Free Original Sin by P. D. James

Never have been. I can’t think why Miss Matlock’s so keen on it. Nostalgia, I suppose. Childhood memories. Not much doubt and sorrow about the congregation at St. Margaret’s. Too well-fed. Too well-off. Still, there will be if the vicar tries to cut out the eight o’clock 1662 Holy Communion on Sundays. There’ll be plenty of doubt and sorrow in the parish then.”
    “Has he suggested it?”
    “Not in so many words, but he’s keeping an eye on the size of the congregation. You and I must keep up our attendance and I’ll see if I can stir up some of the villagers. All this trendiness is Susan, of course. The man would be perfectly amenable if he weren’t egged on by his wife. She’s talking of going off to be trained for the diaconate. Next thing they’ll be ordaining her priest. They’d both do better in a large inner-city parish. They could have their banjos and guitars and I dare say the people would quite like it. What was your journey like?”
    “Not bad. Better tonight than this morning. We were ten minutes late at Charing Cross, a bad beginning to a bad day. It was Sonia Clements’ funeral. Mr. Gerard didn’t go. Too busy, so he said. I suppose she wasn’t important enough. Naturally that meant I felt I had to stay.”
    Joan said: “Well that was no hardship. Cremations are always depressing. You can get some satisfaction out of a well-conducted funeral, but not out of a cremation. Which reminds me that the vicar actually proposed using the Alternative Service Book when he buries old Merryweather next Tuesday. I soon put a stop to that. Mr. Merryweather was eighty-nine and you know how he hated change. He wouldn’t think he’d had a proper Christian burial without the 1662 book.”
    When on the previous Tuesday Blackie had returned home with the news of Sonia Clements’ suicide, Joan had taken it with remarkable composure. Blackie told herself that she oughtn’t to be surprised. Her cousin frequently confounded her by an unexpected response to news and events. Small domestic inconveniences would provoke outrage, a major tragedy was taken with stoic calm. And this tragedy, after all, couldn’t be expected to touch her. She had never known, not even met, Sonia Clements.
    Breaking the news, Blackie had said: “I haven’t gossiped with the junior staff, of course, but I gather that the general feeling in the office is that she killed herself because Mr. Gerard sacked her. I don’t suppose he did it tactfully either. Apparently she left a note but it didn’t mention losing her job. People take the view, though, that she’d still be here if it wasn’t for Mr. Gerard.”
    Joan’s response had been robust. “But that’s ridiculous. Grown women don’t kill themselves because they’ve been sacked. If losing your job was a reason for suicide we’d be having to dig mass graves. It was very inconsiderate of her, very thoughtless. And if she had to kill herself she should have done it somewhere else. After all, it might have been you who’d gone to the little archives room and found her. That wouldn’t have been at all pleasant.”
    Blackie had said: “It wasn’t very pleasant for Mandy Price, the new temp, but I must say she took it very coolly. Some young girls would have had hysterics.”
    “No point in getting hysterics over a dead body. Dead bodies can’t harm you. She’ll be lucky if she sees nothing worse in life than that.”
    Blackie, sipping her sherry, looked across at her cousin from under lowered lids as if seeing her dispassionately for thefirst time. The solid, almost waistless body, the firm legs with the beginnings of varicose veins above surprisingly shapely ankles, the abundant hair, once a rich brown, still thick and only slightly grey, worn in a heavy bun (a fashion which hadn’t changed since Blackie had first known her), the cheerful, weather-coarsened face. A sensible face, people might say. A sensible face for a sensible woman, one of Barbara Pym’s excellent