More Tea, Jesus?

Outside, the sun had risen. One by one, the other inhabitants of Little Collyweston were getting out of bed and drawing their curtains. Bleary-eyed people stumbled into their kitchens in need of coffee, barely able to appreciate the beauty of the golden rays shining ingratiatingly over their houses. The sun obligingly continued to light up the darkest shadows anyway, spreading its unappreciated happiness over the quiet village.

It didn’t trouble the congregation of St Barnabas church, however. The architect of the building had (presumably unintentionally) constructed it in such a way that actual daylight only rarely made it inside. In the age of electricity, this was not the problem it might once have been, but it did mean that an eternal midwinter stagnated within the church, even on a bright spring morning such as this one.

Perhaps that was the reason why so few people ever seemed to be happy at the Sunday-morning services.

Everything had gone according to plan – the omelette had been as fine a specimen of an omelette as Biddle ever expected to see, and according to the four or five children who had consumed it in a matter of seconds, it also tasted jolly good. But Reverend Biddle couldn’t quite rid himself of a feeling of unease following his sermon. He thought it had been well-received, but there was a definite atmosphere amongst the congregation which suggested that it might not have been understood as well as he had hoped. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but there was a definite anxiety in his own heart that he couldn’t put aside.

He continued with the service, smiling as much as possible so as not to give away his discomfort. It was halfway through the intercessions that the reason for his unease dawned on him: brilliant though the omelette had been in a culinary sense, in the excitement of his achievement he had completely forgotten to tell the congregation what it meant. He had left out the explanation. In short, he had delivered a perfect sermon about how to make an omelette.

No wonder they looked so baffled.

Hastily, he inserted a long intercession in which he thanked God for his ‘binding love, which binds and unifies our broken lives to make us a single unified body, just as broken eggs are bound together in an omelette …’ But he felt fairly certain that this was lost on the congregation. Too little, too late.

Sheepishly, he announced the final hymn. As the organ piped up with an almost completely different set of notes to those the composer had written, Biddle began to formulate plans for a series of sermons in which he could unpack and expound upon the significance of his perfect, family-oriented and utterly irrelevant omelette.

Chapter 2

Sunday lunch in the Phair household was tense as usual. Something about spending the morning at St Barnabas church always cast a nasty atmosphere over the rest of the day; in particular, it put Lindsay in a miserable mood. Today her mood had taken a rather extreme turn for the worse.

They had driven home in silence (apart from the chattering of the girls in the back of the car, who had eventually been told to shut up by Lindsay, which had made Rebekah cry). Lindsay had prepared lunch without speaking, but made her disposition clear by banging the cooking utensils as loudly as possible, as Robert had tried to sound interested and not jealous at the girls’ description of what the omelette had tasted like, whilst acting as though their mother’s behaviour was completely rational and only to be expected on a Sunday afternoon. Lunch was served in plate-banging silence.

‘Shall I say grace?’ Robert mildly enquired.

‘Say what you like,’ Lindsay muttered, and started eating. Evidently she was sulking.

Robert paused. Really, this was very childish. He let out a long sigh. The girls had looked at him, expectantly. ‘Oh dear,’ he said quietly. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Will you stop saying “oh dear,”’ Lindsay angrily told him, ‘and say grace, if you’re going to say it.’

Another pause. Another sigh. ‘Oh dear,’ Robert softly added. Then he drew in a new breath, deciding it was time to pull things together at least. ‘Let’s hold hands – Esther, Rebekah?’

‘Mummy isn’t joining in,’ lisped Rebekah.

‘Well, Mummy doesn’t have to join in, if she’s eating. You can hold Esther’s hand.’ A slight pause, a disappointed look at his wife, then: ‘Dear Lord, we thank you for, er, for looking after us and keeping us safe, and we thank you for this time we have together, and er … er for this lovely day, and we thank you especially for this lovely dinner and for Mummy who made it. Amen.’

‘Amen,’ the girls obediently chorused, then immediately started eating. Robert didn’t start so quickly, but gave another sad look at his wife and patted her on the arm, reassuringly.

That was enough to set her off. ‘Why do we even go?’ she exploded, putting down her knife and fork with a clatter. ‘I have work to do at weekends, I could be getting work together for the five history lessons I have to look forward to tomorrow, but no, we have to go to church and waste our time with – what, I mean, what is it, what is it we go for?’

‘Well—’ Robert began. He laughed, quietly. ‘It’s always difficult to see what, what … er … what goes on, in a church, beneath the surface. You know, I’m sure …’

‘Nothing goes on beneath the surface,’ Lindsay spat. ‘They’re the most superficial bunch of people I’ve ever seen. I hate them.’

‘That’s not true, you know that, we’ve got lots of good friends at church …’

‘You’ve got lots of friends,’ Lindsay complained, self-pityingly. ‘I’m sure that they all feel sorry for you because you’ve got such a dreadful wife.’

‘Of course they don’t,’ he said, unconvincingly.

‘We sat at the front and me and Kirsty were right at the front so we took the biggest pieces of omelette, only Kirsty got some on her dress …’

‘Not now, Rebekah,’ said Robert.

‘Oh, and as for Reverend smiley self-righteous Biddle, what on earth was he doing making an omelette? I’m sorry, but that was the last straw. I’m not going to church and giving up my Sunday morning to watch somebody make an omelette!’

‘Well …’ Robert laughed, quietly and nervously, ‘different people have different styles of – it was a family service, after all.’

‘What was the point, though? Why did he do it?’

‘Well, I think he – he did it to make, er, to illustrate his point.’

‘What point? Did he make a point?’

‘Well – no,’ admitted Robert.

‘I think my tooth is coming out.’

‘Well, stop playing with it, Esther, or it will definitely come out.’

‘Isabel says that she gets fifty pence from the tooth fairy.’

‘Does she really? They must have a different tooth fairy working in that area, then, mustn’t they.’

‘We’ll have to find another church,’ Lindsay said.

‘Well …’

‘I’d stop going to church altogether, but I’m thinking about the children. I’ve given up hope for myself, I just want them to be okay.’

‘Well …’ Robert laughed nervously again, ‘if everybody took that attitude, I mean nobody would go to heaven, would they?’

‘… Kirsty got some on her dress, she did, it was a clean dress and …’

‘Isabel said that maybe the tooth fairy might give me more money the older I get.’

‘Yes, Esther, I don’t think …’

‘Was he trying to make some point about Easter?’ Lindsay postulated, loudly. ‘Was that it?’

‘Possibly,’ Robert said. ‘No Esther, I can’t talk about this now …’

‘But it’s not Easter yet! Why was he doing something with eggs before …it’s Lent! You’re meant to use up all your eggs before Lent! It wasn’t even liturgically correct!’

‘Well, yes,’ Robert agreed, ‘that’s true, but in a family service – I mean, I don’t think it’s wrong to make an omelette in Lent, is it? Not scripturally.’

‘I suppose you’ll be wanting me to make an omelette now?’

‘Well …’ Robert laughed, anxious but slightly hopeful. ‘Now that you mention it …’