Lamplight in the Shadows Read online

  Lamplight in the Shadows

  Robert Jaggs-Fowler

  Copyright © 2015 Robert Jaggs-Fowler

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

  or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

  any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

  publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

  the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries

  concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to

  real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  For Linda

  Under whose feet I spread my dreams

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Robert Jaggs-Fowler

  W.B. Yeats

  Principal Characters

  Prologue

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Part Two

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  Part Three

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  Part Four

  33

  34

  35

  Epilogue

  Also by Robert Jaggs-Fowler

  Poetry

  A Journey with Time

  Non-fiction

  The Law and Medicine: Friend or Nemesis?

  W.B. Yeats

  HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

  Enwrought with golden and silver light,

  The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

  Of night and light and the half light,

  I would spread the cloths under your feet:

  But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

  I have spread my dreams under your feet;

  Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

  W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)

  ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’

  Principal Characters

  Dr James Armstrong, GP and potential ordinand

  Janice Armstrong, wife of James

  Jules Armstrong, brother of James

  Jim Armstrong, father of James and Jules

  Connie Armstrong, mother of James and Jules

  The Venerable Paul Swinburn, Archdeacon of the East Riding of Yorkshire

  The Reverend Michael Ewing, Vicar of St Peter’s Parish Church, Barminster, E. Yorks

  Dr Ian McGarva, GP and senior partner, Bishopsworth Medical Practice

  Mary McGarva, wife of Ian

  Dr Charles Hawkins, GP and partner, Bishopsworth Medical Practice

  Susan Hawkins, wife of Charles

  Dr Richard Carey, GP and partner, Bishopsworth Medical Practice

  Belinda Marsh, girlfriend to Dr Richard Carey

  Dr Thomas Slater, GP and partner, Bishopsworth Medical Practice

  Anna Baldwin, practice receptionist

  Simon Baldwin, husband of Anna

  Norman Thornhill, farmer and a patient

  The Reverend Jeremy Pinchbeck, Priest-in-Charge, Helliton

  Mark Allerton, farmer and choir master

  The Reverend Dr George Morgan, Director of Ordinands, Diocese of York and Canon Prebendary at York Minster

  The Reverend Luke Palfreyman, Warden of Norton Abbey

  Paul Jenkins, gardener and caretaker, Norton Abbey

  Andrew Walker, law student and potential ordinand

  Fr Dominic Caruana, Roman Catholic Priest

  Prologue

  The silence was tangible as he peered through the narrow windscreen and shivered with the coolness of the February early morning air. He could have kept the engine running for warmth, but was afraid that even though he was in a narrow country lane high up on the outskirts of the town, the throaty noise of the sports car’s engine might attract attention in the quietness of those few hours before most townsfolk started their journeys to work. Even as it was, he was courting discovery by one of the occasional dog-walkers who ventured that way, knowing that his was the only car of this particular model within twenty miles. If seen in such a strange location at that time of the morning, the local gossip routes would soon transmit news of his whereabouts faster than one could possibly imagine.

  And then what? He tried not to think about the repercussions and concentrated by focusing on a point about a quarter of a mile away. He could just see its outline through the grey, swirling mist that so often enveloped this part of Lincolnshire. This morning it was intent on playing tricks with his eyes and he tried to stare without blinking, desperate not to miss the signal that he, equally desperately, was praying would be given.

  As he waited, he mused on the events of the past two months. How had it happened? How had his entire world been turned upside down? His every sense of right and wrong, of morals and religious duty, so deftly swept aside to leave his mind in a tumult of emotions; where anguish, guilt, ecstasy and a profound sense of having just made the most important discovery of his life were all mixed together like some sort of mental potpourri, leaving him struggling to bring it to logical and coherent order in the way he organised everything else in his life… or had done until now.

  He turned on the radio, momentarily thanking the previous owner for bypassing the ignition switch, and flicked through the pre-tuned buttons offering a choice of Classic FM, BBC Radio 3 and 4. At times like this, it was classical music in which his tortured mind took refuge. Plucking a tissue from the glove compartment, he wiped a hole in the misted screen, turned up the volume of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A and resumed peering across the field in front of him.

  * * *

  A quarter of a mile away, a young woman stood at the door of her newly built, detached house, watching the rear lights of her husband’s car as it turned the bend and disappeared from sight, glad that she was free of his haranguing and questioning for the next ten hours. For a moment more she remained at the door surveying the building site with all its future promise of an attractive middle-class development on the rural edge of the town, but which at present, apart from her house, had only one other.

  The house had once represented everything she thought she wanted: the outward sign of progress up the social ladder. It was financed to a significant extent by the lower mortgage rate allowed to her husband as a junior manager in a high-street bank, but furnished largely through her own en
deavours as a receptionist in the local medical practice. Now, however, it had come to represent everything she hated. Why had she ever agreed to marry him in the first place? The jokes about bank managers being far from dynamic were certainly true in his case… so tedious, so lacking in humour, so lacking in aspiration, so lacking in bed…

  She didn’t know whether it was the latter thought or the damp morning mist that caused her to shiver, returning her thoughts to the present. How long had he been gone? She glanced at her watch. Surely, he would be on the dual carriageway by now and therefore unlikely to return home until that evening. That aspect of him she did at times appreciate: his boring, but ever-so-helpful predictability! Her eyes roamed across the ploughed field opposite her house, following the contours uphill until she reached the hedge on the far side; even now, it was only faintly visible through the mist.

  Another tremor ran through her, but this time one of expectation, not revulsion. Somewhere up there, out of sight in the mist, was salvation. Reaching inside the door, she switched on the outside light and stepped back inside the house.

  * * *

  For one moment, he thought that the mist was again playing tricks. He pressed his nose to the windscreen, his eyes narrowing as he tried to pierce through the half-light. He counted the lamp posts again. No, he had been right; there was now an extra light right where the shadowy outline of the house was; a house that had been the object of his intent gaze for the past half an hour; a light that signalled, like a beacon through the mist, the welcoming message that he was safe to approach.

  He turned the ignition key and the engine came to life with a throaty eagerness matching that of its owner. Reversing from the field gateway, he gently eased into first gear and started the hill-descent into town. Moments later, he parked on the gravel of the new drive. Pausing only to lock the car door, he strode purposefully towards the house, pushed open the front door, entered and closed it quietly behind him before switching off the now redundant external light. Her clear blue eyes met his with a gaze of warmth and seductiveness as, without a word, his eager lips found the rounded, welcoming softness of her own.

  Part One

  1990

  I have called you by name; you are mine.

  Isaiah 43:1

  1

  Barminster, East Yorkshire

  January

  ‘Dr James Armstrong, Your Grace.’

  As the housekeeper announced James’ arrival, the Archdeacon raised his eyes from the crossword of the Daily Telegraph and rose from his armchair to greet him. ‘Good afternoon, Dr Armstrong,’ he intoned in a mellow voice, extending a long, bony hand to James.

  ‘James,’ he responded, firmly shaking the proffered hand as the Archdeacon nodded. Taking one of the comfortable armchairs gestured to by his host, James took a moment to study the room. It was obviously a study, with books of varying ages crammed onto floor-to-ceiling shelves that lined two-thirds of the walls. An old oak desk, strewn with paper, stood in front of a patio window, beyond which he could see part of a tree-lined lawn demarcated by a herbaceous border. More books sat piled on the floor next to another of the several armchairs, whilst a copy of the Church Times had been placed, neatly folded, on an occasional table to the right of the Archdeacon’s chair. A pipe lay to one side, a slight spill of ash, a leather tobacco pouch and a gold lighter indicating that it was still in use. On the mantle-shelf, a small, black, leather-bound bible had been placed beneath a wall-mounted crucifix and – finishing the scene rather splendidly, thought James – an old, golden Labrador languished on the fireside rug, its soft, brown eyes surveying him with half-hearted interest over a greying muzzle, whilst its tail gave the only sign of welcome in the form of a slow, twitching movement.

  A gentle knock on the door as the housekeeper entered with a tea tray focused his mind back on the Venerable Paul Swinburn, Archdeacon of the East Riding of Yorkshire. A tall, slim man with silvery-grey hair, he was dressed semi-officially, his clerical collar partially hidden by a baggy tweed cardigan. James tried to hazard a guess at his age, but decided he could be anywhere between a prematurely ageing fifty-something to a well-preserved seventy. He had a timelessness about him that matched that of his study. Perhaps the effect of ordination, mused James to himself.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, accepting the china cup of tea offered to him by the Archdeacon.

  ‘So, James, Michael told me a little about you when he rang last week. Perhaps you would like to fill in the details?’ With that, the Archdeacon sat back in his chair and sipped his tea.

  The problem, James thought, as he returned the Archdeacon’s thoughtful gaze, is quite where to begin. Should he start with the conversation he had two weeks ago with the Reverend Michael Ewing, vicar of St Peter’s Parish Church in Barminster; or begin to explain how he had, many years ago, been a chorister in his old parish church in Kent and subsequently at one of the Chapels Royal in London, where his religious convictions had first been developed to the depth they now were; or should he broach on his recent, but growing, sense of general unrest with his life?

  ‘Michael was most helpful,’ he said, noticing the Archdeacon’s cue and deciding to encapsulate his present thoughts rather than analyse their background. ‘Perhaps I should relate my conversation with him? I think that will summarise matters rather well.’ A gentle nodding from the Archdeacon encouraged him to continue. ‘Michael has been a great source of inspiration to me over the past few years. I first met him in 1987 shortly after I moved to Barminster and started to attend the services at St Peter’s. In my opinion, he is the type of priest who represents what the Church of England should be about. He manages to portray piety with dignity, yet at the same time is able to converse freely with his parishioners about mundane secular matters. I also like the fact that he still uses the Book of Common Prayer for some services.’

  As James paused for a sip of tea, the Archdeacon reached for his pipe and slowly refilled the bowl from the tobacco pouch. He had murmured appreciatively at James’ last remark, as though he, too, regretted the present, somewhat superficial, direction the modern Church of England was taking.

  ‘I qualified in medicine in 1985 and have spent the past four years or so completing the post-graduate work required to enter General Practice,’ continued James. ‘Officially I can become a principal as from the end of this month, although I have yet to find a practice in an area I wish to live.’

  ‘Where would that be?’ asked the Archdeacon.

  ‘Ideally a market town in North Yorkshire.’

  ‘So what will you do at the end of January?’

  ‘I have the offer of some locum work in a practice in Bishopsworth in Lincolnshire, although I am not too certain for how long that will last. Fortunately, I shall still be able to live in Barminster and travel each day.’

  James was aware that he had been talking for some time and had yet to speak of the very matter for which he was there. He decided to stop perambulating around the subject and dive straight in.

  ‘The problem is that for some time now I have had a growing sense that medicine is not the whole answer. I have always wanted to be a doctor; my father says I wanted to be a GP when I was eight years old. However, now that I have arrived, I am not convinced that I have achieved the final hurdle to make me satisfied with what I can offer. I still feel somewhat incomplete.’ He paused and glanced anxiously towards the Archdeacon. ‘I hope I am making some sense?’

  The Archdeacon, with the stem of his pipe firmly clamped between his teeth, could only nod through a haze of aromatic smoke.

  ‘This is where my conversation with Michael really began,’ continued James. ‘As time has gone on I have had the growing realisation that I would like to be a priest. At first, I ignored the idea as it would have meant a major diversion in life and I would have felt that I had wasted the past ten years since I first started studying medicine. However, I then came across the concept of non-stipendiary ministry. There is such a priest at St Peter’s… as you w
ill, of course, be aware.’

  The Archdeacon again gently nodded. At the time of his original conversation with the Reverend Ewing, James knew nothing of NSMs, as non-stipendiary ministers were known. He had been interested to learn that they were men who studied for the ministry, often on a part-time basis, and, once ordained, pursued their ministry through their place of work or within other areas of the community. They were not necessarily tied into a particular parish and did not receive a stipend from the Church or elsewhere for their ministry. Indeed, the work of NSMs had at sometime been described in the style of an advertisement for a famous alcoholic drink: ‘They minister where other ministries cannot reach!’