The lads lifted the slim coffin onto their shoulders and shuffled into church, me and Father Bert leading them, Sally’s dad, aunt and a collection of other folk walking behind. ‘I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me shall never die,’ I intoned as we walked through the church door.
The church was absolutely packed: family; local teenagers who had known Sally fleetingly during her time in Helmsley; teenagers from elsewhere who had been her friends or fellow addicts; heavily pierced and tattooed men who looked like thugs, no doubt suppliers and pimps here to see the end and give everyone the evil eye; others who I guessed were plain-clothed police officers with closely cropped hair, watching everyone, like cats stalking birds, waiting their moment. All too often, I had had funerals like this in Middlesbrough, but never for a moment expected one in Helmsley.
We sang ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ and ‘Lord of the Dance’ as the lights flashed on and off with each thunder crash: ‘I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black / It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back . . .’ Sally’s dad and aunt had wanted to say a few words: Earl Spencer had given a moving tribute to his sister, Princess Diana, at her funeral in St Paul’s, and they wanted to do the same for their Sally. But when it came to their moment they were sobbing uncontrollably, so I said a few words as the rain drummed on the church roof; how this was simply intolerable, such an utter waste of a young girl’s life, how those who had supplied her with drugs had blood on their hands, how those who had bought and sold her had blood on their hands, how the weeping sky was a parable for God weeping over every child so cruelly lost. I was so angry.
We walked to the cemetery, the cortege bringing the market-day traffic to a halt. I wore the thick woollen cloak that a dear parishioner had made for me in my Middlesbrough days. It was guaranteed to keep out the pelting rain for about twenty minutes; enough time to bury the poor girl in the waterlogged cemetery, a pool of muddy water in the bottom of her grave. Father Bert stood beside me, in his thick black cloak, gently saying the time-honoured words in his beautifully softly spoken Geordie, ‘The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’
Job done, we stood by the iron gates of the cemetery and shook everyone’s hand, rainwater streaming down our faces. Local teenage girls and teenage boys, their eyes red with weeping; other teenagers, haggard with jaundiced tearless faces, tell-tale signs of addiction; thugs who refused to shake my hand, refused to look at me. Finally, Sally’s dad and aunt, still utterly distraught, giving me a hug.
Then the undertaker stepped in. ‘Seeing as you don’t live locally, I’ve brought my invoice along. We did everything as you asked,’ he said, holding out the bill. Probably not the best time to settle accounts. It certainly wasn’t for him, because as soon as Sally’s dad and aunt saw the envelope they legged it, running like Olympic sprinters through the torrential rain, the undertaker running after them, waving his bill, losing ground by the minute. Father Bert caught my eye and we both smiled at each other – the first smile that day.
Chapter Twenty-five
‘Come on, bonnie lad, I think we deserve a spot of lunch,’ Father Bert said as we stripped off our robes in the vestry following Sally’s funeral. Though my trusty cloak had absorbed most of the downpour, a fair few drops of rain had got through, dampening my clothes, making me shiver. Rachel was out for the day doing a bit of supply teaching, so I gladly took up Bert’s offer.
Of course, it wasn’t him who was offering lunch, but Margaret. We drove up out of Helmsley through a driving rain which turned to thick fog on the moor tops, damp and chill. I was glad I was in Father Bert’s warm jeep and not being drenched on my bike. We wound our way slowly, Bert peering through the windscreen, familiar landmarks obliterated. The swirling mist conferred an anonymity on well-known places, which popped up alarmingly, with no prior warning, no distant scene. Suddenly the high walls of Rievaulx Abbey loomed before us, so at least geographically we knew where we were. But the fog, aided by just a little imagination, transported me to different ages: the Abbey in its heyday, an industry of prayer and work, the valley thronging with bleating lambs; Henry VIII’s cruel commissioners tearing the Abbey down, smoke and fire and cries of anguish, monks running for their lives, their livelihood gone with the stroke of Henry’s pen; the Abbey’s neglected ruins in the quiet 1950s, yet to be promulgated as a World Heritage Site; Helmsley’s Vicar popping down to the school every Friday to cane the big boys who’d cheeked the nuns.
We left generations of ghostly voices behind us as we crawled up the hill to Old Byland and parked in Margaret’s stack yard, the homing jeep knowing its way there despite the fog. Margaret bustled out of the back door to greet us.
‘Just look at the pair of you,’ she exclaimed, ‘white as sheets. Come on in and get warm. I’ll put a couple of chairs around the Aga.’
It was a re-run of my previous visit; Father Bert and Margaret teasing each other, plates piled high, thick slices of another roast leg of lamb, the fat crisp and sweet, done to a turn, followed by apple pie and steaming, creamy custard, followed by strawberry trifle domed with whipped Jersey cream.
‘I’ve told you before, Margaret, we really should have fish on Fridays, and abstain from meat!’ Fr Bert chided.
‘Tush, fish wouldn’t bring the colour back to your cheeks like a bit of juicy lamb. And anyway, the Lamb of God died on a Friday, so I always have lamb in His honour.’
It certainly did the trick. I felt thoroughly restored as we sat afterwards in Margaret’s exquisitely furnished sitting room, a log fire roaring in the grate, finishing the meal off with a strong cup of tea and a stack of After Eight mints. My eyelids became heavier and heavier and I repeatedly had to stop myself drifting off. I thought of my friend Stephen, also a vicar, who had returned to work after a bad bout of mumps. Shortly after lunch one day he had gone to visit an old dear and settled himself down in her comfy armchair. The next thing he knew she was tapping his shoulder, ‘Vicar, Vicar, I think it’s time you were going to evensong.’ It was 5.45, and he’d slept a full four hours, with his parishioner simply watching this man of God, slumbering in her midst.
Father Bert must have read my thoughts. ‘David, if we stay here much longer we’ll both be snoring the afternoon away. I need to go and see Edna, one of my former parishioners at Cold Kirby, who’s been in hospital with pneumonia. You’ll really like her, a very faithful soul, never eats anything but fish on a Friday!’ He ducked as Margaret threw a cushion at him.
We drove along the ridge to Cold Kirby. A fierce west wind had cleared the fog and rain, meaning that we had fantastic views over the wooded valleys to our north and south. We pulled up outside a tiny terraced cottage, smack in the middle of this moorland village perched just above Sutton Bank. The hamlets surrounding Helmsley tended to have a very smart feel; their houses well-appointed. In sharp contrast, the houses in Cold Kirkby looked more than a bit battered and care-worn. The wind had had free rein, picking up speed over the long Vale of Mowbray then funnelling up Sutton Bank’s five-hundred-foot cliff before blasting down Cold Kirkby’s main (and only) street. I could see where the cold in Cold Kirby came from, and why Edna had succumbed to pneumonia.
‘Brr, it’s always like this, even in high summer,’ Bert admitted, as we tumbled into Edna’s cottage. The front door opened straight into a living room cluttered with dark oak furniture, with barely drawn heavy velvet curtains hanging at the draughty windows. Edna, a white-haired rotund lady, her face red and weathered, had been lying on the settee, but sprang up as soon as we entered.
‘Father, it’s so good to see you. I’ve been reet bad, but I’m on t’mend, thank God. Ee, it is lovely to see you. I were six weeks in hospital but t’new vicar never came once to see me. You were a saint, always popping in to check how we were!’
‘I don’t think I was. I was just partial to your scones,’ Father Bert joked. ‘Anyway, I’ve brought the new Vicar of Helmsley to see you, so put the kettle on.’
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br /> A few minutes later Edna bustled in with a tray of steaming tea and a generous plate of scones, spread liberally with butter and raspberry jam. The scones, though huge, were as light as a feather and fortunately slipped down a treat. Had they been heavier, I wouldn’t have been able to face them after my massive lunch.
‘Well, you haven’t lost your touch, Edna,’ Father Bert said, licking the jam off his fingers.
Edna’s red face flushed even redder with pride. ‘The jam’s homemade, as always, freshly made yesterday with the last of my autumn raspberries.’
‘Lovely,’ Father Bert replied. ‘Nothing better than your scones and jam as a chaser after one of Margaret’s lunches.’
I was beginning to wonder whether Father Bert had spent his entire time as a parish priest wandering from farm to farm, sampling folk’s cooking. ‘Fortunately, David here does a lot of cycling, so will work off the pounds. Equally fortunately, I don’t have to, because smoking this helps me to be naturally skinny!’
As he spoke, he packed tobacco into his pipe and lit up. Edna started coughing, violently. ‘Ee, I’m so sorry, luv,’ Bert apologized, putting his pipe out immediately, emptying its contents into his saucer, ‘I’d forgotten about your pneumonia.’
‘So you cycle then?’ Edna asked me, once she had got her breath back. ‘We all used to cycle when we were young. Every Wednesday night during wartime about a dozen of us would cycle down Sutton Bank to the flicks at Thirsk, eight miles there, eight miles back.’
‘It would be an easy free-wheel down, but a reet hard pedal coming back, wouldn’t it?’ Father Bert asked.
‘Well, we went t’ chippie once the film had finished – with eight pence of cod and four pence of chips inside you, you could tackle anything! And we used to walk some of t’ steeper bits.’
‘That’s cheating, Edna!’
‘Not really. Most of us lasses paired off with a lad, so we didn’t mind the chance to get our breath back and to get to know each other better.’ Edna gave us a cheeky wink.
‘Ay, I should think you would have needed a fair bit of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation climbing up Sutton Bank,’ Father Bert laughed.
‘I did need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation once, not when I were going up, but when I were coming down. I was at back of the pack, hurtling along at thirty miles an hour, when my brakes failed on one of them hairpin bends, and I ended up flying over the handlebars and landing in a gorse bush.’
‘Good heavens, Edna, did you break anything?’ Father Bert asked, real concern in his voice.
‘Only my ’eart,’ Edna replied, intriguingly. ‘As I said, I was at back of the pack, but none of t’ others, including the lad I was sweet on at the time, even noticed I was missing. They just carried on, got to Thirsk, watched the film, stuffed themselves with fish and chips and then sauntered home, without giving a thought about where I’d ended up.’
‘So no one came to your rescue?’
‘Fortunately, there was an air station at Sutton Bank’s top, where the gliders fly from now. An American airman, on t’ lookout for returning Lancasters, spotted me instead, and hurtled down hillside to my rescue. “Are you OK, Miss?” – he had this deep Southern drawl that would have made me weak at the knees if they’d not already been grazed and scraped on that wretched gorse. He were a real gent, walked me and my bike back up the hill, then he took me to the first aid post. After they’d patched me up, we walked arm in arm t’ canteen and he treated me to a quarter-pound beef burger with lashings of salad and ketchup – it were a banquet compared to what we were used to on rationing, believe you me. “Only the best for Edna,” he said t’ chef, “she’s had a terrible shock.” They treated me like royalty. While all this was going on, he’d got the air station workshop to straighten my bike’s buckled wheel and check it out. “Take it steady, miss,” he shouted as he waved me on my way.’
‘As you say, a real gent,’ Father Bert agreed, helping himself to another scone. ‘What happened to him?’
‘Well, we went out on a few dates, the odd dance or two at the airbase, that sort of thing. The local lads used to jeer at me when I turned off at the top of the bank rather than go with them down to Thirsk. But then again, he’d picked me up when they’d left me. Some nights I’d just stand at the top of the bank, waiting for t’ American bombers to return. I’d be straining my ears for sound of the engines. Then one night, a full moon – a bombers’ moon – I waited and waited and waited, but he never came. I learned later that they’d taken a hit and had had to ditch in t’ North Sea, only five miles from Scarborough. It seemed so cruel; they nearly made it home.’
She broke off, crying. Father Bert leant over and stroked her hand, soothing her. ‘I know, Edna, I know, so many never came back. The very best.’
There was a long silence. Funny where talking about a simple thing like cycling can get you. After a few moments Edna dabbed her eyes, went into the kitchen and returned with a bucket. ‘Come on you two, no point dwelling on the past, you can help me feed t’ pigs.’
We followed her outside into a little garden, the wind whipping my hair across my face. I envied Father Bert’s Brylcreem, because not a hair of his head was out of place. Most of the garden was taken up with a wooden pen which contained a huge sow lying on her side, suckling eight tiny pink piglets.
‘Edna, that’s an absolutely grand litter,’ Father Bert said. ‘Did you have any trouble with the birth?’
‘No, it went grand, they just slid out one after one. I didn’t even have to call the vet out.’
‘Edna used to have a famous vet, didn’t you?’ Father Bert prompted.
‘Alf White, otherwise known as James Herriot,’ Edna replied. ‘He were another gent, nothing ever too much trouble. He had small hands, a woman’s hands, perfect for teasing the odd stubborn piglet out into the world.’
‘I thought he practised in the Dales – Swaledale way,’ I said.
‘Oh no, that’s just in t’ books, he moved in his imagination thirty miles west, to protect his clients, you know. His actual surgery was in Thirsk, so he attended to us, day or night. He didn’t come up on his bike, mind, but in a little battered Austin Seven, with dodgy brakes that frightened the hell out of him going back down Sutton Bank.’
‘So did he carry on after he became famous?’ I asked. I was a lifelong fan of James Herriot, and I felt I had found the Holy Grail.
‘It didn’t change him a bit. He used to type his books up on a little portable typewriter on his knee of an evening, whilst watching TV with his family – just a hobby really, once he’d finished his rounds. Even after he got famous, he were just the same Alf we’d always known and loved. When they made a film of his books he booked a coach and took us all t’ cinema in Malton to watch it with him. He never seemed to appreciate that millions around the world hung on his every word. He were just a lovely, lovely man.’
‘Well, you’ve come across some lovely men in your life, Edna, including me!’ Father Bert joked. ‘Now the sow and her little ones are fed, me and David had better be getting on. David fancies himself as a bit of writer, so who knows, he might be getting his portable Imperial out tonight and tapping out the story of James Herriot tapping out a story!’
Chapter Twenty-six
I leant my bike against a prickly holly hedge, and simply gazed at Helmlsey’s castle, church and pan-tiled houses; all silhouetted against a starlit sky. With the nearest large town thirty miles away there was a spectacular array of stars, unencumbered by urban light pollution. My eyes were tracing the distinctive shape of the Plough when a scraping noise brought me back down to earth. I found eighty-six-year-old Jack tottering about in the garden. ‘I’m just putting the neighbour’s bin out,’ he explained, as if he were a helpful teenager. ‘She’s not too mobile these days!’
Jack was an old sailor who locals affectionately nicknamed Captain Birdseye – he sported the same white beard and cap, and his Yorkshire accent was tinged with the same ‘shiver me timbers’ drawl as in the inf
amous TV advert. His sea legs meant that on land he had a lumbering gait. Or it could have been the rum; whatever time of day I visited, early or late, he never failed to offer me a drink, and I never failed to decline. Had I succumbed to one of Jack’s generous measures there would definitely have been no more visits whatsoever for me that day. Val, my very proper church secretary, had once accepted just one of Jack’s tots, and had had to ring her husband to fetch her home afterwards because the room was spinning and her voice was slurred.
Ancient Mariner Jack’s oft-repeated sea stories were epic, vivid and gripping. He’d bravely served in both the Merchant and Royal Navy in the Second World War. ‘We left Scapa Flow in a devil of a rush,’ he’d informed me during our first encounter, a few weeks before. ‘Even things that were bolted down were washed overboard, with the paint on the ship’s funnels being stripped off by the fierce seas. We were in danger of sinking.’ And then he had suddenly switched from the icy waters of the North Sea to the tropics, where, prior to the war, Jack had been caught up in the 1937 Hong Kong Typhoon.
‘As the typhoon got stronger, the ship’s engine increased speed to full-on, just to keep us stationary. The big danger was if another ship drifted and hit us. Twenty-seven ships were sunk in harbour, one landed up on the mountainside, another in the middle of a football field.’
As we entered his little bungalow this night, I noticed once again the silver-framed photo of the ship stranded on the mountainside, given pride of place on the top of his well-stocked drinks cabinet. ‘Are you sure you won’t have a rum, Vicar? Go on, it’ll ward off the chill!’ Jack cajoled.
‘I’d better not, Jack,’ I replied, pointing to the photo. ‘Look what happened after you gave the captain of that ship one of your tots!’
‘Very droll, Vicar, very droll,’ he chuckled.
Very soon after we had moved into Canons Garth, Val had asked if I could visit Jack, and his wife, Mary, who was very frail. Mary was the quiet one; white-haired, sitting in her chair, painfully thin in contrast to barrel-shaped Jack, hardly moving at all whilst her husband never stayed still, rummaging around, looking for this memento, that memento from his sailor days. She had the sweetest of smiles, and listened attentively to his stories – which she must have heard scores of times before – looking amazed, as if she was hearing them for the first time, and laughing at his oft-repeated little jokes. She listened attentively to me, too. I realized she hadn’t got long for this world, so each week I had taken her Holy Communion, reading her the Gospel from the previous Sunday’s service. She gave the impression of treasuring every word, unlike Jack, who fidgeted throughout, a faraway look in his eyes. On just one occasion did he calm down, when I read of Jesus quietening the storm on the lake and reassuring the terrified trawlermen with his ‘Hush, be still.’ Despite his love of alcohol, the wine on offer never tempted Jack to receive Communion. ‘Not for me, thank you, Vicar,’ he used to say, after I had communicated Mary.
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