A Time for Living: Polwenna Bay 2 Read online

  If they actually had Ocado in Cornwall, that was. Maybe Asda delivered? Or at the very least Patsy Penhalligan from the pasty shop?

  Deciding it made sense to Google the facts before he starved to death in his new house, Ashley downed the cold coffee and pulled his MacBook Air out of his bag. A flutter of leaflets and paperwork drifted onto his table like malevolent snowflakes. Words swam and danced before his eyes and he caught himself wondering if this was the change in vision he’d been warned about. Drowsiness was a dead cert; he’d gone from needing only a few hours a night to lying in like a teenager. There had been sudden bouts of vomiting too, but so far nothing else on the list of doom had made its presence felt. To begin with, Ashley had had no evidence, only the overwhelming suspicion that the thing he’d been so arrogantly triumphant about surviving last time had been creeping up on him unawares. It had always been a possibility that it would return, of course; that was one of the reasons why he enjoyed living life to the max and doing things now and as fast as he could. Still, until the consultant had confirmed his worst fears, Ashley hadn’t really believed them. He’d told himself he was just being paranoid and a worrier.

  Until it was verified that he wasn’t.

  He glanced down at the leaflets. The text was sharper now. Glioma. Benign. Biopsy. Burr hole. His hand rose to touch the hat. Burr hole was quite a cute name for this crater. It sounded better than it looked; that was for sure. Radiotherapy. Gamma knife. God. It sounded like something out of Marvel Comics. He’d turn green, smash his way out of the lab before the surgeons could even get near him and then go rampaging through the metropolis.

  Yeah. Right. He was far too tired to rampage. Anyway, why waste time? He had about four months before the operation. Four months to do his best to put everything to rights. To finish the house his parents would have loved. To spend some real time out of the office and in the beautiful village he’d loved since family holidays all those years ago. To try to make his peace with Morwenna-pain-in-the-ass-Tremaine.

  Or rather, since he was trying to be honest here, to kiss her just once more.

  Once all these things were done, Ashley told himself firmly as he shoved the leaflets back into his bag, then he’d worry about the rest of it. First of all, though, he was going to enjoy a perfect Indian summer, even if it killed him – which, he reflected with a certain gallows humour, it might well do.

  He pushed the computer aside. He was tired again, which was ridiculous, and the scenery was passing by in a way that was horribly metaphorical. Everything was out of his hands now, Ashley realised bleakly. Everything. The sun that was blasting onto his face through the window, the speed of his journey and, most of all, the latest and most dangerous tumour that was growing silently and lethally inside his brain.

  Chapter 3

  “Finally, the last item of this evening’s agenda before we all scoot back down to the Water Carnival,” said Jules Mathieson, glancing round at the members of her Parochial Church Council, who were sitting at the table in the vestry and trying hard to look interested. The early evening sunshine was pouring in rainbows through the stained-glass window, while strains of music drifted up on the light breeze. She could tell that everyone was itching to get back to the village and stuck into the cider.

  Jules didn’t blame them one bit. Church business wasn’t the most exciting stuff, especially on Water Carnival Saturday, but Sheila Keverne, Jules’s verger, was a stickler for routine and there was no way she would allow the PCC to reschedule. The Rock of Gibraltar was more likely to hop on EasyJet for a change of venue than Sheila was to change the date of a church meeting.

  St Wenn’s PCC was a small team comprising the clergy (which meant Jules) and lay members of the church. Their job was to oversee the wellbeing of the church, both spiritual and practical, and to promote the church within the community. Mostly they did a great job. Sheila as Vice Chair coordinated things and bossed everyone about; Dr Richard Penwarren was diligent in his role as Treasurer; and Alice Tremaine was an organised secretary who, with the help of her great-grandson, managed to do a blinding job of emailing minutes, tweeting church news and updating St Wenn’s Facebook page. Then there were the Pollards, a father-and-son builder team who looked after St Wenn’s general maintenance. Jules’s friend Danny Tremaine had recently joined too, and was proving to be a dab hand at working on the churchyard.

  “Final item then, maid,” prompted Roger Pollard impatiently as Jules paused to gather her thoughts. He and his son, Little Rog, were both cross-eyed from a day of cider drinking and were looking forward to a few hours more.

  “Yep, get on with it, Rev,” agreed Danny. He raised a hand to his hair and pulled a face. “The flour and water’s setting in this like concrete. I’ll need to chisel it out at this rate.”

  “I’ll send Mum up to Seaspray if you like?” offered Richard Penwarren. His grey eyes were starred with laughter lines as he said this – because although his mother was the village hairdresser, she was infamous for practically scalping anyone who wandered into her salon.

  “No thanks, mate,” shuddered Danny. “I might have survived a roadside bomb in Kabul but I don’t think I’d make it out of your ma’s salon in one piece.”

  Jules laughed. Her own bob was also full of the remnants of the earlier flour-bomb battle – and not so long ago it had been attacked by Kursa Penwarren, an experience Jules wasn’t keen to repeat. For a few awkward weeks she’d looked like a fatter version of Sinéad O’Connor.

  “Final item?” prompted Big Rog, tapping his watch.

  Jules took a deep breath and steeled herself for breaking what could be very bad news indeed. She really hated spoiling what had been a lovely day so far.

  “Before you all get excited, this last one may take a while because I’m afraid it’s about as serious as it gets.”

  Alice Tremaine looked up from the minute-taking. Her kindly face was full of concern. “Whatever is it, love?”

  “I had a phone call this morning from the cathedral office,” Jules told them slowly. Actually, she nearly hadn’t answered, she’d been in such a tearing hurry to get to the beach where she was organising the children’s treasure hunt. When she’d picked up, Jules had soon wished that she’d just ignored it. Sometimes ignorance really was bliss.

  Sheila Keverne clasped her hands over her cashmere-clad bosom. “The bishop’s office? Rang us? Oh, Jules! How exciting!”

  “Well, you may find it gets even more exciting,” said Jules, who always liked to look on the bright side. “Brace yourselves, folks, because Bishop Bill is coming to visit St Wenn’s.”

  Jules’s verger couldn’t have looked more excited if the vicar had announced that Jesus was popping in for a cuppa. Actually, Jules thought with a little dash of cynicism, Sheila probably wouldn’t be nearly as impressed by Jesus with his tatty robes, dusty sandals and penchant for spending time with smelly fisherman as she would by a bishop in purple robes and who lived in a palace.

  “I hate to rain on your parade, folks,” she interrupted when her team broke into happy chatter, “but I suspect there’s a reason for his visit and it’s not to look at our stained-glass windows. Well, I guess it is indirectly, but only the broken one. The bishop’s called for an audit of St Wenn’s.”

  Richard Penwarren frowned. “Are you saying he wants to audit our finances?”

  “Not just our finances,” Jules said. The chatter had stopped abruptly and everyone was staring at her. Even the Pollards had managed to focus beyond their next pint. “Apparently there’ll be a second audit too, one that looks at our parish registers.”

  “I hate to sound thick, but what’s in those that he’d want to see?” asked Danny.

  “Christenings, marriages, deaths, confirmations. Basically, the activity of the church.” Jules checked each item off on her fingers. “You guys probably don’t need me to point out that it’s looking pretty empty. I can’t think when we last had a christening here and nobody’s been confirmed for at least three years.
Weddings might just about save us from looking totally redundant, although there’s not been one in my time here.”

  “But we do lots of other things,” Sheila protested and everybody nodded in agreement. “There’s the coffee mornings, the toddlers’ club, the young mums’ group, the old folks’ parties, the jumble sales for charity, the memory café and lots more.”

  It was certainly a respectable list and probably explained why Jules was constantly shattered and had no social life. Well, that and the long walks she’d got into the habit of taking along the cliffs.

  “You’re right; we do lots of great work here,” she agreed. “St Wenn’s is certainly at the heart of Polwenna Bay – but the problem is that it doesn’t look that way on paper, which is where it matters. The Church of England will want to see the official church paperwork and have a picture of the numbers who attend the actual services, and you all know as well as I do that the figures won’t look good.”

  “So why’s he coming if there isn’t much to see here?” Alice asked slowly. “Or is that it? He’s actually coming to confirm that, officially at least, things are very quiet at St Wenn’s?”

  There was a pause after she said this. Jules could practically hear the cogs grinding in the Pollards’ brains. Danny caught her eye and she knew he’d got it instantly.

  “The bishop’s coming to see if they can close us down,” Danny said. His mouth, on both the injured and the uninjured side of his face, was set in a grim line. “Come on, you lot, you must see? St Wenn’s is a pretty church with views to die for and it would probably sell for a small fortune. It’s exactly the kind of building the C of E could flog.”

  “Sell the church?” Big Rog’s mouth swung open on its hinges. “Bleddy hell!”

  “Who’d want to buy a church?” wondered Little Rog, scratching his head. “What would they do with it?”

  “Make it into a holiday cottage,” Danny replied bleakly. “A developer – somebody like your boss Ashley Carstairs, for example – would snap it up in a heartbeat. Look at what’s happened in other villages. We’ll hardly be the first.”

  Alice looked upset. “He’s right. The Methodists have closed loads of chapels.”

  “Well, they would, but we’re in the Church of England! Oh! I bet that Ashley’s already been sniffing round. He’s up here all the time! You know he is,” Sheila declared, glaring at Jules as though this was her personal fault. Cashley, as he was nicknamed in the village, was about as popular as a dose of Norovirus. “It’s just the kind of thing he’d do! That man won’t be happy until he’s destroyed our village.”

  “He gave Fernside woods to Mo,” Danny pointed out reasonably. “She’s planning on donating it to a village trust.”

  “He probably did that because it will give him brownie points with the council when he comes to convert the church,” sniffed Sheila. “If I see him up here I’ll make sure I tell him to sling his hook!”

  Jules said mildly, “The Lord’s house is open to all, Sheila. Even Ashley Carstairs.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t be!” Folding her arms over her chest, Sheila raised her chin in a determined fashion. “Over my dead body is that incomer buying St Wenn’s.”

  “No, he bleddy well isn’t,” agreed Big Rog, banging his fist on the table so hard that all the mugs jumped. “It’s our church. It belongs to the village.”

  “There might be a bit of work in it for us though, Pa,” mused Little Rog. The Pollards, like quite a few builders in Polwenna Bay, had been doing very well out of Ashley Carstairs recently. They’d been building his giant wall for almost a year and had been busy making renovations on his house, Mariners. However, the work was nearly at an end now. Lean times loomed.

  “True, my boy, true. Maybe it’s all for the best,” said his father, thoughtfully. “Can’t odds it; the church is a bit empty, Vicar.”

  The seductive call of Mammon was strong in the building trade lately, Jules thought wryly.

  “How are the church finances looking?” she asked Richard.

  The doctor pushed his glasses up his nose. “Not in great shape to be honest, Jules. I was waiting until any other business to say that we urgently need to repair the roof over the nave. The leaks are getting much worse.”

  Jules already knew this. When the heavens opened, which was fairly frequently in Cornwall, she could pick up a brolly from the porch and do a very good Gene Kelly routine inside the church. She’d had to visit the farm shop twice last week just to buy extra buckets.

  “Then there’s the broken window of St Wenn the Blessed,” the doctor continued, steepling his fingers under his chin and fixing her with worried grey eyes. “And the masonry needs pointing too. The winter storms really do give the building a hammering.”

  “The retaining wall needs some work as well,” said Little Rog quickly. “Don’t it, Pa?”

  “It does, my boy, it does – and that’s expensive work. We’ve priced it up ourselves already and we’re by far the most reasonable quote you’ll get in these parts,” confirmed Big Rog, trying to pull a sad face but not quite managing.

  “So what you’re saying is that we’ve got a church that needs a huge cash injection and a congregation so small that it doesn’t look financially viable,” Danny said slowly.

  “That’s about the size of it.” Jules had come to this depressing conclusion quite a while back and she’d already had many sleepless nights over it. “We could be jumping the gun, of course. The bishop might just want to visit us and check the books. It could be nothing sinister at all.”

  Oh look. There went a pig flying past the vicarage.

  “Do you really believe that?” Alice asked.

  Jules sighed because in her heart she knew that her worst suspicions were very well grounded. “I wish I did, but I’m afraid not, no, because I’ve seen this happen before. Besides, Richard’s right. As things stand we don’t look financially viable. I think Bishop Bill is coming here with a view to closing St Wenn’s.”

  A heavy silence fell.

  “Our family’s worshipped at St Wenn’s for centuries,” said Alice quietly. She turned to Danny. “I married your grandfather here, your parents married here and so did you and Tara. I was hoping Morgan might too one day.”

  “There’s six generations of Pollards in the churchyard,” mused Big Rog.

  “And even more Kevernes,” piped up Sheila, not to be outdone.

  The members of the PCC glanced around at one another anxiously. The fun of the Water Carnival and any haste to return to the festivities were totally forgotten.

  “When’s the bishop due?” Richard asked.

  “The end of the month, or thereabouts,” Jules answered. It was early August now, so they had roughly four weeks until doomsday. She’d probably wear her knees out praying but she didn’t intend to go down without a fight. Jules hadn’t been the vicar of Polwenna Bay for very long but already the village and its people had found their way into her heart. She couldn’t imagine having to leave them or seeing the pretty church that offered so much sanctuary and comfort turned into yet another chichi holiday let.

  “So we need to raise shedloads of money by September,” Danny concluded. “Short of a big win on the lottery, any ideas?”

  There was silence, broken only by the squabbling of the gulls outside.

  “A bring-and-buy sale?” offered Richard eventually. “A few coffee mornings?”

  “Good ideas, Doc, but I don’t think they’re going to bring in huge amounts,” Danny sighed. “It all adds up, I know, but we have to think big. Massive, even. It needs to be something that people really want to do and are prepared to cough up good money for.”

  “How about a charity gala dinner?” suggested his grandmother. “Symon could host it at the Seagull and we could sell tickets. I’m sure we can think of ways to make it exclusive. The St Miltons could probably give us some pointers; their ball always does well.”

  There was a murmur of agreement at this.

  “That could work,�
� said Jules. “Anything else?”

  The Pollards liked the idea of a big party at the pub; they weren’t quite clear how this would raise money, but lots of beer would be involved and they were more than happy to organise it. After this there was another pause before Sheila slammed the table with her hand and, in the style of the bathing Archimedes, cried: “I’ve got it! I know exactly what we can do and it’ll raise loads of money!” She looked around excitedly. Jules didn’t think she’d ever seen her verger look so animated, not even when she was busy bossing the brass-cleaning ladies around. Her cheeks were flushed the same pink as the nodding valerian flourishing on the dry stone walls and her eyes were sparkling just as brightly as the sea below in the bay. “I saw a film all about it once – oh, it was lovely! That Helen Mirren was in it; I like her, don’t you? It was all about the Women’s Institute!”

  “You want to do something with the WI?” Richard was looking confused.

  Danny caught Jules’s eye and grinned. “Like what?” he whispered. “Pimp them out?”

  “Stop it,” scolded Jules. She had absolutely no idea what film it was that her verger was on about, but then again Jules hadn’t been to the cinema for donkeys’ years. To Sheila she said kindly, “Go on. What could we do?”

  “Exactly what they did in the film. They made a calendar and sold loads. Everyone joined in and they made an absolute fortune. Some women posed behind the flowers, some at the piano and some hid among cakes – all in the nude, of course, but very tastefully done!”

  “In the nude?” squeaked Big Rog. His gooseberry-green eyes were practically out on stalks. “What is this film? Fifty Shades of bleddy Grey?”

  “Who cares what it is?” said Little Rog. “It’s a great idea. I’ll second it. Porn to save the church. Bleddy genius. Call the Daily Mail.”

  “It’s not porn! It’s art!” huffed Sheila. “Porn! The very idea!”

  Danny was in tears of laughter. “She means Calendar Girls, the film where some WI ladies posed for a naked calendar to raise money for a cancer charity. It’s pretty tame really and the idea’s been done to death since. The Young Farmers do a calendar most years and my regiment did an army one too.”