A Rumpole Christmas by John Mortimer

Author:John Mortimer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: VIKING ADULT
Published: 2009-10-29T07:00:00+00:00

“Now, as a sign of Christmas fellowship, will you all stand and shake hands with those in front of and behind you?” Eric, in full canonicals, standing on the steps in front of the altar, made this suggestion as though he had just thought of the idea. I stood reluctantly. I had found myself a place in the church near a huge, friendly, gently humming, occasionally belching radiator and I was clinging to it and stroking it as though it were a newfound mistress (not that I have much experience of new- or even old-found mistresses). The man who turned to me from the front row seemed to be equally reluctant. He was, as Hilda had pointed out excitedly, the great Donald Compton in person—a man of middle height with silver hair, dressed in a tweed suit, and with a tan which it must have been expensive to preserve during winter. He had soft brown eyes which looked away from me almost at once as, with a touch of dry fingers, he was gone and I was left, for the rest of the service, with no more than a well-tailored back and the sound of an uncertain tenor voice joining in the hymns.

I turned to the row behind to shake hands with an elderly woman who had madness in her eyes and whispered conspiratorially to me, “You cold, dear? Like to borrow my gloves? We’re used to a bit of chill weather round these parts.” I declined politely and went back to hugging the radiator, and as I did so a sort of happiness stole over me. To start with, the church was beautiful, with a high timbered roof and walls of weathered stone, peppered with marble tributes to dead inhabitants of the manor. It was decorated with holly and mistletoe. A tree glowed and there were candles over a crib. I thought how many generations of Coldsands villagers, their eyes bright and faces flushed with the wind, had belted out these hymns. I also thought how depressed the great Donald Compton—who had put on little gold half-glasses to read the prophecy from Isaiah: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful”—would feel if Jesus’ instruction to sell all and give it to the poor should ever be taken literally.

And then I wondered why it was that, as he had touched my fingers and turned away, I had felt that I had lived through that precise moment before.

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