Judgment Day Read Online Free

Council, gathered round the vicarage dining-room table, had read and digested the Diocesan Architect's report. They were in the process, now, of taking in the full implications of the estimate presented by the firm of church restoration experts recommended by the Diocesan Architect. George Radwell, bemused, had wondered at first if the figures were a bit wild; could all those naughts be correct? Even Sydney Porter, despite his profession, had been taken aback. But Jim Squires, brother to Squires the builder, had said yes, they could be, it's the scaffolding, see, the labor, and all that lead, and the guttering, and this rot in the vestry, and the pinning above the porch. It's not tuppence, nowadays, all that. Miss Bellingham had sighed and tutted and said everything was so dear, only last week she'd had a bill for fifty-seven pounds from the garage. Fifty-seven pounds, I ask you!
    The church, seen through the vicarage window, looked solid enough, hunched there in the dusk, though dwarfed, admittedly, by the wall of the car park and the two-story block of luxury flats behind the Amoco garage. Smaller, perhaps than once it had been—or seemed to be—but enduringenough, surely? This catalog of ills was somehow indecent, this chronicle of decay and disease and infirmity, as though some reticent old lady had foisted on you chapter and verse of her medical history. The Parochial Council, in flight from the problems that lay on the table before them, this dizzying sheaf of figures and prognostications, gazed out of the window and confronted the situation each according to his or her own lights.
    Miss Bellingham thought new altar cloths would be an idea while they were about it, and the floor polisher was on its last legs.
    Sydney Porter wondered if you could perhaps get the total down a bit by bringing in a local firm, at least for the more straightforward work, Jim Squires—his brother in mind—nodded sagely.
    Mrs. Harrison said briskly that of course the Mothers' Union would have a Jumble Sale, several if necessary. And the fete proceeds could be diverted from the Christian Aid Fund.
    George thought about fifty thousand pounds. The figure printed itself on the window, with curlicues and loops and squiggles like the majestic script on old five-pound notes, the big white ones. Through the phantom script he saw the black of the road, shiny in rain, the fresh green of the willow in the Coggans' garden, the golden fabric of St. Peter and St. Paul, crouched there in reduced circumstances. He saw Mr. Paling's car go by, slowing down to turn into his garage. The sight of this brought Mrs. Paling to mind: she floated into the center panel of the window and hung there like, and yet most unlike, the Virgin in the north window of the church. She hungthere, grinning, and then, most deliberately, removed her blouse.
    “…some sort of anniversary celebration,” said Miss Bellingham. And then, more sharply, “What do you think, Vicar?” The Parochial Council sat in expectation, looking at George, while George stared at the window in which Mrs. Paling, grinning still, had begun to dissolve until there was nothing to be seen but her teeth, like the Cheshire Cat. “Quite,” he said, “I was just about to suggest it myself, I'm entirely with you.”
    *  *  *
    “Are you joking?” said Clare Paling. She looked at her husband across the kitchen table, over the remains of pigeon casserole and a not-bad bottle of plonk from the supermarket. “No, you're not, I see. What do you propose? Shall I run for presidency of the Women's Institute?”
    Peter Paling, at thirty-five, had a receding hairline. It had begun its recession in his late twenties and had been the subject of a running joke between Clare and Peter, to do with those uncertain fellows in London tube advertisements, restored to confidence and potency by a nifty grafting job. Peter, lacking neither, would live with his increasing scalp exposure and indeed subtly turn it to his