Distant Voices Read online

  ‘I won’t make you learn passages from the Bible,’ Charles murmured in her ear. ‘And you can have a new bonnet and your very own copy of Lord Byron’s works.’

  Caroline smiled in spite of herself. ‘With promises like that, I confess I am tempted. I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Good.’ The bishop nodded approval. ‘But now to the other problem. You cannot go back to Pengate, Charles. Quite apart from any other consideration that man was no fool. He will lie in wait outside the close to check for himself that the young lady he saw really is someone else, and in so doing he is bound to see you. You will have to stay here, both of you, until we can think of a plan to get you away.’ He frowned.

  ‘In the meantime, you could marry us, father?’ Charles took Caroline’s hand.

  The bishop looked at them thoughtfully. ‘I think that would be a little premature, Charles. Ladies like months to plan things like weddings.’

  ‘Not this one, father.’ Charles smiled. ‘This one is a rebel. There is nothing she would like more than a secret wedding in the cathedral at dead of night, followed by a honeymoon aboard the Marie Blanche on the way to France. Am I not right?’ he appealed to Caroline.

  She laughed. ‘I’m afraid Charles knows me too well already, my lord,’ she said. ‘I do find that idea appealing.’

  ‘And your day will be made if you are pursued by armed soldiers with warrants for your arrest, no doubt,’ the bishop said dryly. ‘I would rather your honeymoon were spent quietly in London while I find you a suitably quiet parish somewhere far from the sea!’

  ‘Oh, Father –’

  ‘That is my decision, Charles.’ For the first time the bishop looked angry. ‘And now, you may take Caroline into the garden for a while, while I speak to her father.’

  Charles seated himself on the swing and gently pushed at the ground. He smiled up at her. ‘You can wear the pendant now.’

  She took it from her pocket. ‘Would you mind a new parish?’

  He shook his head. ‘I have to remember that my father is also my bishop. I must obey him. Besides, it’s a challenge! Think what we could do in a new parish together.’

  She smiled. ‘You could become a highwayman.’

  ‘With you for my Moll?’ He laughed. ‘What a pair we should make. I can see life will never be dull with you!’ He grew serious again. ‘And what if I reformed and settled down to a life of hard work? Would that dismay you?’

  She looked up at him soberly. ‘If life grows dull, Charles,’ she said, ‘I can always ask Captain Warrender to tea!’

  OBE

  It was the fault of the books of course. She knew they said that the technique would work but she hadn’t actually believed it. Not deep in her heart of hearts.

  The thing was that she loved the theory. Who wouldn’t? It was pure fantasy. And she loved the whole scenario that went with it all. The exercises, the meditation (an excuse to sit for twenty minutes twice a day without moving and feel self-righteously good, not guilty, about it), the props: the oil burner, the candle, the chunk of amethyst and best of all the feeling which she knew was probably wrong, not in the spirit of the thing at all, that she had a secret and one which would, if Desmond found out about it, shock him to the roots of his hair.

  She had never joined in as much as she should with the parish work but it was becoming commonplace for vicars’ wives these days to have a job (in her case boring secretarial) so the ladies of the parish had been given free rein to follow their inclinations for supporting good causes and she kept out of the way as much as she could.

  This evening, for example, she had intended to go to the W.I. meeting. That was why she hadn’t gone with Desmond to the school nativity play. The trouble was as soon as the door closed behind him she experienced such an incredible feeling of release. Poor darling Desmond. If only he wasn’t so – so – Pi!

  When they had married he had been a market gardener. Not garden centre material; not even really the specialist nursery type. But that might have come. With her pushing and her energy it really might have come. Instead he had suddenly got God. Badly. Within five years he was an ordained priest, the market garden and house had gone and they were living in an inner, well not city exactly but definitely urban environment, in a small modern church-owned cottage which gloried in the name of Rectory. She still wasn’t quite sure why she hadn’t left him. No, that wasn’t true. She knew exactly why. She still loved him. Adored him actually. And he still adored her. Obviously. Otherwise how did she manage to entice him to do the things she still managed to entice him to do under the cover of the ecclesiastical duvet?

  It was all his fault actually because he had given her the idea in the first place. After a particularly exciting interlude which had left him with watering eyes and distinctly out of breath, as he lay triumphantly on top of her, her wrists firmly held to the pillow where they could do no more harm (if that was what you called it), he had whispered the word. Witch.

  Lying still, looking up at him with misleading docility Serena smiled.

  The word appealed to her. It did not conjure up pictures of old crones and broomsticks and untimely bonfires. Not the way Desmond said it. Oh no. It had definitely been intended as a compliment.

  It was as she was choosing a book for Desmond’s father’s birthday (‘golf or gardening: they’re safe’) that she saw the book on Wicca. That’s what they called witchcraft these days. She sidled nearer the table on which it was displayed. New Age/Religion/Popular Psychology it said on the sign hanging over the display and she flipped the book open. The photograph thus exposed (the right word, she thought, with a gasp and then an audible, half embarrassed, giggle) was of a woman, stark naked except for a beautiful necklace, facing an equally naked man who had no necklace, but whose wrists appeared to be tied together.

  For a long moment she stared. She did, she had to admit, feel quite aroused. She glanced up and saw two tables away, thank the dear Lord with his back to her, Stan Eversley, a churchwarden from their parish. She slammed the book shut and wondered in sudden embarrassment whether this was a hot flush. Something exceedingly uncomfortable was certainly sweeping up her body and colouring her cheeks an unseemly hue.

  ‘Mrs Perkins? I thought it was you.’ He had seen her then. The hot flush was swiftly followed by a cold douche of dread. She picked up the nearest golfing book (had the assistant classified it under New Age/Religion or had a careless customer put it down in the wrong place?) and she left the shop with her innocent purchase, smartly wrapped, under her arm.

  She didn’t buy any books on Wicca of course. Of course not. Even though it did seem to have more scope for, well, fun, than the C of E. What she did buy was a book on personal development. Later. When no one she knew was in the bookshop. And even then she told the assistant it was for her nephew. Then she bought another, on yoga and one on meditation, both recommended by the first.

  She drew the line at incense. Desmond, a low church man if ever there was one, would freak out at the first whiff, but aromatherapy oils were all the rage and – she studied a book on this subject as well – could with a judicious choice of oil be used in meditational settings. The amethyst cluster was actually being used to decorate a shelf in one of the local hand-made pottery shops. It wasn’t for sale, but she knew by now that if a crystal calls you and wants to live with you, you cannot argue with it. Luckily the shop assistant had read the same books and knew this as well so a mutually satisfactory deal was struck and the amethyst too was presumably ecstatically happy.

  There weren’t often occasions when she could light her beautiful ceramic oil burner and her candle and lay the crystal near them. She needed to be sure not only that Desmond was out but also that no one else knew that she was in. (The parishioners, even though they knew she worked, still felt they had a right to every second of time she was at home.)

  Guiltily putting on the answerphone and switching off the lights she crept upstairs to the cupboard euphemistically called the sewing room (not by he
r, as she told anyone who would be interested) and closing the door behind her she stood still for a moment to centre herself.

  It was growing increasingly easy to slip into the meditative mood. She was, she thought, quite good at it, although she wasn’t sure how one judged such things. Certainly she was learning how to go more and more deeply into whatever it was that made her tick.

  The first time she had what her book called an OBE (out- of-body experience to those of you who are unrehearsed in these matters – forget the Order of the British Empire) she nearly died of fright. One moment she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her eyes shut, her mind alert but free, her hands upturned on her knees, the next she was up in the corner of the ceiling looking down. With a yelp of fear she tumbled back into herself, scrambled to her feet, tore open the door, ran down the stairs and into the kitchen for a very unalternative caffeine fix. Her hands were shaking so much she couldn’t get the lid off the Gold Blend. For the first time in her life she wished she smoked. That would give her something to do to settle her nerves. She had actually been there, on the ceiling. Not imagining it. Not dreaming it. Not wishful thinking it. Actually. For real. Genuinely.

  When Desmond came home she was curled up on the sofa watching an old tape of Taggart. He glanced at the screen, gave a slight grimace aimed in equal parts at the gory corpse in close-up and the unintelligible Glaswegian dissertation on methods of slicing through the jugular, and he dropped a kiss on top of her head.

  ‘My roots need touching up, don’t they?’

  Serena didn’t take her eyes off the green-clad figure in charge of the scalpel.

  ‘Do they?’ He squinted down. ‘They look all right to me.’

  It was amazing how much she had noticed in that split second of altered viewpoint: the greying roots and an unacceptably prominent, some might say slightly conked nose she had never noticed – never before seen from that angle, the spiders’ webs festooning the light bulb and lamp shade and the worn patch on the carpet just inside the door which was barely noticeable from ground – or normal eye – level.

  It was two days before she meditated again and of course she couldn’t do it properly. She was too tense, and let’s face it, too afraid.

  A week later though it happened again and this time she found she could move around the ceiling. Two days after that she discovered that, unbelievably, she could fly through walls.

  Practising sometimes twice a day she became proficient at manoeuvring. In fact all she had to do was think herself somewhere and there she was.

  It was while she was skimming around Desmond’s study that the thought of him transported her abruptly to where he was, sitting uncomfortably in the Eversleys’ sitting room, a cup of coffee balanced precariously on his knees, a crumb from a lately-consumed biscuit stuck provocatively – or so thought his wife – to the corner of his lower lip. Oh Des. It would look so silly to anyone else. He would be mortified if he knew. Opposite him Jean Eversley was sitting on the sofa, her hands laced around her knees, her eyes glued to the crumb. Every now and then she brushed self-consciously at her own lips. He frowned, puzzled by her action, failed to imitate her body language, and ploughed on with what he was saying.

  ‘Jean, my dear. I appreciate your confiding in me, I really do. I just wish there was something I could do to help.’

  Serena thought herself onto the arm of the chair next to him. Cautiously she reached out a finger to touch his lip. Desmond frowned. He shivered visibly and looked round. ‘I’m sorry, Jean. Someone must have stepped on my grave.’ The crumb was still in place.

  Serena felt herself smile. She didn’t dare try and touch him again. She still wasn’t that good at this manoeuvre which was rather advanced. The technicalities were still a little vague and she wasn’t convinced she might not suddenly materialise in person. In fact she wasn’t convinced that Jean Eversley couldn’t see her, for the woman’s eyes had grown suddenly huge and her normally florid complexion had paled.

  She had thought she was invisible – had been to herself when she hovered in front of a selection of mirrors at home, and was, obviously, to Desmond or he would have reacted to the vision of his wife floating neatly onto the arm of the chair in which he was sitting and arranging herself with provocatively crossed legs right there in the churchwarden’s overheated sitting room – but her worst suspicions about Jean were confirmed a moment later when the woman’s voice, a creaky, whispered, shadow of its former strident self suddenly said, ‘Can you see it?’

  ‘It?’ Desmond frowned. Vaguely locating the area on which she was focusing he stared straight at Serena. ‘See what?’

  Serena breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘It. The ghost!’

  Desmond shook his head sternly. ‘Oh come now, my dear Jean. You’re overwrought.’ Standing up he put a fatherly arm around the woman’s shoulder. To her relief Serena saw the crumb, dislodged by this sudden activity, release its hold on his lip and fall harmlessly out of sight onto the carpet. ‘It’s the thought of Stan playing you up, that’s all. You’re upset. Once things have settled down again you’ll realise there are no such things as ghosts.’

  ‘What about the holy ghost?’ Jean was trembling visibly but not too shaken to be perverse. Serena scowled. How typical of the woman.

  Desmond however handled it brilliantly. He gave a deep, world-weary sigh. ‘That is not the same sort of ghost, Jean.’ He smiled. ‘As I’m sure you very well know …’

  He was about to get boring.

  Serena thought herself home.

  When he got there himself by more orthodox methods (1987 Vauxhall) half an hour later, she was making biscuits.

  ‘So, do I gather Stan Eversley is having another affair?’ She smiled at him innocently.

  ‘How on earth did you know that?’ Desmond seemed genuinely shocked. After all Jean had only just found out.

  ‘Village gossip.’ Deftly Serena put the baking tray into the oven. ‘The old hypocrite! How does he think he’ll get away with it?’

  Desmond threw himself down in a chair and pulling the teapot towards him he shook it experimentally to see if there was any tea left. ‘He always does. Jean will forgive him. She adores that silly old man.’

  Of course she had to be very firm with herself. Spying on parishioners was definitely not on. Nor was spying on Desmond. Not once she had checked that his relationship with the beautiful and frustrated Dawn Freeling really was the spiritual and healing challenge he said it was. But it was oh so tempting.

  When Don French rang up to say he couldn’t come to the vestry meeting because he had a migraine she couldn’t resist running upstairs, locking herself in the loo and popping over to his house to see what he was really up to. Just to give some support and spread a healing thought or two, you understand. She found him in the sitting room, his feet propped up on the coffee table, sharing lager and a take-away curry with Joseph Porter, the tearaway brother of the Methodist minister. They were glued to a video of Seven. Apoplectic with rage she almost lost control. Luckily the sweeping gesture designed to hurl the already emptied, crushed, cans of Holsten to the floor had no effect at all other than to make her spin round and round in circles. But she saw Don give a shiver. He edged away from the table and put down his fork. ‘Joe.’ He had gone pale. ‘Did you feel that?’

  ‘Wha’?’ Joe, the son of an Oxford scholar, was glotally disadvantaged at the best of times. After a chicken vindaloo he was virtually incoherent.

  ‘Cold. Rather unpleasant.’

  Thanks a bunch! Serena was fuming, but back in control.

  ‘Na.’ Joe lurched forward to grope with a wayward hand for his can.

  With slit-eyed concentration Serena honed in on him. Putting her own hand firmly round his wrist she pulled.

  Joe let out a scream. Curry and lager flew in all directions. He leaped to his feet, vaulted the back of the sofa and cowered behind it as Serena positioned herself next to Don and whispered, with gratifying effect, the one word ‘Rectory�
�.

  When she walked back downstairs to where Desmond and Stan and the others were holding their meeting the phone was ringing. Desmond returned from answering it with a smile. ‘Don is feeling a bit better. He thought he would come over after all,’ he said.

  She knew she had to stop doing it. Her conscience was troubling her more and more and besides that, her character was changing and Des had noticed. She was becoming a know-all – she knew for example exactly when Stan Eversley had stopped dallying and returned to Jean’s bed – and she was becoming insufferable. She had all these private jokes. She was like those poor souls one saw walking down the street chuckling to themselves at some hilarious unshared secret. Maybe this was what they were laughing at. Maybe they could all do it: leap from their bodies and whiz around the world. She had tried that as a change from the affairs of the parish. World travel. She would watch a programme on the TV about some distant, exotic and above all expensive place and then she would pop over there for a quick look. And no danger of malaria or funny tummy.

  But secrets become burdens. There was no one to share her experiences with; her close friends had dropped away or become hostages to the Royal Mail when she and Des had moved to the parish – so far from where they lived before – and she had made only acquaintances since then. Not once did she meet some other out-of-body soul and only seldom did people see her and when they did they were nearly always afraid.

  Except once. In France. She was standing gazing at the most beautiful waterfall she had ever seen, in a lush, narrow, deserted valley high in the Franche Comté when she heard footsteps near her. The man who stood there was tall and devastatingly good-looking in a particularly French way. Only a little out of breath after the climb, he sat down on some rocks to recover as he stared down at the rainbow arc of water. She studied him with interest, made brazen by her invisibility. He was definitely a dish.