Robin's Way 01

[I thought I might step outside my comfort zone here in a number of ways. I hope my regulars will enjoy it. It is a slow build and if it is fast sex you are looking for, this is not the place. PP]

Robin? What sort of name is that for a girl?"

"It's my name," I replied, somewhat irritated by his tone of voice. He wasn't to know I'd had that reaction over and over again from the moment I went to school. My tutor at College had been taken aback when "Robin" turned out to be a red-headed woman with attitude and legs rather too long for the skirt I was wearing (as a male friend kindly put it), and that was pretty much standard all the way through to theological college and into my first curacy. That being so, I should not have been as short as I was with Ryan, but he was, even at the start, irritating as well as charming. He was one of those men who knew he was handsome and clever -- and he knew I knew and thought I should react accordingly. Since I never liked doing what I was expected to do, I reacted according to my own lights. That was my introduction to our local lord of the manor -- or at least to his heir.

My rector, Susan, was simply the best priest a girl could have wanted to serve her ticket under. She was a no-nonsense woman from Manchester who saw the Deanery as her challenge. Rural Suffolk was hardly home territory, and wealthy Tory landowners not her natural constituency, but she proved as adept with them as she did with all the locals. With seven parish churches to curate, she needed a curate and got me. Unlike Susan, I had grown up in the countryside and loved the rural life. She noticed, and as time passed, tended to let me deal with the outlying rural parishes.

Though it had happened when I was a girl, out here in the countryside, twenty years ago was but a moment, and there was some hesitation about the presence of a "lady Vicar". My favourite comment was from Mrs. Bertram, who must have been ninety if she was a day, who leaving Communion one day commented: "Don't worry love, it'd be easier for them to accept if you looked like the back of a bus. Pretty Vicars are harder on them." She made me laugh, and I reflected that if one of the oldest inhabitants had no problem, I should lighten up with those who had. Time showed that was the sensible thing to do. Ryan later maintained that what was really wrong with what he called "Vicars in knickers" was that we made the "Tarts and Vicars" fancy dress ball problematic by being both.

Ah, yes, Ryan again. He keeps popping up. His family owned the old Rectory which the church had flogged off in the 1980s, leaving the then Vicar with a little suburban box, which made do for a busy curate. Said box was next to the Old Rectory, and it had been the habit of Lord Surtees to invite the old Vicar to lunch once a month. I inherited the invitation, and it was with some consternation that the butler received me.

"Hi there," I said cheerily, noting the puzzlement on his face, "I'm Robin, the Reverend Topham, the new curate." I thought that his head would explode, as his eyes seemed bent on popping out, but I suppose the jaw dropping let out enough air to prevent that. He recovered quickly, and inviting me in, offered to take my shawl before showing me to the drawing room.

"The reverend Topham, my Lord." If Lord Surtees was surprised, he did not show it.

"Delighted to meet you, and so glad you could come. Though I don't often get to church, it matters in this community, and I like to keep in touch. Have you met my son, Ryan?"

He steered me in the direction of a very tall, bronzed figure who looked as though he was channelling Michelangelo's David -- and knew it. I am on the tall side for a woman, five-nine, in my heels five-eleven, but he towered above me, he must have been at least six foot four.

"My, what have they done with Vicars? They didn't look like you at Dover Court." Now why was I not surprised to learn he'd been to one of the most exclusive, and expensive public schools in the country, famous for producing goodness knows how many Conservative Prime Ministers. Craning my neck upwards, I smiled:

"Thank you, but they do say that altitude can blur the vision."

He laughed: "Touché, nice return of serve. Now, what can I get the prettiest Vicar I know to drink?"

"A gin and tonic would go down nicely. How many Vicars do you know, by the way?"

Fixing me a stiff gin and tonic, he smiled broadly: "If I'd known they made them in your model, I'd have made sure I knew a lot more. But you have me at a disadvantage. You know my first name, what's yours?"

"Robin", I said.

"Robin, what sort of name is that for a girl?"

And that, as they say, was how it started.

I'd tried to explain to my stepmother, but I might as well have saved my breath to cool my porridge. Like it or not, and I didn't, we lived in an era and a society where a common sense of morality had broken down.

My answer to why I would not have sex with a man to whom I was not married was simple; it was wrong. What did I mean by wrong? I meant that I was a Christian and that set my moral framework. Sex was a natural human urge, but there were lots of those, and the idea they were all okay was easily disproved by what would happen to me if I gave into my appetite for cream buns. I'd look like one in no time, with deleterious effects on my health and figure. I didn't need to go to that utilitarian argument, because my moral framework told me gluttony was a sin. But what common moral framework did our society now have?

Even I, with my views, would hesitate before giving again the sermon I had given once at Theological College on 'the sinfulness of pre-marital sex'. Most of my male colleagues seemed to take it as a cue to ask me to bed, while my female colleagues felt compelled to regard me as "weird", even if in private, some said they agreed with me. The only framework which it seemed was held in common was "consent". As long as the woman consented to sex, that was fine. It ruled out criminal sexual acts on the grounds of a lack of an ability to consent by one side.

I was uncomfortable with the whole thing, but as my tutor had said, I was going into ministry in the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth. Of course, there were those who would counsel me that what I did in private was my own business -- but I had my moral framework and I tried to live my faith. That's why I was still a virgin at the grand old age of twenty-eight. It looked as though Ryan might want to test the waters -- hence the challenge.

I'd have been lying to myself if I'd denied finding him attractive -- indeed, very attractive. But then I doubted that any red-blooded woman would have found herself neutral on the subject. The difficulty for me was twofold. My only previous sexual experience had been at university, and had not been with a man. We had, as they say, "made out", but not gone "all the way?" I had been more attracted to women than men, a problem for an ordinand in the Church. And now, along came Ryan.

Over the next few days, I found my thoughts straying in his direction. Monday was a welcome day off, and like most clergy, I used it to catch up with mundane things like getting my washing done and ensuring that my vestments were clean and starched. I was one of those odd women, maybe the only one, who loved the process of ironing and starching her surplice. Indeed, I loved it so much I did Susan's too. Across the period I served my ticket there, she said the thing she'd miss most when I moved on -- apart, of course, from my cheery smile, was my laundry services. If all else failed, I could earn my living as a cleaner cum laundry-maid. I could not abide mess or dirty clothes. Nor, it turned out, men who thought they were God's gift.

It was my regular practice to take a long walk on Monday afternoons. The country lanes were white with blossom, the abundance of which, this year, reminded me of God's love for us -- there was so much of it that one marvelled at it -- as well as our ability not to appreciate it. As we had just passed the second Sunday in Easter, I thought a gold-coloured beret would go with my pashmina and my mid-calf skater skirt, and as it more or less matched my walking shoes, I thought I would present a suitably coordinated picture to any of the congregation I might encounter. Men could get away with looking like scruff bags, women clergy ought not to hold themselves to such a low standard.

The sun was still high in the sky, and the water was running slowly. We'd had a winter notably without rain, and a hot Easter. But I still couldn't resist doing what I had always loved doing as a girl -- playing Poohsticks. For those unfamiliar with Winnie-the-Pooh, well in the first place, buy and read the books, and in the second place, it consists of dropping sticks on one side of the bridge and seeing which of them comes out first. I was so engrossed in my game that it was only when he spoke that I realised I had company.

"The stick on the right will win. Want to wager me ten pence?"

Turning, there he was -- Ryan, smiling broadly. "Well?"

I tried not to look as startled as I felt.

"Well, since I agree, I'm hardly going to bet against my preference. Do you play?"

The moment the words were out of my mouth I could have kicked myself. Grinning broadly and looking me straight in the eyes he responded:

"Depends on the game and the stakes. What did you have in mind?"

"A quiet country walk, as it happens. You?"

Again, the urge to kick myself came.

"Oh this and that, nothing that I could mention to a vicar in knickers."

I felt myself flush. He invested the words with a wealth of meaning which I was determined not to get, or indeed, to investigate.

"Thank goodness for that," I said, with what I hoped was a light laugh, but which I feared had probably come out as a nervous giggle.

"So, if I take the left side and you the right, let's see which stick wins -- are you Pooh or Christopher Robin?" he inquired, teasingly.

"Why narrow it down?" I teased back, I could always be Kanga or Tigger."

I really did need to take a vow of silence, or else think faster.

"I suppose that depends whether you're the motherly sort or bouncier?"

He looked at me, quizzically.

"A vicar in knickers never answers such questions", I said, extricating myself from the dilemma he had posed.

"Sounds more like Wol," he said, "a wise Vicar holds onto them that way."

I couldn't help laughing, he was quite outrageous, but in a flirtatious way at which it was impossible to take offence without coming across as a total killjoy.

"Quite agree, and I am a Wol Vicar. I choose the left."

"I thought you said the right would win."

"That was with the willow twigs, the two oak twigs you have will work differently."

"Oh", an expert, are we? Tell you what, make it fifty pence if you are that confident."

"We poor curates are hard-pressed you know." I smiled, looking straight back at him.

"Tell you what, if you win, I buy you dinner, if I win, I buy you a drink at the White Swan. What do you say?"

"I say that it's a way of asking me out, but accept." I was now daring him.

"You're on. One, two, three ...."

And we dropped the twigs simultaneously, before turning and looking over the bridge to the edge of the weir. I still got that childish sense of triumph when I saw my twig go over first.

"Dinner it is then," Ryan smirked. "As it's your day off, what say I pick you up at seven?"

"Hey," I protested, "Mr. Fast Worker, who says I'm even free tonight?"

"Well, are you?" His smile was as broad as the river.

I felt myself blushing as I answered:

"As it happens, yes."

"So, seven it is? I'll pick you up from the new vicarage?"

"I think you already did", I smiled.

And so he had.

It was all very well Ryan joking about "Vicars in knickers", but it is a truth not universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a clerical collar is often puzzled about what to wear on a date. There it was, that word. Was this a "date" or was it just a casual drink and dinner? Come to that, what had Ryan been doing at the weir? If it came to that, what was I doing going to dinner with him? "Dinner"? It was the pub for goodness sake, get real woman.

I thought a t-shirt -- linen, of course -- and an A-line, mid-calf length red skirt with pleats might do the trick -- with red heels, of course. There, I thought, looking in the mirror, not bad if I said so myself. The question of what I was getting myself into would be resolved as time went by, so I encouraged myself to enjoy the moment -- and wondered whether actually talking to myself was the first sign of madness? The checked jacket would look good, so I grabbed that as I heard the doorbell chime.

"Your coach awaits you Ma'am", he smiled, "you scrub up well, like the red -- and love the beret. I'd hadn't ...." And there, for once, the silver tongue failed, so I got in.

"Hadn't what, Ryan, expected style? Did you think I'd turn up in something clerical?"

For once, I had the conversational advantage. He took it well, and, the perfect gentleman, opened the car door for me. Lotus Elans are low-slung, so getting in with decorum required skill; I was glad I'd not worn a shorter skirt; a feeling not, I think, shared by him, to judge by the look on his face.

It was a glorious May evening, so we chose to dine in the conservatory, which gave us a view down to the river. The food was, by local standards, not too bad, and our choices said much about us and in a way, explained how the evening went. A "steak, done lightly" and a pint of real ale, for Ryan, and the "vegetarian risotto" with a glass of Pinot Grigio for Rowan, said it all really. And yet it could not be denied he was fun, as long as you kept on your toes; he clearly regarded conversation as a competitive sport. But I was a good listener, and never met a man who didn't appreciate that in a girl.

I learned a lot about him. He'd done Economics at Cambridge and then worked in Switzerland with one of the big banks. It was clear, listening to him, that he was no mere playboy. He had the opportunity to be, money was not short in the Surtees clan, and he had the looks and the style, but he was a man driven to prove something, perhaps to himself as well as his father. But none of that explained why he was dining me little me.

The risotto was a little gloopy, so I pushed it aside once I'd satisfied the need to eat a little. He was so engaged in his steak and his conversation that I had thought he'd not noticed. I was wrong, as it gave him an opening gambit in his game.

"Was that as bad as it looked? Do you normally eat so little?"

I explained that it wasn't one of the great meals of our time, and that food and I had a sometimes distant relationship.

"But I take it that your steak was one of the better dishes they do here?"

"Pubs do steaks well or they go under. Vegetarian dishes round here are a tokenistic attempt to satisfy young women who like to signal their virtue."

As an opening gambit, it was a good one; aggressive but elegant. It demanded a response in kind, or the game was over. I could see how easily he could get bored.

"Surely", I quipped in reply, "a lady Vicar should be signalling her virtue?"

His laugh was full-throated.

"You give as good as you get, don't you?"

"I am like John Lewis, never knowingly undersold."

"And there was I, thinking you might be a Tesco girl, every little helps."

If we were going to play supermarket bingo, I was going to run out of road, so it was necessary to change tack.

"Oh, I am all in favour of helping, but the Lord helps those who help themselves, speaking of which, if you don't want that last bit of bread, I shall requisition it."

"Bread on the waters and all that, eh? Speaking of which, what on earth made you become a lady Vicar?"

There it was. A direct question deserved an indirect answer, but that, I told him, could wait for the dessert course.

Predictably, Ryan ordered one of those rich puddings to which men who have been to public school seem to be prone. Equally predictably, I ordered cheese and biscuits. In response to "what do you want to drink" I ordered a cappuccino while he ordered an espresso. So far, so predictable.

As we settled into the armchairs in the lounge, he asked again: "So, what got you into this?"

"You mentioned 'on earth'", I replied, sipping gingerly at my coffee, "but it was more to do with what is not necessarily here but should be". I hoped that might pique his interest. Somehow, it mattered to me that Ryan should judge me by my intelligence and not, as he seemed to be, by my looks.

"Try me," he riposted, challenging me.

I explained to him that it wasn't a case of my choosing. I'd wanted to be an academic. I had a good first from Oxford and had begun post-doctoral work on T.S. Eliot's religious poetry, but it had dawned on me, at first gradually, and then in a blinding flash one morning at the eight o'clock Morning Prayer, that what was calling me was the religion and not the poetry; the poetry was in response to something Eliot sensed; I sensed it too. I had gone to talk with my College Chaplain, who'd put me in touch with people from the Anglican Training College, and the rest, as they say, was history. In short, I had felt a calling.

He had kept silent, and he looked intently at me.

"So, does that come with a pile of baggage?"

Sipping less gingerly, I looked at him over the rim of the cup.

"Only with others", I said.

"How so?"

"You'd be amazed, or not", I replied, "at the number of people who think one of two things: either that I must be some sort of bra-burning feminist; or that, in addition, I must be a raging pinko."

"And are you?" He was amused, but kept it in; I could see that his eyes were waiting for me to fall into the traps he had laid.

I was not going there, instead, I would take the battle onto his territory.

"Do you suppose anyone really burnt their bra? I'd always thought it an urban myth, but I suppose if it's necessary, I could buy one for the burning." He looked at me, I looked right back, challenging him. He did not rise. "As for the rest, politics does not interest me, but looking after others does."

"Well," he drove forward with another thrust, "Lady Thatcher said that the Good Samaritan wouldn't have been able to do anything without money."

The challenge had been thrown down. But if he could refuse mine, I could refuse his.

"True, that, but surely what matters is that he used that money to help those less fortunate than himself? Camels, eyes of needles, and rich men are an interesting mix."

"They could mix interestingly with Lady Vicars," he quipped right back.

"I doubt your girlfriend would appreciate that," I fired back immediately. If he was pushing onto this terrain, I'd push back.

"That's a fair point, but Allegra's an understanding sort of a girl, and she does so hate the country, so I wouldn't concern yourself with her."

"I wasn't", I said, "but I thought you might want to, as she is your girlfriend."

"So," he said, shifting one of the minor pieces on the board as a distraction, "an after-dinner snifter, or does your virtue demand holding back?" There was a challenge in the way he said it.

"I wouldn't concern yourself with my virtue", I said, "it has a solid track record of success. But a small scotch and water would be good."

At that, we came together, as he ordered one too.

A silence, the first that evening, descended, broken only by the waitress bringing a second scotch -- and the bill. He was clearly expecting me to go all feminist over it and hesitated.

"Oh, it's fine, after all, it's your own designated forfeit for losing at Pooh Sticks."

He laughed at the reminder, and paid up.

The silence descended again. I looked out into the conservatory where the blackness of the night was uninterrupted by any artificial light.