The Bad Samaritan (5 page)

Rosemary nodded.

“I understand. My mother said she felt like that during the war, when my father was fighting in North Africa.”

“I seem to be living in a dream here,” said Stanko, his eyes miles away. “No reality. My wife and little girl they are at war. And I? I serve at table.” He stood up. “I go now. You very kind to listen to me. I never met so kind person.”

Rosemary had stood up too, worried by his face, which seemed about to crumple. Perhaps to hide it he took her hand and raised it to his lips. She had never had her hand kissed in that Continental way before and hadn't expected Stanko to do it, but as he dropped it she realised that his face was indeed crumpling into tears, and the next thing she knew he was sobbing into her shoulder—long, anguished, racking sobs, and she could only put her arms round his thin shoulders, murmur words of comfort and encouragement, say she understood, that it was very natural, and
all the banalities with which one tries to soothe terrible grief. It occurred to her that she had been in such a situation only with children before. She also wondered where it might end.

It ended with his taking out a grubby handkerchief and dabbing at his eyes.

“You very kind,” he said. “I go now.”

He was looking straight into her eyes. Rosemary nodded.

“I would like to hear if you get news of your family. I'll give you my address.”

“Is not necessary. Is in the book.”

“Of course.”

“Thank you again. Thank you for so much kindness.”

He was at the door now. He looked as if he was going to burst into tears again. Rosemary said firmly, “Good night, Stanko,” and he wrenched open the bedroom door and fled out into the corridor. Rosemary heard him running up the stairs to his attic room, but she also heard steps on the main staircase from the ground floor that passed her bedroom and finally went into another room further down the corridor.

She poured herself another large glass of wine and sat in the armchair, thinking hard. This time she thought things through, and came to the conclusion that it was time for her to go home.

R
osemary fixed her return home for Wednesday. By then she would have been away for ten days, and if anything was going to “happen” (about her loss of faith, of course, not in her relationship with Stanko) it would surely have done so by then. All that had happened, in fact, was that she had shaken down into her agnosticism: it had become more comfortable, like new clothes after a few wearings. The holiday in Scarborough to find herself had in reality been no more than a pleasant break away from home. Now it was time to return to normality.

Things with Stanko had gone no further. He had seemed a little embarrassed by his breakdown in her room, and at breakfast the next day they only exchanged conventional greetings. Rosemary had an uncomfortable feeling, though, that some eyes in the room were fixed on them. At dinner on Tuesday he had dropped a small, square snapshot on to the table, something that looked like a passport photograph. It was a pretty, dark-haired young woman.

“Is my wife,” he said.

“She looks very nice,” said Rosemary, thinking how staid and
middle-class she sounded. But it was quite true: she did look nice. Where was she now, and what had the war done to her?

On Wednesday Rosemary felt no need to hurry home. Paul would be at a Rotarians' dinner that evening, so there was no chance of eating together. She decided to have a last long walk on the beach and then lunch at Cliff View. This was a mistake. When Stanko came to offer her a choice of braised lamb and cod and chips he bent down and hissed in her ear, “Both is offle.” She chose the awful cod and chips and settled down to read about the last years of the various Sitwells: eccentricity ripening into sheer awfulness. When, at the end of an extremely boring culinary experience, Stanko brought her coffee he said, “You forgive me for Sunday night?”

“Stanko, there's nothing to forgive.”

“Is very not English.”

“Sometimes being un-English is a very good thing to be.”

“Un-English. Is good word. I learn.”

But she felt very English when, as she left, she shook his hand and said, “Keep in touch.”

He looked bewildered for a moment, as if her words had something to do with touching her. Then he understood and beamed. “Oh yes, I keep in touch,” he said. As she settled her bill she heard him whistling around the kitchen.

She carried her own case again as she walked back to the station, taking a last look at the shops that sold the sort of clothes she wore—she, the wife of a Church of England vicar in a reasonably well-to-do parish, wearing the uniform of her order. The thought still depressed her a little. The train was fairly empty for the first stretch of the way home, but at York she had to change trains, and as she was walking over the bridge she saw ahead of her the figure of one of her husband's parishioners, Selena Meadowes.
Rosemary slowed down and looked around her airily, as if seeing the beauties of York station for the first time. But as ill luck would have it, just as Selena was about to board the train she looked around at the station clock and in the process she spotted Rosemary.

“Oh, super!” she said, waving energetically. “Someone to share the journey with.”

Without a hint of a query to
her
, Rosemary thought resentfully, as to whether she wanted her journey shared. But then, clergymen and their wives were generally regarded as always on tap, and not to have needs and preferences of their own.

“Hello Selena,” she said in neutral tones. “I wondered if I would see anyone I knew.”

Selena breezed ahead, her smile cleaving a way through the bustle of travellers till she found a good double seat facing forward. She was her usual bright, spick-and-span self, all her clothes brightly patterned and sparklingly clean, as if she were dressed for a soap powder ad, and in her usual nice-young-mum style that made the heart sink. She always reminded Rosemary of the heroines in fifties musicals, and she imagined her as anxiously awaiting the return of the dirndl skirt.

“Here we are,” she said in her bright soubrette voice. “Golly, you
do
look well, Rosemary. Blooming. Your break away has really done you good.”

Probing, thought Rosemary. In fact she was aware that she was being watched very closely.

“Thanks,” she said noncommittally.

“So what did you do?”

“Oh, the sort of thing one does at seaside places out of season: walked, read, took in a play. It was an old Ayckbourn—quite funny.”

Selena looked as if she was not after drama criticism.

“Well, whatever it is it's certainly agreed with you, I can see that. Did you, er . . .” Here we go, thought Rosemary. “Did you come back any happier?”

“I wasn't suffering from depression, Selena.”

Selena looked the tiniest bit embarrassed.

“Oh, I know, but people were saying—Mrs Harridance was saying—”

“Mrs Harridance says a great deal, as you know, and very little of it is to the purpose.”

“Oh Rosemary, she means well.”

Rosemary raised her eyebrows skeptically.

“When people say that about anyone they usually mean that they blunder about bringing disaster in their wake with the best possible intentions but not an ounce of common sense. I don't see Mrs Harridance like that at all. Florrie Harridance has one thought and one thought only: herself.”

Now Selena Meadowes looked shocked. Rosemary had violated a code. One did not make out-and-out condemnations of people if one was a clergyman's wife.

“Rosemary! How unkind of you. You'd never have been so uncharitable . . . before.”

“Wouldn't I? I'd have thought it even if I didn't say it, which comes to much the same thing. You were saying that Mrs Harridance said—”

“Well . . . that you were having . . .
problems
. Spiritual problems.”

“You could call it that. I lost my faith.”

Selena looked terribly concerned, as if she had said that her puppy had disappeared.

“And the break away didn't . . . change anything?”

“No. I never really thought it would. What is that saying about travellers changing the sky above them but not themselves? I
don't see why anyone should expect to find God in Scarborough, in any case.”

“You must be
awfully
unhappy,” said Selena soulfully. Since she had just been trying to convey exactly the opposite, Rosemary was annoyed.

“Not at all. I'm perfectly happy.”

“But your whole life was centred on your belief in God.”

“Was it? I think you must have been under an illusion about me, Selena. It had become not much more than a routine. Now it's gone it's as if a blanket has been lifted from over my head. Now I can breathe properly at last.”

“Oh Rosemary!”

“It's as well to speak the truth, isn't it? That is precisely how I feel.”

“But what will you
do
?”

“Do? I don't see that I'm called on to do anything.”

“But . . . maybe I shouldn't say anything.”

“Do. I'm quite unshockable.”

“Mrs Harridance feels you shouldn't play any part in parish affairs as long as you're an unbeliever.”

Rosemary smiled grimly. “Back to Victorian values, eh? Ostracise the unbeliever. Well, that will give me a lot of spare time, which will be very welcome. I wonder what I should do with it? Take up macramé, perhaps, or study for an Open University degree. I wonder what Mrs Harridance would advise.”

“I'm not saying everyone agrees with her, of course.”

“I should hope not,” said Rosemary, in tones that were becoming positively grim. “I should be sorry to think that the spirit of Mrs Harridance had infected the whole parish.”

“You
are
unfair to her, Rosemary.”

“Could we talk about something else, Selena? I'll have quite enough talk about this when I get home to Paul.”

“Oh, I am sorry!” Selena's face was quite guileless, which showed what faces could do. “I thought you'd
want
to talk about it. I know I would.”

“Well, I don't. And please tell anyone who asks that I don't. Has anything else happened while I've been away?”

“I don't think so, Rosemary. Stephen Mills has agreed to talk to the Mothers' Union on ‘Business Ethics and the Christian Religion.' ”

“What would he know about either?”

“Rosemary! You
are
changed.”

Rosemary kept up her brisk, unkindly tone, which she found very palate-cleansing.

“Now don't pretend you don't know there are lots of people in the parish who are extremely suspicious about Mr Mills.”

“Well, I think they're very unfair. You shouldn't be suspicious unless you've got good, concrete reasons . . . . And he's so dishy!”

“Do you think so?”

“Well, you can't deny
that
. Film-star looks. When he looks me straight in the eye I go positively weak at the knees.”

“I have a physical reaction, certainly, but not that one.”

“Don't tell anyone, will you?” Selena was not listening to anything said to her and gave a tiny giggle. “Me, a happily married woman!”

“Your secret is safe with me. I'm just glad you're not one of those whose knees go to jelly at the sight of Paul. I don't know what it is about a clergyman that
gets
to some women.”

“Your husband is
awfully
attractive for his age.”

“I'll tell him you said so. He'll be terribly grateful. Now I think about it, maybe you'd better keep quiet about some of the things I've said today. I don't want to cause him more trouble than he'll have from me anyway.”

“Of course, Rosemary! Silent as the grave.”

On the way home on the bus Rosemary wondered why she had bothered attempting to ensure Selena's silence. She belonged to the Florrie Harridance Broadcasting Corporation, and everything Rosemary had said would be round the parish by the next day. By the time she had settled herself comfortably in at home, deciding that it really
was
nice to be back among familiar things again, she was starting to ask herself why she had said anything to Selena Meadowes at all. She knew what she was like, she had no liking for her, yet she had blabbed to her as if she was discretion itself. Had she got some kind of parochial death wish? Did she see her work with Paul in Abbingley as at an end? If so, Paul ought to have been the first to be told. And when she really got down to hard thinking, she was not at all sure that this was what she wanted.

Paul was in and out quickly at six, kissing her warmly and saying it was wonderful to have her home, then changing into black tie and decrepit dinner jacket and going out looking infinitely seedier than he would have in a lounge suit or clericals. Rosemary listened to a Nielsen symphony, watched the ten o'clock news with her usual hunger for reports from Yugoslavia, and waited for his return. When she heard the car pull into the garage it was clear he had someone with him.

“It's just Stephen,” Paul called as he came through the front door. “Come to get the Rotary Club books.”

He bustled in and went to his study and over to the bookcase, where the account books had been piled in readiness. Dark Satanic Mills came in to the hall and stood in the living room doorway with his usual smooth confidence.

“Hello Rosemary,” he said. “Welcome back.”

He did look handsome, Rosemary thought, against the half-light from the hall. In fact, he stood there posing as handsome, exuding the confidence of handsomeness,
broadcasting
his handsomeness. He was not tall, in fact he was almost stocky, but he
had shiny black hair, each strand immaculately in place, and perfect features set in a sallow skin. Women notice me, his bearing announced. And if they have anything I want, I notice them.