[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":358},["ShallowReactive",2],{"story-the-incumbents":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"date":346,"description":347,"edited":346,"extension":348,"meta":349,"navigation":350,"path":351,"seo":352,"stem":354,"tags":355,"__hash__":357},"stories\u002Fstories\u002Fthe-incumbents.md","The Incumbents",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":342},"minimark",[9,13,17,29,36,39,42,45,52,55,58,61,64,67,70,73,76,83,90,93,96,99,102,105,108,111,114,117,120,123,126,129,132,135,138,141,144,147,150,153,156,159,162,165,168,171,174,177,180,183,186,189,192,195,198,201,204,207,210,213,216,219,222,225,228,231,234,237,240,243,246,249,252,255,258,261,264,267,270,273,276,279,282,285,288,294,297,300,303,306,309,312,315,321,324,327,330,333,336,339],[10,11,5],"h1",{"id":12},"the-incumbents",[14,15,16],"p",{},"Even for the hopeless enthusiast, the collector that chases after churches like butterflies for his pinboard, this was not an inviting specimen. The dull, exceedingly low church of Thenford had no point of even provincial note. There was no piece of plate or ornament worth a pause, no name recorded anywhere on headstone or wall plaque, that had could have possibly enjoyed longer fame than the memories of those who had known them. I must confess here to being an archetypal specimen of that compulsive category, the church addict. My predilection is rural. For me there is no dearer thing than an antique sight which has lain long and steady since the conquest. The thoroughbred of this breed will be a composite of many styles, like some portmanteau creature of a medieval bestiary. Its crux might be a Norman arch, but then add a storied tower of Early English type, perhaps a few Jacobean wall plaques, all scrolls and filigreed Latin, and finish with a fine voiced Victorian organ, and you have something very near perfection. It should be a slow formed, nearly geological thing, to which the folie and fervour of each century has lent its contribution. In the yard, there should be a brace of yews like parishioners’ frozen mid gossip on their Sunday way to the porch. There should be headstones all around, slanted together for warmth during their long wait for the hereafter. I have sought these places out since boyhood in every county of England. It has been my abiding and single passion. It is in the presence of such places, that I have my ration of peace, it is here alone that I am capable of unconcerned absorption.",[14,18,19,20,24,25,28],{},"The true enthusiast is not rigid in their taste, and so my interests are ecumenical. A business-like piece of urban gothic, its sleeves rolled up to deal with the pressing masses, a deliciously fragile rococo chapel appended to a shaggy rustic pile, a shard of concrete cathedral making its great atonal yell to heaven, all of these will more than do. Pathologically, to deploy the obligatory psycho-jargon of the times, I cannot leave unanswered the summons I hear from a passing church. I must stop to confirm a suspicious of hidden riches. I must put a pompous façade to the sword by a survey its banal insides. Even if hopelessly late for some appointment or exhausted by the day, most likely spent in bagging other specimens, an unexamined church will lodge in my mind like a spur, like an indeterminate memory of switching off the oven, like the door with a knack to its lock. I might walk boldly on with my hands thrust in my pockets, or drive a few hundred meters up the lane, but I will be duly hoisted back.  I am sure you have this feeling too sometimes before you take a course of action for reasons which remain opaque. That it is not really you, or not consciously you, who has decided. My inner voice whines and stamps, but my feet are already on the move. I must. I have to. To borrow a phrase from my schoolboy Greek, it behoves me to go. In this case, when I consider that day left me without the slightest interest in churches for nearly a year, when I think how I let so many go unexamined, their call unrequited, the question of why I ",[21,22,23],"em",{},"did"," stop, and its twin, what if I ",[21,26,27],{},"hadn’t",", what if I had ground on up the hill, leaving that unhappy place in a pall of exhaust, these questions present themselves before me on a heavy schedule. They are my matins, compline and vespers. I construct happier pasts and deponent futures where I didn’t, where I hadn’t.",[14,30,31,32,35],{},"I had nowhere particular to be on that bright October afternoon. As I drove through the narrow Somerset lanes the sun reached with boles of light through gaps in the hedges. The sky was a rare and vivid blue . Now that I am retired, I am learning to accommodate the weightless feeling of having nowhere to be.  Like the examination dreams that pursued me after finals, I have frequently that horrid jolt as when you realise you should have been in a meeting twenty minutes ago. I am shaken from my paper or crossword puzzle, and then realise, slightly sadly, that this is the only demand on my time. One often reads of the ache that wracks the severed limb. Some part of my mind in a melded in a Pavlovian fashion to the dictates of a working schedule. This is the effect of a long, unvaried career and not particularly remunerative career. I imagine it will be permanent. I wait for the phone to go, for the inbox to ping. My conclusion that ails me is that I derived rather more, not purpose, not meaning, but ",[21,33,34],{},"substance"," from the work that didn’t interest me. Without it I am rather formless.   I have become a sort of ghost that haunts its metalled ways. I miss even, if that is word, perhaps rather I lack the colleagues who tended to scare me slightly, whom I only spoke with when it was unavoidable. However, on that day in question I had the slightly nauseous sense of freedom that a car journey through empty country lanes can engender. A deliciously false sense that I was speeding toward a deck of possibilities just over the next rise. I had pulled into a stopping point and checked the name of the village shown on the sign I had just passed, against its reference in Pevsner’s Buildings of England. It was a pauper’s grave of an entry for Thenford, a few lines on the manor, a peremptory note on some palaeolithic tombs, and then this scant note.",[14,37,38],{},"“The Church of St Erewyn Ad Vincula. Rather dull mid-Victorian red brick gothic. Formed of a squat nave with no clerestory. Two-light tower with a crenelated parapet. Clearly local work, compare with entry for the neighbouring St Jude’s.  Architect’s name does not survive. Apparently built on an early Anglo-Saxon foundation but no trace of this remains and the attribution is probably spurious. The interior and overall effect is extremely low in design and whitewashed so as to recall the most stringent days of the Commonwealth.”",[14,40,41],{},"Not much to entice the passing traveller. But I had nowhere to be and no one expecting me, and even if I had, a passing glance at least would have been obligatory. I ground up the next three hundred meters of steep and potholed lane, the Beatle’s engine crying as usual, and then pulled into the patch of slanted tarmac patch provided as a car park. The entry had precisely captured the dull pedestrian aspect of building’s fabric. Yet the setting itself was  pleasant enough. The lane was screened on the far side by a thick hedge of trees. These were snarled and matted so as to admit only the occasional shaft of light. In front of the church was gravel and then a retaining wall between this and the graveyard with an decrepit iron gate giving entrance to the latter. Behind the church itself was a patch of similarly knotted woodland and the day was clear enough to see across to the Mendip hills. Thenford was barely more than a few houses huddled around a pub, quickly turning to farms on the outskirts.",[14,43,44],{},"I parked noisily on the crunching gravel and levered myself out of the Beatle. I subject this car to acid abuse when it fails me only to defend it fanatically from mechanics and worried friends. As I massaged two plaintive knees I formed I traced the silhouette of the nave, chancel and squat tower. Uniformly dull was my verdict and there was little to suggest that this might need revising. As I stood there, I had for the first time that vestigial sensation at the nape which suggests an unseen observer, bringing my shoulders up in an involuntary contraction. I spun theatrically on one heel, to dispel any fear by through ridiculousness. There was a slight flash of light from the dark of the hedge row as I did so, caused perhaps by a branch rebounding from the weight of a departing verge. Or perhaps from quick the motion of a figure evading my line of sight. In any case I saw no one, and after testing my breath against the cold air for a little longer than required, I turned back to the church. The paintwork on the gate into the yard was leprous with rust and the dry hinges made a wincing shriek as they moved. The headstones were very sparse, with no new burials apparent. The stones were arranged in shoddy broken links, as if hurriedly dug and planned without much care. Several careered forward or back and were not many years from lying as flat as their owners. There was the standard yew whose carmine berries were starting to fall, leaving a bright ring at its base against the grass. The porch was plain, a chamfered arch and no more, and only one notice displayed inside.",[14,46,47,48,51],{},"“",[21,49,50],{},"Service on the final Sunday of the month, Father Saunders serves the parish churches of Linstone, Shepbury and Ampney Barton on the first, second and third Sundays of the month respectively",".”",[14,53,54],{},"The paper on which this was typed was Rorschached with water and the laminated plastic had bubbled away. In one corner of the noticeboard the felt had rotted from emerald to a sodden black. There was no other information of any kind, not even the standard lines on anti-climb paint. The arch of the door itself was low, and the stone of the porch floor rose perhaps a foot above the bottom of its planks. It was like the entrance to a tunnel or dug out so squat and compact was its design. The door would certainly be locked I thought as I tried the handle compulsively, looking back over my shoulder as I did so. It echoed the wincing noise of the grave yard gate and began to swing with a resistance in its arc, no doubt from the hinges, as if pushing back to shut me out. I lent my shoulder into it, not that this provided a great deal more force, and it opened. I stepped into a thick and heady scent of damp. From the bright warmth of the afternoon, it was as cold and dark as an underground pool. I closed the door behind me, which swung eagerly shut on its return, concluding with a final clang of bolt on lock.",[14,56,57],{},"The floor was of grey slab, not long enough in place to be worn smooth. My brogue made an echoing clack as I walked. As is my usual practice I selected a pew at the back of the nave to sit on. These were grim things of dark wood, tightly packed and so narrow that my knees were painfully pressed into the back of the one in front, and I am not the tallest of men. The whole interior was extremely low in design. The walls were puritanically whitewashed, the altar was a stone block draped in a sparse white cloth. Without any plate or dressing you felt the full force of the sacrifice supposedly performed there. There was no side chapel off either aisle and the organ was drab and small. Neither was there any information board with church histories and leaflets for sale, nor adverts for charitable ventures or even an appeal to give what you could to save the roof. There was a small wooden box, apparently for donations, but no suggested amount or reminder of what it cost to keep the place open each day. As I think back over my initial minutes in the church, weighing each of my moves to find the Rubicon which I could not have crossed back over, I think it was the unaccommodating plainness of the place that caused me to linger. Although it was of no real antiquity, there was nothing to suggest any time had passed since its construction. Once you were inside, it gave no inkling of the present, one passed into a time where church going was like getting dressed, obligatory if you wanted to play any social role at all.",[14,59,60],{},"The total absence of ornament made the church into a kind of monastic cell, a rocky hermitage chosen to focus the attention onto God alone, to banish by pain and plainness all worldly thought. The illusion that the 19th century had lingered on was strengthened by the sconces that sat in every window and were set into the wall at intervals. There were the fag ends of candles and stalactite-esque formations of wax from frequent and recent use. Some standing electric lights made a brief concession to modernity, but these cast only a pale and invalid gloom. One sputtered and blinked pathetically as I watched. I stood up from my pew and walked up the north aisle with my soles artificially loud in the silence. I thought I would see what the peripatetic vicar had holding forth on recently, and took an order of service from a pew as I passed. The folded leaflet informed me that the seventeenth Sunday after Trinity had just come, and the lessons chosen were from Job, Jeremiah and Luke. I made it to the lectern which was plain and pared down in design as expected. I thought I would read a little from the oversized bible that lay weightily shut upon it. It was interspersed with bookmarks of a sort of black leather, close to a vellum. When I removed one I was left with a perfect thumbprint of fine black dust. The page was from the first book of Samuel, someone had been clearly doing a little bible study of their own. My eye fell on the following verse:",[14,62,63],{},"“And he said unto her,",[14,65,66],{},"What form is he of?",[14,68,69],{},"And she said,",[14,71,72],{},"An old man cometh up;",[14,74,75],{},"  and he is covered with a mantle.”",[14,77,78,79,82],{},"With an empty church as my audience and no chance of reply, I couldn’t resist a reading. My shyness is stippled with a pompous strain. I gave something of the firebrand to my rendition and ended rather forcefully on “",[21,80,81],{},"mantle","”, blasting the word out with more volume than I had intended. Rather than a dismal acoustic that would have been in keeping with the character of the church, my words echoed lengthily around the nave and chancel. I stopped in a ridiculous pose with one ear slanted towards the ceiling, in an exaggerated attitude of listening, as the sound finally faded. On the final echo, I caught a curious note, like a thin laugh which faded like waning gust. It must have accompanied my echo and only just outlasted it. I thought the sound came from behind me. It’s tone it was dry and thwarted, as if made by vocal organs long unused for this purpose. I was in the process of turning around to assure myself that the church was still empty, when the obvious sound of sobbing came from a door I had not noticed in my survey. This had my attention immediately and the laugh, imagined or not, was forgotten. The door from which this wretched sound came, was set into the western wall under the tower. It stood slightly ajar. I felt a surge of embarrassment that my ridiculous reading at the lectern had been overheard. Perhaps the noise coming from behind the door meant that I had been taken as a burglar or vandal. I took the steps over floor of the church at some speed, my feet clopping like a hurrying doctor marching down their corridors. I was desperate to apologise for my noisy intrusion. As I tried to find a suitable form of words I began to pant heavily despite the shortness of the distance. Retirement has brought me both mental and physical expansion. The sound of approaching feet and stertorous breath seemed to provoke a rise in both the pitch and vehemence of weeping so that I came to the door sweating heavily and in a paroxysm of embarrassment. I knocked ridiculously, stuck outside like a servant or a penitent child, while the wailing continued within. The fire paint on the door had peeled with the damp and stuck to my knuckles, showing patches of long corroded wood beneath. This gave off strongly the wet sour smell released by kicking over a fallen log. My knock brought no reply only a loud “oh god!” in a terrified voice, which I thought was probably a woman’s. This was no euphemistic replacement of an obscenity, her address to god was a personal, direct call to an existing thing. If I recall my Latin rightly, one would have said that it was in the vocative case. This dolorous and abject call must have pronounced with the same intensity of belief by martyred Christians in the arena in their final moments. Chivalry has long been aspiration of mine, kept unrealised by cowardice, but I had to take some action now, and so stuck only my head around the door.",[14,84,85,86,89],{},"This was an absurd gesture, and I had opened my mouth to begin grovelling but quickly shut again as I had managed to provoke a desperate shriek from the woman of about sixty, whom I saw to be the origin of the noise. She was dressed in vestments and was positioned in the corner of the small room in the archetypal attitude of prayer. She knelt on the plain stones, which must have been both cold and painful unless her joints were in much finer condition than mine. Behind her was an armchair, which for some reason she had eschewed. Her hands were clasped in front or her with a simple wooden crucifix held between them. This was attached around her neck with a bare string. She quite literally wrung her hands, trying to squeeze some protective or apotropaic relief from the wood. Either that or they trembled so violently as to give the same effect. Her eyes were not just shut but clamped bitterly together, so that her whole brow was disfigured with line and tension, as if what might be approaching should be denied the slightest chance of apparition by any means. In a racing voice she spoke to herself ",[21,87,88],{},"sotto voce",", reciting I think the twenty third psalm. It was a rendition closer to a spell or incantation than I have ever heard.",[14,91,92],{},"“The lord is my shepherd I shall not want,",[14,94,95],{},"  he maketh me to lie down.",[14,97,98],{},"He restoreth my soul,",[14,100,101],{},"he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness.",[14,103,104],{},"He prepareth a table for me in the presence of my enemies,",[14,106,107],{},"he annointeth my head with oil-“",[14,109,110],{},"I had to say something to bring her out of this distressing state.",[14,112,113],{},"“My goodness I’m so sorry I thought the place was deserted” I said.",[14,115,116],{},"My tone was rather prissy, exculpatory, I was making excuses rather than an apology. I have never been able to find a soothing tone, a consoling mode. It is not a question of empathy. I was quite aware of the fear this woman was feeling and was mortified at having so clearly been its cause. It is warmth that I struggle to produce. I can manage the appropriate string of apologetic words, but completely without the concern or care needed when faced with discomfort. I find also that I tend to revert to an outmoded diction with strangers. In part I think I am attempting to convey a superiority, an intellectual quality, a distinction of breeding and origin, but the largest factor I think is a fear of being thought a fool. Or rather, without this posture of refined, affected thoughtfulness, what else is it that I have? What could they possibly find in me of any note? You will note that self-criticism is a strength while self-correction is not. I lack the necessaries. The point I am seeking to make is that my words were entirely unfit for the occasion. However, when she heard my voice, my weak home counties tones, I like to think she was quickly assured that I was unlikely to mean her deliberate ill. In any case the wailing and gnashing of teeth abated. Instead, she gave a series of shallow, whimpering breaths that often mark the end of a heavy bout of crying. Crying is something I’ve a history with. I’ve been in the crying business a long time. Boarding school with its feral tormentors, parents distant and then abruptly dead. All of this was unoriginal in its particulars or its effect. Crying and me, we grew up together. I knew then that she had left the maelstrom and were heading for choppy but calmer water. The compression of the brows needed to force her eyes closed began to give. I thought of a newborn mewling thing preparing to open them for the first time while unsure of the technique. They opened. They Her eyes were of amber brown colour, rather like an owl or falcon, and they were light and sharp in their movement, and lambent with salt drops and a residual fierceness. There was Ithink, an understandable anger at being made so afraid. She blinked and took me in, summed me up as an object of terror. There was a hesitant relief.",[14,118,119],{},"“I’m so sorry to have startled you, I just came in to have a look and- are you alright?” I should have started with that basic inquiry.",[14,121,122],{},"She spoke “I’m, you are-yes I’m alright” and then she added a slightly defensive “thank you.”",[14,124,125],{},"These were aimless and embarrassed thanks. She kept looking at me all the while, blinking away the tears as quickly as she could as if not wanting to lose sight of me. She dug an execrable handkerchief from the pocket of her cassock. I saw that the black fabric of her vestment was decked in many polychrome and richly textured stains. She blew with a raucous and productive effort, and looked at me with the look of someone waking from a concussion or coming round from a delusion, who is struggling to reconcile the dissonance between an inner and outer reality. She rocked forward to gain the momentum to rise from her knees. She sharply as she did so and massaged at her right hip with her hand. I stepped forward to help her.",[14,127,128],{},"  “oh do you need a-let me”",[14,130,131],{},"Reluctantly, compelled by the pain, she took hold my hands and I pulled her upright. We stood there, inclined towards each other in a nearly amorous attitude. I was hunched with effort and she by protesting joints. In the motion of getting her to her feet, and for seconds longer that I thought necessary to get her balance, she squeezed tightly at my wrists, gripped, released and gripped again, trying to confirm, I now realise, that I was safely corporeal.",[14,133,134],{},"She took some heavy, settling breaths.",[14,136,137],{},"“Are you sure you are alright? I really didn’t-“",[14,139,140],{},"“I’m quite alright thank you” she cut me off sharply, as if wanting to establish herself as a person of sound mind and managed emotions.",[14,142,143],{},"  “You don’t need to apologise, I reacted very foolishly.”",[14,145,146],{},"There was some self-recrimination in her voice, and this is a tone I am familiar with. She stopped here without further comment. There was a hiatus where you would have expected a fulsome explanation of why it was in my entrance and admittedly pretentious reading had precipitated such a torrent of fear. Her eyes which had been so fixed on mine were now intent on my feet.",[14,148,149],{},"“No you weren’t foolish at all” I tried to protest “And really I am terribly sorry”",[14,151,152],{},"She cut in a little too quickly “It’s just we had had some burglars,  and they, well they broke some things and caused a lot of damage. We had to involve the police. I thought you might have been them coming back”",[14,154,155],{},"I had the impression both that she was lying and that she wasn’t used to doing so. Burglars are not normally prone to readings from the book of Samuel. She spoke a little too haltingly, as if adding information on the fly.",[14,157,158],{},"“Oh that’s awful. Is nothing sacred these days!” I couldn’t get enough sincerity into this cliché and she looked at me sharply for any mockery.",[14,160,161],{},"“Were you hurt at all? by these vandals I mean?”",[14,163,164],{},"She shook her head. “No no I wasn’t here. But I thought they might have come back, you hear stories.”",[14,166,167],{},"“Yes I understand perfectly” I said untruthfully.",[14,169,170],{},"She looked at me with the slightly startled look of the liar who thinks they will be caught out. She smiled, I think to reassure me, but in a stillborn sort of way that didn’t reach anywhere near her eyes. She was on her way to unhealthily thin. Her cassock hung shapelessly like a monastic habit. Her hair was tied back into a perfunctory bun and didn’t look like it had seen a brush for some time. The corners of her eyes were so lined with the deeply cut and crazily arranged trench system you usually see in the heavy drinker or smoker. Unlikely but not impossible in this case I thought.",[14,172,173],{},"“Is there anyone I could call for you? Are you feeling better?”",[14,175,176],{},"She looked at me now a with a little mocking sadness",[14,178,179],{},"“Thank you there is no one you could call, but I am feeling better. I’ll be alright.” She had a crisply factual voice with a very slight trace of the local accent. I tried a smile and said",[14,181,182],{},"“Well I won’t impose on you, if you are feeling better, I should get back in the light, headlights on the blink, and again I am really very sorry to have frightened you”",[14,184,185],{},"As I was saying this, she broke eye contact several times to look towards the open door, out into the body of the church. There were in fact several loud creaks as if some weight was being placed or removed from one of the pews, habitual sounds in an old building such as this one.",[14,187,188],{},"She rather jumped on me with “Oh but won’t you stay for some tea? I have some biscuits somewhere here too”",[14,190,191],{},"She moved quickly across the room and began to ferret around a in chaotic corner of dirty mugs, saucers and mauled packets of biscuits, all centred round a dented kettle. Through its measuring window rich deposits of limescale were visible, as it if it had been used to boil some chemical solution. As she did this she looked back over her shoulder at me several times, smiling but with a lingering trace of her former fear, waiting for my answer, her hands pulling items onto a tray as she did so.She aimed to make my ascent inevitable through her preparation for it being given.",[14,193,194],{},"“No that’s very kind but I won’t impose on you, I should start making tracks.” I am indeed averse to driving in the dark, but more truthfully, I had no great desire to spend much more time with this woman who had exhibited what could have easily been madness.",[14,196,197],{},"She turned to face me. Her arms fell limply to her slides. The consuming fear, provoked for some reason by being along in the church, had returned. She looked past me again towards the open door and chewed savagely at her lip as if masochistically testing some ulcerous part. I saw them that her lips were badly chapped and bled at various points. There were marks around her neck which appears to be the result of fingernails. Her hands were scabrous and patched with livid red, as if from constant itching. This was a woman, not overcome with a passing fit of fright, but one who lived in a state of habitual terror . This seemed like a more likely explanation for her outburst, her appearance and the state of the room. On each of the four wall there were crucifixes of every size. They were all plain, without the sagging figure of Christ, just a simple wooden cross. There must have been over fifty of the things. The room itself was a small rectangle. I had entered through one of the short sides. Set into the other short side was a door which was also open, and gave onto a bedroom. This was clearly a manse or living attached to the church. In the room we stood in there was a desk along one side with the disordered tea things at one end, while the other was swamped in a mess of papers. In the corner of the other long wall was the collapsed armchair which she had been kneeling in front of. On either arm was a crucifix, the bottom portion of the uprights polished and shining, worn from constant contact with the skin. She was clearly a woman of great, or extreme piety, on the fringe of religious mania if not already there. But there was something in her manner, in the way she spoke once she had collected herself, which was too well formed to support this diagnosis.",[14,199,200],{},"“Please, look, I’ve had a bad shock, you wouldn’t be imposing at all. I feel a little faint, if you could stay with me little while. Please stay”",[14,202,203],{},"There was such dejection, such entreaty in her final words that I began to waiver. ",[14,205,206],{},"“Oh my name is Judith” She added, a little more brightly, trying to form a bond with me to force my hand, like the hostage trying to garner sympathy with their captor.",[14,208,209],{},"A good Christian name I thought, as I shook her optimistic hand. Like her garments the fingers were mottled with varied stains. It trembled noticeably on its way towards me and clung clammily at mine.",[14,211,212],{},"“Jonathan” I replied.",[14,214,215],{},"The state of her living indicated that visitors were as sparse as her congregation. Now that she had recovered from her shock she was either keen to make conversation when she had the chance, or to demonstrate that she was saner than suggested so far. I hadn’t the heart or courage to refuse again, and I had done sufficient stints with aging relatives in their dotage. I could spare thirty minutes.",[14,217,218],{},"I found myself saying",[14,220,221],{},"“Well I could stay for a short while until you are feeling better”",[14,223,224],{},"I smiled at her as I spoke, and saw a look of consuming relief pass briefly over her face, tempered then by an attempt to conceal her too obvious emotion, and then swamped again by her cares, as she glanced out into the church.",[14,226,227],{},"I said “do let me sort out the tea, you sit down”",[14,229,230],{},"To which she replied with a vague “well, yes”",[14,232,233],{},"She positioned herself awkwardly in the armchair. Automatically she began to trace the outline of one of the crosses as she sat, her knee jogging at speed. She was an archetype of absent distraction. I boiled the kettle and inspected two of the few mugs still sporting handles. They were caked with a dense brown residue that only lifted with deliberate scrubbing. I filled the sink with hot water and coaxed the dregs of some dish soap out of its crumpled bottle. Not wanting to draw too much attention to my remedial cleaning, although she seemed absorbed entirely in staring out into church, I asked",[14,235,236],{},"“How long have you been here then Judith?”",[14,238,239],{},"“I’ve been the vicar here for ten, no eleven, years now” there was a pensive hardness to her tone. She spoke as this was a place she had been marooned in. She caught herself and gave me a weak tea smile “eleven years, how time flies.”",[14,241,242],{},"And then, with a collaborating intimacy that was entirely new to our conversation, and something approaching a true smile, said “Why is it seem to speak of the flow of time, its unrecoverable loss, in trite banalities like “how time flies” or “they grew up so fast.” These are desperate phrase don’t you think? We have a need to say to the other person “I’m suffering too! I’m dying too!”",[14,244,245],{},"There was none of the abject terror now. Her speech and thought was too considered for for a mad woman. I frowned slightly and rifled around for a quotation, as I often do when I have nothing much to say",[14,247,248],{},"“The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”",[14,250,251],{},"With another smile she followed on with the lines",[14,253,254],{},"“Nor all thy piety nor wit, shall lure it back to cancel half a line, or all thy tears wash out a word of it.”",[14,256,257],{},"I had the combined sensations of annoyance at finding my quotation to be less recondite than I had reckoned, and intrigue as to quite who it was I was speaking with. She no longer seemed either fanatically pious or to be kicking her legs over the brink of madness. There was clearly a mental acuity that was belied by her recent collapse.  Making it all the more concerning and harder to parse. The kettle had reached a dull boil and I added hot water and then tea bags to the old metal tea pot I had recovered from under a cereal packet.",[14,259,260],{},"“Ah you like your Khayyam then?” I asked, fatuously, trying to conceal a snobbish irritation to which I am prone.",[14,262,263],{},"“English literature degree, for my sins, Durham. I don’t get much of a chance to read these days.” Her vacant sadness returned for the final phrase. The only books on her shelf were various editions of the bible. I sifted through the several open packets of biscuits, discarding several softening specimens and positioned them the only plate that was not missing significant portions of its circle.",[14,265,266],{},"“Ah well you must be kept busy with your work, I saw from the porch that you only have one service a month, do you minister to the other churches in the area too?”",[14,268,269],{},"“Yes, I do St Ebbes, St James and Mary the Virgin as well, umm, so I do one each Sunday on rotation. We simply don’t have the congregation or indeed the priests to run regular services at each.”",[14,271,272],{},"I replied with genuine feeling. I am not a believer, but I have what you could call Anglican sympathies. The god in which I do not believe is that of the Church of England. With each church that can no longer draw enough parishioners for even a monthly service, or with each that is sold for novelty flats, or horror of horrors as a bar, that is one less location for me to satisfy my hobby.",[14,274,275],{},"“Ah yes it must be very hard for you with falling church attendance. You would face the same problem all over the country I should think, but more acutely in somewhere as rural as this. Such a loss for a local community when a church must close, or sits around locked up all week.”",[14,277,278],{},"She paused for a moment before making any reply. This took a little longer that you would likely need to consider the substance of what I said, as it was neither particularly interesting or particularly original. She traced once more the outline of the crucifix on the arm of the chair.",[14,280,281],{},"“You are right of course. God is not particularly fashionable these days, and the flock is dwindling all over the country.Many churches are simply forced to close.” I was prepared for a lament on the godless times in which we lived but this wasn’t forthcoming. She looked at me very seriously with those hawkish eyes that were intent and careful, and then spoke faster than she had before, as if not quite trusting herself to finish.",[14,283,284],{},"“This church, has never been popular with its priest or parishioners. In the other three I can draw enough to justify making the visit one Sunday each month. Here I have no congregation at all. There perhaps are one or two, the very pious and elderly, who force themselves with the help of god to sit through his-” There were tears her eyes now, she sobbed as she took a breath, bracing herself for the word that followed, and taking a grip on both crucifixes “-his devilry.” Her use of “devilry” was literal. It recalled a wall painting illuminating the torments of hell for the gawping peasantry. I think this perhaps was the first time she had given this account, at least to a stranger. Delusion hadn’t been far from the mark as a diagnosis, and I couldn’t hide a half curious smile. Content that my initial judgement had been the correct one, I tried to look sufficiently credulous.",[14,286,287],{},"“But no-one can stand it for long, he tries to stop, he tries to stop the liturgy-“ She gave way to convulsive sobs. She was bent double in her chair as if wracked with stomach pains, the crucifixes forgotten she had both hands over her eyes, stopping her sight. Throughout our conversation I had been sat on the edge of the table along the other side of the room. Now I lent hesitantly towards her and placed a useless hand on her shoulder. There was a concentrated scent as I did so, the importunate animal odour of the habitually unwashed. The top of her scalp showed a growing patch of baldness and a liberal carpet of seborrheic flakes, pasty white against the grey of her hair. She clasped at my hand; she massaged the bones and flesh. It was then I heard a swishing sound from inside the church. It was like the wind at a broken pane, or the fingers of a neighbouring tree dragging against the clerestory. Or perhaps the sound of vestments moving over a stone floor. I had then the first sense not of fear, but of the disconcerting strangeness of my position, this strange church which had maddened its incumbent. Her grip on my hand became desperate. She said, in a voice that was childlike in its complete loss of resolve, in its total fear",[14,289,290,291,51],{},"  “",[21,292,293],{},"He’s here",[14,295,296],{},"“Who is here?” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt. The clear signs of delusion or possible psychosis in her speech, set against the falling light outside the church were not making me feel easy. There were two onyx lamps on her desk which provided the only illumination in her room, and outside of their ambit a deep shadow waxed.",[14,298,299],{},"She looked at me, there was no trace of either education or piety in her face, but a blank horror. In a whispering voice she said",[14,301,302],{},"“He’s buried in the yard, but he hasn’t left, he never left, he was the priest here, a fallen priest. It’s at dusk when it’s worse, in the dark”",[14,304,305],{},"This was now a matter for a professional. I had firstly to try and calm her down, and then to call someone to come and collect her. This was presumably not her first episode given the state of her room, and a doctor or friend would have a much better grasp of what to do than I. I forced what was probably not a very reassuring smile and said clearly and at half speed",[14,307,308],{},"“You mean you think the burglars might have come back? We would have heard the door open if anyone had come into the church, so I don’t think you need to worry. Would you feel better if we closed the door? Is there anyone I could call for you?”",[14,310,311],{},"She shook her head, so tensely it was more like a spasm and still gripping me like a child at the gate of a detested school and said in the same tone",[14,313,314],{},"“I have to be able to see. He waits, he waits at the door. I must know where he is, so I can make it over the nave and out of the porch before he comes. He is weaker outside in the yard. No one can help, there is no help. They would think I was mad.”",[14,316,317,318,51],{},"I had to use both hands to extricate myself from her grip. She took hold of both crucifixes again and fell into a mumbled prayer. I think she was repeating the words of Christ at Golgotha “",[21,319,320],{},"father, why hast though forsaken me",[14,322,323],{},"I spoke again in the exaggerated manner used for the elderly and infirm",[14,325,326],{},"  “I’m just going to look around the church to make sure no-one is there and then I’ll get someone to help you.”",[14,328,329],{},"I wanted to be away from her company so as to consider my options. She seemed to be beyond hearing now, although I’m not sure she didn’t laugh, a desperate empty laugh, when I said I would look in the church itself.",[14,331,332],{},"The door stood open. I walked out into the nave, my soles echoing with uncomfortable volume into the empty space. It was approaching five o’clock and the light had almost failed. I was walking down the aisle towards the altar when I became of a whispering sound that seemed to both fill the building and to be directed into my ears. It was rasping and weak, and cycled over and over between a question and a horribly malevolent and disdainful laugh. The question was from some judge or interrogator,",[14,334,335],{},"“does your office of priest mean nothing to you?”",[14,337,338],{},"Then two things happened which caused me stop utterly still before the chancel. Two candle sticks arranged on the altar fell at the same time and at the same angle onto the floor with a enormous clang. The bible still open on the lectern slammed shut. I stood there in dumb panic, trying to place this into a plausible sequence of cause and effect. At that moment, I was conscious of something pushing past me at speed, which caused me stumble in a half turn back towards Judith’s rooms. As I turned, I had a brief but indelible image, like a flash of a light bulb in a darkened room, of a cowled deaths head which turned to stare at me as it passed, the flesh all but stripped to the bone, the lip curled into a vicious leer, and a blast of carious breath into my mouth. I ran. My feet had started to carry my before I had paused to think. Or that is what I try to convince myself of. I stopped only once at the door. I looked back. Judith’s door was open only partially, her weight clearly thrown behind it. On the other side of the door billowed a mass of torn robes, horribly thin limbs of greater number than could belong to any man were thrown around the crack of the door and grasped at her on the other side.",[14,340,341],{},"I drove desperately. I thought of calling the police, but to report what exactly? I called the ambulance to report a woman having a mental breakdown but of course I have no idea what result that came to. I assume they arrived two hours later and if she lived, they were met with feigned surprise. No further action possible would be recorded on some distant file. She was a woman caught between faith and horror, unable to abandon her church but tormented every night she spent there, with no ministry to perform, no congregation to shepherd. I think of her often at her desperate prayers, tracing and tracing again the lines of her crucifixes, wondering why she has been abandoned by her god.",{"title":343,"searchDepth":344,"depth":344,"links":345},"",2,[],null,"Even for the hopeless enthusiast, the collector that chases after churches like butterflies for his pinboard, this was not an inviting specimen. ","md",{},true,"\u002Fstories\u002Fthe-incumbents",{"title":353,"description":347},"The Incumbents file","stories\u002Fthe-incumbents",[356],"Spooky","bguVyPA_u-fpRcbq6Rv7PPvjrsZfMe93Pi3Z_8OfibE",1793724018841]