a tale about time.
"But in eternity, nothing moves into the past; all is present," St Augustine.
A strangely dressed clergyman, wearing a pair of designer sunglasses, asks Peter for a lift to the Cathedral. And so starts four very strange and revelatory days of philosophical discussion on life and death, the nature of time and eternity, and resurrection. Desperately trying to understand, Peter is swept along from one situation to the next until finally he grasps what this strange and enigmatic man has been trying to explain to him.
A Red Grouse Tale which will keep you hooked and leave you with a lump in your throat.
An adult speculative, spiritual and philosophical tale for those who like to think about what they are reading.
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Background Information.
As has been the case with a number of my stories, I started with the end of this tale. So sorry, as I can’t tell you that without spoiling the read, you’ll have to forego that piece of information. From that starting point it was a case of retracing how my protagonist might have arrived there.
What I can tell you is that the central part of the tale is a discussion between my protagonist, Peter, and the man he meets; the strangely dressed clergyman wearing a pair of designer sunglasses. Their discussion and how it effects Peter plays out over four days and ranges over the subjects of birth, life and death, what might exist before we are born and after we die, resurrection, Heaven and Hell, and of course eternity. Yes, quite a lot! St Augustine has an intriguing part of his book ‘Confessions,’ devoted to the subject of time and as I just loved the concept encapsulated in his quotation, ‘But in eternity nothing moves into the past; all is present,’ chose this as a central plank in my ‘strangely dressed clergyman’s’ explanation of the foregoing.
Of course these subjects have fascinated men down through the ages, so it would have been possible to have expanded the book and have pulled in the thoughts of many. However, I was not trying to write a philosophical treatise, but what I hope is an interesting and intriguing, relatively simple, tight story and so I deliberately limited myself to a restricted palette; - Henri Bergson, Stephen Hawking, Bishop George Berkeley, and of course Augustine, together with the Greek and Christian views of same, get a look in. Apologies to the other great minds.
The man Peter meets had to be someone very special indeed in order that he could ‘explain’ the aforementioned philosophies. Although I say so myself, I think my ‘strangely dressed clergyman, wearing a pair of designer sunglasses’ is one of, if not my best character creations. I hope he intrigues you as much as he does me, because I would love to use him again in another story, perhaps a novel next time. And talking of favourite characters; the observant amongst you will notice that the Reverend Money, from previous ‘Tales,’ has a small cameo role.
By its very nature, the subject matter has a religious slant to it. However, it is interesting to note that even Augustine’s thoughts on time make little to no mention of the Christian concepts of God, Heaven or Hell. It is almost as if time is untouched by any of the concepts of any one religion. As yet we can’t prove any of the theories relating to it, we can only speculate, and that is what makes of such intellectual fun.
On a closing note, as with all my other Red Grouse Tales, many of the locations in the story actually exist. ‘The Cathedral’ is one of the great cathedrals of this country (England) and is a fascinating building. The little crypt-like chapel with its blue ceiling also exists, though that may take a bit more finding! And the Chapel of the Transfiguration? As its name might suggests is a bit of a mix of various locations.
I hope you enjoy reading this tale as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Sample Chapters.
The Blue Horse
Day 1
“He was of medium height, slim build, had a thin ascetic looking face and medium length dark brown hair. As he was dressed nearly all in black it was easy to speculate that he might have been going to a fancy dress party dressed as a 17th century clergyman, because although he didn’t wear knee length stockings, his trousers were fairly tight and he was wearing a passing resemblance to a frock-coat. In odd contrast to this attire, was the pair of designer sunglasses he was sporting which gave him the appearance of and suggested that he could have been an eccentric pop star. However, rather than a cliched too-many-cigarettes-graveley ‘How yer goin’ man?’ his voice was level and serious; a bit churchy; a bit like his clothes. As much as I couldn’t make up my mind about him from his appearance there was something trustworthy about him in his manner.”
Thus, Peter had started his tale.
“Is it just us this evening?” he had asked earlier, as there were only five of us, not the usual ten or more.
Our pints of beer sat on the polished wood table in front of us. It was the one nearest to the fire and had been deliberately chosen as the room felt a somewhat cold that evening. This no doubt was due to the fact that the pub was surprisingly empty. Indeed, at that time we were the only customers.
“Or are we expecting some more?”
“No, there’s a do on at the village hall,” Tom had reminded us.
“Oh yes, I’d forgotten that. I expect they’ll have all got raked in to do something, in which case ..... we may as well make a start. So, who’s got a tale to tell?”
Each of us had looked at the others like guests at a Poirot denouncement wondering who was going to crack first.
“OK”, Peter had said in a slightly hesitant tone, “as it is just us this evening, I’ll tell you of a strange personal incident that happened to me just before we moved here”. He’d then started his story with the foregoing description, but realising that he’d got ahead of himself went on to explain,
“We were living in the ‘big city’ then. My wife’s son and daughter-in-law were over with their two kids, and for reasons which I can’t remember, they didn’t have return air tickets. Then, whilst online and in the process of trying to find some alternative, would you believe it, our telephone together with our Internet connection packed up. I went round to the neighbours next door and contacted the telephone people and after the mandatory several minutes of listening firstly to Vivaldi and then to recorded messages telling me how valuable my custom was and next asking me to push button this or button that, I had, eventually, got to speak with a human being who said he would arrange for an engineer to come out and fix it, but that that would be in three days time. Just great! Our guests would be gone by then.
However it wasn’t because of the phone failure that they (our visitors) changed their plans, because we could have easily found a computer with an Internet connection had we wanted to, but let us say the failure was a catalyst for their doing something different. On the afternoon before they had planned to leave they arrived back with a rented car and announced that they were going to drive back home. They would take the ferry, drive through Holland and Germany and hand the car in when they got there. It was all arranged. I had to admire their cool confidence. Had it been me in their position, I would have been a nervous wreck about the whole thing. But I’m ahead of myself again, as I didn’t know any of this plan just then, because it was just when they had arrived back with the rented car with the kids in the back, that this eccentric looking fellow, dressed as a 17th century clergyman and sporting his sunglasses, had stopped at our gate and had said,
“Excuse me, I know this is asking a lot, but could you give me a lift? I’ve got lost and I’m running a bit late.”
Peter took a sip from his pint. He wasn’t used to this story telling thing and was obviously having a little difficulty marshalling his thoughts. However, he soldiered on.
“I walked over to the gate leaving ‘the rabble’ who were noisily getting out of the car.
“Where are you trying to get to?” I asked.
“The Cathedral,” he replied.
So he was a clergyman; a trendy vicar in cool shades. My heart sank a little. A ‘trendy vicar’ is to my mind rather like a ‘flash bank manager’. Each profession requires its own gravitas in order that one can take it seriously. However, putting my probably very unfair judgmental thoughts aside I said,
“Sure. I’ll run you down there. Bear with me. I’ll just get the keys”.
Following the excited kids and their mother down the hallway, I collected the car keys, told Susan (my wife) where I was off to and that I would be back in about half an hour and left the gang presumably talking about their plans for their return journey; though as already said, I didn’t know this then and only found out about it later. As I re-emerged from the house brandishing the car keys my soon-to-be-passenger started to walk round to the passenger door of the hire car.
“No, not this one, mine’s round the corner.”
“Oh, I am so sorry. I hope I am not putting you to too much inconvenience. This really is very kind,” he said as we passed through our gate and walked round the corner to my car which I had been unable to park directly outside the house and so had parked in the almost adjacent side street. Ours was an old Victorian terraced house and many of the houses on our road had been sub-divided into flats with the result that there were more cars than kerbside along which to park them and you had to grab whatever space you could find even if it was at some distance from your front door. Arriving at the car I pressed the key and the lights flashed.
“The door is open,” I said.
He looked slightly baffled, as if he hadn’t come across remote central locking before, but proceeded to climb in without any further hesitation.
As we drove down the road and on to the dual carriageway he told me that he was the Dean of the Cathedral. For my part I explained that I wasn’t a church person and that he would have to excuse my ignorance. However I added, I did know the Cathedral, or as I found out later thought I knew the Cathedral, and was able to comment on the Norman architecture, the beautifully carved choir stalls and their fascinating misericords. Something in his reaction gave me the impression that he was a little surprised that I knew about these, but, be that as it may, we had a pleasant conversation and he was good company. I dropped him off at the Cathedral Green in front of the great building. The traffic bollards on the Market Place hadn’t been installed in those days and it was still possible to drive right up to the main entrance.
When I got home the kids, and the adults as well, had great fun at the Dean’s expense.
“Did you see how he was dressed, gradda?”
“Wasn’t he cool in his shades?”
“You have to admit”, said Susan, “that he did look as if he’d just stepped out of the pages of a history book.”
“He was a nice bloke,” I said, coming to his defence. “We had a good chat about the Cathedral. He’s the Dean there. I think he was a little surprised that I knew about the ‘naughty couple’ misericord.”
“You talked with a dean about that?!”
“Why not?”
The kids just sensed that something had been said. “What’s a naughty couple misery cord?”
“Misericord. Your dad will explain,” I said, passing this hot-potato quickly on whilst miming a what-do-you-expect-me to-do shrug at dad, and then, in an attempt to help dad out, changed the subject.“And what do you guys know about Norman architecture?”
“It is rather strange how religious people feel the need to dress up in eccentric clothes and stand out from the crowd. Why can’t they dress normally, like everyone else?” Susan mused out loud. “If a welder, or a coal-man, or someone working in a factory went out socially, dressed in his or her work clothes, we would all consider them lazy and scruffy for not changing, but priests seem to think that it is their duty to socialise in their work clothes.”
“Perhaps they consider they are ‘tending their flock’ and so are at work”, I suggested. “I suppose generally they are a bit better now. I remember when I was a kid, our local vicar used to walk along the High Street in an ankle length black cape with an ecclesiastic purple silk lining. ‘Can’t remember if he wore knee length stockings and plus twos, or whatever you call them. He may well have done, for all I know.”
“He must have been a sight. Count Dracula!” laughed my step-daughter-in-law, hunching her back and raising her arms in a Dracula pose to her eldest son, who held up a pair of crossed fingers and pulled a desperate face.
“Yes”, I continued, “his conversational gambit with my mother was always, ‘How many children have you?’ And when she had answered his comment was always, ‘Ah, you have been blessed.’ At times I nearly cracked-up laughing. This obviously didn’t please my mother, as she usually looked at me rather sternly, as if to say ‘behave yourself’. The Church and its ministers were probably held in higher esteem in those days.”
“And this Dean of yours, was he really wearing a frock-coat?” asked my step-son who, after he had parked the hire car earlier that afternoon had rapidly disappeared upstairs with a large bag of shopping and so hadn’t seen the Dean.
“It looked like it. I am not up on frock-coats; what about you?”
“Me? I’m a dedicated follower of fashion!” he sang, imitating the Kinks, which brought a smile to everyone’s face.
“And did you see his neckwear? Not a dog-collar, more like a Cromwellian bib.”
“Ya. When I first saw him I did think he was off to a fancy dress do,” I had to admit.
And then I thought we needed a change of subject and asked, “So when are you guys off tomorrow? And more importantly, when have we got to get up?”
“Oh, we don’t leave until the afternoon. Ship sails at 4.15pm”
“Oh good! Who fancies a G & T?”
Day 2
Somehow the car got packed, the kids got squeezed in and they all left for the ferry at the appointed time the following afternoon. There were the usual hugs and tears and requests to ‘phone when you get home’, and then they were gone and the house was suddenly quiet again. Susan always takes partings hard and so we had quite deliberately decided that we would go and spend a few days away as a means of aiding the transition from ‘a house full of family’ to ‘a house full of just the two of us.’ However, these plans had to be changed as I had woken up that morning feeling strangely unwell. Perhaps it was the start of a cold. Whatever it was, the whole idea of going off to stay with one of Susan’s friends for a few days just didn’t appeal to me and I thought, I would be no fun for them. So the end result was that Susan arranged to go and stay with her friend as already planned, but without me. When she’d packed her bag I ran her down to the station.
After we had said our goodbyes and Susan was on her train, I returned to the car and sat down. My head was spinning. Just the time to get a summer cold! I lay back in the seat and closed my eyes, but no sooner had I done so than who should tap on the car window but the same Dean from yesterday.
“Hello. Are you busy? I was wondering if you might care to have a look round our Cathedral?”
I confess my heart sank as my plan was to return home and either go to bed or, if I felt up to it, get on with a skirting board repair that was somewhat overdue and Susan had been ‘on about’ yet again. I had thought I might get it done while she was away, and so with this going through my mind coupled with the fact that I had no great desire to go on a conducted tour of the Cathedral, mumbled something about parking being difficult at the Cathedral at this time of day. If he did notice my irritation, he didn’t show it and cheerfully replied,
“Parking is not a problem. You can park your car in The Close. May I?” he added, indicating his wish to join me in the car.
“Of course,” I found myself saying, realising that I wouldn’t be going to bed or fixing the skirting board after all.
We drove out of the station car park and headed down the hill and on to the dual carriageway just as we had done the previous day, though with myself feeling on the one hand slightly annoyed that my plans had been changed in this manner and on the other hoping that I wasn’t coming across as too rude. After we had taken the slip road and passed through the Market Place, he said,
“Continue straight on here and then take the next right.”
Although I had visited the Cathedral on several occasions I had never driven beyond the turning for The Green and so knew nothing about what lay beyond it. The road was narrow and hemmed in by old buildings on the left and a high stone wall on the right. An arched narrow entrance in the wall brought us in to an enclosed courtyard of grass and flowering cherry trees surrounded by old stone houses with slate roofs; The Close. It was all very pretty, picture-postcard stuff. A real little oasis of beauty and calm, cut off from the rude noisy bustle of the city outside.
“Wherever you like”, he said. “This is all church land so the traffic wardens don’t come in here.”
After parking the car, we walked across a quadrangle to an old, large wooden door set in a weather beaten sandstone wall next to a small round tower. In the almost black, ancient door was set a smaller postern, which the Dean opened and we passed through and into a short dark corridor. As we walked along this stone corridor which opened out on to the cloisters, I had this strange feeling that something wasn’t quite right; a bit like deja-vu but the other way round, I could feel it but couldn’t put my finger on what it was that was disconcerting me. Of course, it must have been at least two years if not three since I had last visited the Cathedral, so perhaps my memory was playing tricks. However, the stone arcading of the cloisters, which I had seen on previous visits, certainly appeared to be in far better condition than I remembered. Obviously some restoration work must have been done since my last visit? I also noted with some sadness that Fenwick Lawson’s wooden sculpture of St Cuthbert that had been in the centre of the square grass quadrangle when I had last visited, was no longer there. A pity, and I wondered why when having obviously spent so much on restoring the stonework the wooden sculpture had been overlooked? But these things so often are. Colin Wilbourn’s superb wooden sculpture ‘The Upper Room’ that had been located down beside the river for so many years had ended up rotting due to lack of maintenance.
This had been an intriguing piece of work; one of not being what it seemed at first sight. It had been constructed from ten elm trunks, representing the apostles and a viewing seat from which the separate individually carved trucks, none of which made any visual sense on their own, appeared to merge together to reveal a room with arch windows and a table set with simple plates and cups; the residue of a meal. But was the scene real, or was it not? Was one looking at ten separate, individual elm trunks each with an individual piece of carving on them, or was one glimpsing a fleeting image of the Last Supper? Things are not always what they seem, and that was the nagging feeling that held me as the Dean and I walked round the old cloisters towards the south door of the Cathedral proper ........
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Reviews.
*****
One of the best stories I have read in all my 72 years. It puts my philosophy into words better than I ever could have. Pay close attention to your own life and you may very well be given insights you would otherwise miss!
(See the full review by Wanda B on Amazon and Goodreads)
*****
Very thought provoking! Loved it!
(See the full review by Anna on Amazon and Goodreads)
*****
When you read a short story you don’t expect to have your thoughts on the relationship of past, present and future challenged. But this is exactly what Leslie Garland does with this new addition to his “Ref Grouse Tales”. He takes a seemingly simple tale told in a pub and turns it into a challenge of perception. The “Blue Horse” is something you can’t read just once. To fully appreciate the nuances of this story you will need a second reading.
The “Red Grouse Tales” are all wonderfully crafted and with each tale readers are treated to the rich, imaginative expertise of Leslie Garland. You will be touched and surprised by this wonderful tale.
(See the full review by Debbie Viscosi on Amazon and Goodreads)
