It shouldn’t happen to a vIcar (but It dId!)

Fed up with Trump? Lose yourself in this gloriously beguiling saga of a new vicar overcoming the suspicions of locals in a Yorkshire market town and helped by a war hero turned TV star

tAKING care not to scratch the shiny Mercs and Jaguars jammed into the car park, I propped my bike against a crumbling stone wall.

The great bell of nearby York Minster was booming 12 noon as I strolled through the doors of the private hospital and into the matron’s office.

‘I’ll tell Lord Feversham you’re here,’ she said, greeting me warmly. ‘I know he’s been looking forward to meeting you.’

My Lord was sitting up in bed as I was ushered in to meet him. In his early 50s, he had the look of a Tudor monarch: rotund and ruddy-faced, his bald head polished, his beard full and well-manicured.

A linen tent covered the lower half of his body, including what he described as his ‘gammy leg’.

‘I’m sorry about your leg,’ I began as I took off my cycle clips. But my priestly concern was dismissed with a wave of a hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ barked milord, grimacing in pain. ‘It’ll heal, like it’s healed before.’

And so began the most surreal job interview ever.

I’d been tipped for the post of vicar of Helmsley, a pretty market town in North Yorkshire. But the appointment had to be made by the lord of the manor — in this case, the bedridden aristocrat in front of me.

It all seemed a bit old-fashioned, I thought, given that this was 1997, and not the Middle Ages.

‘It seems that you’re the man of the moment, Wilbourne!’ boomed Lord Feversham. ‘Why is that?’

As I replied, he grimaced again. I wasn’t sure whether it was his leg or my answers which were paining him so much.

We talked about the history of the church and about my predecessors — most particularly the flamboyant character who had recently vacated the post.

He’d proved brilliant at making close connections with his flock — one too many close connections, as it turned out. aLL

hell had broken loose on Easter Day that year after photographs of him in bed with a woman who was not his wife appeared in a national Sunday newspaper.

‘Of all the stupid things — carrying on with one of your parishioners in Helmsley!’ exploded Lord Feversham. ‘ He should have kept his mistress in Leeds. Nobody would have found out!’

I do wonder about the aristocracy sometimes — it’s often said they have a different take on morality from us lesser mortals.

Still, I didn’t want to offend his Lordship, so I adjusted my face into an expression suggesting that, as a man of the cloth, I didn’t really approve of people keeping mistresses in Helmsley, or Leeds, or anywhere else.

We talked of the country churches that went with the job, and about how I might go about lowering the average age of the congregations, which as far as I could ascertain was around 75. And about how I proposed to get round the parishes on my bicycle, given North Yorkshire’s challenging terrain.

‘Well,’ said Lord Feversham finally, ‘go back to your Archbishop and tell him you’ll do. And when you get downstairs, tell matron I’m ready for lunch. I’ve had a look at the menu — I’ll have the roast pheasant and game chips.’

And that was it. The job was mine. I was vicar of acre upon acre of beautiful Yorkshire scenery, including the breathtaking Rievaulx Abbey. A little taste of heaven on earth? I couldn’t help thinking so. WE MOVED into our new vicarage just as Princess Diana died and the nation mourned. Our arrival was cheered by a visit from my new churchwarden, Alan, a retired GP in his mid-70s. ‘I’ve got a cauliflower for you, but it’s not quite ready,’ were his baffling first words, followed by a hasty retreat.

An hour later, he returned. ‘It’s ready now,’ said Alan. ‘I’ll bring it along. I just wanted to check you were still in.’

As if my wife and three daughters were going anywhere, with countless boxes to unpack and myriad DIY chores to complete. Half an hour later, Alan was back, this time with the cauliflower.

‘Cook it straight away and have it for your tea,’ he said. And with that he was gone. He clearly delivered cauliflowers like he’d once delivered babies.

So as Britain grieved, I set about turning our vast tenbedroom, stone-flagged vicarage into a cosy family home.

The parishioners were very proud of their ancient pile, complete with its own Tudor chapel, stubbornly refusing to sell it and buy a more modest house for their vicar.

But they didn’t have to live in it, with the wind blowing through the rattling lead windows and astronomical heating bills.

Before long, our children were organising relay races round the house, clattering along the 40ft landing and leaping down the spiral servants’ staircase as I

toiled with my hammer, stepladder and tool-kit.

In those early days, plenty of people ‘happened to be passing’, inspecting my DIY and checking out the new vicar and his brood. ‘People come to Helmsley to die,’ the chairman of the district council informed me glumly.

He was a thickset, elderly man with jowly cheeks and bloodhound eyes, much like an ancient prophet imparting his message of doom.

‘The last vicar but one used to come to school on a Friday morning and cane me,’ confided another, a grizzled old man. ‘He told us Jesus loved us, then whacked us to hammer home his message.’

He made it clear he wouldn’t be darkening the church’s doors, and I can’t say I blamed him.

‘This used to be a maternity home, too,’ declared a bell-shaped farmer’s wife over a cuppa in our draughty kitchen. ‘I had to give birth on a hard metal operating table here. I don’t want to make you blush, vicar, but me arse was freezing. It’s a wonder I didn’t get frostbite!’

There was one, however, whose visits were a welcome diversion.

‘It’ll take you 20 years to make any impact here,’ said Father Bert, a retired parish priest, cheerfully.

FaTHerBert came from the high church wing of the C of e — spick and span, ramrod straight and with a good head of immaculately parted silver hair. Unlike most of my visitors, he was good enough to lend me a hand.

It transpired he’d been a tail-end Charlie during World War II, manning the rear gun turret of a Lancaster bomber. and here he was now, manning the foot of my ladder as I tried to patch up a sagging ceiling. It was all to no avail as the plaster came crashing down, enveloping us in a cloud of grey dust.

‘ee, that took me back,’ said Father Bert. ‘I was always having dust like that fall about my ears, when those Messerschmitts used to take a pop at me! Let’s go for a spin while all this dust settles.’

Just for a moment I wondered whether he had a tame Spitfire parked up the lane, so I was vastly reassured when he opened the doors of a rather smart jeep.

‘You need one of these for where I’m taking you,’ he said as we roared up the 1:4 incline out of Helmsley. ‘You’ll never have seen a ford like this!’ shouted Father Bert a few miles into our journey.

Like all fords, the road dipped sharply into a stream — but this one was a raging torrent. The water splashed over the jeep as we dived in, but, undaunted, Father Bert then made a sharp left turn so that rather than rising out of the other side, we were driving along the river itself.

‘Bert, what on earth are you doing?’ I shouted in panic as a tidal surge engulfed the windscreen. I felt rather like a passenger in James Bond’s Lotus esprit submarine in The Spy Who Loved Me. ‘Get on to the road!’

‘This is the road, laddie!’ he consoled, as though driving along riverbeds formed a normal part of a country parson’s life. ‘Just a couple of hundred yards to go now.’

We bounced along a bit further before turning sharp right and onto dry land, pulling up at a smart stone- built farmhouse with a range rover parked outside.

‘Who’s this you’ve brought with you, Father?’ said a pleasantlooking lady in her 60s emerging from one of the barns with bits of straw in her hair. ‘I’m David, the new vicar of Helmsley,’ I said. I wasn’t sure what else to say, because I wasn’t sure why we’d stopped by.

‘ Oh, how lovely!’ Margaret beamed. ‘You’ll stay for a bit of lunch? Father always pops in around this time of day — in fact, every day for the last 18 years. I must be the most visited woman in the diocese!’ She looked at Bert fondly. ‘That would be lovely, but are you sure you’ve got enough?’ I asked anxiously.

‘Oh, yes, don’t you worry about that. I always cook a bit spare.’

severaLpans were bubbling on the aga in Margaret’s spacious kitchen overlooking the village green as we took our seats on Windsor chairs around a large oak table. First up was a thick slab of golden Yorkshire pudding, swimming in rich, brown gravy.

‘ Will you have a bit more?’ Margaret asked. as I finished my second piece of Yorkshire pudding, she put dish after dish of vegetables on the table: peas, carrots, green beans, swede, mashed potato and roast potatoes.

‘all grown by my own hand,’ she reassured me. ‘Father, will you carve?’

‘I always do,’ Father Bert replied, as a huge leg of lamb was placed before him. ‘Which one’s this?’

‘Oh, it’s Bertha,’ said Margaret. ‘I thought she was fattening up nicely, so I took her to Thompson’s in Helmsley last week for slaughter. I’ve frozen the rest of her.’

‘ah, God bless Bertha,’ Father Bert intoned, a somewhat unconventional grace. Miraculously I got through it all, and said eventually: ‘Well, I suppose we’d better be getting back to base. Margaret, that was scrumptious.’

‘ But you haven’t had your pudding yet,’ she protested, whipping away the dinner plates and bringing out a huge dish from the aga’s oven. It was bread and butter pudding, my favourite, cooked to golden perfection.

But still she wasn’t finished. She placed a quart jug of custard on the table before disappearing into the larder and emerging with a cut-glass bowl brimful with trifle.

‘Now, David, which are you going to try first?’ she asked.

Margaret would not take no for an answer, so bread and butter pudding was followed by trifle. ‘Now, how about a bit of ice cream to finish off?’

That afternoon I felt distinctly sleepy as we shot up and down hills on our drive home. We were silent for most of the journey as I pondered two questions. First, how had Bert ever summoned up the energy to visit a single