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162 pages

English

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Description

Set in the early 1990s, Dr James Armstrong, a young, newly-qualified GP lives with his wife, Janice, in Barminster, where he is busy laying out plans for their future. However, his search for a medical partnership is complicated by a long-term and persistent sense of being called to ordination in the Church of England. Whilst exploring the possibility of a dual professional life as a doctor and priest, he accepts a position as a locum GP in a practice in the quiet market town of Bishopsworth. Once there, his world is thrown into chaos when he finds himself powerfully drawn to a beautiful young woman, whose own marriage is failing. The result is an emotional drama that brings into focus the underlying difficulties of his own bleak relationship. Torn between his loyalty to his wedding vows and the unexpected discovery of true love, James is left battling powerful emotions that make him question all that he has previously stood for. He needs to make some difficult decisions; decisions that will mean winners and losers. But what is he prepared to sacrifice and at what price? Lamplight in the Shadows explores the complex tensions between perceived duty and misplaced loyalties. With characters drawn from rural society and religious settings, the story will appeal to those who enjoy romantic fiction.

Sujets

Contemporary romance

Informations

Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 février 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781784628208
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Lamplight in the Shadows
Robert Jaggs-Fowler

Copyright © 2015 Robert Jaggs-Fowler
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to
real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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ISBN 978 1784628 208
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Matador ® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

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For Linda
Under whose feet I spread my dreams
Contents

Cover

Also by Robert Jaggs-Fowler

W.B. Yeats

Principal Characters

Prologue

Part One

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Part Two

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

Part Three

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

Part Four

33

34

35

Epilogue
Also by Robert Jaggs-Fowler

Poetry

A Journey with Time

Non-fiction

The Law and Medicine: Friend or Nemesis?
W.B. Yeats

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)
‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’
Principal Characters

Dr James Armstrong, GP and potential ordinand
Janice Armstrong, wife of James
Jules Armstrong, brother of James
Jim Armstrong, father of James and Jules
Connie Armstrong, mother of James and Jules

The Venerable Paul Swinburn, Archdeacon of the East Riding of Yorkshire
The Reverend Michael Ewing, Vicar of St Peter’s Parish Church, Barminster, E. Yorks

Dr Ian McGarva, GP and senior partner, Bishopsworth Medical Practice
Mary McGarva, wife of Ian
Dr Charles Hawkins, GP and partner, Bishopsworth Medical Practice
Susan Hawkins, wife of Charles
Dr Richard Carey, GP and partner, Bishopsworth Medical Practice
Belinda Marsh, girlfriend to Dr Richard Carey
Dr Thomas Slater, GP and partner, Bishopsworth Medical Practice

Anna Baldwin, practice receptionist
Simon Baldwin, husband of Anna

Norman Thornhill, farmer and a patient
The Reverend Jeremy Pinchbeck, Priest-in-Charge, Helliton
Mark Allerton, farmer and choir master

The Reverend Dr George Morgan, Director of Ordinands, Diocese of York and Canon Prebendary at York Minster
The Reverend Luke Palfreyman, Warden of Norton Abbey
Paul Jenkins, gardener and caretaker, Norton Abbey
Andrew Walker, law student and potential ordinand
Fr Dominic Caruana, Roman Catholic Priest
Prologue

The silence was tangible as he peered through the narrow windscreen and shivered with the coolness of the February early morning air. He could have kept the engine running for warmth, but was afraid that even though he was in a narrow country lane high up on the outskirts of the town, the throaty noise of the sports car’s engine might attract attention in the quietness of those few hours before most townsfolk started their journeys to work. Even as it was, he was courting discovery by one of the occasional dog-walkers who ventured that way, knowing that his was the only car of this particular model within twenty miles. If seen in such a strange location at that time of the morning, the local gossip routes would soon transmit news of his whereabouts faster than one could possibly imagine.
And then what? He tried not to think about the repercussions and concentrated by focusing on a point about a quarter of a mile away. He could just see its outline through the grey, swirling mist that so often enveloped this part of Lincolnshire. This morning it was intent on playing tricks with his eyes and he tried to stare without blinking, desperate not to miss the signal that he, equally desperately, was praying would be given.
As he waited, he mused on the events of the past two months. How had it happened? How had his entire world been turned upside down? His every sense of right and wrong, of morals and religious duty, so deftly swept aside to leave his mind in a tumult of emotions; where anguish, guilt, ecstasy and a profound sense of having just made the most important discovery of his life were all mixed together like some sort of mental potpourri, leaving him struggling to bring it to logical and coherent order in the way he organised everything else in his life… or had done until now.
He turned on the radio, momentarily thanking the previous owner for bypassing the ignition switch, and flicked through the pre-tuned buttons offering a choice of Classic FM, BBC Radio 3 and 4. At times like this, it was classical music in which his tortured mind took refuge. Plucking a tissue from the glove compartment, he wiped a hole in the misted screen, turned up the volume of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A and resumed peering across the field in front of him.

* * *

A quarter of a mile away, a young woman stood at the door of her newly built, detached house, watching the rear lights of her husband’s car as it turned the bend and disappeared from sight, glad that she was free of his haranguing and questioning for the next ten hours. For a moment more she remained at the door surveying the building site with all its future promise of an attractive middle-class development on the rural edge of the town, but which at present, apart from her house, had only one other.
The house had once represented everything she thought she wanted: the outward sign of progress up the social ladder. It was financed to a significant extent by the lower mortgage rate allowed to her husband as a junior manager in a high-street bank, but furnished largely through her own endeavours as a receptionist in the local medical practice. Now, however, it had come to represent everything she hated. Why had she ever agreed to marry him in the first place? The jokes about bank managers being far from dynamic were certainly true in his case… so tedious, so lacking in humour, so lacking in aspiration, so lacking in bed …
She didn’t know whether it was the latter thought or the damp morning mist that caused her to shiver, returning her thoughts to the present. How long had he been gone? She glanced at her watch. Surely, he would be on the dual carriageway by now and therefore unlikely to return home until that evening. That aspect of him she did at times appreciate: his boring, but ever-so-helpful predictability! Her eyes roamed across the ploughed field opposite her house, following the contours uphill until she reached the hedge on the far side; even now, it was only faintly visible through the mist.
Another tremor ran through her, but this time one of expectation, not revulsion. Somewhere up there, out of sight in the mist, was salvation. Reaching inside the door, she switched on the outside light and stepped back inside the house.

* * *

For one moment, he thought that the mist was again playing tricks. He pressed his nose to the windscreen, his eyes narrowing as he tried to pierce through the half-light. He counted the lamp posts again. No, he had been right; there was now an extra light right where the shadowy outline of the house was; a house that had been the object of his intent gaze for the past half an hour; a light that signalled, like a beacon through the mist, the welcoming message that he was safe to approach.
He turned the ignition key and the engine came to life with a throaty eagerness matching that of its owner. Reversing from the field gateway, he gently eased into first gear and started the hill-descent into town. Moments later, he parked on the gravel of the new drive. Pausing only to lock the car door, he strode purposefully towards the house, pushed open the front door, entered and closed it quietly behind him before switching off the now redundant external light. Her clear blue eyes met his with a gaze of warmth and seductiveness as, without a word, his eager lips found the rounded, welcoming softness of her own.
Part One

1990

I have called you by name; you are mine.
Isaiah 43:1
1

Barminster, East Yorkshire

January
‘Dr James Armstrong, Your Grace.’
As the housekeeper announced James’ arrival, the Archdeacon raised his eyes from the crossword of the Daily Telegraph and rose from his armchair to greet him. ‘Good afternoon, Dr Armstrong,’ he intoned in a mellow voice, extending a long, bony hand to James.
‘James,’ he responded, firmly shaking the proffered hand as the Archdeacon nodded. Taking one of the comfortable armchairs gestured to by his host, James took a moment to study the room. It was obviously a study, with books of varying ages crammed onto floor-to-ceiling shelves that lined two-thirds of the walls. An old oak desk, strewn with paper, stood in front of a patio window, beyond which he could see part of a tree-lined lawn demarcated by a herbaceous border. More books sat piled on the floor next to another of