Dogs Delight: Evensong

Showing posts with label Evensong. Show all posts

Friday, 3 May 2013

Dogs Delight 13 Why did we move here?

The village is famous for its very tall filigree church spire, pointing fastidiously to heaven. You can see it from far and near from many directions in the countryside around.

Now that I am thinking spiritually, along the complex and evanescent lines suggested by C S Lewis, I feel drawn to Evensong whenever I see the spire or hear the church bells ringing. They ring very often. In fact, the bellringers practise the whole of Monday and Wednesday and Friday evening which makes Richard swear and ask why in heaven’s name we moved here. (Naturally they perform for a very long time on Sundays.) On the other days he forgets about it: Richard doesn’t bear a grudge. Whenever there is a funeral, which is more often than is respectable, the great bell Vengeance tolls for most of the day. Returning from shopping in Laxley or wandering back to the village along a public footpath, I am transfixed by St Agnes’ spire hovering over the fields. On each sighting, from every angle, the summons is more insistent.

The spire definitely has a hold over the villagers. The cardboard signs by roadside plant stalls and on garden gates leading to jumble sales invariably read ‘Tower Preservation Fund’ in uneven capitals. I have heard that a newcomer was ostracised for holding a raffle for Save The Children. And the tower is famous for its beckoning. It beckons people from various high points across the county, and daily beckons villagers to a closer acquaintance, despite the quality of the vicar.

Mrs Dilkes often stands staring at the improbable finger. She told me that Peter Hopkirk’s father Jacob once climbed it for a dare and refused to climb back down. Mrs Dilkes says she was quite a girl, which I can hardly imagine, to look at her; but she remembers old Jacob Hopkirk frozen in fear, looking down on the upturned faces of the cheering villagers. It did not end happily.

A builder who was afraid of heights kindly climbed the tower to join Jacob on the ledge and found himself equally pinioned by fear against the crenellations. After a while the builder engaged the crowd with a brief attempt at a descent, during which he dislocated one or two elbows. The two men remained transfixed for hours underneath the famous sneering gargoyle and a relay of beer from the Lone Gelding kept the crowd’s spirits high until the fire brigade was called and arrived with an entertaining extra-extending appliance. The builder told the Laxley Gazette that the gargoyle sneered at him the whole time. Some people call the spire unlucky.

Dogs Delight is now available on Kindle at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogs-Delight-ebook/dp/B00CA8XZKC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368550507&sr=1-1&keywords=dogs+delight

Tuesday, 30 April 2013

Dogs Delight 16 Random

When we get home I lock Bailey outside and watch him wander over to the angel and cock his leg against the plinth. Then I hunt for the Chronicle, the village freesheet, which I find at last in the bottom of a drawer between lurid rhododendron catalogues. I take it across to the window seat: Peter Hopkirk is striding past in waders, a sack containing moving animals over one shoulder. On the penultimate page is Reverend Newsome’s Lines from the Vicarage, but they are not as encouraging as I would like. This month he is reflecting on bus shelters again.

‘A chance encounter with a senior citizen,’ he writes, ‘set me thinking about the randomness of life. But is life really random? I feel that Mr X and I were meant to share that moment of communion, waiting for almost three quarters of an hour for the number 63.’

Possibly that is how he speaks from the pulpit. I decide that his least elevated sermons will probably be for the Family Service, which is notorious for children running about enjoying themselves; so if I do go to church I must attend something less frantic. I have long wanted to experience Evensong, which seems to be a service in which you can remain more detached. I imagine the dark cool interior of Saint Agnes’ and the soaring organ music, the few reflective souls dotted about the pews enjoying moments of calm and space and eternity. I will sit among them and perhaps I too will achieve some kind of revelation. But then each shadowy figure becomes more defined and I see that every one is an Apostle. A week passes by.

Dogs Delight is now available on Kindle at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogs-Delight-ebook/dp/B00CA8XZKC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368550507&sr=1-1&keywords=dogs+delight

Sunday, 28 April 2013

Dogs Delight 18 Lads' curry night

A few days later I finally do attend Evensong; but I am not proud of my motivation: I am escaping Richard’s mother, Marjorie, who is occupying the sitting room and indulging her grandsons.

   ‘Richard said you were going out tonight,’ she remarks, pulling a magazine with a multi-coloured cover from her tank of a handbag. It is a misunderstanding: only Richard has gone out, on what he calls a ‘lads’ curry night,’ because I said I didn’t want to go anywhere with him. Marjorie says it is a pity I haven’t gone out. Though she provides a jolly commentary on the boys’ every action she has little to say to me, and few opinions about me either. The only one I can remember Richard reporting back is that I ‘read too many books.’ Tonight she planned to be alone with James and Christopher, for Marjorie is a grandmother who properly worships. Sometimes I can see her almost feeding on their attributes, devouring them as they play and eat and fight.

   I watch her now delighting in each inconsequential action: the unwrapping of the chocolate she has brought, the chubby greedy smiles, the jostling then the pushing and the shouts. I remember my dark reticent children flitting about the shadows of the garden, indifferent to chocolate. Marjorie’s smile implies that this snatching and greed are marks of masculine vigour, boding well for the family line. She glances at me and smiles fatly and faintly, dismissive, as at a failing patient when the bell rings and visiting time is over.

   The evening bell is tolling, voicing the habitual village melancholy, but tonight it tolls for me. The night is quiet, the air unmoving and I slip out of the back door like a guilty servant, trailing my long mouse-coloured scarf. The only soul abroad is a man in a thornproof with a woollen hat pulled well down, smoking over the notices in the Post Office window. He is a surly man, a crony of Peter Hopkirk who is supposed to shoot blackbirds for his supper.

   It is difficult to say what I am hoping for but when I arrive at the church I find Hilary Green, a villager who goes about weeding the countryside. She is wearing a man’s cap and muffler, gabbling to herself and pulling up nettles by the lych-gate. Her hands are red with nettle stings and crazed with scratches and grime. It's hard not to stare.

A small man in a bad suit is waiting in the shadow of the monumental door. He is the butcher’s assistant, charged with making the famous oversized village sausages and guarding the secret of their special ingredient, which Richard swears is paraffin. He smiles self-consciously as he hands me a service sheet and hymn book and I am ashamed that I notice the suit doesn’t move when he does. The headmistress in her best sage tweeds and Mr Dilkes, who is a churchwarden, both unnerve me by the cold force of their welcome. Mr Dilkes, who has gout, is leaning on a stout stick with a stoat’s head handle. At the organ old Jacob Hopkirk is playing something unfathomable in a minor key. He stares into space, distracted and a little demented. Probably he is thinking about climbing the tower again.

Dogs Delight is now available on Kindle at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogs-Delight-ebook/dp/B00CA8XZKC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368550507&sr=1-1&keywords=dogs+delight

Saturday, 27 April 2013

Dogs Delight 19 The Evensong experiment

I open an ancient oak gate and slide into an empty pew near the back.
village church, evensong, clerestory, pew

The church is stone cold. I lean back, breathing in strong polish and reading the lists of fallen from the First World War, inscribed in creamy stone above our heads. The church is stripped-down medieval, clean and calm and beautiful; but the flower arrangers and apostles’ wives have filled the vases with depressing plants, late rusty brown dahlias and cotoneaster.

I count the worshippers: ten of us are here for Evensong, including two apostles and a toddler in the front pew. He is struggling in his mother’s arms and waving a chubby hand at the cruel beak of the lectern eagle as we mouth the first hymn:

Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father,

There is no shadow of turning with thee;

Jacob Hopkirk plays too low for almost all of the tiny congregation; all but the apostles and the large woman who runs the teashop in Laxley who is singing in a strong bass, not much off key.

Thou changest not thy compassions, they fail not,

                 As thou hast been thou for ever wilt be.
                 Great is thy faithfulness
                 Great is thy faithfulness

I look past the candlelight into the dark shadows behind the altar. There is no shadow of turning with thee. I try to pray, but how should I pray? My words are commonplace: ‘Please help me. Please help me to go.’ Where can I go? Despite my supplication, my straining after certainty and resolve, there is no revelation. St Agnes’ remains a cold museum. The back of my neck is hot and tingling and I pray I do not faint.

Holy people say that every action and every thought can be a prayer, so I kneel and try to project my hopelessness and lack of belonging in the press of my forehead on the cold oak of the pew. I do not belong. I never will belong. I hate this place. I hate the walls and the house and Richard and his friends and his mother and even the boys. I screw up my eyes but cannot force out a tear.

And from the front of the church comes a furious cry, the wail of the angry baby who is reaching out his arm to the lectern.

‘Want parrot!’ he screams. ‘Want parrot! Want that parrot!’

The vicar stands up like a wraith, mildly smiling. He coughs twice and begins to speak to us about parking, and the importance of patience, which is one of the virtues.

parrot, lectern, Evensong, vicar, Evensong service

Dogs Delight is now available on Kindle at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogs-Delight-ebook/dp/B00CA8XZKC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368550507&sr=1-1&keywords=dogs+delight