Louis de Bernieres - Notwithstanding - Stories from an English Village

He drove back down the hill, tooting his horn as was customary at the bend, and turned right along Notwithstanding Road, past the pound and the Glebe House where the legendary Girt Pike had been caught by young Robert. He drove by the hedging and ditching man, who was contemplating a small blue-and-white enamelled saucepan that he had just unearthed from the ditch, and headed towards the golf course. Miss Agatha Feakes hurtled by in a pink cloche hat, waving cheerily, with a piebald billy goat gazing out lugubriously from the back seat of her 1927 Swift convertible. Many of the houses had Christmas-tree lights twinkling in their windows, and the Rector felt a twinge of sadness at the idea that anyone should be about to die at Christmas.

He turned into the driveway of the Rawcutts’ house, parked on the gravel sweep before the front door, gathered up his paraphernalia and knocked anxiously. There was a frantic barking and then the door was opened by Sir Edward himself.

‘Edward!’ exclaimed the priest.

‘Godfrey, what a pleasant surprise! Are you coming in? Is it too early for the holy ones to drink sherry? I’ve just poured one for Gemma.’

The Reverend Freemantle was thunderstruck and embarrassed.

‘What’s the matter, Godfrey? Anyone’d think you’d seen a ghost.’

‘You’re all right then?’

‘All right? Of course I’m all right. As you see. In the pink.’

‘I was told you were dying!’

‘Dying, Godfrey? I just played two sets of squash with my eldest. Damn near beat him too.’

‘Well, I’m so pleased. I was informed that you were dying and asking for communion!’

‘Really? A prankster? You should have telephoned and saved yourself the trouble of coming up.’

‘It was an old lady. She came and asked me to get here as quickly as possible.’

‘An old lady? Really? Which one?’

‘Well, to be honest, Edward, I can’t remember her name. I know I’ve seen her before.’

‘Not in the congregation?’

‘Well, I don’t think so. Edward, I’m so pleased you’re all right. I was going to phone you anyway because I hadn’t seen you at communion for a couple of weeks. I was beginning to get worried.’

‘Nice of you to be concerned, but I thought it would be fun to go to one in Chiddingfold, and the week after I tried out Peasmarsh.’

‘Fun? Really, Edward, the Eucharist is supposed to be a very solemn thing. You can’t go round doing it for fun.’

‘Isn’t it supposed to be fun?’ asked Sir Edward. ‘I’ve always enjoyed it tremendously. It’s such an improbable joy to have a God who actually enjoins the drinking of wine. It’s so wonderfully reasonable. Such a pity that communion wine seems to be made of treacle. Still, one can always go home and have the profane stuff for lunch.’

The two men looked at each other, and then Sir Edward said, ‘Well, as you’ve come all this way to give me communion, why don’t you give it to me anyway?’

‘Really?’

‘Well, why not? I’ll try not to enjoy it. I will be most solemn, Godfrey, quite fantastically solemn, I promise.’

‘I’ve done Communion for the Sick in someone’s house before, but not an ordinary one.’

‘First time for everything! Go on, Godfrey, be a sport. We can do it in the study, and then Gemma will give you crumpets dripping with butter.’

‘Anything for Gemma’s crumpets,’ said the Rector.

‘Let’s not do the whole caboodle, though,’ said Sir Edward. ‘I know the Ten Commandments already. We’ll do the prayer for the Queen, and the creed, of course, and you can do one or two sentences, if that’s in order, and then the exhortation, and then you can do the business.’

The Rector was amused. ‘What, no general confession?’

‘No point, old boy. Haven’t done anything worth confessing for ages. Awfully dull. Don’t want to waste the Lord’s time listening to anything pointless, do we?’

‘Sorry, Edward, I think you’ll have to confess. We’re not allowed to miss that out, I’m afraid.’

The two men went into Sir Edward’s study. He cleared his desk, and the Rector unpacked his carpet bag and laid everything out on it, covering it first with the clean white linen cloth. He looked around at all the leather-bound books in their glass-fronted cabinets, and wondered whether Sir Edward had read many of them. He suspected that they had all belonged to Sir Edward’s father. Sir Edward dropped a cushion on to the floor by the desk, and knelt upon it. He clasped his hands together, closed his eyes and bowed his head. The priest watched him praying, his lips moving silently, and not for the last time was a little ashamed at the fact that so many of his flock really did seem to have a stronger, simpler and purer faith than he did himself. Sir Edward opened his eyes, blinked and said, ‘Righto, Godfrey, let’s do the prayer for the Queen.’

It all went very well, though it was mildly disconcerting for the Rector to be giving communion to someone who knew the service even better than he did himself; Sir Edward was quite obviously reciting the sonorous words of the Book of Common Prayer to himself as they were being read. He grew positively excited when being delivered the bread and wine, and afterwards recited the Lord’s Prayer with gusto. He accepted the blessing with sighs of satisfaction and pleasure, so much so that the priest thought it almost indecent.

Afterwards, over tea and crumpets, Lady Gemma, the Reverend Freemantle and Sir Edward discussed the weather, the state of the church roof, the best way to get rid of moles, the daunting prospect of having hundreds of relatives to stay over Christmas, why it was that the little crowd of teenage carol singers who came round every year only knew two carols, and the possible identity of the mysterious old lady. Sir Edward proposed that she must be some old biddy with bats in the belfry, and this proposition received the general assent of the company. ‘Never mind,’ exclaimed Sir Edward, ‘it was terrific fun to have communion in the study. Godfrey, I am so grateful.’

The Reverend Freemantle then gathered his paraphernalia together, collected a Christmas peck on the cheek from Lady Gemma, and had his hand shaken vigorously by Sir Edward, who repeated, ‘Tremendous fun, marvellous!’ a great many times. They waved from the porch as the Rector departed in his Singer, to call in first at the church, where he returned some of his things to the vestry. Thence he went back home, and resumed his desperate perusal of old sermons, eventually finding an appropriate one in a volume compiled by a certain Reverend Colin Sykes, late of St Andrew’s College, Berkshire.

On Christmas Day it began to snow just as everyone was leaving church, and by the afternoon three inches of glistening blanket had settled on the lawns and meadows of the village. With the brilliant whiteness, there arrived a wondrous hush.

Just when all was utterly quiet, the steady tolling of a single muffled bell in the church tower began. It rang three times, paused, rang three times more, paused, and then three times again. After a few moments it began a steady, slow mournful tolling, as if thereby something were being counted. Some people in their warm houses wondered what it might possibly mean, but most, illiterate in the reading of bells, thought nothing of it at all. Down in the rectory, in his armchair, the Reverend Freemantle awoke from his nap after lunch and listened. ‘Now, what’s that?’ he asked his wife, who had challenged herself to a solitary game of pelmanism and had spread cards all over the coffee table.

‘It’s the bell, dear,’ she said unhelpfully. He listened, and for some reason he felt a heavy sensation in the pit of his stomach. ‘It’s a passing bell,’ he said, ‘I’m sure it’s a passing bell.’