THE GRAND DAY AND EVENING FOR JOSIAH PYKE

Could it be a third lovely is going to enter Josiah's life?

Nobody could have felt more proud than Josiah Pyke did on that grand day when he led his daughter down the aisle to stand besides her best friend and lover Michael Stubbs in order to become his wife.

He had wanted to perform the service himself, but Jodie had wanted him to give her away.

In actual fact, she would have preferred a civil ceremony because her faith was totally different from that of her father, but out of respect for him and his calling she had accepted that the church it must be. So The Reverend Beryl Faith had been co-opted from Swanspottle church where she had been condemned to serve for the better part of a decade, and she had declared herself delighted to join the handsome young man and the beautiful young woman in Holy Matrimony.

Michael Stubbs had developed into a strong and diligent young man with a caring disposition and a love of his work at Oakapple farm, where he had been apprenticed and rapidly become indispensable when it came to the small flock of sheep lovingly reared as representatives of an ancient breed that had almost been obliterated in favour of chubbier and more profitable alternatives.

So he stood waiting for his bride to make her way from the back of the church, and the Reverend Beryl Faith, who was fidgeting with a book and half a dozen papers whilst waiting for the bride who was fashionably late for the church. Next to him stood his best man and the church was resonant with the natural hum of whispered conversations when nothing of any importance is happening.

Then the organ struck up announcing the arrival of the bride, and Jodie Pyke made her way slowly and with her proud father down the shortish aisle of a shortish church to eventually become Jodie Stubbs.

Afterwards, when photographs had been taken and the glowing eyes of the bride never stopped devouring the handsome physique of her chosen beau, Josiah took a few moments off to thank his Swanspottle colleague for her contribution to his daughter’s happy day.

“I’d have thought,” said the Reverend Beryl candidly, “that you might have wanted to conduct the service yourself.”

He shook his head. “Jodie wanted me by her side,” he said briefly. “And what a daughter wants, a daughter gets!”

Beryl laughed. “I wish my dad had been so considerate,” she said quietly. “But when I got married he insisted in conducting the service, leaving my grandfather to give me away, and he was a doddery old soak by then, and rapidly on his way to the Hereafter.”

“It wasn’t so glorious a day, then?” asked Josiah.

“Nor so glorious a marriage,” frowned Beryl Faith, shaking her head. “It didn’t last long, and when he discovered I wanted to follow my dream and become a church woman in the footsteps of my father he made his opinion quite clear and emigrated to Canada, where he still is. Now he’s got a second family out there, though he can’t marry, of course. But that hasn’t bothered him! He’s not concerned with living in or out of sin! Our son went out to join him as soon as he was old enough, leaving silly old me still married, but in name only, and not a love in my life, except God, of course.”

“I’m sorry,” murmured Josiah.

“Oh, don’t be! I’m happy enough even though my living in Swanspottle is a creaky old place with more leaks in wet weather than your average sieve. Look at me: I’m fortyish, and I won’t say what size the ish part of that number is, I reckon I’ve still kept the bigger parts of my youthful looks and all I miss from the past is my son. Oh, and sex, if that doesn’t shock you!”

Josiah might have told the truth and said that it did, but he was too honourable to risk making Beryl feel uncomfortable, and he grinned, impishly he hoped, and offered to escort her to the reception.

It went as well as all the better receptions do go, and before it ended the bride and groom drove off for their honeymoon in a car that jingled and jangled with old tin cans and multi-coloured streamers flying out behind it.

“There was a time when the honeymoon was the anticipated time when he and she found out whether they were compatible in bed as well as out of it,” observed Beryl. “I mean, before contraception became reliable not so many couples tried it until they were safely married, and the honeymoon was when they discovered whether they could stand each other in the most meaningful sense. It was when I discovered that I wasn’t particularly compatible with my husband, anyway, though I did manage to conceive!”

“Ophelia and I didn’t have a honeymoon as such,” sighed Josiah, “just a few days away from home, and before you ask we had no problems as all!”

“Young folks these days are so fortunate,” murmured Beryl. “Rather than being virgins at the altar new brides are often really experienced in the ways of their husbands, which has got to be a good thing bearing in mind how long they plan to be married!”

Josiah was beginning to feel uncomfortable by the way the conversation kept veering back to physical relationships. He looked at Beryl and had to admit that she was the most attractive woman he’d seen in many a long year, but somehow she seemed obsessed by the subject, and he thought it odd.

She noticed his expression, and swallowed. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I hope you don’t imagine that I’m a w***e in vicar’s clothing or anything like that. But I am a woman...”

“I’d noticed,” smiled Josiah, “and I think nothing of the sort.”

“I was going to say, I’m a woman and my collar doesn’t make me immune to what other women take as perfectly normal and even desirable.”

“And I’m a man, and not immune either,” sighed Josiah, “and for too many years, since my Jodie was seventeen when her mother passed away, I’ve been a celibate guide to a congregation that I reckon to be as far from celibate as any village congregation can be! I hear the stories, you know, how Mr so-and-so spent the time with Mrs What’sit when most decent folk are in bed, and tell the truth I’ve occasionally felt a twinge of jealousy or envy.”

“I know exactly how you must feel when this or that piece of gossip makes its way through to you,” sighed Beryl, “because I’m the same, and all my parishioners know I’m a married woman so I can’t even vanish with a handsome young fellow over night without starting tongues wagging. I don’t, by the way ... vanish with a handsome young man, that is.”

“We’re in a privileged position,” murmured Josiah, “and it would be so wrong if we abused it.”

“How come, privileged?” asked Beryl, frowning.

“We preach the sanctity of marriage, so we can’t be seen as the ones to threaten it,” he replied, raising his eyebrows.

I like that, she thought, the way he does that with his eyebrows … and his eyes … I like them, too.

“What do you think the happy couple will be doing right now?” she asked.

He looked at his watch. The guests had mostly drifted away once the bride and groom had swept off in their rattling car. A few, mostly elderly ladies, were tidying up and chairs were being stacked by two youngsters.

“If they’ve got any sense they’ll be in bed together,” he said, almost choking, “though I’m perfectly sure it won’t be the first time or even the hundred-and-first time.”

“I know,” she sighed, “and I’d best be making my way back to Swanspottle. Unless...”

“Unless?” he asked.

“Do you want a guest for the night?” she asked, and he couldn’t help noticing those lovely eyes of hers, and how they were pleading.

© Peter Rogerson 14.04.18