Free Half Broken Things by Morag Joss Page B

longer worried that inadequacy was what it was. Since Simon had been born he had devoted himself almost entirely to parish matters that, he had persuaded both Wendy and himself, were more deserving of his attention. He had wanted, he said, to set Simon an example of life and work that would be worth following.
    So the lychgate, Gordon now considered, might be a problem whose time had come. The lychgate could be his next project. And for as long as it would demand his energy (Gordon was known by his parishioners to be terribly focused) he could not be expected to lavish the kind of attention that Wendy had had time for on the grandchild with an absent father. In fact, he thought, with Wendy gone, he
needed
a project. Gordon liked to be committed. Over the years, ‘commitment’ was what he had come to call the habitual and sustained expenditure of his energy on a range of projects of his own devising. ‘Commitment’ was the personal quality of which he was proudest in himself. He no longer noticed much about the church or his parishioners except the things he disliked, one of which was a lack of commitment. He was just thinking he might bring it into the sermon on Sunday and also get in something about the needles and condoms (obliquely, of course) when he saw a man, presumably Jeff Stevenson, standing under the lychgate, his head raised in apparent admiration of the timbering of the roof. What was the attraction? It was not nearly as interesting as the church—you could say it detracted from it—and it was only nineteenth century, Gordon thought, simultaneously deploring Jeff Stevenson’s taste and framing the first arguments he would have to meet and demolish on his way to reinstating the lychgate in the parish’s affections. Not wishing Jeff Stevenson to see him waiting at the window, Gordon turned, selected his deerstalker from several hats hanging in the hall, pulled on his jacket and set off from the front door of the vicarage to meet him.
    â€˜Hello there! Gordon, how
are
you?’ Michael demanded, meeting him on the churchyard path and advancing with a handshake. Gordon submitted his hand, Michael seized it and grabbed Gordon’s wrist with his left hand. As he beamed at him and yanked his arm up and down, Michael was trying to see beyond the smeared glasses, which reminded him of the chip shop window at the top of his road on Snow Hill. He searched through the lenses for eye contact and fixed him with a look of concern. The hat was perching so ridiculously on Gordon Brookes’s head that he had to concentrate on not staring at it.
    â€˜How are you doing, Gordon? I’m Jeff. Jeff Stevenson.’
    â€˜Yes, yes, hello. You’re expected. Gordon Brookes.’ Gordon lifted the hat and replaced it. He always wore a hat of one sort or another; he thought of his hats as his little trademark. Oh, the vicar and his hats, he imagined people saying, affectionately casting their eyes upwards. He found it useful that a hat created an illusion of approachability and friendliness, and at the same time kept people away. Most people were wary of eccentricity, he had found. They seldom stopped him in the village to chat, for instance, unwilling to risk being thought, by association, as barmy as the man in the barmy hat. But clearly Jeff Stevenson was not most people. For one thing, he had a most persistent handshake.
    â€˜Great hat! How do you do?’ Michael said, thinking that Gordon Brookes’s lower lip looked too red and wet.
    Gordon said, ‘I didn’t realise you knew my name. We haven’t met before, have we?’
    Michael swallowed. Although Gordon Brookes’s tone of interrogation was mild, he was still asking a question. Michael had never before been asked how he knew a vicar’s name. Vicars in general seemed to assume that everybody knew who they were. Thinking fast, he worked out that he could afford to be honest about the source of that small