Star over Bethlehem (7 page)

Mrs. Badstock heaved and pulled. The smell of the village dump was not agreeable. It was an unsightly mass of old tyres, broken chairs, ragged quilts, old kerosene tins, and broken bedsteads. All the things that nobody could possibly want. But Mrs. Badstock was tugging hopefully. If that old pram was anyway repairable—She heaved again and it came free …

“Drat!” said Mrs. Badstock. The upper portion of the pram was not too bad, but the wheels were missing.

She threw it down angrily.

“Can I help you?” A woman spoke out of the darkness.

“No good. Blasted thing's got no wheels.”

“You want a wheel? I've got one here.”

“Ta, ducks. But I need four. And anyway, yours is much too big.”

“That's why I thought we could make it into four—with a little adjustment.” The woman's fingers strayed over it pushing, pulling.

“There! How's that?”

“Well, I never! However did you—Now, if we'd got a nail or two—or a screw. I'll get my hubby—”

“I think I can manage.” She bent over the pram. Mrs. Badstock peered down to try and see what was happening.

The other woman straightened up suddenly. The pram stood on four wheels.

“It will want a little oil, and some new lining.”

“I can see to that easy!
What
a boon it will be. You're quite a little home mechanic, aren't you, ducks? How on earth did you manage it?”

“I don't know really,” said St. Catherine vaguely. “It just—happens.”

The tall woman in the brocade dress said with authority: “Bring them up to the house. There's plenty of room.”

The man and the woman looked at her suspiciously. Their six children did the same.

“The Council are finding us somewhere,” said the man sullenly.

“But they're going to separate us,” said the woman.

“And you don't want that?”

“Of course we don't.”

Three of the children began to cry.

“Shut your bloody mouths,” said the man, but without rancour.

“Been saying they'd evict us for a long time,” said the man. “Now they've done it. Always whining about their rent. I've better things to do with my money than pay rent. That's Councils all over for you.”

He was not a nice man. His wife was not very nice either, St. Barbara thought. But they loved their children.

“You'd better all come up to my place,” she said.

“Where is it?”

“Up there.” She pointed.

They turned to look.

“But—that's a
Castle
,” the woman exclaimed in awestruck tones.

“Yes, it's a Castle all right. So you see, there will be lots of room …”

St. Scoithín stood rather doubtfully on the seashore. He wasn't quite sure what to do with his Salmon.

He could smoke it, of course—it would last longer that way. The trouble was that it was really only the rich who like smoked salmon, and the rich had quite enough things already. The poor much preferred their salmon in tins. Perhaps—

The Salmon writhed in his hands, and St. Scoithín jumped.

“Master,” said the Salmon.

St. Scoithín looked at it.

“It is nearly a thousand years since I saw the sea,” said the Salmon pleadingly.

St. Scoithín smiled at him affectionately. He walked out on the sea, and lowered the Salmon gently into the water.

“Go with God,” he said.

He walked back to the shore, and almost immediately stumbled over a big heap of tins of salmon with a purple flower stuck on top of them.

St. Cristina was walking along a crowded City street. The traffic roared past her. The air was full of diesel fumes.

“This is terrible,” said St. Cristina, holding her nose. “I must do something about this. And why don't they empty the dustbins oftener? It's very bad for people.” She pondered. “Perhaps I had better go into Parliament …”

St. Peter was busy setting out his Loaf and Fish stall.

“Old Age Pensioners first,” he said. “Come on, Granddad.”

“Are you National Assistance?” the old man asked suspiciously.

“That kind of thing.”

“Not religious, is it? I'm not going to sing hymns.”

“When the food's all gone, I shall preach,” said Peter. “But you don't have to stay on and listen.”

“Sounds fair enough. What are you going to preach about?”

“Something quite simple. Just how to attain Eternal Life.”

A younger man gave a hoot of laughter.

“Eternal Life! What a hope!”

“Yes,” said Peter cheerfully, as he shovelled out parcels of hot fish. “It
is
a hope. Got to remember that. There's always Hope.”

In the Church of St. Petrock-on-the-Hill, the Vicar was sitting sadly in a pew, watching a confident young architect examining the old painted screen.

“Sorry, Vicar,” said the young man, turning briskly. “Not a hope in Hell, I'm afraid. Oh! sorry again. I oughtn't to have put it like that. But it's long past restoring. Nothing to be done. The wood's rotten, and there's hardly any paint left—not enough to see what the original was like. What is it? Fifteenth century?”

“Late fourteenth.”

“What are they? Saints?”

“Yes. Seven each side.” He recited. “St. Lawrence, St. Thomas, St. Andrew, St. Anthony, St. Peter, St. Scoithín, and one we don't know. The other side: St. Barbara, St. Catherine, St. Appolonia, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Cristina the Astonishing, St. Margaret, and St. Martha.”

“You've got it all very pat.”

“There were church records. Not in very good condition. Some we had to make out by their emblems—St. Barbara's castle for instance, and St. Lawrence's gridiron. The original work was done by Brother Bernard of the Benedictines of Froyle Abbey.”

“Well, I'm sorry about my verdict. But everything has got to go sometime. I hear your rich parishioner has offered you a new screen with modern symbolical figures on it?”

“Yes,” said the Vicar without enthusiasm.

“Seen the big new Cathedral Centre at New Huddersfield? Coventry was good in its time, but this is streets ahead of it! Takes a bit of getting used to, of course.”

“I am sure it would.”

“But it's taken on in a big way! Modern. Those old Saints,” he flicked a hand towards the screen. “I don't suppose anyone knows who half of them are nowadays. I certainly don't. Who was St. Cristina the Astonishing?”

“Quite an interesting character. She had a very keen sense of smell. At her funeral service the smell of her putrefying body affected her so much that she levitated out of her coffin up to the roof of the Chapel.”

“Whew! Some Saint! Oh well, it takes all sorts to make a world. Even your old Saints would be very different nowadays, I expect …”

 

The Saints of God

Saint Lawrence with his Gridiron

Saint Catherine with her Wheel

Saint Margaret with her Dragon

Saint Wilfred with his Seal

The Saints of God are marching

Are marching down the hill

The Saints of God are marching

To ascertain God's Will

“Oh, we have sat in Glory

And worn the Martyr's Crown

But we now make petition

That we from Heaven go down.

“In pity and compassion

Let us go back to men

And show them where the Pathway

Leads back to Heaven again …”

The Island

There were hardly any trees on the island. It was arid land, an island of rock, and the goats could find little to eat. The shapes of the rocks were beautiful as they swept up from the sea, and their colour changed with the changing of the light, going from rose to apricot, to pale misty grey, deepening to mauve and to stern purple, and in a last fierceness to orange, as the sun sank into that sea so rightly called wine-dark. In the early mornings the sky was a pale proud blue, and seemed so high up and so far away that it filled one with awe to look up at it.

But the women of the island did not look up at it often, unless they were anxiously gazing for signs of a storm. They were women and they had to work. Since food was scarce, they worked hard and unceasingly, so that they and their children should live. The men went out daily in the fishing boats. The children herded the goats and played little games of their own with pebbles in the sun.

Today the women with great jars of fresh water on their heads, toiled up the slope from the spring in the cleft of the cliff, to the village above.

Mary was still strong, but she was not as young as most of the women, and it was an effort to her to keep pace with them.

Today the women were very gay, for in a few days' time there was to be a wedding. The girl children danced round their elders and chanted monotonously:

“I shall go to the wedding … I shall go to the wedding … I shall have a ribbon in my hair … I shall eat roseleaf jelly … roseleaf jelly in a spoon …”

The mothers laughed, and one child's mother said teasingly: “How do you know I shall take you to the wedding?”

Dismayed, the child stared.

“You
will
take me—you will—you
will
…” And she clung to Mary, demanding: “She will let me go to the wedding? Say she will!”

And Mary smiled and said gently: “I think she will, sweetheart!”

And all the women laughed gaily, for today they were all happy and excited because of the wedding.

“Have you ever been to a wedding, Mary?” the child asked.

“She went to her own,” laughed one of the women.

“I didn't mean your own. I meant a wedding party, with dancing and sweet things to eat, and roseleaf jam, and honey?”

“Yes. I have been to weddings.” Mary smiled, “I remember one wedding … very well … a long time ago.”

“With roseleaf jam?”

“I think so—yes. And there was wine …”

Her voice trailed off as she remembered.

“And when the wine runs out, we have to drink water,” one of the women said. “That always happens!”

“We did not drink water at this wedding!”

Mary's voice was strong and proud.

The other women looked at her. They knew that Mary had come here with her son from a long way away, and that she did not often speak of her life in earlier days, and that there was some very good reason for that. They were careful not to ask her questions, but of course there were rumours, and now suddenly one of the older children piped up and spoke like a parrot.

“They say you had a son who was a great criminal and was executed for his crimes. Is that true?”