4. The Inquisitive Vicar

A WIDOW WOMAN Part 4

The Reverend Jonah Pyke loved his job.

He loved the feeling of power that swept over him when he stood in the pulpit and pontificated on matters he barely understood. He loved the feeling of warmth and affinity he felt when he addressed the young mothers group, especially when he chose a subject he was particularly ignorant of for debate as the week’s topic, like personal relationships.

He never mentioned sex, though. Just implied it.

The Reverend Jonah Pyke was a young clergyman, and indeed lucky to be given the parish of Brumpton, but the sitting tenant had passed away mid-carol service last December (nobody noticed, the congregation just assuming that he was having forty winks which was perfectly normal for him) and there was a shortage of ordained men following losses due to the recent world war. He was single, not yet thirty and thought himself handsome, though his attention to personal details like hygiene sometimes left a lot to be desired.

Indeed, the Bishop had actually written to him informing him of the possibilities provided by an inexpensive tablet of soap.

But he enjoyed a great deal of the work expected of him, though funerals were his favourite. There was something about a grieving widow (and it was usually widows) that he found touched his heart in several electric places.

The latest was Mrs Jane Simpson.

He read the note informing him of the demise of her husband, not that he was interested in husbands. But this one had passed away in the local hospital (peacefully in his sleep, though how they knew it was peaceful when he probably died at three in the morning he didn’t fully understand, he usually being comatose at that hour), and had a serious lung condition that took him away to Heaven or Hell, he wasn’t as yet sure which, leaving a wife in her forties and two children.

She clearly needed comforting. It stood to reason that a woman so deprived of company must need an understanding clergyman to lean on even though, at her age, she was possibly old enough to be his mother. Almost, maybe, but not quite.

He’d loved his mother. She had been a veritable angel until he’d left home to study religion and she’d absconded with the window cleaner who he was sure had seen too much of her through the newly cleaned window to be decent or even healthy.

He thought all window cleaners should have a specially fiery apartment in Hell reserved for them. No, not apartment but hovel, and one burning unceasingly for eternity.

The house where Mrs Simpson and her brood lived was one of the many in need of demolition. Several had been attended to by the Luftwaffe who had removed them during the war courtesy of high explosives, but the Simpson residence was still just about standing.

He knocked the door and was almost knocked out by the loveliness that confronted him. Mind you, he found most women under the age of seventy-five unbelievably attractive, and it was not really surprising that Mrs Simpson appealed to something basic buried deep and almost untouched inside him.

“I’ve come to offer you my most serious and sorrowful commiserations,” he said, slipping his best pulpit voice into gear.

“You poor man,” replied the recently widowed Jane Simpson, “is that egg down your shirt?”

It was, but he hadn’t noticed. A casual glance in the mirror as he left home that morning had showed a beautifully pristine clerical collar, but hadn’t reached further down his shirt to where a yellow streak stood out against a black background.

Her observation would have thrown a lesser man, but he was up to it and the first thing he did was arrange a broad and toothy smile on his face before explaining that life was too short for him to worry too much about streaks of yolk.

That was quite the wrong reference to the duration of life bearing in mind that he was talking to a very recently widowed woman, particularly one who proceeded to burst into tears at the very reminder of mortality.

“I mean, I didn’t notice,” he stammered, and attempted to wipe it off with a grubby handkerchief.

And incidentally smearing what hadn’t already dried, making the whole mess worse.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, because he was: but not at her bereavement but rather at the state of his own shirt.

“Do you mind,” she wept, and started to close the door.

“The undertakers have consulted me,” he said, slipping his foot into the gap so that she couldn’t close it completely, “I was hoping you could tell me a little something about the deceased so that what I say in church is meaningful…”

“He was a b*****d,” she said.

That threw him. “You call him that, and he’s still on his way to wherever?” he asked, appalled.

“No. He really was. He never knew who his father was though he believed it was the window cleaner… it was nineteen hundredish and men did what they pleased back then, his poor mother…”

“Oh.” The Reverend Jonah Pyke was lost for words, an almost unique occasion for one who had been regularly convinced by his own mother that he had what she called the gift of the gab.

“He was a loving father,” wept Jane, the mention of a window cleaner reminding her that she no longer had her own windows cleaned because she’d been left destitute with barely enough loose change to pay for the funeral, and there were several obvious smears.

“I’m sure he was.” Pyke was on firmer more secure ground because weren’t most men who had fathered children sometimes and accurately described as loving?

Not that his own father had been anything of the sort. But then, he, too, had been a clergyman and with a huge inner awareness of the realities in life he had no reason to be loving. To him original sin needed to be dealt with, and he had a leather belt with which to attend to such a detail should his son show the least sign of evil. And that belt had a painful side to it which the young boy had been made aware of more than once.

But other fathers were surely loving?

“He smoked, and it was that as killed him…” wept Jane Simpson.

The Reverend Jonah Pyke was an occasional smoker himself in that he carried a packet of cigarettes with him when he was out and about and lit up when he was sure he wasn’t being seen.

“It can’t have been that,” he muttered.

“Oh but the doctor said it was.” Jane’s tears were being given emphasis by her conviction that doctors know everything, or if they don’t, what knowledge they’re short of doesn’t matter.

“The Lord has never condemned men for smoking,” assured the Reverend, “in fact, I believe the bishop is said to favour the odd cigar.”

“Then he’ll find out,” splattered Jane, “in good time,” she added in case he didn’t.

“Can we discuss the service?” asked Jonah, “is there a particular hymn your late husband loved?”

“Hymns? He had no truck with hymns,” replied Jane because she’d never discussed any such thing with George, and they hardly ever went to church.

“I’ll put Lead Kindly Light…” suggested the vicar, because he needed something to hang the forthcoming funeral on, and kindly lights leading the way seemed almost appropriate.

“That’s it,” wept Jane, “now if you don’t mind…”

“All right. I can see you need time for reflection,” he smiled.

She closed the door.

“What I couldn’t do to her,” something inside his head said, rather coarsely and most irreverently.

“What I’d let him do to me if he had a clean shirt,” thought Jane, who was still suffering the loneliness of bereavement and was aware how long it was since anyone had made love to her.

© Peter Rogerson 15.06.21

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Reviews

[Suzanne Sonderleigh]

Loved this story! Having working at an Episcopal church for thirteen years, I have first hand knowledge of the lives of priests. The banter between them keeps the story moving nicely. Definitely shows the priest is only human….just wrapped in clerical clothing. Will definitely watch for more of this story.

[Peter Rogerson]

Thanks for your comment. I try to infuse humanity into men who are often seen as one-dimensional and rather boring.