I change into clerical attire and say a brief prayer for the day, my first in this ministry, that it should go without mishap. The rain seems to be holding off this morning, so I search out bicycle clips. I can’t afford to fill up my car until the end of the month, and the little fuel I have needs to be kept for emergencies. These are often hospital visits at unsociable hours, where tearstained relatives sometimes tell me, dumbfounded, I don’t understand why he’s calling for you, Vicar. He never mentioned God his whole life long . . .

—

The first name on my list is a Lady Althea Brock, latterly resident of the big house of the village, Upton Hall. The hall has been turned into a girls’ boarding school and Lady Brock has retired to the lodge of that same house. As I have half an hour to spare, I make a circuit of the village, enjoying the peace of the lanes and dismounting to wheel my bicycle along the lowest path of a glorious beech wood, marked Pipehouse Wood on Clive’s map, rising uphill from one side of the road. It is a blessing to be in the rushing quiet of the woodland: the beeches are beautiful, their trunks gray and smooth except for where the roots and limbs meet the trunk. At these places there are fine wrinkles that remind me more of skin than bark.

The air is mild, the soughing of the wind the only sound. I doubt I would hear a car if it passed along the road. I pause and breathe in. The nearest beech is elephantine with age, the roots spreading, bunioned. A grandmotherly tree. Was this the sort of place Yvette had in mind for her ashes? We never talked about it properly. For all I know she could have changed her mind. Preferred to stay close to us in her urn.

I put my hand on the tree trunk. It is cool and damp. Above me I hear the familiar patter of rain on leaves.

Emerging from the shelter of Pipehouse Wood, I bicycle, anorak flapping, along under a great slope of bare downland toward Upton Hall. The rain increases as I approach my destination. In my haste I miss the turn, so I dismount again and make a shortcut through stands of coppiced hazel trees, very old, with thickets of thin, upright branches springing from the base. I’m within sight of the lodge when a small brownish terrier bursts out of the undergrowth. Teeth bared under a wet mustache, it rushes toward me and stops about a foot away, emitting a single, long, quarreling bark.

“Go away,” I say, as many have before me when confronted by small dogs with their hackles raised, and just as uselessly. “Push off, you horrible little animal.”