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3, The Mead

Denby Lane

Fallow Hill

(nr Burley Cross)

20 December, 2006

Hold on to your hat, Jess…

And yell HALLELUJAH! Because MEREDITH HAS FOUND HER JESUS! She’s finally found him! I wrung it out of her while we were stacking away the chairs, straight after you left. You were completely right! It was exactly as you said! She’d known for literally weeks and was just keeping the information back (out of caution? Mischief? Spite?!). You said you didn’t trust her, Jess, and you were spot-on. Spot-on!

SHE’S FOUND HIM, JESS! And we’re officially THE FIRST TWO PEOPLE IN THE WHOLE WORLD TO KNOW ABOUT IT! (Well, apart from her, obviously, and ratty little Sebastian – her loyal henchman – who was glowering at her, furiously, across the hall, as she told me! Oh. And probably the rev – they’re thick as thieves, those two. But who cares? WHO CARES?! We’ve dragged it out of them! We’ve bludgeoned it out of them!)

I don’t mind admitting that I’m feeling rather proud of myself right now, Jess – a tad smug, even. My cheeks are still flushed with victory as I sit at the kitchen table and scribble all this down (sorry about the paper – it’s from that expensive batch Duncan had printed up with the old address directly before we moved – but it was all I could lay my hands on at such short notice).

Oh, Jess, if only you could’ve been there! You would’ve been AMAZED at what I put her through! Appalled! I was completely and utterly relentless!! I was like an attack dog! A Rottweiler!! I kept following her around the hall and worrying at her and worrying at her until she simply couldn’t stand it any more and just blurted it out!

‘For heaven’s sake, Emily!’ she shrieked (both her cheeks the colour of boiled beetroot). ‘I’ve found a Jesus. He’s called Kieren Knowles, if you must know. He’s a professional actor and he lives in Hebden Bridge. Now just leave me alone, will you?!’

Hebden Bridge, Jess! Of course I would’ve rung you on the spot and blabbed, but my dratted mobile’s out of commission (and Duncan – the old misery – has a strict moratorium on phone calls at home after ten).

You said you’d be heading off to your mother’s first thing, so I thought I should probably just jot down all the gory details and include them (while they’re still fresh!) along with the earring, which I wrapped up, very carefully, in a tiny piece of lilac tissue paper.

I do hope I scribbled down the address correctly. You were in such a rush – such a panic – that I honestly couldn’t tell if it was 27 Elmdon Lane, Marston Green, Birmingham, or 27 Elendon Lane, Marston Green, Birmingham (I’ve taken a lucky punt). Please, please, please don’t accidentally tip it out of the envelope and lose the damn thing all over again (you silly goose!).

I must confess that it was little short of a miracle that Peter found it (Peter Bramwell – the First Shepherd – tall, grey-haired chappie with the lazy eye who Lilian kept hectoring all night for cracking his knuckles. I do think Lilian was slightly out of line, there – and I could tell you did, too, by the way you kept sighing and rolling your eyes every time she opened her mouth – but I don’t know why he persists in doing it, I really don’t. It’s perfectly maddening. Is it any wonder Rita’s losing her marbles?! I mean wouldn’t you under the circumstances?!).

He said it was lying in the middle of the rubber karate mat, directly in front of one of the needlework exhibits; not ‘Our Feathered Friends’, but ‘Burley Cross Entwined’, the large display detailing the complex – and somewhat tumultuous – relationship between Burley Cross and our French twin, Olonzac (it’s an awfully good title, don’t you think? In-twine-d/ en-twin-ed? Of course we have Shoshana Baverstock to thank for that; it’s nice to know she’s getting something constructive done as she lounges around, completely starkers, in that fancy ‘sunroom’ of hers all day long, eh?!).

The earring looks a bit wonky, now, I’m afraid. I’m not sure if Peter didn’t accidentally step on it before he picked it up. I’ve done my best to wrangle it back into position, and I don’t think I’ve done too bad a job…

As luck would have it, gold is one of the earth’s most malleable metals (or so Peter informed me as he passed it over. It seems he used to be a metallurgist! Imagine?! When he told me I said, ‘Oh! A metallurgist! Congratulations!’ – I was still dizzy with the Jesus news. He just scowled and barked, ‘It’s nothing you need to congratulate me for!’ then stalked off [?!]).

In fact – now I come to ponder on it – I remember passing you that apron to wear while you were standing and inspecting the exhibit before we handed out the teas (Sally Trident’s pit pony did look like a Stegosaurus! I told her exactly the same thing myself!). I can only imagine it popped out when you dragged it on over your head.

OH MY GOD, Jess! I CAN’T BELIEVE SHE’S FOUND HIM!! As soon as Duncan gets off the internet (he’s doing some last-minute research for his OU thesis on the primitive fabric dyes they used in the Bayeux tapestry) I’m going straight online to try and find his MySpace page! ‘Kieren Knowles: professional actor!’ I LITERALLY CAN’T WAIT!!!!

And the look on Meredith’s face, Jess! It was a classic! An absolute picture! I just kept going on and on and on at her! I came at her from all angles. Will he be a blond Christ, Meredith, or a brunette, because I know brunette Christs are all the vogue these days – and very P.C. – but I can’t help thinking a blond would be so incredibly romantic… What age will he be, Meredith? Jesus died at thirty-three, but will you be strict and insist on absolute numerical parity?

By the end I was just babbling any old nonsense at her: ‘Will he have his own teeth, Meredith? Won’t he mind dreadfully working with a bunch of amateurs? Will he be tall? Over six three? Will he speak with a northern accent? What if he has a tattoo? Must he be a believer? Will he be circumcised?’

Turns out (and this was a total bolt from the blue): HE’S PLAYED JESUS BEFORE!!

Meredith was just starting to fill me in on all the finer details (his hair is brown, almost black, his eyes are ‘a fine, cornflower blue’ …) when Seb came barrelling over. ‘Of course he’s played Jesus before,’ he says, all droll and self-satisfied. ‘He’s quite the pro, apparently – he just has “the Jesus look”.’

Well, my jaw literally dropped! ‘THE JESUS LOOK!?’

As I’m sure you can imagine, I was absolutely desperate to pursue this line of enquiry still further (I could’ve followed it to the ends of the earth, quite frankly!) but I was suddenly overwhelmed by a strong – almost violent – urge to find out something even more pressing, i.e.: DID TAMMY THORNDYKE KNOW YET???

I just yelled it at them. I just screamed it. I lost all sense of self-control.

‘DOES SHE KNOW?! DOES TAMMY KNOW?!’

(Then I got rather short of breath and started to cough, and had to rummage around in my bag for my asthma inhaler.)

‘Nobody knows,’ Meredith snapped. ‘I really didn’t want to tell anyone until we’d sorted out the finer details of his contract.’

(Good heavens, Jess! Get her! What a terrible, old sourpuss!)

At this point Sebastian butted in again and started congratulating Meredith on how she conducted the night’s warm-up. He said, ‘I always find the trust exercises you use so extraordinarily liberating, Meredith. And it’s not just the exercises themselves, it’s how you approach them, how you time them. So much skill! Such finesse! In fact I rarely finish one of your sessions without feeling this wild surge of emotion. I often get quite tearful! It’s rather embarrassing! They’re just so… so potent, so “connecting,” so… so empowering.’ (Well, it’s no great mystery how he managed to wrangle himself The Disciple Jesus Loved Best, then!)

Of course I wasn’t going to be outdone (even if I don’t currently have a speaking role!). I heartily agreed with him. I said, ‘When Tom Augustine touched my forehead and whispered, “You are alive, Emily! You are utterly free! Take your freedom, now, and celebrate the world with it!” I honestly thought I was going to wet myself! His hand was so cold! It was like being prodded by a frozen chicken leg!’ (In fact I seriously thought I had wet myself, Jess. That’s why I seemed so distracted when you were asking me whether the wigs were still kept on the top of the prop box.)

I then went on to say how I thought the improvisational exercises tonight had been absolutely priceless (weren’t they, though?!)! I said, ‘My favourite moment was when Arthur Wolf was “being an egg”, Sally Trident broke him into a frying-pan and then Jess [you!] yelled, “Oh no! Look! You’ve gone and broken his yolk!”’ (I mean that was hilarious! And utterly spontaneous, to boot!)

I’d barely finished speaking when Seb turned and delivered me THE MOST FILTHY LOOK!!!

‘Yes,’ he says, snidely, ‘Jess is quite the little comedian!’

(?!?!?)

With the benefit of hindsight, Jess, I think you were right to be suspicious of him. I think he does have it in for you. And it’s not only because you aren’t officially ‘one of us’, i.e. not currently resident in the village, but because he’s jealous of your talent – pure and simple! He’s still stewing over the fact that your audition for Angel of the Lord went down so well. People were talking about it for weeks! Pammy Stevens got palpitations! The way you worked with the light towards the end – turned to face it, dumbly, questingly, then extended out your arms and slowly, dramatically, dropped your chin on to your chest…

Beautiful!

There was such an incredible atmosphere – you could’ve heard a pin drop in that hall.

WHY MEREDITH DIDN’T GIVE YOU THE ROLE I WILL NEVER, NEVER UNDERSTAND!!

I mean all that hogwash she came up with afterwards about the cast ‘not being about individual egos, only about The Collective Will’, and ‘really needing to find the right kind of balance’ (it’s an amateur production of The Passion, Jess, not a Soviet-era-style, group gymnastics display)! And that interminable speech about things being ‘real’, and then ‘moving into fast-forward’, and then ‘suddenly becoming hyper-real’ – but ‘not acting, never acting’, just ‘being’, just ‘believing in the moment’, just ‘cherishing the moment’, just ‘making the moment true…’ (what on earth does that even mean, Jess? ‘Making the moment true’?).

If Meredith is – as she claims – such a staunch advocate of the truth (what’s her other favourite catchphrase? ‘Be sincere, be here’ – with a pious little pat on her heart?!) then how on earth can she possibly justify casting Tammy Thorndyke as St Martha?! St Martha!

Tammy Thorndyke’s converted to Buddhism! I swear to God, if I have to hear another syllable about that infernal trip she and Baxter took to Tibet last year, and how she got altitude sickness halfway up a mountain and collapsed, and then, when she came to, how she felt ‘an incredible warmth in her throat chakra’ which slowly spread throughout her entire body, making her feel like ‘a glowing bottle of preserved ginger’ I honestly think I shall spontaneously combust!

As I said to Jill Harpington the other day (while we were picketing Wharfedale Council about those awful, new recycling bins), ‘Isn’t it unfortunate that Tammy’s recent “conversion” doesn’t appear to be offering any kind of formal impediment to her singing lead soprano in the church choir?!’ (Ouch! Climb back into the knife drawer, Emily!)

But that awful, piercing vibrato, Jess! It’s more than my shattered nerves can bear! Drew Cullen – on the organ – even turns off his hearing aid, and he’s deaf as a dodo!

I actually conducted an informal survey with the help of Gillian Reed last year (Gill’s the blowsy, buck-toothed piano tuner’s wife who polishes the church pews etc.) after she mentioned to me, in passing, that the bats were defecating at almost twice their usual volume on the days when the choir either rehearsed or performed.

With a little casual investigation it became increasingly clear (I can show you the graphs if you like – in fact I’ll dig one out for you, right now) that the more music we sang in a higher register, the more guano the bats produced – often (like when we were rehearsing ‘Jerusalem’, for example) defecating over three times as much!

Then – and this was the real eye-opener, Jess – when Tammy was off for a month in August (nursing her youngest daughter through a botched nose-job down in Guildford) the overall quantities produced fell by almost two-thirds! OVERNIGHT! Right across the scale! I SWEAR!

Utterly fascinating (I know), but I suppose we’re trespassing a little off the subject here, because let’s face it, Jess (as I said earlier this evening), if ‘the truth’ really is Meredith’s main priority, then why does she persist in ignoring what’s so patently true about St Martha, i.e. that it’s not a glamorous role at all!

Martha’s a work-horse, Jess! She spends virtually all of her time throughout the Gospels JUST DOING THE WASHING-UP!!

That’s why Jesus gets into a row with her when she tells Mary Magdalen to stop hanging around with the boys all night and give her a quick hand with the kitchen chores! Jesus gets into quite a bate about it. He tells her that Mary is much better off where she is (just sitting on the floor, staring at his ‘Godhead’), and that Martha’s eternal soul would be far better served by doing the same thing herself!

(Well, that’s all fine and dandy, Jess, but if Martha hadn’t done the chores, what in heaven’s name would The Twelve have eaten for dinner? How could Jesus have hosted The Last Supper? And what would Michelangelo have painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, all those years later? A dozen hungry people arguing over a raw turnip?! Hardly an appropriate subject matter for such a prominent art work I’d’ve thought!)

It’s ridiculous, Jess! Pure hokum!

I mean Tammy Thorndyke has a dishwasher, for heaven’s sake! And she has a char (if it’s socially acceptable to describe dear Susan Trott in those terms)! And she gets all her dinner parties professionally catered by the sister of that haughty besom who runs Pinenuts (the Swiss tea-house in Ilkley). D’you know her? The Dutch girl with the strange eyebrows who Duncan calls ‘The Exclamation Mark’, because she always persists in looking alarmed (no matter how conservatively he orders).

Honestly, Jess, it’s just a joke! The ‘real’ and the ‘hyper-real’ and all that ‘fast-forwarding’! What’s she trying to do, turn us all digital?!

Anyhow – to get back to our little spat – I was still recoiling from the ‘comedian’ comment, when Meredith suddenly started throwing in her own two-pence-worth, saying how she didn’t think you and I were ‘a terribly good influence on each other, and, by extension, on the group’.

You and me, Jess? Not a good influence? What on earth can she possibly mean?! The bare-faced gall of the woman! The pure, unalloyed cheek of it! I just felt like grabbing her by her bony shoulders and shaking her and shaking her! I just felt like screaming into her horsey, self-satisfied face: ‘I’m a sixty-seven-year-old grandmother of five, Meredith! How dare you stand there in your awful, gold-braided, ethnic pantaloons and scold me like I’m a seven-year-old child!’

But I just bit down hard on my tongue, Jess, and tried to rise above. Let it go, Emily, let it go, I thought. Do as the Good Lord would’ve done.

(It wasn’t having all that much effect, I’m afraid, and then that thing you’re always saying popped into my head: ‘They only hate us because we’re beautiful!’

I repeated it to myself, three times. It was extremely helpful.)

Yet even that wasn’t to be the end of it, Jess! Worse was still to come! Seb then interrupts Meredith to say how ‘disruptive’ he’d found our contributions in Group Discussion!

I must’ve looked simply stunned by this (I think I probably started wheezing again – with the shock – and then staggered back, supporting myself, faintly, with a trembling hand, against the wall) because Meredith quickly butted in to say how much they appreciated our input, overall, and that she couldn’t deny we’d invested a great deal of effort. (Remember our special DVD night, Jess? The Name of the Rose, The Omen, The Da Vinci Code, Nacho Libre and The Passion of The Christ, all in one go?)

Seb wasn’t to be put off, though. He started muttering under his breath about how ‘unhelpful’ he’d found your views on the Catholic Church turning Mary Magdalen into a whore because ‘they all feared the vagina’.

Obviously I leapt straight to your defence! I said I’d told you that because I’d read it on the internet.

‘Oh! On the internet, Emily!’ Seb snorts. ‘Well, that speaks volumes, doesn’t it?!’

Then, before I can even open my mouth to respond, he continues, ‘And how about when you said Jesus “hated his own family”, and “thought Buddhism was a big pile of mumbo-jumbo”? Were these shining little gems also mined online?’

Well, that was it, Jess!

WAR!!

I drew myself up to my full height (5′3″, in heels) and said (in my best Ice Queen voice), ‘If you want to take issue with those views, Sebastian, then I’m afraid you’ll need to take issue with the Holy Bible itself!’

Meredith gazed at me for a second, perfectly astonished. ‘It says Jesus hated his own family in the Bible?’ she demanded (plainly shaken to the core).

‘I believe there’s a fairly memorable moment in the Gospel of St Matthew,’ I loftily enlightened her, ‘when Mary and Jesus’s brothers arrive, unannounced, to pay him a visit. A disciple comes to tell him (he’s preaching a sermon at the time) and Jesus refuses – point-blank – to interrupt what he’s doing to give them an audience. He simply asks, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Then, later on, he justifies this slightly high-handed treatment by saying, “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother,” i.e. Jesus doesn’t play favourites…’ (I deliver Meredith an especially, stern look at this juncture.) ‘We are all his kith and kin.’

‘Poppycock!’ Seb scoffs. ‘That doesn’t mean he hates his family!’

‘You can chose to interpret it any way you like,’ I sigh, turning to look at him with an expression of infinite sadness (and of infinite pity. And of infinite patience – it was a highly complex and abstruse expression, very Sphinx-like – as I’m sure you can imagine). ‘But haven’t you hated your family sometimes, Seb?’ I continued, swinging out my arm, rather dramatically. ‘I mean haven’t we all? Just as our Sweet Lord did?’

Everybody was (quite naturally) rendered dumb for a couple of seconds by my infallible logic, but then Meredith started muttering something about ‘Tammy being very hurt, very injured, by the mumbo-jumbo comments’.

‘Matthew 6: 7,’ I announced, crisply. ‘“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many worms.”’

I meant to say ‘words’, obviously (I don’t really know where the ‘worms’ part came from), but, as luck would have it, I was saved from possible ridicule by the sudden arrival of Peter Bramwell (the metallurgist) who came to inform Meredith that the bulb had just blown in the storeroom (which meant he was unable to locate a ladder – I’m not entirely sure why a ladder was required at this juncture).

I decided that this timely interruption presented an opportune moment to beat a hasty (if still perfectly dignified) retreat. (Always quit while you’re ahead, eh?!)

Phew!

So I think that’s pretty much the sum of it, Jess. Sorry if I’ve run on a bit. My fingers are all cramping up – I feel like I’ve been writing this for hours (Crikey! Look at the time! It’s five after twelve and Duncan’s not even had his Bournville yet! He’ll have committed hara-kiri by now!).

I do hope the earring is still intact by the time it reaches you. I’m not entirely sure why you were so desperate to have it back over the festive season – I was under the strong (if possibly erroneous) impression that your mother’s proclivities (fashion-related and otherwise) bordered somewhat on the conservative. If this is the case, then you should definitely think twice about wearing it again until you’ve broken your other piece of ‘Big News’. Let’s hope she takes it a little better than your father did!

I’m very confident (as I said earlier) that he’ll have cooled down enough by now to let you drive at least some of the way to Birmingham.

When’s your test? Jan 5th?

We’ll definitely speak before then –

Happy Christmas, my Gorgeous Boy!

Give ’em hell, eh?!

XXXXXX

Em

PS KIEREN KNOWLES!!!!

‘Professional actor!!’

VA-VA-VA-VA-VOOM!!

PPS Always remember: They only hate us because…

Oh! You know!!

XX