58. THE REVEREND OPHELIA HALL

Is it ever too late in life to get married?

“I don’t know what the Entwhistle woman puts into her tonics, but they sure do something for me!” exclaimed Ursula a week after returning home from hospital. Her new hip had settled in well and the discomfort that had resulted from quite intrusive surgery had faded to virtually nothing.

“I find them sort of uplifting too,” agreed Greendale, and Ursula could tell that was true because the flimsy comb-over with which he had tried to conceal the extent of his baldness from passing strangers and friends alike was being pushed out of the way by a vigorous burst of new growth.

“You’re looking as well as you did way back in the fifties when you tried to jive and spent most of your time on your backside,” she laughed.

“So when are we going to remarry?” he asked. “You told that lovely Nurse Abercrombie that we were going to renew our marriage, so we’d better do it. After all, didn’t you invite her?”

“I might have done or I might not have done,” wheezed Ursula, “my mind’s so full of magic and mayhem I’m hard pushed to remember anything! But yes, we’ll remarry as soon as we can! I’ll phone the Register Office and see if they’ve got any cancellations!”

“Don’t you want a church do?” asked Greendale, looking disappointed.

“The church … now what do I think of the church?” mused Ursula, “the place where the Reverend Jude learned to see the light and lose his belief when there was nobody up there to cure his grief? The place where the Reverend Tony Bishop was murdered in a highly suggestive position in the pulpit along with his house keeper and chief cleaning lady who had her head pushed against his groin? That church…?”

“Yes,” nodded Greendale, “that church!”

“Now why would any sane person want to commit themselves to carnal heaven whilst disbelieving in a spiritual one?” asked Ursula, “and talking of spiritual this and that, how about a drop?”

“Just a finger,” requested Greendale, “and as for the church, you don’t have to believe in what it was created to represent to want to get married in it. And now they’ve got a lady vicar...”

“I heard that, and it seemed a step in the right direction,” nodded Ursula, pouring two drinks from the bottle on the trolley in the corner, “we womenfolk have been on the back-burner of life for far too long. Why, in the early part of our lifetime, Greendale, it was considered improper for a woman to drive a motor car! When that murderess Angela Tightbottom turned up as a chauffeur in the long ago of time, tongues didn’t half wag! It ain’t right and proper, they squawked to each other, a woman making a great big car like that go faster than walking!”

“You always were a feminist,” sighed Greendale, “even when you ran that shop you were so proud of.”

“I don’t know how you worked that one out,” said Ursula.

“Neither do I, but I bet it was true,” grinned Greendale, “now shall I go and see the vicar…?”

“The lady vicar?”

“The same one. What’s her name? Ophelia? That’s it: the Reverend Ophelia Hall.” murmured her elderly lover thoughtfully, “and since I had a spoon of that tonic the Entwhistle woman gave you I can actually walk there with only one stick! Come on, let’s give that new hip of yours an outing and see when we can get wed!”

Ursula sighed. “I suppose so, if it pleases your male ego,” she said, “needing to be macho enough to marry the same woman twice!”

“It’s only because I love you,” he told her, his ninety year-old eyes twinkling.

“People can love each other when they grow old and frail, can’t they?” mused Ursula. “You know, all my life, every moment of it, I’ve believed in love above all things. Even when I had no man in my life, and there was plenty of time like that, I looked on love as the greatest triumph of evolution. After all, there’s no profit in hate, neither financial or spiritual.”

“That’s a unique way of looking at it,” murmured Greendale, pulling his jacket on. “But, you know, I understand exactly what you mean. And, darling woman, I love you.”

Old as they were, and less sprightly than they would have liked to be, they managed the short walk to the church in just over ten minutes. Nowhere in Swanspottle was very far from anywhere else. She lived in a tiny section of the village that had been known as Middleworth since time immemorial, but that could have been walked through from end to end in almost no time at all and never appeared on postal addresses.

The church was dark and gloomy inside. Where more splendid and older Christian buildings had bright stained glass windows it had only dull plain ones, and not enough of those to properly illuminate the place.

The Reverend Ophelia Hall was arranging a display of flowers and tut-tutting to herself when in her opinion colours clashed or, and this was more than opinion but fact, petals fell off flowers that had been past their best a week ago.

“Why hello, fallen angels,” she cooed at them when she caught sight of them.

“I’ve never fallen!” rasped Ursula,

and “I’m no angel!” barked Greendale, a little brusquely, but the Reverend didn’t seem to notice.

“What can I be doing for you two young folks?” she asked, heartily as ever.

“We’re wondering,” began Greendale.

“We want to get married to legalise the sex thing,” said Ursula, smiling sweetly as if she’d just said something soft about ice-cream.

“What a wonderful idea!” exclaimed the Reverend lady, “maybe I should do the same one day? When I get a taste of the sex thing, that is? At the moment I’m strictly celibate, but it’s not mandatory in this branch of the church.”

“So you could find a man and make whoopee?” asked Greendale.

“If I wanted to, I could. But for the moment I’ll give it a miss. So you two young folks want to tie the knot?” she smiled warmly at the two lovers.

“We do,” confirmed Ursula, “I was all for the Register Office, but Greendale here thinks we ought to be blessed in church.”

“Of course you should!” exclaimed the Reverend Hall, “marriage is a holy estate and is for the procreation of children! Without the virtue of wedded parents a little tacker is a b*****d, you know.”

“We’re not planning on having any … er … children,” murmured Ursula. “I’m ninety-one, you know, and medical people suggest I may have left it a bit late.”

“So, if you don’t mind me asking, why do you want to get married at this stage of your lives?” asked the Reverend Ophelia Hall, “I mean, if you’ve left it too late to procreate…?”

“We procreated once,” Greendale said, beginning to be irritated by the vicar’s apparent obsession with family life, “and it was fun at the time. But now we’ve got a better reason to get married than merely procreating.”

“You have? How gorgeous? Tell me, what is that?” asked the vicar.

“It’s love,” smiled Ursula, “plain simple love and a piece of paper that says nobody can take it away from us. Oh, and sex, of course, when it’s convenient...”

“Yes, sex,” sighed Greendale, and he smiled broadly at the shocked expression on the Reverend Ophelia Hall’s face.

© Peter Rogerson 06.09.18