The typo I caught in my last letter (“sin” for “son”!) reminds me of a couple of gaffes we both laughed out loud about, when I was still a boy.
Can I remind you?
The first must have happened when I was about 12 years old—old enough to know something of your history and clever enough to be able to appreciate the subtleties involved. You had been reading from the Bible—perhaps the text was the Epistle of the day—in the chancel of St. Botolph’s church in Aspley Guise, where you were Rector, standing behind the imposing golden lectern that carried the weight of that enormous book on the spread wings of a flying eagle.
The lofty tenor of your sonorous voice, so much loved by your congregation, still echoes in my mind as I recall this particular occasion, when the actor you had once wanted to be popped up from ancient history and turned to the congregation, instead of the altar, and bowed to them, your “audience”, more in appreciation for their imagined applause for your performance than in solemn reverence for the gospel.
Do you remember this?
Sitting in the Rector’s row beside my mother and my sister, I somehow caught your eye in one of those moments of I-know and I-know-you-know that degenerated, on my part, into barley contained giggles and, on yours, into a quick turn back to face the altar to conceal the realization on your face that you had been caught by your son in an act of vanity that would have been recognized by no one unfamiliar with the quandary of your choice, as a young man, between the theater and the ministry.
The second occasion was also at St. Botolph’s, this time in the vestry. I had just served as altar boy for the early communion service and was divesting my cassock and surplice while you replaced your robes on their hangers and sat down at the oak table in the middle of the room to perform the ritual act of signing the registry of services. Unscrewing the cap of your fountain pen, you noted down the date as required in the appropriate column and next to it, in the adjacent, wider column, the nature of the service—Holy Communion. Then you set out as usual to sign your name in the last column… and wrote, with a flourish, instead of Harry L. Clothier, Holy L. Clothier.
So, you see? I remember these things, the smallest things. I remember them, perhaps, because more than anything they tell me who you are; and because I remember nothing more strangely intimate than all the time we spent together in the chancel--or the vestry--of St. Botolph’s church in Aspley Guise, where you were Rector.
Good memories, then.
Your son,
Peter
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