by Liz Trenow
‘Then lunch.’
It is the smell of the church, rather than the sight of the interior, that takes her back: old prayer books, furniture polish and dust, the cloying scent of lilies dying in their vases. She is immediately transported back to her teenage self, wriggling uncomfortably on the hard wooden choir stall, listening to Pa droning on about parish notices, jumble sales and whist drives, not to mention the endless readings from the Bible and, worst of all, his interminable sermons.
He would usually start promisingly, with a story about something that had happened to him or to an acquaintance, or something he’d read in a book or seen in the newspapers. But about five minutes in, with dreary inevitability, the topic would revert to the religious text. He would quote a passage from the Bible, or a psalm, and then he’d be off for the next twenty minutes, explaining what the passage meant and what we should learn from it.
‘Can’t you make your sermons a bit shorter?’ she’d asked him once. ‘Or even tell a joke or two?’
‘Believe me, I would if I could get away with it,’ was his answer. ‘But if I try lopping off even five minutes, someone always complains they’re not getting their money’s worth. And I’ve come a cropper in the past, telling jokes. Believe me, some people have no sense of humour.’
Another time she asked him if he really believed – as he’d claimed in his sermon the previous day – that all human beings are essentially good.
He’d paused for a moment before replying, ‘I think we’re born good, sweetheart, but our lives shape us, and sometimes not always for the better.’
‘Like Mr Blackman?’
He gave a curious hollow laugh. ‘Yes, even someone like him was good, once upon a time.’
‘I hate him,’ she’d said. ‘I hope he goes to hell.’
Pa’s smile dissolved in an instant. ‘Listen, Molly. The war changed everyone, and not always for the good. We all lost someone, or lived for weeks and months expecting to die ourselves at any moment, or were horribly injured. And most of us saw things no human being should ever be expected to witness.’
‘But why should that make someone evil?’
He shook his head. ‘Only God knows these things, darling. All I know is that the legacy of war is all around us, and we should give people the benefit of the doubt.’
‘The other day I heard you calling him the devil incarnate.’
His face was severe now. ‘Listen, you must never, ever repeat that, my darling. In my position, I have to be neutral in all things, as you know. If I lose the support of my congregation, I may as well pack up and go home now.’
‘Home? Where?’
He’d laughed again, then. ‘It’s a manner of speaking, sweetheart. I mean, give up the parish and go somewhere else.’
‘Don’t you sometimes wish you could go somewhere else, to get away from Blackman?’
He sighed. ‘Yes, I do. But there are many good souls here in this parish, and God tells me I must do my best to mediate, to make their lives easier. To restore harmony. And that, my love, is exactly what I am trying to do.’
He did his best, the poor man. But it broke him, in the end.
She’s tried to prepare herself for it, but it still comes as a shock, all the same. At the head of the north aisle there is a kaleidoscope of bright colours in the window that was once filled with plain glazing.
‘Can you wheel me over there, love?’
As they approach, Bella starts to laugh. ‘Heavens, Mum, that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in a church window. A crocodile, eating a pair of legs? What on earth . . .?’
The top half of the stained-glass design is traditional enough, a classic Arts and Crafts interpretation of a medieval knight and his lady. But at their feet is another knight, surely St George, slaying what is plainly not a dragon, but an enormous, green crocodile in the process of devouring a pair of legs that hang, comically, like strands of spaghetti from its fearful-looking teeth.
‘A crocodile? Whatever’s a crocodile to do with Wormley?’
It has everything to do with Wormley, Molly thinks to herself. Old Eli said the creature would bring evil and he was right enough, in a way, even though everyone mocked him for his prophecies. Poor Eli. So kind, so gentle, so lonely. So damaged by war and bereavement, like most people around that time. Except for Blackman, of course, who’d profited while others suffered.
Suddenly she feels terribly weary. Remembering is exhausting. What she would most like to do now is lie down with her cheek resting on the stone flags and stay there, until the cold seeps into her body with a heavy forgetfulness and she can slip away to join Father and Jimmy, wherever they are.
Bella’s voice comes from somewhere far away. ‘You look as though you could do with a bite to eat, Mum.’ The window slips from view as Molly’s chair is turned, and she is being wheeled back down the aisle towards the church door.
Later, when they are sipping soup of the day in the warm recesses of the pub, Bella says, ‘Tell me about that window, Mum. Whatever is a crocodile doing in an English country church?’
Molly puts down her spoon. Where on earth to start?
PART TWO:
DECEMBER 1949
3
We arrived in the village in early December. The countryside was like a foreign land to me and Jimmy, you understand. Until then we’d only ever lived in the city.
He was ten, I was fourteen, and we were only just beginning to get used to life without Mum. I say ‘getting used to’ but we never really got used to it. The word ‘cancer’ had been whispered when the adults thought we were out of hearing, but we had sharp ears. Whatever it was that killed her took a long, long time. But even with all that warning, when the end came it was a hideous shock.
At first I simply couldn’t believe it, nor could Jimmy. Someone had told him that Mum had gone to heaven and he sobbed every day because he didn’t know his way there. How do you respond to that? To say that to go to her, he’d have to die as well? That Pa and me wouldn’t be coming with him, not just yet? Or that we all have to die, sometime? There is no consolation. Death is final, and they are gone forever.
I wept too, of course, and got angry, stomping around the flat and cursing God with all the worst swear words I knew. But mostly I just felt numb. Everyday activities, like getting dressed and making toast, going to school and coming home, felt like wading through thick fog. For a long, long time I was sure I’d never properly feel anything ever again.
Pa dropped his bombshell barely nine months after that. Since returning from the war he’d been one of several curates at St Martin-in-the-Fields, the beautiful church on the corner of Trafalgar Square, right in the centre of London. I loved it for its great columns, the light from its tall windows, the cheerful sound of its bells and those enormous bronze lions in the square. And I always imagined it having once been in the centre of green pastures, for why else would it have been given that name?
Best of all, the curacy came with a two-bedroomed flat just twenty minutes’ walk away, in the heart of what they call Bloomsbury, which is where, Mum told us, lots of famous writers and artists used to live before the First World War. There were still great gaps in the terraces, like broken teeth, where houses had been reduced to piles of rubble by German bombs. In fact, our own had cracks in the walls and the windows didn’t fit very well, so that the rain came in at the corners and we had to hide the damp patches with strategically placed pieces of furniture. But we didn’t mind. There were parks nearby, and Mum seemed happy enough. Until she got ill, that is.
Neither of them had ever talked about it to us, but I’d come to understand that Pa had had such a difficult time as an army chaplain that his nerves were shredded and he suffered terrible nightmares. So when he was demobbed, the church authorities offered him the curacy at St Martin’s, because the work was not too demanding and there would be plenty of others around to support him. Now, so it seemed, they thought he had recovered enough to take on his own parish. We would be
moving out to the country.
‘It’s a great honour,’ he said, his face more cheerful than I’d seen it in a long time. ‘I’m thrilled. We’ll have a lovely big vicarage, and lots of countryside all around for you two to explore. It’ll be a new start for all of us.’
It was so unexpected. We’d never lived in the country, except for a few brief months when we’d left London to avoid the Blitz. Moving to a new parish would mean leaving school, all of my friends and the people at St Martin’s who’d been so kind when Mum was ill. It would be a complete upheaval of our lives.
‘Couldn’t they find you a parish in London?’
‘I suppose if I waited . . .’ He paused to think, pulling his left earlobe. ‘But don’t you think it’ll do us all good to get out of the city for a while? The war’s taken a toll on everyone, darling. Not just on the buildings, but in our hearts and minds. We’re all a bit broken. What I hope is that living in the countryside for a while will heal us, help us grow stronger.’
What none of us knew, of course, was that the tentacles of war reached everywhere, even to the most tranquil, remote parts of the country. They may not have been bombed in the way that cities were, rationing may not have been so painful and you did not see so many people with disabilities and disfigurements, but the scars of war were there all the same, the trauma hidden deep in people’s heads, as we were to discover all too soon.
But for the moment my concerns were about more everyday matters. ‘What about school? Will there be one for Jimmy, like here?’ My brother loved the bright, sunny school ten minutes’ walk away, where there were plenty of other children like himself. His speech had improved, he could even tie his own shoelaces now and eat his meals with a knife and fork.
‘Don’t worry, my darling, I’ve already checked. The village is only six miles from a large town called Colchester, where there’s a special school for Jimmy and a girls’ grammar for you, with an excellent reputation. You can both go by bus.’
‘But who will look after us?’ Even though everyone had rallied round during Mum’s last few months, bringing food, doing the laundry, taking Jimmy to school and even cleaning our small flat, I’d found myself having to take on most of the domestic responsibilities, making sure that everything was planned for, everything covered. I could just about manage a small flat, with all the shops and friends nearby. However would I cope with a great big vicarage, without any familiar people around us?
‘There’s a housekeeper,’ Pa said. ‘A woman from the village, left over from the previous incumbent. I haven’t met her yet, but everyone says she’s a treasure. Her name is Mrs Diamond.’
‘Hope she lives up to it. Being a diamond, that is,’ I said, hating myself for sounding so grumpy.
Pa gave me a wan smile, clearly hoping to soften my resistance.
A sudden, worse thought. ‘She’s not going to actually live with us, is she?’
‘Oh no, sweetheart. She’s got her own home in the village and will come every day.’
Someone else to do the housework so that I could get on with my own life. Perhaps that would work out all right. I didn’t want to leave London, but to console myself I wrote in my notebook:
Positive thoughts about moving:
1.A housekeeper to look after us.
2.Jimmy would love the freedom of the countryside.
3.I might make new friends.
4.Pa could make friends with God again (very important).
He was looking forward to making a new start, he said, so I hoped this meant he was planning a new start with God. Not that I believed in God any more. How could I, when He’d taken our mother away? You could pray all you liked, but now I had proof that no one was listening. Or, if they were listening, they didn’t care. Even so, I went on pretending, so as not to upset Pa even more.
It was different for him, because believing in God was part of the job description for the clergy. During Mum’s last days I’d heard him praying out loud: ‘Oh God, why have you deserted me? Show yourself, I beg you. Hold my hand, help me through this trial.’
Pa hardly ever prayed out loud except when he was running church services, so hearing this made me shiver. But if he felt confident enough to get excited about becoming a proper vicar, then perhaps it was a good sign.
Wormley vicarage was cold, cavernous, unloved and filled with shabby, old-fashioned furniture. It was far too large for our little family. But by the time we’d packed up everything and driven the long, tedious journey from London I was so exhausted that I didn’t really care.
Downstairs there were four main rooms: two at the front overlooked the village street and across to the church. One had obviously been used by the previous occupant as a study, and was dominated by a massive mahogany desk that looked more like a ship. On the desk sat an ancient Bakelite telephone and I was about to get excited at the prospect of using it, but Mrs D told us it wasn’t connected, and somehow Pa never got round to that.
The back of the house was the sunny side, facing south over the garden and towards the woods. The kitchen had a linoleum floor, a solid-fuel range, shelves containing dusty kitchen implements and a large scrubbed-pine kitchen table. From here, a door led into a scullery with a deep square white sink and wooden draining racks and, beyond that, a useful lobby with dedicated spaces for boots and coats led out into the garden.
The dining room was the best of all, with sun pouring in through French windows into the garden, and two casement windows on either side. I suggested this would make a much brighter, warmer living room, but Pa wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I’m going to need that table for parish meetings and so on,’ he said firmly.
The stairs turned at a half-landing, with a tall window overlooking the front path, useful for checking who might be coming to the door. My bedroom had twin beds, a chest with wonky drawers, a tall wardrobe and, best of all, a personal washbasin. In the wardrobe I found a box of old paperbacks, mostly trashy romances with titles like Stolen Love and Together Again and covers showing doe-eyed women in various states of dishevelment gazing longingly into the distance, hoping for their lover to return. Their spines were broken, their pages yellowing with age, but I took them out and arranged them along a shelf, like a proper library.
Then I sat at the small writing desk in front of the window and peered out through dusty panes at the green swathe of unkempt lawn and the bare black branches of the trees beyond.
At last I had my own private space, with a bolt on the door. This was where I planned to write, to imagine other people and other worlds; it was the start of my new life as a soon-to-be famous novelist and poet, so I imagined. My notebook and pens were laid out ready to go. All I needed now was the inspiration, and I felt sure my new life in the village would provide it.
Mrs Diamond lived up to her name, although it took all of us a couple of weeks to get used to the idea of someone else running the house. I was afraid she might look too much like Mum, but happily she could not have been more different: a tall, rangy woman of about fifty with dark, thinning hair tied back in a severe bun, and a serious expression that only occasionally cracked into a smile, all the more rewarding for its rarity.
She would arrive just after breakfast and whip like a whirlwind throughout the house with her carpet cleaner, duster and polish, before settling into the kitchen to cook up a daily banquet of good, plain food. We had all become resigned to the continuing rationing of meat, butter and sugar. But out here in the country there were always a few ‘little extras’ to be had: eggs often, jars of honey, sometimes cheese and even the occasional whole chicken, delivered complete with head, legs and feathers. Happily, Mrs D knew exactly how to prepare it. We were all very grateful to be eating properly again.
She showed me how to riddle and refill the coke-fuelled Rayburn that provided the house with an unreliable and barely adequate supply of hot water. It had an array of hobs and ovens of different temperatures for cooking, although we never really got the hang of it and when she wasn’t there we
tended to use an ancient electric ring instead.
Each day she relaid the open fireplaces in Pa’s study and the living room with careful pyramids of screwed-up newspaper and twigs or kindling, topped with a few lumps of coal. There was plenty of wood to be had in the countryside, but the fireplaces were only fit for burning the expensive coal that was delivered in sacks and emptied down a chute into a coalhole in the dark, cobwebby cellar. Being so unused to managing open fires, and Pa being too mean to stoke them up properly, we shivered through that winter, missing the gas fires that had kept our London flat so toasty warm. I’d never really appreciated the convenience of gas, until we didn’t have it.
In addition to her duties at the vicarage, Mrs Diamond was a pillar of the church community and a mine of information about everything and everyone in the village. She organised the cleaning and flower rotas, and chivvied the volunteers who mowed the grass and weeded the graves and paths in the churchyard. Despite having lost a leg in the war, her husband, George, was still very active and always available to do odd jobs, she told us. And it was she who suggested that ‘the Rev’, as she called him, should hold a small sherry party after the morning service on Christmas Day.
‘Nice for them to meet you personally,’ she told him. ‘Just a small glass does wonders, with orange squash for the children and the Temp’rance lot. And they won’t linger long. They’ll be hungry for their dinner.’
Thinking back, all the people who would come to matter to me, for better or worse, came to the vicarage that Christmas Day. Kit and his parents, the Blackmans, Robert, the Timpson twins, the redoubtable Miss Calver. Everyone except Eli.
4
Christmas in a vicarage is never much of a family time, which is just as well, because with only the three of us we didn’t make much of a family. Any aunts or uncles or cousins were too far away, and Pa was too busy for us to travel back to London to be with friends. It was only our second Christmas without Mum, so it was probably a helpful distraction to have the house filled with guests.
