Electric Acorn 13 : Fiction : Pat Jourdan

Electric Acorn 13 : Short Stories:

Pat Jourdan

Sunday Afternoon

Bryn led the way into the church. He was tired of chat and wanted a diversion. "St Alban the Martyr, Dalwood," would provide it. The young couple lingered in the graveyard. They preferred to hunt out interesting names on the gravestones with their children. It was amazing, after all, that the church was open, but they probably had an arrangement with the pub-owners, plus all the windows on The Green faced onto the pathway. Unless someone came on foot and stuffed any silver or gold plate under their jumper, their car and its registration would be noticed. Nonetheless, it was still strange to find a country church unlocked ; Tess knew that the Rev Alston always locked up scrupulously after each service, as often all three lumps of church keys hung up on the rack in his hall at home.

Bryn and Derek started a discussion on the building. It was a humble enough place, compared with the interior walls of any suburban house - rough surface, peeling whitewash here and there. but the eye did not stay down at earth level for long, being drawn up by the scattered blaze of the stained glass window.

"It's as if those colours only existed in the middle ages," said Bryn, humbled for an instant.

"Yes," said Derek, "I know there's a vogue for nineteenth century glass again, but the colour's just not there. That red looks as though it could only be got from raw blood poured into the glass. Almost livid."

Liz stood with them, looking round. "It's those funny black lines that get me. They seem to come in such arbitrary places, yet they work perfectly."

"Just like kids' paintings at playschool," chipped in Tess.

"Always perfect each time. Innocent eyes, I suppose." She looked up at the East Window, circa 1480. "Their eyes weren't fouled up with newsprint, telly, films and videos and so on. They just looked out at the world and put bits of it into their work."

At the back of the church were various framed notices giving some of the history - how the great East Window had been removed in Cromwell's time and hidden in the attics of Dalwood Hall. Given by Sir Henry Marling in 1480, hidden in the disorders of the mid-seventeenth century, and then restored. How outrageous. Hiding an entire window. In an age without telephones or helicopters, the village getting the news; the moonlit night, the horses and carts, the clattering removal, the trusty estate servants sworn to secrecy. The soldiers arriving at the already-desecrated church, sparrows flying merrily up the nave. The exaggerated dumbness of the villagers, the effusive decoying of the Lord and Lady. Or perhaps the lord and
lady gone to London, to establish a "front", leaving a mother-in-law to swear I know nothing, nothing. An empty grin. The soldiers hacking a bit at the altar- screen on their way out, pinching the candlesticks, prising off the tabernacle doors to get at the chalice.

Tess went to the baptism font. A notice caught her eye. Report of the parish 1648. No drunkards are in this parish, no man or woman is without work. There are no bastards here, nor unmarried woman with-child. There are no recusants in this parish, nor any profaners or blasphemers.

For an instant she no longer felt safe. Frightened, as if the others would turn on her. They were still looking at the painted rood-screen; through the open door there was a view of the luscious green graveyard, with Robin and Jenny and their children clambering around. From the pub on the village green came the sound of laughter and clinking glasses. A car started up, someone going home early.

The parish would be getting rid of her - unmarried with children, and a recusant, too. And unemployed. And even now there was only the ring of fields for miles around. Where would they go and what would they do, with the rules of the next parish being the same? The wind, the rain, winter approaching - luck and getting by were luxury concepts. Only to hope for a pocket of land, a hamlet that lay on the forgotten borders of two lax parishes. There would be no Catholic church, no weekly money; no man would have anything to do with her.

She would have to recant, probably at this very christening stone, and keep the old recusant thoughts to herself, talking to herself along the hedgerows of the village. Or perhaps they murdered people; how else could any village boast of such a record population?

Unless - and here humanity came back, like a bouncing brass band - it was all lies, done for the commissioners, and the whole place was full of buffoons, drunkards and destitute women, all hiding in sheds and outhouses during the day's inspection.

Yes, that would be it. Tess turned back to the others, changed as if she had cut her hand on a razor that they had not seen, like the time when Mark had cut his thumb on a Stanley knife and the sink was full of blood, rose patterned.

Biography

Pat Jourdan trained as an artist at Liverpool College of Art. Her writing has been included in Poetry Ireland Review, The Shop, Orbis, and California Quarterly etc. Reviews for online NHI and is editor of The Lantern Review. Winner of the Molly Keane Award and the Cootehill Poetry Award.