“I'll have to tell your mum now,” said Caroline, as they were putting the carol books away in the vestry.

Hilary, who wanted nothing to do this, wandered to the back of the church, to the sidemen’s table, and the font where she had been christened eighteen years ago.  Plaques to the war dead loomed over the West Door: three Water Langley brothers killed on one day in 1916; the nineteen year old “dearly beloved son” of Septimus Smith, gen^t of Langley Hall, “lost at sea” around the Cape in 1812.  Next to him was Nath^l Butt, tallow merch^t of this parish, dec^d 1698, whose many virtues included being a “scourge of papery” …….. (What was that noise?)  ……. then the list of vicars of Water Langley, beginning with Wolfstan of Langton in 1181 …….. That noise again, sounded like a stone!  Someone was throwing stones at the church.

Hilary looked around.  Everybody had left, apart from Margaret and Caroline, talking by the organ, illuminated by the bright yellow organ light.  Cautiously, Hilary opened the studded oak door: the Pearce children looked back at her sullenly, in their dirty anoraks and snagged tights, sitting on a curb-stone of Stanley Pullen, former verger, and, incidentally, Constance Newton’s father. They had the pebbles in their hands. 

“Don’t throw stones at the church!” shouted Hilary.  “You’ll break a window.”

“Fuck off!” cried Davina Pierce.

Hilary gasped.  Students used this word all the time, of course, but Davina was only nine.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking fuck!” said Sharon.

“Clear off!” Hilary shouted.  “What are you doing here anyway?”

“Waiting for our mum,” said Davina.

“We’ve as much right to be here as you,” retorted Sharon, raising her hand and throwing another stone.  It bounced angrily off a granite buttress.

“Don’t!” cried Hilary.  “Don’t do that!”

“I'll throw stones if I want, Hilary Bowles,” snarled Sharon, picking up another pebble.

“If any church windows get broken, I'll report you to the police!” Hilary replied, in a shrill voice.

“Bastard!” cried Sharon.

“Bastard!” repeated Davina, copying her sister.

Hilary turned and was about to reopen the church door.  “You are a bastard, aren’t you, Hilary?” said Sharon. 

“Shut up!” she cried, trying to sound authoritative and failing.

“Your mum fucked a vicar, didn’t she?”

She keeled round.  She couldn't help it. 

“Your mum fucked a vicar!” they cried again.  Then they ran off, cackling, into the dark churchyard.

Hilary scuttled back into church.  For several minutes, she stood by the sidesman’s table, clenching and unclenching her fists, shaking, not with cold, even though the automatic timer had long since switched off the church heating.  Her mother and Caroline were still talking, by the organ, in that yellow light, on and on.  Margaret would not let Caroline go easily.

“What’s the matter, love?” asked Margaret, after Caroline had eventually left them.

“Nothing.”

“Is it Caroline wanting to leave the choir?”

“Yes!” agreed Hilary, eagerly.

“Don’t worry about it.  We’ll sort her out!  I've got her to sing for the Christmas services anyway.  Come on!  Granny will be wondering where we are!”

Hilary and Margaret always ate supper with Hilary's grandmother after choir practice.  Mrs Rayner lived within yards of the church, in a little terraced house in Bottom Lane, off Church Square.  She had come to this little house as a bride, when there was no running water and only an outside toilet at the bottom of the garden.  Margaret and her sister, Barbara, had been born here and their father, Albert, had died here, when Margaret, the younger child, had been just three.  Nobody remembered Mrs Rayner’s husband.  Mrs Rayner herself hardly remembered her husband.  In Water Langley, Mrs Rayner was the woman in the village wool shop and, indeed, she had only sold the wool shop a few years ago. 

There was a blazing coal fire in Mrs Rayner’s front room and a small leaved table set cosily for three, but Hilary felt no warmth.  Mrs Rayner brought in a steaming fish pie and, as she always did, served Hilary first, as if she were a small child.  “Hil,” said Margaret, as they started to eat, “I'm sorry I snapped at you, about the Pearces.  It’s just that I’ve had every single choir member saying same thing!”

“The children at the village school aren’t being very nice to Sharon and Davina either,” added Mrs Rayner.  “All the more reason for the choir to make them welcome!”

“We really must,” said Margaret.  “That’s what it’s all about.”

Hilary stared into her plate.  She didn’t feel hungry at all.  Everybody in Water Langley thought Margaret, the organist of St Catherine's, Water Langley, was wonderful: that was what Hilary had always understood.

For several days, Hilary could not get the Pearces out of her mind, and, convincing herself that she had caught a cold, didn’t leave her house, not even to go to church.  Margaret arranged for Andy to come round to the house, to practise his solo with the piano, as she had suggested at choir practice.  For some strange reason, she thought Hilary would want to join them, but the prospect of meeting Andy face-to-face propelled Hilary out the house at last, to go Christmas shopping with Caroline.

 “What’s the matter, Hil?” Caroline asked, after they had ridden on the bus all the way to Chenham almost in silence.

“Got a cold,” said Hilary.  She couldn't share this with anybody, not even Caroline.

Back home again, as she was hanging up her coat on the coat pegs in the hall, Hilary spotted a white envelope - a Christmas card, she supposed - sticking out of the pocket of her other coat.  When she picked it up, she instantly recognised the handwriting on the envelope as Andy's, and it wasn’t a card but a long letter, Andy complaining about the boyfriend of his older sister, Alice.  “The first evening he was here, he asked Dad how much our house was worth,” Andy wrote in disgust, and Hilary wondered about writing back, but didn’t see quite how she could get her letter to the Newton house without anyone knowing.  She saw him at choir practice on Friday, and again in church on Sunday morning, practising his solo, and, afterwards, she supposed she really ought to have wished him luck, or something.  She was preoccupied.  That was the problem, preoccupied with this Pearce thing.

But why was she bothering about what an eleven year old and a ten year old were saying, Hilary wondered suddenly, on Sunday afternoon, during the practice immediately before the Nine Lessons and Carols.  Caroline's parents, Julia and Geoffrey Bryant, were putting up decorations in church and the choir and Margaret were rehearsing with urgency and excitement.  Mrs Phillips was singing the Sans Day Carol descant sharp, Margaret was stopping them and pressing the correct note on the organ - and the choir were hanging on to her every word!

As they traipsed into the village hall for the usual tea and cakes, Hilary relaxed.  The choir didn’t really need tea and cakes, so soon after Sunday lunch; what they really required at the village hall were toilets.  Mrs Dove, of Great Hall, Water Langley’s oldest resident, didn’t think it proper to have toilets in church, and, when John Newton (churchwarden) had broached the subject at the PCC, Mrs Dove had retorted that she couldn't possibly discuss such things with a gentleman.  Back again in the vestry, the choir robed up, all of them, as usual, combing their hair in one small mirror.  “Wish my hair curled under like yours,” Hilary said to Caroline.

“It’s called a page boy style,” said Andy's mother, Constance, also combing.  “Alice wears her hair like it too.  She went to Vidal Sassoon, in London.”

Minutes later, the choir processed into the church, into silence and darkness.  Hilary wriggled in excitement.  Christmas had started, Christmas in Water Langley.  You didn’t appreciate how wonderful Water Langley was until you had been away from it.  In a minute, during “Once in Royal David’s City”, candles would be lit, but not just yet.  Hilary sensed the fullness of the pews, discreet shuffling and the occasional cough, the presence of people who hadn't been in church since Nine Lessons and Carols last year: Hilary's father, Frank, in his usual overcoat, the one he wore to football matches, sitting with Uncle Roy and Auntie Edna; Caroline's two brothers, Richard, now at Sandhurst, his hair very short (“Creepy”! thought Hilary) and Steve, still a student, his hair long (normal!); Andy's sister, Alice, who was an air stewardess and always looked amazing, sitting with her grandparents, no boyfriend with her now.  Hilary looked carefully at her Alice’s sleek dark hair, which indeed curled under like Caroline's.  Was it sinful to think about hair in church, Hilary wondered.

The Nine Lessons and Carols, including Andy's nervous and breathy solo, passed quickly, and soon they were processing out to Margaret playing Bach’s “In Dulci Jubilo”, the jolly hum of congregational chatter, and the clatter of teacups at the back of the church.  The junior choir were tumbling over the chancel in their small cassocks, supposedly collecting up copies, actually heaping them into random piles on the front stall.  Margaret was receiving congratulations from the whole congregation, including Mrs Dove, who, although nearer 90 than 80, always dressed up for church, matching navy blue coat, hat and handbag, navy and red silken scarf.  Mrs Dove would only notice Margaret, whose mother had been “in trade”, on these auspicious occasions, nor would she notice Hilary's father, Frank, hovering in the front pew, whose father had also been “in trade” (cabinet-maker).  As she struggled down the chancel steps, Frank never thought to offer her a supporting arm. 

“Hello, Dad!” called Hilary, wishing he wouldn’t stand there in everybody’s way, that he would make conversation, like normal people.

He leaned over to speak to her, as if what he had to say were private and embarrassing.  “How long’s Mum going to be?”

“I don’t know, Dad!” replied Hilary, speaking loudly deliberately. 

Caroline's mother, Julia, was bustling about, taking down candles and throwing them into cardboard boxes. “Absolutely fantastic as usual, Margaret!” she called, in the direction of the organ.  “Hello, Frank.  Any chance you could give us a hand?”  As he reached up to the nearest candle holder, Hilary heaved a sigh of relief.

Andy's sister, Alice, the air stewardess, glided into the chancel, in a long, grey woollen dress, with gold buttons, and knee-high boots.  (“London clothes!” Hilary's grandmother would say, sniffily.)  “Everything’s just the same!” she said.  “I don’t suppose anyone remembers me being in the choir.”

Hilary remembered very well, Alice, a bossy twelve year old, telling the junior choir what to do and, more particularly, what not to do. 

“Wasn’t Andy marvellous?” cried Constance.

“Yes, Mum,” Alice replied.

Margaret, having finished her organ voluntary at last, swung her legs over the organ stool.  “Of course, he was!” she exclaimed, wrapping her arm around Andy's shoulders.  “You sung that really well!  And you too, Hil,” Margaret added, wrapping her other arm around Hilary.  “I could hear you, in the descant in the Sans Day - not sharp, like certain other people!”

“Lovely service, Margaret, dear,” called Constance.

“Lovely service, lovely evening!” replied Margaret.

Later on, it occurred to Hilary that the Pearce children hadn't been in church that evening.