for the war, he had been made to lie down mainly in green parishes, encountering the curate’s devil mostly in his well-dressed and relatively urbane forms, cushioned by adequate Easter offerings and the possession of a large Victorian vicarage. He saw the world as basically a good place where the Church of England could indeed be defined as the Conservative Party at prayer and where things were to be made better and better by keeping them just the way they were. The face of evil was to be seen most clearly in any form of change. Every year when he was on retreat in a house run by nuns in Weymouth, the curate would run riot about the church, putting up large, hand-painted signs of evangelical tenor, lettered in orange. ‘Jesus - the rock that does not roll’ or ‘Despite inflation, the wages of sin is still death’ or ‘Jesus - not just a Christmas presence’ or ‘Noah's company stayed afloat when the whole world went into liquidation.’ As soon as the Rev. Maclehose returned they were plucked down again and obliterated. It was as much the vulgar, bright colours as the message that troubled him.
It was his unrecognised misfortune to have two Scottie dogs, one black, one white, just like in the Dewar's whisky advertisements. He called them Whisky and Soda and thought himself waggish. Soda was the white one of course. The alternative had been to call them Warp and Woof. They were joyful, frisky dogs and ranged at will over the vicarage garden, rooting and fetching sticks in the shrubberies and bamboo thickets. At night, he would call them in and, after supper, it was like the warmth of old port to him to see them as they lay chubby and wet-jowled, snoring by his fireside. He thumbed his pipe with Three Nuns tobacco and rejoiced in the benison of nature's foison. The word 'dog' he noted, occurred eighteen times in the Bible, the word 'cat' not at all.
‘He drinks,’ said the parishioners. ‘He's a bugger for his scotch. You can hear him every night shouting for it, regular as clockwork. '”Whisky! Soda!” over and over again.’
Many of the parishioners also drank. But Jack realised that vicars were somehow not real people, more costumed bit-players, and it was the recognised role of religious specialists to act out ‘Austere Virtuous Life’ on behalf of the secular laity, just as the Royal Family were expected to mime a model of ‘Domestic Bliss’ that their subjects no longer practised themselves. Yet tippling was acknowledged as a kiss-my-ring Catholic pursuit, the whisky priest a character who had wandered in from another play, so that here it bore overtones of popery and was therefore unacceptable.
‘It ought not to be allowed,’ Mum tutted, only half aware she was impersonating Mr. Growser from the wireless. ‘I don't know how his housekeeper puts up with it. Of course, he's very sly. You never catch him having a nip. I wonder what he does with the empties.’
Purchases of spirits, except at Christmas, were always carefully monitored in the village shop. There was no anonymous supermarket where they could be made. So the Reverend must be deliberately channelling his trade outside to the detriment of the local economy. Now that showed a downright lack of fellow feeling. In Weylands, thrift often lay behind the condemnation of vice so that wives disapproved of husbands' adultery largely on the grounds of 'wasting money.'
In his innocence, the Rev. Maclehose was unaware of these doubts of his flock, indeed, he even seemed to sense a quickening of their miraculous faith in the close attention they all paid nowadays as he sipped the communion wine as if expecting a bolt of divine lightning. Every week, he swung himself up into the Sunday lectern with a stiffness that suggested less old age than the conscious burden of his own authority and the weight of their sin and sometimes stumbled on the worn top step which led some of the congregation to smirk at inner knowledge. Occasionally, he cursed passionately under his breath, ‘Oh bread and butter!’ or on a bad day, ‘Oh, armholes!’ and fixed them with an acid stare and let it roll slowly, corroding their smirks, over them, as if looking for a known suspect who might be able to assist him with his enquiries. It was a bit of business that never failed. Guilt was the fuel that primed the pump of Weylands people. Today, his eye rested on Jack, sitting in the choirstalls, surpliced and beruffed, a vision of innocence. Jack blushed. Religion was still mainly a social act in Weylands and it was no impediment to choristry that he had never been baptised. Mum and Dad, had omitted it not as a defiant statement of their agnosticism but more because baptism was seen as some fine-tuning of the ritual apparatus, a technicality that had yet to be mastered outside the middle class or a poetic elaboration that went beyond the dingy, utilitarian symbolism of the state and was therefore just showing off. In the army, on church parade, the men were ordered to sort themselves into ‘Normal C of E, Catholics and Fancy Buggers.’ People who held christenings, with silver spoons, cakes and embroidered smocks, were Very Fancy Buggers.
‘According to the ten commandments,’ roared the vicar, stoking up their fires of guilt, ‘you're all damned! Listen to the list of your sins.’ He breathed in, suggesting the length of the list that now had to be read. ‘Heathendom, idolatry, swearing, scorning the Sabbath, contempt for parents, killing, adultery...’
He looked up and glared. Someone was creeping from the church, face averted - Dick Moore.
‘Just remembered where he left his bike,’ came a stage whisper, followed by titters.
’..stealing, bearing false witness...’
There came a rhythmic squeak. He looked up again in outrage. Now, someone fat was creeping out after him in creaking shoes. With the sun shining in his eyes, he could not quite see who it was.
***
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