Free Mr Golightly's Holiday by Salley Vickers

as welcome as white violets.

10
    T HE R EVEREND M EREDITH F ISHER NEVER economised with her conscience. She nursed it as a proud mother nurses a precocious child. And, like many such mothers, she was not parsimonious with the cherished one’s talents.
    No event in Great Calne passed unnoted by its vigilant parish priest and so significant a matter as the arrival of a new tenant at Spring Cottage could hardly have been overlooked. If she had not yet made a welcoming visit this was not because she was idle.
    Meredith Fisher took her pastoral work strenuously. On Wednesdays and Fridays, she attended the South Devon counselling training at Plymouth College, which had the virtue that it freed the yew tree by the rectory wall to harbour Johnny Spence.
    It might be hoped that the vicar’s training provided other benefits too. But it is a sad fact that a zest for human psychology is not always shared by the objects of its concern. Meredith Fisher’s attempts to counsel the parish of Great Calne had fallen on stony ground. Statistics indicated that it was improbable that Great Calne had escaped its share of sexual abuse – but if so, its victims and perpetrators were joined in some unholy pact to keep quiet about it. And adultery, though certainly rife, was, if not actuallyapplauded, apparently tolerated. It appeared there was no Christian means of helping the afflicted.
    The arrival, therefore, of a brand new opportunity to adjust a psyche to normality (it was well known that writers were neurotic and this one was single, which, in a man, generally meant some kind of sexual dysfunction) was a bonus for the vicar. Hers was essentially a doctrine of light; there was no darkly noisome corner of the human psyche the Reverend Meredith Fisher felt unequal to illuminating.
    The chance to cast light upon her neighbour’s darker corners presented itself on Saturday over her breakfast of Weetabix, toast and jam.
    ‘Been to see the writer chap over the road?’ her husband, Keith, asked casually behind the Express. He was keen to run down to Newton Abbot and lay a bet on ‘Banoffee Pie’ which was running seven to one in the 2.15. To accomplish this successfully his wife’s attention had to be diverted. There had been a worrying trend recently to make Saturday the day they ‘did things together’ which Keith was hoping to nip in the bud.
    The common weal, and other large causes, can generally be relied on to outweigh lesser domestic concerns and Keith was relieved to see his wife already at the door of Spring Cottage as he reversed the Renault down and out of the front drive. He could wing it into Newton Abbot, place the bet on Banoffee Pie and then pick up some brownie points with She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed by hopping down to Tesco’s to do the weekend shop.
    Mr Golightly had already switched on the kettle for a second cup of coffee and was about to put on Clifford Curzon playing the Schubert impromptus when there was a rap at the door. The lunch with Ellen Thomas had been nourishing, and entertaining, but it had not forwarded his writing plan. He had shut his eyes for a mere five minutes and already it was evening…But sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof was his motto and that morning he had woken bright and early and ready to work.
    The effort at opening the front door to Sam Noble had eased the tendency to stick; a fact which Mr Golightly regretted when he saw he had yet another visitor, one who was engaged, it appeared, in robbing the garden of its crop of harmless wildflowers. Unless it was the gardener Nicky Pope had warned him to expect.
    The Reverend Fisher held out a frankly earthy hand – in the other she held a bunch of wilting dandelions.
    ‘Hi there. Meredith Fisher.’
    ‘Golightly,’ said Mr Golightly, somewhat emphasising the syllables of his name.
    ‘I’m the rector – don’t fall down dead with shock!’
    ‘No,’ said Mr Golightly. If anyone was about to fall down dead it certainly wouldn’t be