‘Jesus,’ Ruth says, raising an eyebrow. ‘I wish more of my congregation followed it. Quite a few spent a great deal of time advertising their Christianity to the world. I sometimes thought they should just have had done with it and worn a sandwich board:I’m a Christian and I enjoy gossip and philanthropy.It would have saved an awful lot of breath.’
‘Were there many like that?’ Jo asks.
‘A few. And some skipped the philanthropy part,’ Ruth says, with a grin.
Jo is about to laugh when she sees that, once again, Ruth is looking anxious.
‘No. No, that is unfair of me. I shouldn’t say that. Many,manyof the people I knew did a great deal of good.’
Ruth’s frown clears and suddenly she laughs out loud.
Jo looks expectantly at her.
‘I’m sorry, I was just thinking of my curate, Angela. I do miss her. She was a quiet thing, but had a wicked sense of humour. Our churchwarden, Colin Wilkinson, now he was quite the opposite: a large, bluff, angry kind of man. I don’t think he was always very kind to Angela. Instead of “Wilkinson”, behind his back she used to call him, “Mr Will-kill-soon”.’
Jo joins in Ruth’s laughter, wondering if Colin is one of the people Ruth imagines wearing a sandwich board.
Ruth pulls a packet of jelly babies from her pocket and offers one to Jo, ‘Are your parents churchgoers?’
‘Christmas and Easter, and not so much at Easter these days.’
Ruth nods and says nothing more. Jo notices that Ruth hasn’t asked her directly about her own faith, and also that Ruth is not the one who usually introduces religion into the conversation – unless it’s a scam call, she remembers, smiling. If anything, it is Malcolm who is the one who tends to lead the conversation in that direction.
‘Anyway, you were asking about the blood, poo and vomit,’ Ruth recalls, returning to Jo’s original question. ‘Well, a vicarage and church can be magnetsfor drunks, addicts, vandals and thieves. They may well be the people who need your help the most, and that is fine, but there will always be one or two who take the piss. And in some cases deposit their piss and shit on your doorstep or in the aisle of your church.’
‘God! How did you cope with that?’ Jo asks, then wishes she had skipped the ‘God’ part. Talking to a vicar brings with it a self-consciousness that she isn’t used to. Is that a problem for Ruth? Is she aware of people treating her differently?
Unperturbed, Ruth replies, ‘Usually with a bucket and bleach.’
‘But how did you work out who you could help and who you couldn’t?’
‘I don’t think I ever did. You have to try, but you also have to accept that you can’t always make a difference.’
This reminds Jo of something, ‘Last night, I was reading more about William Foyle. When he’d become rich and successful, people would write him begging letters. He knew that some people would be trying it on, but he replied to them all, including money in the envelopes. When people told him he was a fool, he asked, how would he know he was reaching the people in real need if he didn’t help them all?’
‘I’m looking forward to hearing more about him,’ Ruth says, leaning back on the bench and looking up through the trees to the last of the afternoon sunshine.
‘Weren’t you ever frightened? I mean of people turning up at the vicarage and church?’
‘Sometimes I was, especially as I was a woman living on my own.’ Ruth looks back towards Jo. ‘I was married for a short time, but it didn’t last. So, being alone, I had to be sensible about who I would invite in.’ She goes back to studying the trees above her. ‘I may believe in God,’ she says, with the trace of a smile, ‘but I’m not stupid.’
Jo grins.
‘I did think I was being broken into once,’ Ruth goes on, meditatively.
‘What happened?’
‘I kept hearing noises on the stairs – it was first thing in the morning. I called out a few times but no one answered. Then I started getting really worried, so I jumped out of bed and grabbed the first thing that looked like a weapon.’ Ruth starts to laugh.
‘What? What?’ Jo says, starting to smile herself, without knowing why.
‘Then Angela, my curate, appeared at my bedroom door carrying a breakfast tray and a bunch of flowers. It was my birthday.’ Ruth is rocking with laughter by now.
‘And you?’
‘Well, I was stark naked, pointing a hairdryer at her, like one of those community support people who stand by the road with a traffic gun.’
Jo gives a shout of laughter. ‘But without the high-viz jacket.’
