‘They were such lovely lads, Vicar, nowt but boys really – my age, barely out of their teens. Joking with me, teasing me, flirting with me, with a twinkle in their eyes. “What’s a lovely lass like you doing, wasting herself being a Church Army sister?” they’d say, “Let me take you to the flicks and we’ll have a whale of time in the two and threepences!” I can see them now, fooling around in the sea, kicking water at each other, leaping the waves then hanging around my caravan, begging a steaming cuppa to warm themselves up.
‘Next day they were in the sea again, but no frolicking this time. They were face down in the water, we were dragging them out with hooks, body after body after body, drowned, if they hadn’t been already dead when they hit the water.’ She stopped and wept.
I lent her the linen cloth to dry her tears, and gently asked, ‘What went wrong, Sister?’
‘Oh, the Americans in the gunboats offshore had got confused, and thought the landing craft the lads were practising in were U-boats surfacing, and fired on them, blowing them to smithereens. Then the next day German E-boats got in on the action and blew the Americans to smithereens. Such a waste. Nobody’s fault really – fortunes of war – but such lovely, lovely lads.’
On the radio Cliff crooned about being a bachelor boy until his dying day. But no longer did the baby Jesus seem to be doing a jig; in my imagination, as the wireless vibrated, he seemed to be sobbing, his whole body wracked with grief. The Devon coast was by no means the end of Lillian’s brush with tragedy. It seems that she crossed the Channel after D-Day and dragged her Church Army caravan around all the major battles and skirmishes, finally ending up at Belsen, of all places.
‘We were too late, Vicar; they were so thin, just skeletons wrapped in skin – dried-up, wrinkled skin. I felt so useless. I held a cup of sweet tea to the lips of one poor woman, but she couldn’t manage even a sip. I broke a bun up to make it easier to eat, and tried to feed it to her crumb by crumb, but she was too far gone, they all were.’ Lillian shook her head, consumed by sorrow and remorse. ‘Our lads who liberated them didn’t feel much like eating or drinking either,’ she added. ‘Such horror, such utter cruelty, such pointless waste of life. It made us all physically sick.’
I began to understand a little bit why, having witnessed such utter deprivation and desolation, possessions and home comforts now meant nothing to her. After the war she had ended up in this Dickensian hovel in Helmsley, driving her battered Morris Minor to the nearby market town of Thirsk, James Herriot’s old haunt. She had worked there as a Church Army sister, assisting the vicar. Helmsley was too High Church for her, so she commuted along the A170 to work with a more middle-of-the road guy. Alan and Derek had told me how Lillian drove in the middle of the road, terrifying oncoming traffic as she sped down Sutton Bank’s steep slope. She sounded like Les, the dodgy bus driver from my boyhood days. She had given up the car long since, but having observed her wandering along the pavement, veering from side to side, I realized she clearly walked in the same way as she used to drive.
‘Oh Lillian, I feel so sorry for all those victims of such a terrible war,’ I commented, ineptly.
‘My family were war victims,’ Sister Lillian boldly declared, as if that qualified her to have a solidarity with all victims. ‘Our house in Sunderland was shelled just before Christmas 1914, when German destroyers sneaked through the fog and strafed Scarborough, Bridlington, Whitby and Hartlepool – the whole set. Then the Luftwaffe bombed us again in 1940. My auntie was gassed, too,’ she told me, a surprisingly proud ring to her tones.
‘Gassed?’ I exclaimed. ‘I didn’t think the UK mainland was subject to gas attacks.’
‘Well, the bomb that hit our house in 1940 made a massive crater by our front door. My auntie, in a panic, ran out of the house and fell straight into it and knocked herself out. At the bottom of the hole was a ruptured gas pipe, which gassed her as she lay there. The ARPs found her and carried her on a stretcher to Sunderland Hospital. She came round after a day or two, though, and was none the worse for wear. Well, not too much worse,’ she chuckled.
I laughed too. When the laughter eventually subsided, we talked shop a bit, as ministers do. ‘What did you preach about today, Vicar?’ she asked.
‘John the Baptist,’ I replied. ‘An obvious Advent theme, Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord and all that.’
‘Oo, John the Baptist, John the Baptist, now he was a very good man, a very good man,’ she exclaimed, as if he was a personal acquaintance. ‘Mind you,’ she added after a moment’s thought, ‘not as good as Jesus!’ as if the two lads had helped staff her Church Army canteen and been weighed up by her shrewd gaze. When I glanced at baby Jesus as I left, his eyes seemed to be twinkling.
Chapter Thirty-three
Though a very small town, Helmsley is a place of many shops – nearly a hundred – and in the run-up to Christmas there was an annual ‘Best Shop Window’ competition. As the new boy on the block, I was commandeered to co-judge the event with Lord Feversham. Like Dracula, we got to work just after dusk, with the bright lights of the shop windows being a wonderful antidote to the dank and damp December chill.
We scrutinized each shop window as intensely as an art dealer checking whether the painting before him is a Picasso or a fake. The analogy is appropriate, because there actually were two art shops; one with a gaudy landscape in the window priced at a modest £50,000.
‘What a pity, I’ve forgotten my cheque book,’ Lord Feversham joked. ‘Have you got any spare change on you, Vicar?’
We duly cooed over pyramids of handmade chocolates; rolls of thick, lush fabric, hand-block printed; exquisite jewellery, diamonds sparkling in the Christmas lights; country-wear shops with windows crammed with plus-fours and tweeds and green wellingtons priced at £75. ‘Don’t worry, Vicar,’ Lord Feversham reassured me, noting my look of concern. ‘It’s seventy-five pounds per pair, not for each boot!’
We paused before gunshop windows that sported an arsenal which could have swung things for the second Earl of Feversham and his beloved deerhound on the Western Front. We halted before furniture shops, one window crammed with second-hand Mouseman furniture, the English oak seasoned dark brown, the tables and sideboards with characteristic adzed tops. We really lingered before the toy shop of which dreams are made; becoming little boys again, eyes as big as saucers as we drooled over a model railway steaming its way around the shop. Apparently the layout was based on the former Ryedale Railway, complete with stations and signal boxes and tunnels and bridges and viaducts and rivers.
We smelt the coffee, the freshly made bread, the fish and chips, the pizzas, the Yorkshire curd tarts, the cheeses.
‘I might give Lady Polly a buzz and tell her she’ll just have to cancel dinner,’ Lord Feversham blurted out. ‘For once I’ve fed through my nose rather than paid through my nose!’
Lady Polly was obviously to the fore of his mind, in that he stared long and hard at a pretty yellow dress on a sylph-like model in Pennita’s dress shop. ‘That’s just Polly’s colour and style,’ he concluded. ‘Any more loose change you can lend me, Vicar?’ The dress was priced at a modest £239.
For obvious reasons we didn’t linger in front of the lingerie shop. ‘Would somebody kindly explain to me what is the precise point of a thong?’ Lord Feversham asked as we approached the safer climes of Helmsley Exotic Fruit.
‘It’s something to do with sandals,’ I replied, thinking back to my encounter with Sister Lillian. ‘John the Baptist didn’t feel worthy to do up the thongs of Jesus’s sandals.’
‘Mm, don’t play the innocent with me, Vicar,’ Lord Feversham mocked. ‘I think your predecessor would have come up with a more exciting definition!’
We moved on quickly to the bright lights of Claridge’s, where there was an eye-catching display of bespectacled Steiff teddy bears reading the latest bestsellers, burying their heads in Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone, Cold Mountain, The God of Small Things and Notes From a Small Island.
We finally came to rest outside Nicholson’s butchers and salivated over the lush hams, plump turkeys, sides of beef oozing blood, strings of sausages bursting out of their skin and huge, glossy pork pies. Ben the proprietor was hosting Jesus for the day, and had placed him in the centre of his packed shop window. Below him was the simple sign, JESUS, BORN IN A STABLE, BE THE GUEST AT OUR TABLE.
Throughout our very long walkabout, the shops’ proud owners looked on expectantly; most had a look in their eye that spoke volumes, ‘Just you dare not choose me!’ I realized by the end of the night that I was set to make one friend and over fifty enemies. Why did I ever agree to do this?
Everyone gathered in the market square for the presentation to the winning window. Lord Feversham’s gammy leg was causing him to wince as he scaled the steps of the memorial to his esteemed ancestor, William Duncombe, the second Baron Feversham. The memorial had been erected during Victorian times by the renowned architect Gilbert Scott, with a life-sized statue of William Duncombe walking tall beneath a stone canopy, Albert Memorial style. As the December rain drizzled down upon us, I rather envied his canopy.
Standing by the side of his stony ancestor, the present-day Lord Feversham announced the result, which was unanimous. Both Lord Feversham and I really, really enjoyed our food, so we awarded Nicholson’s the first prize.
‘A meat fest with a theological garnish,’ Lord Feversham pronounced, ‘feeding both body and soul. What could be better!’
The piqued crowd clearly didn’t share his Lordship’s enthusiasm, with caustic comments filling the cold night air. ‘What an utter fix. I spent hours dressing my window. Ben just let his lad run amok for five minutes.’
‘Any fool can scatter a few pork pies – I bet they bribed ’em with the promise of a free turkey!’
‘You have to be a mason to get anywhere in this town.’
‘You could have put Jesus in the middle of a dung heap, and that stupid new vicar would have awarded it first prize!’
There were mutterings and grumblings galore, detracting from the festive spirit of the season. Since the first prize was just a bottle of champagne, retailing in Tesco at £9.99, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. They were losers in every sense of the word.
The next morning, I took Jesus into Ryedale School. I’d cycled there at breakneck pace, just to keep myself warm. There’d been a heavy frost overnight and white crystals clung to the hedgerows and tree boughs, with the blades of grass in the surrounding meadows bleached white and standing to attention. At assembly, I took my cue from Butcher Ben and talked about a baby’s presence at sundry tables, changing perceptions. I tried to get the kids thinking about the difference baby Jesus would make if he popped up at everyday tables in their homes, or at the Cabinet Table in 10 Downing Street, or at an operating table in a hospital, or whatever table wherever. Some wag had once quipped that having a baby in the home was the best example of minority rule he knew.
Whilst still on the stage, I handed over the ultimate baby to the Head, who bristled visibly. He assumed the air of CJ in The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin, giving me a I-didn’t-get-to-where-I-am-today-by-cuddling-pot-Jesuses-in-front-of-three-hundred-and-fifty-teenagers look.
‘Mr Howard, perhaps you would take – erm take – erm take this off me,’ he croaked, holding the baby Jesus at arm’s length, as if he’d just filled his nappy with a particularly pungent stool. ‘Design and Technology are going to have custody of – of erm – of Jesus for the next twenty-four hours, so I expect you all to treat him with the respect he deserves.’
I’d chatted to Ben Howard, the D&T teacher (Woodwork and Metalwork in old money), on my previous visits to the school – a fantastic guy who was a practising Roman Catholic. Whilst, in my experience, Roman Catholics can be trusted with Jesus, I was less sure about the D&T classroom and how safe a fragile china doll would be with wood chips and shards of hot metal flying around all over the place.
Jesus wasn’t the only special visitor that week. The school was hosting a series of activities on fire awareness and prevention, led by the local voluntary fire service. One of the governors, Nicky, was a voluntary firewoman, and had organized the programme. Affectionately known as Nee-Naw-Nicky, her arresting start to the week hadn’t quite worked out as she had planned. Her big idea was to deck herself in her uniform, complete with respirator, oxygen cylinder and mask. Wielding a fire-axe in her hand, she planned to force open the door to the year seven class awaiting her visit. As soon as she entered she would then dive down to the floor and wriggle along the length of the room like a snake, keeping herself as near to the floor as possible, as if the room were filled with acrid smoke.
Her preparation had been meticulous. Unfortunately, on the day her mask had fogged up, making it well nigh impossible for her to see clearly. Thoroughly disorientated, she crashed into the wrong classroom. Instead of entertaining excited year sevens who were fully prepared for her unconventional arrival, she burst into a year ten English class, who were doing a read-through of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I had studied the play in my third year at Archbishop Holgate’s grammar school, and had learnt great chunks of it off by heart, which often came to my rescue in later life when I was lost for words. Though the play is action-packed with assassinations, set speeches and large-scale battles, I was virtually certain it did not include axe-wielding firewomen writhing across the stage. To say Nicky’s entry was a shock would be an understatement. Two year ten girls were so traumatized they had to go to Miss Linley, the ever-sympathetic Head of Upper School, for counselling. At the other end of the scale, one year ten lad had found it so funny he wet himself laughing, gaining the nickname ‘Pissy Pants’, a name which most probably will haunt him for the rest of his days. Even the ever stoic Head had tears running down his cheeks as he told me the tale. Single-handedly, Nee-Naw-Nicky had created her own one-woman disaster zone.
Wanting to make a major impact can go so badly wrong. I was once demonstrating to an infant assembly how they used to write in times gone by. I had sharpened a feather to create my own quill pen, which I dipped into a bottle of registrar’s indelible ink. For some reason, at that point the bottle assumed a life of its own, leapt out of my hands and liberally showered the reception class sitting agog on the front row. I can still see their spotted sweatshirts, spotted socks, their little spotted innocent faces, wide-eyed, thinking this was all part of my act. I can still see the face of the reception teacher, as her studied look of intense interest turned to one of abject horror. As tears of laughter ran down my own cheeks, I wasn’t laughing at Nee-Naw-Nicky; I was laughing with her.
Early the next morning I cycled back to Ryedale School to retrieve Jesus. The class had been busy and had made him a beautiful crib, made out of pine wood and stained deep brown. One of the girls, whose parents ran a stud farm, had brought in some hay to give the crib a real manger feel. Despite my concerns, the D&T department had done him proud; I should have realized that a carpenter’s workshop was hardly a novelty for Christ.
Chapter Thirty-four
The caravan was old-fashioned; wooden, horse-shoe shaped, with a tin chimney attached to the side emitting smoke with the pale blue hue of a wood fire. I’d spotted the caravan parked on the verge the day before, with a couple of lean-looking piebald horses tethered alongside. As I cycled towards it today I noticed a slender young woman, raven-haired, hanging out nappies on an improvized washing line between the caravan and hedge. ‘Good morning,’ I shouted.
‘It is indeed, Father,’ she responded in a broad Irish drawl. ‘Top o’ the morning to you!’
I pulled up and leant my bike against the hawthorn hedge, making the washing line wobble. I left Jesus in his newly acquired crib on guard in the basket and introduced myself to the woman. ‘I’m David, the local parish priest. How are you doing?’
‘Ach, I was doing OK until you came along and put me washing in danger. I don’t want these nappies dropping off into the mud and have to wash the whole lot of ’em again!’ She smiled, her blue eyes twinkling. ‘But we’re doing fine, thank you. I’m Julia, by the way. My man has got a bit o’ work mending fences and dry-stone walls, my bairn’s thriving in this fresh country air, and there’s enough tinder for me to gather in yonder woods to fire the stove and keep us as warm as toast on these frosty nights.’ She gave my cycle a hard stare. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Go ahead,’ I replied.
‘What on earth are you doing with the baby Jesus in your cycle basket?’
I laughed, explaining how I was taking him on tour during December, leaving him here and there.
‘I think that’s absolutely wonderful, Father,’ she said, moving over to my bike to have a closer look. When she returned she had tears in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry to get emotional, Father, but he’s the spitting image of the baby Jesus we had in the Christmas crib in our church in Cork, when I was a lass. I used to be a server, and at the Christmas Day Mass, Father Pat, our parish priest, used to get me to carry him in and place him in the crib beneath the altar, as the congregation sang “Adeste Fideles”. I don’t think I’ve done anything else in my life where I felt so special, so honoured.’
She made me a cuppa, pouring steaming water from a copper kettle boiling on an ancient stove inside their dark, cluttered caravan. On the same stove was a bubbling stew pot, containing what looked like a couple of pheasants, definitely dead. There was a table, kitchen cabinet, sideboard, wardrobe and double bed which reminded me of Alan and Joan’s Mouseman furniture, with the same bulky look, the same ancient feel.
Shepherd of Another Flock Page 23