The Evil that Men Do by Jeanne M. Dams Page A

at nine thirty, and with the 1662 Prayer Book.’
    â€˜Not only tiny, but conservative as well. This is a very good idea, Alan. Only, can we hire a car on a Sunday morning?’
    â€˜I’ll go down and ask Pam. I need to tell her we won’t be in for breakfast, anyway.’
    He was a little longer than I had hoped, and when he got back the news wasn’t great.
    â€˜There’s no regular car hire in the village,’ he reported. ‘Bourbon, love?’ He held out the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and, when I nodded, poured a tot into a tea cup and passed it to me. ‘Pam thinks we might be able to talk one of her friends into some sort of unofficial arrangement, but I’d actually rather not, because of insurance complications.’
    â€˜Oh, shoot. I was beginning to look forward to a service in that beautiful church.’
    â€˜All is not lost. There’s one chap in Broadway who will drive us anywhere we want to go, even on a Sunday. If he’s free, we can go to church, then have him drive us back to Winchcombe where we left our car. Then we’re mobile again and can go where we like – on foot when we want, in decadent comfort when we don’t.’
    â€˜Perfect,’ I said, and lifted my cup in a toast to pleasant plans.
    We got up early the next day, to the sweet sound of church bells, and everything went like clockwork. Pam had phoned the driver, and yes, he was free, and yes, he would be happy to take us anywhere we liked. Our hostess had also kindly packaged up a portable breakfast, so on the brief drive to Buckland we nibbled on fruit and oatmeal bread and drank excellent coffee.
    I marvelled, as we drove, over how different the countryside looked from a car. I had never given much thought to how much one misses when being whisked along at highway speeds. The small flowers, the strange and beautiful beetles, the lovely, fresh smell of the moist earth, the movement of the clouds – all of these are overlooked. ‘We’ve lost something,’ I said to Alan.
    He smiled, knowing what I was thinking. ‘We’ll walk more, I promise. There’s good walking near home, too, you know.’
    â€˜They all used to walk. Everyone. These paths were made by people going someplace, hundreds and hundreds of years ago.’
    â€˜Yes, but don’t forget that some of them rode, the wealthy ones who had horses or mules. And if they had a long way to go, they had to contend with rain and wind and even snow sometimes, and predatory animals – and humans. We’ve lost the closeness to the earth, but we’ve gained safety and comfort. And of course speed. We could be in Edinburgh by teatime.’
    â€˜I don’t want to be in Edinburgh by teatime. I want to be right here, doing exactly what I’m doing. And later I want to walk and walk.’
    â€˜Hmm,’ was all Alan said.
    The church service was lovely, simple and dignified. There was no choir, which was possibly just as well. We were used to the acclaimed Cathedral choir at Sherebury, and the efforts of a small group of village singers wouldn’t have been quite the same. But the organ was good, and the organist acceptable, and the congregation sang the hymns with vigour.
    After the service we explored the church more thoroughly than we had on our previous visit. The oldest bits of it were thirteenth-century, and there were some remarkable works of art, extremely old and very well preserved. One of the sidesmen (I called them ushers until somebody, years ago, told me the proper English usage) showed us around, with a good deal of expert knowledge and not a little pride. ‘One of the finest parish churches in all of England,’ he said, and we couldn’t disagree. Of course we wouldn’t have, anyway, but it was easy in this case to say the right thing.
    â€˜In Broadway for the festival, are you?’
    â€˜In a way,’ I said. ‘We’re enjoying it,