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axe blade against wood, and looked inside the church door to see a scrawny lad make splintered firewood of the high carved pulpit from which the Hon. Rev. had so often thundered. A few of the older villagers looked on curiously. St Aidan’s had a small and dwindling congregation – most had fled to the Methodists at St Bart’s, where a friendlier atmosphere ruled and the hymns were more to their taste.
    ‘It’s all my fault,’ said Adela to Ivy. ‘I shouldn’t have made Father so angry. Now look. God’s punishment!’
    ‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ said Ivy, ‘God’s got bigger things to worry about than you answering your father back.’
    Still Adela gulped and wept, and asked if she could go with Ivy wherever Ivy was going: if she stayed where she was she would die of a broken heart. Ivy said Adela was better fitted for the stage than for a convent, but her heart would break even more if she knew where Ivy was going.
    ‘Where’s that?’ asked Adela.
    ‘Down to the Almshouses with a Christmas gift for the poor.’
    ‘Let me see it,’ said Adela, so Ivy showed it to her. In case the matter of the missing parcel ever arose, which was doubtful, she would have covered her tracks well enough.
    ‘But it’s addressed to me,’ said Adela, horrified.
    ‘Your father thinks you’re too young to receive unsolicited gifts,’ said Ivy. ‘He told your mother to burn it but I told her it was a wicked waste so she told me I could take it away and give it to the poor.’ Ivy crossed her fingers as she spoke, but it was true enough. Her mother surely counted as poor, and enough of the charity gifts that were left at the Almshouses ended up on her novelty stall anyway.
    ‘But it’s from Belgrave Square, which means it’s from relatives. What harm can there be in it? I don’t understand.’
    ‘You know what your father’s like about your family. Your uncle’s on the wrong side in the House, your aunt’s a walking clothes horse, your cousin Arthur married a Papist whore and your cousin Rosina as good as killed her own grandfather. They’re all bound for hell. Just let me get it down to the Almshouses and forget about it, there’s a good girl.’
    ‘It’s very strange,’ said Adela, ‘that one side of the family should be so very good, like ours, and the other side so very wicked, like theirs. What’s a whore?’
    ‘Never you mind,’ said Ivy.
    ‘I shall shrivel and die for lack of information,’ said Adela sadly. ‘The sooner I am a Bride of Christ the better. Well, take my only Christmas present away, Ivy, and give it to the poor. Do you think one feels hungry and cold in heaven?’
    ‘I might drop by Swaley’s Farm and see if there’s any cream going free,’ said Ivy. ‘Your ma put out some stale bread for the birds. I could put it aside, and with some cream and a drop of sugar from my mum it’ll make a good supper tonight.’
    ‘Thank you, Ivy,’ said Adela. She poked the parcel with her finger. ‘It feels squishy,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it’s velvet. Please can’t I just see what’s in it?’
    ‘It’s more than my job’s worth,’ said Ivy, putting the parcel back in her shopping basket, and went on down towards the Almshouses, missing the first turning to her mother’s cottage but taking the second, once out of Adela’s sight. This took her past Swaley’s Farm, where her boyfriend George worked mornings, milking. He’d already left for Bath, where he was at college, so she stuck the envelope from Belgrave Square in a gap between the plaster wall and one of the milking stalls where no one would notice it, and went and had a cup of tea with her mother.

A Deed Once Done
    The enormity of what she had done was slow to dawn on Isobel. She had been feeling over-emotional lately, prone to bouts of crying, behaving quite irrationally, and flushing with embarrassment when there was nothing to be embarrassed about. She knew perfectly well that her worries about Consuelo’s closeness to