Free The Skeleton in the Grass by Robert Barnard

thought better of it.
    The funeral was conducted by a clergyman from a neighbouring parish. So that her father could hide his own lack of emotion, Sarah thought. Then she chided herself for a cheap jibe: her father felt his wife’s death as deeply as he was capable of feeling anything of an emotional nature. A slight by the Bishop, however, would have hurt him more.
    He sat throughout the service icy and remote, apparently contemplating arctic vistas. After the sad spectacle at the graveside he received attempts at comfort and commiseration in the same tight-lipped manner with which, atChristmastime, he was accustomed to receiving compliments of the season.
    Back at the vicarage some attempt had been made to provide fare for the principal mourners. It seemed to Sarah that such food and drink as there was had been provided, unasked, by Mrs. Wilcox and Mrs. Spencer, wives of churchwardens. Her father had played no part in the provision of it, and played next to no part in the dispensing of it. Nobody knew whether they were meant to go back to the vicarage, and nobody who went could decide how long they ought to stay. They ate to hide their embarrassment, and escaped as soon as was decent.
    The women of the church—who in fact kept the congregation together, since the Reverend Causeley’s ministry seemed to concern itself solely with forms, tithes, and marks of respect that should be paid to him personally—were a comfort to Sarah. Her mother had done all the things a vicar’s wife was expected to do, and had done them as well as anybody of her shy, dispirited nature could be expected to do them. A vicar’s family did after all occupy (and the Reverend Causeley was extremely forward in asserting it) some position in rural society—lower than the local gentry, certainly, but at least as high as the doctor. The big house in the area was seldom occupied, since the gentleman of the house was busy retrieving the family’s fortunes in the City of London. Indeed, local rumour had it that he was not so much retrieving the family’s fortunes as quite simply making a lot of money for himself—that he would gladly have got rid of the house if he could have found anybody foolhardy or vainglorious enough to have bought it. Thus a considerable burden had fallen on Sarah’s mother, and the ladies of the parish were warm—perhaps over-warm—in their praise of her manner of carrying it.
    When they had all gratefully ducked off, there seemednothing to do, nothing to say. Sarah took herself off for a walk, on a hill path where she could be quite certain she would be alone. The late afternoon sunlight restored her spirits. When she got home her father was in his study, no doubt “writing a sermon”—one of those dry discourses, like the financial statement of a company chairman, which showed little sign of the literary pains that were apparently bestowed on them. Whatever he was doing, he would certainly be happier on his own. Sarah found a book—it was Angel Pavement, which her mother had had out from the library. She would have to take it back in the morning. Meanwhile it would help to take her mind off the clock ticking.
    Her father emerged from the study as the time approached for his little bit of supper. Sarah asked if he would like anything, and he murmured that he thought he could just manage a piece or two of toasted cheese. Sarah made several slices, some for herself, and they sat around the fire eating them. There was no intimacy. They said nothing. Only when her father had finished, and he sat wiping his fingers, did he say:
    â€œHow much notice do you think the Hallams will expect you to give?”
    Unconsciously she had been expecting that question in one form or another. Perhaps it was Oliver who had prepared her mind for it. She had not planned an answer, but it came without hesitation:
    â€œI shall not be giving notice. I shall go back to work