This Is All (48 page)

Ms M. felt sorry for him and such a heel for her rudeness,

And if I am like that, I thought, if I am all those things and more, isn’t everyone else like that too? Will was, I knew that for sure; his depths attracted me like a great lake into which I wanted to plunge and dive down to the bottom to find the secrets of his life that lived there, the secrets he never talked about and perhaps didn’t even know existed in him. And if everyone is like that, then nothing can ever stay the same, because everyone will always be changing in some way, and not everyone will change in the same way at the same time. So I must be prepared, I told myself, I must be ready, must accept changes when they occurred. But at that moment, with so many big changes coming all at once, changes I didn’t want, this was very difficult to accept.

I wish I had gone to Ms M. She might have turned me away, but I don’t think so. (In fact, I know so, but I couldn’t know that then.) Now it seems starkly clear why I would feel so upset – what it was deep inside me that made me feel as I did. But at the time I couldn’t work it out for myself because I didn’t know myself well enough. And so I sat by the river, watching the water amble by, and brooded and fretted and, to tell the truth, wallowed in a bout of self-pity (that petty sickness of the soul which is the most unattractive sickness of all).

What I couldn’t see, what I didn’t understand was this:

From the time my mother died, my father and Doris tried to protect me from the shock of her loss. This began even before she died, while she was in hospital. I wasn’t taken to see her. Dad told me she’d gone away for a while to a place where children were not allowed. I was given presents from her each day with a letter, which my father read to me. I found out only recently that Dad bought the presents and the letters were written by Doris. Mother was too ill to do anything.

Then one day while Dad and Doris were at work – or so they said – I was being looked after by my beloved

that she said, meaning only to apologise, ‘I wouldn’t mind helping but I’m not a Christian. Not a
practising
Christian. Not anything, really.’

‘O, that doesn’t matter,’ the vicar said, giving her a beaming grin that quite changed his face from morbid to boyish. ‘It’s the company that counts, you see. Would you mind? Have you time? It’s quite easy. It’s all in the service book. If you sit next to me I’ll show you what to do and what to say as we go along. Would that be all right?’

She didn’t feel up to refusing. The thought crossed her mind that the rev. might be one of those priests who get their names in the papers – sitting next to him while he showed her what to do, one thing leading to another – but she sensed that he wasn’t. There was something likeable about him, despite his weary appearance – partly because of his weariness. At any rate, she did as he suggested and they said Evensong in low ritual voices, the vicar using the wrong end of a pen to point to the words she had to say. When they came to the creed,
I believe in God the Father Almighty …
the vicar muttered, ‘Me only.’ There was a ‘lesson for the day’ from the Old Testament, which the vicar read out, and a passage from the New Testament that he asked Ms M. to read, which she enjoyed, as she always enjoyed reading aloud. The part of the service she liked the most was one of the psalms for the day:

O how amiable are thy dwellings: thou Lord of Hosts!

My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God
.

She thought you could say that about whichever god you believed in. And she liked the words themselves. That a dwelling could be
amiable
was a lovely idea,
entering the courts of the Lord
had a stately sound, and
rejoice
was exactly what her heart and her flesh had been doing ever since her godspell.

When they finished the vicar sat in silence for a minute, then ruffled his dog’s head, man and dog stood up, the vicar

grandfather Kenn, who used to take me to visit the churchyard. I was playing with my favourite doll, Betsy Borrowdale. (She was named Betsy after a character in a book my mother used to read to me, and Borrowdale after a place in the Lake District where we’d stayed for a holiday the year before Mother died and which Dad liked.) Betsy was home-made, a birthday gift from Doris when I was two, a rather lumpy rag doll whose hair came off at the slightest pull after I decided one day that she needed a bath, during which I used lavish amounts of shampoo that, combined with the hot water, weakened the glue with which Doris had stuck it on. I think I loved Betsy as much as I did because she was not like the mass-produced plastic child-proof dolls of the Barbie variety but had been made only for me and needed considerable motherly care if she were to stay alive and not fall apart. She was so often my companion and had endured so many adventures that by the day Granddad was looking after me she was almost completely bald, had one floppy arm that had lost its stuffing and her painted-on face had almost worn off. In fact, by then she was the ghost of her original self.

I was sitting on the floor nursing Betsy while Granddad read me a story I hadn’t heard before about a rabbit that went to heaven.

‘Do you think,’ Granddad said when he finished, ‘that Betsy might go to heaven one day?’

This thought had never entered my head, the prospect appalled me, and as I knew that when grown-ups asked such a question something of the kind was likely to happen, I hugged Betsy to me all the harder.

‘Everyone has to go to heaven sometime,’ Granddad said.

‘But not yet,’ I said in my most determined voice.

‘Heaven is a pretty good place to be. So maybe Betsy would like it there.’

‘She can go when I go,’ I said.

‘That’s all right for Betsy,’ Granddad said. ‘But people are

said, ‘Thanks so much. You were very kind.’ ‘No problem,’ Ms M. said. And the vicar and his canine acolyte processed into the vestry. And that was that.

Ms M. left the church feeling she’d been given a gift and pleased with herself for pleasing the Old Vic.

The next day she resisted. But two days later she was back again, sitting beside Old Vic ‘saying the office’, as he called it. And the day after, and the day after that. Then it was Sunday. Not being ‘one of the congregation’, she stayed away, but felt the miss. On Monday she was there again. And so began a routine that became a habit.

Nothing much was ever said between them. Ms M. would arrive, go straight to her seat beside Old Vic, who was always there before her, praying silently. They’d say the office. Afterwards, Old Vic would ask how she was, she’d reply briefly, adding some item of news, such as ‘Wordsworth for homework tonight,’ or ‘I’ve a club after school tomorrow. Can’t get away before five-thirty.’ To which Old Vic would reply, ‘Ah, Wordsworth!’ or ‘I’ll wait till six-thirty. Would that suit you? No one will be inconvenienced after all.’ He never said anything about himself, except with a smile when she asked how
he
was, ‘Fit and well. Fit and well,’ even though he always looked unfit and unwell and tired and she was sure he must have high blood pressure because his face was florid and he had broken veins in his lumpy nose.

Which is why she wasn’t surprised when she arrived one day to find the door locked and a note pinned on it, in beautiful italic writing that said,
Services cancelled due to illness of vicar
. What did surprise her was the distress she felt that Old Vic was ill and the depth of her disappointment that she wouldn’t be saying the office with him. For a moment this nonplussed her.

By the time she got home she had to know what was the matter. She looked up Old Vic’s phone number and rang. A croaky voice answered – Old Vic being strangled.

different. They aren’t the same as dolls. Sometimes people we love have to go heaven, even though we don’t want them to.’

There was nothing I wanted to say about that. I didn’t like this conversation.

But Granddad continued. ‘What would you think if Mummy had to go to heaven?’

‘Mummy wouldn’t go without me,’ I said.

‘Ah,’ said Granddad, ‘but you see, heaven is somewhere you have to go to on your own. And you wait there for the people you love to come to you when it’s their turn.’

‘I don’t like turns,’ I said. ‘We have to take turns at school and it’s always the nasty people who push in first, even when it isn’t their turn.’

‘It isn’t like that in heaven,’ Granddad said.

‘How do you know? Have you been there?’

‘No. No one comes back from heaven.’

‘So how do you know?’

‘I just do. It’s one of the things you know when you’re old, like me, but not when you’re young, like you.’

‘Grownups always say that,’ I said. ‘They always say you have to wait for the things you want till you’re grown up.’

‘That’s true,’ Granddad said. ‘They do. And about understanding things.’

‘Yes.’

‘I must say, you’re a clever girl to have spotted that.’

I was knee-wriggling pleased to be called clever by Granddad. Praise from him always gave me a thrill because he so rarely praised anybody I felt he meant it and wasn’t just being nice.

Granddad was quiet for ages. I hung on to Betsy and waited to see what would happen next. (Another thing you’re always having to do when you’re a child is wait for the grownups to be ready to do whatever they want to do, whereas they don’t like waiting for you.)

Then he said, ‘There’s something you should know, and I

‘Hello,’ Ms M. said. ‘This is Julie.’ And only then realised that she had never told him her name. ‘I mean,’ she added quickly, ‘your helper at Evensong.’

‘My dear!’ Old Vic said with obvious pleasure even through his strangulation.

‘Sorry to hear you’re poorly.’

‘Bronchitis. The very devil.’

‘Can I do anything?’

‘How kind. Mrs Topping is attending. My churchwarden. Topping by name, topping by nature.’ He tried to laugh but had a nasty coughing fit instead.

When the fit was over, Ms M. said, ‘Missed saying the office.’

‘I also.’

‘Well …’ What else could she say to someone with whom she had never had a proper conversation? ‘Hope you’re better soon.’

The next day, the same notice, the same croaking voice on the phone. And the next.

‘Isn’t there anything I can do to help?’ Ms M. said this time. ‘Would you like me to come and see you? I’d like to. Really.’

‘You’re an angel. But I wouldn’t want you to catch anything and Mrs Topping keeps me well supplied.’

‘I do miss Evensong.’

‘You do?’ There was a pause. She was going to say goodbye when Old Vic went on, ‘You still could, if you want to. On my behalf, as well as everyone else’s. You know the ropes by now. And I’d like that. It would mean a great deal to me.’

She knew at once she would, and said, ‘How do I get in?’

‘Mrs Topping has a key. She lives opposite. In the bungalow. Number five. I’ll warn her.’

For eight days, minus Sunday when a stand-in priest took the services to which she did not go, she said Evensong all alone in the church. And as soon as she got home, she rang Old Vic, who instructed her about the next day’s special

think you’re a clever enough little girl to understand.’ He picked me up and sat me on his knee. ‘Daddy told you Mummy has gone away for a while.’

I nodded. I felt something bad was coming.

‘The thing is,’ Granddad went on, ‘she won’t ever be coming back.’

I said, ‘Daddy said she’s waiting for me.’

‘Yes, I know. And he’s right. She is. But you won’t be going to where she is for a long long time.’

I knew I was going to cry soon. I said, ‘How long? Will it be before Christmas?’

‘Longer than that. Not until you’re older than I am, I should think.’

Older than Granddad? This was inconceivable. I started to cry.

‘And,’ Granddad said, ‘that’s such a long long time that I thought you might like to say goodbye to Mummy properly, like you would if she was going away on a long journey.’

‘Like when she and Aunty Doris went to London?’

‘Yes, like that.’

‘I don’t know,’ I wailed. ‘I don’t want her to go away.’

‘None of us does,’ Granddad said, mopping up my tears with his handkerchief. ‘You’d like to say goodbye to Mummy, wouldn’t you?’

I tried to take this in. ‘How can I say goodbye to Mummy if she isn’t here?’

‘Well, you see,’ Granddad said, ‘when people go to heaven, they leave part of themselves behind. A part that can’t go to heaven and stays here so we won’t forget them.’

‘But I won’t forget Mummy,’ I said.

‘I know, I know,’ Granddad said. ‘But if you were going away and you could leave part of yourself here so people you loved could say goodbye to you properly, you’d want them to, wouldn’t you?’

I thought about this, but couldn’t make any sense of it. ‘I don’t know,’ I said through my snivels.

prayers (the names of sick parishioners, the dead, the newly born, etc.), and they exchanged their usual few words about themselves.

For the first time in her life Ms M. felt she was being treated like an adult and being useful in an adult way, and she loved it.

When Old Vic was well enough to return to work they settled into their familiar routine again. A couple of times Mrs Topping joined them, suspicious, Ms M. couldn’t help guessing, about what was going on. She was one of those ‘holy women’ whose life is their work for their church and who often become maternally possessive of their priest.

On Fridays the old woman who had been arranging the flowers the day of Ms M.’s godspell would be doing the same job when Ms M. arrived but she always left when the service started.

Two months went by. And it was after the service one Friday that Old Vic said, ‘Three months now, and we’ve never had a proper talk. I don’t even know your full name.’

‘Julie Martin,’ Ms M. said.

‘Of this parish?’

‘Bowbridge Lane.’

‘Hello, Julie Martin of Bowbridge Lane.’

‘Hello, Reverend Ruscombe of St James’s.’

They shook hands and laughed.