Phil Rickman - Crybbe

'Such a sheltered life, you see, here in Crybbe. And then the secretarial job with the diocese. I think – God help me – I think she really believed that having an affair with a clergyman was somewhat less sinful than having a less… er, less physical relationship with a layman.'

'Nearer my God to thee,' Fay said wryly.

'Quite. She was quite unbearably understanding when… when your mother found out and threatened to get us all, via the divorce courts, into the News of the World. Tricky period. Things were quite hairy for a while. But, there we are, it ended surprisingly amicably. Quite touching, really, at the time.'

Fay said, 'You mean she accepted her martyrdom gracefully, as it were, to save your precious career.'

Alex lowered his eyebrows. 'Quite,' he said gruffly. 'Of course I felt sorry for Grace and we kept in contact – in an entirely platonic way – for many years.'

'Even when Mum was alive?'

'Platonically, Fay, platonically. Came back to Crybbe to live with her sister, as you know, then she died, and Grace was alone, a very aloof, proper little spinster in a tidy little house. Terribly sad. Do you think I might have another…?'

'I'll pour it.'

'Thank you. And then, of course, I had the letter from young Duncan Christie at the cathedral, just happening to mention Grace was in a pretty depressed state. Not too well, sister recently dead. Feeling pretty sorry for herself, and with reason. Never been quite the same since… you know. Well…'

'You've told me this bit A chance for you to make amends.'

'Nemesis, you see. I had ruined the poor woman's life, after all.'

'That might be questionable.'

Alex shook his head, in a rare hair-shirt mood. 'And, well, I just happen to turn up there one day, just passing through, you know. And I just happened to stay. So, after all these years, Miss Legge finally becomes Mrs Peters – or, as she liked to put it, Mrs Canon Peters. And Alex resigns himself to a year or two of ministering to this rather severe elderly lady, incurably ill and incurably set in her ways – odd, really, she seemed much older than me, although she was twenty-odd years younger.'

'Yes, but…'

'I know. I'm coming to it. Woodstock. Why didn't I sell this place when Grace died and go back to Woodstock?'

'The very question I've been trying to ask you for months, Dad.'

'Er… Yes.' Alex slurped milk into his coffee. Fay looked up as hard rain spots hit the window. The dried-blood bricks of the houses across the street gleamed drably.

'You see, there are things you don't know about Woodstock. Like the fact that it. er..well, it wasn't mine to sell, actually.'

Fay closed her eyes.

'Still belonged to Charlie Wharton. I may have conveyed the impression I'd bought it off him. Fact is, I was only sort of keeping it warm for his retirement, and I was surviving rather longer than either of us had envisaged. And they were about to boot him cut of the bishop's palace, you see, so he was pretty anxious to have the place back. In fact, I, er, well, I might have been facing a spot of legal action to remove me if I hadn't cleared off when I did. To be honest.'

Might have guessed, Fay thought. Might have bloody guessed.

'So what it comes down to,' she said, smiling icily, 'is that you were rather more anxious to move in with Grace than she was to have you.'

'Well. Until I, er, raised the possibility of marriage.'

Fay nodded, still smiling.

'Problem is, as you know, money and I have never got along terribly well together. Ladies, horses, unwise investments…'

Alex stirred his coffee. The rain came down harder. Fay noticed a damp patch near the kitchen ceiling. It was getting bigger.

'Dad,' she said, 'you are a total, unmitigated shit.'

Alex went on stirring his coffee and didn't deny it.

Fay went to wash the breakfast dishes, digesting the information and its significance: that her father was not a wealthy man, that his total assets amounted to little more than a very small terraced cottage in a back street in Crybbe. A cottage which, even if sold to, say, Max Goff. would hardly pay a year's rent on a basement room in Battersea.

She wondered what kind of pension he'd got. And if he had debts she knew nothing about.

So much to think about that it seemed silly even to raise the issue. However…

'You've seen her, haven't you? Since she died, you've been seeing her.'

'Oh, Fay.' Alex rubbed his eyes. 'This part's so difficult. The past few months – such a blur. I don't know what I've done, what I've seen. These past couple of days… It's as though I'm waking up. Wendy perhaps, I don't know.'

'You know what I'm talking about, though. Let's not piss about here, Dad. Grace's ghost.'

She shivered, just saying the words, Grace's empty fish-smile in her mind.

'I… This really is hard. Especially for me, as a priest. All my life… so many anomalies. So many things one can't encompass within the scriptural parameters. That business in Y Groes a year or two ago. And now young Murray and his evil children.'

'You haven't told me about that.'

'Sworn to silence, child. And, you see, there's always a rational explanation, always a psychological answer. Murray rushing ahead with his career in the blissful certainty that a clergyman can operate more effectively if he doesn't believe.'

'Sod Murray, Dad… Grace.'

'You don't, have to bring me back to the bloody point. I'm not rambling.'

'Sorry.'

'All right. So I'm guilty of whatever crime it might be to smooth things out for two elderly folk in a bit of a mess. The problem is, when Grace popped her clogs rather sooner than expected, my overwhelming reaction, I'm sorry to say, was one of relief. There we are. Truth out. I'd got a roof over my head and she wasn't under it any more. How's that for a Christian attitude?'

'Not so deplorable.'

'It may not seem deplorable to you, wretched child, but I wanted to suffer. I needed to suffer. I'd been getting away with things all my life and here I was again landing on my feet.'

Fay thought, Christ, what's he saying? Is he saying that, in his dislocated mental condition, he created Grace's ghost, a resentful avenging presence to remind him of his sins?

'And you,' Alex said. 'Why the devil did you have to come back and look after me? I didn't want to inflict myself on you. Prissy little Grace didn't want you in her house.'

The crux of it. He might be able to project Grace, like a gruesome magic-lantern slide on his own dusty mental screen.

But you can't make me see her, Dad. You can't do that.

How could she tell him what she'd seen? (Did I really see it? Did I see it?) What would that do for his remission?

'OK, Dad.' she said. 'Drink your coffee. I understand. Look, I've missed the news now.'

Fay switched on the Panasonic radio on the kitchen window ledge. She had indeed missed the news and had to listen to a couple of minutes of sport before the headlines were repeated.

'And to recap on today's main story: in Crybbe, police are investigating the death of a personal assistant to billionaire businessman Max Goff. The dead woman, thirty-five-year-old Rachel Wade, appeared to have fallen from a high, window in historic Crybbe Court This a Offa's Dyke Radio News. Next bulletin: ten o'clock.'

For long, long seconds, Fay didn't move at all. Stood frozen at the sink, a damp dishcloth hanging from one hand.

The kitchen clock, two minutes fast, said 9.17.

Alex, sliding his chair back, getting to his feet, said, 'How come you didn't pick that one up, Fay?'

'I normally make the police calls before you get up,' Fay said numbly. 'We had breakfast instead. Offa's Dyke have an early duty reporter, in at half past five.'

'Ah.' Alex brought his coffee cup to the sink. 'Expect you'll be off to find out what happened.' He looked up, his beard pure white in the dull morning. 'You all right, Fay? How well did you know this woman?'