Stuart Pawson - The Mushroom Man

Father Tudor Harcourt had a problem. At such times he found it a great comfort to have a silent, somewhat one-sided conversation with God.

Occasionally, the Almighty showed him the answer. He was not an impatient man: had he known that he was pencilled in for a personal audience in the next fifteen minutes he would have waited.

He'd reached the part of the lane where the county council had regravelled the road. Why on earth did they waste the taxpayers' money every year resurfacing perfectly acceptable country lanes, used only by agricultural vehicles and elderly clerics on equally elderly bicycles?

The three-speed Raleigh didn't roll as freely on the new surface, so he had to pedal more. Then there was the increased risk of a puncture. He winced as loose chippings, picked up by the tyres, rattled under the mudguards. The gravel was deepest along the edges of the road, so he steered into the middle, where the small amount of traffic had worn a smoother passage.

The problem, for which he needed the guidance of the Almighty, involved Father Harcourt's imminent retirement and his friendship with Miss Felicity Jonas. Miss Jonas, a petite and charming member of his flock, 'did' for him three days a week. She cleaned his house, washed and darned his socks and ironed his vestments. She also kept his diary up to date, arranged his appointments and filed his sermons.

Sometimes he would discuss a sermon with her, if he felt he had to use his position to comment on a particularly pressing social issue, and he found she had a down-to-earth wisdom that sometimes pulled him back from taking a too holier-than-thou standpoint. She gave him much more than all this, though. She was, he believed, his friend. His best friend, his only friend. The only proper female friend he had ever known. And she gave him a constant, aching reminder of the only woman the only other woman he had ever loved.

Fifty years ago it had been a long, hot summer. Young Harcourt was kicking his heels before going to theological college. He would be the third generation of Harcourts to take the cloth via a line of uncles, of course. A Harcourt had been tortured and executed after the Popish Plot three hundred years earlier; he was the last of a long, proud line. Never had he held a moment's doubt about his vocation, his calling, until he met Mary Hemsby, and now, fifty years later, those same doubts were creeping back.

Mary had been sixteen. She took him on long walks on summer afternoons, in those optimistic days after the war, through the wheat fields that loaned their golden colour to her hair and long, bare limbs. She showed him secret places, and promised pleasures that caused him to lie, sweating and sleepless, through the sultry, tormented nights. He was saved from making the hardest decision of his young life when her parents sent her away. They, he believed, apparently not realising he was a Roman Catholic, had not wanted her to marry a clergyman. He often wondered if she had found happiness.

The truth was more prosaic. Mr. and Mrs. Hemsby sent their daughter to a relative in Wales in something of a hurry because it was becoming increasingly obvious that she was pregnant. The butcher's boy had banged her up one wet April afternoon, delivering rather more than the half of stewing meat and some polo ny that his basket held. She'd had a lasting, but not happy, marriage, and now lived less than fifteen miles away.

Father Harcourt puffed with the exertion of pedalling. He could see the black and white chevrons of the barrier marking the bend in the road, a quarter of a mile ahead, where it reached Peddars Dyke and turned abruptly right to run alongside it. Not far beyond that bend was Miss Jonas's cottage and afternoon tea. What was he going to say to her? When he retired he would have to leave his home. A place had been reserved for him at St. Jude's Retreat, near Walsingham, and very nice it was too, but it was not what he wanted. What he wanted was to move into Rose Cottage with Miss Jonas. Ideally, he would like to marry her. That would offset one scandal, but would it create another, within the Church? At the very least he'd need a dispensation from the Pope, which could take years. God wasn't coming up with any answers.

OK, he'd accept the wagging tongues and the moving curtains when he walked through the village: Just let me find the right words, and may Felicity's response be favourable.

He'd reached the bend. Oh dear! A car was coming the other way, its roof visible above the hedge from his vantage point on the upright Raleigh. He pulled over towards the side of the road, where the loose gravel had been swept into a swathe, like a sandbank round the outside of a bend in a river. The stones rattled staccato under his mudguards, as loud as hailstones on a greenhouse roof, and the bicycle wobbled alarmingly.

Reg Davison was having a good day, a bloody brilliant day. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in time with Radio Fenland's current chart-topper and mused on the vagaries of his fortunes. The only cloud was the fact that he was way over the alcohol limit for driving and still twenty miles from home. That was why he was on this back road instead of racing along the A47.

"Take the old Roman Road," Edgar Johnstone had advised him. "No fear of being pulled over by the traffic police along there." It was advice Reg had taken gladly. His licence already displayed ten penalty points, picked up for speeding of fences a drink-driving rap would be the end of everything he'd worked for.

It wasn't going to happen, though. He was on a winning streak. He listened to the gravel chipping off the paint under the car and luxuriated in the comfortable feeling that a company vehicle generated.

No large garage bills for him. Next week he'd suggest to the boss that they trade in this old tub. The new, twenty-four-valve model looked good, and, by Christ, he'd earned it.

The winning streak had started the day before. Reg chuckled at the thought of it. He'd never know how he'd managed to keep his face straight when old man Wimbles had taken him to one side and given him the news that Julian wasn't coming home, but was marrying and settling in America. For fifteen years Reg had struggled, virtually single-handedly, to build up Wimbles Agri Supplies. Being sales manager was all right, but he'd been promised a directorship. Then, one fine day, young Julian Wimbles had breezed in, fresh from university, and demanded his birthright. Reg was back on the road; a thousand miles a week, in rain, fog or snow.

The old man had sent Julian to the States to study methods and gain some experience. Well, he'd done just that. Reg's body jerked up and down in time with the music. Rarely had such a mundane tune been so joyfully received. Julian had fallen in love with a rancher's daughter in Utah. He'd converted to Mormonism and was going to marry her. They were building a house on Daddy's land.

"Oh, you must be very disappointed that he won't be taking over here,"

Reg had said sympathetically when Mr. Wimbles told him, but in the privacy of his own office he had danced a jig round the desk, before collapsing with paroxysms of glee into his executive chair.

That was yesterday. That was only for starters. Today he'd entertained Edgar Johnstone and the committee of the North Anglia Farmers Cooperative for lunch and obtained their signatures on a three-year feed contract. Eighteen months of hard slog had come to fruition with the biggest order Wimbles Agri had ever taken. And there could be more. Next year the seed contract was up for grabs, and Reg had made some good contacts, shaken some interesting hands.

He belched and farted at the same time. For a horrible moment he thought he'd messed his pants. Too much success was bad for the digestion. Duck a l'orange, accompanied by a gin and tonic, two pints of bitter, nearly a bottle of Beaujolais and two brandies wasn't good for it either. That thought tickled Reg, and he threw back his head and laughed.