Shepherd of Another Flock

by David Wilbourne

  Robert Aske had gently tried to stem the tide, but had ended up being hanged for his trouble. Yet despite the shock and awe tactics visited on it by the Tudors, there was a deep soulfulness about Rievaulx that was indestructible. The stones remained; high walls and vaulted ceilings which even Henry VIII’s merry men could not tear down, enabling faith to surge softly backwards through the intervening centuries. The last-but-one vicar had talked of feeling as if a spiritual steam engine was behind him whenever he visited Rievaulx. My indefatigable predecessor, Charles Gray, had tried his best to get the Abbey re-roofed, but couldn’t raise the £30,000 to do the deed – a fortune in Victorian times. But at least he’d restored the slipper chapel – St Mary’s – with its lethal stone tiles reminding everyone of their mortality.

  The lead buried deep in the ground by Henry’s commissioners had been rediscovered in the 1920s. It was put to good use; re-leading the Five Sisters Window in York Minster, which had been removed to safety during the Great War to prevent damage by Zeppelin raids. The commissioners had originally buried the lead because, with the onset of a very wet winter in 1539, any carts bearing such heavy cargo would have sunk to their axles on tracks which were little more than quagmires. They intended to return for their spoils the next spring, but for some reason they never came back. So it was nearly four hundred springs before the precious treasure was found and put to a far better use than sating Tudor greed.

  Although the monks were driven out five hundred years ago, there is still a monastic presence at Rievaulx in that a couple of Anglican nuns occupy a cottage at the abbey’s entrance, complete with their own tiny private chapel; a grasshopper overlooking an ecclesiastical giant. The two women were members of an order of nuns which I had first encountered way back in the autumn of 1962. My dad had taken a group from the church to stay at Wydale Hall, a retreat house staffed by nuns about twenty miles east of Helmsley, deep in the North York Moors. My mum went along, so I went along too. Though we had travelled fifty miles from Hull, fish still loomed and was served at every meal. The winter which followed was one of the severest for decades, and the van delivering fish to Wydale got stuck in the snow drifts and the delivery man froze to death in his cab. Despite the windfall of frozen fish, the nuns’ fondness for the stuff understandably waned after that.

  The retreat was a silent one, so I was baffled by all those adults not talking to each other, as if they had got into an almighty sulk after a terrible row – by no means an unusual occurrence in east Hull. One very young nun took pity on me. She hitched up her red-lined skirts and we scoured the woods together, hunting for conkers. Returning with our hoard, she used a skewer from the kitchen to drill a hole through their centre and threaded them with a piece of string. She then enlisted the other nuns to join a knockout conker competition which I won, although I think the other players were being extremely lenient. Over thirty years later, I mentioned the incident when preaching at the nuns’ mother house in Whitby. An elderly nun sidled up to me afterwards and said, ‘I was that nun!’ She had never forgotten the copper-haired little boy from darkest Hull, and I had never forgotten her.

  The retreat was my first visit to the deep countryside, and I was enthralled by the wildness of it all. By night I lay awake listening to the rasping cry of pheasants; I guess they were calling me home.

  Since becoming vicar of Helmsley, each Friday lunchtime I’d cycled over and said a quiet Communion with the nuns. This day, as in previous weeks, we were joined by a small group of people who travel the length and breadth of Yorkshire to be there for a service which barely takes half an hour. All are women who have had their fair share of tragedy and are uncomfortable with conventional church. They feel safe coming to the sisters. As the only male present at the proceedings, I inevitably feel a bit self-conscious, and that day nervous old me accidentally knocked over a whole flagon of Communion wine. The whole congregation raised their eyebrows, as if to say, ‘Hm, typical man!’ The normally formal service then took a novel turn as they fussed around with dish cloths, tea towels and kitchen paper, trying to mop up the wine before it stained the carpet. Fortunately, the wine wasn’t consecrated, otherwise the two nuns present, à la my college tutor’s fantasies, would have had to consume the whole carpet.

  Though in her nineties, one of the nuns at the Abbey, Sister Bridget Mary, thinks nothing of spending her annual fortnight’s leave visiting her nephew and niece in Peru, scaling the Andes with them like a mountain goat and returning with the photos to prove it. As a girl she had attended the school in Whitby run by the sisters, and then at eighteen had professed her life vows, just before the Second World War began. At the beginning of the First World War, just before Christmas 1914, a German destroyer had shelled Whitby, damaging the Abbey and several houses in the town, so in 1939 the seaside resort was more than a bit jumpy that history might repeat itself, and the sisters considered relocating their school inland.

  But then, as the threat of Nazi invasion of the whole of Britain loomed in the spring of 1940, the nuns proposed a more drastic evacuation. It was Bridget Mary, by then a popular teacher at the school, who was assigned the task of single-handedly taking the girls by train to Liverpool and then sailing with them over an Atlantic criss-crossed by U-boats to the safe shores of Canada. The nuns, like most of the British populace, really believed that invasion was inevitable, and had felt that sending the girls to Canada would enable this bloom of British maidenhood to be preserved intact until the Nazis were vanquished and it was safe to return. Bridget Mary, truly an action-nun, often talked of the whole escapade in the same matter-of-fact way that teachers these days talk of a trip to Alton Towers.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  ‘If they don’t live in Helmsley, they can’t be buried in Helmsley, those are the rules, otherwise everybody the length and breadth of Yorkshire will want to be buried here,’ the trustee concluded grimly.

  The fiercely guarded parish cemetery lay in a sunny south-facing spot beneath Baxton’s Hill, to the north of Helmsley on estate land. In fact, there was an inner cemetery with padlocked gates and high yew hedges, a cemetery within a cemetery to which only the Duncombe family had access and were laid to their final rest. The outer cemetery was available for lesser mortals. In Victorian times this was restricted to Anglicans or those who opted for a Church of England burial, with a less salubrious patch available for non-conformists, Roman Catholics or atheists, but in these more ecumenical times we were less fussy. Provided, it seemed, that they had lived in Helmsley immediately before their death.

  ‘What about people who lived in Helmsley but who’ve been in hospital or a care home for a long time?’ I asked the trustee.

  ‘Well, strictly speaking, if they’re on the electoral roll they can be buried here, if not they can’t,’ he persisted.

  The thing was, all of a sudden I had not one but two people who didn’t qualify to be buried here. The first was an eighty-six-year-old guy called Jim from Redcar, a grey seaside town near Middlesbrough. Jim and his son, Chris, had called on me yesterday, out of the blue. I showed them into my study and brewed a cup of tea and listened. Jim looked so gaunt, and was in the last stages of lung cancer, with only weeks if not days to live.

  ‘I was born in Helmsley, Vicar, and this has always been home for me,’ Jim began, speaking in short spurts, catching his breath repeatedly. ‘When I was a boy, come winter or summer, I’d stride up onto the moors, and it was always marvellous. My mum died when I was just a lad, but the moors seemed to ease the sadness. The grouse, the deer, the hares; wondrous things. I could just watch them for hours.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘I try and cycle up to the top of Baxton’s every day now, and it proves a tonic every single time.’

  Jim took a sip of tea, caught his breath and continued. I had the sense he hadn’t got long to tell his story. ‘In our teens my brother and me learnt dry-stone walling. Repairing old walls, putting up new ones – it was the job which dreams were made of. Such views! And air like wine. An
d they actually paid us to be out on the moors!’

  Then the Second World War dashed all that. Jim told me how he and his brother were conscripted as shipbuilders and were billeted in Middlesbrough, where they raced against time to convert trawlers into minesweepers. It was very urgent work, and the management turned a blind eye to health and safety.

  ‘We’d only been working in the boatyard for a few months when there was this terrible explosion – they were arc-welding too close to a fuel tank, or something like that. My brother copped it, along with a dozen others. They hushed it up, not wanting to damage morale. There was a lot of hushing up things like that in the war; management getting away with shoddy practices.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so very sorry, it must have been so hard,’ I said, truly feeling for him facing a double bereavement; already grieving for his beloved moors in a town full of smoke and grime, then grieving for his brother and only friend.

  There was a long pause. ‘Ah well, the sorrow passed in time, like most things pass,’ Jim said sagely. ‘I met this wonderful lass called Nancy, and we fell in love and married, and she made life worth living again. We started off renting a back-to-back house in the centre of Middlesbrough. It was a rat-ridden hovel really, but you’ll put up with anything when you’re in love.’

  After the war Jim had got a job in the steelworks, where the money was good. ‘By this time Chris had come along, and we saved enough to move out to Redcar and buy a shiny new Ford Anglia,’ Jim told me proudly. ‘But I never forgot my old roots in Helmlsey, Vicar. I worked long hours, but whenever I had a half-day to spare, we drove the thirty miles over the moors to give us a taste of home.’

  ‘Every single time he returns to Helmsley, it takes years off him,’ Chris added poignantly. ‘Even his accent changes from Teeside to Moors!’

  ‘It’s my heart’s desire, sir, to be laid to rest here, to come home at the last,’ Jim said, haltingly, every word costly, painful breath following painful breath. ‘I realize you’ll have your rules, but if it were at all possible, well, I would be in your debt for all eternity.’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ I’d assured them as I bade them goodbye.

  Early the next morning I had had a call from Chris, informing me that his dad had died during the night. ‘It seemed like a great weight was lifted off him. He really liked you, believed you would fight his corner.’ No pressure then.

  No sooner had he rung off than the undertaker called. ‘There’s been a death in Helmsley,’ he began; his usual grim, if unsurprising, icebreaker. Every undertaker I have ever dealt with has always sounded a bit miffed that death had come their way yet again, as if they’d really like to ring up the vicar and discuss Saturday’s football results, or their wives’ moods, or invite me out for a drink. Only once a year, just before Christmas, did they knock on my door when death wasn’t on the agenda, presenting me with a bottle of Croft’s, ‘with the compliments of the season, Vicar, and thanks for all your help.’ I’m not sure whether it was psychological, but the sherry always tasted of embalming fluid.

  ‘Actually, it’s not quite a death in Helmsley,’ the undertaker continued, diverting from his usual patter. ‘It’s a bit complicated. It’s a young lass, by the name of Sally, who’s died of a drug overdose. She was just seventeen, had lived here, there and everywhere; with her dad, with her mum, in care. For a while her dad lived in Helmsley and she was so happy here, loved the place. In fact, in her short life, it seems Helmsley was the only place where she was truly happy, so they want to bring her back.’

  ‘I’ll look into the cemetery rules,’ I promised. ‘Leave it with me, I’ll get back to you.’

  Later in the day I’d had my discouraging conversation with the cemetery trustee, and so I didn’t hold out much hope that either Jim or Sally could be buried at Baxton’s. But in one of the damp attics in Canons Garth I had discovered a musty tome entitled Helmsley Cemetery – A History. Previously I had given this outstanding work of literature a wide berth, but now I poured over it, just to check whether the trustee was playing by the rules. It seemed the running of the cemetery was in the hands of three trustees; two who were elected, and the third being the Vicar of Helmsley, who served ex-officio, and whose decision, should any dispute arise, was final.

  Even though I personally felt I was the most laid back, collaborative priest in history, Rachel often teased me that I had dictatorial tendencies. I had been unwise enough to share with her an episode from my childhood, during our Aughton days. There had been an election for head boy and head girl at our local primary school at Bubwith. By then I was the tallest and strongest boy in the class and was the monitor on the school bus, which meandered around the lanes driven by the near-blind Les. I made it clear to every child on that bus that they should either vote for me or else, and I won by a landslide – forty-nine votes out of ninety-six – with my nearest rival only achieving a mere dozen. I wasn’t proud of the episode, and have felt ashamed and mortified that I shored up my vote with menaces. In my defence, I don’t think I wanted to win to wield power or influence. It was just that I absolutely adored Mr Nixon, my head teacher, and simply wanted to work closely with him – in my infant mind believing that head boys and head teachers at least had heads in common. Ever since then, despite Rachel’s teasing, I have shied away from taking advantage of my position.

  Until now. I rang both cemetery trustees, intending to gently but firmly tell them I was overruling them, given the special circumstances. The one who had told me non-residents weren’t allowed cut up a bit rough, suggesting that if I was going to exercise absolute power, then I could exercise absolute responsibility and cut the cemetery grass myself. The other trustee was Derek, the former postman I had encountered at the end of my day of prayer. Since he was profoundly deaf, his wife talked over the phone, writing down my every word for him and then relaying his reply.

  ‘Oh, poor little soul,’ she sobbed when I told her about the dead girl. ‘Derek says, you go for it, David.’

  So that made it a simple vote, two to one in favour, with me spared having to exercise absolute power – until the next time.

  Jim’s funeral turned out to be a very decent affair. He had never forgotten Helmsley and Helmsley had never forgotten him, because the church was full of locals with whom he had kept in contact, even if it was just the annual exchange of Christmas cards. They had all come to pay their last respects to this true son of Helmsley, who had bravely served in his own way during wartime. By the graveside, I threw the rich brown soil on his coffin, ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ Chris, his son, was standing by my side. ‘Thank you for letting him come home,’ he softly said, tears running down his cheeks.

  Sally’s funeral was far more fraught. Her father and aunt had met with me in my study at Canons Garth, beside themselves. Life had clearly been difficult for them all, and they talked rather confusingly of betrayals, addictions, times when they were flush, times when they were strapped for cash. ‘She could be a bit wild, and took some handling,’ her dad explained. ‘I realize I lost it sometimes, hit out at her, but she gave back as good as she got and used to hit me back. From time to time I just couldn’t cope any more, and she had to be taken away into care. That really broke my heart.’

  ‘Oh you did your best, you did your best,’ Sally’s aunt said, squeezing his hand. I guess every parent feels a sense of inadequacy, that they could have done so much more to cherish their children. Terry Wogan was always playing Abba’s ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ on his breakfast show, and it brought a lump to my throat every single time. I didn’t judge this guy wringing his hands before me. There but for the grace of God, I thought.

  Sally had collapsed in the back streets of Leeds and the post-mortem revealed that she had died of a heroin overdose, although her dad was convinced that the drug had been deliberately spiked. It was all a garbled tale of drug barons and of young girls being forced into prostitution, being beaten up or worse if they refused. He claimed that Sally had refu
sed to kowtow and had been made an example of.

  Whatever had actually happened, a young girl’s life had been cruelly ended and Helmsley was to be her final resting place. The day of her funeral was the last Friday in October; market day. The dawn was angry red, ominous, and a thunderstorm was forecast. Alan, my churchwarden, had got up early and put out police cones by the church lychgate, to make sure the market traders kept their white vans clear for the funeral cortege. I stood by the lychgate in my robes, ready to receive the coffin, sheltering under the eaves from the gathering storm. Alan was by my side, his back ramrod straight, almost standing to attention. Gus was with him, straining at the leash. Father Bert had turned out too, standing with me in his robes, muttering in his Geordie accent, ‘Po-oor lass, po-oor little lass.’ I was very glad they were there, my right-hand men.

  Clearly no expense had been spared: a highly polished hearse and three limos drew up. The coffin was made from the finest oak and covered in flowers. Sally’s dad, aunt and sundry relatives and friends gathered at the lychgate, along with five very rough-looking young lads, aiming to carry her coffin into church. Gus growled at them.

  ‘What are you lot doing here?’ Sally’s dad suddenly shouted at them. ‘You gave her the drugs that killed her.’

  By this time the rain was pouring down, lightning flashing, thunder crashing.

  ‘Leave it, let’s go,’ I said to Sally’s dad.