THE END OF OPHELIA'S DREAMS

Josiah takes a break in a lake district cottage where he starts to seek a new reality.

It had been hard leaving Jodie behind, in Henstooth, while he drove all the way to the Lake District, but the Bishop had just about insisted.

Jodie was staying with Michael Stubbs and his father and she was perfectly happy to do so. In truth she was of an age when a young woman is more than delighted to be obliged to share the company of a lad she finds to be both interesting and good company and Jodie accepted the break from her father with more than a comfortable amount of eagerness. At least, that crossed Josiah’s troubled mind, still take up as it was with mourning his wife.

Josiah had taken the death of Ophelia badly. He had spent long distressing hours searching his mind for an explanation. Why had his Maker allowed this to happen? What had Ophelia, or him for that matter, done to deserve such an early and painful separation? Why was life such an uncertain thing when prayer was so definite and, he’d always believed, concrete?

And he had turned to the Bishop for answers, and the Bishop had shaken his head.

“You’re losing your faith, Josiah,” he had said.

And Josiah supposed that had been what was really troubling him until the Bishop added,

“I lost mine ages ago.”

The shock had been seismic. It had shaken him to the very roots of his being. The Bishop had lost his faith? The Bishop had become a non-believer, yet that same Bishop was on a comfortable stipend from the church and showed no sign of giving his bishopric up.

“It’s easily done,” he added, “when the whole lot stops making any sense. And the more you think about it the more it troubles you. I won’t even mention the way Hitler tried to murder all of God’s chosen people, and wasn’t stopped by a flash of lightning or a crash of thunder...”

“It’s just that Ophelia was such a … such a good person,” muttered Josiah.

Because that’s what she had been.

“Then I’ve got a treat for you. There’s Michael in Northumberland. He’ll guide you, and you need a break,” advised the Bishop. “The Reverend Stocks. He’s got a lovely cottage in the lake district, overlooking Ullswater and a whole lot of mountains. I’ve been there. The air is just marvellous, and he’ll show you some sense. He’s a good man.”

“Did he show you some sense?” asked Josiah, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

“He tried. By golly he tried. But I’m a lost cause, my son, a very lost cause. But I do try to live a good life. I don’t hurt anyone. I comfort those who are in need of comfort. I don’t try to pour too much Jesus into too many broken hearts...”

And that had been that and here he was on his way to call (for a couple of weeks of recuperation from the ordeal of his bereavement) on the Reverend Michael Stocks, the previous incumbent of his parish in Henstooth, who had taken over briefly after his own father had passed away.

They’d spoken on the phone and Michael had even used his own contraption of a computer to send detailed instructions how to find him. He had made the journey by car and he wept when he remembered that the last person to drive it had been a very poorly Ophelia who had done her utmost to remain in charge of her own life for as long as she could. And being mobile had been part of that. She had driven to hospital for chemotherapy because that was part of her independence.

Josiah had never liked driving. He’d taken the test a few years earlier on Ophelia’s insistence, but truth to tell he would have preferred to do the bulk of the journey by rail. What scared him most was what he would do when he had to find his way from the railway station to Lark Cottage, so he had plucked up his courage and done the entire journey by road.

“Environmentally disastrous,” he had told Jodie with a grin. “Are you sure you’ll be all right? I’ll be gone for a fortnight...”

“I’m seventeen, dad,” she had grinned, “there was a time when seventeen year old lasses were almost middle-aged!”

“Okay,” he had agreed. “But with Michael … you’re a girl, be careful...”

And she had given him that teasing look, the one she had inherited from her dear mother, and told him “I know how to handle randy youths,” in the sort of voice that convinced him that she really did.

And here he was, her voice still whispering its youthful certainties inside his head somewhere, and there was the figure of Michael Stokes waiting in the small front garden of Lark Cottage.

It was a delightful building, almost certainly not as old as it looked but still having a quaintness that gave it a feeling of age as if the bricks and stones had been laid in a very different age. And the garden was neat yet wild, filled with a profusion of flowers that looked as if they may well bloom the whole year long. And the Reverend Stokes was standing there, grinning broadly, his white teeth contrasting startlingly with his African skin.

“Welcome, my son,” he boomed.

Michael Stokes had retired almost twenty years earlier, soon after he had taken over the parish at Henstooth, and he had moved with huge joy to his favourite corner of the world, where there were mountains and lakes amidst a profusion of wildness, and he could spend his declining years in harmony with nature. Now he was almost eighty, but still had a vigour in the way he stood there waiting.

If this is god’s waiting room then folks must hang around in here an awfully long time, thought Josiah.

“Welcome, welcome my son,” repeated Michael Stokes, holding out his hand in greeting.

“I hope I’m not being imposed on you,” said Josiah uncomfortably. “The Bishop sort of insisted...”

“Oh, he would, he would,” laughed Michael, “he came here what, ten years or more ago, in order to retrieve his lost faith and before you could say Jack Robinson he had lost the rest of it! And if it’s faith you’re after, then you either find it or lose it in a place like this. But I’ll say no more on the subject for the time being. Come in, and I’ll show you your room.”

That evening they sat at a garden table surrounded by the aroma of so many flowers Josiah lost count of all the colours. And there were roses round an archway that had been build round the back door, aromatic roses that filled the air with so much sweetness it almost made Josiah feel giddy. Their view was simple: the pure blue of Ullswater lake and the rising beauty of the hills and mountains that looked unspoilt by the efforts of man.

“This is what I meant when I said you either lose or gain your faith,” said Michael, indicating the serenity that stretched for as far as the eye could see.

“You mean… Mother Nature or Father God?” asked Josiah.

“Precisely,” he said, nodding his wise old head. “And it’s where you put your love, in the mother or the father… the Bishop couldn’t understand that when he was here.”

“Where did he stumble?” asked Josiah.

“He looked at the mountains and saw the hand of God,” said Michael Stokes, “and when I looked at the mountains I saw the ravages left by countless upheavals in the growth of the Mother … Mother Earth, you know.”

“The mountains and the lakes … her offspring …” sighed Josiah, “yes, that’s right, that’s how it is, I see the ending of my dream of Heaven when I look out there… And no need to mourn for she who passed away, no need for that, the mother will see that life goes on somehow, somewhere, in Jodie, and in all the little Jodies that stretch forth into the future...”

“Jodie is your daughter?” asked Michael, knowing she was.

“Her mother’s daughter, and mine,” whispered Josiah. “Her mother’s dream… and mine”

© Peter Rogerson 10.04.18