a holiday to Italy and had been so happy to dress in white or cream trousers and delicately coloured shirts, lilacs and blues – he had felt better, quite liberated (though that feeling had almost been his undoing again). But today he had to look like a vicar and so his dark suit and clerical collar and highly polished black leather shoes were appropriate. He put his notebook and a pen in an inside pocket, and his spectacles in another. They were unattractive spectacles which did not suit the shape of his face, but he had been unable to bear looking in the mirror in the optician's while choosing them – his own image had repelled him and he had made too hasty a decision. Still, the unfortunate spectacles made him look suitably serious and grave, which was a good thing. Everything was an act, after all.

St Mary's was easy to find but the entrance to it was not. He had to go twice round the one-way system before he found it
and was irritated with himself for becoming flustered. Once, he'd negotiated the streets of Manchester easily but already his living in a small country town appeared to have eroded his driving skills and made him nervous in traffic. Given more time, he could see he would end up like the majority of his parishioners, scared to drive anywhere busy. Finding the room where the committee meeting was to be held took almost as long as getting into the hospital itself – he seemed to trudge miles, constantly bewildered by signs and having to ask directions in spite of them. St Mary's, he discovered, was a rabbit warren of a building, full of odd connecting passages which sometimes seemed more like tunnels and came out at different levels. He started to perspire, not with any physical effort but with the memories. He'd walked other corridors such a great deal, backwards and forwards for hours, needing to keep moving, until the drugs had calmed him and made him sleepy.

They were all waiting for him, though he was not late. He hated entering a room full of people already seated and staring at him. Most of them half rose, some smiled and nodded, and the man at the head of the table, obviously the chairman, welcomed him. There was only one vacant chair, next to a large, imposing woman who looked vaguely familiar and yet he was sure he had not met her. ‘Mrs Hibbert,' she said, sticking out her hand. ‘We live quite near each other, I think. So pleased you could join us.' There was a general clearing of throats and then the chairman said how glad they all were that the Rev. Cecil Maddox had accepted the invitation to see how the Friends worked. If, during this meeting, he had any questions he must feel free to interrupt and ask them. Cecil stared straight ahead, avoiding all eyes, and composed himself to listen. The woman next to him, Mrs Hibbert, had a great deal to say, and the more she said the more obvious it was to him that the chairman could not bear her. He was wary of her, though. Every time he tried to cut across her interruptions he did so with suspiciously excessive politeness. Taking quick looks round the table, Cecil could see that everyone found Mrs Hibbert annoying, but nobody appeared to have the nerve to object to the way in which she was dominating the meeting.

‘It is quite ridiculous,' she was saying, ‘to spend money on
refurbishing the chapel. It is hardly used, and it is not in any case our responsibility.'

‘But the legacy is to the Friends, Mrs Hibbert,' said the chairman, ‘and therefore the spending of the money is our responsibility.'

‘We have many other calls on our purse,' Mrs Hibbert said.

‘Ah, yes,' agreed the chairman, ‘but, with respect, you are forgetting that our benefactor specified that she wished some of her money to be spent on the hospital chapel –'

‘Then she should have left it to the hospital, or the church, whichever church looks after the chapel.'

‘But she didn't, she left it to us, with this one request –'

‘It is only a matter of buying some paint to freshen the walls, and material for new altar curtains,' a woman, timidly ventured.

‘That is not the point,' Mrs Hibbert said. ‘The point is, it would be a waste of good money. Patients who go to the chapel, and precious few even know where it is, don't care what the walls or curtains are like. They simply don't notice such details.'

‘Far be it from me to question your knowledge, Mrs Hibbert, but how do you know this?' the chairman asked.

‘Oh, I know,' Mrs Hibbert said. ‘I've witnessed patients there. They don't notice anything. They go there as a last resort, depressed people who are desperate.'

‘Our benefactor's husband was apparently a manic depressive,' said the chairman.

‘Well, there you are,' said Mrs Hibbert.

‘I'm not sure – I may be very stupid – that I do know where I am, where we are in this discussion,' he said.

‘We are at the point when it ought to be obvious that newly painted walls and fresh curtains make no impression on depressed people –'

‘Mrs Hibbert,' the chairman said, interrupting her for the first time, ‘I must emphasise that the legacy is bound by the terms surrounding it. Whether we approve or not is irrelevant, whether depressed patients will benefit or not is equally irrelevant.'

‘May I just add,' Cecil said, quietly, ‘that in my experience not everyone who goes into a hospital chapel is depressed. Some patients go there to find peace and comfort. They may be frightened rather than depressed.'

‘Same thing,' Mrs Hibbert snapped.

Cecil took care to keep his tone light. ‘I beg your pardon?' he said.

‘Same thing,' Mrs Hibbert repeated.

‘I beg to differ,' Cecil said. ‘Fear and depression are not the same thing.'

‘They are linked,' Mrs Hibbert said. ‘Depressed people are all frightened of something, or they wouldn't be depressed. It might just be that they are afraid of their own inadequacy, but frightened they are, and their fear is what makes them depressed. Simple. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about.'

Nobody knew how to react. Embarrassment was as thick as smoke in the air. Cecil felt stunned, and then outraged, but before he could comment on how extraordinary he found Mrs Hibbert's self-confident statement, the chairman took charge. Volunteers were called for to buy paint and material, and others to do the painting and sewing. They duly came forward and other business was moved on to. Throughout it, Cecil was acutely aware of Mrs Hibbert, sitting with a fearsomely straight back at his side, rigid with what he interpreted as hostility towards himself. He should not have spoken. The last thing he should have done was get drawn into any discussion about the causes of depression, and he was grateful that the chairman had put a stop to it before he had become properly engaged. But he pondered during the rest of the meeting over Mrs Hibbert's views. What did she know about depression? It seemed most unlikely that she had ever suffered from it herself, but one never knew. At the end of the meeting, he tried to linger behind so as not to exit with his neighbour, but she waited for him at the door. ‘I wonder, Vicar,' she said, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘if I could drive you back?' Politely declining her offer, he pointed out that he had his own car. ‘I thought perhaps you were not up to driving yet,' she said, in a tone of such sympathy that an irrational rage almost overcame him and he had to take refuge in a fit of coughing. ‘I'm quite well, thank you,' he gasped at last.