A strikingly cold autumn. October frost, nearly all the trees were bare. His arthritis playing up.
Giving him a hard time tonight. Difficult keeping his mind on the job, wanting only to get it over and limp back to his study - even though, since Judy's death, this had become the loneliest place of all.
'... and on Wednesday evening, there'll be a meeting of the morrismen in the Function Room at The Man, that's 7.30 ...
The congregation numbered close on seventy tonight, not a bad turnout. A few regular faces missing, including several members of the committee of the Mothers' Union, but that wasn't too surprising, they'd been here this morning. Couldn't expect anyone to attend twice, even the Mothers.
He rounded off the service with a final hymn, accompanied as usual by Alfred Beckett on the harmonium - a primitive reedy sound, but homely; there'd never been an organ In Bridelow Church, despite its size.
'Well done, lad,' Ernie Dawber said at the church door patting his shoulder. 'Keep thi chin up.' Fifteen years his senior, Bridelow born and bred, Ernie Dawber had always called him 'lad'. When the Rector had first arrived, he'd expected a few problems over his name. It had still seemed too close to the War for the locals not to be dubious about a new minister called ...
'... Hans Gruber,' the schoolmaster had repeated slowly rolling it round his mouth like a boiled sweet.
'Yes.'
'That's German, isn't it?'
Hans had nodded. 'But I was actually born near Leighton Buzzard.'
Ernie Dawber had narrowed his eyes, giving the new minister a very hard look. 'Word of advice, lad. Keep quiet about that, I should. Thing is ...' Glancing from side to side '... there's a few folks round here who're not that keen on ...' dropping his voice,'... southerners.'
The Rector said now, thinking of his lonely study, 'Come back for a glass, Ernie?'
'I don't trunk so, lad.' Ernie Dawber pulled on his hat 'Not tonight.'
'I'll never forgive you for this.'
He was gripping the stiffened edge of the sheet like a prisoner clutching at the bars of his cell, his final appeal turned down.
'We should never have let you go home, Mr Castle,' the nursing sister said.
'Matt, please ...' Lottie put her cool hand over his yellowed claw. 'Don't say that ...'
'You never listen.' Feebly shaking his head, inconsolable All the way here in the ambulance, Lottie holding his hand, he'd been silent, away somewhere, still on the Moss perhaps.
His eyes shone with the tears that wouldn't come, no moisture left in his body.
The nurse said, 'I think he should have some sleep, don't you, Mrs Castle?'
'Sleep?' Matt was bleakly contemptuous. 'No real sleep in here. Comes out of the bloody ... drug cabinet ... only sort sleep you can get in here.' He looked past the nurse, 'Where's Dic?'
'I told you, Matt,' Lottie said gently. 'He wouldn't come in. He's too confused. He's probably walking round the
grounds, walking it off. He'll come in tomorrow, when he's ...'
'Might be too late, tomorrow.'
Lottie smiled at him. 'Don't be soft.' There was a small commotion behind her, a nurse and a young porter putting screens around a bed opposite Matt's.
'Another one gone,' Matt grunted.
'Bath time, that's all,' the nurse said unconvincingly.
'Give you any old crap in here. Look, tell Dic ...' His faltering voice forming words as dry and frail as an ancient cobweb... Tell him, he can be in the band. If he wants to. Then ... when Moira comes, he can play. But you won't, will you? You never do owt I say.'
'You tell him,' Lottie said. 'Tell him when you see him in the morning.'
Matt Castle made no reply. He seemed too dehydrated to sweat or to weep. It was as though somebody had talcumed his face, like a ...
Lottie swallowed hard.
'Useless... bitch.'
Matt fell asleep.
Shrivelled leaves, unseen, chattered on the window-pane. The dead leaves said, Go away, draw the curtains, put on the light.
It's not your affair, the dead leaves said.
The Rector didn't move, just as he hadn't moved in the late afternoon, at dusk, when the warning flurry had hit the pane, as if flung.
At the top end, the vicarage garden almost vanished into the moor. When the light faded, the low stone wall between them dissolved into shadow and the garden and the moor became one. On the other side of the wall was a public footpath; it was along this they came, and sometimes, over the years, around dusk, the Rector had seen them, had made himself watch them.
Tonight, resting up before evening service, sitting in the window of the darkening study, wedged into a hard chair, his swollen foot on the piano stool, he'd watched three of them enter the churchyard from the footpath, passing through the wooden wicket gate. They were black, shapeless, hooded and silent. A crescent moon had wavered behind smoky cloud.
It was all over, though, as was usual, when he walked out across his garden, through the gate and into the churchyard
Half an hour before the evening service.
Now he was back in his study, listening to the leaves with the lights out. All he could see through the window was the reflection of two bars of the ineffectual electric fire.
When Judy, his wife, was alive there'd been a coal fire in the study every night from the end of September until the end of April.
The Rector was cold. Eleven years now since Judy's death. Where had all the warmth gone, the warmth which before had only increased with the drawing-in of the days? Where had the smiles gone, the smiles which lit the eyes while the mouths stayed firm?
And why, for that matter, had Ma Wagstaff's herbal preparation had so little effect this time on his arthritis?
He stood up, hobbled close to the window, cupped his hands to the pane and peered through.
At the garden's edge, a few graves lurched giddily on the slope, and then the church loomed like an enormous black beast. Lately, Hans Gruber had been wondering if life would not have been a good deal simpler in one of those modern churches, where one's main headache was glue-sniffing behind the vestry. Us and Them. Good and evil. God and Satan.
Hans thought, Wouldn't that be wonderful?
After his wife had left, they'd wheeled Mr Castle's bed into a the ward where, unless anyone was brought in suddenly, he'd be alone, until...
'Until morning,' the young nurse whispered, reassuring herself.
Mr Castle was sleeping. She was glad; she was still afraid of people who were dying, who were in the actual process of it. She wasn't yet sure how to talk to them, how to look at them, and the awful suspense - what it would be like, the atmosphere in this small, comparatively quiet space, in the moment, the very second when it happened.