‘How did she die?’
‘It was very sudden. Her heart, they said. I saw Natalka yesterday. She was sorting out Peggy’s books.’
‘She did love her books. Dear Peggy.’
‘She did. I’ll miss our booky chats. I’ll miss everything about her, really. She was the only good thing about that place.’
Edwin also lives in Seaview Court. It’s pleasant enough and it does, as the name suggests, have a spectacular sea view, but Edwin, who moved from an elegant Regency terrace in Brighton, loathes the place. Peggy had liked it though. ‘Where would you get a view like that?’ she often said. ‘Not the Hamptons, not Amalfi, not even Lake Baikal.’ Peggy often came up with these obscure places. How did she know them? It’s too late to ask her now.
‘When’s her funeral?’ asks Benedict. He’ll go, of course. He’s been going to a few funerals recently. They are usually held on Fridays in his parish church and Benedict goes along if he thinks that, otherwise, there won’t be enough mourners. His friend Francis, Father Francis now, says it’s in danger of becoming his hobby.
‘Natalka didn’t know. I don’t think Peggy had any faith. I hope it won’t be at that horrid crematorium.’ Edwin is a Catholic, another thing he and Benedict have in common.
‘Did Peggy have any family?’
‘One son: Nigel. They weren’t close. Peggy once described him to me as a kulak. I had to look it up. It’s Russian. Means a prosperous peasant, class enemies who sided with the land owners. Typical Peggy.’
Benedict knows about death. I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord. He knows the service from his seminary days, and from his recent bout of funeral-attending. But he thinks that Edwin, at eighty, must know death better than he does. The Grim Reaper is, if not around the corner, then definitely making calls in the area.
‘You were a good friend to Peggy,’ says Benedict.
‘Thank you,’ says Edwin, sounding rather tearful. ‘I hope so. She was certainly a good friend to me. You don’t make new friends at my age.’
‘It’s difficult at any age,’ says Benedict.
Benedict grew up in Arundel, a scenic market town on the River Arun, complete with castle and cathedral. The youngest of three children, he attended a private Catholic school where he was usually known as ‘Hugo’s brother’. The only truly memorable thing that he ever did was to announce, aged eighteen, that he wanted to become a priest. His parents, who were Catholic in the stubborn way some old recusant English families are, sticking to their faith all through the Reformation, never expected any of their children to take it this far. They clearly found it embarrassing and rather self-indulgent, in the same way that you don’t expect your gymnastics-loving daughter to join a circus. ‘I thought only Irish people became priests,’ his mother said once. But the truth is that even the Irish don’t become priests any more. Benedict’s private Catholic school had used to turn out two or three a year but he had been the first for almost a decade. Even his teachers found it embarrassing. And then to become a monk! It wasn’t even as if he was a hard-working parish priest, living in the community and trundling about giving communion to the housebound. ‘What are you going to do all day?’ His mother again. ‘Lock yourself away and chant?’
But Benedict had loved the chanting and he’d loved the monastery too. If he tells people that he used to be a monk – and it’s not something that comes up in conversation that often – he knows that they assume he left because he lost his faith. In fact, his faith is as alive and as terrifying as ever. He left because he fell out of love with God and realised that he wanted ordinary, mortal love. In fact, he wanted to get married. It’s funny, the seminary went on so much about denying the sins of the flesh, of sacrificing the chance of marriage and having children; they gave the impression that, in the Outside World, these joys were just there for the taking. It never occurred to Benedict that he would find himself, after two years, living alone in a bedsit, having not had a date, or even anything approaching one, since he’d left St Bede’s. ‘Go online,’ his sister tells him but it’s not meant to be like that. You’re meant to meet someone while you’re walking by the sea, or taking your books back to the library. A gorgeous woman, perhaps slightly quirky, a bit dishevelled, will turn up at the Shack and they’ll have a cute conversation about vanilla latte and, before long, they’ll be going to art films at the cinema and laughing as they run along the beach in the rain. He doesn’t want to give up his dream of Quirky Girl even though he’s never seen anyone remotely like her in Shoreham. The only young woman he knows is Natalka.
Natalka appears at midday, still wearing her blue overalls, which she manages to make look almost stylish. Benedict knows Natalka quite well, they see each other most days, and he would definitely call her a friend but, at the same time, he doesn’t know much about her. She’s from Ukraine, she went to university in Bournemouth and she works as a carer. He imagines himself saying this to his mother, who often asks if he’s met ‘someone’. His mother would roll her eyes at the ‘carer’; she wants him to meet a lawyer or an accountant, or a primary school teacher, which she would consider a very suitable job for a woman. Benedict doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with being a carer – the monastery had been all about the corporeal acts of mercy, after all – but he does think it’s a strange career choice for Natalka. Lots of carers choose the work because the hours are supposedly flexible and because they have young children or elderly parents to look after but, as far as he knows, Natalka has no family ties. ‘With her looks,’ Edwin had said once, ‘she could be an actress or a model.’ Benedict had thought this depressingly sexist but, deep down, he had agreed.
‘Coffee?’ he says now.
‘Cappuccino please. With an extra shot.’
‘I remember.’
Benedict takes even more care than usual with Natalka’s coffee and, on sudden impulse, decorates it with a heart.
Natalka drinks the coffee without noticing the decoration. ‘Did you hear about Peggy?’ she says.
‘Yes. Edwin told me this morning. He’s very upset.’
‘Poor Edwin. I think she was his only real friend. We’ll have to look after him.’
There are no other customers so Benedict joins Natalka at the picnic table. ‘We will look after Edwin,’ he says. ‘I’ll invite him to go to church with me.’
‘Steady on,’ says Natalka. ‘Don’t go mad.’ Steady on. Her English is really very good, even when she’s using it to mock him.
‘You know,’ says Natalka, ‘I was the one who found Peggy.’
‘I didn’t know. That must have been awful for you.’