England and Other Stories

SAINT PETER

IT EMBARRASSED HIM now, so many years later, to say he was a vicar’s son, that he’d been raised in a vicarage. It was like saying he’d been raised in some cosy cottage in the country — even if the vicarage had been in one of the less appealing suburbs of Birmingham. It was an ordinary house with a bay window. If you stood by the window you could see the church a little way along the road on the other side. ‘A stone’s throw’ was what his father always said, they were a stone’s throw. It was a common enough expression, but when he was small he always used to picture someone actually lifting their arm and tensing their back to throw a stone. He’d wonder whether the throwing was from or to the church. He was troubled by the idea of anyone throwing a stone at a church, or even from one.

He could still summon up now, though it was long ago, his father’s keen but gaunt face. His father had died when he was still small, so it was always the same unageing face that he saw, while his own face in more than fifty years had changed immensely. There was something about that time, when he was only eight and when his father, though no one knew it yet, was dying, that was imprinted on him. He couldn’t picture nearly so clearly, though he’d actually known him for longer, the face of Peter Wilson, his stepfather. And he’d never known, though the question remained, if when his father had been dying Peter Wilson had been just his mother’s friend and a friend of the family or something more, even at that time. And if his father had known it.

It was like picking up a stone and trying to guess its weight. And not knowing, even now, which way to throw it. His mother knew, but had never said. Why should she? And now that she was old and frail and losing her memory he had even less reason to press her. He could only wonder if it all still pressed upon her anyway.

His mother hadn’t met him in any case, that afternoon, at the school gates. He was eight years old and he didn’t need his mother to meet him. The school wasn’t much further away than the church. But she was one of those mothers who’d still turn up, perhaps because she was the Vicar’s wife. And he was one of those kids who, though he might have preferred his mother not to turn up, was secretly glad that she did.

But this time it was his father. It was a cold grey day in March. A mean buffeting wind was blowing. It was also the last day of term before the Easter holiday, and he wondered, though there was no logic to it, whether it was because of this that his father and not his mother had come to meet him.

He certainly hadn’t known then that his father would be dead by Christmas. Nor could his mother have known, nor even his father himself. He wasn’t well and he looked tired, standing by the school gates, but not especially ill. He’d been clearly able to manage the walk to the school, something that would prove impossible soon. He’d been told by his doctor that he shouldn’t overdo things, at just the time, around Easter, when his duties were particularly demanding, but he’d made a joke about this. There was a deputy vicar lined up to take at least some of the services, and since ‘vicar’ meant deputy anyway that meant there was a deputy-deputy.

It had disappointed him to be told that a vicar was only a deputy. It seemed like a mark of unimportance. And he’d been troubled by the idea that a doctor could tell a vicar what to do.

They’d walked back together. He felt that his father had come to the school gates in order to tell him something, to have his exclusive attention as they returned home. But something — perhaps the evil wind, constantly sending up clouds of dust and grit as they walked — had forestalled this.

It was anyway only when they got back that he realised his mother wasn’t at home. He’d assumed she’d simply indulged his father’s whim, but now his father said, ‘Mum’s sorry she couldn’t meet you, but she’ll be home any moment.’ It was said in a way that made him understand he shouldn’t ask why. In any case, almost in the same breath, his father said, rather strangely, ‘Easter is coming.’ It was hardly necessary to say it, everyone knew Easter was coming, but since he’d said it so quickly after what he’d said about his mother it made him think that Easter was like a person too who’d turn up at any moment — from wherever it was that Easter went.

His father put the kettle on and cut a thick slice of bread which he plastered with butter, then with strawberry jam. This was his regular reward for coming home from school. His father was doing exactly what his mother would normally do, though he was doing it, sleeves rolled up, with his sinewy arms, which for the first time he’d thought were not like a vicar’s arms, but just like any man’s arms.

They took their tea, and the bread and jam, into the front room. They used their front room regularly. A lot of people seemed not to do this — they reserved their front rooms for special occasions. Perhaps their own case was different because the house was a vicarage and because from the front room you could see the church. From where his father now chose to sit he couldn’t have seen the church — you had to be close to the window — but he sat so that he was nonetheless looking out, at their gate and the privet hedge juddering in the wind. It was clear that he wanted to say something.

It was St Peter’s Church and it was only a coincidence that it was Peter Wilson. There were lots of Peters. His own name was Paul. There was a St Paul too. Since his father was the Vicar of St Peter’s, he’d absorbed a few facts, even when he was very small, about St Peter. That his symbol was the crossed keys. That these keys represented the keys to heaven, since St Peter was the keeper of the gates to heaven. That Jesus had once said to St Peter that he was the rock on which he’d build his church, since the name Peter was also just an ordinary word meaning ‘rock’. It had seemed to him that, with all these attributes, Peter must be the best and most important of all the saints. So he’d been proud and glad that his father was the Vicar of St Peter’s.

But his father now said, with the tiredness in his face showing in the light from the window, that St Peter had once been no kind of saint at all. It was like his remark about Easter. It came from nowhere and seemed to be heading nowhere, but he said it with some emphasis. He said it was important to understand this. St Peter had once been no saint at all. Then he said, and this was a rather shocking remark, that it was important to understand too that there had once been no such thing as Easter.

It became rather difficult to eat his bread and jam. It felt wrong while his father was pronouncing such things. It had been wrong perhaps of his father to prepare it for him. But his father had only been doing, decently, what was expected, what his mother would have done. And, until moments ago, he’d been a hungry boy, home from school.

He’d remember always that slice of bread — it was rather thicker than his mother would have cut — that he wasn’t able, even with an effort, to finish. His father must have seen his struggle, but, caught in a quandary of his own, been unable to say anything. He was talking about St Peter.

He’d remember always his challenging bread and jam, the blue-orange glow of the gas fire, which his father had turned on, and the noise behind him, through the window, of their gate knock-knocking in the wind.

‘Can you imagine that?’ his father had said. ‘Can you imagine when there wasn’t any such thing as Easter?’

He couldn’t. Easter was something that came round every year, like birthdays and holidays, like Christmas. Then his father had told him the story that, even at eight, he probably mostly knew, and even knew mostly from his father. But his father had never told it like this, as if it were a story that had never been told before.

It was important to remember that there’d once been no such thing as Easter. It was important to remember that when Jesus spoke to Peter on the night before Good Friday it wasn’t the night before Good Friday, because Good Friday didn’t exist then. There was no such thing. And Peter wasn’t a saint either. He was just Peter. But this was nonetheless the night, the real and actual night before Jesus was put on the cross, if no one but Jesus understood it. Peter didn’t understand it, and didn’t believe it when Jesus said to him that before the cock crowed in the morning he, Peter, would deny him three times. Peter didn’t know what was happening. He was only Peter.

Jesus had gone to a place to pray, and though he knew what was to come he’d begged God to spare him. He’d said, ‘Let this cup pass from me.’ All through the night Jesus had stayed awake and prayed, but the three disciples who were with him had just slept in a huddle close by. Despite what their master was going through, they’d just slept. One of them was Peter.

More than once Jesus had woken them, but they’d just slept again, even at such a time. Because their eyes were heavy, his father had said, and they were only human. They didn’t really know what was happening. Jesus had already that night named the disciple, Judas, who would betray him, but he’d said to Peter too those words about the cock crowing. Even knowing this, Peter had just slept.

His father had said all these things not like a vicar speaking in church, but as if they were being said for the first time. Some of his father’s words were just words from the Bible and perhaps, even at eight, he knew this, but he felt them, saw them, like real things. He felt the weight of the disciples’ eyes. Saw that cup, though it was only a cup in Jesus’s mind. Felt the passing of that long night and the stern exactness of those three times.

He couldn’t finish his bread and jam. It was what his mother had said, almost immediately, when she came in: ‘You haven’t finished your bread and jam.’ She’d noticed very quickly the little remnant of bread with the small half-moon shape in it of his mouth. But she must have noticed too that there was an atmosphere inside the house. An atmosphere. She must have noticed it more than the piece of bread.

Let this bread and jam pass from me.

It was only a story. But he lay awake that night, listening to the wind and feeling somehow that he should stay awake the whole night, he should do this, for his father’s sake. But he’d slept too, despite the story. He’d simply fallen asleep. He was eight years old and he slept deeply and sweetly and when he woke up it was bright daylight and he knew that he didn’t have to get up to go to school. He could shut his eyes and go back to sleep if he wished. It was a delicious feeling. For a moment he hadn’t remembered his father speaking to him or anything about the previous day. Then there was a sort of shadow in his head. Then he remembered.

Outside, the sky was clear. The wind had stopped. It was Birmingham, and no cocks crowed. In a while his mother would come in to see if he was awake. She would stoop to kiss him. Sometimes, so as to enjoy her kiss, he’d pretend he was still asleep and that it was her kiss that had woken him. He wondered if she guessed this. It was a little like wishing she wouldn’t come to the school gates, but being glad, inside, that she did.

He’d surely have remembered if his mother had kissed him that morning.

Peter Wilson was a teacher at the primary school. Peter Wilson had once taught him. He’d become a friend of the family, as teachers can become, perhaps a particular friend of his mother. He’d been Mr Wilson, then he became Peter. Then he became his stepfather.

If his father had known that Peter Wilson was something more than just his mother’s friend, then he’d have known, when he became more seriously ill, that if he died it would give her her freedom. And if he’d died knowing — or even wishing — this, then that would, surely, have been not unsaintly. In any case, being a Christian, a vicar, his father would have known that he’d have to die without anguish or bitterness, accepting that it was God’s will.

When his father died — it was early December and now it was Christmas that was coming — his mother hadn’t cried, or not much, or not in front of him. But then she too had to behave with composure, like the wife of a vicar. But she cried a lot, and in front of him, when Peter Wilson, many years later, left her, just suddenly left her. It’s more uncomfortable, perhaps, for a mother to cry in front of her twenty-year-old son than in front of her eight-year-old son — setting aside which is more uncomfortable for the son. But she cried anyway, uncontrollably, as if she were crying two times over on the one occasion. He’d hesitated to embrace her.

What’s in a word? Words aren’t things. Cup, stone, rock. He didn’t really believe, even at eight, though his father must have believed it, that St Peter had a pair of keys that opened the gate to heaven. How could heaven have a gate? How could heaven have the same arrangement as his school, or even their front garden? People say of themselves, it’s the commonest excuse, and he must have said it of himself more than once in his life, ‘I’m no saint.’

He’s no saint. Or: She’s no angel.

Could he have thought it, of his own mother, as she stooped like that to kiss him in the morning? She’s no angel.

His father had said that it had all happened just as Jesus had said. Those who came to accuse and arrest him accused Peter too — of being a follower of Jesus. Three times, in fact, Peter was accused and three times he said that he had nothing to do with Jesus. Even though he’d been told by Jesus that this was just what he’d do — which should have been the severest and most unbreakable command not to do it — Peter had gone ahead three times with his denials.

His father didn’t say about this that it was because Peter was only human and he was afraid. He just said it was what happened. Peter had slept because his eyes were heavy. Now he made his denials, three times. Immediately after the third time the cock suddenly crowed. Then Peter had wept.