Andrew Taylor - The Four Last Things

She phoned Mrs Gunter from the hospital concourse and gave her the news.

‘Best thing for all concerned, really.’

Sally said nothing.

‘No point in pretending otherwise, is there?’ Mrs Gunter sniffed. ‘And now I suppose I’ll have to sort out her things. You’d think she’d be more considerate, wouldn’t you, being a churchgoer.’

Sally said she would return Audrey Oliphant’s bag.

‘Hardly seems worth bothering. Audrey said she hadn’t got no relations. Not that they’d want her stuff. Nothing worth having, is there? Simplest just to put it out with the rubbish. Except Social Services would go crazy. Crazy? We’re all crazy.’

During the afternoon the despair retreated a little. It was biding its time. Sally visited the nursing home. She let herself into St George’s and tried to pray for Audrey Oliphant. The church felt cold and alien. The thoughts and words would not come. She found herself reciting the Lord’s Prayer in the outmoded version which she had not used since she was a child. The dead woman had probably prayed in this way: ‘Our Father, which art in heaven.’ The words lay in her mind, heavy and indigestible as badly cooked suet.

Halfway through, she glanced at her watch and realized that if she wasn’t careful she would be late picking up Lucy. She gabbled the rest and left the church. The Vicarage was empty but she left a note for Derek, who was still enjoying himself with the archdeacon.

It was raining, sending slivers of gold through the halos of the streetlamps. As Sally drove, she wondered whether Lucy had forgotten the conjuring set. It was unlikely. For one so young she could be inconveniently tenacious.

Sally left the car double-parked outside Carla’s house and ran through the rain to the front door. The door opened before she reached it.

Carla was on the threshold, her hands outstretched, her face crumpled, her eyes squeezed into slits and the tears slithering down her dark cheeks. The big living room behind her was in turmoil: it seethed with adults and children; and the television shimmered in the fireplace. A uniformed policewoman put her hand on Carla’s arm. She said something but Sally didn’t listen.

Michael was there too, talking angrily into the phone, slashing his free hand against his leg to emphasize what he was saying. He stared in Sally’s direction but seemed not to register her presence: he was looking past her at something unimaginable.

‘I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age, or travel, been able to effront or enharden me …’

Religio Medici, I, 40

Eddie called her Angel and so had the children. He knew the name pleased her but not why. Lucy Appleyard refused to call Angel anything at all. In that, as in so much else, Lucy was different.

Lucy Philippa Appleyard was unlike the others even in the way Angel chose her. It was only afterwards, of course, that Eddie began to suspect that Angel had a particular reason for wanting Lucy. Yet again he had been manipulated. The questions were: how much, how far back did it go – and why?

At the time everything seemed to happen by chance. Eddie often bought the Evening Standard, though he did not always read it. (Angel rarely read newspapers, partly because she had little interest in news for its own sake, and partly because they made her hands dirty.) Frank Howell’s feature on St George’s, Kensal Vale, appeared on a Friday. Angel chanced – if that was the appropriate word – to see it the following Tuesday. They had eaten their supper and Eddie was clearing up. Angel wanted to clean her shoes, a job which like anything to do with her appearance was too important to be delegated to Eddie.

She spread the newspaper over the kitchen table and fetched the shoes and the cleaning materials. There were two pairs of court shoes, one navy and the other black, and a pair of tan leather sandals. She smeared the first shoe with polish. Then she stopped. Eddie, always aware of her movements, watched as she pushed the shoes off the newspaper and sat down at the table. He put the cutlery away, a manoeuvre which allowed him to glance at the paper. He glimpsed a photograph of a fair-haired man in dog collar and denim jacket, holding a black baby in the crook of his left arm.

‘Wouldn’t like to meet him on a dark night,’ Eddie said. ‘Looks like a ferret.’ Imagine having him running up your trousers, he thought; but he did not say this aloud for fear of offending Angel.

She looked up. ‘A curate and a policeman.’

‘He’s a policeman, too?’

‘Not him. There’s a woman deacon in the parish. And she’s married to a policeman.’

Angel bent her shining head over the newspaper. Eddie pottered about the kitchen, wiping the cooker and the work surfaces. Angel’s stillness made him uneasy.

To break the silence, he said, ‘They’re not really like vicars any more, are they? I mean – that jacket. It’s pathetic.’

Angel stared at him. ‘It says they have a little girl.’

His attention sharpened. ‘The ferret?’

‘Not him. The curate and the policeman. Look, there’s a picture of the woman.’

Her name was Sally Appleyard, and she had short dark hair and a thin face with large eyes.

‘These women priests. If you ask me, it’s not natural.’ Eddie hesitated. ‘If Jesus had wanted women to be priests, he’d have chosen women apostles. Well, wouldn’t he? It makes sense.’

‘Do you think she’s pretty?’

‘No.’ He frowned, wanting to find words which Angel might want to hear. ‘She looks drab, doesn’t she? Mousy.’

‘You’re right. She’s let herself go, too. One of those people who just won’t make the effort.’

‘The little girl. How old is she? Does it say?’

‘Four. Her name’s Lucy.’

Angel went back to her shoes. Later that evening, Eddie heard her moving around the basement as he watched television in the sitting room above. It was over a year since he had been down there. The memories made him feel restless. He returned to the kitchen to make some tea. While he was there he reread the article about St George’s, Kensal Vale. He was not surprised when Angel announced her decision the following morning over breakfast.

‘Won’t it be dangerous?’ Eddie stabbed his spoon at the photograph of Sally Appleyard. ‘If her husband’s in the CID, they’ll pull out all the stops.’

‘It won’t be more dangerous if we plan it carefully. You’ve never really understood that, have you? That’s why you came a cropper before you met me. A plan’s like a clock. If it’s properly made it has to work. All you should need to do is wind it up and off it goes. Tick tock, tick tock.’

‘Are we all right for money?’

She smiled, a teacher rewarding an apt pupil. ‘I shall have to do a certain amount extra to build up the contingency fund. But it’s important not to break the routine in any way. I think I might warn Mrs Hawley-Minton that I may have some time off around Christmas.’

During the next two months, from mid-September to mid-November, Angel worked on average four days a week. Sometimes these included evenings and nights. Mrs Hawley-Minton’s agency was small and expensive. Word of mouth was all the advertising it needed. Most of the clients were either foreign business people or expatriates paying brief visits home. They were prepared to pay good money for reliable and fully qualified freelance nannies with excellent references and the knack of controlling spoiled children. The tips were good, in some cases extravagantly generous.

‘It’s a sort of blood money,’ Angel explained to Eddie. ‘It’s not that the parents feel grateful. They feel guilty. That’s because they’re not doing their duty – they’re leaving their children to be brought up by strangers. It’s not right, is it? Money can’t buy love.’