Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (8 page)

The Society held a regular weekend at the Morecambe guest house, once a year, just before the busy season – the busy season being around Easter, after malingering illnesses contracted during the harsh winter. Of course, there was sometimes an unexpected spate in January, but it’s surprising how long people hang on, once they know it’s the end. My mother, who has always been interested in the End, personal and general, had a friend who used to make most of the wreaths for the Fylde coast.

‘Our time’s coming,’ she used to say, every winter, and every winter she bought a new coat.

‘It’s the only time I can afford it,’ she said. ‘People live a lot longer now, and they don’t want a fuss at the end.’ She shook her head. ‘No, business isn’t what what it was.’

She used to come and stay with us sometimes, and bring her wires and sponges, and catalogues.

‘It’s funny, but they always want the same, never anything adventurous, although I once did a violin in carnations for a musician’s husband.’

My mother nodded sympathetically.

The woman sipped her tea.

‘Now, Queen Victoria, that was a funeral.’

She took a chocolate biscuit from the bottom of the pile.

‘Course, I was young then, but my mother, she wore her fingers to the bone making wreaths. And they were wreaths in them days. Hearts and flowers, coronets, family crests, look I still have them in my catalogue.’ She picked it up and showed us the faded pages. ‘But nobody wants ‘em.’

She took another biscuit.

‘Crosses,’ she said bitterly, ‘that’s all I do, crosses. A woman with my training it’s not right.’

‘Couldn’t you do weddings as well?’ I asked her.

‘Weddings,’ she spat, ‘what would I want with weddings?’

‘You’d get a bit of variety,’ I suggested.

‘And what do you think they want at weddings?’ she challenged me.

I didn’t know, I’d never been. Her eyes gleamed down at me.

‘Crosses,’ she said, refilling her mug.

The weekend we all trouped down to Morecambe for the Society spree, the woman was there as well.

‘On contract work,’ she told us.

Apparently there had been an epidemic at a nearby boarding school. A lot of the pupils were no more, and naturally their parents wanted wreaths.

‘The school wants two tennis racquets in their colours, as a tribute. I’m using mimosa and roses, it’s very difficult, but it’s a challenge.’

‘Well, the money won’t go amiss, will it?’ said my mother.

‘It’ll pay for my bathroom that’s what. A woman of my training without a bathroom, it’s shocking.’

I asked if I could help, and she said I could, so we went down to the greenhouse together.

‘Put these on.’ She gave me a pair of gloves with no fingers. ‘And start sorting them roses.’

Her own hands were red, and speckled with mimosa dust.

‘What d’y think your mother would like?’ she asked me, by way of conversation.

‘Oh something very grand I think. I think she’d like the Bible open at Revelation.’

‘Well, we’ll see,’ said the woman.

The woman and I got on very well. Years later, when I was needing a Saturday job, she helped me out. She had gone into partnership with an undertaker, so they could offer the whole package at special rates.

‘It’s a cut-throat business,’ she told me.

They got a lot of work between them, and usually needed an extra hand. I went along to help with the laying out and make up. At first I was very clumsy. I used too much rouge, and smeared it down the cheekbones.

‘Show some respect,’ said the woman, ‘the dead have their pride.’ We always had a check list with the burial instructions, and soon this became my particular task. I went round making sure that the dead had everything they wanted. Some just asked for a prayer book or their Bible, or their wedding ring, but some were positively Egyptian. We did photograph albums, best dresses, favourite novels, and once someone’s own novel. It was about a week in a telephone box with a pair of pyjamas called Adolf Hitler. The heroine was a piece of string with a knot in it.

‘Some folk,’ said the woman, when she read it.

But we put it in anyway. It reminded me of Rossetti who flung his new poems into the grave of his wife, and had to ask permission from the home secretary to get them out again six years later. I liked my work. I learned a lot about wood and flowers, and I enjoyed polishing the handles as a final touch.

‘Always the best,’ declared the woman.

One year, the Society had a special conference in our town. My mother campaigned for weeks to make sure we got a good turn-out. May and Alice went posting invitations through letter boxes and Miss Jewsbury was billed to play the oboe. It was an open meeting to inform and encourage new members. The only place we could find to host the meeting was the Rechabite Hall on the corner of Infant Street.

‘Do you think that’s all right?’ asked May anxiously.

‘We won’t look too deep,’ replied my mother.

‘But are they holy?’ insisted Mrs White.

‘That’s for the Lord to decide,’ my mother said, very firm.
Mrs White blushed, and later we saw she’d taken her name off the volunteer list for buns.

The conference was booked for a Saturday, and there was always a market near Infant Street on Saturdays, so my mother gave me an orange box, and told me to shout at everyone what was happening. I had a bad time. Most of the street traders told me I was in their way, that they had paid to be there, that I hadn’t, and so on. I didn’t mind the abuse, I was well used to it, and never thought it personal, but it was raining and I wanted to do a good job. Eventually Mrs Arkwright from the Factory Bottoms shop took pity on me. She had a stall at the weekend mostly with pet food though she would advise on vermin if it was urgent.

‘I like my little break,’ she said.

She let me put my orange box inside the shelter of her stall, so that I could give out tracts without getting too wet.

‘Tha mother’s mad, tha knows,’ she kept saying.

She might have been right, but there was nothing I could do about it.

I was relieved when two o’clock came and I could go inside with the rest.

‘How many tracts did you give out?’ demanded my mother, who was hovering by the door.

‘All of them.’

She softened. ‘Good girl.’

Someone started playing the piano just then, so I hurried inside. It was very gloomy with lots of pictures of the apostles. The sermon was on perfection, and it was at this moment that I began to develop my first theological disagreement.

Perfection, the man said, was a thing to aspire to. It was the condition of the Godhead, it was the condition of the man before the Fall. It could only be truly realized in the next world, but we had a sense of it, a maddening, impossible sense, which was both a blessing and a curse.

‘Perfection,’ he announced, ‘is flawlessness.’

Once upon a time, in the forest, lived a woman who was so
beautiful that the mere sight of her healed the sick and gave a good omen to the crops.

She was very wise too, being well acquainted with the laws of physics and the nature of the universe. Her great delight was to spin, and to sing songs as she turned the wheel. Meanwhile, in a part of the forest that had become a town, a great prince roamed sadly along the corridors of his palace. He was considered by many to be a good prince, and a valuable leader. He was also quite pretty, though a little petulant at times.

As he walked, he spoke aloud to his faithful companion, an old goose.

‘If only I could find a wife,’ he sighed. ‘How can I run this whole kingdom without a wife?’

‘You could delegate?’ suggested the goose, waddling beside as best she could.

‘Don’t be silly,’ snapped the prince. ‘I’m a real prince.’

The goose blushed.

‘The problem is,’ continued the prince, ‘there’s a lot of girls, but no one who’s got that special something.’

‘What’s that then?’ panted the goose.

The prince gazed into space for a moment, then flung his body to the turf.

‘Your hose has split, sire,’ hissed his companion, embarrassed.

But the prince took no notice.

‘That special something . . .’ He rolled over, and propped himself on an elbow, motioning the goose to do the same.

‘I want a woman, without blemish inside or out, flawless in every respect. I want a woman who is perfect.’

And he buried his face in the grass and began to cry.

The goose was much moved by this display, and shuffled off to see if she could find some advisors.

After a long search, she stumbled on a clump of them under the royal oaks, playing bridge.

‘The prince wants a wife.’

They looked up as one man.

‘The prince wants a wife,’ she repeated, ‘and she must be
without blemish inside or out, flawless in every respect. She must be perfect.’

The youngest advisor got out his bugle horn and sounded the cry. ‘For a wife,’ he shouted. ‘Perfect.’

For three years the advisors roamed the land to no avail. They found many lovely and virtuous women, but the prince refused them all.

‘Prince, you’re a fool,’ said the goose one day. ‘What you want can’t exist.’

‘It must exist,’ insisted the prince, ‘because I want it.’

‘You’ll die first,’ shrugged the goose, about to go back to her feeding tray.

‘Not before you,’ spat the prince, and chopped off her head.

Three more years passed, and the prince began to write a book to pass the time. It was called
The Holy Mystery of Perfection
. He divided it into three sections.

Part one: the philosophy of perfection. The Holy Grail, the unblemished life, the final aspiration on Mount Carmel. Saint Teresa and the Interior Castle.

Part two: the impossibility of perfection. The restless search in this life, the pain, the majority who opt for second best. Their spreading corruption. The importance of being earnest.

Part three: the need to produce a world full of perfect beings. The possibility thereby of a heaven on earth. A perfect race. An exhortation to single-mindedness.

The prince was very pleased with his book, and had a copy given to all his advisors, so that they should not waste his time with the merely second-best. One of them took it with him to a distant corner of the forest, where he could read in peace. He wasn’t academic, and the prince had a very dense prose style.

While he was lying under a tree, he heard the sound of singing coming from somewhere on the left. Curious, and a
music lover, he got up to find out who was making the noise. In a clearing, there was a woman spinning thread and accompanying herself with a song.

The advisor thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

‘And she can sew,’ he thought.

He went up to her, bowing as he came.

‘Fair maid,’ he began.

‘If you want to chat,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to come back later, I’m working to a deadline.’

The advisor was very shocked.

‘But I am royal,’ he told her.

‘And I’m working to a deadline,’ she told him. ‘Come for lunch if you want.’

‘I’ll be back at noon,’ he answered stiffly and marched off.

Meantime, the advisor questioned whoever he met about the woman. How old was she? Who were her family? Did she have any dependants? Was she clever?

‘Clever?’ snorted one old man. ‘She’s perfect.’

‘Did you say perfect?’ urged the advisor, shaking the old man by the shoulders.

‘Yes,’ cried he, ‘I said perfect.’

As soon as it was noon the advisor banged on the door of the woman’s home.

‘It’s cheese soup,’ she said, as she let him in.

‘Never mind that,’ he retorted, ‘we’ve got to get moving, I’m taking you to the prince.’

‘What for?’ asked the woman, ladling out her own soup.

‘He might want to marry you,’

‘I’m not getting married,’ she said.

The advisor turned to her in horror. ‘Why not?’

‘It’s not something I’m very interested in. Now do you want this soup or don’t you?’

‘No,’ shouted the young man. ‘But I’ll be back.’

Three days later, there was a great commotion in the forest. The prince and his retinue were arriving. The prince himself had lost the use of his legs from sitting still so long, and had to be carried in a litter. At the sight of the woman, who was sitting spinning, just as before, he leapt from his pallet,
crying, ‘I’m cured, she must be perfect.’ And he fell on his knees and begged her to marry him.

The court turned to one another, smiling. They could stop all this nonsense now, and live happily ever after.

The woman smiled down on the kneeling price and stroked his hair.

‘You’re very sweet, but I don’t want to marry you.’

There was a gasp of horror from the gathered court.

Then silence.

The prince struggled to his feet, and pulled a copy of his book from out of his pocket.

‘But you must, I’ve written all about you.’

Again the woman smiled, and read the title. Then she frowned, and motioning to the prince, pulled him inside her home.

For three days and three nights the court camped in fear. No sound came from the hut. Then on the fourth day, the prince appeared, weary and unwashed. Calling his chief advisors around him, he told them all that had taken place.

The woman was indeed perfect, there was no doubt about that, but she wasn’t flawless. He, the prince, had been wrong. She was perfect because she was a perfect balance of qualities and strengths. She was symmetrical in every respect. The search for perfection, she had told him, was in fact the search for balance, for harmony. And she showed him Libra, the scales, and Pisces, the fish, and last of all put out her two hands. ‘Here is the clue,’ she said. ‘Here in this first and personal balance.’

‘There are two principles,’ she said, ‘the Weight and the Counter-weight.’

‘Oh yes,’ put in one of the advisors, ‘you mean the sphere of Destiny and the wheel of Fortune.’

The prince swivelled round.

‘How do you know?’ he demanded.

The advisor blushed. ‘Oh, it’s just something my mother told me, I’d forgotten it until now.’

‘Well anyway,’ said the prince peremptorily, ‘the point is I’m wrong and I’m going to have to write a new book, and make a public apology to the goose.’