Peter Noakes had been the organist and choirmaster at his local parish church, St Leonards, for nearly thirty years, and had been a member in its ranks since he was eight years old. His wife had also been a choir member until she had passed away three years before from cancer. Now aged fifty, he was a tall, bespectacled man with a mane of shiny dark hair whose time was spent between his day job as a landscape gardener and his duties at the church. There had been nobody else in his life since the death of his wife, apart from his two grown up children Alice and Joseph who were both at university.
There were sixteen other members in the choir aged between eight and seventy four, supplemented during the university holidays and at certain weekends by his own children. Seven of these were primary school children; five girls and two boys recruited from the local school.
By contrast, Reverend Maxine Power had been the vicar at St Leonards for just four months. This was her first posting as a vicar but she had already been successful in recruiting the younger children into the choir and reinstating a Sunday School for those under eight years old. There had been a definite rise in numbers in the congregation since she had replaced the previous incumbent who had retired.
She was unmarried, aged in her early thirties, a slim but plain looking brunette who in public always wore her shoulder length hair tied back with a gold hair clip. When she wasn't wearing her black cassock she would usually be dressed in a black shirt with the traditional white collar and a plain black knee-length pencil skirt and black hosiery, together with an unflattering pair of flat black slip on shoes.
It was a sunny Saturday in early July. St Leonards had hosted three weddings at hourly intervals starting at twelve o'clock. It was now ten to three and the last service had ended, the register had been signed and the happy couple and their guests had processed into the churchyard for the photographs. The seven younger choir members plus two teenage girl altos had attended every wedding and were now in the empty church waiting to be paid. Peter went up to the vestry to collect the wages where Maxine was sorting out the various bits of legal paperwork from the register. She handed him an envelope.
"There's ninety pounds in there," she said to him. "I know we normally only pay them three pounds per wedding, but I didn't have time to get any change from the bank this week so they can have a bit extra. There's plenty in the kitty."
"Yes," said Peter. "We must have over ninety pounds spare in the choir funds from before the younger ones started."
One of Maxine's good qualities was her generosity and instead of banking any excess wedding money for the church, she allowed the choirmaster and bell ringers to have a bonus if there was any spare left over from previous weddings. Peter opened the envelope. There were nine ten pound notes inside. The children gathered round him in the vestry doorway eager to collect their pay.
"Okay", he said, "You've all got a bit extra this week for good behaviour, so no pushing Lucy, and form an orderly line, all of you! Jodie, here's yours...Rhiannon... Sophie... Louise... Ryan... Lucy... Josh... Annabelle... and Abigail."
Each child collected their money as he called out their names culminating in the two older girls who had waited patiently at the back. He tore up the empty envelope and went back into the vestry to throw it away. The children had now left and the only people left inside was himself, Maxine and Fred the verger who was tidying away the leftover service sheets and hymn books.
"Phew," said Peter mopping his brow. "I'm glad that's over. I'm sweltering." He had already taken off his cassock and surplice and just had on a short sleeved shirt and a pair of light blue cotton trousers but the sweat was pouring off him.
"Tell me about it," said Maxine. "What say we go for a drink somewhere and cool off?"
"I'm tempted," said Peter. "I'm not doing anything this afternoon so why not. Thank you, Maxine."
"Call me Max," she said. "All my friends do. Give me a minute to get this clobber off."
Rev. Max Power! Peter couldn't help but smile to himself at her title and name. She had removed her surplice as soon as she had entered the vestry but still wore the black cassock and the white collar around her neck. She started to unbutton the cassock and Peter expected the usual drab black shirt to be revealed. Instead he was pleasantly surprised to find she had a short-sleeved summer dress on underneath, pale yellow in colour. She hung the cassock on a hanger and placed it in a cupboard in the corner of the room then unfastened the black Rabat with the white collar attached to it and placed it on a shelf in the cupboard. Her dress was quite low cut and there was more than a hint of cleavage on display. Peter felt his cock jerk upright at the sight, more so when her dress slid back exposing a great deal of thigh as she bent down and pulled her handbag and a pair of white wedge heeled sling-back sandals out of the cupboard. She wore no hosiery and kicked off the black shoes, replacing them with the sandals, unclipped the gold hair clip and put it in her handbag, gave her hair a quick brush and pulled a pair of large red framed sunglasses from within her bag and placed them on top of her head.
"Right, let's go then," she said. "Fred will lock up. See you tomorrow Fred." She waved at him as they walked out and pulled her glasses down. The wedding party was still outside and they dodged the guests, trying not to get in the way of those taking photographs. Who would have guessed that the lady in the yellow dress and the red sunglasses was the same person who had officiated at the wedding service less than half an hour earlier?
They walked through the side gate from the churchyard into the rectory garden where Maxine's car stood in front of the garage.
"Hop in," she said. "We'll go to the Rose & Crown at Stelling. There shouldn't be anyone there who knows us."
Maxine had an unusual car for a vicar. While most of her peers drove smart little hatchbacks or those with families had large people carriers, hers was a satin red cabriolet. She had left it parked with the roof closed, but soon they were speeding along the country lanes with it down. Peter couldn't help but keep looking at his weekend boss as he referred to her to his friends. Her hair was billowing in the breeze, sunglasses in place, her dress sitting seductively midway between her thigh and her knee exposing her legs. A small gold cross on a gold chain sat around her neck, a gold signet ring on the ring finger on her right hand and a small gold watch with a black strap on her left wrist.
Stelling was only about ten miles from the parish and it didn't take above twenty minutes to get there. There were very few people in the pub and nobody in the beer garden so they went and sat at a shady table with their drinks. Thankfully Peter had remembered his own sunglasses and he clipped them onto the front of his normal glasses. They chatted away about many things including his late wife and family, his work as a gardener and her previous position as a deacon in a parish in Liverpool. She sat opposite him, not with her feet directly under the table, but with them to the side. Every so often, she would cross her legs and he would innocently try and see if he could spot a glimpse of her undies, then she would uncross them again and stretch them out in his direction. Was she flirting with him? His cock seemed to think so as each time it jerked into life with anticipation, before receding again when nothing was seen.
An hour or so later and with a couple of non-alcoholic lagers each inside them, Maxine made the suggestion of heading back as she had to finish off the sermon for the next morning's service. They got back into the car, but instead of heading home along the direct route by which they had come, she headed down the narrow lanes towards the coast. After about five minutes, they passed a few farm cottages and came to a gateway with a dirt track leading through it. She pulled in off the road and drove round to the right so the car was concealed from passing traffic before reversing up to the hedge. Roughly a hundred yards ahead beyond the fenced off cliff edge lay the English Channel with the French coastline clearly visible across the other side.
"I love it here," said Maxine, switching off the engine and relaxing back into her seat. "I often come up here for inspiration for my sermons. The sea is like life you know. Sometimes it is calm and you can see what is going to happen, sometimes it is rough and unpredictable."
"How true," said Peter. He too had been through some rough, unpredictable times in the past few years.
They said nothing for a while, listening to the sound of the waves breaking on the beach below them and watching the tankers and container ships passing up and down. It was quite breezy and the wind was blowing Maxine's hair across her face so that she had to keep pushing it aside. After a while, she turned to face Peter.
"You know, you're a very kind, patient, gentle man," she said to him. "I've been watching you with the younger ones. You have a way of putting them at ease, yet you're firm when you have to be without being too demanding or upsetting them."
Peter blushed at her compliments.
