That night Mark Stewart was waiting for Irvine Gould in the White Horse bar, and he was one or two drinks ahead of the amiable professor.
“Hi, Mark, sorry I’m late,” the gangly American said in his watered-down southern drawl.
Mark gave him a half-hearted salute. “I take it that you’ll have your customary pint of best English ale. Can’t take the stuff any more myself after German lagers. Too flat, too warm…” He ordered a pint at the bar. “But if you’re determined on researching the habits of the locals, then you might as well understand the reason for their flatulence.”
Professor Gould realised that Mark was masking his fear for his sister with an external bluffness that was typical of the British officer class.
“Any news today about Marda?”
Mark shook his head slowly. “Bugger all, professor. I’ve spent a week ingratiating myself with a bunch of gypsies who’ve been camped near the common for about six months. The police suggested I try them out. Some of the locals have visited their Madame Rosa. I had my fortune told, but nobody had seen Marda. Anyway, I don’t think she’d get involved with them.”
“What did the crystal ball say? A tall dark stranger would change your life?”
“No, it’s a lot of balls, but I thought I needed to jolly them along. I didn’t find out anything. The police aren’t too helpful, except for that old so-and-so in Shere, Constable Ben McGregor. He keeps sniffing around, hasn’t come up with much, but at least he’s trying. As for the rest…I don’t know. Anyway, how’s your research? I still don’t understand you colonials being so keen on tracing family trees.”
The professor gulped down his pint. He had noticed how the locals tended to do just that. When in Rome…“As I think I told you,” he said, belching into his hand, “my interest in genealogy is only a sideline. Medieval church history is my bag, as the saying goes.” The professor sometimes liked to think he was “cool”; he believed he could “relate” to the flower-power movement, for example. “My bag, man,” he said self-mockingly, “my area of specialisation. They’ve got great church records in this area, especially in Guildford.”
The captain, joining in the self-parody, felt it was his duty to play up to the professor’s stereotypical image of the English gentleman. “Sounds a bit dull to me, old boy.”
“Not at all. Fourteenth-century England was as bloody and as lively as Vietnam. Your guys were fighting all over France, pacifying the Welsh and kicking the crap out of the Scots, although the Scots gave as good as they got. And the English were fighting each other. It’s no wonder that so many hooked up with the Church.”
Gould had already explained his interest in St. James’s church and its unique architectural heritage. “I’ve been working my butt off to finish a paper on the church and its anchoress.”
“Bit far from the sea for mermaids, aren’t we?”
“Everyone around here knows about the anchoress. You mean to say you don’t?”
“Only joking. English sense of humour.”
The academic ignored the jibe. “I can see your glass is empty. Let me get you another.”
Over the next round of drinks, Gould explained his work on female hermits, and Christine Carpenter in particular; as well as the possibility of an interesting French connection to Christine. The professor meant to keep his description short and sharp, but he was an academic, and his learning and enthusiasm resulted in a long monologue.
“Sorry, Mark, I must be boring you.”
“No, not at all, but I can’t understand why an eighteen-year-old bird would want to lock herself away in a bloody wall. Sounds a bit insane, not to mention insanitary, to me.”
“No, it’s a fascinating case, and I have some really interesting new material that I unearthed in Bordeaux. So few English-or American-scholars work on French medieval records. They were so bureaucratic then…”
“They still are, Irvine. They still are. I’m glad the Frogs are out of NATO, I can tell you…”
“Yep, can’t stand us Yanks running the show. The trouble with us is that we’re fixers, not preventers. We could have soothed de Gaulle’s feelings and prevented this cock-up. Same back home. I despair when a failed movie actor becomes governor of California. I know they’re weird out there but Reagan. How could they?”
Mark Stewart enjoyed teasing the professor, despite the fact that Gould’s lazy drawl made him suspect the man was falling asleep in mid-sentence.
“Politics and films are the same in the USA. Washington is one big B-movie, always looking for the happy ending.” Mark was trying to coax the anglophile into xenophobia.
“No, I guess you’re right. We could learn a lot from you Europeans, except how to stand up to the Russians. You guys are so weak the Russians could march to the Channel tomorrow.”
Mark let it go because he had learned from their earlier conversations that Gould was a passionate advocate of nuclear disarmament, who wanted to ditch the bomb and force the West Europeans to build up bigger conventional armies…until the Russians were ready to talk peace.
The professor continued, “But culture, that’s different. I wince when I see American tourists over here. Why do they all look fat and stupid? It’s better over there, honestly, but we still spend more on chewing gum than books. We can’t spell any more. All those fast-food signs, the letter ‘U’ for ‘you,’ and all that. America is becoming a monument to bad grammar and trivia. We measure our art in dollars, love in the number of orgasms, and churches have become supermarkets, or the other way around.”
Gould took another big swig of his beer.
“And the South! Heck, I regard myself as a loyal southerner, but it’s like Palestine before Christ; there are more prophets than rocks, and each one of them wants his own church. I just wish more architects would find God. If they do find a good design, in typical American fashion-if you’ve got a good thing, overdo it. I don’t know, Mark, all these prophets, all these lousy churches and yet God, the great architect, has died. God has expired and fifty thousand do-gooding social workers have sprung up in His place.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, buddy,” Mark said in an atrocious imitation of Gould. “Your films are great. That’s what’ll change the world. I think that the future will have a slight American accent, lots of Coca-Cola and bugger-all communists.”
The professor laughed. “I hate the Coca-Colaisation of the world. That’s where the Gaullists are right. We need individuality. That’s why Sergeant Pepper is British. That’s why I love you Brits, you have so many eccentrics. Here eccentricity is tolerated, even encouraged. Back home, so much of being an American is not to let your individuality become a social embarrassment, a nuisance in the commercially conformist drive for happy consumers.”
“You’re not a Marxist, are you, Irv?”
The professor ignored the dig. Despite his attempts to ape the current flamboyant vocabulary, he was a scholar and too deeply immersed in his period to pass convincingly for a member of the beat generation. He was not a political activist, despite his hostility to American involvement in Vietnam and his pro-disarmament views. His real world was the Middle Ages, and he could not help but return to it. “I’ve found some incredible material on the Anchoress of Shere-Christine Carpenter-in an abbey near Bordeaux. I should get a few more articles and a conference paper out of it at least.”
The army officer did not understand the world of academic papers and conferences, which seemed a waste of time to him. But he appreciated the professor’s passionate energy, so he put on his best intently listening face.
“The trouble is, the local historian-amateur historian-a Catholic priest who’s written one or two minor things about Christine and the traditions of anchorites-male anchoresses, that is-is rather elusive. I wrote to him from the States, and we’ve met once. He lives just outside Shere. Now he’s surely an English eccentric, a bit of a recluse, I guess. Harmless nut, but he knows his stuff. Bit cocky about his knowledge of the Shere anchoress; might be able to make him eat his words, though. I called him to say that I’ve almost finished my paper and he gave me the brush-off. Weird. You’d think a priest would be vaguely polite, especially if he’s an historian who’s in my field. I’ll try again before I leave. Maybe I caught him on a bad day.”
The Englishman looked pensive. “I don’t remember meeting a priest when I went round with the reward leaflets,” Mark said. “What’s his name?”
“Duval. Father Duval. He lives at Hillside, an old rectory about a mile or so from here. Kind of difficult to find. Have you come across it in your wanderings?”
“No. I’ve checked out nearly every house or farm around Shere, using the electoral roll. But perhaps a priest might not be on it. I could have missed a few people. I’ll find the house on the OS map I’m using,” said Mark, with a renewed interest in the conversation.
“Well, I hope he’s more polite to you than he was to me.”
“Anyway, have you eaten, Irv? No? OK, let’s see what grub is on offer.”
The next day Mark went to Guildford to see Jenny. He enjoyed her company, and not just because she was such a good friend of his sister and somebody who could guide him around the town. Under different circumstances, she could have been special to him. Jenny was obviously extremely distressed by the mystery of her friend’s disappearance, and she recognised Mark’s angst hidden beneath the officer’s bluster. Intuitively, they leaned on each other for mutual comfort. Mark opened up about his feelings in a way that he had never done before, and he learned much about himself and about his sister. He wanted so much to share his feelings with Marda, and was tempted to sublimate his emotional frustrations in a more practical way with Jenny.
One evening as he left her flat she held him, chastely, in an almost sisterly fashion, and said, “If you love Marda enough, and I think you do, and if you are determined enough, and I am sure you are, you will find her. I believe that with my whole heart.”
Mark thanked her and kissed her gently on the cheek. Jenny’s support meant a lot.
His search, however, was more important than his habitual philandering. Mark felt good about that-not much had come between him and his sex drive before. But his loneliness and fear about his sister were forgotten one evening when a quiet meal with Jenny was transformed into hours of gentle but intense sex. He had never needed to lose himself like this before. Previously, he had treated women in the same way he planned his military exercises: tactics, surprise, mobility, feints, and even aggression if necessary; women were prizes to be seized. Being with Jenny was so different that he almost cried after they made love. The loss of Marda, and Jenny’s empathy, accelerated his maturity: he understood consciously for the first time that tenderness had nothing to do with any kind of victory. Jenny’s comforting embrace and Professor Gould’s company in the pub were the few bright spots on a black landscape for Mark Stewart.
Two days after the chat with Gould, Mark decided to visit Hillside. There was a small cottage a quarter of a mile away which had been empty when he had last called. He went back there, and then walked over to the priest’s home.
Mark opened the rusty gate and climbed up the stone steps to the front door. The house had a run-down feel, weeds were running riot in the garden. It looked rather uninhabited, except there were curtains, which were drawn. The professor had told him someone lived there, however, so Mark knocked on the door; then he noticed a bell and tried that. He rang again and waited.
He could hear a shuffle inside. Sounds like an old man, he thought. Eventually, after hearing two locks click, the door opened a foot. A much younger, bigger man than the army officer had expected peered out of the gap.
“What do you want?” the man asked brusquely.
“Er, I’m sorry to disturb you. Are you Father Duval?”
“Yes, what do you want?”
“My name is Captain Mark Stewart. I am looking for a missing woman…”
Even before Mark produced a leaflet, he thought he noticed an odd shift in the priest’s eyes. The officer had been involved in a number of interrogation courses in Berlin, and, despite his bluff cavalryman’s manner, he didn’t miss much. He recorded it all mentally.
“Have you ever seen this woman, please? She lived in Shere.”
Duval’s manner changed a little. He opened the door a few inches wider, and he was a touch more polite. Mark noted the nuances.
After Duval had looked at the leaflet for a few seconds, he said, “No, I’m sorry. I’ve not seen her.”
“Thank you for your time. May I leave a leaflet with you? If you do hear or see anything, please contact any of the numbers listed…There is a reward.”
Mark had said the same phrases a thousand times. Too late, he realised it was inappropriate to say this to a Catholic priest, so he covered his awkwardness by adding: “Not that you would be motivated by money, sir, but perhaps you would mention it to your parishioners.”
“Yes, of course.” Duval was a little taken aback; not many people knew of his religious vocation in Shere, but the priest managed a smile. “And Merry Christmas to you,” he added. Mark thanked him and took his leave. The door closed quickly behind him.
As he walked slowly down the steps Mark decided that he would visit Duval again. He stopped by the gate, spending deliberately long seconds lighting a cigarette in hands cupped against the wind, his eyes taking in every detail of the house. As he walked back to the village he wondered whether his desperation was making him look for villains in the wrong places, seeing even priestly academics as suspects. But he had to act on any lead, any clue, anything at all. He thought Duval was lying. It was in his eyes. But a Catholic priest? Mark started to worry about his own mental state. Maybe he was going over the top because he had given himself just one more week in Shere. He had to return to his regiment soon: he couldn’t test his commanding officer’s patience too much.
That night in the White Horse, after he had recounted the day’s events, Mark asked the professor to tell him more about the reclusive priest. The officer realised that, in intelligence terms, he was breaking cover, but he had always relied upon his instincts, not manuals of fieldcraft. Gould was a good man, he knew. Mark had always liked the openness of Americans, at least those he had met in professional life. And he needed a mate to talk to-he was surprised how much he missed the camaraderie of the officers’ mess.
“Tell me about this priest of yours,” Mark said bluntly.
“Can’t say much more than what I’ve already told you. He’s had one or two undistinguished articles in the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, and there’s a small book published by the loopy medievalists in Exeter; he had an essay in there on Julian of Norwich. This stuff is really only for the specialists.”
“But why do you think he’s so unfriendly towards you? If there are so few specialists why isn’t he interested in another one?”
“Could be rivalry. Local historians get very protective about their patches. And academic historians specialise in back-stabbing and being bitchy. They argue about university politics like crazy because usually the stakes are so low. And we all get paid zilch so we’re mostly bitter and twisted old so-and-sos. But he’s also a priest. They can be crabby, especially having to do without women.”
That last sentence tripped a switch in Mark’s clouded, unhappy mind.
“A man without a woman, living in a secluded place. It’s a recipe for mischief. Look at the navy…”
The American laughed. “Hell, don’t jump to dopey conclusions, Mark. He may be an oddball, but why should you connect him with your sister? I did notice that he’s a pipe-smoker who breaks his matches in two and puts them back in the box. Supposed to be a sign of suppressed aggression. But that’s not a hanging offence, Mark. You can’t run around accusing priests of…whatever.”
The professor didn’t want to say murder, although that’s what he meant.
“I am convinced she’s still alive, and I intend to find her. I may be clutching at straws, but if this mysterious Duval character has anything to hide, I’ll find it.”
Gould looked at him warily. “Forget it, Mark. I told you, I’ve met him, and he’s an innocuous medieval buff. A priest, remember.”
“Yes, you’re right. I’m just frustrated about going back with bugger all. C’mon. It’s Christmas. Let’s have another drink.”
Mark went off to buy a round. He didn’t want to annoy his new friend by pressing him on the priest, but a seed had been planted and now it was germinating. Impulsively, he asked the barman if he knew Father Duval.
“Well, lots of people come in ’ere, not sure if I know him, but you could try in the Prince of Wales up the road.”
Mark bought the man a drink and tried again. The drink obviously helped.
“I’m not sure of his name,” said the barman, “but there is a fellow who comes in sometimes with his dog. It’s said he’s a Catholic priest, but he don’t wear his religious gear in here. Sits by there,” he said, pointing, “and has a quiet pint. Don’t bother people. Bit of a loner. Lives up at the old rectory, I believe. Lives on his own, so they say. But you could ask Jim over at the shop. He knows who does what and where roundabout ’ere. But it won’t have nuthin’ to do with your sister, though, if he’s a priest an’ all that.”
The next morning Mark discovered from the shopkeeper that a few months back Father Duval’s food order had increased. “Said he had an aunt visiting when I mentioned it. I thought it was strange because he’s been ordering the same thing for years,” said the shopkeeper, in the slightly conspiratorial tone in which village gossips specialise. “And he started ordering cigarettes, even though he smokes a pipe. Nothing odd there, lots of people smoke both. But when I mentioned it, he stopped coming in here, except for the very occasional thing. Must have upset him. Don’t like doing that to my customers.”
Mark left after thanking him again for putting up a leaflet in his window.
Next he called into the newsagent and contrived to find out what Duval read, using his easy charm to persuade the young female assistant to check the order book. Mark discovered that the priest was a new customer for newspaper delivery: The Times daily and, recently, the New Musical Express weekly. The officer made a quip about the priest being an ageing beatnik. The young lady was thanked and invited “sometime” for a drink in the White Horse. It was a typical English invitation-sometime meant never. Mark was too busy trying to reconcile the strange combination of reading matter in which Duval indulged.
The captain resolved to go again to Duval’s house to confront him, on the pretext of asking whether the priest would take some more leaflets and leave them in his church; upon reflection, he thought better of it, because it was too obvious. He needed time to think, but he wondered whether Marda had time. He had discounted the idea of her going off on walkabout. There was no way that she would have done that to their parents. Amnesia, despite the detective yarns, was extremely rare. And nobody had been found. The only chance she was still alive was that she was somehow being kept against her will…somewhere. He knew he was chasing after phantoms of his own imagination, but he had to do something.
That night Gould tried to solve his problem. “I’m sure that Duval is not your man,” said the professor. “Sure, he’s weird, but he’s an intellectual. We’re all weird.”
“If you think you’re weird, you should meet some of the senior officers in my regiment.”
“Seriously, Mark, maybe I can find a way of asking, obliquely, about him when I see the Bishop of Guildford later on this week-Friday in fact. Bishop Templeton should know something of the priest, it’s his diocese. The bishop isn’t a historian, but he’s fairly switched on to church architecture in the area, so I wrote to him from the States to arrange a meeting.”
Mark looked downcast. “I’m supposed to leave on Friday.”
“Why don’t you catch your flight and I can contact you if I find out anything? If I may be frank, Mark, I do think you’re branding the wrong steer. Look, I know you’re desperate to find out anything you can about your sister, but don’t get fixated on a Catholic priest. They’ve got a reputation in Ireland for getting lonely parishioners knocked up, but I’ve never heard of them kidnapping or doing worse things to young women.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Irv, but he’s not Irish. Why do we always associate priests with being Irish?”
“Because it’s the jewel in the papal crown,” the American said in his classroom style. “The Emerald Isle is the most Catholic place on earth, and the Pope wants to keep it that way. No rubbers. No abortions. No porno mags or skin-flicks. It’s like feudalism, really; the state backs the Church in its primitive authoritarianism. The real Irish problem is that the brightest ones become priests and are generally celibate, whereas the Jewish problem is the cleverest ones become rabbis-and you know what large families they have. I can say that, by the way, because I’m a Catholic with Jewish relatives.”
“I didn’t know that professors could indulge in such racial stereotyping.”
“Sure, we do it all the time. The stereotyping of ideas is politics. Refining stereotypes is philosophy.”
“Sounds too philosophical for me, Irv. My view is that the clever Irish all emigrated to America; the thickos stayed behind to listen to the Pope and give us Brits a hard time over Northern Ireland.”
“Yes, you’re still in the army. You might be needed if things blow up in Ulster, unless we Americans can get you out of there first.” The professor smiled mischievously. “But we still need you in Germany. So go back. I have another month left of my sabbatical. You can leave some leaflets with me, and I’ll check with Constable McGregor at the Shere police station before I go. If I hear anything, I’ll phone you, I promise. Don’t wreck your military career on top of everything else.”
“Yes, you’re right. I’m making an ass of myself. We’ll have a farewell drink on Thursday, then I’ll bugger off to Woking before I get my flight from Heathrow. Thanks, Irv, I’m glad I got to know you. It’s been a bloody tough few months.”