by Ivan B
Peter was beginning to get tired when he was introduced to Cameron, who was the manager of one of the local building societies cum modern bank. Cameron came from South Africa and had that rich Boer accent. He didn’t look much like a bank manager as he had on a blue open necked short sleeve shirt and casual grey slacks. Peter recalled neck muscles the size of tree trunks and prominent biceps that Peter thought could probably crack a walnut in the flex of the elbow. But it was the eyes Peter remembered most as they seemed small and totally out of proportion with his flat-nosed wide face. As Peter expected, Cameron worked out in a gym every evening before going home from work. He was proud of his family, dedicated to his work, and fearsome in his belief that money earned by the church should be kept by the church. “You never know when a rainy day is going to come,” he said, “and if we give it away one day we’ll come to regret it.” He had no concept of the generosity of God, the joy of giving or supporting others to do the Lord’s work. He said that his non-work passion was cricket. He ran the local cricket team and had paid to have a South African sport’s channel on his cable TV. However, what really had unnerved Peter about Cameron was his easy denigration of the previous vicars. He especially singled out the Reverend Winder, who he considered to be a man of little fibre (‘had a nervous breakdown, I ask you where’s the man’s faith’) and daft ideas (‘I mean he wanted to have special children’s services and use the church for amateur dramatics – I ask you where’s the reverence to God in that?!’).
Roger Danby was next round the room. He was the council secretary and had been for a number of years. He was manager of (or did he own?) the local golf club. He has that red-faced disposition that comes from too much alcohol and got through two glasses of red wine to Peter’s half a glass of mineral water. His clothes were loud; brown sports jacket in a large check, yellow golfing trousers, and a gaudy purple shirt. He had a cravat, a purple handkerchief in his top pocket and a suave manner. Peter decided that he would not have bought a used car from this man. Roger talked about himself in an easy way, but then he was fuelled with plenty of alcohol. He had had three wives and was on the lookout for the fourth. He had recently sold a patch of marshland to a housing developer, but in the knowledge that they would never be able to build upon it. He lived in a flat on the top floor of the golf club with the teenage son from his last marriage, and he called Marjorie ‘that sexy bit of stuff’. Peter wondered what he was doing here as he seemed to have nothing in common with the others, but was obviously a member of the Major’s inner-circle. Peter also wondered about his faith. Every time Peter mentioned God, Roger shied away from talking on the subject usually by covering the change in conversation with a crass remark.
Finally Peter had ended up back with the Major and his wife. They played the perfect hosts asking Peter to talk about himself rather than say what they wanted of him. Peter did manage to elicit from Bessie that George (Peter was already thinking of him as ‘the Major’) had been a career guardsman and had fought in several conflicts. He had, however, left the army slightly before his tour of duty was up. Since leaving the army he had written a couple of books on military logistics and edited a compendium of army insignia. Bessie was less forthcoming about herself, however, and the Major offered no information on the subject.
Peter came back to the present moment, took in the view, sat back in his seat and sighed. He came to the conclusion that he could imagine this bunch in a game of ecclesiastical Cludo. He was wondering who would be bumped off with a candlestick in the vestry when Lord Felburgh’s battered old Ford drew up beside him. Tom got out of his car and opened the Land Rover’s passenger door and got in; the Rover swayed from side to side as the suspension adjusted to his massive frame.
“Though I’d better say something,” he said in his Northern accent.
“I’m not much one for fancy words, but I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I trust God and love St. Nathaniel’s, but, and it’s become a big but, there is something wrong with the church. It’s somehow lost God. I don’t mean that they don’t believe in him, or that their worship isn’t meaningful to them, I just think they’ve lost the meaning of God being part and parcel of the church. It’s in danger of becoming a country club for the upper middle classes while the lower classes are only offered associate membership. Frankly I have no idea how to change that and asked the Bishop to send someone who would.”
‘If you only knew,’ thought Peter.
“I want to make it clear that I will back you all the way,” he continued. “My support is probably not worth a lot, I’ve used the only real leverage I’ve got to get you here, but you have my total backing. Say you want the church burnt down and I’ll light the matches for you.”
“Thanks”, said Peter, trying to hide his surprise at the outburst. “But don’t expect swift action. Change is usually a slow process if it is going to stick. Forced changes works sometimes, but they usually build up too much resentment too quickly to be appreciated for what it brings”
Tom nodded.
“That was the problem with the Revd Winder; he tried to force through changes and ended up thinking that everybody was out to get him. It wasn’t true as there was a large body of the church behind him, but he somehow got it into his head that the world was against him and that was that. Poor chap ended up with a nervous breakdown.”
They were silent for a moment looking out at the dark sea.
“I guess you weren’t born around here?” Peter queried quietly.
“Accents a dead give-away,” chuckled Tom, “No I come from Newcastle, but been around here for the last twenty years or so.”
“Like it?”
“Love it, wouldn’t move anywhere else.”
“Not even back to Newcastle?”
“No, nothing for me there now”
Tom went quiet, and Peter waited, sensing that Tom would say more.
Eventually Tom put his head on one side. “It’s not that I didn’t enjoy Newcastle, I just ended up without a place there.”
Another pause as he recalled his past.
“I was born in a little village on the Western edge of Newcastle. Sounds strange, but it was like a village. There were about sixteen streets of closely terraced houses with small yards between and proper alleyways. I guess I stayed there all my childhood. Those sixteen streets had all I needed: all my friends, all my family, and my entire world. I didn’t think of myself as poor or working class or any other label. We didn’t go to church and the school was on the edge of my sixteen streets. Like most of my mates I left school at fifteen and started work in the foundry at the other edge of my sixteen streets.”
He shrugged.
“My mother died when I was sixteen. I am the only child so that left dad and me. The work was tough and the pay grim, but I lived at home and the only recreation I knew was the pub and books. Next to the school was a small library and I read my way around the shelves. I went there so often I got friendly with old Mrs Knott, who was the librarian, and we used to discuss books for hours on end. Her second passion was birds and the shelves were well stocked with bird identification manuals and suchlike.”
He suddenly smiled to himself.
“Old Mrs Knott was indeed old. She told me one day that her arthritis was going to make her give up driving, so she wouldn’t be able to do any more real bird watching. I’d just got my licence, courtesy of a foundry sponsored fork-lift driving course, and was proud of it. So I offered to drive her car for her. So every other weekend, come rain or shine, we went bird watching.”
His voice softened.
“Only she didn’t only show me birds, she opened up a whole new world for me. For six years we went bird watching and on the way home we would stop for a bite to eat at a hotel, or go to the cinema. A few times we went to the theatre, once to an opera. She died when I was twenty-four and I felt her loss deeply. She had no children and left everything to me, I could not believe it, and neither could my dad. Since I had her car I continued th
e bird watching as I had come to love it. Ever tried it?”
Peter replied, though he was reluctant to break Tom’s thread of conversation.
“Once, a friend of mine called Jane Sato - oddly enough she is minister of the Glumburgh benefice, but I only found that out when I got here - anyway she took me once. She spent the day pointing out birds to me I either couldn’t see, or that looked like all the others.”
Tom picked up his story,
“Well I love it, it relaxes me, and there is a thrill to see birds in their own habitat.”
His smile suddenly vanished.
“That turned out to be a terrible year for me. Mrs Knott died, my dad retired from the foundry only to die six months later. I was still recovering from that when the foundry announced it was closing. It was all very fast, they announced it on a Tuesday afternoon, and by the Friday evening I was laid off, sitting at home with no job, no family, and no prospects.”
He shook his head in recollection.
“Mrs Knott had been a Quaker and although we hadn’t talked about God much she had impressed on me that rather than running about like a headless chicken, it was best to pray in times of distress. I didn’t go to church, so I decided to go bird watching; that was the nearest thing to prayer I could manage. I’d read about Minsmere Heath in Suffolk, so I came down here and spent two glorious weeks in the sunshine, eating good food at the St Cedd’s guest-house and seeing more different birds than I thought possible in one place. One evening I idly picked up the local paper and in it there was an advert for a forklift truck driver. The advert was decidedly odd: it offered a place of work surrounded by the countryside, a basic wage, a caravan to live in, and a share of the profits. It gave an address of The Reject Farm, Felburgh. On my way home I found the farm; except it wasn’t a farm it was a scrap yard. I fell to talking with Lenny Jones the owner and after an hour he offered me the job. I was still in two minds whether to accept it or not when he introduced me to his daughter Angela. She did his office work and worked most of the machinery as well; but she could not drive a forklift, her eyesight was too bad. Don’t get me wrong Angela was no pin-up, she had biceps like a wrestler and lenses in her glasses like milk bottle bottoms, but there was something about her manner I liked. By the time I was twenty-eight I had worked for Lenny for three years and courted Angela for two of them. Eventually we got engaged and Lenny was the happiest man I’d ever seen.”
He suddenly took in a deep quavering sorrowful breath.
“Three months later Angie collapsed at work. The hospital diagnosed Myelogenous Leukaemia. Despite their best efforts she was dead three months after. We were both devastated; absolutely devastated. I don’t think we would have coped if it hadn’t been for Revd Sweeny.”
He took another heart felt breath.
“Angie asked to be buried in a churchyard even though none of us went to church; Revd Sweeny did the funeral. After that he used to call at the scrap-yard every Friday at lunchtime. At first I resented his visits, but Lenny needed someone to talk to about his daughter’s death and Todd listened – can you believe any parents would christen their child Todd Sweeny? After about six months I used to look forward to his visits as well. Todd was marvellous. He would listen to us whinging how unfair it was and moaning about God, but he never contradicted us. As time went by the discussions ranged over other subjects, including God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. But he never talked about the church, I tackled him about this once and he said that the church was ‘the imperfect manifestation of our communal desire to worship’. Six months before he retired Lenny and I were baptised and confirmed, I’ve gone to church ever since.”
He turned a pair of sorrow-filled eyes onto Peter.
“Soon after Todd retired Lenny died in his sleep. He could be a crafty old codger and shortly after Angie’s death he’d asked me to witness his signature. He knew I was in a hurry to go bird watching, so I rushed into his office and signed three times. After his death I found that he had passed the yard to me, and then had got me to sign a proxy form so that he could administrate it on my behalf. By doing that he avoided death duties, but for eight years I thought I worked for him, whereas I actually owned the yard! Then things started to go wrong at the church. We didn’t get a vicar for nearly three years and the current lot moved in on the Church Council and took it over. The rest you probably know, Revd Bygrave came and went in nine months; he had the sense to move on before it all got to him. Then a gap; followed by Revd Winder, poor soul had a nervous breakdown and his wife sensibly took him away from here. Next we had the total rascal Revd Jones; he announced he was going to emigrate two months after he arrived. He did the dirty on us; he knew when he accepted the post that he was going abroad, but never told the Bishop or us. The Revd Graye was next. I liked him; he was prepared to take the council head on, but then he just disappeared. In my wilder moments I wonder if he has gained a concrete overcoat and is now lying in the bottom of the harbour!”
He shrugged his massive shoulders.
“I could see it all going wrong but couldn’t seem to do anything about it. Then one day I went to an auction. I was after a collection of old Victorian postcards of birds of prey. One of the late items listed in the manifest for the day was the title of Lord Felburgh; it was the item immediately after the postcards. I didn’t get the postcards; they were suddenly withdrawn from the auction, so I was present when bidding was opened on the title. The auctioneer tried to start the bidding at £5000, but no one responded. In the end I bought the title for £250, the auctioneer believing that the item had no set reserve. It wasn’t until I received the paperwork that I realised along with the title went the patronage of St Nathaniel’s, Felburgh and St Alphege’s, Glumburgh plus the right to re-divert the river back to Felburgh Creek. Apparently it was a previous Lord Felburgh, who originally diverted it; he had an Act of Parliament passed to allow him to do so, but hedged his bets and the Act also allows him to divert it back. To this day the Act has never been repealed or modified so it still stands. The following week I noticed that the local press was full of adverts proclaiming the auctioning of the title, the auction house had somehow included it in the wrong manifest, but it was too late, it was mine. The auction house had egg all over their face and offered me £5000 to buy it back, they even threatened court action, but to no avail, the Lordship was legally mine and I stubbornly decided to hold onto it. All of a sudden I had become a member of a club that would never have allowed me to join. One month later I received an invitation from the Bishop to attend a church council meeting that was going to consider three new candidates for St Nathaniel’s. I went to the council meeting and listened to the debate. I was appalled, they were asking questions like ‘will his wife be a real vicar’s wife?’ ‘Will he keep things as they are?’ And ‘will he keep his expenses to the minimum?’ After an hour I blew my top and said that as patron I would not sanction anyone chosen by their criteria. I’m sad to admit I bullied them into allowing the Bishop to appoint without reference to them and said that if they agreed to this then so would I. They wheedled, tried backhanded dealing, and threatened to get planning permission for my yard rescinded, but I was seeing red. In the end they agreed and two weeks later the Bishop announced that he was appointing you.”
“I may not be quite what you expect,” Peter said gently.
Tom grinned.
“You’re not their choice that’s your greatest asset as far as I am concerned as you’re not beholden to them. Besides, if the Bishop thinks you’re the man for the job I trust his judgement.”
Peter didn’t really have a reply to that, so they sat in silence for a while. Eventually Tom gave a slow smile.
“You know Jane Sato at Glumburgh?”
Peter studied the far dark horizon.
“We went to university together, I read mathematics, and she was reading oriental history. I think we were both surprised a few years later when both of us were ordained. She was ordained a good few years before me, but it’s quit
e comforting to know that she’s just over the Parish boundary, and that she is my Rural Dean.”
“I’ve met her”, said Tom. “She’s not married.”
“No,” said Peter.
“Do you intend to pick up where you left off?” queried Tom.
Peter took a deep breath.
“No,” he replied carefully. “As they say we are just good friends. Very good friends in fact, but no I don’t want to take it beyond that, and neither would she.”
“Enough said,” Tom intoned seriously.
They sat in companionable silence for a while before they exchanged a few pleasantries and Tom left to drive off into the night.
When Peter got home the light on the Ansaphone was blinking. There was a message from Mark; he thought he had a cleaner for Peter. He said Peter could phone back any time before midnight, so Peter did, even though he would normally never call anyone after nine. Mark was recommending a girl called Jo, a friend of Lucy’s. When Peter had asked if she was reliable, Mark’s reply made him chuckle.
“We’d trust her to launder our underwear and not tell the world that I wore pink knickers.”
At least, he thought, someone in the church had a sense of humour.
Chapter 4
Close Encounters
After the so-called introduction to the council Peter decided on plan B; that is get out of the parish until he was actually licensed to take charge. By diligently searching the Internet he’d found a conference in York entitled ‘Dynamics of the Rural Church’ and decided to go, firstly because the content might actually be useful and secondly he didn’t want to be continually buttonholed by council members and hedged into a corner he didn’t want to be in.