2. Two Lives

The storm turns into a bit of an odd family reunion...

STELLA‘S AUTUMN

2. Two Lives

“What are you doing with that collar doing its best to strangle you?” asked Stella, Trying to come to terms that the Percival she’d enjoyed back in the nineteen sixties might have actually become a clergyman in her long absence from his life.

He grinned at her. “I saw the light,” was all he said, and added “anyway, if it does strangle me my lord will save me.”

She nodded, more shocked than she thought she could ever be by learning that anyone who had touched her life at any time in the past, especially in the very personal way that he had, by doing anything outrageous like taking holy orders.

“We can only hope that you’re now celibate,” she murmured, “seeing as you’ve changed your costume.”

“What do you mean by now?” he asked with that old grin of his.

“Oh, you know, plans you had when you were still in short pants,” she said, smiling at the way his thought processes were twisting his mouth ever so slightly.

“Short pants? You never knew me back then when I was just a jud!” he protested, “we were at least legal!”

“Are you sure I didn’t lie about my age?” she teased.

“You wouldn’t have lied about anything, Stella,” he told her, rather soberly, “it was me who did the lying. There were you, sweet twenty one and I told you I was the same, only I wasn’t. I didn’t want people to accuse you of baby snatching, so I told you I was twenty one when I was only a slip of a lad of nineteen.”

“Ha,” she mumbled, “but all that’s too long ago to mean much any more. “

“I’ve not really done much you’d be interested in since then,” he told her, somewhat awkwardly. “I, er, I passed the appropriate exams and ended up as you see me now, and I’ve spent the best part of the last fifty years telling the faithful how to live their lives in preparation for the hereafter.”

“What about the football team of little boys you planned to be the proud father of? Remember? When you were turning all sloppy and telling me how much you really, really loved me … before you pulled up sticks and ran off to be educated while I worked behind the record counter in Woolworth's back when the place still existed?

He looked uncomfortable, then grinned again before nodding slowly. “I let you down,” he said soberly, “I can see that I did that. But I became enmeshed in something bigger than me and even bigger than the two of us. I began to see what was really important in life.”

“Like churches?” Her tone of voice had changed and he could tell that she was hurt at the very idea that he had not only gone away to University but, hard on the heels of that, had failed to get in contact with her once in what must have been half a century or more.

“God was important to me once I'd had my eyes opened,” he said slowly, “and yes, so is the church.”

“More important than human flesh and blood? More important than … love? Than me? Remember that last time we talked, made plans for the future, you were going to get a posh degree while I went out to work and saved as much as I could? Then, when your studies were over you went on and on about how we were going to go travelling together to see other countries and meet other people...” She discovered that old memories had succeeded in winding her up as they reminded her of two lives: the one they had planned together and the real one she had lived. She had a bombshell to drop before he went, too. But she'd bide her time. It would serve him right.

But all he could do was shake his head. “That planning was all idealism,” he said slowly, “the things we would want to do in an ideal world. But this life isn't ideal. My folks were killed in a car smash...”

She hadn't known that. Why not? But then, had he known how her father had coughed himself to death with each cigarette he smoked in the belief that, if his own personal theory had been right, the cigarette smoke would heal the tightness in his lungs? It was too late when medical science proclaimed that there were harmful effects from smoking tobacco. The damage had been done and he was dying. Then grief after his passing had destroyed her mother not long after, had taken her mind and then her soul and finally her flesh.

“I missed you so much, and when I plucked up the courage and called round I wondered why your front door was opened by strangers who thought I must be simple in the head when I asked if Percy was coming out to play? I was given short shrift by them and had to sort my mind out over a glass of Babycham in the pub down the road, you know, the one we used to go to before we did you know what together?”

“I do know what, and I regret every sinful second of it,” muttered Percival, the playful teasing expression leaving his face. I’m sorry I sinned against you, Stella, but I thought I loved you.”

“You told me that you did.”

“And I’ve come to put everything right,” he told her, looking down at his feet as if they might walk back over time and sort things out for him that way.

“At midnight, during a storm?” she asked, “and all these years later?”

“Will you let me just say, babe?”

“It’s still raining cats and dogs,” she pointed out

“I was wondering… what we might have been like if all our talk had turned into reality,” he muttered, no longer at all sure of himself, “I mean, if we’d had that football team we joked about? Where would God have been then? You were never, what should I say? You know…”

“A believer?”

“I hope you don’t mind me saying it, but yes, I saw you as an atheist.”

She was about to confirm his suspicions about the intensity of her religious devotion when the door down stairs rattled like it always did when it was opened.

“Ah,” grinned Stella, “this might be a turn up for the books!”

“Mum!” called a voice, familiar to her but unknown by him, “what have I warned you about leaving the door on the latch?”

“Ah, Peter,” she said with a huge smile, “you’ll like Peter, Percival. Yes you will! Wait and see!

“I’d better…” began the vicar.

“Not at all” Then she faced the door ad raised her voice I’m up in my bedroom with a man, Peter! Would you like to say hello?”

There was the sound of feet on the staircase and a man in his fifties pushed the door open and almost pushed into Percival as he entered the bedroom.

“Really, mother!” he exclaimed, half laughing, “isn’t it about time you left your love life behind?”

“Come on in, Peter! I know it’s a bit belated, but how about you saying a warm hello to your father?”

© Peter Rogerson 22.06.23

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