‘I’m sorry, Ruth, I’d like to be like you about it, believe me, but bad news is exactly what I’m afraid I’ve had, or may be going to get.’
‘You mean to do with JC?’
‘Yes, that’s what I — yes, yes.’
‘But you can’t tell me what or how.’
‘I don’t know myself, any more than I understand about him and me.’ A tear started to run down Daniel’s cheek and he wiped it away with his fingers. ‘Sorry. If I did I’d tell you about it straight away, you know that.’
‘Isn’t there anything you can tell me?’ she asked gravely.
‘Probably nothing you haven’t already seen for yourself, but anyway, one question I didn’t ask Leo, in fact I expect you noticed me dashing in to stop him answering it before I had time to ask it…’
‘… was if he was a godless drunk one minute and a very serious parson the next.’
Daniel hesitated. Then he said, ‘All right, that’ll do for the moment. At least if any of it wasn’t or isn’t true then I needn’t worry about the rest. Now I suppose I’d better finish off my sermon for tomorrow. I’ll be in for lunch but late. I’ve got to go and see Miss Rawlings first.’
‘Is that the one with the killing eyes and the fantastic figure?’
‘No, it’s the one with the Edwardian false teeth and the face of a thousand wrinkles.’
He was on his way to the kitchen stairs when Ruth said, ‘I wonder why he didn’t bring his wife with him. Why he left the other Ruth at home.’
‘Economy, I expect. If they’re anything like us they have to watch the pennies the whole time.’
‘Well, at any rate he’s not unlike you. I wonder if they’ve got any kids.’
‘We’ll ask him.’ Daniel retraced a couple of his steps. ‘Doesn’t it bother you, being like the other Ruth in temperament as well as looks and even having the same name?’
‘Not a bit. You and he would almost certainly be drawn to the same kind of woman, and the name is nothing. Coincidence. Never make the mistake of underestimating the likelihood of coincidence.’
Daniel finished typing his sermon and went over the script pointing it like the text of a psalm and underlining words to be stressed. When he was satisfied, he put on his dicky and dog-collar, picked up his communion case and went out to his car, an A-registered Cavalier parked at the kerb. His parishioners had bought it for him and met some of its bills. Ten minutes later he was pulling up outside an unprepossessing but not actually awful block of flats. Since it was in quite a good area, not on any football supporters’ track, for example, he left the car where it was, taking the communion case with him. Miss Rawlings had not so far asked for the service but he hoped she might one day, as some in her circumstances already had.
Miss Rawlings lived on the first floor, across a tidy, well-swept hall and up a stairway that Daniel had sometimes thought would have been the better for a couple of graffiti or some other defilement as a distraction from the overall style of the fittings. There was, however, enough of an unwanted smell coming from her room to offset this deficiency, strange and no more than disagreeable rather than straightforwardly revolting. As he made his way in, Daniel recited to himself supposed facts about the swift overloading of the olfactory sense in man.
Beside Miss Rawlings, sitting next to her on the couch of obsolete plastic, was a woman he knew quite well to be her widowed niece, but who looked at him with uncertainty and misgiving, in her fifties but at sea in the presence of a bloody parson.
‘I’ll be going then, Della,’ she said reluctantly, her eyes on him. ‘I thought I’d only just got here, but you seem to have company, don’t you? Is there anything you want? I said is there anything you want?’
‘Haven’t you got that list I gave you?’
‘What? Of course I have. I was just wondering if there was anything else. You know, anything else you wanted. You know.’
There was evidently nothing else, nothing on the tip of anyone’s tongue at least. Looking successively at the other two as if of course it was no business of hers but she did hope they knew what they were doing, the niece left. Then, asked how she had been over the past week, Miss Rawlings began a narrative that worked up now and then to the level of mild complaint. Daniel had been ready for that. His unspoken agreement with the old lady was that she got a few things off her chest to start with and about the halfway mark it was his turn to talk about God, or at least to approach that subject. He listened now to what she was saying about the language of the girl at the paper-shop, superstitiously hoping that to do so might be repaid by her listening to him for as long.
Eventually Miss Rawlings said, ‘My real trouble is I get these nasty times when I don’t seem to see the point of somebody like me keeping going at all. I suppose you’re going to say that’s wrong, Mr Davidson.’
‘A lot of people in your sort of situation do feel that from time to time.’
‘That doesn’t make it wrong or right, does it?’
‘Let’s just say it’s unnecessary.’
‘I don’t remember ever thinking something because it was necessary. What was it — my sort of situation, you said? You don’t know what it’s like, how could you?’
Daniel saw that Miss Rawlings’s eyes were bright over her fallen-in cheeks and the sharp nose that old age had made prominent. ‘No, I don’t,’ he answered her, ‘but now I come to think of it there are plenty of people not in your situation who can’t see any reason for carrying on. I used to be one of them myself. Does that surprise you?’
‘It’s not the same thing at all, a young man like you.’
‘Years don’t matter, we can desperately need help at any time of our lives, and mercifully help is always available to those who ask for it.’
‘I tell you, vicar, there’s nobody who’s going to help me. My niece and my grandnephew, and Ernie, oh he’s marvellous, that Ernie, but what can he do, what can any of them do, they’ve got their own lives to lead. I need a person with me every minute of the day and night, and how could I expect anybody to put themselves in that position, if they had the time they wouldn’t have the patience, how could they? No, I’m sorry, Mr Davidson, you’re very good, but I just can’t see any point in me going on.’
‘You’re forgetting God,’ said Daniel. ‘He’ll be with you as long as you want him, he’s got the time and the patience for everybody. You only have to ask him.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Miss Rawlings, by way of amused or weary reference, not invocation, ‘don’t talk to me about God. I tell you, he’s never done nothing for me.’
‘Have you asked him, have you prayed to him? It’s the same thing, you know. And he always answers, did you know that? I was in such despair once I was going to kill myself, and at the last minute and as a last resort I prayed to God although I didn’t believe in him then, but he answered just the same. I found I could…’
Daniel let his voice trail off. He had thought or hoped that the importance to everybody of what he was saying was so great and obvious that it was bound to reach someone who at any rate was used to hearing God mentioned. But it seemed that the bright eyes had sunk back into their sockets and the liveliness of manner gone again. A moment ago, the one room had looked neat and even cheerful, the single bed made and spread with a light green counterpane, the sink and draining board clear, with the clean crockery on its rack, a pair of flourishing potted plants on the sill. Now, he saw it as static and lifeless, like a model cell in an enlightened gaol. Poor Miss Rawlings. Even if he had had the required energy and insensitivity, he would still have not dared to tell her any more of the story of his first prayer, not just that it had been answered because he had truly wanted help, but what he had suspected more and more strongly ever since that moment, that God had planted in him the impulse to pray. Faith was offered before it could be accepted. He brought out his pocket diary and turned over some of its pages while he briefly made petition that Miss Rawlings should receive the gift of faith.