No More Smiles At Evensong
Reading Time: 2 minutes
Let me set the scene: It is a cold Winter's day and I am homesick. I have only seven years and my red knees are frozen - sticking out, knobbly, from under short grey trousers. Out of the scullery door I can see the field and hear, in it, the slow chugging of the school generator. The light bulb swinging and slightly dimming between each generated chug. The smell of gaberdine rain-macs hung up to dry, And above the macs are cauliflowers hanging "to improve their flavour": It is a sickening combination! Shortly - because it is Sunday - we will have to wash and change into our cassocks and ruffles, then file solemnly, in pairs, along the pathway to the adjoining village church. Michael, a village boy, fourteen of thereabouts, will stand at the very back pumping the bellows up and down feeding the organ's greedy pipes. Before I move towards the front I can see Michael and as usual he catches my eye and smiles. A crooked missing-teeth smile, but friendly all the same. He alone isn't at all phased by us Choristers being 'toffs'. I smile right back and then I move up front and wait for the grumpy headmaster's baton to command my soprano notes. Every Sunday is the same - save for the next in line when Michael is replaced by a wheezing farmer of great age it seemed to me. At Choir practice on Monday evening the headmaster imparts the news that tomorrow we will be "doing a funeral". I am afraid of coffins, and refuse. Result - six strokes of his stinging cane and sent to bed in disgrace. After the funeral other boys relate that Michael was killed when he played in the field with his father's shotgun. I cried that Michael was gone, foreseeing loneliness and... no more smiles at Evensong. © Allen Ansell 2022
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