Sunday at the Cross Bones. John Walsh

eye, and headed home as if I had been trying to enlist them in some branch of the armed forces. The majority, Lord be thanked, crowded round me to ask how they might begin this wondrous, emulatory adventure. ‘I have seldom felt more inspired, Rector,’ said Mrs Russ, ‘and I want to start right away. But apart from cooking lunch for Mr Russ and his sister, my day holds little prospect of moral drama. So how exactly …?’

      ‘My dear Margaret.’ I smiled at her willingness to enter the fray of the Church Militant while roasting parsnips. ‘I do not mean you must seek out occasions of Christlike activity while performing everyday chores. It is only in time that you will discover the moral crossroads which will make demands on your conscience. And only in your own conscience that you will find the answer to the question I have adumbrated today.’

      ‘But what kind of thing will it be, Rector?’ she asked. ‘I mean, where will the question … turn up?’

      Sometimes I feel a Sunday-school teacher in the local mixed-infants class would be of more use than I, when dealing with Mrs Russ.

      ‘Well – imagine a starving beggar came to your front door, looking for, say, cold cuts of meat, or a drink of buttermilk, or a bed for the night. Will you turn him away, or will you say, “Enter, poor misfortunate traveller, and eat with me, and drink with me, and sleep with me, if that is what your wretched condition requires …”?’

      Mrs Russ pursed her mouth into an unbecoming moue.

      ‘… Or if a young woman, recently abandoned by her family, should meet you in the street and say, “I’m cold and lonely and pregnant, and need to be taken in and found a doctor,” will you ask yourself –’

      But Mrs Russ’s look of benign imbecility had changed to one of outrage.

      ‘Indeed. Good day to you, Rector.’

      Fortunately, my other parishioners were more relaxed about applying my radical tenet to their lives. I spent a happy forty-five minutes discussing the practical applications of my plan. I asked them to give me, in a week’s time, tales of how they put into practice what I preached.

      The only fly in the ointment, so to speak, was the major. He has sat and brooded in the front pew, these last few weeks, like a wounded old soldier – which of course is what he is, having served his country in the Boer War. He bears the legacy of that elderly conflict in the extraordinary succession of physical jerks and twitches he displays, both at rest on the wooden seat (he rarely kneels to pray) and before the altar. I have allowed him, for a whole year now, the luxury of reading the lesson, in his sonorous militiaman tones. But there is, I fear, evidence these last weeks that he is in the grip of some mental convulsion. Not just in the bizarre spasms of arms and elbows with which he punctuates his readings, but in his odd vocal technique.

      In today’s lesson, for example, a beautiful passage from the Book of Proverbs, the major swayed before the lectern like a rating before a force-niner, and intoned the words: ‘There be three things which are too wonderful to me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.’

      A simple enough text, yet the major, a man lately too preoccupied with his local ambitions, and too enthralled by the lure of his wine cellar, delivered these lines in a roaring theatrical style. To evoke the eagle, his voice rose to a high falsetto, swooping down to the serpent in a low, basso profundity; then the ship – he drew himself up to a high Admiralty bellow, as if he had spent years of barnacled hardship before the mast, rather than bullying his men out of their trenches and into the firing line; before finally mangling the climactic revelation of ‘the way of a man with a maid’ (what a charming wistfulness lies in that circumlocutory ‘the way of …#x2019;) in a disgusted mutter, completely spoiling the beauty of the image. I love that passage – in which the thought of making love to a woman is ‘too wonderful’ to be borne, like the prospect of flying. Such an eloquent rapture from the beating heart of the celibate! And the words were thrown away by a broken-veined, harrumphing, venal boor of a military charlatan. I stood watching him read, and my heart darkened. I felt a wave of anger. I could have struck him!

      Forgive me, Jesus, for what I have said. I have given way to thoughts of violence on thy Sabbath. But he infuriates me so. I shall not allow him to desecrate future services in St John’s. I shall confront the major, no matter what the cost.

       CHAPTER 3

      Letter from Miss Joan Tewkesbury, Proprietor, Lyons Corner House, The Strand, to Mrs Elvira Samuel, Head of Personnel, Lyons Ltd

      30 July 1930

      Dear Mrs Samuel,

      I have had ocasion to write to you before on the matter of the underseribales who to offen frekwent the premisses of our Corner Houses. You have always been kind enoght to advise me as to the correck proceedor and I want your help regarding one spechial case.

      He is not your ushal rodwy. He is not a drunk nor a tramp, in fact he come on like a perfeck gent, he does not try and nick anything, he is not one to start a sing song in his cupps, fact is he dont drink annything but tea, he is not one of the yellers or screemers after the pubs shut. And that is the truble. Nothing he dose is ever bad enoufh to mean we got to call the constabbulary. But I feer he is a bad influence on the young wimmin we employ.

      He comes by every other night, 9pm reglar as clockwork, he comes sidling in wearing the same gastly long coat, he orders tea and a bun. He sits in the same place, table 5, hes always there fiddling in his pokets and scriblign things down in his horible purpel writing, looking arond him, talkign to peeple on the tables rite and left, chat chat, natter natter, how are you wot splendid wether were having, like evryones his pal. And then it happens. A yong Nippy – take Sandra, only come on the staff last month he clocks she’s a new girl and calls her over. As you knoe, we try and teach new girls, be frendly to the customers, you taut me that yourself when I started Mrs Samuel, but inside five seckons, he starts on em. ‘O hello, my, youre beoutiful, my word youre the dead spit of Binnie Hale, she’s lovely like you, you should be on stage sumwhere. What lovly hair etcetera. Do you like Noel Coward, O shurely youve seen his work, a classy girl like you. Ive met him menny times, only the other nigth I was out with him and CB Cockrain, surely you must know the great impressario. You must be a singer, far too good to be working in a clapped out teashop like this, the bloody nerve of it, clapped out indeed, anyway he says, would you care to ackompany me to a play in the West End on Teusday, it will be my pleshure.

      I tell the Nippiess, first rule of waitressing, be friendly but dont get involved with male customers. Theyre lonly men, or they wodnt be in here at 9 o clock of a Saturday night loking for sympathy. If they was respectable, theyd be at home with there wives and sproggs. But some of these girls, they gets taken in so cruel like they think, O blimey, a real show, the Qwality go and see them, maybe if I go then I’ll be qwality too, poor delooded saps. And next thing you know, theyve had the big nigth out and theyre all diffrent in the morning, tired and droopy and wistful, you cant make them do any washing up for starters and theyre offhand with the customers, they drop plates and canot reckoin bills and go off for a weep in the Toilets. Then the bliter comes in two days later and treets them like old mates, hell stand with an arm round em, talking and talking and skweezing their waste, need, need like its a wodge of doe, and theyre eyes ull shine all angelic like they seen a vishion but before you know it theyll be in the Ladies agen having another big weepin seshon. I know that within a week theyll be gone and I dont know where but it aint to anywhere thats good for them.

      Ive said to him, now look here, Ive lost six or seven good girls, nice girls who was happy at there work before you started in on them, so Id be obliged if you take your custom elsewhere. Well thats no good because he just starts puffin on his big old cigar and qwoting the Bibel at me and giving out about the fall of man and such like until Im reddy to screem and brane him with a spatuler.

      So what am I to do Mrs Samuel? I cant call in the law becoss he aint done nothing wrong. Can I tell him to buger off and bar him like