Having finished my lunch, I thought of Michael Ramsey, who’d crowned Elizabeth II. He’d been Bishop of Durham and then Archbishop of York in the 1950s, prior to going on to be Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a rotund, teddy bear of a man, with bushy eyebrows that seemed to have a life of their own. He was a deep thinker with an innate holiness about him, but he was also a tremendous fidget and wildly eccentric, and not given to the slick soundbites required by the 1960s media pack. Of all the many funny stories about him, my favourite was where he was lecturing to the Oxford Union, fidgeting throughout in his black Oxford gown. Halfway through his lecture he put his hand behind his back and extracted a wire coat hanger from the folds of his gown. He looked at the hanger with some surprise, before spouting out, ‘Ah, that’s much, much better!’
As I sauntered over to the chapel, the dour crematorium attendant was looking anxiously at the river – very anxiously.
‘If it bursts its banks, the water will channel straight into the ovens, extinguishing the blowers as quickly as you and me snuff out a candle,’ he said. ‘The last time that happened in eighty-two there was a terrible mess, with ash and debris swirling down the Ouse. We managed to fish most of it out downstream at Cawood and never let on to the mourners.’
At the York Crematorium today there were no mourners, other than the funeral directors and me. The deceased man was elderly, with a dwindling circle of frail family and friends. They had duly gathered in Helmsley Church for a service first thing that morning, but had wisely decided against following the coffin to York in such icy conditions.
That hoary preface to so many tedious funeral homilies, ‘Although I never met the deceased’, was not quite appropriate this time. As a priest and an adult I had certainly never encountered him. But I had as a child when, thirty years earlier, my parents came to Helmsley and bought their new church organ from him. In my early months in Helmsley I had chanced upon further details about the man I had last met as a child. In November, I was taking Communion to a chap called Alan, who was housebound after a severe stroke, and for some reason I mentioned our organ-buying exploits in 1967.
‘That would be my brother, Ernest!’ he had piped up.
Truly local lads, in their prime both Alan and Ernest had both served as voluntary firemen. Alan told me how in the long hot summers of the 1970s, the fires on the moors had had the same ferocity as bushfires in the Australian outback; they raged for weeks, with the blue plume visible from my old haunts in the Vale of York, thirty or so miles to the south. He and Ernest and the other firemen fought a desperate daily battle to try and contain things, coming home late every evening, reeking of smoke, their clothes and skin caked in greasy soot. Most people’s memories of those seventies summers include languishing on a sun lounger on a singed lawn, sipping an ice-cold gin and tonic, accompanied by Abba singing ‘Dancing Queen’ on their Bush transistor radio. Alan and Ernest and their fellow firemen spent the whole summer in smog, beating back flaming heather.
Ernest had initially worked as a farmhand, followed by a stint at Duncombe Park Sawmill. He then lent Alan a hand, building the council houses down Elmslac Road in the 1950s. Like the one which contained Ted Dzierzek and his large family, these excellent houses of solid stone were now worth a fortune on the second-home market. Having built about fifty houses with his brother, Ernest then found his dream job, driving the delivery lorry at Ampleforth Abbey, to-ing and fro-ing with loads from Ampleforth rail station, their contents no doubt checked out by the omnipresent Minnie. He had taught himself to play the piano and organ, and apparently was quite bereft when he sold his harmonium, his ‘lucky charm’, to us, and had to make do with an inferior electronic model. Like me he was an avid cyclist, lumbering up the hills on his old butcher’s bike through all weathers, taking sundry housebound relatives food parcels when they were snowed in by the occasionally fierce North York Moors winter. In his declining months he had ended up paralysed in an old folks’ home at Drax, south of Selby, in the shadow of the string of cooling towers that flank the River Ouse. His last wish was that his body be brought back to Helmsley for his funeral, prior to cremation.
All these details corrected the unfavourable impression he had made on us in 1967, humbling me that I could read somebody so wrongly. I decided there and then that my New Year’s resolution for 1998 would be to strive to take the longer view of folk and not judge them by just one incident. I said the words of the cremation service on automatic pilot, my mind wandering as I thought on all the things he’d done over the three decades since we’d last met, which were the quintessence of the Helmsley I had encountered in my first few months as its vicar.
I thought too on all the things I’d done since we’d last met. The iconic places which had shaped me, like York, Scarborough, Hull, Cambridge, Middlesbrough, Pontefract, Bishopthorpe, the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors. The experiences which had shaped me, like studying Natural Sciences and Theology, working for Barclays, teaching Greek, being surprised by priesthood, being surprised by schools, playing Private Pike to two archbishops’ Captain Mainwarings. Finding Rachel, the love of my life, in the distinctly unpromising soil of the most boring Lent course since the creation of the world, and then being blessed by three daughters, the epitome of life in all its fullness. Finally finding Helmsley. It was almost as if Ernest, the organ seller, had been keeping this paradise warm for me these last thirty years, but could now safely hand it over and rest in peace.
Returning to my old haunts at York should have felt like coming home. But in the midst of Ernest’s cremation, I suddenly realized that rather than coming home, I was missing home; our new home in Helmsley. Slowly we were getting there with the house, making it more warm and cosy. Slowly I was getting there dragging the church into the twentieth century, spurred on by people with joy in their very souls whose life stories were golden, and who had overcome the greatest adversity, to which my grumbles were as nothing. To cap it all there was the countryside – mile upon mile of moorland unveiling a kaleidoscope of colours as the seasons changed, with deep valley upon deep valley surprising you with ruined abbeys slumbering by raging torrents. Such a feast – no wonder I couldn’t wait to get back home.
‘How much do you want for travel expenses?’ the undertaker asked me as the service ended, bringing me and my musings back down to earth with a jolt.
‘How about four to five pounds?’ I replied, smiling. Understandably he didn’t get the joke.
Endnote
1 From ‘Perp. Revival i’ the North’ in Collected Poems by John Betjeman; ‘Summoned by Bells,’ from Collected Poems by John Betjeman © 1955, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1968, 1970, 1979, 1981, 1982, 2001. Reproduced by permission of John Murray, an imprint of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd. Reproduced by John Murray Press, a division of Hodder and Stoughton Limited.
List of Illustrations
1. Castlegate in Helmsley, its bank festooned with daffodils.
2. The little town of Helmsley, red roofs huddled round a Norman church and ruined castle.
3. Me aged eighteen months, not a happy bunny in my new pushchair.
4. Two years old, with my mum and dad in my grandparents’ garden in Chesterfield.
5. At the west end of York Minster in 1962, following my dad’s ordination. What hats!
6. Playing the organ at St Giles’, Marfleet, 1963. The organist used to rap my knuckles with a ruler when I played the wrong note.
7. Nativity play at Bubwith Church, 1966. I’m the one still standing.
8. At the west end of York Minster in 1982, following my ordination, with Rachel, my father and my brother Jonathan.
9. Rachel and Ruth at Surprise View, Helmsley, summer 1986.
10. Our wedding day at St Mark’s Broomhill, Sheffield, Saturday 30 July 1983.
11. In Swaledale with Ruth, Hannah and two-week-old Clare.
12. All Saints’ Church, the view from the lychgate.
13. The wall painting depicting St George slaying a red-scaled dragon insi
de All Saints.
14. The market square in the late Victorian period – little has changed since.
15. Saints Ruth, Clare and Hannah in niches at Byland Abbey, where the monks decamped after Old Byland became too hot to handle.
16. Rievaulx Abbey with its magnificent and haunting high stone walls.
17. Looking for lost cricket balls at Canons Garth, autumn 1997.
18. A Christmassy Canons Garth, December 1997.
19. Duncombe Park, an awe-inspiring sight.
20. An ice-train in Duncombe Park, Christmas 1997, with Helmsley Castle in the background.
1. Castlegate in Helmsley, its bank festooned with daffodils.
2. The little town of Helmsley, red roofs huddled round a Norman church and ruined castle.
3. Me aged eighteen months, not a happy bunny in my new pushchair.
4. Two years old, with my mum and dad in my grandparents’ garden in Chesterfield.
5. At the west end of York Minster in 1962, following my dad’s ordination. What hats!
6. Playing the organ at St Giles’, Marfleet, 1963. The organist used to rap my knuckles with a ruler when I played the wrong note.
7. Nativity play at Bubwith Church, 1966. I’m the one still standing.
8. At the west end of York Minster in 1982, following my ordination, with Rachel, my father and my brother Jonathan.
9. Rachel and Ruth at Surprise View, Helmsley, summer 1986.
10. Our wedding day at St Mark’s Broomhill, Sheffield, Saturday 30 July 1983.
11. In Swaledale with Ruth, Hannah and two-week-old Clare.
12. All Saints’ Church, the view from the lychgate.
13. The wall painting depicting St George slaying a red-scaled dragon inside All Saints.
14. The market square in the late Victorian period – little has changed since.
15. Saints Ruth, Clare and Hannah in niches at Byland Abbey, where the monks decamped after Old Byland became too hot to handle.
16. Rievaulx Abbey with its magnificent and haunting high stone walls.
17. Looking for lost cricket balls at Canons Garth, autumn 1997.
18. A Christmassy Canons Garth, December 1997.
19. Duncombe Park, an awe-inspiring sight.
20. An ice-train in Duncombe Park, Christmas 1997, with Helmsley Castle in the background.
Born in Chesterfield and schooled in Lichfield, Hull, York, Scarborough and Cambridge, David Wilbourne worked for Barclays Bank as well as teaching Ancient Greek before ordination. He has spent the majority of his ministry in Yorkshire, and was Vicar of Helmsley for twelve years and a canon of York Minster. Since 2009 he has served as a bishop in Cardiff and the South Wales Valleys, alongside the Archbishop of Wales. He has worked in over thirty schools, is the lead Bishop for Education in Wales and a member of the National Society Council and Church of England Board of Education. He and his wife, Rachel, a history teacher, have three adult daughters. He is also a writer, broadcaster, and an amusing and poignant after-dinner speaker – however heavy the meal, no one sleeps when David is speaking!
First published 2017 by Sidgwick & Jackson
This electronic edition published 2017 by Sidgwick & Jackson
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ISBN 978-0-283-07271-0
Copyright © David Wilbourne 2017
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