felt as if her prayers were falling into a dark vacuum.
‘Your will be done,’ she said again and again in the silence of her mind; and the words were merely sounds emptied of meaning. It was as if she were talking into a telephone and not knowing whether the person on the other end was listening or even there at all. She tried to persuade herself that this was due to the stress of the moment. Soon the stress would pass, she told herself, and normal telephonic reception would be restored. It would be childish to suppose that the problem was caused by the old woman’s curse.
‘Shit,’ said Michael, as they turned into Hercules Road. Someone had usurped their parking space.
‘It’s all right,’ Sally said, hoping that Lucy had not heard. ‘There’s a space further up.’
Michael reversed the Rover into it, jolting the nearside rear wheel against the kerb. He waited on the pavement, jingling his keys, while Sally extracted Lucy and her belongings.
‘What’s for lunch?’ Lucy demanded. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘Ask your father.’
‘A sort of lamb casserole with haricot beans.’ Michael tended to cook what he liked to eat.
‘Yuk. Can I have Frosties instead?’
Their flat was in a small, purpose-built block dating from the 1930s. Michael had bought it before their marriage. It was spacious for one person, comfortable for two and just large enough to accommodate a small child as well. As Sally opened the front door, the smell of burning rushed out to greet them.
‘Shit,’ Michael said. ‘And double shit.’
Before Lucy was born, Sally and Michael Appleyard had decided that they would not allow any children they might have to disrupt their lives. They had seen how the arrival of children had affected the lives of friends, usually, it seemed, for the worse. They themselves were determined to avoid the trap.
They had met through Michael’s job, almost six years before Sally was offered the Kensal Vale curacy. Michael had arrested a garage owner who specialized in selling stolen cars. Sally, who had recently been ordained as a deacon, knew his wife through church and had responded to a desperate phone call from her. The apparent urgency was such that she came as she was, in gardening clothes, with very little make-up and without a dog collar.
‘It’s a mistake,’ the woman wailed, tears streaking her carefully made-up face, ‘some ghastly mistake. Or someone’s fitted him up. Why can’t the police understand?’
While the woman alternately wept and raged, Michael and another officer had searched the house. It was Sally who dealt with the children, talked to the solicitor and held the woman’s hand while they asked her questions she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. At the time she took little notice of Michael except to think that he carried out a difficult job with more sensitivity than she would have expected.
Three evenings later, Michael arrived out of the blue at Sally’s flat. On this occasion she was wearing her dog collar. Ostensibly he wanted to see if she had an address for the wife, who had disappeared. On impulse she asked him in and offered him coffee. At this second meeting she looked at him as an individual and on the whole liked what she saw: a thin face with dark eyes and a fair complexion; the sort of brown hair that once had been blond; medium height, broad shoulders and slim hips. When she came into the sitting room with the coffee she found him in front of the bookcase. He did not comment directly on its contents or on the crucifix which hung on the wall above.
‘When were you ordained?’
‘Only a few weeks ago.’
‘In the Church of England?’
She nodded, concentrating on pouring the coffee.
‘So that means you’re a deacon?’
‘Yes. And that’s as far as I’m likely to get unless the Synod votes in favour of women priests.’
‘A deacon can do everything a priest can except celebrate Communion: is that right?’
‘More or less. Are you –?’
‘A practising Christian? I’m afraid it’s more theory than practice. My godfather’s a priest.’
‘Where?’
‘He lives in Cambridge now. He’s retired. He used to teach at a theological college in the States.’ Michael sipped his coffee. ‘I doubt if Uncle David approves of the ordination of women.’
‘Many older priests find it hard to accept. And younger ones, too, for that matter. It’s not easy for them.’
They went on to talk of other things. As he was leaving, he paused in the doorway and asked her out to dinner. The invitation surprised her as much (he later admitted) as it surprised him. She refused, but he kept on asking until she accepted, just to get rid of him.
Michael took her to a Chinese restaurant in Swiss Cottage. For most of the time he encouraged her to talk about herself, either evading or returning short answers to the questions she lobbed in return. She told him that she had left her job as a careers adviser in order to go to theological college. Now she was ordained, she had little chance of finding a curacy in the immediate future, all the more so because her father was ill and she did not want to move too far away from him.
‘Besides, a lot of dioceses have no time for women deacons.’
Michael pushed the dish of roast duck towards her. ‘If you’re a deacon – or a priest – well, that has to come first, I suppose? It has to be the most important thing in life, your first allegiance.’
‘Of course.’
‘So where do people fit in? I know you’re not married, but do you have a boyfriend? And what about children? Or would God be more important?’
‘Are you always like this?’
‘Like what?’
‘So pushy.’
‘I’m not usually like this at all.’
She bent over her plate, knowing her thick hair would curtain her face. In those days she had worn it long, and gloried in it.
‘You’re not celibate, are you?’ he asked.
‘It’s nothing to do with you.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘As it happens, no. But it’s still nothing to do with you.’
Three months later they were married.
It was ridiculous, Sally told herself, to read significance into the malicious ramblings of an unhappy woman. To see them as a portent would be pure superstition. Yet in the weeks that followed Sally’s first service at St George’s, the old woman was often in her mind. The memory of what she had said was like a spreading stain. No amount of rubbing would remove it.
May God damn you and yours.
When Sally had been offered the curacy at Kensal Vale, it had seemed almost too good
