Village Vicar 9 in the beginning was the word

 

Chapter 9 – in the beginning was the Word.

 

Chaz did some digging into records, and when  he was next visiting Lucy Grey, he sang out as he heard noises over the hedge,

“Good morning, Sergeant Blake! Did you ignore your captains when you were in the army or is it just that you don’t like my career change?”

There was a moment’s silence, then a face, deeply scarred, popped over the hedge.

“You’re a captain?”

“I was, when I was in Iraq,” said Chaz.  “Yes, I’ve seen action.   I came out with no serious physical scars and no more mental scars than any of us. Active service was less kind to you.”

“They call it PTSD, and some people call it cowardice,” said Blake, gruffly.

“Usually the armchair officers who have not seen the elephant,” said Chaz. “You silly bugger, are you hiding from  Sir Tall-yarn Dickwit, as I have heard the man described?”

“That and I have these damned scars.  Not that they seem to scare Summer,” said Blake.

“Oh, Summer is one in a million,” said Chaz.  “A good kid; knows when to interfere constructively and who to involve in her interfering.  Now I see she’s made a decent sized hole in the hedge, are you coming through for gingerbread men and some of Lucy’s excellent tea? She doesn’t make tea which can barely struggle out of the spout like the W.I., even if she doesn’t make it strong enough to stand up and fight back like the Tank Corps do.”

“Well, the Tank Corps do carry their own stoves and boiling vessels,” said Blake. “I think they’d run their vehicles on tea if they could manage it.”

“Now that would solve the oil crisis,” said Chaz.  “Summer helped me ice my gingerbread men, and perhaps she’s told you enough that you can guess who we’ve been caricaturing shamelessly.”

The gingerbread men were definite caricatures, and Lucy tutted.

“You two are shameless!” she scolded.

“I know,” said Chaz. “But if I can’t let off steam by being shameless from time to time I would lose my temper with some people, and that would not do. You two are safe and I can order the sergeant to hold his tongue.

“Tell me more about them,” said Blake.

“The twin-set-and-pearls gingerbread lady is Mrs. Hadley.  She has her moments of being human, and I think she is learning to be less judgemental, but now and then she comes out with comments which rile me.  This morning she was going on about benefits scroungers, and I had to speak sharply about how not all people on benefits are scroungers.”

“I’m on benefits; because fighting for my country robbed me of my health with a bullet in my lung,” said Blake, forcefully.

“Perhaps you will permit me to tell her so,” said Chaz.

“I suppose so,” said Blake. “It’s real physical damage so she can’t make fun of me.”

“She won’t make fun of you in my hearing,” said Chaz, grimly. “I know what you’ve been through.”

“I know who this is,” Blake picked out a comic figure with an outsize moustache.  “Sir Tarleton.”

“And somehow I cannot see him improving,” sighed Chaz. 

“Who is the one with the Swastika –designed sweater?” asked Blake. Chaz sighed.

“Andy Pierce.  I ran into him in the pub.  He was banging on about how preaching inclusiveness was all very well so long as I didn’t mean a long list of people who don’t suit his idea of real people.  I hope he crashed his motorbike and has to be rescued by a black cop, and a Pakistani doctor and a Russian physiotherapist.”

“Unlike you to sound so vindictive,” said Lucy, mildly.

“He makes my skin ... no, he makes my soul crawl,” said Chaz.

“I don’t cook any better than any sergeant, I’m afraid, so I enjoy a bit of baking,” said Blake, looking guilty as he reached for a fourth gingerbread man.

“We all have our talents,” said Chaz.

“Mine is making crosswords,” said Blake.

“Really?” Chaz brightened. “Perhaps you will do one for me, for my sermon – I want words like ‘community’ and two paired answers, ‘charity’ and ‘love’ since the one is a translation of the other, with reference to that. I want to print it on the hymn sheets for the week as well as put it on the OHP, to fill in with the congregation.”

“You’d better let me have the sermon to work from.”

“So long as those three go in, and appropriate other words, I leave it to you, and I’ll put together the sermon around the crossword,” said Chaz.

 

On the way home, the vicar hesitated, and then knocked on the door of Mrs. Hadley.

“Vicar! Come in,” said Mrs. Hadley. “I can offer you tea? Earl Grey?”

Chaz managed not to shudder.

“I’m a bit full of tea, to be honest, Mrs. Hadley,” he said.  “Miss Grey introduced me to her neighbour, poor man, and I wanted to ask you, as a favour, to discreetly and subtly make him feel welcome.”

“What, that scruffy-looking benefit ...”

“War hero,” said Chaz. “You do not get to be made sergeant for being a scrounger, and he has a bullet in his lung.  He’s also seen the sort of things which would, I am sure, leave most people screaming and shaking,  whatever that desk-jockey of a little ... er, I mean Sir Tarleton ... might call PTSD.”  He chided the captain mentally for overwhelming the reverend.

Mrs. Hadley disliked Sir Tarleton cordially.

“He’s never seen active service, of course,” she said, with a touch of delighted malice.

“No, and I am wrong to call him down for something he cannot understand,” said Chaz.

“Well, some of us have more imagination,” said Mrs. Hadley. “Why, I recall how panicked I got, stuck in a lift in QD in town, and that’s nothing to what our poor soldiers go through!”

“Even so; and you have the ability to put yourself in their shoes,” said Chaz, laying it on with a trowel. “Now, I don’t suggest letting him think you are going out of your way for Blake, but perhaps a smile when you meet him shopping, and perhaps put it to Mrs. Beales that a talk from a man whose hobby is designing crosswords would be rather exciting. I’ve asked him to design a crossword to use as part of my sermon on Sunday, and I’m looking forward to it.”

“Oh my! I had no idea other ranks might be intellectuals!” said Mrs. Hadley, awed.

Chaz murmured something about it taking all sorts.

 

Sgt Blake produced a most excellent crossword, and Chaz happily scribbled his sermon around solving the clues.

He opened his sermon on Sunday,

“Now, I am sure some of you are wondering why we have a crossword on the overhead; well, perhaps by the time we have finished solving it together, you will understand a bit more; but I want you to reflect what crossword clues are, and why a crossword is therefore of relevance in church.”

He went on, reading out the clues to each word, trying to pick raised hands from people he knew less well, and hoping they had got the right answer.  His sermon was no more than an expansion of each clue, but it clarified them and made people think.

And when the crossword was complete, he asked,

“And now, who can tell me what the clues to a crossword are?” he asked. “No?  Don’t you think they are a set of instructions?  And I’ve just seen inspiration dawning on Summer Grey’s face; so what else is a set of instructions, Summer?”

“The Bible!” said Summer, bouncing in her seat.

“Quite correct!” said Chaz.  “And my thanks to Sergeant Ross Blake for making this crossword for me,  and I am hoping he will submit one for the parish magazine I am hoping to bring out – as well as anyone else who would like to present a puzzle, or a poem, or a short story, or a report on something in the village.  And I’m going to need a second editor.”

“That, I could take on, Captain,” said Blake.

“Excellent! Better a volunteer than ten pressed men, as they say,” said Chaz.

“Captain? He was a captain?” burst out Sir Tarleton, in outrage. “What is the army coming to, to make people like him an officer?”

“You shut your mouth, you desk-wallah,” said Blake. “Captain Charles Cunningham DSO  won that Distinguished Service Order singlehandedly taking out an enemy machine gun, because I went and looked up his record.  And he bowls better with grenades than any of your tinpot cricketers do with a cricket ball.”

“Yes, well, all that’s behind me, Sergeant, and I came to a higher calling of trying to rescue broken lives rather than taking them,” said Chaz.

“Well, some people need to know you’ve seen both sides,” said Blake, truculently, and started coughing.

Chaz was so delighted to see Mrs. Hadley go to help him and take him over to her cottage for a cuppa that he forgot to be cross about being outed.