Part 8
With Raunds came a few more villages which were searched for hidden Catholics in the now
familiar manner, through village shops and pubs. There was one village pub which at lunchtime
was never ‘manned’. It was just open and the locals helped themselves and paid for what they
drank. It seemed to work but eventually the landlord retired and the place was metamorphosed
into a glass and chrome emporium with all the atmosphere, friendliness and trust gone for ever
and the clientele changing at a stroke from ploughman’s lunch customers to ‘outsiders’ arriving in
convertibles, souped up Mini-Coopers and Porsches. Village shops were beginning to close,
unable to cope with supermarket opposition. The locals still wanted their own shop but only for
trifling things and what they may have forgotten to buy on their weekly ‘big’ shopping trip or the
odd bit of sugar or milk which they suddenly found they were lacking and to obtain which they
would not hesitate to rouse the local shopkeeper even after hours. The ultimate was a lady who
went into the local post office/shop, bought nothing but asked for change to pay her bus fare to
the supermarket.
With all this pub crawling – all in the very best of taste and for most noble reasons – I count
myself fortunate not only not to have become an alcoholic but also not have acquired a
reputation as a boozer. The danger only occurred to me much later as I thought back on cold
winter evenings in the caravan when a bit of the hard stuff would probably have warmed the
cockles, done little harm but possibly would have become a habit. Somehow – a blessing for
which one ought to be grateful – the temptation to drink alone has never raised its ugly head and
the advice of the old rector of the seminary was quite easy to follow: “ Never drink spirits
regularly before the age of 40.”
Meanwhile, the Diocese was split and I managed to give away four villages on the
border; including Molesworth American base which had first been a military prison, then a centre
for the sale of surplus stores and by then the home of a special force of fighter bombers with a
secret compound where, it was rumoured, some unmentionable weapons were being kept. I was
introduced – through a stout wire fence – to a pack of most vicious guard dogs who spent their
life protecting this compound and the American military policeman who was a parishioner assured
me that if he was ever called upon to do some serious work then a catastrophe of some sort
would already have happened. I did not ask for further details especially when both he and I fell
into disgrace with his Liverpudlian wife. After the tour of the base we had a drink in the mess, he
had several more than was really wise and on the way back his car hit and injured a pheasant.
To save it further suffering I suggested we ought to kill it in the obvious way of driving over the
writhing body. The softy - big, hulking brute of a military cop – could not bring himself to do this
and when I did the mercy killing with a large spanner he vomited spectacularly. I took the body
with me to be presented to my mother to be plucked and cleaned and converted into a tasty
lunch. Our brave policeman eventually got home, told his story to his wife and then fell going
upstairs to bed. She was genuinely shocked not just at a priest killing a pheasant but also that I
could have led her innocent husband astray to such an extent that he was so inebriated as to
fall up – not down – the stairs.
The world – and the Church – in the 1960/70’s was going through what Heraclitus would have
called a state of constant change and flux ( one of those snippets of useless information sticking
in the mind from two years of Philosophy). The language of the Mass was changing and Latin
was no longer being taught in seminaries. Priests were moving, leaving and becoming
‘specialists’. The liturgy was turned back to front, altars brought forward, communion rails torn
down, the Penny Catechism not just being priced out of business but being supplanted by
various catechetical schemes for children which were being acclaimed as the best since sliced
bread. All this affected even the backwoods in the diocese with parish priest dragging his feet
and established parishioners – many of venerable age and a lifetime of devotion to the Church –
finding it all just too much. One lovely old lady sadly decided that the Mass in English was
obviously not valid. She gently told me that she was aware that as an official representative of
Holy Mother Church I was unable to resist the changes and even should not do so. But she
decided that she would no longer leave her cottage in an isolated village to attend Mass – she
would say it with us, in Latin, on Sundays and weekdays at the appropriate time and would be
with us in spirit. I took her Holy Communion once a week and waited for the inevitable and logical
consequence: she was an educated lady and would quickly reason that Communion, the Real
Presence brought about by and through an ‘invalid’ Mass was itself suspect, to say the least.
Very soon she said just that and made it clear that I would always be welcome but please don’t
bring her Communion. She was in her late 80’s, pleading and argument only upset her further,
she continued to say her own Mass and I feel certain the Lord listened to her prayers and did not
hold her views against her. She died alone and – one hopes – peacefully, was not found for
several days and I buried her with a Latin Mass and utter confidence in her salvation.
It was decided - I decided, since there was no such thing as even an inkling of democracy in
parishes at the time – but with some consultation and advice, to run Thrapston and Raunds as
one parish with as much done in common or at least on a rotation system as was possible.
People were encouraged to attend the Sunday Mass at a time it suited them, no matter which
end of the parish they happened to live. Easter services and Midnight Mass alternated between
churches. It took a year or so for the ‘them and us’ mentality to be eroded – from both ends of
the new parish. The histories of the areas were quite different (Raunds had been started by the
now extinct Travelling Mission and always looked to Rushden; Thrapston went back further and
still tended to feel it was a part of Wellingborough or even Oundle) but since both shared a
common burden - me - things gradually came together and a genuine new parish was beginning
to emerge.
Money was always a problem. Never insuperable but many things could have been done if
there had been a bit more of it. The collections gradually increased from the first Sunday grand
total of just over £16 but so did expenses once the church – then churches – were used more
than just on Sundays. Heating and lighting was bad enough but the great expense was transport
since the only way to keep the district together was to travel a lot oneself and also bring people
in from outlying villages. To this end we purchased an old ambulance - complete with original
bell which was transferred to the sanctuary – and grandly called it the Parish Bus. The
aluminium body was in excellent condition and by visiting a few scrap yards the ten-seater was
converted into a comfortable fourteen seater. On three days a week it became a common sight in
designated villages picking up the Catholic children straight from their school gates, taking them
to one or the other church for lessons and preparations for the sacraments before distributing
them more or less to their doors and hour or so later.
It demanded a certain amount of skill and dedication to drive and maintain the bus and there
may well have been laws about standing passengers ( certainly no rules about seat belts) but we
chose to know nothing about such details. The record was a load of 30 adults being gingerly
delivered back to their villages after the annual fete. It resulted in yet another visit to the scrappy
to get a ‘new’ suspension unit. I developed a very intimate relationship with the engine
(positioned inside the cab) and kept it running through the years with loving tender care. [ With, it
must be added, unfailing and patient support from a very good friend who owned a local garage
and allowed me – under careful supervision – to pretend to be a skilled mechanic]. On one
occasion, quite late at night after a Bingo session, the float in the carburettor sprung a leak and
we managed to get home with me driving with my right hand and very carefully pouring petrol into
the open carburettor from a gallon can in my left. A spillage onto the hot exhaust may well have
made that evening quite exciting. On another occasion my careless driving under a low arch
resulted in the roof being neatly sliced off. Replacing it with aluminium sheets resurrected the bus
but it never looked quite the same again and eventually had to be retired - sold for £20 to
become a chicken house on a local allotment. The bell is still in the church.
We managed financially, parishioners were generous, numbers grew gradually and the parish
priest got a job at £40 per month – he became Parish Clerk for Thrapston Council – mainly due
to the fact that he was the only applicant who had a typewriter and duplicator. This involved
attending the monthly parish meeting and issuing minutes, paying the groundsman his wages
every week, allotting spaces in the local graveyard and making sure the gravedigger did his job
in time and paying the quarterly bill for local street lighting. This last job nearly resulted in a
coronary when the first bill arrived – well over £900! – until it became clear it was for the
Thrapston Parish, not St. Paul’s Catholic Parish. On odd occasions it did appear rather unfair
that bigger and more established neighbouring parishes could afford to spend more money on
various luxuries – new liturgical accoutrements apparently being ‘demanded’ by the new liturgy,
fancy books, kneelers, pilfer-proof collection baskets etc etc – than we ever had to spend on
necessities. On one occasion ( a quite convivial clerical Christmas party) one parish priest matter-
of-factly mentioned that he had spent as much on a new duvet as we managed to get in a whole
month’s income. And there was me with my faithful companion – Butch – acting as an excellent
hot water bottle. In years to come I did remember this incident and when in bigger and richer
parishes did consider it a lawful parish expense to help smaller or newer parishes by offering to
pay some of their less huge bills – if only as a sign of good will.
My faithful companion
and hot water bottle.
My mother moved into a small bungalow in Raunds, well knowing the risk that a move for me
would eventually be on the cards. To her eternal credit she never interfered in the parish and
was quite happy not to have any preferential treatment. I did often wonder how strange it must
have been for her to listen week after week to her son’s brilliant sermons but never actually
dared to ask just in case she would be brutally honest. Who knows, she may well have just
switched off! Parishioners were very good to her, she made many friends and seemed to be
happy. I remained in the caravan but more often than not travelled the five miles to have a good
lunch rather than ‘enjoy’ my own brand of cooking - microwaves, the saviours of old and crusty
bachelors, were only just being invented. The Borstal had become a thing of the past and my
apparently indispensable job in the Corby schools had been taken over by a resident priest.
There was more than enough to do in that scattered parish – not to mention my growing notoriety
as an odd ball who gave shelter to Thomas the donkey, slept with his dog, had all kinds of
contacts for getting puppies and kittens for old people who had lost their pets, had a thriving non-
profit making organisation with the local S.V.P. chopping up liberally grease-soaked barrels used
for bringing in sheep fleeces from Australia to the local tanneries and so distributing bundles of
kindling to old people in remote corners of Northamptonshire and, even, having the biggest pipe
collection in the area. With no real ambition to speak of I would probably have been more than
happy if I had stayed in the place for good. Whether the same could be said for the parishioners
was not something I really wanted to know since in rare introspective moments I did begin to think
that perhaps we were all getting into a rut.
Except for the nagging sense of guilt that a house really ought to be built to give the place
some respectability. When, after ten years, the move to Bedford came the lack of a house made
it very difficult for the poor bishop to find a priest to take over. Caravan dwelling was a
comfortable, scruffy and cosy way to live; with a few obvious limitations, but certainly not to
everyone’s taste. Bishop Grant phoned one day and asked, would I like to go to Bedford. My
reply was: “ Not really”. He then characteristically made it impossible to argue by saying that it
would make him very happy if I went to Bedford. Who was I not to want to make a bishop happy?
So I went.
Even just two weeks before the change was due there was no replacement for the parish
and I was on the verge of rebellion; it seemed like treachery to leave the place priestless. At the
bishop’s request several likely candidates had been along, admired the churches, loved the
landscape, expressed wonder at the parish bus and some concern about the level of income ( I
had been on the list of ‘poor parishes’ organised by the Universe Catholic paper whereby at
Christmas and Easter a large and generous food parcel was delivered to keep the parish priest
alive and kicking for the big feasts) but expressed horror at living in a caravan – even though
there was a definite Episcopal promise that a house could be built at any time. Presumably the
general lot of curates had improved since they turned down the offer of a parish – never mind
the idea of obedience – when just a few years previously no self respecting and suffering curate
would have refused the offer of even a cabbage patch. Eventually a lovely priest was appointed
who proved utterly unable to look after himself - never mind the material side of a parish - in any
practical way and nearly starved through the next twelve months or so. It was cruel and very
unfair on an excellent priest with much to offer but as unable to be practical as I am of being
artistic or becoming a violin virtuoso. Both he and the parish survived, he went on to give
valuable service in other parishes, Thrapston and Raunds and scattered district went through
some pains and changes but emerged still a parish and now, no doubt, ready to be ‘clustered’ or
undergo whatever the future may hold for most areas.
I was given a generous cheque by the parishioners ( a touching and life-saving custom which
could also mean that it assures one’s departure and little likelyhood of coming back) plus a very
posh and engraved pipe lighter cum cleaner and departed to a much larger parish in Bedford –
still with quite a few villages attached so that my pub-crawling with a pious purpose could
continue. It was only some 18 miles away from where my mother had settled down so keeping my
eye on her – and vice versa – was still quite easy and whether Bishop Grant had had this in mind
or not, she remained convinced that he had been deliberately considerate and understanding
and always had a soft spot for him; not to mention that on visitations and confirmations he had
always had a good meal and short nap at her bungalow and made a fuss of her cat. A contrast to
his brief incursions into the caravan where he had been obliged to remain permanently stooped.
