by John Moore
Mr Chorlton was in a mood of deep depression, which was very rare with him. He had recently retired from his job as Assistant Master at the preparatory school near Elmbury where he had taught the Classics for nearly forty years. He hated giving it up; but the old Head Master, who had been as a brother to him, had died, and the school had been sold to a young man, who, as young men will, at once began to make radical changes. ‘I knew he was a mathematician as soon as I looked at him,’ said Mr Chorlton, ‘and I knew that he would have no respect for tradition in consequence.’ He substituted rugger for soccer in the Easter term and the English Hymnal for Hymns A and M in chapel. He revised the old-fashioned syllabus and introduced new subjects such as Physiology and Modelling. (‘As if’ said Mr Chorlton, ‘a country boy were incapable of discovering for himself about the sex-life of butterflies and as if he had to be taught to play with plasticine!’) However, these reforms did not seriously affect Mr Chorlton himself and he carried on contentedly enough with his teaching of the Classics until one day the Head Master decided that the school must adopt the New Pronunciation of Latin.
‘This was too much,’ he told me afterwards. ‘I had no choice but to resign.’ And indeed it was impossible to conceive that Mr Chorlton, who had begun the spring term every year for forty years with Arma virumque cano … should adapt himself to saying Weerumque.
‘I should have had to pronounce the accusative plural of causa,’ he said, ‘as if I were referring to the behind of a cow. I should have had to tell my boys that Julius Caesar, a hooknosed tough, reported his conquest of England in a sort of sissy’s squeak of Wayny, weedy, weeky! No: I am too old for such nonsense. I had to go.’
But now that the holidays were over and yet he remained on holiday, he was restless and lonely and the years of his retirement, which he had often looked forward to, stretched in front of him empty and grey. Certainly he had plenty of hobbies to amuse him: his entomology, reading, cricket, wine; but there remained a gap in his life unfilled and he missed, I think, the things which old schoolmasters so absurdly miss, the scamper of feet in the corridor, the chatter of young voices, the rows of dull or lively faces which never change nor grow old although the piece of Unseen through which Williams Major blindly fumbles his way is the same passage which his father, then Williams Minor, clumsily stumbled through in the same form-room twenty-five years ago.
The Groupers Arrive
Brensham had put up with the Rector’s back-slappings, shoulder-thumpings, and schoolboyish endearments for about three months when he held his first ‘house-party’ and let loose upon the astonished village some two-score members of the Oxford Group.
There wasn’t room for them all at the Rectory, so the overflows were boarded out at the Horse Narrow, the Trumpet, and the Adam and Eve. The landlords of all three had had a bad winter, and they were very glad to make a few pounds by letting their rooms so early in the season. ‘Whatever you says about the Parson,’ said Joe Trentfield, ‘he’s the first parson I’ve ever heard of who was good for trade.’ However, I don’t think even Joe bargained for the remarkable assortment of visitors who arrived at the Horse Narrow on Friday evening. He didn’t know much about the Oxford Group, but he had vaguely expected some sort of grave ecclesiastical conclave: if not of clergymen, at any rate lay brothers or foreign missioners or the kind of prim elderly ladies who organize Scripture readings or arrange for copies of the Bible to be placed in the bedrooms of commercial hotels. He was somewhat taken aback, therefore, when he discovered that his quota of guests included two bouncing gym-mistresses, a Lett who spoke little English and a Lithuanian who spoke none, and a middle-aged American lady who talked about Gard with ease and assurance but rather in the way she would speak of a President of the United States.
After closing-time Joe took a walk up the village street and called on Jim Hartley at the Adam and Eve.
‘What kind of queer fish has the Rector sent you?’ he inquired.
‘Rum ‘uns,’ said Jim. ‘They may be very religious but they’re certainly rum. I’ve got a Frog and a couple of Huns, and a pretty little piece who looks like an actress, and one of those huntin’ shootin’ women, and - Joe—’
‘Yes, Jim?’
‘I’ve got a bloke with his head close-cropped who always talks out of the corner of his mouth. What’d you say about him?’
‘I’d say he’d probably just come out of jug.’
‘And I should say,’ said Jim with awe, ‘that it won’t be very long before he goes back there!’
Next day, as it happened, we played the first cricket-match of the season; and after the match we went to the Adam and Eve for our usual game of darts. The bar, however, was so full of the Rector’s guests that there was no room for us, and we went on to the Horse Narrow. Joe’s bar was crowded too, but we decided to make the best of a bad job and stay there. Before we knew what was happening we found ourselves involved in conversation with a number of hearty young men and women who told us that their Christian names were Alan, Mabel, Betty, Ernest, Sigrid and Harry, and asked us to tell them ours.
Within a few moments Mr Chorlton had been captured by an attractive-looking if slightly hysterical girl who discoursed to him on the subject of Absolute Truth; another girl was talking earnestly to Alfie upon some matter which seemed to cause him the profoundest embarrassment; Sir Gerald listened courteously to a blond youth who told him gravely: ‘I assure you, sir, even my lawn-tennis has improved since I brought religion into it.’ As for me, I was cornered by the Lett whose English appeared to be limited to a single and ambiguous phrase. ‘Yes, by damn, no!’ he shouted enthusiastically, in answer to every question; ‘No, by damn, yes?’ he would interrogate me by way of variation if for a few moments through sheer exhaustion I fell silent.
There was such a great deal of chatter, so much high shrill laughter, so many boisterous cries of ‘Old Boy’ and ‘Dear Fellow’ that you could hardly hear Mimi’s strumming upon the piano at the other end of the room. When Joe passed me a beer across the counter he whispered:
‘I likes to see ’em enjoying ’emselves, but ‘tis a wonder to me how they does it, on ginger-pop.’
I now perceived that none of the Groupers drank beer, but consumed numerous fizzy drinks such as lemonade, Cydrax, or raspberry squash.
‘Tell me,’ I said to the Lett, ‘are you all teetotallers?’
He clicked his heels and bowed.
‘Yes, by damn, no!’ he yelled.
Over his shoulder the blond tennis-player spoke up to inform me:
‘It’s not a matter of principle, old fellow; nothing priggish or Blue Ribbon about it; but if God tells you, in your QT, to give it up, well, you give it up, that’s all. He told me to stop smoking, too.’
‘QT?’ I asked, bewildered. ‘What’s QT?’
‘Quiet Times, old man. After breakfast.’
‘It’s like being on the transatlantic telephone,’ said the American lady, ‘but you never get a wrong number from Gard.’
I glanced at Billy Butcher, who was standing next to her and he gave me a slow wink. He was in one of his clowning moods and I watched him put on his rather vacuous Andrew-Aguecheek look before he announced innocently:
‘Really, I ought to try it. I’m the most frightful hopeless drunkard that ever was.’
They gathered round him at once like wasps round a pot of honey.
‘No, honestly, you aren’t really?’ said the attractive girl who had been talking to Mr Chorlton.
‘Honestly, I’m afraid, incurable,’ said Billy. ‘No medicine in the world can do me good.’ (I thought: by God, that’s true, and I wonder if he really knows it.)
‘But our medicine,’ said the American lady, her eyes shining, ‘is not of this world at all, it comes from Gard.’
I edged away, and left Billy to his fooling. It was his own business, I thought, if he liked to pull their legs; but I found it, somehow, a trifle embarrassing and I was glad of the opportunity to slip away into a corner and talk to Davi
d Groves about the plague of rabbits in the railway-cutting. The Groupers, no doubt, were just silly and adolescent and probably harmless; but they were alien to Brensham and to the Horse Narrow and our pub wasn’t the same, our cricket-evening was utterly spoiled, because of their presence. Almost everybody, except the Groupers, looked a bit uncomfortable and constrained; and only Sammy was entirely happy, for he had got hold of the Lithuanian who couldn’t speak English and was telling him, without the least risk of interruption, the story of the geisha girl at Yokohama.
The Garden-party
On Sunday afternoon the Rector and his wife gave a garden-party on the Rectory lawn to which the whole village was bidden. Mr Chorlton and I went butterfly-hunting instead, and spent a pleasant day on the hill; we had an account of the party later from Billy Butcher, who attended it. The tea, we learned, had been followed by a meeting, at which the Groupers made speeches and talked very informally about God and about their sins. The girl who had been an actress spoke on the subject of Absolute Purity and the man who looked like a convict on Absolute Honesty; a young woman called Mabel described Absolute Truth. (‘Yes,’ said Mr Chorlton, ‘I listened to her last night. She is uneducated, empty-headed and shallow; but, bless her heart, she believes she has discovered what all the philosophers from Socrates downwards have searched for in vain!’) Then the blond young man had electrified the meeting by declaring: ‘If you ask me who is the best tennis coach in the world I shall answer quite simply: God.’ He was followed by a Bright Young Thing who warned her audience that her speech would be a teeny-weeny bit shame-making. It was. ‘And then,’ said Billy, ‘I said a few words—’
‘Billy!’ exclaimed Mr Chorlton. “Don’t you think you’re playing a rather silly game?’
‘It gave them pleasure,’ said Billy, ‘and I enjoyed it. I can’t see that it did any harm.’
‘What did you tell them?’ I asked.
‘I described to them in great detail the sensations of a man suffering from the willies.’
Mr Chorlton said gravely:
‘Have you ever had them, Billy?’
A cloud passed briefly over Billy’s face.
‘Twice,’ he said. ‘Once in West Africa and once in the ship coming home. They’re hell.’
I changed the subject, ‘Who was at the party besides yourself?’ I said. ‘From the village, I mean.’
‘Sammy. Briggs. The Trentfields. Mrs Hartley and Jim. Sir Gerald and his wife. Lord Orris and Jane. Alfie. Mrs Doan and Sally and a few more.’
‘Any converts?’ I said.
Billy looked curiously embarrassed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I - er - don’t know exactly. I suppose there might have been one or two.’
The Converts
It seems astonishing, in retrospect, that this transatlantic hysteria should have had any effect upon Brensham at all other than to shock it, for Brensham is old and wise, its roots go deep into English history, and its religious tradition is tolerant, easy-going, and unfervent. Revivalists of various persuasions have passed through our countryside at various times, and provoked no more response than a shrug of the shoulders or a raised eyebrow for all their hymn-singing and their oratory. However, the Rector and his Oxford Groupers did succeed in making a few converts at first and they certainly ‘changed’ one or two lives, though they may not necessarily have changed them for the better.
The first of these converts were Mrs Doan and Sally; and they were converted, not by the Groupers, but by Billy. His foolish leg-pull, begun with a jest and carried on in a mood of savage clowning, had a consequence which he certainly had not anticipated. Mrs Doan, silly but kind, who had mothered him for years as if he had been her own wayward son, naturally concluded that there must be something good in any religion or revival which held out the prospect of curing him of drinking. As for Sally, she was young, she was infatuated, and she was feather-brained; she longed, as all young people do, for a Cause, and here was a Cause which she could identify with Love. After Billy’s speech, Sally had rushed up to him and cried:
‘Oh Billy, I’m - so - so pleased.’
‘So …so happy about it, Billy dear,’ echoed her mother. And, to make his shame and embarrassment all the greater, they had kissed him, while the triumphant Groupers, moved beyond measure, could scarcely forbear to cheer.
Subsequent conversions were less emotional and, perhaps, somewhat less complete. Sir Gerald Hope-Kingley, for instance, who rather hesitantly and for a very short time dabbled about on the fringe of the Group without becoming very deeply involved in it, did so because he was a Potterer - his Alpines had failed again - and no opportunity for Pottering came amiss to him. (In the same spirit he had dabbled in Buddhism, Christian Science, and Spiritualism, and at one time, he told us, had practically made up his mind to become a Moslem.) Jeremy Briggs also joined the Group, because he thought, at first, that it was Democratic; and also because it gave him the opportunity to make political speeches thinly disguised as affirmations of religious faith. And Mrs Hartley joined it for the simple reason that she was a bit of a snob and it delighted her to address the gentry, even if most of them were foreign gentry, by their Christian names.
But other of the villagers, for various reasons, disliked the activities of the Rector and his friends, and were shocked, embarrassed, or merely amused by them. Joe Trentfield, who held the soldierly view that Niggers began at Calais, disapproved of the presence in Brensham of so many foreigners. ‘Mark my words,’ he said, ‘there’s something behind it’ - and when we asked him what was behind it he whispered darkly: ‘Religion has been used as cover for spying before now.’ Alfie Perks, who had only been to church about three times in his life, was scandalized by the Groupers’ public confession of their sins, and declared firmly: ‘There’s only one religion for me, and that’s Church of England.’ Lord Orris, too gentle and too courteous to blame or criticize, nevertheless when asked his opinion would sigh and shake his head. Jane, who declared herself an atheist but secretly, I think, longed for a Faith she could fight and die for, failed to find one in the Oxford Group; she thought its members were ‘soft, stupid and vulgar’. Old David Groves, being asked by the Rector to call him by his Christian name, was so upset that he fled from the meeting. The Colonel who had been a regular churchgoer in the old Rector’s day, was so profoundly shocked by the whole business that he exclaimed fiercely: ‘I shall never enter the church again’ - and then, with one of his sudden smiles, added an amendment: ‘Until they carry me there!’
No more Cakes and Ale
Throughout the summer the Groupers came and went, mainly at weekends, and for the most part Brensham shrugged its shoulders and regarded them as a small recurrent nuisance like the buzzing of flies. Mrs Hartley, however, continued to make Jim’s life a misery because she had received Guidance to the effect that he was getting too fat, and had obediently cut down his meals to two a day, while denying him the customary snacks and trifles such as chitterlings and sardines on toast with which she had stayed his pangs of hunger at mid-morning. For breakfast she allowed him two small pieces of Ryvita without any butter.
The Group lost one adherent, for Sir Gerald bought a book on the Pyramids which persuaded him that there was a great deal of truth in the teaching of the British Israelites; and they gained one, for Sammy Hunt suddenly and quite unaccountably joined them. This distressed us, for we were very fond of Sammy in spite of the fact that his tales grew longer and his determination to tell them became more unshakable as time went by. But as Joe Trentfield said wisely: ‘Sailors are great ones for queer religions. ’Tis the loneliness in the ships as sets ‘em thinking; and they catches funny ideas from folks like the heathen Chinee. Once a sailor always a sailor; so Sammy’s susceptible to religion as some people are to colds. He’ll get over it soon.’ And indeed, Sammy didn’t seem at all happy in his new faith. In contrast to the scrubbed and smiling laces ol the Groupers his was as long as a wet week; and when he encountered us he gave us a small sideways’ look and hurried on,
like a dog that has been naughty.
Mr Wilkinson, meanwhile, continued to rush about the village patting people on the back; and when you addressed him as ‘Rector’ he would invite you, with a toothy smile: ‘Call me Thistle.’ Brensham accepted his invitation and called him Thistle henceforth; but not to his face.
The Groupers, of course, would have addressed the Holy Apostles themselves by their Christian names; or rather they would have abbreviated them and called Saint Peter Pete. So you heard Sally Doan saying of the Rector: ‘I think Cecil’s so wonderful’ and you learned for the first time the unexpected Christian name of Sally’s mother: which was Dolores.
These two, I think, enjoyed themselves more than anybody else in Brensham during that strange uncomfortable summer; for all women delight in reforming the men they love, and they were completely convinced that Billy, if not already cured, was well on the way towards reformation. It would be untrue to say that the Group had ‘changed’ Billy; nothing could do that; but with the aid of the Deans it had nearly succeeded in breaking him. He crept about wretchedly, frightened of his old friends and terrified of the Doans, loathing the attentive Groupers, loathing himself, and yet perhaps half attracted as well as half repelled by the promise of hearts-ease which the new faith seemed to offer him.