Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“Nothing,” Hogarth said. “Not a ginger. Not a git. And no vicar to be found. Everyone on her side’s in a real twist, Bren. Her mum was moaning about the wedding breakfast being ruined, she was hissing about getting revenge on some ‘rotten sow,’ and her dad’s just left to ‘hunt that little rat down.’ Quite the folks they are, these Townley-Youngs.”

“Maybe you’re off the hook, Bren.” Tyrone — his older brother and best man and, by rights, the only other person who should have been in the vestry aside from the vicar— spoke with guarded hope as Hogarth closed the door behind him.

“No way,” Hogarth said. He reached in the jacket pocket of his hired morning coat that, despite all efforts by the tailor, failed to make his shoulders look like anything other than the sides of Pendle Hill incarnate. He took out a packet of Silk Cuts and lit up, flicking the match onto the cold stone fl oor. “She has him by the curlies, she does, Ty. Make no mistake about it. And let it be a lesson to you. Keep it in your trousers till it’s got a proper home.”

Brendan turned away. They both loved him, they both had their own way of offering consolation. But neither Hogarth’s joking nor Tyrone’s optimism was going to change the reality of the day. Come hell or high water— and between the two it was more likely to be hell — he would be married to Rebecca Townley-Young. He tried not to think about it, which is what he’d been doing since she’d fi rst dropped by his office in Clitheroe with the results of her pregnancy test.

“I don’t know how it happened,” she said. “I’ve never had a regular period in my life. My doctor even told me that I’d have to go on some sort of medication just to get myself regular if I ever wanted a family. And now…Look where we are, Brendan.”

Look what you did to me was the underlying message, as was And you, Brendan Power, a junior partner in Daddy’s own solicitor’s fi rm! Tsk, tsk. What a shame it might be to be given the sack .

But she didn’t need to say any of that. All she needed to say, head lowered penitently, was, “Brendan, I simply don’t know what I’m going to tell Daddy. What shall I do?”

A man in any other position would have said, “Just get rid of it, Rebecca,” and gone on with his work. A different sort of man in Brendan’s own position might have said the same thing. But Brendan was eighteen months away from St. John Andrew Townley-Young’s decision as to which of the solicitors would handle his affairs and his fortune when the current senior partner retired from the fi rm, and the perquisites that went with that decision were of the sort that Brendan could not turn from lightly: an introduction to society, the promise of other clients from Townley-Young’s class, and stellar advancement in his career.

The opportunities promised by TownleyYoung’s patronage had prompted Brendan to involve himself with the man’s twenty-eightyear-old daughter in the first place. He’d been with the firm just short of a year. He was eager to make his place in the world. Thus, when through the senior partner, St. John Andrew Townley-Young had extended an invitation to Brendan to escort Miss Townley-Young to the horse and pony sales of the Cowper Day Fair, it had seemed too much a stroke of good fortune for Brendan to demur.

At the time, the idea hadn’t been repellent. While it was true that even under the best of conditions — after a good night’s sleep and an hour and a half with her make-up and her hair curlers and her very best clothes — Rebecca still tended to resemble Queen Victoria in her declining years, Brendan had felt he could tolerate one or two mutual encounters with good grace and the guise of camaraderie. He counted heavily on his ability to dissemble, knowing that every decent lawyer had at least several drops of dissimulation in his blood. What he did not count on was Rebecca’s ability to decide, dominate, and direct the course of their relationship from its very inception. The second time he was with her, she took him to bed and rode him like the master of the hunt with a fox in sight. The third time he was with her, she rubbed him, fondled him, skewered herself on him and came up pregnant.

He wanted to blame her. But he couldn’t avoid the fact that as she panted and bobbed and bounced against him with her odd skinny breasts hanging down in his face, he had closed his eyes and smiled and called her Godwhat-a-woman-you-are-Becky and all the time thought of his future career.

So they would indeed be married today. Not even the failure of the Reverend Mr. Sage to appear at the church was going to stop the tide of Brendan Power’s future from fl ooding

right in.

“How late is he?” he asked Hogarth.

His brother glanced at his watch. “It’s gone half an hour now.”

“No one’s left the church?”

Hogarth shook his head. “But there’s a whisper and a titter that you’re the one who’s failed to show. I’ve been doing my part to save your reputation, lad, but you might want to pop your head into the chancel and give a bit of a wave to reassure the masses. I can’t say what that’ll do to reassure your bride, though. Who’s this sow she’s after? Are you already having a bit of stuff on the side? Not that I’d blame you. Getting it up for Becky must be a real treat. But you were always one for a challenge, weren’t you?”

“Stow it, Hogie,” Tyrone said. “And put out the fag. This is a church, for God’s sake.”

Brendan walked to the vestry’s single window, a lancet set deeply into the wall. Its panes were as dusty as was the room itself, and he cleared a small patch to look out at the day. What he saw was the graveyard, its cluster of stones like malformed slate thumbprints against the snow, and in the distance, the looming slopes of Cotes Fell that rose cone-shaped against a grey sky.

“It’s snowing again.” Absently, he counted how many graves were topped by seasonal sprays of holly, their red berries glistening against the spiked, green leaves. Seven of them that he could see. The greenery would have been brought this morning by wedding guests, for even now the wreaths and sprays were only lightly sprinkled with snow. He said, “The vicar must have gone out earlier this morning. That’s what’s happened. And he’s caught somewhere.”

Tyrone joined him at the window. Behind them, Hogarth ground his cigarette into the floor. Brendan shivered. Despite the fact that the church’s heating system was busily grinding away, the vestry was still unbearably cold. He put his hand to the wall. It felt icy and damp.

“How are Mum and Dad doing?” he asked.

“Oh, Mum’s a bit nervous but as far as I can tell, she still thinks it’s a match made in heaven. Her first child to get married and glory-to-God he’s hopping into the arms of the landed gentry, if only the vicar’ll show his face. But Dad’s watching the door like he’s had enough.”

“He hasn’t been this far from Liverpool in years,” Tyrone noted. “He’s just feeling nervous.”

“No. He’s feeling who he is.” Brendan turned from the window and looked at his brothers. They were mirrors of him and he knew it. Sloped shoulders, beaked noses, and everything else about them undecided. Hair that was neither brown nor blond. Eyes that were neither blue nor green. Jaws that were neither strong nor weak. They were all of them perfectly cast for potential serial killers, with faces that faded into a crowd. And that’s how the Townley-Youngs reacted when they’d met the whole family, as if they’d come face to face with their worst expectations and their most dreaded dreams. It was no wonder to Brendan that his father was watching the door and counting the moments till he could escape. His sisters were probably feeling the same. He even felt some envy for them. An hour or two and it would be over. For him, it was a lifetime proposition.