Trisha Ashley - The Magic of Christmas

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, subsiding into the seat next to me. ‘One of the dogs slipped its lead and was practically in Mossrow before I caught him.’

She smiled apologetically around at everyone and, apart from the vicar, who was still looking poleaxed, we smiled back, since Annie is Goodwill to all Mankind personified. Even though I’m her best friend, I have to admit that she is a plump, billowy person the approximate shape of a cottage loaf and, although her hair is a beautiful coppery colour, that pudding-bowl bob does not do her amiable round face any favours. She certainly doesn’t normally cause men to go red and all self-conscious …

‘We were only just starting,’ I assured her. ‘Clive’s called the meeting to familiarise the vicar—’

‘ Do all call me Gareth,’ he interrupted eagerly, finding his voice again, but I expect most of us will just carry on addressing him as ‘Vicar’ because we are nothing if not traditionalists in Middlemoss.

‘And you must call me KP,’ said Dr Patel agreeably, ‘like the nuts.’

‘And I’m Lizzy,’ I put in hastily, seeing Gareth’s puzzled expression at KP’s old joke. ‘You’ve already met Annie, haven’t you?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. ‘At church.’

He was just Annie’s type and clearly smitten, but she didn’t seem to notice!

‘Perhaps we’d better get on?’ suggested Clive. ‘Only the Youth Club will be in here tonight for snooker, and I’ll need to set the tables up. First, could you all please read this quote from a recently published book.’

He passed round a bundle of photocopies.

Although called the Middlemoss Mysteries, this surviving vestige of a medieval mystery play, annually performed in an obscure Lancashire village, is in reality a much debased form. At some point in its history it was reduced to a mere series of tableaux illustrating several key Biblical scenes, such as the Fall of Lucifer, Adam and Eve and the Nativity. Then, early last century what little dialogue remained was rendered into near-impenetrable ancient local dialect by Joe Wheelright, the Weaver Poet, and this is constantly reinterpreted by each generation of actors. The head of the leading local family, the Pharamonds, traditionally speaks the Voice of God.

We all read it in silence.

Then Annie said, ‘Well, it’s not so bad, is it, Clive? We can’t hope to keep the Mysteries a total secret, so we always do get some strangers coming along, especially since the Mosses have suddenly become so terribly trendy to live in.’

‘No, it’s the folksy visitors who would want to take over and fix the whole thing like a fly in amber that we want to discourage,’ I agreed. ‘The Middlemoss Mystery Play is just for the locals, something we’ve always done, like that Twelfth Night celebration they have up at Little Mumming.’

‘That’s hardly comparable with our play, dear, since I’m told it’s only a morris dance and a small miracle scene of George and the Dragon,’ Marian said.

‘That’s right,’ agreed Clive. ‘But they keep it quiet: I’ve even heard that they block the road into the village with tractors on the day, to deter strangers.’

‘I think the best thing about our Mysteries is the way each new generation of actors adds a little something to their parts, even if we do now stick more or less to the Wheelright version,’ I said, though actually, while the acting itself is taken very seriously, I often suspect the Weaver Poet of having had a somewhat unholy sense of humour.

‘I don’t think “debased” is a very polite description,’ Marian said, looking down at her photocopy again and bristling to the ends of her short, spiky silver hair. ‘And what does he mean, “impenetrable dialect”? If the audience doesn’t know the bible stories before they see it, then they should, so they’d know what was going on!’

‘Er … yes,’ said the vicar, with a gingerly glance at Dr Patel, who was sitting with his hands clasped over his immaculately suited round stomach, listening benignly.

‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ the doctor said, catching his eye. ‘I went to infants’ school right here — my father was the senior partner at the practice — so I know all the bible stories. So did all the Lees from the Mysteries of the East Chinese takeaway in Mossedge, and there’s usually at least one of that family taking part in the play.’

‘We have many mysteries,’ I said helpfully. ‘Even the pub is called the New Mystery.’

‘Little Ethan Lee made such a sweet baby Jesus last year,’ Miss Pym said sentimentally. ‘He simply couldn’t take his eyes off the angels’ haloes.’

‘None of us could,’ Annie said. ‘We’d never had ones that lit up before.’

‘Oh?’ said Gareth, clearly groping to make sense of all this. ‘Well, Clive has kindly loaned me the videos of last year’s performance, which I’ve watched with … with interest.’ He cleared his throat. ‘While I’ve seen the Chester Mystery Plays and, er … although the format of scenes from the Old and New Testaments have similarities to that, otherwise they don’t seem much alike …’

‘They’re not, Vicar,’ Clive said. ‘They might have been at one time — you’d have to ask Mr Roly Pharamond, he’s got all the records. But when the Puritans took over and tried to ban it, the squire — another Roland, he was — he told the players to cut it right down, so it could be performed in one day up at the Hall, instead of here on the green.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Marian, ‘and on Boxing Day instead of Midsummer Day, because fewer strangers would be travelling about then. Then, when it was safe to perform the Mysteries in public again — well, we’d got used to doing things our way.’

‘So it’s still performed up at the Hall on Boxing Day?’ Gareth asked.

Miss Pym nodded. ‘In the coach house. The doors are opened wide and the audience stands in the courtyard, with lots of braziers about to keep them warm. The stables on either side are used as dressing rooms. It lasts about five hours, with breaks for refreshments, of course, and musical interludes.’

‘Musical interludes? Indeed?’ Gareth brightened. ‘Hymns, perhaps? I’m hoping to breathe a little life back into the church choir.’

‘No, actually a local group perform — the Mummers of Invention,’ I told him. ‘My husband sings with them and they’re quite good. Sort of electric folk style.’

‘Mummers of Invention ?’ he murmured, looking bemused.

‘The last vicar had the strange idea that the play was blasphemous in some way,’ Clive said, ‘but you could see yourself from the video that it’s the exact opposite, couldn’t you? It’s all bible stories, and the entire parish is involved right down to the infants’ school. The children always play the procession of animals into the ark.’

‘And they helped me to make the Virgin’s bower last year with wire and tissue paper flowers,’ Miss Pym said, ‘though since it kept falling on Annie’s head (your fifth and last appearance as Virgin, wasn’t it, dear?) it could not have been called an unqualified success.’

Annie caught the vicar’s eye, went pink, and looked hastily away — but at least now she had noticed him.

‘And you run the Mysteries committee, Clive, and direct the play?’ Gareth asked.

‘Yes, that’s right. In September we start giving out the parts and rehearsing. No one can play the same role for more than five years except God, so things change, and different people come forward or drop out.’

‘Some of the new actors who’ve moved into the area lately have volunteered,’ I said.

‘Yes, like Ritch Rainford,’ Annie murmured dreamily, and I gave her a look. I hope she’s not going to get a serious crush on the man, since it’s unlikely to lead anywhere.