Brensham Village (21 page)

On Sunday afternoon the Rector and his wife gave a garden-party on the Rectory lawn to which the whole village was bidden. Mr Chorlton and I went butterfly-hunting instead, and spent a pleasant day on the hill; we had an account of the party later from Billy Butcher, who attended it. The tea, we learned, had been followed by a meeting, at which the Groupers made speeches and talked very informally about God and about their sins. The girl who had been an
actress spoke on the subject of Absolute Purity and the man who looked like a convict on Absolute Honesty; a young woman called Mabel described Absolute Truth. (‘Yes,' said Mr Chorlton, ‘I listened to her last night. She is uneducated, empty-headed and shallow; but, bless her heart, she believes she has discovered what all the philosophers from Socrates downwards have searched for in vain!') Then the blond young man had electrified the meeting by declaring: ‘If you ask me who is the best tennis coach in the world I shall answer quite simply: God.' He was followed by a Bright Young Thing who warned her audience that her speech would be a teeny-weeny bit shame-making. It was. ‘And then,' said Billy, ‘I said a few words—'

‘Billy!' exclaimed Mr Chorlton. “Don't you think you're playing a rather silly game?'

‘It gave them pleasure,' said Billy, ‘and I enjoyed it. I can't see that it did any harm.'

‘What did you tell them?' I asked.

‘I described to them in great detail the sensations of a man suffering from the willies.'

Mr Chorlton said gravely:

‘Have you ever had them, Billy?'

A cloud passed briefly over Billy's face.

‘Twice,' he said. ‘Once in West Africa and once in the ship coming home. They're hell.'

I changed the subject, ‘Who was at the party besides yourself?' I said. ‘From the village, I mean.'

‘Sammy. Briggs. The Trentfields. Mrs Hartley and Jim. Sir Gerald and his wife. Lord Orris and Jane. Alfie. Mrs Doan and Sally and a few more.'

‘Any converts?' I said.

Billy looked curiously embarrassed. ‘Well,' he said, ‘I - er - don't know exactly. I suppose there might have been one or two.'

It seems astonishing, in retrospect, that this transatlantic hysteria should have had any effect upon Brensham at all other than to shock it, for Brensham is old and wise, its roots go deep into English history, and its religious tradition is tolerant, easy-going, and unfervent. Revivalists of various persuasions have passed through our countryside at various times, and provoked no more response than a shrug of the shoulders or a raised eyebrow for all their hymn-singing and their oratory. However, the Rector and his Oxford Groupers did succeed in making a few converts at first and they certainly ‘changed' one or two lives, though they may not necessarily have changed them for the better.

The first of these converts were Mrs Doan and Sally; and they were converted, not by the Groupers, but by Billy. His foolish leg-pull, begun with a jest and carried on in a mood of savage clowning, had a consequence which he certainly had not anticipated. Mrs Doan, silly but kind, who had mothered him for years as if he had been her own wayward son, naturally concluded that there must be something good in any religion or revival which held out the prospect of curing him of drinking. As for Sally, she was young, she was infatuated, and she was feather-brained; she longed, as all young people do, for a Cause, and here was a Cause which she could identify with Love. After Billy's speech, Sally had rushed up to him and cried:

‘Oh Billy, I'm - so - so pleased.'

‘So …so happy about it, Billy dear,' echoed her mother. And, to make his shame and embarrassment all the greater, they had kissed him, while the triumphant Groupers, moved beyond measure, could scarcely forbear to cheer.

Subsequent conversions were less emotional and, perhaps,
somewhat less complete. Sir Gerald Hope-Kingley, for instance, who rather hesitantly and for a very short time dabbled about on the fringe of the Group without becoming very deeply involved in it, did so because he was a Potterer - his Alpines had failed again - and no opportunity for Pottering came amiss to him. (In the same spirit he had dabbled in Buddhism, Christian Science, and Spiritualism, and at one time, he told us, had practically made up his mind to become a Moslem.) Jeremy Briggs also joined the Group, because he thought, at first, that it was Democratic; and also because it gave him the opportunity to make political speeches thinly disguised as affirmations of religious faith. And Mrs Hartley joined it for the simple reason that she was a bit of a snob and it delighted her to address the gentry, even if most of them were foreign gentry, by their Christian names.

But other of the villagers, for various reasons, disliked the activities of the Rector and his friends, and were shocked, embarrassed, or merely amused by them. Joe Trentfield, who held the soldierly view that Niggers began at Calais, disapproved of the presence in Brensham of so many foreigners. ‘Mark my words,' he said, ‘there's something behind it' - and when we asked him what was behind it he whispered darkly: ‘Religion has been used as cover for spying before now.' Alfie Perks, who had only been to church about three times in his life, was scandalized by the Groupers' public confession of their sins, and declared firmly: ‘There's only one religion for me, and that's Church of England.' Lord Orris, too gentle and too courteous to blame or criticize, nevertheless when asked his opinion would sigh and shake his head. Jane, who declared herself an atheist but secretly, I think, longed for a Faith she could fight and die for, failed to find one in the Oxford Group; she thought its members were ‘soft, stupid and vulgar'. Old
David Groves, being asked by the Rector to call him by his Christian name, was so upset that he fled from the meeting. The Colonel who had been a regular churchgoer in the old Rector's day, was so profoundly shocked by the whole business that he exclaimed fiercely: ‘I shall never enter the church again' - and then, with one of his sudden smiles, added an amendment: ‘Until they carry me there!'

Throughout the summer the Groupers came and went, mainly at weekends, and for the most part Brensham shrugged its shoulders and regarded them as a small recurrent nuisance like the buzzing of flies. Mrs Hartley, however, continued to make Jim's life a misery because she had received Guidance to the effect that he was getting too fat, and had obediently cut down his meals to two a day, while denying him the customary snacks and trifles such as chitterlings and sardines on toast with which she had stayed his pangs of hunger at mid-morning. For breakfast she allowed him two small pieces of Ryvita without any butter.

The Group lost one adherent, for Sir Gerald bought a book on the Pyramids which persuaded him that there was a great deal of truth in the teaching of the British Israelites; and they gained one, for Sammy Hunt suddenly and quite unaccountably joined them. This distressed us, for we were very fond of Sammy in spite of the fact that his tales grew longer and his determination to tell them became more unshakable as time went by. But as Joe Trentfield said wisely: ‘Sailors are great ones for queer religions. 'Tis the loneliness in the ships as sets ‘em thinking; and they catches funny ideas from folks like the heathen Chinee. Once a sailor always a sailor; so Sammy's susceptible to religion as
some people are to colds. He'll get over it soon.' And indeed, Sammy didn't seem at all happy in his new faith. In contrast to the scrubbed and smiling laces ol the Groupers his was as long as a wet week; and when he encountered us he gave us a small sideways' look and hurried on, like a dog that has been naughty.

Mr Wilkinson, meanwhile, continued to rush about the village patting people on the back; and when you addressed him as ‘Rector' he would invite you, with a toothy smile: ‘Call me Thistle.' Brensham accepted his invitation and called him Thistle henceforth; but not to his face.

The Groupers, of course, would have addressed the Holy Apostles themselves by their Christian names; or rather they would have abbreviated them and called Saint Peter Pete. So you heard Sally Doan saying of the Rector: ‘I think Cecil's so wonderful' and you learned for the first time the unexpected Christian name of Sally's mother: which was Dolores.

These two, I think, enjoyed themselves more than anybody else in Brensham during that strange uncomfortable summer; for all women delight in reforming the men they love, and they were completely convinced that Billy, if not already cured, was well on the way towards reformation. It would be untrue to say that the Group had ‘changed' Billy; nothing could do that; but with the aid of the Deans it had nearly succeeded in breaking him. He crept about wretchedly, frightened of his old friends and terrified of the Doans, loathing the attentive Groupers, loathing himself, and yet perhaps half attracted as well as half repelled by the promise of hearts-ease which the new faith seemed to offer him.

‘We're so
proud
of you, Billy,' the Groupers would tell him several times a day; and indeed they were, for their attitude towards him was that of anglers towards an enormous fish
which they have just landed. And Sally Doan would look at him with wide bright ecstatic eyes and tell him: ‘Yes, Billy, we're all so proud.'

Why had he ever risen to their bait, so obligingly hooked himself, swum with hardly a kick or a wriggle into their landing-net? I don't know; but I think Billy of late had become increasingly aware that he had reached the end of his tether. I had seen him, sometimes, in the mornings before he had his first drink and I had wondered how he managed even to drag himself down to the Adam and Eve. Once I had watched him, when he failed after three attempts to lift his glass, tie a handkerchief to his wrist, pass it round the back of his neck, and use the arrangement as a pulley by which he raised the drink to his lips. He couldn't go on much longer like that; and when the Groupers' tinselly bait swam into his ken he played with it at first as a savage jest and then seized it as a sort of suicide. It was that or DTs.

Now he had given up drinking; the Groupers, Mrs Doan and Sally saw to that between them, for they hardly left him alone for a moment during the day. They ‘entertained' him; they took him for picnics on the hill; they even brought him into the pub and bought him peppermint cordial and ginger wine. But they never left him alone there; for they were not going to let the biggest fish they'd ever hooked flop back down the slippery slope into the river.

As far as possible, we kept out of his way, for he appeared embarrassed in our company and we felt it only fair to give the Groupers a chance to ‘change' him or ‘save' him or whatever it was they were trying to do. But I met him once in the Horse Narrow, with the blond tennis-player who held that God was a good sport and the young man from Latvia who doled him out his ginger wine and who had apparently been detailed as his keeper or guard. Billy raised his glass to
me and said: ‘Down the hatch, boys' with a rather pathetic imitation of his old manner; and then he whispered to me over his shoulder: ‘They're trying to do a Watts-Dunton on me, old chap.' ‘Yes, by damn, no!' said the Lett loudly, clicking his heels.

In August the Rector took the Village Hall for another meeting. It was fruit-picking time, and Brensham's busiest season; so the village had a good excuse to stay away. However, there was quite a large audience, for we had heard that Pistol, Bardolph and Nym would be present to testify to the change in their lives; and that was something we would not miss if we could help it. Tidings had reached Elmbury of the strange happenings at Brensham; and the three musketeers had decided to find out whether there was any profit to be made out of them. It seemed there was; for they arrived on a motor-bike and sidecar, and all three were wearing new suits. The Rector made a short speech in which he said that the Oxford Group, although its aim was spiritual, had recently demonstrated that it could do practical good as well. Those three old soldiers, whose lives had been so wonderfully changed, had pointed out that their infirmities and the effect of past wounds prevented them from getting about the country to attend the numerous meetings which were now being organized by the Group; therefore a few of the Groupers, who wished to remain anonymous, had subscribed between them enough money to buy the motor-cycle combination which tonight had been ridden for the first time …

This speech was received with loud cheers; for there were a large number of Fitchers and Gormleys at the back
of the hall, who had heard with wonder and unbelief of the conversion of Pistol, Bardolph and Nym and had immediately concluded that the Group must provide a happy hunting-ground for scroungers. They were gratified to find that they had been right; and they stared with envy at the smart new suits of Pistol, Bardolph and Nym who sat with great assurance upon the platform.

The American lady spoke, and a gentleman from Helsinki said a few words, and then Billy Butcher made a very strange and confused speech which caused many of his hearers to suspect that he had been drinking again although his keepers gave the assurance that he had had nothing but ginger wine; for his face was flushed and his words were mainly inaudible, and he finished up by quoting, irrelevantly, the Groupers thought, a long extract from Swinburne's Hymn to Proserpine. At the end of this recitation he shouted in a loud voice
Vicisti, Galileae
, and sat down.

However, the speeches of Pistol, Bardolph and Nym made up for Billy's unfortunate lapse. Pistol affirmed that he had been in prison eighteen times; Bardolph overbid him with twenty; and Nym, outdoing them both, declared that he had been incarcerated not only twenty-five times but in six different countries. The Fitchers and Gormleys cheered, the Groupers clapped, and ‘Bravo, bravo!' cried the Rector.

‘I ain't proud of it, mind,' whined Nym. ‘I ‘angs me ‘ead in shame.'