by Jane Anstey
The liturgy washed gently over him as he led the first part of the service. The standard Easter lectionary readings followed, and the gradual hymn, and then he found himself in the pulpit, sermon notes spread out in front of him, and the Bible in his hand.
“I’m not going to read the set gospel for today,” he told them, as they stood waiting expectantly for him to begin. “Today we’re going to look at something a little different, in Matthew’s gospel.” And to the accompaniment of a rather surprised––even incredulous––silence, he read the parable of the two servants.
The congregation sat down in a higgledy piggledy fashion, shuffling as they made themselves comfortable. There weren’t so many in number as there had been at Christmas, he noticed, but it was still a reasonable congregation for a rural parish. He looked over the heads of those in the first few pews, happy to see Liz, Mike and Lorna sitting together towards the back of the nave. It was unusual, and he therefore felt doubly (or was it trebly) blessed, to see them all there supporting him. He wondered for a moment where the twins were, but didn’t allow himself to worry overmuch about it. They had clearly found some way of wriggling out of church attendance that Liz had thought acceptable.
“You may remember,” he began, “that at Christmas I preached about our debt to God for His creation, and also for his gift to us of Jesus to be our redeemer. I thought we might revisit that idea today from a different angle. Over the last few days, we’ve thought a lot about our sins being forgiven through Jesus’s death on the cross. In one of the versions of the Lord’s Prayer in the gospels, that word ‘sin’ is replaced by ‘debt.’ It says ‘forgive us our debts as we forgive the debts of others.’”
He looked around him, trying to pick up clues as to how the sermon was being received by his listeners. He glanced at his family in their row near the back. Liz, when she was present, was a particularly good barometer for the congregation’s reactions. Today she looked relaxed, smiling at him as he met her eye. Perhaps that was just because she was happy about her new job and the prospective move to Oxford. Lorna was clearly attending to his words, though what she made of them often surprised him when he talked to her afterwards; while Mike, fiddling surreptitiously with his phone, looked no more bored than he usually did on the rare occasions when he came to church.
“So what happens in this story I read a few moments ago? We have a steward—a high official—who owes his master a lot of money, and the master (very kindly, we may think) lets him off the debt. He writes it off…forgives him the obligation to repay, if you like. But what does the steward do? He goes off and finds a minor servant who owes him a lesser sum of money and demands that he pay it in full, in spite of that servant’s pleas for that same forgiveness the master has shown to the steward himself!”
There were a few nods in the congregation as people began to understand his drift. It did seem incredibly unfair and ungenerous of the steward not to forgive this debt when he himself had been forgiven a much larger one. Jeremy smiled to himself. The British sense of fair play was outraged. You could see it in their faces. Now for the main point, the sudden thrust to take them unawares.
“But wait––isn’t that what we all do? God forgives us our debts, or sins, but we refuse to forgive others the wrongs they’ve done us. How many times do we think or say about something that it’s ‘unforgivable’ or ‘too much to take’ or some similar words? It may be something someone has done, or failed to do, something they’ve said––often something quite trivial or unimportant that for some reason we’ve found very annoying or hurtful. So, we hold on to it, whatever the cost to the other person. Of course, it isn’t always easy to forgive people for the things they’ve done. Sometimes it takes time and effort, and sometimes we need to ask God to help us. But if we don’t make that effort, we are like the unjust servant who was forgiven a debt himself but wouldn’t pass that generosity on.”
He thought suddenly of Rose. I bet she’s having a lot of trouble forgiving Clive for what he’s done to her and Robert. He couldn’t help remembering Liz’s analysis of Rose’s life of self-sacrifice. He didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on someone else and make them feel they had to do the impossible. Something encouraging was required now, to leave them with.
“Just remember,” he told them, “that in actual fact we don’t owe anything to God––not even the five farthings of the Oranges and Lemons song. God has forgiven us everything; that’s why we need to forgive those around us and let the debts go.”
~ * ~
When Robert and the twins arrived at Sundials, they disappeared at once into Robert’s playroom to enjoy the delights of the electric railway. Rose did not expect to see them again until lunchtime. She went out into the garden and half-heartedly began to cut the wispy brownish grass that had grown up around one or two shrubs. The task seemed thankless and uninspiring. The weather wasn’t very warm, and she only ever gardened because it had to be done, not because she enjoyed it particularly. It was a pity she couldn’t afford to keep the gardener on, now that Clive had left. But she knew she must guard every penny if she and Robert were not to end up in penury.
There was no help for it, she reflected, as she picked up the dry grass tops and put them in the wheelbarrow. Whatever Robert felt about leaving his home, she couldn’t possibly stay there for long without Clive’s income. They would have to find a smaller house with a smaller garden that she could manage herself. Surely something would come up in the school’s catchment area if she looked for long enough? Her task would be made more difficult because the house she bought would have to be in the village itself: she couldn’t drive, and the school bus from Two Marks and Southover had been done away with years ago. She couldn’t possibly move Robert from the school where he felt secure and happy―not at the moment.
Oh, dear, she thought. I can see there are going to be a lot of decisions for me to make and problems to overcome. And that isn’t what I’m good at. She straightened up, looking despondently around the untidy garden. But then there isn’t much I am good at.
She berated herself silently for this defeatism. Hadn’t she learned anything from all the events of the past six months? Clive had never valued her, and this, it seemed, had fatally damaged her self-esteem. For years, she had lived in the shadow of his contempt and taken his estimation of her as her own. But she had believed all that had changed after the St Martin’s ball and the beginning of her relationship with Simon. True, in the end she had felt, for Robert’s sake, that she had to turn her back on Simon and what he had offered her. But even so, and whatever happened in the future, she knew Simon had found her worth loving. He had wanted her to live with him, had believed that she was capable of being more than the inadequate drudge she had become as Clive’s wife.
She wondered again whether he knew that Clive had left her. Surely he would contact her if he knew—suggest that they meet and talk? She didn’t feel she could contact him. It might seem she was just assuming everything could go back to where it had been before she ended their friendship. And she knew it couldn’t. Simon had decided to move on––quite literally. He was packing to go. But still she couldn’t help hoping that things might work out right between them. Somehow something might happen to make it possible. Once she would have prayed for it, begged God to make it happen. But there were too many things she’d prayed for that had been denied her, and she no longer believed there was any help outside her own actions. But without belief in God, hope was the most difficult thing of all.
Feeling rather despondent, she put away her gardening tools and went inside for a cup of coffee. She had boiled the kettle and was spooning coffee granules into a mug when she heard the front door open. She had left it unlocked when she went outside––there was little need for security precautions in St Martin-on-the-Hill. But people usually rang the doorbell, even if they knew the door was probably open. It was a matter of good manners that most of the villagers took for granted. So who could have come in without doing so?
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“Hallo, Rose,” said a familiar but most unwelcome voice.
“Clive! What on earth are you doing here?”
“Things didn’t turn out quite how I expected,” he explained.
“You haven’t come back?” she asked in horror.
He looked slightly taken aback by this forthright attitude. “That’s not very friendly, Rose. I’m just here for a couple of days, that’s all. I’ve had to change some of the arrangements I made, so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I stayed while I sorted everything out.” The words “it is my house” seemed to hover in the air between them, but Clive obviously thought better of saying them out loud.
Rose’s heart sank like a stone. Just as she had thought things were getting settled, just as she’d begun to imagine a future with Simon, however rose-tinted her spectacles might be over that––Clive had to turn up, like the proverbial bad penny. A very bad penny.
Rebellion rose in her like vomit in the gorge, violent and irresistible.
“I do mind,” she told him furiously. “I mind very much. You are not coming back here, Clive. Not now, not any time. You made your choice––and a very clear one it was. You left us, and we’re making our lives without you now. It’s too late to think again about it. Much too late.”
“I thought Robert—”
“Robert is fine without you,” she flung at him. She shut the kitchen door to prevent Robert from hearing his father’s voice. The playroom was at the other end of the house, but just the same, she was taking no risks. “Robert and I are both coming to terms with your leaving. What he doesn’t need is more uncertainty and change.”
I need to remember that when I’m thinking about contacting Simon, I suppose. The sudden thought stopped her in her tracks for a moment.
“But––”
“No buts,” she insisted, rallying. “I don’t want you back, even temporarily, Clive. If you’ve changed your mind about your future, that’s your problem.”
“Just for a night or two,” he begged. “Rose––I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Rose gasped. “That’s nonsense. You can go to Sarah’s if you actually need a place to stay for a few nights. Call her first and ask, though. She may have a boyfriend staying with her.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he accused her. “Having the whip hand over me, when it’s my money that paid for this house, this furniture––even your clothes.”
“I only wish I were enjoying it,” she replied, feeling sad rather than triumphant as she looked at his white face. “Do you really think I’m that keen to own things you paid for, Clive?”
She had never seen him so uncertain of his own power to make what he wanted happen, even though he was masking the uncertainty with anger. For a moment, she felt intensely sorry for him. But probably that was what he wanted. She couldn’t let him manipulate her into starting the whole sorry charade again.
“You made this house over to me, Clive, yes, but you also left me with all your responsibilities. I didn’t ask you to do that. You wanted to embrace poverty and all the rest of it. If that’s proved less wonderful than you thought it would be, that’s just too bad. I’ve told you, I don’t want you back. Now go away.”
She opened the front door, and waited for him to leave. He saw the determination in her face and in it his defeat. She watched the fight go out of him. His shoulders sagged and he slunk out of the house and down the drive to his car. She didn’t wait to see him drive away but closed the door and leaned against it. It was the first time she had ever crossed swords with her husband and been the victor. How much I’ve changed, she thought. Me, telling Clive to go. Whatever next?
~ * ~
Robert and the twins, unaware of the drama being played out at the front of the house, watched the little trains buzzing cheerfully round the circular track.
“We’re moving to Oxford,” Bethan told Robert. “Mum’s got a new job there.”
“It’s a terrific secret,” Chris reminded her quickly. “You mustn’t tell anyone. Mike told us in confidence.”
“Robert won’t tell anyone else, will you, Rob?”
Robert looked rather anxious. “Does that mean you won’t be coming to school anymore?”
“We will for a few weeks,” said Chris. “Most of next term, maybe. Mum starts work at the college in Oxford next term, but Mike has exams, so we can’t go with her yet. Anyway, Dad will go on being rector here for a bit, I expect. He has to talk to the bishop about it before he can leave, so we’ll stay here with him.”
“In September, we’re all going to new schools,” Bethan told him. She sounded quite unworried about it. Wherever Chris was, she would be all right. They carried their own mutual support unit around with them.
Robert thought about this. “It’s going to be lonely without you,” he confided, in rather a small voice. He knew Darren would dump him without thinking twice if Chris wasn’t there, and none of the other boys took any notice of him, except to tease him occasionally.
“Mr Hellyer is going to move to Oxford, too,” Chris told him. “Is that cool or what?”
“Brilliant!” agreed Bethan.
“Mr Hellyer is a super-hero,” said Chris. “He saved Mike from a wicked monk.”
Robert opened his eyes wide as they told him (under further pledges of secrecy) of Mike’s adventure at Whitehill.
“I like Mr Hellyer,” he said, when they had finished. “He saved my life, too, once. I didn’t know he was leaving.”
It was intensely frustrating that parental prohibition had prevented him getting to know the teacher better. As far as he could see, children had no power to influence anything that adults chose to do. Now it seemed all his friends were going away at the same time. And to the same place.
“Oxford sounds really brill,” said Chris. “We’re going up next week to see it. We don’t want you to be left behind,” he added, getting to grips with the new situation. “Why don’t you ask your Mum if you can come, too? Then you could go to school with us in Oxford.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” replied Robert, shaking his head dubiously. “I couldn’t leave her behind, could I, even if your Mum would let me stay with you? She’d need a job or something. She isn’t much good at getting jobs,” he added.
“We must be able to think of some way of taking you with us.”
“And Mummy,” insisted Robert, slightly anxiously.
“Well of course.” Chris was shocked at this obtuseness. “You wouldn’t want to go without her, would you? You said so. I’m sure she could find a job if she tried.”
There was a pause while Robert tried to think of a job his mother might be able to do.
“What about your Dad?” suggested Bethan. “Couldn’t you get him to find a job in Oxford? Or perhaps he could go to London on the train from Oxford every day, instead of from Winchester.”
“My Dad’s gone to live in a monastery,” Robert told them, his voice not quite steady. “He isn’t ever coming back home.”
Chris stared at him. “OMG!” he said. “I’ve never known anybody who became a monk. Except that mad wicked monk at Whitehill who tried to hold Mike hostage.” He shuddered.
“I don’t think people leave home to be monks very often,” Robert explained. Clive’s unusual behaviour didn’t seem to him to merit admiration.
“I hope he isn’t going to be like that monk who attacked Mike,” exclaimed Bethan.
“Well, if your dad’s gone to live in a monastery, he won’t be able to get a job in Oxford. So that idea’s no good,” Chris pointed out, steering the conversation back to the main point.
There was another silence. Then Robert said, rather tentatively: “Mummy’s very good friends with Mr Hellyer––or she used to be.”
Chris’s eyes opened wide. “Is she? That makes things a lot easier, doesn’t it?”
“It does?” asked Robert, bewildered but hopeful.
“Of course it does, stupid. This is what we’ve got to do.�
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Robert listened rather doubtfully to Chris’s idea. “Well,” he sighed at last. “I’ll try. But I don’t know whether it will work.”
“Don’t be a twat, Rob,” said Chris in a bracing tone. “It can’t hurt to try.”
Bethan patted Robert on the shoulder. “Just do your best,” she encouraged him. “We’ll get Mum to ring your mum about a sleepover next week. Then we’ll see what happens.”
“It’ll all work out fine,” Chris told him, confident in the efficacy of his plan. “You’ll see. You do what we agreed, and it’ll be okay.”
Robert nodded, but he was still doubtful. Like his mother, he had very little confidence in his ability to carry out anything complex, however well-arranged beforehand. This plan of Chris’s sounded too daring for him. Still, the twins were depending on his cooperation, and they were only trying to help him.
“I’ll do my best,” he promised.
Thirty-three
At the rectory, the following week was chaos, as Liz had predicted, but it was a happy chaos on the whole. The children had taken remarkably well to the idea of moving to Oxford, especially after they’d gone up for the day to see the city. Now she had to concentrate on getting ready to move herself on a weekly commute and prepare lessons and work programmes for the coming term in her new job. It was a whirlwind of an operation in a period of three weeks, but it had to be done, and she was so excited about the job that the pressure and the chaos didn’t trouble her. She went about the house singing, causing everyone who encountered her to smile.
If she had been less preoccupied with the immediate future, she might have thought to question why the twins seemed so keen to have Robert for a sleepover that week. When they first mooted this, she had resisted them, saying it was ridiculous to expect her to have their friends to stay when she had her hands full sorting everything out for next term. But they persisted, finding all kinds of arguments to persuade her, starting with the fact that this was probably the last time Robert would be able to come for a sleepover.