The Face Read online

  After that, how could he refuse?

  He heaved the twelfth over-stuffed shopping bag into the back of his car while wondering what sort of dent this amount of food would make in his salary if he had to do it on a continual basis. While he was on holiday he didn’t mind, holidays had that sort of effect on you. Outside the holiday period it might be a different story. He slammed the large tailgate shut and turned to see a young woman with a small child grinning at him. “Hello Marie,” he said, “Jessica’s grown since I was last here.”

  “She’s doing well, must be the baptism service you gave her.”

  She pointed to the car, “Busy shopping?”

  “Got a couple of friends staying with me.”

  Marie gave a cheeky grin, “You mean the murderess and the madwoman. Gossips all round the village.”

  “What sort of gossip?” He gasped.

  She laughed again, “You needn’t look so anxious. The majority seem to be in your favour with the view that it would take a man of God to open his home to both of them at the same time.”

  “And the minority?”

  “They expect to find you floating face down in a river before the month is out.”

  He knew that Marie was around the same age as Amy. “Do you know Amy?”

  “Went to school with her, same year different form. She tended to keep herself to herself as her stutter made it difficult to hold a long conversation with her. She was always top in domestic science though, sorry they call it food technology these days. She seemed to have the knack. We’d all end up with sponges like dinner plates and she’d pull out a fluffy sponge from the same oven at the same time. Shame about her breakdown, could happen to any of us I suppose.”

  She expertly picked up her daughter and put her in the rear safety seat, carefully interlacing the straps in the correct order. She started to fold up the pushchair, “Don’t know the murderess, except by reputation and rumour.”

  “Which is?”

  Marie threw the pushchair into the back of the Volvo estate and slammed it shut. “She had the reputation of liking the high life, certainly she had a fearsome weekly order with the local off-licence. Legend is that all stopped the day the child was born. Gossip in the doctor’s surgery said that the child was as sick as hell and due to die any day. Tittle-tattle from the Milkman was that she nearly drove herself into an early grave looking after it. General feeling was she got a bad deal from the jury.”

  She suddenly grinned, “Rumour is you’re becoming our Vicar, is that true?”

  Brian wagged a finger, “Time will tell, few hurdles to cross yet.”

  She patted her tummy, “Hope so, another baptism on the way.”

  With that she jumped into the car and reversed out like an expert. He watched her depart with longing in his own heart to see his own daughter; the one whom he had never strapped into a child seat and never seen baptized.

  With two pairs of helping hands the food disappeared into the cupboards, fridge and freezer in seemingly record time. He sat down and looked at the women, they were both grinning. “Just what have you two been up to?”

  “Try looking upstairs,” twittered Bau.

  Gaining no further information he went upstairs, the women had been rearranging furniture. The double bed was now in Amy’s room and Amy’s bed was now in Bau’s room. His camp-bed had been folded up and packed away. Finally his clothes had all been neatly hung up in the fitted wardrobe in Amy’s room. He was gobsmacked at the implication of it all. He licked his lips, “Just supposed, just suppose for one moment, I don’t want this particular arrangement.”

  The women went quiet. Brian let them ruminate for about a minute and then grinned saying softly, “Actually I think it will be an excellent move, one that I would never had the nerve to suggest for fear of offending one or both of you, or being turned down.”

  Amy rushed over and flung her arms around him, “Do you mean that? We can always put it all back.”

  “You can," said Bau chuckling, "but I’m not trying to move that bed again without masculine help.”

  Amy let him go from her bear hug. “Lunch in five minutes.”

  They disappeared downstairs and Brian wandered into Amy’s room, looked at the open door and almost burst into laughter, instead of having the single word ‘Amy’ painted on it, it now proclaimed, ‘Amy & mate.’”

  “You’ve got some post,” Bau remarked as Brian wondered where Amy had got Mulligatawny soup from, he certainly hadn’t bought it. “Had to sign for two items,” Bau added.

  Brian finished his soup and picked the mail up from the worktop. He opened the general letters first, there was nothing special. Then he opened the recorded delivery letter, read it and stuffed it back in the envelope. Finally he opened a jiffy bag and extracted a soft velvet pouch. He grinned to himself; the woman’s eyes were locked onto it. He carefully unrolled it. “Phoned my cleaner yesterday” he casually remarked, “Had her send it to me.”

  “How decadent,” Amy remarked peevishly, “having someone else clean your house.”

  “It’s a school flat and she comes with the territory. It’s a boarding school so I’m often on duty for fourteen hours a day.”

  He undid a little bow of blue ribbon; “I had her sent to me after I talked with Bau about rings.”

  He opened the two flaps and revealed the contents of five rings and two bracelets. He gently touched a ruby and diamond engagement ring. “My mother’s, she wasn’t wearing it the day she died.”

  He finger moved to a tiny band of gold, “My grandmother’s wedding ring mark two. She was married during the war and they had to have a gold-plated copper band. Grandad bought her this on their thirtieth wedding anniversary. When she was dying she insisted on wearing her original one, said it was good enough when they started out it was good enough for heaven.”

  His finger moved again, “My wedding ring, except it never was. When I married Janis I only had enough money for one ring, I thought we intended to renew our wedding vows and properly exchange rings later, we never did.”

  He touched a signet ring, “My father’s,” and finally moved to another band of gold, this time flat and with a deep wavy grove around the middle as if someone had tried to make two, narrower, rings. “Again my mother’s, she didn’t use it as a wedding ring, she just liked the design.”

  Bau peered at the bracelets, “Where did they come from?”

  “No idea, might have been my grandmother’s, might have been an aunt’s. This was mum’s travel pouch and they were in there when I found it. It had more in it then, but my sister Joan and I shared the contents between us.”

  He reached out, took Bau’s left hand and Amy’s left hand and held them in his. “Now I want to say something serious.”

  They both felt him tremble. “I can’t legally marry you both I truly wish I could, but I can’t. I suppose I could become a Muslim, move to the Sudan and marry you both, but not here. I want to be certain that you are both happy with the idea of me marrying Amy in the legal sense.”

  “And Bau being your additional wife,” said Amy smartly.

  “And with Bau being my additional wife.” Repeated Brian.

  “Yes,” Amy said swiftly as if delaying would cause Brian to re-think.

  “Most definitely,” said Bau, “I’d be far happier that way round than if you had me as your first wife.”

  Amy tut-tutted, “Not first wife.”

  Brian trembled again, “We’ve got to get the terminology right. I’ve been thinking about this and personally I don’t like the word concubine, it has too many overtones of amorality. I wondered about wife and consort?”

  He got no encouraging looks. “Or wife and doxy.”

  “No way!” said Bau.

  “Wife and odalisque?”

  “Makes Bau sound like a lump of granite.” Amy quipped.

  Bau lent forward, “How about reverting to French and using femme and épouse?”

  Brian frowned, trying to remember his schoo
lboy French. “Isn’t that wife and spouse?”

  Bau laughed, “Sounds better in French, and I think épouse can mean legal wife.”

  He looked at Amy, “Fancy being an épouse?”

  She nodded. Brian looked at Bau, “And a femme?”

  “As long as it’s not femme fatale.”

  Brian licked his lips and wondered about his own sanity. “If we do go for épouse and femme, I want to make it clear that I want a joint bank account between all three of us for family matters. We can each have another bank account of our own, but I’d like us all to have some money in common.” He paused trying to assemble his thoughts. “I not trying to steal your money, I just want you both to feel that I share everything with you. That means, as far as I am concerned, that you have access to our money. I’ll also make a will splitting my estate between both of you equally. Is that OK?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Sensible.”

  Bau wriggled her hand free and showed him her right hand, she almost whispered “You do realise that these rings are Amy and my love rings? And that these,” she pinged her nose-ring, “are our pledge rings.”

  He felt weak, “Yes, I’m sort of completing the triangle, it won’t change whatever you two have with each other and I won’t try to stop it or interfere. Is that OK?”

  “Yes.”

  “Most clear.”

  He picked up the engagement ring and looked at Amy, “In that case would you do me the honour of becoming my épouse?”

  “Oh yes,” she sighed.

  Brian slipped the ring onto the second finger of her left hand. He turned to Bau, “Would you do me the honour of being my femme as well?”

  She nodded, unable to speak. He went to slip the tiny band of gold onto her left hand and she swiftly tendered her right. “Put it next to Amy’s,” she whispered, “I love you both.”

  He slipped the ring onto the second finger of her right hand, small as it was it went on easily. “This is a token of my love for you,” he said gently while looking her in the eyes.

  Bau responded by removing her thumb-ring and slipping it over the second finger of his right hand. “This is my pledge ring to you. I will be faithful and I pledge never to demand of you anything that will be detrimental to your marriage to Amy.”

  Amy frowned and reached for Brian’s unused wedding ring, she slipped it on his left-hand wedding finger. “And I pledge my love to you and promise that I will never do anything that will prevent you and Bau from loving one another.”

  Brian decided to complete the cycle and slipped the grooved wedding ring on Amy’s wedding finger next to the engagement ring. “We’ll say proper vows later. This is my token of love for you.”

  He held both their hands. “I take you both and promise to love you, comfort you honour and protect you, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to you both as long as I live.”

  He gazed from one to the other as the words of the marriage service automatically flowed into his head. “I take you both, to have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.”

  He touched each of their gold rings; “I give you these rings as a sign of our betrothal and my love for you. With my body I honour you both, all that I am I give to you both, and all that I have I share with you both, within the love of God.”

  Amy replied softly, “And so will I to you.”

  Bau echoed reverently, “And so will I to you.”

  They sat in silence for a couple of minutes until Amy sat back. “My that was a surprise, what do you do for an encore?”

  Bau gazed at her tiny gold band and then at Amy’s grooved ring. “You will legally marry Amy won’t you?”

  “Of course, as soon as I can. I just wanted to stabilise our relationships before I lost my mind.”

  Bau picked up one of the bracelets and put it around her left ankle, Amy did the same with the other, but it was too tight. They swapped anklets and Bau grinned, “You did say ‘all I share with you’ didn’t you?”

  Brian laughed, “And now for the encore.”

  He took the special delivery letter out of its envelope. “A box at the Ipswich Regent to see ‘Rock around the Hours,’ the rock musical tomorrow night.”

  “A box?” said Bau.

  “Well it was two tickets, but they didn’t have a third anywhere close and I thought ‘what the hell, you only live once.’”

  There were cries of delight and Brian enjoyed the moment. Moral anguish could come later; he just wanted to enjoy the moment.

  Brian had planned a romantic meal at a country restaurant; both Amy and Bau had given this the thumbs down. So instead of driving them to some romantic tryst he was fumbling about in the garden. If Verity was to be believed then the ventilation pipe from the underground chamber should have been somewhere inside the Victorian greenhouse, but Brian could not find it. He’d almost given up when, by accident, he glanced at the side of the house and paused for thought. Running up the wall was a cast-iron pipe that for looked like a drainpipe, except it passed the guttering by and ended with a hemisphere of wire mesh. He heard a noise behind him and turned round, “Hello Verity.”

  She surveyed the barren floor of the greenhouse, “Gardening?”

  He glanced around, “No, looking for your ventilation pipe from the chamber below, I think it’s that cast-iron pipe there on the side of the house.”

  Verity followed his gaze, “What you going to do?”

  “Nothing, it’s too heavy to shift and in any case it will probably be taken as a sewer vent.”

  She didn’t seem interested. Now she glanced furtively around. “I’ve just had the most peculiar phone call from Amy, I think she said that you and her were betrothed. Is she having one of her funny turns?”

  Brian laughed, “Not in the least Verity, I gave her an engagement ring at lunchtime and a wedding ring to prove I was serious.”

  Verity’s mouth temporarily dropped open before she managed to croak, “But I thought it was Bau you were interested in, not my Amy.”

  She watched Brian’s face and then threw up her hands, “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”

  Brian led her across to an old garden seat and sat her down. “What you do need to know is that the three of us are strong friends and that I’m not attempting to harm the friendship Amy has with Bau. You also need to know that I intend to marry Amy at the earliest opportunity and that the three of us intend to set up house together.”

  Verity was obviously having trouble with the news, “But you’ve only know her for a few days, you can’t make a lifetime’s commitment on a few days!”

  “Well we have.”

  Verity sucked in her cheeks. “Do you love her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Enough to spend your life with her?”

  “Yes.”

  Even to Brian’s own ears this sounded glib. Verity’s eyes took on a peculiar out-of-this-world look. “You’re serious aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Verity looked at the ground, “She’s on a roll at the moment Brian, but she is by no means well; well in her mind I mean. Without warning she can suddenly plunge into what she calls her black pit. So far she’s never been as bad as she was at the beginning, but she takes time to recover and while she does so she’s terribly vulnerable and sometimes confused. Can you cope with that?”

  He decided not to tell her about the lipstick incident. “Yes.”

  Verity wrung her hands, “And she can appear nonsensical. The day before she moved out she baked a sardine and ginger loaf. Even she couldn’t eat it. I have no idea why she put that particular combination together and neither has she. Can you cope with that?”

  “Yes.”

  Verity became earnest. “I’m not trying to put you off or do Amy down Brian, I have to be sure.” She took a deep breath, “If you’ve got second thoughts it would be best to tell her now. She’d be hurt and doubtl
ess throw a wobbly, but she’d recover. Marry her and file for divorce in, say, three years time and who knows what the outcome would be.”

  Brian gazed at Verity’s worried face. “You really do love her don’t you?” He said gently.

  Verity nodded. Brian reached over and held her hand. “So do I. I know it must sound ridiculous and foolhardy, but even after a few days I know Amy is the woman for me.”

  Verity sighed, “Then I’m glad. It relieves me of a tremendous worry. I’ve been becoming frightened for her and fearing what would happen to her when I die. Now I know she’s safe.”

  She lowered her voice, “And talking of death, you ought to know that in my will I leave everything to her. Wendy’s been despicable to Amy, James is around the other side of the world with his own legal practice and John’s got enough money in his business to start his own bank. Besides it’s Amy who’s been my real child.”

  She stood up; Brian followed suite. “Coming inside?”

  “No, I came to invite you all to dinner tomorrow.” She swallowed as if forcing back undigested food. “That includes Bau, she is most welcome.”

  She turned to go and looked back, “You will take care of her?”

  “The best care in the world.”

  She shuffled her feet; “Can I come to the wedding?”

  “Amy would expect nothing less, you can be mother of the bride all over again.”

  She gave a lopsided smile, “In that case I’d better buy a new hat.”

  She wandered off walking like a forlorn old maid. She stopped about twenty feet away and turned to face him. She called out, “By the way, the Church Council said yes.”

  She gave a wave and left him standing in a web of thoughts. Somehow, against all the odds, the ducks were now firmly in line for him to take up the position of vicar here. On the other hand his personal ducks were flying all over the place. Explaining to the Bishop about his marriage to Amy was one thing, explaining that he also had a second wife was going to be somewhat more tricky. Besides it wasn’t explaining it to the Bishop that was the problem, it was squaring it with God.