‘Yes, Father Wilfred.’
‘Let me be absolutely clear,’ he said. ‘Lateness is not only a discourtesy to me, it is a discourtesy to God, and I will not tolerate it.’
‘Yes, Father Wilfred.’
He said no more but drew back the chair I’d been sitting on and wedged himself under the desk to look at the books. He licked his finger and turned the page in the photograph album and squinted into the magnifying glass.
Chapter Ten
Early on Good Friday, just before the clock chimed for Saint Matthew, Mummer came into our room and drew back the curtains. Hanny rolled over and snuffled into his pillow.
‘Ten minutes,’ she said. ‘Don’t keep us waiting.’
I watched her go and then got out of bed. Outside the sky was obscured by a low swirling cloud of moisture that was somewhere between fog and drizzle. Down in the front garden where the fruit trees dripped and bent in the wind, I saw Father Bernard setting a wooden crucifix against the gate — the last of the fourteen Mummer would have had him distributing round the outside of the house since the first washes of dawn.
Once this was done, he put his hands on the dry stone wall and let his head tip forward before coming back inside. He was as tired as I was.
I rolled back the rug, took up the floorboard and checked the rifle. It was still there, of course. I touched the cold metal of the trigger, flicked the little safety catch on and off and tried to imagine what it would be like to fire it. To feel it punch my shoulder. The noise it would make.
The small hand of the clock found Matthew the tax collector and rang five times in soft dabs that seemed to come from deep inside the mechanisms. I put the rifle back and then shook Hanny until he was awake.
He immediately touched his wrist and looked at me expectantly.
‘Yes, Hanny,’ I said. ‘I know. We’ll get your watch back today.’
***
When we got downstairs, everyone was already sitting around the kitchen table in their coats.
‘’Morning lads,’ said Father Bernard. He had his hand inside a shoe and was scuffing off the dirt in quick movements. ‘Sleep well?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Thank you for asking,’ Mummer said, looking at me and then to Father Bernard.
‘Thank you for asking, Father,’ I said and he slowed his brushing for a moment, glancing up at Mummer and then me.
Hanny went over to one of the cupboards and started looking for cereal. Mummer snapped at him and then, remembering herself, she smiled at him instead and touched him gently on the arm.
‘No, Andrew,’ she said. ‘We don’t eat until it goes dark. And when we do, it will be fish, not cornflakes.’
Hanny didn’t understand. Mummer took the box off him and put it back in the cupboard.
Farther came in coughing and sat down, laying a single key on the table.
‘I’ve got that door open,’ he said. ‘The one in the study.’
Mummer rolled her eyes, but Mr Belderboss leant forward.
‘What was inside?’ he said.
‘A bed,’ Farther replied.
Mr Belderboss frowned.
‘And some toys,’ said Farther.
‘Was it a playroom, do you think?’ Mr Belderboss said.
‘No,’ said Farther, barking into his fist again. ‘I’ve a feeling it was a quarantine.’
‘For the children with TB?’
Farther nodded. ‘There’s a little barred window that’s been bricked up from the outside. That’s probably why we’ve never noticed it before.’
He launched into a rasping cough.
‘Oh, will you stop,’ said Mummer. ‘What is the matter with you?’
‘I think it’s that room,’ said Farther. ‘Full of dust.’
‘Funny place to keep the children, right next to the study,’ said Mr Belderboss.
‘Perhaps it wasn’t a study then,’ said Farther. ‘Or perhaps it was so Gregson could keep an eye on them while he worked. I don’t know.’
‘It’s a constant surprise this place,’ said Mr Belderboss. ‘I shall look forward to seeing it.’
‘Not now, Reg,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘Father’s waiting to begin.’
Father Bernard was standing by the back door in his coat and shoes.
‘Only if everyone’s ready,’ he said.
***
The rain came down harder as soon as we went outside and the back yard became a delta of little streams gushing through the cobbles. Father Bernard walked across to the middle and stopped.
‘Here?’ he said to Mummer.
‘That’s where Father Wilfred started, yes,’ said Mummer.
Father Bernard nodded and then began.
‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.’
Everyone responded and then went to their knees, apart from Mr and Mrs Belderboss who wouldn’t have got up again if they had. Hanny was looking around, more interested in the way the rain was pattering out of the broken gutter, until I pulled him down next to me.
Father Bernard closed his eyes and lifted up his hands.
‘We ask our Lord Jesus Christ to forgive us our sins. And we pray especially for Andrew that he be filled with the Holy Spirit and find peace this Eastertide. Hail Mary, full of grace …’
Hanny watched as we all spoke the words together.
Once the prayer was over, everyone stood up and moved across the yard to the first station. There we got to our knees again and Father Bernard said, ‘We adore thee, O Christ, and we praise thee.’
Everyone replied: ‘Because by Thy holy cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.’
Father Bernard opened a small prayer book, shielding it from the rain with his hand.
Pilate condemned Jesus to death and he took up the cross that was given to him. He fell. His mother came to wipe away the blood and Simon picked him and his crucifix up off the floor. He fell again. And again.
And so it went on, until we had circled Moorings and Jesus was dead.
***
Once it was over, I was allowed to take Hanny out for a few hours before the Tenebrae service at Little Hagby.
We went down to the beach, chancing that the crossing to Coldbarrow would be clear and we could get his watch back. I didn’t want to go at all. I’d have quite happily let Leonard keep the damn thing — Hanny would have forgotten about it in a day — but Mummer would notice it was missing and make me pay for a new one. It would be my fault that he had lost it.
We had no idea of the tides anymore. We hadn’t been here for so long that that kind of knowledge had been lost. But when we got there the sea was well out — a line of foam at the edge of the mud flats. A huge stillness had settled now that waters had retreated but the clouds on the horizon had the look of something building to attack. Darkening and darkening, turning the silent gulls that swooped before them an unnatural white.
Had it been like this for the farmers that had once grazed their cattle here? Had they always looked out to sea, wondering when it would come sweeping in again and with what ferocity? I suppose they must have done.
At some point in the past, there had been a shingle causeway from the beach to Coldbarrow for farmers to get to the saltmarshes further out in the bay, and though, like everything else, it had been washed away, there remained a line of black timber posts at the edge of the old road. They petered out half way across, but it was better than nothing and the fact that they had barely shifted in a hundred years or more meant that they marked the only solid pathway one was likely to find at low tide.
For half a mile, we followed the stumps and then, when they gave out, the wandering tracks the Daimler had left in the sand were the only thing to guide us around the patches of sinking mud and the deep cuttings still eroding from the withdrawal of the tide. It was out here in the maw of the bay that one felt most exposed. The flatness of the sands made everything seem a long way away. There was nothing but the wind and the coming and going of light; and the gulls were bigger and unafraid. This was their territory, and we were nothing.