A Blessing In Disguise
Read A Blessing In Disguise Online
Authors: Elvi Rhodes
Young, attractive, a widow with a ten-year-old daughter â Venus Stanton was certainly not the vicar whom the traditional parish of Thurston had been expecting. The village was agog, the congregation surprised and in some cases not at all pleased.
Venus â had to endure curiosity, misunderstandings and even downright hostility. But she also found warmth, friendship and kindness â sometimes from the most unexpected quarters.
Still mourning the death of her husband, and having to cope with the problems of single parenthood, Venus began to think that she would never manage the task she had set herself. Perhaps the doubters were right â she was not suited to be a vicar, to care for the souls of the parish. But the local doctor thought otherwise, and so did many others who came to regard her not only as their priest but also as their friend.
A Blessing in Disguise
Elvi Rhodes
This book is offered with love to the people of St Margaret's Church, Rottingdean, in gratitude for their friendship.
First to my son, Stephen, and to Fr. Martin Morgan, Vicar of St Margaret's Church, Rottingdean, and friend, who each, when I asked them separately what I should write about, immediately replied, âThe Church of course.' So I did.
Every week Stephen discussed the book with me, on the phone from New York, always encouraging me. Fr. Morgan, out of his long and wide experience as a parish priest, helped me at every turn to get things right, and when I went wrong steered me back.
Several other people helped me in many ways. Olwen Holmes, my friend for many years and deeply experienced in church matters, read and discussed with me as the book went along â all in lengthy long-distance phone calls.
Mary Irvine, my agent and friend, encouraged me, as always, every step of the way.
The Revd Christine Wilson took time from her busy life as a parish priest to tell me what it was like. Her viewpoint was invaluable. She prevented me from straying on to the wrong path.
Shirley Hall, my secretary and friend, kept her cool through countless drafts and redrafts.
Tony Brenton, Information Officer at the National Canine Defence League, together with the staff of its Shoreham Rescue Centre, showed me and told me everything about adopting a dog from them.
Sandie Coleman, wise Head Teacher of St Margaret's Church of England Primary School, gave me insight into how caring a school could be.
Elizabeth Morgan, daughter of the Vicarage, wrote down her memories of what it was like when she was a ten-year-old moving into a new school. Elizabeth was my research assistant for a few years before, alas, I lost her to university.
All these people smoothed my path and I can hardly thank them enough.
The characters and places in this book are purely fictitious. Thurston, and St Mary's Church, exist only in my imagination.
When the organist starts the hymn I rise to my feet and leave my seat. Providing I'm not found guilty of doing anything truly terrible this seat will be mine for as long as I choose to remain in Thurston. I don't know how long that will be, though I rang the bell ten times at my institution. Tradition says you ring the bell to indicate how many years you intend to remain in the parish, but whether I'll stay so long remains to be seen.
I have to walk from my seat to the pulpit, which is no more than a few metres away but suddenly seems like a mile. I hope I appear to be walking steadily, with measured tread, head held high, pleased to be here, which I am, even though at the moment my legs feel like cotton wool.
The pulpit staircase is awkwardly curved; eight steps, each one worn and hollowed from the thousands of times feet have climbed them in the last two hundred and fifty years, though the pulpit is not as old as some other parts of the church. How many of the priests who climbed them felt as nervous as I do right now? Standing in the pulpit, raised high above the congregation, looking down on them.
âIt's a position of which I don't approve,' I said (more than once) to Father Humphrey, my boss at Holy Trinity in Clipton. âI prefer to be on a level with the congregation rather than looking down from six feet above contradiction. I don't agree with priests being set above everyone, either physically or in any other way.
He didn't agree. Well, he wouldn't.
âWell, at least we can
see
you, up there!' he said. He was referring to my height â five feet two in heels â but I reckoned there was more to it than that. There are people who prefer their clergy to be a mite exalted, a comfortable distance from them, and that, from another point of view, was how Father Humphrey liked it for himself. Set apart, elevated.
I take no notes with me into the pulpit. I'm more comfortable speaking without them â Father Humphrey once said, âYou never prepare anything, do you?' Black mark!
The trouble is, today I don't know what's expected of me. What I have to say now will be what I've said before; it's the same message but will it need new packaging for this congregation?
What they will get, what I plan to speak about, is the love of God. I know my homily should be based on the Gospel for the day but what Gospel reading can't be turned around at some point to the love of God? At Holy Trinity I was only allowed to preach at the Eucharist once a month, so I always managed to make it the love of God. I want to tell them also that the Christian faith is not a hunger lunch, it is a banquet. But do they want to hear that?
âIt is
not
always what people want!' Father Humphrey complained. âYou make everything sound too easy.'
I suppose he was right, that's not always what people want. There are those who would rather hear themselves and the rest of the congregation roundly berated for their shortcomings, who enjoy being castigated as miserable sinners, feel better for it, but I'd decided at the beginning, from the time I'd made up my mind I wanted to be a priest, that they weren't going to get that from me no matter where I served. And at Holy Trinity, Clipton, they could get that from Father Humphrey. With knobs on!
Today is not my first appearance in St Mary's but at my institution, less than a week ago, the Bishop preached, though I â another quaint custom â was allowed to give out the notices for the following Sunday. Which is what I've arrived at now, presiding at my first Eucharist here, which I must remember not to refer to as the Mass, as we did at Holy Trinity. Some Anglicans are deeply touchy about the names of things and Mass is thought to be papist â though it is perfectly acceptable, the done thing at Christmas, for one and all, including those who will arrive straight from celebrating at the pub for their yearly visit to church, to refer to it as Midnight Mass.
First of all now I look down at my family. There they are, sitting in the very front pew. When I told my family that places had been reserved for them at the front, and they'd be conducted to them, my father said, âI don't like the sound of that. You know I don't like to be conspicuous, Venus!'
When it comes to churchgoing my Dad is of the old Church of England school. âCome early to get a good seat at the back.' However, he has had no choice. He and my mother, together with my daughter Becky and my mother-in-law Ann, have been ceremoniously conducted to the seats which have been reserved for them.
Becky's lips are compressed in a thin, tight line, turned down at the corners. Her head is bent so that her dark fringe hides her eyes. She is refusing to look at me. She is refusing to look anywhere except at the ground. My ten-year-old daughter is not a happy bunny. It saddens me, it saddens me so much, but it comes as no surprise.
She never wanted to come to Thurston, not for one minute. âI'll hate it!' she cried. âI know I will!' We had passionate tears, tantrums, scenes which have left me shaking, given me sleepless nights. âI won't go!' she said. âI will
not
go! You can't make me! I'll go and live with Granny and Grandpa!' But at ten years old you don't have the choice, do you? The taller people decide everything. They
can
make you. And I was not about to change my resolve.
It's not strange that she didn't want to leave Clipton. Life there wasn't a bed of roses for Becky any more than it was for me; on the contrary, it had been a place of unbelievable sorrow and I knew that she felt, along with everything else, as if she was deserting her father.
Now I find myself gripping the edge of the pulpit, stiffening the muscles in my face and opening my eyes wide, willing them not to fill with tears as I look at my family. Or what is left of my family. Philip, my rock, my prop and stay, my lover and the love of my life, is not there. On this day of all days, the culmination of all those years of study and training for what I have known, with absolute certainty, I wanted to be and to do for the rest of my life. âIt has nothing to do with ambition,' I told him. âI don't want to rise higher. I don't want to be an Archdeacon, or someone important in a cathedral. All I want is, one day, to be a parish priest. To have my own people, God's people, of course, but entrusted to me.' And now the day is here, but Philip is not.
And will not be. Not now, not ever. Or at least not in the flesh. I hope, I truly believe, that he is here in the spirit, but there are times when in the spirit is not enough, and this is certainly one of them. I want him here and now; I want him to look up at me, to meet my eyes, give me a small wink, and then his broad smile. And afterwards I want him to go home with me, back to my new Vicarage, to chew over the day's events, and then to go to bed with me. Going to bed without him is one of the hardest parts, but who can I talk to about that? God, you might say, but I have to tell you that if God gives me an answer to that one it's never loud enough for me to hear.
I want Philip's strength, his assurance that all is well and all will be well. That I
will
win.
I didn't always have that assurance from him. It didn't come quickly or easily. âI always assumed,' he said, âthat when Becky started school you'd take a job, probably part time. I didn't expect you to stay at home. I thought the idea was that you'd go back to being a librarian, or perhaps work in a bookshop.' But I knew what I wanted to do, and was sure I
would
do. âI've told you,' I said, âand I'm totally certain about it, that I wish â if I am found to be suitable â to be ordained into the Church of England.' It came as a bombshell to him.
âBut why?' he demanded. âVenus, for heaven's sake why? I don't understand! Where has all this come from? Have you really thought about it? About what it will do to our lives? And Becky! What about Becky?' She was at nursery school then.
The questions had come thick and fast and I wasn't always able to answer them adequately. I just knew it was what I had to do. I was totally certain and I suppose my certainty made me selfish.