41. BECOMING SIXTY

More years have rolled along and Ursula is hitting a big birthday...

Primrose was planning a surprise for her mother’s sixtieth birthday. She’d been worried that the older woman might become reclusive, living as she did on her own and apparently having few friends, and she wanted the birthday celebration to be special.

But unknown to her Ursula was slowly and methodically putting into being a dream she’d harboured for years. The one that she’d nurtured into existence before Cardew had died a few years earlier.

She was writing a novel, and it was taking some time.

And in that novel a middle-aged widow was searching for love, and finding it in quite a few unexpected places. What her character was experiencing, she thought, she supposed, was what she would like for herself, love companionship in short bursts without the heartbreak of parting. And lust. She hankered after lust if only for a last time. After all, she was days off being sixty!

And hovering around the edges of Gertrude’s life (Gertrude was her character) was the Reverend Simon Shackle, a rather naughty parson in charge of an inner-city church, with all the complications that life in inner cities can bring.

Her main problem was her ignorance of inner-cities and the lives lived by people who were somewhere on the edge of something she might have vaguely heard about, but that didn’t bother her. She simply watched Coronation Street on the television and made the rest up.

A novel might reflect life, but it doesn’t have to exactly mimic it, she told herself.

She was planning the next escapade in which Gertrude would inadvertently fall into a handsome man’s bed when that winsome character was interrupted with her knickers round her knees by the Reverend Simon Shackle knocking her door and sending her male conquest scurrying for the spare room.

And her own door bell rang.

She smiled momentarily and decided that the Reverend Simon Shackle rang a doorbell rather than knocked the door, and she opened her own door to see who was ringing it, expecting Primrose.

It was the Reverend Jude Pernicle, and the coincidence made her laugh out loud.

“Why, Reverend, I was only just thinking of clergymen, and here is one on my own doorstep!” she explained.

He looked uncomfortable, and his Vandyke beard was struggling to present itself in a chirpy way.

“Was it you?” he asked, pushing that beard towards her. “Did you do it?”

“Was what me?” she asked, blinking and wondering whether her fictional clergyman might begin a visit with such a confusing pair of questions and deciding that he wouldn’t. “And what do you think I did?” she added.

“I know I’m not of the Roman faith, but I do think there should be such a thing as secrecy regarding what’s said in the confessional,” he almost barked.

“I’m sure you’re right, and I’d be even more sure if I knew what you were talking about,” she said.

“And why the Bishop?” he asked, and she was sure she saw the glint of a tear in one of his eyes. “You could have come to me!”

“What Bishop?” she asked, “I don’t know any Bishops.”

“And telling him stuff that was part of a private conversation...” By this time he was obviously weeping.

“What private conversation?” she asked.

“He’s angry, you know, very angry and talking about having me defrocked for saying it!”

“Defrocked?” she ask, “and saying what?”

“It was you, wasn’t it? You who told him when it was part of a private conversation...”

“Reverend, I have never knowingly spoken anything to a Bishop,” she said, trying not to sound too severe in the face of his obvious misery.

“It couldn’t have been anyone else...” he mumbled, “and to think I thought I was in love with you!”

“Crikey!” she said, unable to think of any other expletive that wasn’t generally ascribed to the Anglo Saxon origin of her mother tongue.

“Strike that,” he moaned.

“You’d better come in and tell me what this is all about,” she said, standing to one side to allow him to pass by. “By the look of it you need a special kind of spiritual help, if you know what I mean!”

He helped himself to a glass of whiskey from the bottle that was on the trolley in the corner. He noted that it was a different bottle every time he called, which was often enough for such a thing to be noteworthy if only because it meant that Ursula must surely enjoy a wee dram herself.

“I have been given a right dressing down by the Bishop,” he explained when they were both sitting down and Ursula had helped herself to a small measure from the same bottle in order to keep him company.

“What could the Bishop possibly complain about?” she asked, “don’t you keep the church clean enough? Or disinfect the toilets often regularly?”

“There aren’t any toilets,” he sniffed.

“Then what is it, and why are you blaming me?”

“He gave me a right dressing down for not believing in God,” he mumbled, “he said that if God didn’t exist I’d be out of a job and the whole edifice of civilisation would be dragged to the gutters… he even said I was evil to tell such things as what I did and didn’t believe to women. He specified women. And you’re the only woman I’ve spoken to about my faith, or lack of it.”

“And Doris,” I pointed out.

“Doris?” he asked.

“Doris Pumpkin, your house keeper.”

“Oh, her. I had to let her go the other week. I caught her at my, er, spiritual bottle. I mean, if she’d only asked...”

“So you sacked her?”

“Yes. But I’ve never discussed my faith with her. Anyway, she’s not the sort to understand such delicate matters as faith,” said Jude.

“My dearest, sweetest Reverend, whenever you discuss anything with anyone you’re doing it to anyone else within earshot, and from what I noticed Doris Pumpkin was quite often very much in earshot when you were talking to me. It’s your voice. It’s got too many decibels.”

“But she wouldn’t..? Would she?”

“Think about it. You give her the sack, make her unemployed, and I happen to believe she’s just about unemployable, so finding another position won’t be easy for her. And days later the Bishop comes and ticks you off about something only she could have overheard? What do you know about people, Jude?”

“Oh dear … and I blamed you … how could I have been so blind … will you ever be able to forgive me?”

“I might, one day,” she murmured.

“But I’m so glad it wasn’t you,” he sighed.

“Now what was that you were saying about love?” asked Ursula.

“I’m sorry?”

“Just now. You said something about me and love,” smiled Ursula.

“I didn’t mean...”

“You didn’t mean what? Don’t you think you might love me?”

“It’s just that I was nervous, and when I’m nervous things sometimes slip out.”

“Real things?”

He nodded, preferring that gesture to words, that seemed to be increasingly letting him down.

“Then don’t let it bother you. And, Jude, I’ve something special to ask you...”

“You have?”

“I do. I happen to know that Primrose is planning something special in the Crown and Anchor for my sixtieth birthday next week. She doesn’t know that I know, but this is a village and everyone knows everything about everyone, so of course I know.”

“So I’ve found out!”

“Will you come? For me?”

His eyes opened wide and his Vandyke beard regained some of its vibrancy.

“Of course,” he said suavely, “it would be my pleasure!”

“And mine,” she said quietly, and especially if you really think you love me she added in the silence of her head. This could be fun...

© Peter Rogerson 20.08.18

Reviews

[Barb]

A lot of missing punctuation made the reading difficult at times, but I managed to get the gist. There were some enjoyable chuckles (i.e.: "She was planning the next escapade in which Gertrude would inadvertently fall into a handsome man’s bed when that winsome character was interrupted with her knickers round her knees..."). Overall, the story has potential. Nice job.

[Peter Rogerson]

I'm sorry that my punctuation upsets you and maybe I could edit this chapter a little more carefully. Thanks for reading it and taking the trouble to offer advice. I have looked at your own page and find only single chapters, and they appear to be from the middle of longer works which makes the job of reading them so difficult that I've postponed it.