10
Questions
Francis went to church with the family for the first time on Sunday and thought that he might find out something about God there. But he could make nothing of the service, and halfway through he decided that he had better give up. So he spent the sermon time drumming his heels and thinking about Tyke.
But even if he could not understand in church, there was no mistaking the love at home. It took Francis only a short while to discover that where a mother and father truly love each other, children are happy and busy and no one wants to pinch or quarrel much. There was a lot of laughter too and pleasure in being together.
The time they all seemed closest was when they sat on the hearthrug after supper and Mr. Glenny read the Bible to them and prayed. Each night of that week they read more of what Jesus said to His disciples the night before He died, and it seemed to Francis that they must all have stayed up very late to have heard as much as that. He did not understand a great deal except that word love, which came over and over again. Jesus seemed to think it was extremely important.
He was rather disappointed about helping on the farm. This farm was quite unlike his toy model or farms he had read about in books, and Uncle John’s great concern was that he should keep out of the way of the machinery.
However, there were moments! He liked going out in the evening to call in the cattle and then running ahead to stand on the platform in the stall and watch them come in orderly procession to munch their feed. He liked the hum of the machinery and the sound of the swirling milk cascading into the great refrigerated container. Even more, he enjoyed carrying the food to the calves and watching them jostle each other on wobbly legs, plunging their noses into the mixture, or, as they grew older, butting their foreheads together as they fought for their feed. Uncle John had a herd of forty pedigreed Friesans, and a number of them were calving just then. One never-to-be forgotten night they all crouched quietly on the straw in their robes and watched a calf being born.
But what he really loved best was the river. Whenever he could, he would escape and run along the banks, watching the swans, the ducks, and the moorhens, and sometimes throwing stones at them for fun. He found the dam and noticed that, after a rather dry March, the water looked quite shallow. He wondered how they had ever felt so frightened. He wandered farther, to the place where the tributary joined the larger river and found fan-shaped beaches where the cattle came down to drink in the early morning. One day he and Martin painted the little boat, brought down the oars, and went for a ride in it. But the ride was not as exciting as before because it kept sticking in the reeds.
He liked Martin, but privately thought him a rather tame little boy, perfectly content with his home, his school, his village Scout pack, and the countryside. Francis felt he could teach him a thing or two, and tried one day when they were sauntering down the riverbank, looking for swans’ nests in the reeds. The lambs in the pastures on the other side were making a tremendous crying, and Martin was telling him about some boys who had tried to steal a swan’s egg, and the police had gone after them because swans belong to the Queen and are under royal protection.
“Pooh!” said Francis. “That’s nothing. Before I came here, I belonged to a gang that had knives and bombs and things. The police caught me, but I didn’t tell ‘em a thing. It’s easy to fool the police.”
“But what did you do with guns and bombs?” asked Martin.
“Oh, we—we slashed tires and bashed up phone booths, and—blew people up.”
“Why? Whatever for?”
Francis hesitated. He had no answer to that one. Why had they done it?
“Oh, just for fun!” he answered rather lamely.
“Well, it doesn’t sound much fun to me, and I bet it wasn’t much fun for the people who got blown up. Besides, I don’t believe it. Children don’t have bombs. Look at those two long-tailed tits—I think they’re going to build a nest. Stand still, and watch.”
Francis scowled at Martin, standing motionless among the celandines and daisies, far more interested in two silly little birds than in his own dangerous and glorious deeds. And he was not any more successful with little Chris. He and Chris were sitting on the step together eating bread and jam, and Chris was jigging excitedly up and down.
“I’m going to Cubs tonight in my new uniform,” he announced. “Are you going to Scouts, Francis?”
“No!” scoffed Francis, who wanted to go very much. “You do sissy things in Scouts. I belonged to a real gang before I came here, and we used to go out at night with guns and knives and things.”
Chris looked at him, neither shocked nor impressed, merely entertained.
“What did you do with them?” he asked. “Did you kill people dead?”
Francis, glancing round to see that Auntie Alison was well out of earshot, started off on a highly colored account of his own evil deeds. Chris listened calmly enough.
“Well,” he said at last, “you’re not as clever as my daddy. We had a cow what nearly died, and my daddy made it come alive again. It’s much cleverer to make something alive what was dead than to make something dead what was alive, so there!”
Francis gave up. “What do you know?” he muttered. “You and your old Scouts!”
He stumped upstairs and lay down on his bed with his dirty boots on, because he was not allowed to, and stayed there sulking for a time. He felt homesick for his mother, even homesick for the gang, and yet those questions nagged at him. Why had they done it? Had it really been fun? Was healing and helping really better than bashing and destroying? Was loving better than hating and pinching? He had only been at the farm for ten days, and yet he was having so many strange new thoughts. It was all most bewildering.
Later on, he sat alone at the kitchen table, bored and cross, turning the pages of a magazine. Uncle John was out milking, Kate was monopolizing the television with a program that did not interest him, and Auntie Alison was ironing. Martin and Chris had gone off to Scouts and Cubs and had invited him to go too, but, after all he had said, he was too proud to accept. He would make some excuse and go the following week. In the meantime—his gaze wandered around the room and came back, as usual, to rest on the misspelled card on the wall.
“Auntie Alison,” he said suddenly, “Where’s God?”
Auntie Alison nearly dropped the iron. She had quite forgotten the cross boy at the table.
“God?” she repeated. “He’s—He’s everywhere.” She paused to think. “Everything you see, Francis—the flowers, the river, the calves, the birds, the stars—all life and color and beauty come from Him. God is like the source of a beautiful river.”
“Yes, but where is He?” persisted Francis.
She switched off the iron and came and sat down beside him. “It’s a good question, Francis,” she said, “because you’ll never be happy until you find Him. All love and happiness flow from Him, and He wants you to find Him. He loves you—He came to you—”
“What?” said Francis.
“Yes, He came to you in Jesus. We couldn’t see God, so He became a Man. Jesus said, ‘If you have seen Me, you have seen My Father, God.’ Listen very carefully when we read about Jesus at night, because when you begin to know Jesus, you’ll begin to know God. God showed us His love in Jesus—Jesus spent His whole life loving, healing, and helping, and in the end He died because He loved us so much—you’ll hear about that tomorrow night because it is the evening before Good Friday, the day Jesus died on the cross about two thousand years ago. People still remember that day all over the world.”
She was speaking very slowly, uncertain how best to explain, and Francis stared out the window at the last light behind the line of poplars along the riverbank. This conversation had started up a new train of thought.
“All rivers have sources, don’t they?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Where’s the source of this river?”
“I don’t know, but I could find out. Somewhere, far up in the hi
lls, there must be a spring, bubbling up from the earth, and the rainfall’s high up there, so it gets bigger and bigger and other streams join it, and wherever they go, everything grows green and beautiful.”
Francis was silent. Much of what Auntie Alison had said had gone over his head, but two things remained, because anything to do with the river fascinated him. “God is like the source of a beautiful river—all love and happiness flow from Him.”
Kate came in at that point, put on the light, and offered to get supper. Kate was fifteen, tall and slender with long, fair hair. She did not approve of Francis and thought her parents were far too lenient with him, and Francis considered her a perfect pain. He was not going to talk in front of her, so he stepped out into the dusk that smelled so sweet of new grass, catkin pollen, and cows, and wandered down to the river.
It lapped in the reeds where the swans and moorhens were going to nest. A water rat splashed in the amber current and made him jump. “God is like the source of a beautiful river—all love and happiness flow from Him.” If he could somehow find that source, he supposed he would be happy. And perhaps Mum and Dad would love each other, and Gloria would get out—and Mum would get better—and Wendy would stop pinching, and Tyke would stop wanting to do him in.
What else had she said? He tried to remember. “When you begin to know Jesus, you’ll begin to know God.” He had better listen very carefully tonight.
11
The Source
Francis listened every night and, because it seemed like an interesting story, he learned a lot. He learned how Jesus died on Good Friday because He loved people and wanted to take the punishment of their wrong-doing on Himself. He also learned that Jesus rose again on Easter day, was alive now, and still went on loving. Then they started reading stories about His life on earth—healing, helping, loving. It was love, love, love all the time.
That was all very nice, but it made no difference to Francis. He still threw stones at the ducks and did all he dared to annoy Kate. When no one was looking, he still snatched nice food to take to the river, and he told stories that were not true. Mum was getting better, so they said, so he supposed they would soon be going home. He wanted to see Mum, but he did not want to go home, because once they got home the whole business would start over again. Dad and Gloria would reappear, Wendy would start pinching, and Tyke would be near enough to do him in. There seemed no end to it, because there was no new beginning.
The Easter holidays seemed to fly, because there was so much to do. He, Martin, and Chris helped on the farm and messed about with the boat. They made a house on an island, swam, fished, and looked for nests. Francis enjoyed it all, but he was happiest when he was by, on, or in the river. He could not have explained why he loved the river so much. Perhaps it was because his first great adventure had had to do with the river, or perhaps because it had washed him up at the feet of Uncle John. He was obsessed with its course and would trace it out on the map or lie in bed imagining it flowing on and on, broadening, to the great cities and the sea. Sometimes in thought he would trace it backwards to the spring, high up in the hills, where the first silver trickle bubbled over and swelled to a current. When he grew up, that was the first thing he would do—he would follow the river right back to its source.
There were only three days left of the Easter holidays. Kate was rejoicing, and Martin was grumbling at having to go back to school. After prayers that night, Uncle John made an announcement.
“There’s a lot that needs to be done in the yard tomorrow,” he said. “The lawn needs mowing, the flower beds weeding, and the compost dug in for the next plantings. If we all worked hard tomorrow, we could get that done, and the next day we will have a holiday. Martin, Francis, and Chris, I’ll take you all to the cattle market, and Mum can have a quiet day at home. You can come too, if you want, Kate.”
“I’ll help tomorrow and stay home and finish my essay on Wednesday,” said Kate, who was very studious.
“Then you’ll have the house to yourself,” said her mother. “I’m going to the hairdresser’s.”
“Good!” replied Kate. “I like the house to myself. It’s nice and quiet.” She glanced meaningfully at Francis, who was in the habit of playing “Chopsticks” on the piano. They had never actually had a quarrel, for to Francis, Kate was almost grown-up, but she had said several things to him that he did not intend to forget. One day Kate was going to get what was coming. He went upstairs to bed muttering rather viciously, and it struck him that he was not really looking forward to spending the best part of tomorrow working, with Kate watching him out of the corner of her eye, ready to pounce on him if he slacked. It was not his idea of fun at all. He was not a servant, and he was not going to do anything he did not like doing. Perhaps he would do something else.
He fell asleep hating Kate, but as he slept he had a wonderful dream. He dreamed that he was running along the bank of the river toward the source, but the riverbed was dry, and the banks were caked mud like the desert in the geography book. Then he saw a stream trickling from the hills, and wherever the water came, life, beauty, greenness, and buttercups sprang up. A river of life, he said to himself and woke to find the sun streaming through his window and the first cuckoo calling outside. A river of life, he repeated and wondered where he had heard those words before. He rather thought that it must have been in church.
He sprang out of bed in a great hurry, feeling the kiss of the sun on his bare skin. He did not really mean to be naughty. It was his dream that had put the idea into his head. There would not be many days before he went back to school, and he must have a day to himself to do his own thing. Uncle John always got up early but not quite so early as this, and he thought he could just make it. He stuffed some biscuits and cold meat into his pocket and on the table left a note that said, “I’m gone. I will come back. Love, Francis.”
He brought his bicycle from the garage and gave a great sigh of relief as the trees screened him from view. He was going to follow the river, keeping close to the banks, and although he knew that he could not possibly reach the source in the hills, he would go as far as he could. There were other little green, wooded hills on the horizon.
He started off along the road, pedaling between hedges, but he soon discovered that it was impossible to follow the road and stick to the river; he kept losing it. So when he reached the nearest village he asked a friendly garage man if he might leave his bicycle there as he wanted to go for a walk. The man was most agreeable. He pointed out the path that led to the river and gave Francis a bag of chips. So he trotted off through the buttercups, and the sense of freedom, the sunshine, the birdsong, the kindness, and the chips cast a sort of heavenly glow over that April morning that Francis never forgot for the rest of his life.
Even on foot, it was not always easy to follow the river. Sometimes there was a path, and sometimes he had to push through hedges or squeeze through barbed wire or skirt fields of young green wheat. He trotted several miles, and the morning shadows had shortened, and the day was getting hotter. But the river did not appear to be growing any smaller.
Every step was interesting. He came to a wood, dim and scented with bluebells. Here he sat down and ate his lunch, watching the sun-flecked water through feathery beech leaves. A little later he saw a kingfisher dart out of a hole and skim the surface of the river. The banks smelled of garlic, and in one field a family of rabbits were washing their ears. And he never, for a moment, felt lonely. The chatter and gurgle of the river and the crying of sheep and lambs were company enough for anyone. He lost all count of time and could have wandered on forever, happily planning how to annoy Kate, or just thinking about the river.
“The river of life,” he murmured to himself. “The source of a beautiful river.”
It was midafternoon and very hot when the ground on either side of him began to rise, and he realized that he had reached the hilly country. “Far, far away in some high hills!” Perhaps he had gotten there. The river did seem a little narrower
, and he did not know that it was a good deal deeper.
And then, as he rounded a shoulder of the meadow, he found it—a clear stream rushing down over golden stones to join the river. Forget-me-nots and shining buttercups grew on the banks and in the marshy patches at the side, for it had tunneled itself a little valley. Francis, gazing upwards, thought that if he followed it away up into those hills, he might find the source. He strung his sandals around his neck with a bit of string and began climbing, following the stream.
It was not always easy because the hillside was very steep, and the stream cascaded down in merry little waterfalls. Sometimes he had to pull himself up by bundles of fern and grass, and sometimes the land flattened out into daisy-starred pastureland. The river was below him now, a sparkling ribbon winding between weeping willows and alders until it disappeared behind another fold of the hills. He would have to wait till he grew up to track that river to its source, but this one was within his grasp. He just had to climb to the top.
He was nearly there. He had now reached a sloping field that seemed to him greener than any field he had ever seen before. All over it skipped lambs, and sheep lay grazing. It was nearly shearing time, and their full fleeces seemed white as the fluffy clouds above the hilltop. It would be easy going from here onwards, because the stream laughed its way through a pasture and led to a house that stood right on the crest, sheltered by a thicket of larches.
“Perhaps the man who lives in that house looks after the source,” thought Francis, hurrying on, “but I’m going to find it by myself first.” It was not at all difficult now that he had come so far. Just by the house was a stone trough set in the ground full of water. Just above it, near the roots of the trees, was a shallow, bubbling well with a pipe where one could fill buckets, and the water that bubbled up in the well was spring water, clear as crystal. The ferns, forget-me-nots, and periwinkles that grew all around it were longer, greener, and bluer than any he had ever seen before.
Patricia St John Series Page 65
