‘We do not know by scientific proof,’ Mrs Wakeman conceded.

Which was unorthodox in a clergyman’s wife.

Miss Docker had knitted Mr Wakeman a balaclava, heather mixture, to wear between the rectory and the vestry when the frosts set in. She herself, in anticipation, could feel it grating on his square, cleft chin.

‘You know the trick of wearing it?’ she asked.

‘Oh I know! I know, Miss Docker!’ the rector said, and laughed.

Men were all boys really, silly at times. It took a woman’s subtlety to direct their otherwise innocent lives.

So Miss Docker laughed a certain laugh, and ran the push-mower at the grass.

Mrs Wakeman left off peeling rhubarb. She looked out and saw the balaclava Miss Docker had knitted. If the rector’s wife experienced a twinge, it was because her calling required her to outgive. An upright young woman of earnest calves, who gave away her winter underwear, and went clothed in cotton and her faith, she sometimes wondered if Miss Docker might not be her rival, even though an amateur.

Miss Docker was laughing like a girl.

‘If you really insist on cutting the grass,’ the rector said as usual, ‘I shall go inside and compose my sermon.’

Then Miss Docker did something awful, she could not resist. She was pushing the push-mower all the while, clatter and slash, as if to reduce an enormity. Not that truth must ever be reduced. Her misfortune, she knew, was that always, always, she had to introduce the naked truth.

‘I can only be frank,’ Miss Docker admitted. The trouble with you,’ she said, ‘Mr Wakeman, and a serious one in a clergyman’ – all the time clatter and slash – ‘you cannot seem to learn to preach.’

The rector was too large to stun. But he stood there holding his buttocks, his jaws working on unformed words, or suspicion confirmed.

‘Somehow you do not give yourself to it,’ Miss Docker pursued, crunching with her foot.

Then Mr Wakeman turned very dark for a blond man. He said:

‘I cannot argue with you, Miss Docker, on that point Naturally you must be the best judge.’

‘I see that I have touched you on a raw nerve, and am sorry for it,’ Miss Docker replied.

She had run the mower all along the border. The rector followed out of sense of duty.

‘On the contrary,’ he said. ‘I’am open to criticism. In every way. Otherwise, I should scarcely be fit to serve Our Lord.’

‘But inspiration,’ Miss Docker insisted, ‘where is inspiration?’

‘I cannot answer that,’ said the rector.

Such a strong fellow, too. Deep in the chest.

‘A clergyman should have the answers.’ Miss Docker crashed the mower on a stone. ‘Even if he makes them up,’ she only just avoided adding.

Mr Wakeman was gaping wide, smiling whitely.

Then Miss Docker saw, and was oh so cruelly cut. She could have burst into tears. Above the new-mown grass, she smelled the smell of shaving soap. She saw his hands offering the chalice. She loved even his finger-joints.