Country Days (13 page)

R
ose had always worn a harassed look. She had her hands full with small children and a husband who was not exactly helpful around the house, and her mother-in-law, who drove her bananas, was for ever dropping in. Although I could understand why she looked that way, I often felt irritated by Rose’s lonesome expression, and I became fed up listening to her sad stories. Often I felt like telling her to pull herself together but held back for fear of hurting her feelings.

Then gradually, almost without my actually noticing it at first, Rose started to change. The complaining dried up and she started to smile. It puzzled me slightly but I was slow to comment on it in case, like a bright bubble in the air, it might disappear. But it continued and the bubble got bigger and brighter. Then I decided that she must be having an affair: she had fallen in love and that was the reason for the glow. If I had been married to her cranky, selfish husband, I thought, I would have been having an affair as well.

She never said a word but continued to cope happily with little things that she had previously
complained about non-stop. I waited cynically for the bubble to burst, calculating that if an affair was involved, somebody would make a decisive move at some stage. I was terrified that Rose would get hurt in the fall-out, and then we would be back to square one. However, she made no reference to anything unusual happening in her life and I could not imagine where she fitted in time for her affair. Then I tried to think whether she had been going anywhere different over the last few months, and realised that the only outing she had taken up recently was going to a prayer meeting in Upton. That, I thought, could hardly be the cause of the change in her; after all, Rose was no Bible-carrying, born-again Christian.

Then one day she asked me to go with her.

“A prayer meeting?” I queried dubiously. “That doesn’t exactly appeal to me. What do you do there? Wave your hands in the air and sit around chanting alleluia?”

She threw back her head and laughed: “What gave you that daft notion?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but I always had the idea that prayer group people were a bit over the top.”

“Ah,” she told me, “your prejudices are showing. Ours is a very normal, well-earthed crowd.”

“Well, you’re like that anyway,” I admitted.

“Why don’t you come and see for yourself?” she invited. “The only way you will find out is to come
and see for yourself. You are the person who is always telling me that you must judge every situation for yourself and here you are telling me about something that I know all about and you know nothing about.”

I hesitated to take Rose up on her suggestion, feeling that prayer was a private thing that needed silence and peace and quiet. Rose, however, was very persistent, and I wondered could this possibly be the explanation for the change in her. So, as much out of curiosity as anything else, I set out for Upton the following Monday night.

I was not impressed by my first experience of a prayer meeting. Surrounded by people deep in meditation, I felt uncomfortable, even claustrophobic.

Afterwards, while we shared a cup of tea, a friend of Rose’s remarked, “Don’t judge on the first night; come again next week and give it a chance.”

I murmured something non-committal, but thought to myself that once was quite enough.

For most of the week that followed, I thought no more about the prayer meeting, but for no special reason that I could put my finger on, I felt a certain inner peace. Out walking early one sunny morning, I watched a hare racing through a meadow while all around me the air was rich with the smell of wild woodbine. The beauty of the whole scene made me consider the glory of creation, made me wonder about the presence of God in nature, and turned
my thoughts back to the prayer meeting. As Monday night approached, I experienced a sense of curiosity.

That night I felt less self-conscious in the silence. I relaxed and soon found myself in tune with the spirit of the meeting. A woman with a Northern Ireland accent read from the Bible and shared her thoughts on the reading; others joined in. It was quite spontaneous and nobody was under pressure to say or do anything that did not appeal to them. One young girl with a beautiful voice sang a hymn that I had never heard before. She sang it during a period of meditative silence and I sensed that it was completely unplanned.

I experienced at that meeting a great sense of togetherness in the presence of God, and over the following weeks it developed, the peace of the prayer meeting spreading out into other regions of my life. It seemed almost as though at Upton those two hours of meditation every Monday night provided a powerhouse into which I could plug myself. Now life ran much more smoothly, and not only had I discovered Rose’s secret, I had discovered something of my own.

T
HE OLD MAN’S
face was kind and his skin like fine beige tissue-paper stretched tautly across protruding bones; there was no hairline to show where face ended and head began. Over his ears and around the back of his poll the last remnants of his hair fell gently in a downy white frill. A threadbare tweed jacket with leather elbow patches hung loosely on his angular frame and cavalry twill trousers held up by gigantic braces encompassed his long legs, which I imagined to be thin and bony. His leather boots of many creases shone with a dark, rich shine from years of polishing. The whole harmonious colour scheme of muted browns was sparked into life by his bright yellow shirt and deep red cravat. He held out his hand and I put mine into it, warmed by the merriment that sparkled in his dark brown eyes. His hand felt dry and brittle and I almost expected it to crinkle like autumn leaves between my fingers.

“Heard you’ve written a great book, my dear,” he said in a voice that was surprisingly deep and rich in so frail a body.

“Hope you’ll like it,” I answered.

“Could be interesting, old thing,” he answered, leaving me unsure whether it was the book or myself was the “old thing”.

“Never did go to school through the fields, you know. Always had a governess. Bloody awful women, some of them! But one had to put up with them. Anyway, the body might like it,” he concluded.

I digested this statement for a few seconds hoping that he might add something further to throw light on “the body”.

“I am the body,” said a tall, elegant lady, stepping out from behind the tweedy form.

Some women are cool blondes at thirty but here was one at about seventy. With her flaring nostrils and high cheek-bones, she would be beautiful even in death.

“Had a terrific body, you know,” he announced to all and sundry. “Not bad still, old girl,” he added, grinning wickedly at her. She took it serenely in her stride.

Suddenly from the back of the queue came a high-pitched crackling voice, which demanded in domineering tones, “George, for God’s sake, will you get a move on and don’t be holding everything up.”

George threw up his head like a well-bred racehorse and peered back over the line of people.

“Hello! Molly old girl!” he called back. “Never could wait for anything could you? That’s why you were so bloody awful with horses… And men,” he
added under his breath. Before she could retaliate, he picked up his book and together with his beautiful wife swept towards the door, making an exit with flourish and style.

Next in the queue was a gentle-faced woman with wavy auburn hair who made a couple of attempts to say something, but at the last minute changed her mind. Just as she was about to move on, it came out.

“Did you never think of dying your hair?” she asked. “Your face looks much younger than your hair.”

As I put my hand up protectively towards my greying thatch, she added apologetically: “I don’t mean to offend you, now. It is just that it would make you look much younger.”

I assured her that it would take more than that to offend me and that the only reason my hair was going grey was because I was too lazy to do anything about it, and as well as that I rather liked grey hair. Somehow she did not look very reassured by my excuses and went away convinced, I thought, that I was an old hag going to seed.

As they queued the people chatted and exchanged remembrances; old friends met each other with great delight. Even though I was the one they had come to meet, I was finding them fascinating to watch and to listen to. Some when their turns came were reluctant to part with new-found friends and made arrangements to meet again, sometimes filling me in on all they had in common. The queue had
developed into a small party and little groups formed to discuss items of interest in the book. People who had come into the shop in a hurry, all of a sudden had all the time in the world. But if they spent too much time chatting with me, the manager would hover restlessly beside them, hoping to hurry things up a bit.

One woman dressed all in dramatic black, including a black veil, was particularly talkative. When the manager attempted gently to encourage her on her way, she swept up her black veil and announced imperiously: “Young man, I did not come here to be rushed. Please desist!”

He bowed to her command, and who was I to do otherwise?

A jovial priest beamed at me next. “You are the first woman ever to share my bed,” he announced. “It was three o’clock this morning before I put you under my pillow.”

We talked for a few minutes about childhood experiences and if we had had the time could have chatted for hours, so full of fun and yarns was he. Molly, however, was close on his heels and stamped her walking stick with annoyance.

“The old bird behind will hit me a belt of her stick if I don’t get a move on,” he whispered, and he ran out the door with the book under his arm and the bounce of a much younger man in his step.

At last Molly had me at her mercy. Two beady eyes peered at me from either side of a hawk-like
nose and red hair streaked with grey swung to her shoulders. Looking at Molly I thought that my caring lady earlier on could have been right. Maybe grey hair did not look very elegant. But if Molly did not look elegant, she certainly looked interesting. Wrapped in a long grey coat, she sparkled with jewellery. Neck, ears, fingers and wrists were ablaze and if they were the real thing, which they possibly were, she carried a walking fortune.

“No book,” she announced, tapping her walking stick off the floor, “is worth this much trouble. My fool of a husband Roger insisted that I get a copy. Can’t imagine why. Went to a private school himself so what the hell does he know about going to school through the fields. Couldn’t come himself. Oh no! Can’t stand with his bloody gout. But I tell him if you drink that damn stuff you can’t expect anything else.”

“Do you want something special written on it,” I ventured to distract her from her monologue.

She threw back her head and roared with laughter.

“Put ‘To Roger, You silly old fool, From Cuddles’. That will teach him not to send me doing his errands. He’ll be furious because he won’t be able to loan it to his old drinking cronies.”

As I handed her the book, she patted my hand with a ringed bony finger.

“Don’t mind me, my dear,” she said, smiling mischievously and revealing remnants of the beauty
that she must once have been but, unlike “the body”, had made no effort to preserve.

“Goodbye, you clever girl,” she said, adding, “I’ll probably read it too.” And she walked to the door, stick tapping and jewellery flashing.

After Molly a large lady breathed heavily down upon me.

“I could have written that book myself,” she informed me, “only I hadn’t the time. Writing is all right for people who have nothing better to be doing.”

The queue had now dwindled and a trickle of people came along with whom I discussed their childhoods and the pros and cons of modern life. Then in front of me stood a little man with wisps of grey standing up all over his head and eyes sparkling behind rimless glasses.

“The only girl who ever asked me to marry her came from your home town,” he announced.

“And did you marry her?” I asked.

“No,” he answered, “because she frightened the pants off me.”

An unfortunate choice of words, I thought, but he proceeded merrily.

“She was one of those progressive thinkers and was way ahead of her time and certainly ahead of my thinking.”

“Where did you meet?” I asked.

“We were going to university together. She did medicine and, when she qualified, went to England.
Never met her since,” he concluded wistfully.

“And did you get married afterwards?” I asked to bring back the smile to his face.

“Oh yes,” he said brightening up, “and had four children,” he added firmly as if to prove to himself that he really did.

“But do you know something?” he asked confidentially, looking into my eyes as if somewhere in there was the spirit of his old love, “I sometimes think of that grand girl and hope that she never lost her free spirit.”

I watched him walk away. A little man in a grey suit, and no one would ever guess that he carried a lost dream within.

My afternoon signing books was almost over, but I felt enriched by the lives of the many people who had shared their memories and idiosyncrasies with me. They had come to hear my story but each one of them had their own story, some ordinary and some extraordinary, and sometimes in life the ordinary can be extraordinary.