Andy Newton picked up his post on his return from the isolation unit at St Luke's Hospital: three letters from his mother and another in handwriting he didn’t recognise.  He had a cold.  He had always thought he had a cold, but who was he, a medical student in his first term, to contradict a professor in tropical medicine?  Wishing that his mother, Constance, wouldn’t get into such a state, he opened the envelope he didn’t recognise first and, curiously, scanned through the four pages for the signature.  He stopped in his tracks and flushed bright red.  He had been secretly in love with Hilary Bowles for years.

Hilary Bowles and Andy Newton didn’t know each other particularly well, even though, until a few months ago, they had seen each other almost every day of their lives.  They had been born on the same day, 4 August 1955, in the same class at Water Langley Village School, but the boys, in their grey flannel shorts, had played football, and the girls, in their flowery, gathered dresses, had skipped.  The boys had never spoken to the girls and vice versa. 

At eleven, she had gone to the Queens Grammar School, Chenham (girls only), and he to the Chenham Royal Grammar (boys only).  They, with Caroline, and the other grammar school pupils, had caught the bus to Chenham from the bus stop outside the church, while, in different uniforms, and on the opposite side of the road, waiting for the bus to Langton, the rest of the Village School class, now pupils at Langton Secondary School, had shouted at them, “Snobs! Snobs! Snobs!”  But Hilary had talked exclusively to Caroline and the other girls.  Andy and his brother, Robert, were also members of her mother’s choir at St Catherine's, Water Langley, but she hadn't spoken to him in the vestry either.  He was an awkward youth, blushed bright red when you spoke to him.  Now she had written to him about things which she wouldn’t even admit to Caroline, just because she had been really fed up that evening. 

Two days later, walking into Crofton Hall on the way back from lectures, Hilary also discovered in the letter-rack an envelope addressed to her in handwriting she didn’t recognise.  “I know what you mean about university,” Andy Newton wrote.  “Everybody says it’s going to be great but it isn't really.  All I seem to do is work in the library.  St Luke's is all male, by the way, so I haven't got a girlfriend either.”  Hilary drew in her breath.  What exactly had she written to him?  She couldn't remember.  “Do you like Genesis,” he went on.  “Or The Doors?  I can send you a tape if you want.  Do write back soon.”  So she did and so did he, for the remaining weeks of term.

Back in Essex for Christmas, Water Langley had never seemed so warm and welcoming, even though the weather was cold and damp.  Holly wreaths hung on every door, Christmas lights in the big fir trees in the churchyard, and, the first evening she was home, Hilary and her mother decorated their own Christmas tree, using all the decorations they had always used, since Hilary could remember.  Everything was the same.  Caroline turned up at Hilary's house early the following morning, shortly after Hilary's father had left for work, and before Hilary was even dressed.  Hilary pulled on the rest of her clothes hastily and pulled a brush perfunctorily through her hair, which seemed to flop everywhere and, when she eventually arrived downstairs, she found her friend, very comfortably, ensconced in the kitchen with Hilary's mother, Margaret, who was making more tea.  This was Water Langley and everybody drank tea all the time.

Caroline’s fair, shoulder-length hair gleamed and shone, her ends curling under neatly.  Even in an old pair of corduroys and an Arun jumper which Hilary remembered from at least two years ago, she looked polished, poised and confident.  “Hil!” cried Caroline excitedly.  “How are you?  You said you’d come up and see me in London, but you never did!”

Hilary's weekends away from Rushloe had been necessarily spent in Water Langley, quenching her homesickness.

“I’ve had Anne from school on the phone and we’re all thinking of going out, possibly tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s Friday and Friday’s choir practice!” cut in Margaret, the church organist, as she brought the teapot over to the kitchen table.

“Oh,” Caroline replied, flashing her warm smile at Margaret, “so it is!” 

“Yes and only two practices before Christmas!” said Margaret, still holding the teapot in mid-air.  “The teapot stand, Hilary, love.”

Caroline found the teapot stand, which Margaret had left by the sink, and set it down on the kitchen table.  “Are you joining us, Margaret?” Caroline asked, politely, picking up cups from the washing up rack.

“I’ve got to tidy up upstairs.  I'll take mine with me,” Margaret replied, getting milk from the fridge.  “How is LSE, Caroline?  Most students go to LSE to sit at the feet of Marxists, but your mother tells me that you, on the other hand, joined the LSE Conservative Group in your first week.”

Caroline grinned, as she swept her fair hair back from her face.  “What’s wrong with that?”

Margaret nodded.  “I suppose not.  How many students are there in the, er, LSE Conservative Group?”

“Well,” said Caroline, “more than you’d think.” 

“But are you enjoying LSE?”

“Oh yes!” Caroline answered emphatically.

“What’s your course like?” Hilary asked.  Last year Caroline had vacillated between economics, politics and history.

“OK,” Caroline replied, a little less enthusiastically.  “I've got two essays to write over Christmas.”

“Have you got any essays to do, Hil?” asked Margaret. 

Hilary shook her head.  All her work was bang up to date, as the work of students who were not enjoying a heady university social life tended to be.

“Connie says that Andy had exams last week.  She says he’s been working really hard all term, hasn’t been home even once.”

It was on the tip of Hilary's tongue to say that she knew all about Andy’s exams, because he had written about them in his letters, but she didn’t.

“Do you bump into Andy in London, Caroline?”  In Water Langley (population about 1000), people “bumped into” each other all the time and Margaret had lived in Water Langley all her life.

“No.  He’s at St Luke's, and that’s up Euston, Bloomsbury, way.  LSE’s in Holborn.”

Margaret waved her hand airily, as she picked up a duster.  “I'm no good at London districts.”

“Tell me about Piers,” said Hilary, as Margaret’s footsteps retreated.

“I've chucked him,” said Caroline.  “All he talked about was football.”

“Like my dad!  Football, and sport, that’s all he ever talks about!  When he starts, Mum just rolls her eyes,” said Hilary, talking too quickly and giggling, enormously relieved that Caroline was single again.

“It would have suited everybody, though, wouldn’t it,” said Caroline, stretching her legs under the kitchen table, “if Caroline Bryant, daughter of Geoffrey Bryant, chairman of the local Conservative Association, had become a Marxist?  Water Langley mothers are so competitive!”

“Not our mothers,” Hilary replied, loyally.

“Oh no!  They’re the worst of the lot!” Caroline retorted. “But now I am going really to shock you, do something worse than becoming a Marxist.”  Caroline drew in her breath.  “I'm going to have to leave the choir.”

“Oh no!” Hilary cried.  “You can't do that!”

“I've got these two essays to write over Christmas.  Actually, I'm getting a bit behind.”

Nobody had ever suggested to Hilary that she might leave the church choir.  In fact, nobody had ever asked Hilary if had ever wanted to join the choir in the first place.  As organist’s daughter, she had always been there.  Choir practice always took place on Friday evenings, 6.30-8.00pm, and her mother would be there to lead it.  From an early age, Hilary had been taken to church every Friday evening, given a colouring book and told, very firmly, that she wasn’t to bother Mummy, and she wasn’t to crayon on the choir stalls.  She had tried once but Lakeland coloured pencils didn’t make much mark on Anglican oak.  “Ernest Wilson 1923” had marked his name for posterity on the wooden lintel by the chancel steps, but Ernest had used a penknife.  Bit by bit, Hilary had taken part in the singing. 

Hilary's mother had started playing for services at the age of thirteen, and been appointed organist at sixteen, during the war, after the previous organist had died suddenly, at the console, during Matins.  Margaret had played for Evensong the following evening, and was still here.  Yet, even after all these years, Margaret approached each service with great enthusiasm and each major festival with enormous excitement.  On Friday evenings, from five o’clock onwards, she would bash out hymns and anthems on the piano at home, and chatter about what they would be rehearsing.  Although she did drive and possessed an old Triumph Herald, Margaret didn’t really approve of cars, especially around the village, so, as usual, the following evening, a cold, dark, dank, slightly foggy, December evening, she and Hilary set off for choir practice on foot.  They were joined by another choir member, Mrs Metcalfe, who lived a few doors away, and they were chatting about what Hilary dubbed “Water Langley things”, when Margaret stopped suddenly. 

“Hil,” she said urgently, “I think we’ll do “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” for the Nine Lessons and Carols.  Could you go back and get it for me?  We haven't done it for ten years.  It’s time we did it again.”

“Where is it, Mum?”

“In the piano stool, I think.”

Hilary walked back home, where her father, Frank, who had returned from work just before they set off, was now cooking a fry-up in the kitchen and reading the back page of the paper at the same time, the house already filling with smells of bacon and sausage and the sound of his radio.  In just a few minutes, the ambience of the house had changed.  Hilary went into the dining room, raised the piano stool lid and, after a few seconds rummaging about amongst piano music, found a full set of copies for “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree”, slightly brittle and yellowing with age, and clearly stamped “St Catherine's, Water Langley – Do not remove” in fading purple ink.  Church and home were all the same to Margaret. 

Hilary was replacing the piano music back into the piano stool when an old, black and white postcard fell out on to the floor.  Curiously, she picked it up.  The legend on the picture on the front read, “Lough Neagh”, and, on the back, it was addressed, in bright blue ink, in a spidery hand, to Miss M Rayner.  “My darling Margaret ……….” it began in the left hand pane and it was signed “Loving you and missing you, Bill.”

The sound of bacon sizzling was suddenly louder as Frank opened the kitchen door.  “What are you doing, Hilary?” he asked.

“Getting some copies for Mum,” said Hilary, stuffing the rest of the piano music into the piano stool closing the lid.  The postcard fell on to the floor again. 

Frank bent down to pick it up.  “Bill Macready,” he said, glancing at it casually.  “He used to be curate here, many years ago.  He was sweet on your mother.  Every boy in Water Langley was sweet on Margaret Rayner.”

When Hilary thought about her parents’ courtship (which she didn’t very often), she imagined fresh-faced, short-haired, young men in tweed jackets and ties, behaving decorously to young girls in flowing New Look dresses.  She stuffed the postcard back into the piano stool.

“But she married me,” added Frank, grinning sheepishly.  He craned his head towards the kitchen.  “I'd better look at my bacon.”