Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

The church was beautiful outside and in, seven hundred years old, its stained glass smashed by Henry VIII (or was it Cromwell?) and replaced in the nineteenth century by rich red and blue depictions of saints: John the Baptist, apparently draped in a whole camel skin, a golden-haired Mary Magdalene holding a jar of what looked like Elizabeth Arden skinfood but which Winifred said was precious ointment, and St Paul with a beard and joined-up eyebrows. I thought these windows fine but was instructed, this time by Ella as we took our seats, that they were an unfortunate and vulgar substitute for the glories which had been there before. Both sisters, once they had laid down the prayer books they had brought with them, though at least fifty were provided on the shelf in front of us for a congregation of twenty, fell to their knees, put their heads into their hands – not easy for Winifred in her picture hat – and, I suppose, concentrated on silent prayer.

On their way in all the members of the congregation had been chatting to one another in a lively fashion, calling out to ask friends how they were and to remark on the weather, and as soon as the service began I noticed what pride many took in not referring to their prayer books at all but reciting canticles, psalms and responses (I may not have these names correctly) from memory. Mr Dawson wore a white smock-like garment over a long black gown. He was a tallish man and thin, and he reminded me in looks of a professor we had at Lund, not handsome but with a pleasant, beaky face which would one day become what my mother-in-law calls ‘nutcrackery’, nose stretching forward to meet jutting chin. The glasses he needed for reading he kept putting on and taking off, a fidgety habit I hoped Winifred would cure him of when they were married. He had a fine baritone voice in which he chanted various requests to God.

‘Give us peace in our time, O Lord,’ rang out with a particular vigour.

Luckily, there was no one sitting immediately behind us or if there had been they had moved away, for Winifred's hat would have obstructed their view of the choir of four women sitting in the chancel, the aged men who read the lessons and Mr Dawson when he climbed up to the pulpit to give his sermon. I had no experience of sermons but to judge by the innumerable lectures I had heard in recent years and the many talks, I thought it good and said so to Winifred when the service was over and we were leaving the church. It had been on the subject of tolerance and not judging one's fellows when one was in possession of only limited facts about their misdeeds. Later on, at the time of the terrible events that were to come, I wondered if he had been able to put these principles into practice.

‘Yes, Eric preaches well,’ she said, but in a lifeless tone. At last I knew the man's name and in a moment heard her address him by it.

He was standing at the church door as we filed out, shaking hands with his parishioners as we passed, telling some how nice it was to see them, asking others after the health of some relative. When it was our turn Ella went first, was asked how she was and had her hand shaken. Rather to my surprise, having said, ‘Good morning, Eric,’ Winifred got a kiss on the cheek or the air an inch from her cheek. She introduced me and I congratulated him on his sermon. Both sisters looked rather shocked – by my presumption, I suppose, in daring to comment on the oratorical powers of a clergyman nearly twenty years my senior. But Eric Dawson smiled and thanked me.

‘How kind of you to say so.’

In quite a formal and ceremonious way Winifred asked him if he would come up to Lydstep Old Hall that day for supper.

‘Once Evensong is over I would love to,’ he said. ‘What a charming hat, Winifred.’

Again that unbecoming blush. And I felt I was back in that Victorian novel where engaged couples encountered each other only in their parents' homes, chaperoned by siblings. Did Winifred and Eric Dawson never go for solitary walks together, as I was sure other local courting couples must do? Would she never go to the Rectory to be alone with him once his housekeeper, who came in daily, had gone home? Stay overnight? Or was this improper in the kind of world they lived in? It was all so remote from anything I had ever known that I was defeated by it and simply bewildered.

He said goodbye, that he would see us all later and that it had been nice to meet me. On the way back to Lydstep Old Hall, walking up the hill, a violent quarrel broke out between Ella and Winifred, astonishing and rather dismaying. It began with Ella asking if Eric had ever been married before.

‘You know he hasn't, Winifred said, already looking put out. ‘Why do you ask that now?’

‘It does seem strange, doesn't it? I mean, to get to the age of forty-five and never to have been married.’

‘Eric is forty-two.’ Winifred spoke with indignation as if the difference between Eric's real age and that put forward by Ella was thirty years instead of three. ‘He has been wise enough not to get married until he found the woman he really wanted to spend his life with.’

‘You, you mean? Oh, please. Do you know what they're saying?’

‘I don't wish to know, thank you, Ella.’

‘You'll have to, just the same. You ought to know before you do anything you'll regret.’

Winifred said magnificently, ‘I never do things I shall regret.’

Ella burst out laughing, as well she might. I think they had both forgotten I was there or cared not at all. ‘On second thoughts, it may be best for me not to tell you. It will only upset you.’

‘Now you have gone as far as this you had better come out with it.’

‘Don't say you didn't ask me,’ said Ella in an insufferably smug way. ‘Well, they are saying that Eric is –’ she paused for a moment to think, I suppose, what Eric was and came out with the words all in a rush ‘– is an invert. There you are. Don't say you didn't ask.’

Winifred screamed out. ‘How dare you? How dare you? You must be mad, whoever says so is mad, sick in their minds.’

‘Please don't make an exhibition of yourself in the public street.’

Far from a street, it was a country lane with not a soul about. In any case, Ella's words had no effect and Winifred continued to shout and scream, standing still now and stamping her foot. She took off her hat and waved it about while Ella watched, a little smile coming and going. The word she had used meant nothing to me. I had never heard it before but of course I gathered from the context what it meant. Homosexuality was not a subject that was much discussed at that time, though more then than previously. The law which legalized sex between homosexual men in private had come into force the year before.

Ella then, in a slow, steady voice, made calmer by her sister's near-hysterics, proceeded to tell her that one rumour had it that Eric Dawson's Bishop, when the gossip reached him, had advised him to marry. ‘I know the very words he used. Find some older woman, Eric, he said, someone who won't be too demanding, if you understand me, and marry her to set my mind and your own at rest.’

‘You're making it up!’ Winifred shouted.

‘No, I'm not. I swear I'm not.’

The quarrel went on all the way back to Lydstep Old Hall, all along the track and up to the front door. There both of them, by unspoken consent, became silent, each clamping her lips tightly shut as if words which must be suppressed were struggling behind them to break out. On the doorstep, Winifred said to me in bitter tones, ‘There now, you can't complain you're not privy to our secrets, can you?’

I began to wish I had never said that about liking to know the history and the facts of a family. It looked as if they had all had an indignant conference on the subject. Three or four hours later I was walking round those uninteresting fields, a dozen paces behind John, and because he again made no response to my attempts at conversation and didn't even lift his eyes from contemplation of the ground, I let my thoughts drift off to Eric Dawson and the rumour about him.