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Chapter 399
The Church and All Its People

I’m not sure what it says about me and the world and where I am, but I fell in love with a lady yesterday and have been wondering about her ever since. She was a Jehovah’s Witness. She came around knocking at our door. They often do on a Saturday morning. Some people get really worked up about it. There’s been letters in the local paper. But what’s the point in getting het up? You don’t have to open the door. You can get rid of them firmly and fairly. They’re not really selling anything. It’s not as bad as the people with their Betterware catalogues.

Anyway, on Saturday morning, I opened the door, and there was this lady. Dark hair. Darker eyes. Very Mediterranean. Very. Very well-cut leather coat. Asking if I had ever thought about God. I was too distracted to give a smart riposte. I just mumbled something about haven’t we all? She asked if she could leave me a couple of booklets. I said of course. I didn’t want her to go. I suddenly felt very lonely. As if I needed to speak to someone. And her smile touched something inside me. Made me think of someone else, somewhere else. Better. A better person than me. A better person than I would ever be.

So these booklets. One of them, it had a dove on the cover. An illustration of a dove. Symbolising peace I suppose. But it made me think of something else. It made me think of somewhere else. A better place than I’m in now. Suddenly I was back in an overgrown garden. Tim Buckley’s Blue Afternoon was on the cassette player. Then sun was pleasantly warm. And I was sitting on a tree stump watching our Redhead carve. His first commission. A dove of peace. Carved out of the remains of an old elm tree which had been felled the previous winter in the great storm. He was making a fantastic job of it. Even then I remember wondering whether I could capture the moment forever.

To my right was a rickety wooden building, white, though the paint was peeling a little in the sun. It was used as a meeting place. A place of worship. It was only a little bit bigger than our lock up. But it had a certain charm. I recall mentioning this to our Redhead, adding that it would be a fantastic place to put on some live events of our own. I can see him now. Pausing. Tools in hand. Pushing back his cap and looking over at me. Don’t be getting any of your ideas now, he said sternly. This is important to me, and I don’t want to mess up, he added. I held up my hands in surrender. Nevertheless, I thought to myself.

Apart from the Studs Terkel and Andre Malraux volumes, one of the books I wish now I had have purloined from the old library I frequented so often when I was young was Black Music by LeRoi Jones. A collection of his writings on jazz. The free-er end of jazz. While a lot of the music seemed unattainable the writing was completely inspirational. It was one hell of an important primer. Great photos too. Moody black and white. And one of the stories in there I loved so much was about how oh I think it would have been the end of the ‘50s there was nowhere for the jazz underground to play in New York. So one of the ways to get round the rules was to get a few people together and form a church, and there in your place of worship you could get up and play what you wanted, as wild and a untrammelled as you wanted the music to be, and then stretch yourself a little further. The whole idea of churches popping up al over the place is an important part of American mythology isn’t it? Where would the great writers like Jim Dodge, Walter Mosely, and Barry Gifford be without their outlandish reverends of the whatever denomination? It’s not something we have here really is it? And certainly not back then. So certain breakaway sects were very much the exception then. The odd gathering of brethren. And it was one of these brethren groups that had commissioned our Redhead to come up with a dove of peace for their little meeting place out of the way.

I was never too up on the ins and outs of these brethren. I always suspected it was something to do with quakers or the pilgrim fathers. I used to joke and call them the new puritans. I don’t know if they would have taken that as an insult or a compliment. But they were strong people. The sort who would have set sail from Plymouth for a new found land. The sort of pioneers Willa Cather would write about. I’ve no idea even now what their real beliefs were. I’m not sure it really matters. Thinking about it though I realise you don’t see them around like you used to. Maybe they’ve left these suburbs for more hospitable climes? Who knows. But it is a long time since I’ve seen them preaching on street corners. Bearing witness among the Saturday morning shoppers. That took guts. And as I said they were tough cookies. In their way.

I’ve been trying to remember exactly how our Redhead came to be doing what he was doing. I recall him getting caught up in the art thing. I know he started going along to classes, and fell for the sculpture and carving side of things. When we’d got over taking the Michael, joking about Tony Hancock in The Rebel and all that, we realised he was serious and that he had something. We were really pleased for him, and very proud of him. He’d been diligently going along to classes, while we were still loafing around and dreaming of this, that and the other. He had shown some backbone. He liked the classes too. And funnily enough one of the people doing the classes with him was a girl who belonged to the brethren group. The brethren girls were quite distinctive. They always wore headscarves. Oh I don’t mean in the burkha sense. I mean in, oh I guess you could say, the Bobbie Gentry sense. At least that’s an image I have in my mind. It’s not a bad image to have in one’s mind is it? Anyway, this girl. I’m sorry I can’t remember her name. I know it was appropriately biblical. Ruth or something. She was quite lovely. But incredibly shy. Wary of the world outside the brethren. Bewildered by the late twentieth century. Weren’t we all? Our Redhead made friends with her. Gradually.

I’m not quite sure what the brethren’s policy was on friendships and relationships outside of the, shall we say, sect. Pretty much all anyone knew of them was their preaching up the shopping centre. The impassioned street sermons. The one preacher. The rest standing there giving support. Bearing witness. The lads in their shirt sleeves in all weathers. As I said, they were tough. The girls in their headscarves. Headscarves and long, long hair. And impenetrable facial masks. But to our Redhead people were people. And, yeah, gradually he got to know Ruth. He talked about her a lot. He admired her. A lot. He liked her apartness. He liked the way she kept herself to herself. Quietly got on with her work in the class. They got talking. Oh only about art. Wood and stone and paint and paper. But it was something that bound them together. Ruth by all accounts quietly encouraged our Redhead when doubt got the better of him. But you’re good, she’d say. You have a gift, she’d add. Not like the rest of us, and she’d wave her arm dismissively, and smile. Our Redhead said he would kill for that smile.

Genuinely they were firm friends. That was all they wanted. That was all they needed. Our Redhead met some of her folks. They knew he was never going to join the brethren. But they knew he was a good person. A gentle man. And this gentle man was no threat to them. So, they put up with him being friends with their Ruth. So things trundled along and someone got to talking about peace, and symbols of peace, and statues. It was decided doubtless democratically that what was needed for the altar, or wherever, was a wooden carving of a dove symbolising peace and hope. It was also decreed this dove should be carved or sculpted out of a fallen elm in the grounds near their meeting place. The elm being a casualty of the great storm, the hurricane that never would arrive according to the weatherman who clearly did not know which way the wind blew. And Ruth it was who convinced everyone that our Redhead was the man for the job. So it was that on a summer morning I was sitting on a tree stump, surrounded by long grass, listening to Tim Buckley, watching our Redhead at work, and wondering would the world be so right again.

And what do you know? Life eh? Sometime later senseless vandals, perhaps, religious rivals, possibly, or speculative developers, maybe, saw to it that the brethren’s meeting place was burned down. And with it went our Redhead’s dove of peace. By then Ruth was long gone too. Hopefully happily. She was a lovely lady. She should have been born somewhere else some other time, but shouldn’t we all? Anyway in time it seems the rest of the brethren moved out of the area too. You don’t see the distinctive headscarves around now. I guess it’s just as well. It’s not a nice world for unworldly folk these days. We could do with a few more symbols of peace around though. More people of peace. So, here’s to the doves wherever you may find them. Even if it’s on the front of a pamphlet. It’s not a bad thing for a lady with lovely dark eyes to be touting around. I wonder if she’ll call again?

© 2008 John Carney
Illustration © 2008 Alistair Fitchett