by Stibbe, Nina
I wrote to the vicar with my sister’s blessing.
Dear Reverend Derek,
You may have noticed that I have not been attending church. The reason for this is that I’m questioning organized religion and can’t stand all the idiots in church. I still pray but privately in my nightie at bedtime.
Added to which, I’ve heard that due to my divorced status I need the Bishop’s permission to take communion and that has made me feel quite rejected. It’s imperative that I evaluate God in my life. If you have time one day, please could you drop in to openly and naturally discuss the God and church aspect with me.
All good wishes,
Elizabeth Vogel
And delivered it by hand. The vicar knocked on the door the very next day and was invited in for a cup of coffee. He took it milky.
I saw this as a sign of his keenness on our mother, though my sister thought not. She explained that vicars always rush round to anyone showing even the slightest flicker of interest in God these days before they change their mind again. She, my sister, had begun to lose her faith around that time, having just reached the age of doubting everything. And according to her, half the world was teetering on the brink of disbelief because of the Beatles and the kind of pills our mother was taking.
Whatever the reason for his speedy response, the vicar appeared and, to our amazement, they seemed to have sex that very day. And from the noises the reverend made he either really liked it or it was physical agony. This began an affair that lasted thirteen days. He never stayed longer than an hour and always insisted on talking about spirituality and so forth and she’d always drift off during that part. We didn’t always see him because we might be at school, but I kept tabs on it via asking our mother plenty of questions.
‘Did that vicar come round?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long was he here?’
‘An hour-ish.’
‘That’s not long for discussing God.’
‘He’s got the rest of his flock to see to.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘God mostly.’
‘Was it nice, having him to visit?’
‘Not particularly.’
Soon the vicar’s wife called and she and our mother had a heated discussion which included the vicar’s wife saying, ‘Hang on just a minute, you invited him.’
To which our mother responded, ‘No, I did not.’
Which was both true and yet not true, and my sister and I saw the flaw in our system. We cringed and looked at each other, expecting the vicar’s wife to produce the letter I’d written to her husband, but she didn’t, which was a huge relief and we both thanked God.
And the vicar didn’t come round again. He’d been a waste of time and our mother hadn’t taken to him. But, we had to admit, there’d been no play-writing at all during the fortnight of sex with the reverend. A short act appeared afterwards, though.
Rev. Hope: Why do you want to pray alone and not with the rest of the flock?
Adele: The rest of the flock are idiots.
Rev. Hope: I know what you mean.
Adele: I prefer to speak to God alone, in private.
Rev. Hope: Perhaps we could pray together.
Adele: Will God mind?
Rev. Hope: I’m sure he looks away when necessary.
5
Xmas was a busy time in Flatstone and entailed much more than the advent candle and clove-studded oranges of previous years. Our school became a hive of Xmas industry. There was the constant rehearsing of the school nativity play (Mary Had a Baby). And Xmas decorations to be designed, created and displayed around school. Xmas presents to be made for much-loved mothers and hard-working fathers. Turkey and pudding to be eaten at the Xmas lunch, letters to be written to Father Xmas – who apparently had an elf waiting to take them to the village hall ready for him to read at the Xmas Fayre. And then the special Xmas assembly where the headmistress would remind us that Xmas was not about presents, turkey or Father Xmas, but about Jesus.
The headmistress was neurotic when it came to Jesus, especially at Xmas when she worried that he might be ignored or eclipsed by other nicer features of Xmas. So much so that she got the vicar in. Reverend Derek appeared one morning at school assembly and spoke to us on the subject. We sang ‘Away in a Manger’ quite vigorously and then the vicar produced a sign with the word ‘Xmas’ written across it in huge capital letters.
‘X,’ he said, ‘X-mas. How many of you write Christ-mas like this?’ he asked, smiling, tapping the word.
A good few children put their hand up. I didn’t put mine up, sensing a trick.
The vicar scanned the hall. His smile fell and his face turned stony. ‘More than half of you,’ he said.
He told us it was lazy and insulting. ‘Do you not see how lazy and insulting it is, just to avoid writing four letters?’
He didn’t know when it had started, but guessed it had come over from America, probably with rock ’n’ roll. Whatever, Xmas was creeping in more and more and becoming almost normal. He himself had received two or three Xmas cards with ‘Happy Xmas’ scrawled inside and it saddened him to think that people he knew would insult Christ like that.
‘Because, let’s think about this, children, when you write X-mas, what’s the word you’re not writing … hmm?’
He gazed around the hall. Only about two children had their hands up this time and the vicar pointed to a boy called Daniel.
‘You, what is it we’re not writing when we write X-mas?’
‘Christmas?’ said the boy. And everyone giggled.
‘Christ,’ said the vicar, ‘we’re not writing Christ.’
There was something quite infuriating about that vicar standing up on stage tricking us into admitting we wrote Xmas and then saying what a lazy and insulting thing it was, when, for some of us, it was simply a way of not having to worry about how to spell it – my friend Melody, for instance, was usually a good speller but she often forgot the h, and even Little Jack, who was ‘a precocious speller’ according to his teacher, often missed out the t. The problem was, it was a seasonal word and therefore we hadn’t had the all-year-round practice that you have with non-seasonal words such as Accommodation or Squirrel.
And there was that idiotic little vicar saying it was an insult to Jesus to write Xmas. I didn’t think it an insult, I thought it common sense and wondered why the vicar didn’t just talk about something ordinary like the miracle of his birth, instead of moaning about him being insulted in an abbreviation.
I have written Xmas ever since. And I try to never write the word fully out. I even say Exmas. Not to insult Jesus, but in memory of that idiotic little vicar.
Xmas Xmas Xmas.
And if I’m honest, Father Xmas had become more important to me than Jesus by then. It had nothing to do with the writing of Xmas and even if I’d written it as Christmas I’d still have been more interested in Father Xmas. The thing was, on Xmas Eve in 1968, when our parents were still married to each other and we lived in town, I’d heard him arrive in his sleigh on our rooftop.
A loud thump woke me as the sleigh landed and I heard the tinkle of sleigh bells as the reindeer tossed their impatient heads. And nothing since has quite matched the joy of hearing his boots clomping across the tiles to the chimney. I didn’t expect to see him, or even want to see him, but hearing him was the most magical thing. Thinking about it now, I suppose if I’d heard Jesus – as opposed to Father Xmas – arrive on or near my house, I’d have been quite excited too, but it wasn’t Jesus, it was Father Xmas and personal encounters are powerful things, as my sister knew from locking eyes with a policeman in a traffic jam and overly admiring the police for some while after.
The next morning (Xmas morning 1968) – sitting in our parents’ four-poster – I spoke about hearing the sleigh.
‘I heard Father Xmas land on the roof last night,’ I said, mainly to our mother.
‘You don’t look very happy about it,’ she said.
‘I’m just worried it’s the best thing that’ll ever happen to me,’ I said, ‘and now it’s happened.’
‘It won’t be the best thing, I promise,’ she said.
‘But what could be better?’ I asked.
And our biological father came in and plonked a red and white box on the bed. And before we could begin unwrapping it, a puppy popped its head out (it was Debbie) and I suppose that should have been better and it was, in a way, but also it wasn’t.
That year, our first Xmas in the village, there was a bit of controversy about who should be Father Xmas at the Xmas Fayre. For the previous two years it had been Mr Longlady, the beekeeping accountant, him having stepped in for Mr Lomax, the Liberal candidate, who’d been incapacitated with an ailment that meant he couldn’t sit on a church hall chair for sufficiently long to enact the role. But now, this year, Mr Lomax was ready to resume the position and had agreed a comeback with the vicar and negotiated a better chair.
My family didn’t feel like attending the village Xmas Fayre and queuing for an orange from the Liberal candidate, partly because he’d seen an excerpt of our mother’s play and partly because we had vivid memories of the glorious grotto at Fenwick’s of Leicester from our time of being town-dwellers. Fenwick’s being marvellous at Xmas. Mainly because of the amazing window displays and evocative Xmas music floating around. Also, the opportunity to try out eau de cologne and see the neatly folded woollen scarves on the way through to Santa. And then it actually being the real thing – as opposed to the Liberal candidate with a sore throat in a beard.
So, after a family conflab, we decided to go to Fenwick’s instead, even though that would mean a thirty-mile round trip, a long wait in the queue and various spontaneous things our mother might suddenly do. What we hadn’t bargained for was that our mother would drive into the street where we used to live and park just across from the arched gates of our old house. But she did. And we saw the Xmas tree in the obvious position in the glorious bay window, twinkling. And Mrs Vanderbus’s tree in a similarly pretty window twinkling back at it.
She switched off the ignition and, realizing we’d be there a while, I let myself look up to the roof where Father Xmas must have parked his sleigh, just above my room – my ex-room – some years before. And stupidly I tried to relive it. I’d made a rule when it first happened not to relive it too often so as not to wear out the feeling, but, looking up from the car window that evening, I found I had just about worn it out.
‘Do you remember living here?’ our mother asked us, staring ahead and exhaling smoke through her nostrils. I had my first experience of wanting to be sarcastic, but said instead, ‘Yes, do you?’ and she took that to be sarcastic anyway and gave me a look.
‘Do let’s call on Mrs Vanderbus,’ my sister said.
‘And the Millwards,’ I added.
But our mother couldn’t face it. She wasn’t happy enough – they’d see that she was so much less now. Less of a person than she’d been when we’d lived here and we’d had pleasant folk all around us. Town folk who didn’t mind everything so terribly and who had faults of their own.
And Mrs Vanderbus, being Dutch, would be honest and unafraid and say, ‘Eleezabet, what have you done to yourself? You’re so thin, so tired, oh my Got, you must get away from that evil willage.’ And so forth. And the lovely Millwards would say, ‘You look splendid, Elizabeth, the country air must be doing you a power of good.’ And that would be worse.
‘Do you remember I heard Father Xmas land on the roof?’ I said, laughing.
‘Oh yes,’ said our mother, ‘but it was just the aerial had fallen down and was blowing around.’
‘Yeah,’ said my sister.
‘I know,’ I said, but I hadn’t known.
In Fenwick’s later, our mother left us in the queue for Father Xmas and went to do some shopping, and when we got close to the end of the line I felt I couldn’t go in and I let my sister and Jack go in without me. It wasn’t the real Father Xmas – I knew there was no such person, I’d known for a while. Just as I’d known that the best, most exciting thing ever to happen hadn’t actually happened – I’d just imagined it and clung on.
I sat on a toadstool at the door to the grotto and enjoyed the thought of the TV aerial blowing about on the roof. The new meaning to the old memory. And then, thinking I had about five minutes, I went to look at some gloves.
6
We loved to walk in the meres – a network of narrow lanes between the fields that farmers had trodden, ridden and driven into existence over the years. Wide enough for a tractor, just, they were perfect for ponies or walking children and edged with charming tunnel-forming trees and bushes from which things would dart and scamper. We liked playing in the streamy ditches that ran alongside and, because my sister loved farms and all farmy things, we’d peek into farmyards and little paddocks where baby things could often be seen.
It was the animals she loved, of course, and it slightly bothered her that the farmers didn’t seem to like them that much. She noticed that farmers never stroked their little calves but would shove them aside as if they were nothing but a nuisance, and if a hungry piglet poked his little pink snout up, a farmer wouldn’t smile or say, ‘Hey, little fella,’ he’d bash it on the nose with the bucket. My sister loved all animals and it was her ambition to see a family of hedgehogs in line – as you see on greetings cards. And she had a list of mammals she’d seen, like other people have lists of birds or trains. She’d spotted her first badger by the age of four and had been pleased to see it. She used to say that only people who loved animals should be allowed to be farmers and those who were indifferent might become a policeman or butcher instead and just have the one dog.
I stuck up for the unloving farmers, explaining that farming was a job and the farmer couldn’t keep stroking the babies and being sentimental or he’d get nothing done and the corn would choke in the weeds etc. Farming was like being a parent: you might coo for a moment at someone’s baby in a pram or a kitten in a brandy glass, but when it came to day-to-day life you just got on with it and if your kids came too close, you’d shove them out of the way and get on with whatever you were doing.
Anyway, one day in early spring my sister suggested a visit to Turner’s Farm, a mixed sheep and cow farm. The main reason being that she’d heard that some early lambs had been born. But also she was wondering if we might add Farmer Turner to the Man List, him being a farmer and all the associated benefits. She was hoping of course that he’d turn out to be an animal-loving farmer. I was dubious on all counts, having seen him looking stern and overweight in a dirty vest. But we set off down the meres to investigate and on the way picked a bunch of catkins. Our mother liked to have these in a brown jug in the hall as a reminder to hang on because spring was on the way.
Near Turner’s Farm we clambered over a dilapidated gate and noticed, across the field, a cow acting strangely. As we drew closer we saw that the cow, a young one, had its head stuck in a disused plough that had been left rusting near a gateway. Every few moments the cow would struggle and pull and her feet would scramble and churn underneath her but she’d stay stuck.
‘If I could just turn her head slightly,’ said my sister, ‘it would come out.’
And that seemed true, for the cow wasn’t as stuck as she thought. A slight turn and she’d be free.
We stayed quiet a while thinking and I saw the lush, herby grass the cow had been trying to reach under the plough, strands of it hanging from her muzzle. She struggled and churned again, stopped and let out a low moan.
‘Help me,’ said my sister. ‘Let’s try and get her out.’
My sister approached but the cow immediately became distressed and we decided to go to the farm instead and get Farmer Turner – who would reassure the cow before releasing her. We ran to the farmhouse three fields away, pelted into the yard and rapped on the door. A grim-looking potato-faced woman with one enormous hairy eyebrow stood with one side of her lip up and listened t
o our tale and sent us to a barn where the farmer stood winding wire around something. Sunlight was slipping sideways through the planked wall and he looked quite romantic with bare forearms on such a cold day. My sister told him about the young cow.
‘If you could just turn her head to a thirty-degree angle,’ said my sister, who knew her maths, ‘she’d be right as rain.’
‘It’s number 81,’ my sister called after him as he jumped into his Land Rover, ‘the cow is number 81.’ Because like me, in the still moments, she’d noticed the aluminium tag on the cow’s ear.
Farmer Turner bumped and jolted out of the mucky yard and we ran behind, pleased with ourselves. In my happy little head I put Farmer Turner to the top of the Man List and smiled, thinking how thrilled he would be to swap the one-browed, potato-faced woman at the door for our sexy mother with her bone structure and see-through blouses. I jogged along with thoughts about a possible new life with this capable man at the helm – all the lambs for my sister and tractor rides for Jack and a happy family for me and Debbie. And number 81, tame and probably mine.
Breathless, we caught up, leant on the gate and waited to see some expert remedying followed by number 81 cantering away, indignant, mooing.
My sister turned to me. ‘Man at the helm?’ she said.
‘He’d be perfect,’ I said.
‘I was thinking we could write to him …’ my sister began, ‘and ask him for advice on manure …’ But before she could finish, we were rocked by the unbelievably loud crack of his rifle. I felt the noise through the metal gate, right up to my eyeballs.
The cow flopped immediately and hung by her head from the rusty metal trap. Only then did the farmer twist her head the necessary thirty degrees and let it drop. For a moment she looked like a dead stag in some old painting with oversized dentures and folded over neck. The farmer kicked it straight and a clearish liquid poured from the cow’s open mouth, ran down the hard mud and made a tiny steaming lake where our catkins lay.