suspects. The little greaseball Blair was keen, for obvious reasons. Red faces all round when Jeavons tosses it back at them and says he’ll retire instead. What he wanted, we discover, was his freedom, to pursue his specialist interests, hover over psychic surgeons in Chile.’
‘At the Church’s expense?’
‘Dunno. My information is that he’s back in the country and available as a consultant to selected clerics – although I was once told it would be unwise to refer just anybody.’
‘Huw talked about him once,’ Merrily recalled. ‘Only—’
‘Because, if anyone’s on the edge of a crisis, Jeavons has been known to tip them over.’
‘Only, Huw reckoned he was mad,’ Merrily said.
Since the days when hundreds of medieval pilgrims had dragged their crippled limbs to the shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe in Hereford Cathedral, the Church had become increasingly uncomfortable about healing. You prayed for sick people, you might even light a candle, and if there was a cure you thanked God. Beyond that, a certain wariness crept in. Not strictly our thing .
In which case, what was the Church’s thing? The way congregations were crashing, it was clear that this was a question not going unasked. While Jane was changing out of her school gear, Merrily dug out the report: ‘A Time to Heal: A Contribution towards the Ministry of Healing’. In his introduction, George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, referred to ‘Our Lord’s injunction to heal the sick,’ and suggested that the report might be studied and reflected upon and considered for action ‘as appropriate in dioceses and parishes’.
As appropriate . Merrily smiled.
In relation to parishes, the report recommended that clergy involved in healing should consider combining their resources with those of doctors, community nurses and carers operating according to a ‘working theology’ of the Ministry of Healing.
Oh, sure. Like Kent Asprey and Lorraine Bonner, the district nurse, who maintained she’d seen too much of life to be anything but an atheist.
The report was sniffy about some healing services. Lack of preparation, misunderstandings, unjustified claims and emotionalism leading to subsequent disappointment . It was more supportive of what it called Intercessory Groups, in which a number of ‘instructed persons’ met regularly to pray for the sick.
Laying-on of hands, by the minister, in the context of a normal service or Eucharist was also accepted, as were Services of Penance, underlining the healing benefits of forgiveness.
Merrily looked up Canon Llewellyn Jeavons in the phone book. There was a Jeavons L.C.D. at Suckley.
Mad , Huw had said, without explanation.
She knew where Suckley was – a rambling hamlet not far over the Herefordshire border and not far at all, in fact, from the Frome Valley where Lol Robinson was still living out of suitcases in the granary at Prof Levin’s recording studio.
Merrily sometimes caught a frightening image of herself in twenty years’ time. It was in sepia: this small, monklike person in the bottom left-hand corner of the huge old vicarage, hunched over the desk. Dark. Chilly. Cramped. Very much alone.
She saw it quite often these days. Sometimes it was so detailed, and yet so stark, that it was almost like an engraving.
That night, building a fire of apple logs in the sitting-room inglenook, Jane said, ‘You don’t make fires like this when I’m not here, do you? Like last weekend, for instance.’
‘I was busy.’
‘I think you probably didn’t come in here even once. I could almost smell the damp.’
‘Saturday night, I wrote the sermon. Sunday night, we had the service and then the Prossers came to tell me about Ann-Marie. Wasn’t really worth it afterwards.’
The paper and the kindling flared yellow. Jane, on the hearthrug in her jeans and an overstretched white sweater, looked like a little girl again. Seventeen now – scary.
‘It’s just...’ The kid
‘At the Church’s expense?’
‘Dunno. My information is that he’s back in the country and available as a consultant to selected clerics – although I was once told it would be unwise to refer just anybody.’
‘Huw talked about him once,’ Merrily recalled. ‘Only—’
‘Because, if anyone’s on the edge of a crisis, Jeavons has been known to tip them over.’
‘Only, Huw reckoned he was mad,’ Merrily said.
Since the days when hundreds of medieval pilgrims had dragged their crippled limbs to the shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe in Hereford Cathedral, the Church had become increasingly uncomfortable about healing. You prayed for sick people, you might even light a candle, and if there was a cure you thanked God. Beyond that, a certain wariness crept in. Not strictly our thing .
In which case, what was the Church’s thing? The way congregations were crashing, it was clear that this was a question not going unasked. While Jane was changing out of her school gear, Merrily dug out the report: ‘A Time to Heal: A Contribution towards the Ministry of Healing’. In his introduction, George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, referred to ‘Our Lord’s injunction to heal the sick,’ and suggested that the report might be studied and reflected upon and considered for action ‘as appropriate in dioceses and parishes’.
As appropriate . Merrily smiled.
In relation to parishes, the report recommended that clergy involved in healing should consider combining their resources with those of doctors, community nurses and carers operating according to a ‘working theology’ of the Ministry of Healing.
Oh, sure. Like Kent Asprey and Lorraine Bonner, the district nurse, who maintained she’d seen too much of life to be anything but an atheist.
The report was sniffy about some healing services. Lack of preparation, misunderstandings, unjustified claims and emotionalism leading to subsequent disappointment . It was more supportive of what it called Intercessory Groups, in which a number of ‘instructed persons’ met regularly to pray for the sick.
Laying-on of hands, by the minister, in the context of a normal service or Eucharist was also accepted, as were Services of Penance, underlining the healing benefits of forgiveness.
Merrily looked up Canon Llewellyn Jeavons in the phone book. There was a Jeavons L.C.D. at Suckley.
Mad , Huw had said, without explanation.
She knew where Suckley was – a rambling hamlet not far over the Herefordshire border and not far at all, in fact, from the Frome Valley where Lol Robinson was still living out of suitcases in the granary at Prof Levin’s recording studio.
Merrily sometimes caught a frightening image of herself in twenty years’ time. It was in sepia: this small, monklike person in the bottom left-hand corner of the huge old vicarage, hunched over the desk. Dark. Chilly. Cramped. Very much alone.
She saw it quite often these days. Sometimes it was so detailed, and yet so stark, that it was almost like an engraving.
That night, building a fire of apple logs in the sitting-room inglenook, Jane said, ‘You don’t make fires like this when I’m not here, do you? Like last weekend, for instance.’
‘I was busy.’
‘I think you probably didn’t come in here even once. I could almost smell the damp.’
‘Saturday night, I wrote the sermon. Sunday night, we had the service and then the Prossers came to tell me about Ann-Marie. Wasn’t really worth it afterwards.’
The paper and the kindling flared yellow. Jane, on the hearthrug in her jeans and an overstretched white sweater, looked like a little girl again. Seventeen now – scary.
‘It’s just...’ The kid
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