‘I know. I’ve seen his name on the board in the church. What happened to him?’
‘He went mad.’
‘That’s a pity.’ Adam felt a pull of the most heartfelt sympathy for his predecessor. It would be very easy, perhaps the easiest thing of all, to go mad here, in this role, in this horrendous parish. He shut his eyes for a moment, wondering with distant horror if that might not be what was happening to him.
‘Yes, isn’t it? The thing is, he got too involved. Too drawn into the village and its secrets. Which simply won’t do. It’s a sure-fire route to madness.’
‘You know these secrets, or so you keep intimating?’
She pursed her lips.
‘I know a lot of secrets, Adam. Some of them would benefit you. Some of them wouldn’t. Do you want me to show you?’
She put a hand on his shoulder.
He flinched, thinking of Evie, swallowed and shook his head.
‘Julia,’ he said in a hoarse whisper, ‘what happened on the excursion … It was … I think you meant well. But it can’t have a sequel. It can’t happen … I’m not free …’
‘Not free?’ Her fingers closed around his shoulder, bony and hard. ‘What do you mean? What’s happened?’
‘I can’t change the way I feel,’ he said. ‘Especially if she feels it too.’
Julia retracted her hand and used it to smite her forehead, groaning.
‘Dear God, she’s got you. You’re doomed. Well, now I need to rethink. Somehow or other, by
hook or by crook, I’m not letting this happen. If I can’t tempt you with a shag, then I need to come up with something else. Watch this space.’
She swept away, taking the book with her.
Adam sank down into the armchair. His brain was a fog of alarming information. How Julia’s husband had died, the fate of J.E. Lydford, his horrifying dream and, most of all, the fact that Evie might, after all, come to him and be his.
It was too much. For the first time in his life, Adam found himself craving brandy, or at least a little something to dull his senses and let him drift easefully into dreamless sleep. But there was no brandy in the house and he sat up, hour after hour, until finally, just before the dawn, the relief of oblivion was his.
The village cricket match against Hamframpton had been going on all day. On and on and on, in fact, if you asked Adam, who was no great fan of the sport. But he had volunteered his services as umpire, in his endless quest to grab some kind of foothold in village life, so he stood under an unforgiving late June sun in a white coat a size too small for him, his face smothered in clown-thick sunblock.
Saxonhurst were winning. In fact, according to the statistics, Saxonhurst had never lost a village cricket match. They were invincible. Legend had it that, back in the 1980s, they’d played the all-conquering Somerset county side in a friendly and won. They’d bowled out Ian Botham for a duck.
Yet, as far as Adam could tell, they rarely practised and only played a few games each season. Just another piece of unquantifiable Saxonhurst luck.
On the sidelines, Adam was constantly aware of Evie, in her scarlet silk dress, cheerleading enthusiastically. Every time a Saxonhurst man was called out, she ran up to him and leapt into his embrace, snogging the face off him until Adam felt quietly sick. Since her declaration at the Bible study session, she had skirted around the subject every time they met, uncharacteristically demure and coy, not her usual brazen self at all.
And yet she would not relinquish her work at the porn set, nor was she seen any the less wrapped around hearty village lads in the beer garden of the Fleece.
‘The time isn’t right yet,’ was all she would say.
‘But surely if I have to wait, then you could at least stop all this …’
It was no use. She wouldn’t. He had to stand by and watch, it seemed. She wheedled and cajoled with soft words and apologies, but the upshot was the same. He had to suck it up.
Finally, Hamframpton gave up the ghost, having no chance of catching up with the mighty Saxonhurst total of runs – 506 for 3 at tea time.
They all trooped into the pavilion for sandwiches and cake. Adam sipped tea in a corner, watching Evie sit across two giant laps, being fed cucumber slices and strawberries. Julia, in charge of the tea urn, followed the direction of his sour looks.
The sons of Hamframpton despatched to their minibus, only Saxonhurst team members remained, with Evie. Julia and the other villagers had decamped with the empty plates and cups, and suddenly the atmosphere of affable gentility had gone with them, replaced by a kind of avid anticipation that owed everything to testosterone.
‘Team talk,’ said the skipper gruffly to Adam. ‘Not for a vicar’s ears.’