Would that it were so

"It is more remarkable for the quality of its doubt than of its faith" (T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood, writing on Tennyson's poem 'In Memoriam')


Oh dear, oh dear. This was not going to be an easy road.Maybe it just wasn't for some. 

Mother was an atheist, father was an ardent member of the Church of England with designs, in retirement, of being a non stipendiary minister. An interesting dichotomy at home, then.

"Because your mother is a good person, she will surely go to Heaven", he said to the concerned young teenager, his daughter. She, however, couldn't find any scriptural authority for this one, although she did think that she might have got it wrong somehow. Typical.

When daddy was dying, he took communion at home; her mother encouraged it, but could not bear to be in the room. Instead, she sat in the sun room sipping a sherry. Rose couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry, so just sat still and mute.

There were memories of a darkened church at Christmas; thoughts of something moving that was good and Holy and which loved her and wanted her for its own. But the feeling faded as the lights went on. Later, experiments with a Fellowship group so that, as a young teenager, she was encouraged to stand alone and be baptised. Consternation again, though. It seemed that everyone in the cavernous room had the gifts of prophecy or of tongues. Occasionally, one would fall on the floor in rapture. Here we go again, was her only thought - although that was not what she said out loud. Desperate to feel what they felt, she let the pastor take her head in his hands. 

"The Holy Spirit is with you. Can you feel it?"

"Yes" she said, almost convinced by the fervent believer, but afterwards realising that it was a relief to leave. Again, not something to be said aloud.

Ah but back to the organised church some time later. All went well for a while. Baptisms of the babies, good wishes - but no. After a while, doubt prevailed. This time, though, it seemed to be more those around her who did not, in some ways, approve of Rose; what seemed to be a move in the right direction -of acceptance and being held within the body of a church-- began to fail. So sad. Was she too radical? Did she appear too full of nervous energy? Someone wanting to make changes and my goodness the children did not always know to be silent during communion? No harm meant, only concern for the future of the single church. The net effect, as before: no spiritual home other than a poetry book. 

And that is where we leave Rose. Hand off the plough; hoping, in her childish way, for an epiphany. And in this, I know she is not alone.

At the Shalimar Gardens

At the Shalimar gardens, the sun blazed down and her parents glowered at each other. She was familiar with these unkind silences; above all, her mother's eyes looking with resentment at her father. A look that says that "Though I am here, in this fine garden of cool white marble and lush vegetation, my adventure is tarnished because I chose you". 

Maya wondered, yet again, why her mother could not appreciate the man: hard working, diligent and loving. As a teenager, she could surely sense that her mother was altogether sharper than her father.In many ways, he could not keep up his wife's drive and intelligence. What could Maya do but observe and try and provide some solace for him as he laboured away.

This time, though, she saw her father's gaze drift. She followed it and it took her to a willowy lady, in a simple blue sari, who seemed to be charged with some repairs to the red and green floral designs on some of the little doorways on the garden's periphery. Maya felt, with a peculiar shiver, that the lady was truly lovely. That there was something lithe and at ease in the body and in the limpid dark eyes that turned to meet hers with a smile. May could not help but make the comparison with the stiffness of her mother - so beautiful, herself, but so affected by minor slights and what she saw as the disappointments of life.

There was joy in the brushstroke and in the movement of wrist and hand; in the way that the girl was absorbed in the task - and in the way she adjusted her sari to allow better movement when she needed to reach up. Maya knew that her father saw all this, too.

Well, her father was a man of principle. With reponsibilities and family, he would not leave for a girl with kind eyes who thought him charming. Instead, he might be ground down a little further by the woman he married and so, just now,  Maya was glad that her father's mind could drift, while he watched a girl with coltish limbs and deft fingers and as he saw her disappear behind the fretwork at the Shalimar gardens as she made her way home.

The Shalimar Gardens are in Lahore, Pakistan. They are ornate formal gardens, built by Jehangir, Mughal successor to Shah Jehan, who built the Taj Mahal.

Walton West

Back from a trip. Hiatus in stories. Here you are.  Just something simple and personal.

Walton West church is hidden away down a tiny lane on the Pembrokeshire coast; one field across is its churchyard, a broad sweep of sea beyond it and gnarled crab apples trees shaped by the sea wind. 

Here: Laura Margaret Llewellyn- my great grandmother- and her daughter, Florence Beckett, my grandmother. She was born in a house just by the beach you see here. But beyond in the churchyard, my best beloved John Llewellin Beckett, uncle, adopter of his own middle name (I don't know if his mother ever gave him one), but with the spelling he preferred. There are Llewellyns thick and fast in this place. And if you come here with the indomitable auntie Betty, she can take you round to graves old and new -- even explain the use of an epitaph or tell you a potted life story. That's if she has time. She does not care, she will say, to be morbid.

Roland Beckett, my grandfather and Florence, my grandmother, gave life to twelve children in all, with ten surviving childhood. With them all, the tough, kind figure that was Nanny, great grandmother. Always she lived with them. And I grew up with a vague idea that grandmother and grandfather had a bit of a difficult relationship now and then. I know that, when all the children were grown and most had left home, Roland and Florence divorced. Let's hope he found happiness in some other arms: a woman in Tenby about whom I know nothing.  But she was subsequent, don't you know.

In farms from the Swansea valley (for my mother was really a Valley girl by birth, you might say), to Kidwelly and dotted about Pembrokeshire; from Wiston to Creswell Key - my grandmother's last house before she came to live with her large brood - my mother and her brothers and sisters lived a demanding but loving life. I long to hear the stories of all this; I grew up always wanting ten children, after all. 

Last night, I heard about how they swam and splashed in a bathing pool in fields in Wiston; how my uncle John could not buy an engagement ring for my auntie Betty because, as he told her, he had bought a cow instead; how my great grandmother was so ravshing that she stopped traffic in Tenby main street and how --  well, you don't need to know all this. It's just that when you come from a big family, stories come thick and fast and I am grateful for their telling. And yet, much as I love this church on this peaceful little lane, I'd like them all back -- all those grandparents and cousins and uncles and aunts and great uncles - in one place, again - if I could. And just once - in case they all argued.