Wish Her Safe At Home

by Stephen Benatar

Yes, thank you—at long last I was truly enjoying my holiday. Enjoying it immensely. I wondered if poor Miss Eversley was in the congregation.

  No, of course not. I’d have been amazed. Utterly. Quite as amazed as if...

  Well, as if I’d suddenly decided to surprise everyone by rolling up my sleeves ( figuratively speaking!) and stepping up into the pulpit. The pulpit was close. I could have reached it oh so easily. And wouldn’t people get a shock! I should love to see their faces!

  “Ladies and gentlemen. What is a storm in the bathwater?” Dramatic pause. “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a small tornado, it’s a shipwreck, it’s a desert isle. Two weeks in a sarong. (And whom would you choose to spend those with I wonder?) It’s an opportunity to grow. It provides you with a better chance you may have written something good when your Book of Life is finally shut. Something worthwhile. Something fantastic. A success story. That’s what the world demands. And every day’s a different page—how wonderful is that! So run off home and splash your bathwater! Amen, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” I supposed I should have to cross myself.

  But all this would certainly have added a fillip! Stirred things up a bit!

  Unfortunately the service started while I was still thinking about it. A lady had begun to play the organ.

  It was a long time since I’d heard an organ. Yet why should it take me back so quickly to the Odeon Leicester Square? A trailer, just a trailer: “Oh, you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll... ”

  When I was a girl I had never appreciated that old Wurlitzer. Frankly I’d even found it somewhat boring.

  What sacrilege!

  “The Lord be with you.”

  “And also with you.”

  Good gracious, we had started. Where was I?

  The minister was young and not bad looking in a beefy sort of way. This no doubt added a spot of pep to the service. No wonder there were so many women present; I might even come again myself. He had nicely shaped hands, well-manicured, the fingers dark with hair. His wrists as well. He’d almost surely have a hairy chest.

  “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid... ”

  I did my best to concentrate.

  As a matter of fact it wasn’t Almighty God whom I ever worried about: his knowing what went on inside my heart. Or even inside my bathroom. It was all the people I had known who had now died. Or would they by this time have acquired a little more of his nature? I’d have felt shy in front of my headmistress, say, but not at all in front of God. Wasn’t that absurd? I shook my head and laughed at the absurdity of it.

  The minister glanced in my direction.

  Oh dear. Now I should have to apologize.

  We had a hymn.

  “Dear Lord and Father of mankind,

  Forgive our foolish ways... ”

  That was nice. And at least I knew my singing voice was definitely an asset.

  “I’m so sorry that I laughed. It wasn’t disrespectful. I was simply having fun.”

  “Miss Waring, that’s exactly the kind of sound we want to hear inside this church. It was like a breath of... well, between you, me and the gatepost, Miss Waring, I must confess we don’t normally get enough of it. The congregation at St. Michael’s—perhaps I shouldn’t say this in view of such kind hearts and such excellent intentions—has always been, well, quite honestly, a little stodgy up till now. And I do so hope we’re going to see a lot more of you. I heard your singing by the way. May I ask if you entertain professionally?”

  And then he added: “I know I oughtn’t to do this—vicars must never grow partial—but I’ve just got to compliment you on your dress and hat and everything. Breathtaking! Gorgeous!”

  Altogether he was a most pleasant young man. During the reading of the Gospel I asked him a few questions. He was delighted by my quick intelligence; by my refusal merely to accept. I told him something of what Mrs. Pimm had said about the man who had thrown himself from a skyscraper and landed on a passerby. “Vicar, do you believe in second chances? You see, I keep getting this picture of that... probably by now... rather flat-looking individual being given his second chance. Don’t laugh. It’s the resurrection of a Silly Symphony. He goes loping off down the street like a cardboard cutout with a foolish grin.”

  He did laugh.

  “I say it again, Miss Waring. A positive breath of spring.”

  “Now, Vicar. You just keep your mind on your business. You haven’t heard the rider to my question.” I rapped his knuckles with my fan. “Supposing that he didn’t get that second chance? Would you say then that he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time or would you actually believe it could have been the right place at the right time? There are other permutations, naturally, but I wouldn’t think of troubling you with those.”

  I smiled.

  “I also want to ask about King David... and Bathsheba.”

  “My goodness! I can see you’re going to be a full-time occupation! But listen, Rachel, standing here over coffee isn’t really the time for profound metaphysical discussion. You know the vicarage? Well, I’m afraid it’s mostly a shambles right now because my housekeeper, dear old soul that she is, isn’t quite the world’s most dedicated cleaner, nor most enterprising cook. But if you can find it in your heart to overlook such shortcomings as these... ”

  It was all just agreeable nonsense of course. I hadn’t brought my fan.

  He was now mounting the pulpit. I prepared myself quietly and without fuss to listen to his address. Firstly I smoothed my skirt out beneath me and, after I’d resumed my place, carefully crossed my legs. There was so little room: even the arranging of one’s hem required some element of expertise! Then I smiled with shared expectancy at those around me. (They didn’t seem too friendly.) Lastly I cleared my throat and looked all eager and attentive. I even bent forward slightly so that he should realize I intended not to miss a single word. Vicars, after all, were only human: they too unfolded and grew happier with encouragement. “It’s just like talking to your flowers,” I whispered to the woman next to me. In my own case, however—how should she realize?—it was a good deal more than that.

  “We clergymen are always a little behind the times!” he began, quite mystifyingly. (There was a small but appreciative ripple of amusement. I myself laughed—perhaps more audibly than most. “No, no,” I declared, “nobody is ever going to believe that!”) “If you will forgive me I should like to quote from an Epistle we had much earlier in the year.” Forgive him? For something so immeasurably considerate? Obviously he knew that this was my first time here and had chosen a very tactful way of alluding to it. “Beautiful words can sometimes become so familiar that we almost stop listening to what they mean.”

  This was true. I nodded my approval. I felt inclined to call: “Hear, hear!”

  I laughed instead. “Oh, you’re so right!” I observed. “Yes, shame on us! Fie!”

  “Though I have all faith,” he continued, “so that I could remove mountains... and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor... and have not charity... ”

  There was a long and telling pause. He was looking straight at myself.

  “It profiteth me nothing,” he said.

  He spoke the words ringingly, deliberately, with force. I could see his knuckles white upon the rail, those very knuckles which scarcely three minutes earlier had received my playful taps.

  “It—profiteth—me—nothing!”

  I could hardly believe it. For the sake of appearances he moved his head slowly from one side of the nave to the other; but this didn’t fool me in the slightest. I knew full well whose eye he aimed to catch.

  “In other words,” he said, “without love I would not be worth... anything!”

  No, I just couldn’t believe it. He went on to talk about the hunger strikers in the Maze—had I even the remotest idea of the number who had so far died? He wanted to know how persistently I had prayed for any one of them. H
ow many policemen and rioters had been injured at Toxteth he asked. What was the name of that six-year-old child who had been wedged down a well in total darkness for three whole days at the start of June? When was the last time I had passed a hospice or a shelter for alcoholics or even a hospital and thought at all about any of those suffering within? What did I know about either the oldest victim or the youngest who had been killed whilst trying to cross the Berlin Wall?

  From there, somehow, he went on to talk about how I might so easily just be whistling in the dark, how I needed to take a long hard look at my priorities, how he felt, for all I know, about The Man Who Came to Dinner or Chariots of Fire or Shirley Temple—I simply wasn’t listening. He stood there looking so pious and dynamic, with his hairy hands and his hairy chest and his hitherto honeyed tongue, and of all the messages of comfort he could have chosen as a loving and warm-hearted welcome he had gone out of his way to pick a text like that. And at only a moment’s notice too! How cruel! How unspeakably cruel! To have made me feel he was genuinely pleased to see me there, a leavening and stimulating influence, a rare and charming remembrancer of spring, and then to have demonstrated only too plainly... what could you call it now?... his jealousy? Was no one but himself permitted to invigorate?

  Well, he could keep his invigoration. He could hold on to his hairy hands. And to his hairy chest. I wouldn’t want any part of them.

  “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”

  “Some hope!” I said—I thought, quite wittily—staring around me in defiance.

  He ended as though he had simply decided to throw this in for good measure: “For now we see through a glass, darkly.”

  “Do we, indeed? That may be what you think! But take a referendum among the rest of us.”

  There was a pause. I picked up my handbag and gloves and almost walked out right there and then. That, too, might have stirred things up a bit. Yet just in time I stopped myself. People mustn’t, absolutely must not, be allowed to see how deeply they had hurt me.

  But during the next hymn I didn’t sing.

  Oh, yes, I moved my lips all right; it was just that I let no sounds emerge. I could see him looking at me in pretended consternation.

  “Oh, have you strained that lovely voice of yours, Miss Waring?”

  “I think I should make it clear, Mr. Morley, that I am no longer fooled by your bootlicking manner. You can now go and practise on the chemist. The two of you ought to found a Badedas Society—compose some suitably ingratiating jingle!”

  When the collection plate came round I didn’t put in the pound notes I had planned. I almost put in nothing. Yet then, more subtle and poetical than that, I saw I had some silver in my purse and I picked out precisely 35p.

  I began to feel better. By the time everybody suddenly and inexplicably started to shake hands (they were evidently a friendlier bunch than I’d supposed) I had sufficiently recovered—by dint of ignoring, blocking out, trying to think only of things pleasant—to be able to participate. Indeed I joined in readily and with considerable aplomb, especially in view of the fact that I’d at first been disconcerted: “How do you do? Don’t you find it rather cold in here? I really like your handbag.”

  What a lovely way of making contact. Now this was certainly more Christian!

  “Hello. Do you come here often? My name, by the way, is Waring.”

  Unluckily (how British!) most of my well-wishers didn’t seem able—quite—to follow it through. Hands yes, smiles too, yet nothing that went deeper. The overture but not the play. Well, never mind. I found it by far the nicest portion of the service; that and my singing of the first hymn. I had been happy then.

  Otherwise the fact that I was based at the end of a row would have been a huge advantage—for it meant I could go round shaking hands long after everybody else had finished. I wanted to show that Londoners weren’t the standoffish souls many considered them. Nor were they soft. They possessed character; had tenacity.

  One hand I definitely refused to shake, however, was the vicar’s—when afterwards he had the nerve, or the insensitivity, to place himself outside the church door.

  “No, thank you,” I said; and totally ignored his Good morning I believe you may be new here.

  Oh, the hypocrite.

  In fact I seemed to have provided his comeuppance. He looked really at a loss. Piety, dynamism, invigoration—all.

  “Er... there’s coffee in the church hall if you’d like some.”

  Because he so clearly didn’t expect me to accept I nodded. “Thank you, yes, I think I’d like a cup. But please don’t inconvenience yourself. I’m sure I shall be able to find my own way.”

  So perhaps he wasn’t quite as bad as I had drawn him. I had always been taught the overriding importance of good manners; I felt that—at least to some extent—I ought to show him what it meant to have breeding.

  Therefore, while he was still, I noticed, gazing after me (along with the old couple who’d been just about to speak to him) I went back and said, “Incidentally I forgot to thank you for the wafer and the wine. The wine was good; where did you get it? And you may be surprised to hear that I believe in the idea of transformation. At least I think I do. Not of course that I’m a Roman Catholic.”

  “Er... no,” he said.

  I even made a little joke. After all, I wasn’t likely to forget our first ten minutes of good fellowship. “And I don’t imagine you are?”

  “Er... no,” he said.

  He had no sense of humour and, in reality, not much conversation either. I went in to have my coffee.

  The hall was fairly crowded. I joined the queue at a small counter. There was an older woman in front of me who was looking in her purse for change. “Oh, do you have to pay?” I said. “I thought the vicar had invited me. Well, actually it’s all of a piece, isn’t it? I’m not a bit surprised.”

  She smiled at me in a way which I was beginning to realize seemed special to Bristolians. “The coffee’s just five pence,” she said but didn’t sound unfriendly. “If you haven’t got it no one’s going to mind.”

  “Well, that’s a relief; but I think I can probably rustle up five pence.”

  “I hope you enjoyed the service. Oh, excuse me just one moment. I see that little monkey of mine is about to make a pest of herself over there.”

  But her three- or four-year-old, as soon as she was called, came skipping across quite obediently.

  “Well, I can’t say,” I observed, “I thought a great deal of the sermon.”

  “No,” she agreed, “I’m afraid you hit a bad week so far as the sermon was concerned.” She laughed. “ I was expecting it to be all about the Wedding! Felt so disappointed to find Charles and Diana weren’t even mentioned!”

  I gave a little shrug. “Well, one must always be philosophical. I suppose that it could have been worse. Look for the good in any sermon and you can possibly find it.”

  We got our coffees; her daughter had a squash. We stood together, halfway down the room, suddenly not appearing to have very much to say.

  “Let’s hope the weather will be nice and sunny for next Wednesday!”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “I do think Lady Di looks such a charming girl.”

  “Do you?” I asked.

  From her expression I might have announced that I’d just left a bomb in the vestry. “Well... don’t you?”

  “Oh, I daresay she’s pleasant enough. But you’ve got to admit she’s very ordinary. Very ordinary, indeed.” I sipped my cup of coffee. It was peculiarly revolting.

  “Well, yes, in a way, I suppose she is. Yet that’s what makes it all rather nice, isn’t it? I mean, he’s marrying the girl next door!”

  “Precisely,” I said. “Entirely my point.”

  At least I had the satisfaction of seeing her think for a moment. But the moment was short-lived and the thinking unproductive. It led merely to her displaying what she must have considered her wi
nning card. “She’s undoubtedly very popular!”

  I was kind. “Yes, you’re right. Obviously I’m out of step. But I really don’t see what all the hoo-ha is about.” It was a relief to be able to say this to a person I should almost certainly never meet again. (If we passed in the street I could pretend to look the other way.)

  “Well... ” She smiled and seemed to be glancing around for others to support her. “At any rate,” she suggested, “far better than some foreigner!”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure.” She clearly hadn’t followed my argument. “An Englishwoman—well, it could have been you or me or anyone. Just picture it.” I laughed: to add a little levity, a little reassurance: because for some reason she was starting to look flustered. “Coming out of St. Paul’s. Riding through the City in an open carriage. Thousands lining the route, cheering themselves hoarse, waving flags, holding their children up to get a better view. Loving you like the Queen herself. But why? Where is the fairness in it all? Why her, not you?”

  The woman laughed. (Again I’d been able to cheer somebody up; again a victory for politeness!) “Perhaps you hadn’t noticed?” she said. “I am a degree older than she is.” I laughed as well—just as if she’d made some joke.

  “But you do see what I mean?” I persevered. “She doesn’t even dress well. All those choirboy collars!” I gave another shrug: my good-humoured bewilderment at the folly of the Royal Family. “And Dr. Runcie has asked for the prayers of the whole nation to be offered during the ceremony. Why? Haven’t they already got enough without all of us being expected to pray for them as well? But of course”—I smiled—“to them that hath shall be given.” It was the old, old story. “Has the whole nation ever been asked to pray for you?”

  I never got an answer. Before she could supply one her little girl had made an abrupt turn and jerked her mother’s elbow. The woman’s cup was knocked out of her saucer—and threw its entire contents down my skirt. I screamed.

  The next few minutes were chaotic: someone with a tea cloth doused in cold water; half a dozen others offering remedies and opinions, anecdotes and concern; the scolding of the child; the cleaning of the floor.