No Saints at All
Saints’
By Dawn Knox
brandy
Hettie Forbes -Snell decided against
catching the evening bus from outside the Willows Retirement Home where she was
senior nurse. After such a difficult day, she wanted time to unwind before she
reached the vicarage. She was smarting at the way Matron had treated her. While
the Inspectors had been probing the kitchen, the bedrooms, the accounts and the
medical cupboard, Matron had accompanied them, leaving Hettie in charge. It
hadn’t been Hettie’s fault that a group of the more trying guests had ended up
in Basilwade A&E after a boating accident earlier that day but Matron, who’d
been as jumpy as drops of water in a sizzling frying pan, had been unnecessarily
critical. And Hettie had been very hurt.
After all, today had been painful enough without a
tongue-lashing from Matron.
Today was her birthday.
No one had remembered, not even her brother, Wilbur, but that
wasn’t surprising because he was always so preoccupied, and if she was honest,
totally self-centred. He might be the parish vicar but he was certainly no
saint. Mrs McSquirtle didn’t help either. She was the housekeeper although her
title was a misnomer because she did very little in the way of keeping house.
She couldn’t keep much of anything – the vicarage accounts, secrets, her
temper and often her balance. This was mainly due to her partiality to a nip of
medicinal brandy every now and again, and often in between as well. She spoiled
Wilbur by baking numerous batches of shortbread but often forgetting to do the
laundry, clean the house, do the shopping, tidy the garden or prepare meals.
“Please have more charity, Hettie, dear,” Wilbur would say
when she complained, “Mrs McSquirtle has a heart of gold.
“And a liver full of your brandy,” Hettie would
mutter.
“What’s that, dear? Speak up!”
But Hettie would simply get on with whatever needed to be
done, thinking dark thoughts about the small, barrel-shaped woman she privately
thought of as Big Mac.
When Hettie finally opened the front door, the smell of
burned food assaulted her nostrils, darkening her mood. In an ideal world, it
was at this point that family and friends would suddenly leap out of cupboards
shouting “Surprise!” and there would be an enormous cake and balloons saying
Happy 50th. However, she didn’t have any family other than
Wilbur, and not many friends. And, this was not an ideal world, this was All
Saints’ Vicarage, Basilwade.
“Is that you, Hettie?” Wilbur called from the study. Without
waiting for an answer, he added, “Bring me a slice of toast with my cuppa, will
you? I’m meeting the ladies of the Mothers’ Union in a few minutes. I’ll eat
dinner when I get back.”
A dinner, she knew, he expected her to prepare, to replace
whatever Big Mac had incinerated.
By the time Wilbur returned, Hettie had made Shepherd’s Pie,
scraped most of the charred remains of whatever it was that Big Mac had put in
the oven hours before, and was about to run a bath for herself.
“Hettie, would you be a dear and help with the travel
arrangements for the Mothers’ Union annual outing to Bognor? You know how good
you are at that sort of thing… Hettie? Hettie?”
She crept upstairs pretending not to have heard and locked
herself in the bathroom. She wanted to cry. The only celebration of her fiftieth
birthday would be a lonely bubble bath.
“Hettie are you still in there?” Wilbur called ten minutes
later as he rapped on the bathroom door, “I desperately need your help to look
up some coach prices on the Internet. You know how useless I am on that
computer.”
Hettie took a deep breath and sank beneath the mound of
bubbles.
The water had gone cold and her skin was wrinkly before she
got out of the bath but by now Wilbur would be asleep. She dried herself and
crept along the corridor towards her bedroom accompanied by Mrs McSquirtle’s
snores and Wilbur’s squeaks and grunts. She would be up and out of the vicarage
before either of them woke in the morning but they would both be home all day,
so perhaps between them they would organise the MU trip. However, she knew they
wouldn’t. Wilbur would spend all day organising his stamp collection and
thinking about Sunday’s sermon while Big Mac would bake shortbread. The
arrangements would still be there to do when she got home.
Hetty climbed into bed. She was too tired and too dispirited
to read her book that evening. Usually, it was her only escape from normal life.
Tonight, she didn’t want to be reminded that there was such a thing as
escape because it was a luxury she knew wasn’t available to her. It was
so unfair. She was locked into her life with no prospect of getting away. Hettie
looked at the clock. It was two minutes past midnight. Her birthday was over.
She lay awake until the early hours, thinking. Something had to change and the
time was now or her life would be over before it had begun.
The following evening, Hettie left
work promptly. Most of the guests had been rather subdued after their brief stay
in hospital, and that morning, Matron had made her a cup of tea which was
probably the closest she’d come to giving Hettie an apology, so it hadn’t been a
bad day.
“Is that you, Hettie? Wilbur called from his
study.
Hettie sniffed the air. No smell of burning. In fact, no
smell at all which meant that either Big Mac had made salad for dinner or more
likely, she hadn’t got around to preparing anything.
“Hettie! Is that you?”
“Yes, Wilbur.”
“Thank goodness! I’ve got a meeting with the choirmaster and
I need to know you’ve progressed with the MU outing. Oh, and I wonder if you
could bring me a cup of tea before you start dinner…”
By the time Wilbur returned from his
meeting, Hettie had made toad-in-the-hole and worked out prices for the trip to
Bognor. The sooner it was done, the sooner she could run a bath, climb into bed
and escape into her book.
“So, the coach will arrive at the carpark nearest the
seafront at about eleven o’clock and then you can go to a café for tea or walk
along the promenade. I’ve booked you in for lunch at—”
“Hettie! You keep saying you. I shan’t be going. I’ll
be much too busy.”
“Well, I’ve booked them in for lunch then,” said
Hettie.
“No, no! I can’t send the ladies on their own! I was hoping
you’d volunteer to accompany them. You know what a mess we got in last time when
we lost three ladies.”
“Since we’re being particular about pronouns, we
didn’t lose three ladies, you lost three ladies. I was working
that day. You were in charge.”
“Oh, don’t be so petty, Hettie! Anyway, I’ve arranged the
trip for a Saturday so you won’t be working.”
“No, you didn’t arrange the trip. I
did.”
“Sometimes you’re impossible! I expect you’ll be reminding me
of how I borrowed your fluffy penguin when I was seven, next…”
“Took,” muttered Hettie, “You took my fluffy
penguin.”
“What you need is a lot more charity and forgiveness,
Hettie!”
She sighed. She might as well give in because she knew he
wouldn’t let up until she’d agreed to go on the trip.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll go with them.”
“That’s the ticket! I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time. The
ladies of the MU are wonderful. Well, all except for Mrs Fanshawe. She’s a bit
of a madam. But the others are fine. Oh, and Mrs Myers. She can be a tartar
too…”
Hettie didn’t reply. She’d gone into the kitchen to start
dinner.
“Well, if they don’t call you Saint
Hettie,” said the driver, as he pulled into the seafront car park in Bognor,
“they definitely should. I’ve never met anyone with such
patience.”
“There’s no point getting cross with the ladies,” said
Hettie, “but I’m definitely no saint.”
“So, what’s your secret?”
“Secret?” Hettie asked, her cheeks aflame, “I don’t have a
secret,” she said quickly, hugging her bulging rucksack to her chest.
“I just meant you kept your cool despite that woman with the
hair that looks like shredded wheat telling everyone what to do in the case of
earthquake or tsunami.”
“Ah, that’s Mrs Myers, the church warden. She’s always
prepared for every eventuality. And that means everyone else has to be prepared
too, whether they like it or not.”
“She weren’t prepared when that woman threw up over her
though were she?”
“True. Although she did manage to catch most of it in her
hat.”
“Yeah, I’ll give her full marks for that,” said the driver,
nodding his approval.
The day had been exhausting. Hettie
had to remove three ladies from the amusement arcade where they’d got into an
argument with the manager.
“This place is a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah!” said Mrs
Myers as Hettie apologised to the man and led the ladies away.
“Yeah, sod ‘em,” said Mrs Fanshawe.
“And Gomorrah,” said Mrs Yates.
Hettie took them to the Cheeky Cockle Café where the others
were waiting to start lunch. A headcount revealed that someone was missing and
Hettie’s sharp ears heard a loud sobbing emanating from the Ladies, which proved
to be the missing person. Nervous Miss Stibbins was inconsolable after a freak
gust of wind had blown a dish of jellied eels down her front and candyfloss into
her hair earlier that morning. She wept as Hettie tried to pick the sticky, pink
bits from her hair and mop her front with a serviette but finally, she allowed
herself to be led, red-eyed to the place Mrs Myers had saved for her. On
reflection, it would have been better if Hettie had swapped places with Miss
Stibbins and saved her the lecture from Mrs Myers about hurricanes and
evacuation procedures. It was fortunate that one of the ladies carried smelling
salts in her handbag and was able to revive Miss Stibbins.
After lunch, Hettie let the ladies loose on Bognor once more
for an afternoon stroll but despite dire warnings of being left behind if they
weren’t back at the coach at five o’clock, three women were late. Hettie finally
found Mrs Myers, Mrs Fanshawe and Mrs Yates, in the amusement arcade haranguing
the manager again.
“Out!” Hettie shouted, her arm extended and her finger
pointing at the door, “Or we’ll leave you behind!”
The open-mouthed ladies followed her.
“I shall tell her brother how she’s treated us,” whispered
Mrs Myers. “It’s outrageous!”
The other two nodded.
But Hettie didn’t care. She’d brought thirty-four women to
Bognor and she would send thirty-four back to Wilbur – come what may. No one
would be lost on her watch. And if they weren’t happy with the way she’d treated
them, they could take it up with her brother when they arrived in Basilwade.
She wouldn’t, however, be accompanying them home. After
shepherding them on to the coach, she thanked the driver.
“I’m so sorry to do this to you, but I won’t be travelling
home with you. I hope the ladies behave.”
As the driver spluttered with indignation, Hettie climbed out
of the coach and walked briskly away, clutching her rucksack tightly. Inside,
she had her toiletry bag, a few clothes, her passport, a fluffy penguin and a
train ticket from Bognor to London St. Pancras. From there, she would travel by
Eurostar to Paris.
And then? Well, she’d make up her mind when she got
there.
Links to previous stories in the
series:
1) A Question of Timing: https://cafelitcreativecafe.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-question-of-timing.html
2) In MaryWorld: https://cafelitcreativecafe.blogspot.com/2017/09/in-maryworld.html
3) Knit and Natter: https://cafelitcreativecafe.blogspot.com/2017/11/knit-and-natter.html
5) Sydney Jugg’s Book of Grievances: https://cafelitcreativecafe.blogspot.com/2018/04/sydney-juggs-book-of-grievances.html
6) Is there Anybody There?: https://cafelitcreativecafe.blogspot.com/2018/04/is-there-anybody-there.html
7) Going Freelance: https://cafelitcreativecafe.blogspot.com/2018/05/going-freelance.html
8) So App-ealing: https://cafelitcreativecafe.blogspot.com/2018/06/so-app-ealing.html
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