Read The Reaper for Free Online Page B

Accident and Emergency she was seen almost at once and then sent to another section for the X-ray. Otis Joy got up to go with her.
    "There's no need for you to wait," she said. "I'll be all right now."
    He refused to leave her.
    "I could be here for hours," she said when they were seated in the radiography department.
    "All the more reason for me to stay. After all, it was my fault."
    "Why?"
    "If I hadn't asked you to wait, this wouldn't have happened."
    "No, it was my own stupidity," she repeated. "I stepped off the path without looking."
    "It's in a dangerous place, that grave, so close to the church door. You're not the first to trip over it. I've a good mind to have the slab levelled flush with the turf."
    "You couldn't do that. What would the relatives say?"
    "They've long since gone. It belonged to one of the previous rectors, the Reverend Waldo Wallace."
    "Now that you mention it, I've seen the name before."
    "The incumbent for over fifty years, until about eighteen-eighty," he said. "And much loved by the parish. He brewed his own beer and supplied the pub. Believe it or not, tithes were still being paid in those days. Each year at harvest time, good old Waldo gave a tithe dinner at the rectory, a jolly for the whole village."
    "With beer?"
    "His home brew. It was a real bender. And a midnight firework display. Said he waited all year to hear the ladies crying 'Ooh!' and 'Ah!' as the rockets went up."
    She giggled. "You made that up."
    "No, Waldo said it. Pre-Freud and quite innocent, I'm sure. He never married."
    She didn't know what to say.
    "Anyway," Otis Joy added smoothly, "he wouldn't have wished this on you."
    She said Waldo Wallace sounded a sweetie.
    "Oh, sure. But on the other hand," he said, "we all get our kicks some way. If Waldo liked to hear the ladies going 'Ooh!' and 'Ah!,' maybe he had something to do with you tripping over his grave."
    "All he heard from me was 'Ouch!' I hope I said nothing worse."
    "He must have heard some ripe Anglo-Saxon in his time. We clergymen do, you know."
    "Not from a woman, surely? Waldo was never married, you said."
    "He would have had a housekeeper, and I bet she dropped a plate occasionally and said something stronger than 'Oh, my word.'"
    Rachel was called for the X-ray. There would be a further wait while they processed it and showed it to a doctor. She was feeling guilty about taking so much of the rector's time on a Sunday.
    "Don't you have Evening Service soon?" she asked when she returned to the waiting area.
    He looked at his watch. "Oceans of time."
    "It must be hard, trying to find space for your own life."
    "This is my own life," he said. "I don't think of it as a job. True, there are fixed points in the week, services, PCC meetings, choir practice, and so on, but I make time for other things when I feel the need. Wouldn't be much use to anyone if I never relaxed."
    "So what do you do?"
    "In my spare time? Fresh air and exercise. I like to get out. Music."
    "What sort? Classical?"
    "Catatonia."
    "You're kidding?"
    "There's some very good bands about these days."
    "I'm surprised."
    "I grew up with pop. Didn't you?"
    "I thought you were going to say Mozart."
    "Can't fault him, but I hear a lot of solemn music in church. Give me something with a heavy beat and grunge guitars."
    "My husband thinks it's cool to listen to jazz, Benny Goodman and stuff. To me it's more dated than Beethoven." She felt a small stab of conscience for knocking Gary (not to say Beethoven), but it didn't trouble her much because she also felt the hurt of the proposed New Orleans trip. "His jazz crowd like warm beer and late nights."
    He grinned. "Thick, floppy sweaters."
    "Old jeans and sandals. And cigarettes. Not many women go for jazz, unless they sing with a band."
    "How does a jazz musician wind up with a million pounds?" he asked suddenly.
    "I don't know."
    "By starting off with two million."
    She was called to see an orthopaedic specialist. The X-ray showed she had a fracture above