Shepherd of Another Flock

by David Wilbourne

  ‘The chaplain said it was nearly midnight by the time they returned. They’d covered two hundred and fifty miles in all and spent seven hours on the road. They only had a cuppa at each lighthouse,’ my dad explained. ‘Their wives tried to keep their Christmas dinners warm in the oven, but the gravy had dried out a bit by the time they rolled back into Bishopthorpe.’

  ‘Why did they go around the lighthouses?’ I asked. I was constantly puzzled by weird church practices, and indeed still am.

  ‘Well,’ my dad began. His speech was as laboured as the Archbishop’s when he’d tried to spell out the find-your-biblical-partner game to me. ‘On Christmas Day we think of baby Jesus, the Light of the World, being born. The Archbishop wanted to thank all the lighthouse keepers for the light they bring to keep ships safe, and he felt there was no better day to do that than on the Light of the World’s birthday.’

  Half a century on, as I recall my parents’ raised eyebrows and knowing glances, I guess the long-suffering chaplain and chauffeur, and their long-suffering wives, hadn’t entirely shared the Archbishop’s enthusiasm. And the boozy lighthouse keepers must have been a bit puzzled by a purple-cassocked archbishop suddenly knocking on their door, bearing a box of chocolates. All because the lighthouse keeper loves Milk Tray, or perhaps Terry’s All Gold.

  Chapter Five

  On May Day, 1997, just a few weeks after the Bishop of Whitby had suggested I think about taking Helmsley on, I cycled down to the polling station at Bishopthorpe Primary School, where I voted as the bright sunshine outside caught the air of utter optimism. I hummed ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ as I pedalled north from Bishopthorpe into York along the snaking River Ouse, past Terry’s chocolate factory, recently taken over by Kraft Foods. The chocolatey aroma didn’t smell quite as nice as when I first encountered it in 1962, though. Perhaps memories of childhood are kind, with long hot summers and sharp delicious tastes, but somehow the aroma that day seemed a bit bland, less appetizing. When Terry’s and Rowntree’s were unashamedly York-based, rather than beholden to distant multi-nationals like Kraft and Nestlé, it made for a more tasty world.

  In York I dodged numerous tourists as I rode beneath the ancient city walls, winding my way through the narrow streets before speeding past the majestic Minster, the place where both my dad and I had been made priests. Overshadowed by the Minster’s west towers, I parked my bike by the crumbling stone wall of the Purey Cust Hospital, careful not to scratch the Mercs and Jaguars jammed into this private hospital’s car park.

  The Minster’s Great Peter, a bell three times the height of a man, boomed twelve noon as I walked into the hospital’s office and was greeted warmly by the matron. The hospital’s proximity to the Minster meant that, whenever there was a big service, clergy often used its wards to get ready. I reminded the matron how, a couple of years back, a whole gang of bishops had used the top floor to robe. They had then descended en masse in the lift in their multicoloured cope-and-mitred splendour. They emerged opposite the operating theatre only to terrify some poor soul who was just being wheeled out, who must have thought he was having the strangest glimpse of heaven. The bishops didn’t help by practising their rusty pastoral skills on the poor bloke – after all it was years since most of them had been parish priests, some never at all.

  ‘Ooooh, have you had an operation, then?’ one pink-coped bishop asked, somewhat stating the obvious.

  ‘You’ll be feeling a bit woozy,’ said another, decked in a cope of daring yellow and purple. ‘But I’m sure you’ll soon improve. You’re better off in here than being at the mercy of the NHS!’

  ‘We told him it was just the after-effects of the morphine,’ matron laughed. ‘Now, let me take you to Lord Feversham. He’s been very much looking forward to your visit,’ she added, with a twinkle in her eye.

  Before my all-important visit to the hospital, I had done my homework. Helmsley was a bit of a Downton Abbey of a parish, with Lord Feversham cast as their Lord Grantham. Actually, the first Lord Feversham had represented Downton and Salisbury in parliament in the seventeenth century, and was originally Baron Downton before his descendant took up the Feversham name and moved to Duncombe Park in Helmsley. Helmsley was also one of the few parishes left in Britain where the lord of the manor still appointed the vicar. As I was now up for the post, I needed to make a good impression on Lord Feversham, who was holed up in the Purey Cust with a gammy leg.

  My Lord was sitting up in bed, with a linen tent over his lower half. In his early fifties, he had the look of a Tudor monarch: rotund and ruddy-faced, his bald head polished, his beard full and well-manicured.

  ‘I’m sorry about your leg,’ I began, as I took off my cycle clips, conscious that I sounded as stupid as those bishops cooing over the patient being wheeled out of the operating theatre. My pastoral concern was dismissed by a wave of a hand.

  ‘Don’t worry about that, it’ll heal like it’s healed before.’ Even so, he grimaced with pain before continuing, ‘It seems like you’re the coming man! Why’s that?’

  So began the most surreal job interview ever. Lord Feversham punctuated each of my stuttering answers with a grimace – I was never sure whether it was his leg or my answer which pained him. We talked about Helmsley and its previous two vicars. The first went there in 1955, the year I was born, and stayed thirty-seven years unto death. He had been a shy man, deeply faithful and spiritual. Sadly, his brand of exquisite catholic worship failed to make a connection with the masses. The next vicar had then jump-started a lot of exciting initiatives, making all sorts of connections with folk who normally didn’t darken the church door. He was as flamboyant as his predecessor was shy. A shade too flamboyant, as it turned out.

  ‘He should have kept a mistress in Leeds, no one would have found him out then. Of all the stupid things, carrying on with one of your parishioners!’ was Lord Feversham’s brisk take on the affair, a strange view of moral correctitude. Not wishing to offend his Lordship, I said nothing out loud, but tried to adopt an expression which signalled that, as a cleric, I didn’t really approve of people keeping a mistress in Helmsley or Leeds or wherever. It’s often said the aristocracy have a different take on life from us lesser mortals.

  We talked of Helmsley’s history, and of how, in Victorian times, the parish had had a vicar who’d been a bit of an empire builder, erecting church after church in the surrounding countryside, seemingly wherever there was a huddle of farmsteads. He and a posse of assistant clergy had leisurely ridden on horseback around the moorland villages, taking services whenever a church crossed their path, building one when it didn’t. One priest had even slung his hammock in the aisle of a faraway church on the top of the moors on a Saturday evening, so he could tip himself out in time for the servants’ service before dawn the next morning.

  ‘You’ve no horse, no assistant clergy; how are you going to cope with it all, just you and your bicycle?’ Lord Feversham chuckled.

  We talked of healing wounds; of harvest festivals and Remembrance Days; of being relevant whilst honouring tradition; of getting children and teenagers to come to church; of trying to lower the average age of the congregation, which as far as I could ascertain, was around seventy-five. It was all standard, boring churchy stuff to which I gave the standard, boring answers. But all the way through the interview, I was daydreaming about that dragon I had first seen daubed on Helmsley church’s wall thirty years before. Could I bring it to life, like the portraits that spring off the walls in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore, and bring a bit of fierce fire to Helmsley?

  There was one hint in that surreal interview that traditional Helmsley was ready to change. Lord Feversham chuckled as he told me that the film Brassed Off had been screened the previous night at the Helmsley Arts Centre. The film celebrated a pit village’s thriving brass band, set against the chill backdrop of Margaret Thatcher closing all the mines. ‘My agent tells me that the whole audience cheered and clapped to a man when the plucky brass band won in the Albert Hall
. If that can happen in Helmsley, believe you me, there’ll be a landslide in the election today. Tony Blair and Labour will romp home.’

  We chatted a bit about ourselves. He told me with tears in his eyes how his first wife had died tragically, aged thirty. He’d then married again, and he and the youthful and vivacious Lady Polly had embarked on transforming Duncombe Park. For decades it had served as a school for gals of the gentry. But with gals of the gentry nearing extinction, its time as a school had come to an end in 1980, and Lord and Lady Feversham had moved back into the place. Camping out in a couple of rooms to start with, with not much more than a primus stove and sleeping bags as home comforts, they painstakingly began to restore the house to its former glory, room by room.

  We talked about my wife and the three daughters we had at primary school. ‘Four women in the house, eh? You’re more like a chaplain to a nunnery than chaplain to an archbishop!’ Lord Feversham jested. ‘And they tell me your wife’s supportive?’

  ‘Well, she supports me as a priest, just as I support her as a history teacher,’ I replied, more than a bit rattled. The days of clergy wives being unpaid curates, running around the town dispensing broth to ailing parishioners, had long since passed. ‘Traidcraft’s her big thing,’ I informed his Lordship.

  ‘What the hell’s that?’ Lord Feversham snapped.

  ‘It’s an ethical company which sells all sorts of foods and clothes and stuff from the developing world, and ploughs the profits back into workers’ cooperatives and their communities,’ I explained. Lord Feversham grimaced. I’d heard that his seventeenth-century ancestor, Charles Duncombe, had made his fortune anticipating Charles II suspending the Stock Exchange, compounded by some shady tax affairs. I guessed the incumbent lord wasn’t the greatest fan of ethical companies. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  ‘Well with New Labour romping home, we’ll all have to be a bit more ethical in our dealings. When you’ve settled in, come up to the house and have lunch with Lady Polly and me, and tell your wife to bring a Traidcraft catalogue – we’ll see if we can sell a few things in the visitor centre.

  ‘Go back to your Archbishop and tell him you’ll do,’ Lord Feversham concluded, as I was dismissed from his court. ‘You can prepare for government,’ he chuckled, ‘and when you get downstairs, tell Matron I’m ready for my lunch. I’ve already looked at the menu – I’ll have the roast pheasant and game chips!’

  Chapter Six

  Three months later we moved to Helmsley, just as Princess Diana died and the whole nation wrung its heart out, playing out its own version of Evita. Thirty miles from York, Middlesbrough or Scarborough – the nearest large towns – Helmsley tends to be immune to the fads and fashions which grab the world by storm. But even so, for days afterwards people went around the town with long faces and tears in their eyes. Our arrival was cheered by a visit from Alan, my new churchwarden, who was in his mid-seventies.

  ‘I’ve got a cauliflower for you, but it’s not quite ready yet,’ he declared on our doorstep, before making a hasty retreat. Then an hour later he returned. ‘It’s ready now, I’ll bring it along. I just wanted to check you still were in.’ As if we were going anywhere, with countless cases to unpack and a myriad DIY chores to complete. Half an hour later he was back again. ‘Cook it straight away and have it for your tea.’ And with that he was gone. I guessed I would be seeing more of him, if I could ever catch him for long enough. A retired GP, he clearly delivered cauliflowers like he formerly delivered babies.

  I was too busy to grieve for Diana, because I had just three weeks before my official duties began in which to turn our huge and ancient vicarage into a cosy home. Early autumn gales whistled through the gaping holes in the chimney breasts where wood-burning stoves had been roughly torn out by the removal men – in a hurried departure, the previous occupants had taken all the carpets, fixtures and fittings with them. They desperately needed them for their hastily acquired new homes.

  Helmlsey’s vicarage, with the quaint title Canons Garth, dates from the twelfth century. When it was first built it was just a hall with a central fire; a base for the canons from Kirkham Abbey, who trudged twenty miles or so over the hills to build Helmsley’s church and Rievaulx’s abbey. Since then, bits and bobs had been added to make a chapel, five rooms downstairs and ten bedrooms upstairs. The parishioners were very proud of their ancient pile, stubbornly resisting pressure to sell the vicarage and buy a more modest house. But then again, they didn’t have to live there, with the wind blowing through the rattling leaded windows and astronomical heating bills to run a boiler which barely kept the damp at bay. Rachel and the girls were very good about it, donning extra-thick jumpers to keep warm. Our full-of-fun Clare ingeniously organized relay races using her Sweep puppet as a baton, shooting up the narrow main staircase, clattering along the dark-beamed landing – forty feet in length – which snaked past six bedrooms, before leaping down the spiral servants’ staircase and onto the home straight – another forty-foot long wending corridor with chapel, study, Tudor porch, living room and stone-flagged dining room off it – before reaching the hall and cajoling a sister or a parent to be the next Sweep-bearer. Her target was that the five of us would complete the run in five minutes; by the time we had achieved that, extra-thick jumpers were no longer necessary and Sweep sported a distinctly frayed look.

  So, as the nation had a collective nervous breakdown over Diana and Elton John wailed his farewell, I worked through the night to make our house habitable; re-pointing the stonework, installing thirty-seven curtain rails and the thirty-seven pairs of curtains which Rachel ran up on her sewing machine into the early hours, fitting hundreds of square yards of carpets – bits and bobs cobbled together from previous vicarages which made a positively psychedelic mosaic beneath our feet. For most of September I was never more than a few yards away from my toolbox. Fortunately, I enjoy trying to mend things, and as I did I pondered long and hard about how to mend a broken parish.

  In those early days, various people ‘happened to be passing’ and interrupted my labours, checking out the new vicar and his brood. They waxed lyrical about Helmlsey’s faults, depressing me no end. ‘People come to Helmsley to die,’ the dour chair of the district council came specially to tell me. He was a thickset, elderly man, with jowly cheeks and bloodhound eyes; much like an ancient prophet imparting his message of doom. That basically was all he had to say; once he had said it, he made his excuses and left.

  ‘The last-vicar-but-one used to come to school on a Friday morning and cane me,’ another visitor, a grizzled old man, complained as he loitered on our ancient doorstep. ‘I admit I used to cheek the nuns who ran school, but I was too big for them t’ take on. They saved up the punishment until t’ vicar came in on a Friday to take assembly. He told us Jesus loved us, then whacked us to ’ammer ’ome his message.’ With that he walked away, making it clear he would never darken any church door ever again. He had my considerable sympathy.

  ‘We used to come to this place for our inoculations. The nuns who lived here ran a primitive ’ealth service. God, those needles ’urt!’ declared a bell-shaped farmer’s wife over a friendly cuppa in our draughty kitchen. ‘They weren’t that smaller than t’ hypodermics t’ vet used to stick into our ’osses.

  ‘And it was a maternity home too,’ she continued. ‘I had to give birth lying on a hard metal operating table. Don’t let me make you blush, vicar, but my arse, sorry, my backside was freezing. It’s a wonder I didn’t get frostbite!’

  I laughed – her straight talking was a tonic compared to all the double-speak and church politics I’d endured at Bishopthorpe.

  ‘But I soon forgot all that when my contractions came thick and fast, blood and stuff cascading onto the floor, like I was an animal on a butcher’s slab. The sister loomed over me, sneering as if I were t’ worst sinner that ever graced God’s earth. My Jim was pacing up and down outside, beside himself with worry. He kept sticking his ’ead round t’ door, his ’air all tossl
ed. It fair raised my spirits to see him. “Is she all right, sister? She’s ’ollering somert terrible.”

  ‘ “You should have thought of that nine months ago, before you did what you did to her,” the sister snapped, and she pushed him straight back out into corridor. She hadn’t an ounce of mercy in her. Bit ironic, when they called themselves t’ Sisters of Mercy.’

  Still the parishioners came. They spluttered scary tales of my immediate predecessor who, in their opinion, partied too often, drank too hard, mixed with the lowest of the low, made beautiful maidens swoon, told religious people they were hypocrites and tried to put faith back at the top of the Church’s agenda. To be honest, he sounded just like Jesus. But whatever, it all seemed quite anarchic, and as I hammered and sawed and painted and cleaned, I contemplated how to restore order, as well as having to square up to those who used the anarchy as a cover to play their own little power games.

  There was one visitor who was able to put me more at ease. ‘It’ll take you twenty years to make any impact here,’ Father Bert, a retired parish priest, cheerfully advised me in his broad Geordie accent. He belonged to the High Church wing of the Church of England, hence his title. He wasn’t quite as tall as me, but his back was ramrod straight, hinting at a military past. He sported a black suit and a black clerical shirt, and a good head of immaculately parted silver hair, liberally plastered down with Brylcreem. Clear blue eyes gazed intently at you through rimless glasses, giving him a bemused, prayerful, kindly air. He had popped in just after breakfast – the girls had all gone to school, Rachel had gone shopping in Thirsk, so it was good to have a voice from the world of men to banish Canons Garth ghosts.