Selected Stories

It was as it always had been, she was thinking, Bartholomew offering the man money when it hadn’t been asked for. The soft touch of the family, their father had called him, and used that same expression, laughing a bit, when Bartholomew first wanted to become a clergyman. But even so he hadn’t been displeased; nor had their mother, nor Hester herself. Bartholomew’s vocation suited him; it completed him, and protected him, as Hester tried to do in other ways.

‘Lucky I called in there,’ he was saying, and Hester sensed that he had guessed by now why they were driving to Oscarey. He had put it all together, which was why he referred again to the stop at the garage, for often he didn’t want to talk about what had to be talked about, hoping that whatever it was would go away of its own accord. But this was something that shouldn’t be allowed to go away, no matter how awkward and difficult it was.

‘Good of him to want to help,’ he said, and Hester watched a flight of rooks swirling out of a tree as they passed it.

‘It’s interesting, how things are,’ she said. ‘At Oscarey.’

It was still early when they arrived there, ten to eleven when Bartholomew drew up outside the Spar shop at the crossroads. ‘A Mr Flewett?’ he enquired at the single check-out, and was given directions.

He left the main road, drove slowly in a maze of lanes. Here and there there was a signpost. They found the church almost immediately after they turned into what had been the back avenue of Oscarey House, grown over now. There were graves but hardly what could be called a churchyard, no more than a narrow strip of land beside a path close to the church itself, running all the way round it. One of the graves, without a head-stone, was more recent than the others. The church was tiny, built of dark, almost black stone that gave it a forbidding air.

‘A chapel of ease it might have been,’ Bartholomew said.

‘Mr Flewett’ll know all about that.’

Inside, the church was musty, though with signs of use. The vases on the altar were empty, but there were hymn numbers – 8, 196, 516 – on the hymn board. The brass of the lectern was tarnished, and the brass of the memorial plates; the altarcloth was tattered and dingy. The slightly tinted glass of the windows – a bluish grey – did not have biblical scenes. You couldn’t call it much of a church, Bartholomew considered, but didn’t say.

‘It could be lovely,’ his sister said.

Mr Flewett was elderly, which Hester had predicted he would be. He was on his own these days, he said, bringing tea on a tray, with biscuits in a tin. He had been welcoming at the hall door, although he had examined his visitors closely before he invited them into his house.

‘We have the recording of the service, of course,’ he said. ‘I’m in charge of that myself. Morning prayer only.’

Oscarey Church was one of several in a combined benefice, the most distant being seventeen miles away. ‘Too far for Canon Furney and there are a few who can’t take to the recording so they make the journey to the canon at Clonbyre or Nead. On the other hand, of course, there’s Mrs Wharton’s kindness.’

That took some time to explain. The small scattered community of Oscarey was a mixture now of poor and better-off: besides the remnants of the estate families, there were newcomers. Mrs Wharton – no longer alive – had been one of the latter. Her will left her house and a considerable legacy to Oscarey Church, this money to provide a stipend for a suitable incumbent, the house to become Oscarey Rectory.

‘That’s what this is about,’ Mr Flewett went on, pouring more tea.

Hester nodded. ‘I heard something like it,’ she said. ‘That perhaps a younger man ...’

‘Indeed.’

Bartholomew felt uneasy. Hester often became carried away. In the sad, grimy little church he had understood how her imagination had been excited and still was; but the poverty of the place had a finality about it; even the attempts to disguise its neglect had. There was no obvious way in which the impossible could be reversed.

‘The Church of Ireland moves slowly,’ Mr Flewett said. ‘I think we can agree about that. And of course Mrs Wharton died only five months ago. But time eats away at good intentions. Her wishes must be honoured. She is buried in our little graveyard.’

‘I think we might have noticed,’ Bartholomew said.

‘Canon Furney is seventy-one. He’ll not retire and there’s no reason why he should. He’s a good, dear man and no one would want him to. What we fear, though, is that when he goes, Clonbyre and Nead will be taken in with Oscarey again and Oscarey possibly abandoned, so far away we are. But Mrs Wharton’s house would be a better rectory than the one there is now at Clonbyre, and her generosity otherwise is what the benefice is crying out for.’

‘You’ve been very kind, Mr Flewett,’ Bartholomew said. ‘It’s been interesting. But we’ve taken up your time and we mustn’t do that.’

‘Indeed you haven’t. No, not at all.’

‘I hope it all works out for you.’

‘All of us at Oscarey hope that.’