Category Archives: Astray

Funeral today for Marion, a regular at the Boar’s Head. People had to stand at the back of the church. She’d been known by half the city, it seemed. Her office colleagues and neighbours in formalwear, a couple of rough sleepers, women from the charity shop, teens from a youth group. The relatives did their best not to break down during their eulogies. She lived a better life than most of us, said the priest. Even towards the end, he said, she was more worried about the woman in the next bed than herself.

At the wake in the pub there were sandwiches, crisps, sausage rolls, small cakes, jugs of orange juice. Everyone had a story about her giving something away: money, plants, food, knitwear: she used to sit and knit in the pub. She made rounds to the homeless when she could still walk. She knew who’d disappeared, who’d got housing, who’d died.

I approached Henry, a young low-church priest who insists on being called by his first name. He was drinking Guinness. He was with Tim, an elderly Congregationalist who lives in the countryside. A retired farmer I think. We were joined by Stewart, with whom I sometimes go on country walks. He’s taking the initiation course at the Catholic Cathedral while also going to the little Orthodox church on Oak Street. He’s unsure where he belongs.

Brave thing to say in a sermon, said Tim over the noise.

What was? said Henry.

That she lived better than most of us.

It’s true, said Henry.

Oh yeah, Tim said. But true in what sense?

Stewart smiled at that, not kindly or unkindly. He has a way of listening as if he’s trying to catch some accent.

In the sense that she loved people, said Henry. Fed them, noticed them, stayed with them. I’m sure God is as interested in that as we are.

Sure, said Tim. But God isn’t just a word for being kind.

Henry said nothing for a moment. Someone near the bar laughed too loudly. A woman in black was crying into a napkin while another woman rubbed her back.

I was tempted to ask where they thought she was now. She’d put us to shame, but hadn’t believed or taken the sacraments, as far as anyone knew. I kept quiet of course; it was an indecent thought.

Stewart said that in the Orthodox church they pray for the dead because love doesn’t stop at death and only God knows the state of a soul. They don’t declare, he said, they pray.

We pray for the dead too, said Henry.

Tim took a sip of juice. The trouble is, everyone wants mercy without judgement.

I thought of the bank app, the man outside the cashpoint, the money sitting there with its quiet power. I thought of Marion making her rounds on a crutch.

Henry said, a bit sharply, I’m not in the business of measuring grace at a funeral.

No, said Tim. Nor am I.

When the glasses had multiplied and the room grew warmer, Stewart talked about the Orthodox liturgy, how at home in mystery they seemed to be, whereas we’re always irritably reaching after problems and ways of working them out. Tim said churches lost their way when they started dressing up the Gospel with all kinds of nonsense. Like what? said Henry. All of it, said Tim. Incense, fancy robes, gold cups. Cathedrals. Popes and bishops. Rock bands in churches. Instead of preaching Christ crucified. Well, I’m with you on Christ crucified, said Henry. I’d keep the incense.

I listened and drank and exchanged a few words with people I knew who passed by. I watched the mourners carrying paper plates and swapping stories about her.

On the way home the question returned. Where was she now? It seemed both childish and terribly serious. It stayed with me for a couple of days until I started to forget about it.

When I walked through town to Sunday service there was an ugly feeling I couldn’t place. I couldn’t tell whether it was in me or outside. It was windy, leaves and wrappers skittered about; it was if the city itself was askew, or as if unresolved fights from Saturday night were lingering. A passing man said to his friend, If I hadn’t let them do all that, I wouldn’t be so fucked now. A woman yanked her crying child into a pram. In church a humming child kept kicking the back of my chair. Someone came in smelling of urine and queued up for the Eucharist. As I was leaving, a drunk kicked over the Church is Open sign; as I looked back I saw the church warden come out, and hoped he didn’t think it was me. I was confused the whole day.

I sometimes feel for the priests, especially in Lent. They must have to fake it from time to time like we do; their minds must stray like ours. I wonder if the mood comes over them too. I never know whether other people feel it. But the masses are beautiful and true whatever our moods.

*

I spoke to Giuliano after Friday mass in Julian’s cell. He said he was behind on the rent. I took some cash out of my pocket but he held up his hand, almost annoyed. Maybe he wanted to spare me the self-satisfaction of helping him. Or maybe he was annoyed with himself for his weakness in telling me.

Ash Wednesday. Noon service with the imposition of ashes. ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ Mingling of dark and light in the old words and the winter light through the windows. Have mercy on us. Make haste to help us. We’re so entangled in sin we can barely think straight.

Some of us gave token money to the homeless man who shrewdly comes and sits outside the church with his dog before mass. I spoke to him. He told me sharper things than some of the folk in church.

I’m calmer these days, happier. The background static of money worry has quieted. That’s a new feeling. But there’s something money can’t fill. Evensong fills it, bar billiards and banter fills it, but the mood still waits for me in my room at night.

Today, when I went to the bank, I was treated differently, ushered into an adviser’s cubicle. I shuffled the money between new accounts on their app while we talked. It almost felt like a game. He ordered a new card for me. Don’t wave it around, he said.

When I came out, a man was sitting on a sleeping bag by the cashpoint holding a cardboard sign. I went to evensong, and as I stood and crossed myself, part of me thought about how much to invest in shares. If I were a good Christian, I thought on the way from the Cathedral to the Boar’s Head, I’d give this poison away at once.

In the pub I meet friends I know are struggling: carers on shit wages, people on disability benefits, divorced men. Let me get this one, I say, but they refuse. Sometimes people with money come in; we can tell. They look around with an easy air, like the people I grew up with. Will I get that easy air?

I’ll keep it to myself for now until I can figure out what it means. But am I not secretly making up my mind? Doesn’t part of me already relish this new hoard?

Realistically, it’s not that much, serious people might say. You have no assets, no career to speak of now, no pension. You’re still renting and your income is approaching nil. You might live thirty more years. What happens when you get old? Care homes are a grand a month. Get some compound interest and live your life.

*

In religious life, you become more of a hypocrite, not less. You become aware you’re play-acting before powers you don’t understand – that you’re in the lowlands of religion. Safer to stay in the middle ground with one foot in this world. I’m chastened again by the Lord’s sayings: ‘Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.’

I feel the need to talk to Giuliano, a priest, someone wise. But I’m not sure I want wise counsel just yet.

Roy at the Boar gave me shifts behind the bar. I sent applications and picked up the odd translation and editing job. The rest of the time went on walks in the countryside, church and worrying about money.

One day my sister rang from Copenhagen to say our mother had had a massive stroke and was in hospital. She can’t speak, she said. After we rang off I booked a flight. When I landed the next evening I took a cab from the airport to the hospital.

It smelled of disinfectant and cooking from the kitchen. Signs pointed the way to the neurology and stroke units. A grey-faced man in a dressing gown shuffled down the corridor pushing an IV pole. My mother was in a two-bed room. One of her eyes was half open, the other shut. Her mouth hung slack and her legs were swollen under the sheet. A nurse was checking the drip and the monitor. The TV on the wall was playing a quiz show on mute. My sister looked up at me from a chair with an expression I’d never seen before.

A gaunt month followed. We got to know the nurses’ shifts. From time to time my mother’s eyes cleared, she smiled, and we made out a few words. The doctors spoke about rehabilitation, the nurses made positive noises. My sister didn’t believe them. She’s not coming back, she said, I know her. I spoke to the hospital chaplain and tried to pray, but the words went thin in the clinical air, as if they belonged back among stone and stained glass, not by this bed. If they couldn’t live here, I thought, what were they for?

I took the bus to the hospital in the mornings and let myself into my mother’s flat in the afternoons. I slept on the sofa bed at night. It was strange to be there alone. The cupboards were full of things that should have been thrown out years ago: a dozen plant pots, bills and letters dating back to the nineties, a jar of buttons she’d had since we were children, keys without locks. I went up to the loft, which was full of furniture and knickknacks from their years abroad. I spoke to the neighbours, called the utility companies, kept her friends updated.

Towards the end the consultant asked us into a little relatives’ room off the ward. He said there was nothing more they could do except give her morphine. They moved her to palliative care in a separate wing. The drip was removed. The room was quieter there. Just the bed, our chairs and her groans carrying down the corridor. We’d never seen pain like it. My sister was with her when she died, in the middle of the night. In the morning there was just the bed and the chairs.

*

We arranged the funeral, spoke to the family lawyer and auctioneers, contacted estate agents and started clearing the flat. When I’d done what I could, I went back to Norwich, where my plants had died and more admin was waiting for me.

The flat sold quickly. After thirty years of rocketing Copenhagen prices it fetched five times what my parents had paid. It took the lawyer several months to sort out the estate. By Christmas, which I spent at my sister’s, it was done.

I was free – in one sense at least.

The last of my steady freelance work fell through on a Tuesday. A short email: changes in the industry, thanks for everything, maybe in future. There wasn’t much to fall through, but the floor still gave way. I got jumpy and filled in an online form for benefits. A week later an appointment letter arrived, summoning me to a back-to-work session at a business hotel near the airport.

A lobby with a scent of air freshener and a coffee machine. Low armchairs, framed pictures of cities at night. I told the receptionist what I was there for. She pointed me to the conference suite.

In the room there were rows of chairs facing a flipchart and a projector screen. A table with jugs of water, cups, plates of biscuits still wrapped in plastic. We sat scattered across the rows. A woman at the front fiddled with the laptop. She wore a lanyard and a card that said Facilitator under her name.

Welcome, she said, when the projector finally worked. Thank you all for coming. Today is about taking ownership of your future. She clicked. A slide appeared: a stock photo of someone in a field, arms spread wide. Underneath: Reframing Redundancy as Opportunity.

We went round and introduced ourselves with our backgrounds. She wrote words on the flipchart. Communications, education, retail, hospitality, care. Then she drew a circle and wrote in the middle: Transferable skills.

Think in terms of your skill set, she said, not job titles. You’re not just a teacher or a carer. You’re adaptable, solution-focused. You have a personal brand.

A wiry man in my row leaned back restlessly in his chair, let out a noise and muttered something. I felt a tug to join in, roll my eyes, but the last thing I wanted was to sneer. I’ve done enough of that for one lifetime.

We were given handouts with boxes to fill in. My key strengths. My unique selling point. My three-month goals. The facilitator walked up and down the rows, bending to look at our papers, nodding. Great, she said. That’s really strong. You’re an asset. The jugs of water sweated on the table. The projector hummed. I watched my hand write phrases from the business texts I’d spent years translating and writing.

At the end she thanked us again and told us to stay positive. This is a journey, she said. You’re here because you have potential. We filtered out into the car park without speaking. Lorries rolled past on the ring road. The Holiday Inn behind us might have been anywhere on earth.

*

I cycled to evensong at the Cathedral, taking my time. A few tourists walked around taking pictures. The priests and choir came in. We stood as they filed into their stalls.

O Lord, open thou our lips.

And our mouth shall show forth thy praise.

The words were as familiar as the hotel slogans, but they did something else. They told me I was dust. The choir sang the psalm. The days of man are but as grass. The lines sat heavy and right in the air.

We knelt for the prayers. They asked mercy for war-torn peoples, for those who labour, for the lonely, the unemployed.

After the grace we went out separately into the cool dusk. The city was the same: crisp packets and cans on the street, migrant Deliveroo drivers on modified bikes. In the bookies’ window a screen rolled through odds for the weekend matches. Two economies, I thought: this one and that slower, stranger one, where even days like this are said to be taken up and worked on in a higher order, out of sight. I felt a draught of joy on the way home.

I saw the Italian man again in Julian’s church the other day. His beard had gone grey. I approached him after mass. He didn’t remember me from when he was in his bliss. Giuliano was his name. I know, he said, that’s why she called me. We went for tea in a café round the corner. He was timid now, worn. He told me he’d gone back to Italy after that first visit, but still felt drawn to Norwich, and had moved over to work as a carer. He talked about his shifts, the elderly people on his ward, the broken boiler in the flat he was renting. The first time I come here I stay all the day in the cell, he said. Now is different. Now I work. I have people to wash, to dress. Old people. I am tired. I still go to the church but now I don’t have so much time. I pray when I work. For me is difficult. He took a folded service sheet from his pocket, smoothed it on the table and put his finger under a baptism notice. On Sunday I am godfather in the Cathedral for my friend, he said. You can come.

I did. We met by the west door and went in together. We sat near the aisle. After the sermon the verger led the parents, godfather and priest down to the font. Giuliano walked with them, solemn, and the congregation turned to watch. The baby in a white frilly dress stared up at the high ceiling. She made a small noise. The mother adjusted her bonnet. The priest spoke and asked questions of the parents and godfather, who answered for her. We all wander far from God and lose our way. Do you turn away from sin? I do. Do you reject evil? I do. Water was poured over the little one’s head, the sign of the cross traced on her forehead in oil – on a face that couldn’t focus. She was being drawn into a story she knew nothing about.

We took Communion, then gathered outside. The family invited me to their house, but I declined and walked to the Boar’s Head. It was almost empty. I took a stool at the bar and ordered a pint. I got that uneasy Sunday afternoon feeling: I should be doing something productive, like sending job applications. The service sheet was still in my pocket. I put it on the bar and set my glass on it without thinking. I worried about the child, who now too was signed up to promises none of us could keep.

A couple of the regulars came in. One had just got divorced. I commiserated and bought him a drink. We bought each other drinks. Others turned up. We all drank, turned on our stools, laughed, went outside to smoke, came back. The chat turned silly. I had a squabble with an atheist who spotted the service sheet. I made one of those sudden half-cut decisions, went home, ate and slept. When I woke up it was dark and my head was woolly. The day had started out so beautifully, in good faith.

*

The next morning, with no work, I went to Communion at Julian’s. There were four other regulars. Let us confess our sins in penitence and faith… I haven’t turned away from sin, I thought, I turn to it, the Enemy whispers in my ear every day. Forgive us all that is past and grant that we may serve you in newness of life… We gave each other the peace, took the Eucharist and went our ways. On the walk home the empty mood came over me again, the one in which nothing seems to matter and you might as well do what you want. The cars, shops and people were distant, as if behind glass. I looked into the Boar’s Head, but it was closed, thankfully. I paused, sat on an empty beer keg and rolled a cigarette. This mood, I thought, this void, is also a space something else might pass through.

*

Ah, then let me talk to you for a while, Lord. Mend the years of damage I’ve done to the parts of me that can still hear you. Clean the soul I make daily efforts to soil. I ask this while most of me resists it. Left to myself I lead myself astray.

*

The words we repeat in your places are very old. We try to make them new by saying them again. But I can’t sit and wait for as long as it takes. The mood comes and I escape from you, back to the streets, the pub. Hidden God, who knows me better than I know myself, help me get under the surface to where you live. Let me start over.

At Felkirk there was a visitor who riled me. He talked during the silent meals. The Brothers reminded him to keep silence. He made a show of saying sorry but forgot the next minute and continued to whisper about his hometown’s local politics, the food, anything. It was as if the silence was intolerable to him. The services seemed easier for him to bear, since there were readings and visitors can join in with the hymns and antiphons. I listened to him and felt irritation rising – then got a hint of how the Brothers checked themselves. One of them glanced at him, then away, his face settling back into neutrality. I imagined it was a minor inconvenience to them compared to whatever else they had to endure in that place, some of them for decades. Daily denials within the same walls: the same faces, the same routines grinding away at their self-image. The communal life seemed shaped to prevent anyone marking themselves out from others. The cassocks, the rows at table, the patterns of standing and sitting together during the offices: all designed to help them cast off their social costumes, speak to God in their true voices and welcome each guest as an equal, whether a local, an asylum seeker or a posh priest from Oxford.

I remembered something I’d read about the command to love your neighbour – not certain types of people or those you happen to like, but whoever happens to be there. Each person bears a hidden maker’s mark, like sheets of paper with different words on them but all carrying the same faint watermark you only see when you hold them up to the light. The chatty visitor, the Brothers, me – beneath our various performances, the same mark.