Page 3 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
It was an unsettling thought: but then, when had I ever had any other kind?
I dialled the familiar vicarage number and impatiently waited, imagining Charles waking up from a light snooze, working out what the ringing noise was, and then plodding across to answer it.
‘Charles, there wouldn’t be a lot of virtue in giving Max up if he’dalready discarded me first, would there? I mean, I’d still be damned even if I did the sackcloth and ashes for ever thing that Pa’s so keen on?’ I demanded without preamble.
‘Yes, Cass my dear, but God is love, don’t forget,’ he said,then yawned. ‘Good heavens, is that the time? I must have dozed off in my chair.’
‘Pa’s God isn’t love, it’s punishment and vengeance and retribution and stuff.’
‘Love takes strange forms, and possibly your poor father is not always in his right mind. But I sincerely believe his phone calls to you are a manifestation of his paternal love.’
‘You do? What about the locking me in the cupboard to drive the devil out episodes when I was a child, though? Was that a manifestation of his love?’
‘In his own misguided way, I believe it was. He perceived your physicalresemblance to an ancestor he thought evil, and took the Bible’s message that sin was handed down the generations too literally. Didn’t you say that he punished your brothers and sister also?’
‘Not Jane – never Jane. She couldn’t do any wrong,’ I said bitterly. ‘But the boys were physically punished if they misbehaved.’
‘Well, dear Cass, he was misguided, and the law would intervene on yourbehalf should such a thing happen these days, for which we must be thankful.’
‘But, Charles, even my mother doesn’t like me!’
‘I have told you of the many examples I have come across of families where one child is less regarded than the rest, for no discernible reason: it isnotyour fault.’
‘ButamI innately bad?’
‘Of course not: you have many good qualities. But you have sinned, as youyourself realize, in your relationship with a married man. Yet God will understand how needy of love you were, and at any time you can repent and start afresh, the one lamb that was lost and is found again.’
You know, I might not always follow what Charles is on about (or want to do what he suggested), but I always felt better after talking to him.
‘You should come into the church sometimes,’he suggested.
‘I couldn’t come to a service – I haven’t been in a church since I left home.’
‘I didn’t mean a service, although you are always welcome. I meant just come in, in order to meditate in the house of God. The door is always open.’
‘Not at night, though, surely?’
‘Yes, even at night. Of course I lock the vestry, and there’s a CCTV camera in the gallery, but I would only look at thefilm if something was taken, which praise the Lord hasn’t happened yet,’ he said practically.
‘Well I might try that, Charles, if you really think a bolt of lightning won’t crisp me on the threshold, even if I am still a married man’s mistress.’
‘I am sure it won’t. Oh dear!’ he added, sounding alarmed.
‘What?’
‘Mrs Grace left a shepherd’s pie in the oven for my supper, and I’m afraid I fellasleep and forgot about it! It smells a little singed.’
‘Like me, really,’ I said, but he’d gone.
After this somehow soothing conversation, instead of going down to the village pub for dinner as I generally did, I heated up my second pizza of the day (garlic chicken), poured a glass of red wine, and settled down to consider the whole Max’s Mistress situation, which was not something I’d botheredto do for a considerable number of years.
But in his absence I was slowly starting to wake from Max’s thrall (and he had a lot of thrall) like a somewhat aged Sleeping Beauty, and question just where my life was heading. If anywhere.
Who hung the ‘Gone to Lunch, Back in Two Decades’ sign out?
Look how we’d all jogged comfortably along for so manyyears, Max and his two women in their separate,non-interlocking worlds, once long habit had dulled my initial feelings of guilt; a guilt that now seemed to be slowly seeping back in.
Max once assured me that Rosemary tacitly accepted our affair, since she was not interested much in the sexual side of marriage even before her dreadful accident, and at least Iwassharing him – I mean, I hadn’t taken him entirely away from her, as I might havedone.
