V - The Good Woman

‘She was a good woman’, the Pastor intoned, closing his Bible and signalling for the viewing of the body to begin. The congregation muttered their agreement and with sighs and handkerchiefs dabbed to weeping eyes, they made ready to pay their last respects to one of their own. Ties were straightened, waistcoats realigned over spreading bellies, new hats primped. Fine new high heeled shoes click-clacked on the flag stoned floor. Yes, she was a good woman.

In our congregation of good people are some I would like to introduce. Some, I am sure, you know by sight if not by name.

Let us begin with the Pastor, a good holy man who, overzealously ‘beating the hell out’ of his wayward daughter, put her in hospital and, on her release, she was taken into care. His wife, a good woman, stood by him. After all, it was for ‘the girls own benefit’, he only beat her because he cared. They were good people.

Next, see the family man; one family here, the other in Jamaica. His philandering is well known but he always repents, therefore, he is a good man. His wife has not spoken to him civilly for 20 years but she will never leave him, he is ‘the cross she has to bear’.

Have you seen these faces before, are they in any way familiar to you?

Skipping backwards a little past the young couple with features hardly formed we see the small children, almost oblivious to the day’s events, happy to play amidst the stalls; tag or, if allowed, kiss chase.

Quickly, see the large woman approaching. As stately as a battleship, crying uncontrollably, a church sister. For the past thirty years she did her best to support our good woman in her moments of need. She even took care of the ‘messy’ conjugal side of things when the good woman decided that her husband’s demands were too much for her to bear. She is also a good woman. She was discrete at all times and no opprobrium was visited upon her, the good woman or their families. Indeed, her discretion was well known by all the ‘unfortunates’ she undertook the same service for.

A woman stops to kiss the impossibly happy, made-up, face of the corpse in the open coffin. I can tell you nothing of her save that when the throat cancer that finally devoured our good woman was finally diagnosed, she shrieked loudest for the shunning of science and modern medicine and to ‘put your trust in the Lord’. On this occasion the Lord and modern medicine could not halt the inevitable slide towards the next world.

In the queue to view the coffin one, two, three, four, five women back. Do you see the two women? One youngish, mid- twenties/thirty maybe, dragging along a wilful girl-child, the other; forty something, all flowery hat and quiet demeanour accompanied by a tall slender young man with a perpetual scowl. His eyes darting as if seeking to escape from the shuffling throng. The younger of the two came to church, at her family’s insistence, to find a good man, which she did. He is long gone now but the evidence of his existence is in her hand.

The older woman took the opposite route; her child was born of illicit trysting with a man who said he loved her. Maybe he did, who can tell, all that is known is that he stayed with her for two years after the boy was born and then, one day went out and never came back again. She joined the church shortly after and has been repenting her sin of the flesh ever since. She never speaks to her son of the man who would not marry her, despite years of begging; she refuses to say anything about him except that ‘the Lord would not place upon your back a burden to heavy to carry’.

Her son, ‘the burden’, though seemingly quiet and calm, hates all this. He hates all these people that see him as the embodiment of his mother’s sin. He has sworn that one day he will up and leave like his father did. He wishes to be young before he gets old and he has no chance of that here. He feels as if he is just ‘sitting in God’s waiting room’, waiting to die.

Just behind them is a portly, wealthy looking couple. The man walks with his head bowed as if in reverence for our lost friend. This may be the case or it may have some bearing on the son he lost a year or so ago. The boy wanted some ‘respect’ and to be in with the local street posse. His initiation was to steal a car, which he did. When the police gave chase he drove faster and more erratically in an attempt to get away. Although the gang members pleaded for him to stop he would not. The survivor explained that the boy was more afraid of what his father might do or say than anything the police and the courts might do to him. The car came to rest in the front garden of a house in Haringey, the front seat passenger and the lad behind him landed in the ornamental fishpond. The survivor was sitting behind the driver; in fact, it was the driver’s body being safely anchored by a seat belt that stopped him joining his friends in the pond. The driver’s face was unrecognisable; no open coffin for that burial.

His wife wore a new designer dress and held her head high; she had their place in the community to think about. After all, they were good people.

We three stand upon the rostrum overlooking our mother’s displayed corpse. We stand like statues, unmoving; beacons to the future. Like a row of medals to show what this good woman has achieved. However, there is something, someone missing. The medals are not a full set. Leaving aside the three who died before they were five, we are missing one of our number; our eldest brother who, at the age of twenty six finally plucked up the courage to tell our parents he was gay.

Our father immediately disowned him while our mother chose to pray for him. She wept, moaned and pleaded for him to abjure his abomination. She even called on her church fellows to pray for him and ask for his demons to be cast out.

In the end my brother recanted. He would try and make her proud. He married a pleasant, plain, plump girl who was happy to be married to a bright boy who was going places. She accepted him as her husband and did her best to please him.

The good people heaped congratulations upon them, score one for God it seemed. Three years later the ‘going places’ guy took a long walk off a high ladder with only a short length of electrical cable to support him. His, now pregnant, wife found him in the middle of the night, it appears. I can’t be sure as she was found the following afternoon by worried neighbours, catatonic and sitting in a pool of blood created by her miscarriage.

That was almost 20 years ago, we have not heard from her for 15 or so.

Of the good woman herself well, let me see….Lay down with a dog and woke with fleas, decided that she had made her bed and now she must lie on it, married in haste repented at leisure, chose to be fruitful, went forth and multiplied. Even at times when the family was fast outgrowing our father’s income, she never failed to pay her tithe to the church. That is the nature of a good woman. When our father beat us for whatever reason she stood and watched and, after he had gone said, ‘Let that be a lesson to you’. Even now I am not sure what we were supposed to be learning.

So here we stand, the statues on show for the congregation. I will be glad when this day is over. My business with these people will be concluded and I will never have to deal with them again. I am filled from head to foot with bile and cannot choke back much more. I am drowning in the performance and the hypocrisy and I need someone to throw me a line.

Another problem is that I am jealous. So, so jealous of the simplicity of their lives; their blind faith. Sometimes I regret my curiosity, the fact that I learnt to ask questions, to see people as people rather than divine them by dogma, to recognise contradictions. I could never accept the blond haired, blue eyed saviour they have. Born in a time and place where all were dark; I can never accept a book of tales that bolstered apartheid and slavery; that marked me as a second class citizen.

I am jealous of their simple, blind faith for, without it I fear, I can never be a ‘good man’.