James Lark - More Tea, Jesus?

‘Shall I say grace?’ Robert mildly enquired.

‘Say what you like,’ Lindsay muttered, and started eating. Evidently she was sulking.

Robert paused. Really, this was very childish. He let out a long sigh. The girls had looked at him, expectantly. ‘Oh dear,’ he said quietly. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Will you stop saying “oh dear,”’ Lindsay angrily told him, ‘and say grace, if you’re going to say it.’

Another pause. Another sigh. ‘Oh dear,’ Robert softly added. Then he drew in a new breath, deciding it was time to pull things together at least. ‘Let’s hold hands – Esther, Rebekah?’

‘Mummy isn’t joining in,’ lisped Rebekah.

‘Well, Mummy doesn’t have to join in, if she’s eating. You can hold Esther’s hand.’ A slight pause, a disappointed look at his wife, then: ‘Dear Lord, we thank you for, er, for looking after us and keeping us safe, and we thank you for this time we have together, and er … er for this lovely day, and we thank you especially for this lovely dinner and for Mummy who made it. Amen.’

‘Amen,’ the girls obediently chorused, then immediately started eating. Robert didn’t start so quickly, but gave another sad look at his wife and patted her on the arm, reassuringly.

That was enough to set her off. ‘Why do we even go?’ she exploded, putting down her knife and fork with a clatter. ‘I have work to do at weekends, I could be getting work together for the five history lessons I have to look forward to tomorrow, but no, we have to go to church and waste our time with – what, I mean, what is it, what is it we go for?’

‘Well—’ Robert began. He laughed, quietly. ‘It’s always difficult to see what, what … er … what goes on, in a church, beneath the surface. You know, I’m sure …’

‘Nothing goes on beneath the surface,’ Lindsay spat. ‘They’re the most superficial bunch of people I’ve ever seen. I hate them.’

‘That’s not true, you know that, we’ve got lots of good friends at church …’

‘You’ve got lots of friends,’ Lindsay complained, self-pityingly. ‘I’m sure that they all feel sorry for you because you’ve got such a dreadful wife.’

‘Of course they don’t,’ he said, unconvincingly.

‘We sat at the front and me and Kirsty were right at the front so we took the biggest pieces of omelette, only Kirsty got some on her dress …’

‘Not now, Rebekah,’ said Robert.

‘Oh, and as for Reverend smiley self-righteous Biddle, what on earth was he doing making an omelette? I’m sorry, but that was the last straw. I’m not going to church and giving up my Sunday morning to watch somebody make an omelette!’

‘Well …’ Robert laughed, quietly and nervously, ‘different people have different styles of – it was a family service, after all.’

‘What was the point, though? Why did he do it?’

‘Well, I think he – he did it to make, er, to illustrate his point.’

‘What point? Did he make a point?’

‘Well – no,’ admitted Robert.

‘I think my tooth is coming out.’

‘Well, stop playing with it, Esther, or it will definitely come out.’

‘Isabel says that she gets fifty pence from the tooth fairy.’

‘Does she really? They must have a different tooth fairy working in that area, then, mustn’t they.’

‘We’ll have to find another church,’ Lindsay said.

‘Well …’

‘I’d stop going to church altogether, but I’m thinking about the children. I’ve given up hope for myself, I just want them to be okay.’

‘Well …’ Robert laughed nervously again, ‘if everybody took that attitude, I mean nobody would go to heaven, would they?’

‘… Kirsty got some on her dress, she did, it was a clean dress and …’

‘Isabel said that maybe the tooth fairy might give me more money the older I get.’

‘Yes, Esther, I don’t think …’

‘Was he trying to make some point about Easter?’ Lindsay postulated, loudly. ‘Was that it?’

‘Possibly,’ Robert said. ‘No Esther, I can’t talk about this now …’

‘But it’s not Easter yet! Why was he doing something with eggs before …it’s Lent! You’re meant to use up all your eggs before Lent! It wasn’t even liturgically correct!’

‘Well, yes,’ Robert agreed, ‘that’s true, but in a family service – I mean, I don’t think it’s wrong to make an omelette in Lent, is it? Not scripturally.’

‘I suppose you’ll be wanting me to make an omelette now?’

‘Well …’ Robert laughed, anxious but slightly hopeful. ‘Now that you mention it …’

‘… but can’t I have just a little bit more …’

‘Kirsty wiped it off but it left a mark …’

‘Whatever it was meant to mean, it was meaningless.’

‘It left a mark, Mummy, right here in the …’

‘Will you shut up Rebekah. What’s the point in going, though? Is there a point? Am I missing something?’

‘Pleeeeease, Daddy …’

‘I’m not discussing it now, Esther. Come here, Rebekah, don’t cry …’

‘Everyone’s just there thinking about themselves,’ Lindsay finished, ‘in their own little worlds and making omelettes and singing nice songs to Jesus – well, in case you didn’t notice, Jesus didn’t even bother turning up.’ She got up from the table, her stool clattering behind her as she stamped her way into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Robert was left trying to comfort his youngest daughter, knowing that he was about to be pressured into giving his other daughter fifty pence for the tooth that would inevitably come out that afternoon.

In fact, Lindsay Phair was wrong. Jesus had turned up, for the third week running, and had sat through the whole service in a pew towards the back. Since nobody had spoken to him, however, nobody had realised who he was.

Having already prepared one meal that morning, Andy Biddle decided that a microwavable beef casserole was all he could be bothered to make for his lunch. Much as he liked the romantic idea of a hearty Sunday roast, he spent his day of rest preparing the Lord’s table and it wasn’t practical to come up with complicated cuisine for his own pleasure as well.

He was about two thirds of the way towards a fully heated casserole when he spotted the reminder on his kitchen noticeboard saying ‘lunch with Bishop – Sunday’. Cursing with words that vicars are perhaps supposed to know about but probably shouldn’t use, he aborted the microwave and hurried upstairs to change back into a clerical shirt.

The problem with his kitchen noticeboard, he thought to himself, was that there was too much on it. He was hardly going to notice a tiny reminder about lunch when he had the parish newsletter staring out at him, replete this month with a poorly reproduced picture of Mrs Hall holding her prize-winning window box. As he hurried back downstairs fixing his dog collar into place, he paused briefly to glare at the offending photograph, which looked more like a leprous troll playing the accordion. How was he supposed to concentrate on important reminders with that there?

Biddle briefly considered driving to the Bishop’s house, but the consumption of large quantities of alcohol was virtually an obligation at Bishop Slocombe’s lunches so he decided it would be wiser to cycle. Not that cycling home drunk was particularly wise, but the protection of God (one of the perks of his job) counted for a lot on these occasions.

‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ Bishop Slocombe demanded twenty-three minutes later, glowing in all of his red splendour as he steered Biddle into his house. ‘Were you doing a special mass or something?’ The Right Reverend Findlay Slocombe was the suffragan bishop of Cogspool; this was something of a booby prize as suffragan bishoprics went, subject to the same kind of concealed snickering amongst Anglican clergy as that endured by the Bishop of Maidstone, but that didn’t stop Slocombe from acting as if he sat in one of the most esteemed positions in the hierarchy of primates.