Cheerful House

Charismata

Chapter 105: Cheerful House

Jo Fletcher had wanted, with the clean desire of a young curate not yet properly wounded by competence, to prevent disaster before it arrived.

By ten past eight on Saturday she was standing in the side hall of Saint Mark's, Sunderland, looking at a handmade sign that said WELCOME NIGHT COMPANIONS and understanding she had instead hosted it.

The sign had stars on it.

That was how sin entered the Church now. Through felt-tip optimism.

The parish hall smelled of tomato soup, radiator dust, and women trying very hard not to let awkwardness become visible.

At the far end, behind the folding screen they had called the quiet space, sat Tia Harwood in a borrowed beanbag chair staring at the emergency exit as if it had personally offended her.

Sixteen. Grey hoodie. No patience whatsoever for Christian atmosphere.

Her mother Lorna was in the kitchen making tea for volunteers instead of sitting down, which Jo now understood to be the central indictment of the whole evening.

The volunteers themselves were good people.

This was the problem.

Mrs. Cowell from the flower rota. Alan Briggs from men's breakfast. Sandra Pike, retired teaching assistant, smiling so continuously she had moved beyond kindness into theatrical endurance.

All of them taking turns being calm in three-hour blocks because Jo had let a deanery handout describe that as wisdom.

She could still hear Ruthie in the car twenty minutes earlier.

How many cheerful Christians are currently making that family worse.

Jo had said three.

Ruthie had replied,

Four. You're driving.

Now the car was gone. Ruthie had not come in. At the curb she had only said,

I am not the answer to your bad idea. You are. Ring if somebody collapses or starts narrating.

Then she had sent Jo back inside with nothing but terror and the command to take the sign down first.

Jo did that now. Pulled the starry WELCOME NIGHT COMPANIONS poster off the door before anyone could object.

Sandra turned from the kettle.

"Oh. Were we not wanting that."

"No," Jo said.

"We were never wanting that."

Sandra looked confused rather than hurt. Another mercy.

"Right."

"I'm sorry."

"No need."

"There is."

Tia's voice came from behind the screen.

"Could everyone stop saying sorry like it's a hymn."

Jo closed her eyes.

"Yes."

She went round the screen.

There was no quiet in the quiet space. It had only shrunk the mistake.

Someone had put a printed Bible verse on the chair beside Tia and a plate of untouched digestives on the floor. On the windowsill lay Jo's own clipboard with the rota times.

19:00 Sandra

22:00 Alan

01:00 Jo

Tia saw her looking.

"You made me a timetable."

"I know."

"Why."

Jo answered with the only dignity left to her.

"Because I was frightened and organized the wrong thing."

Tia considered that.

"That does sound churchy."

From the kitchen, Lorna laughed once and then turned it into a cough.

Jo came back out.

Lorna was still at the counter with the mugs. Still upright only by old working-class habit and maternal shame. Still thanking everyone who had already made themselves too visible.

Bev Harwood, the aunt from three doors down, stood in the doorway to the hall with her coat still on and the face of a woman trying not to say I told you to keep them at mine because there were clergy present and she had manners.

Jo crossed to her.

"You were right."

Bev shrugged with professional sadness.

"Usually am. Doesn't help the moment."

"Can they come to yours now."

Bev glanced toward the screen.

"I've been saying that since half six."

The problem was not only the hall. It was the audience. People had gathered because kindness in public made more sense to them than privacy in a terrace.

Alan was setting out more chairs. Mrs. Cowell had begun whispering about prayer cover to the retired nurse from the parish lunch team. Sandra asked Lorna whether she fancied toast in the voice of a woman who had never been told that excessive gentleness could become surveillance.

Then Lorna dropped a spoon.

Only a spoon.

But the sound made everybody turn at once.

Too many faces. Too much concern. No house left in it now. Only scene left in it.

Lorna bent to pick it up and stayed down.

Not theatrically. Not fainting. Just there on the kitchen lino with one hand on the cupboard door, shoulders shaking once as if the body had finally stopped taking instruction.

Bev was beside her before anyone else moved.

"Out," Bev said to the room with such local authority Jo nearly thanked God aloud.

"All of you out of this kitchen unless your surname is Harwood or you know where the clean towels are."

Sandra backed away at once. Alan looked toward Jo for procedure.

Jo heard the clipboard on the windowsill in her head like a rebuke from paper itself.

"Do what she says," Jo told him.

"Now."

The volunteers drifted into the hall, stunned by how quickly good intentions had become crowding.

Tia appeared behind the screen. Saw her mother on the floor. Saw the ring of people already trying not to be a ring.

"I told you," she said to no one and everyone.

"This place keeps smiling at us."

Jo stepped forward. Stopped. Finally learned enough to stop.

Bev looked up from the floor.

"Curate."

"Yes."

"Phone the doctor if you must. Phone Hull if you must. But mostly phone yourself and ask why you moved them out of a house that knew their names."

Jo did not defend herself.

There was nothing left worth defending.

She went into the vestry because it was the nearest room ugly enough to tell the truth and rang Hull from the parish landline with hands that would not keep still.

Ruthie answered on the second ring.

"Tell me."

Jo said it all in one breath. Hall. Rota. Screen. Tia. Lorna on the floor. Bev furious and correct.

Silence.

Then Ruthie said,

"Good."

Jo almost wept.

"How is any of that good."

"Because now you know what failed. Put Bev in charge of the family. Put the volunteers in charge of chairs somewhere else. Get the mother horizontal. Get the daughter back under a ceiling that recognizes her. I'm sending Miriam."

"To Sunderland."

"Yes."

"Tonight."

"Yes."

Jo leaned against the vestry wall.

"We made a cheerful house."

"I know."

"I thought help would help faster if it looked organized."

"That is why God made terraces and aunties."

Jo covered her eyes with one hand.

"What do I do until she arrives."

Ruthie's answer came at once.

"Take down every sign. Burn the rota if you're feeling liturgical. Put tea in Bev's hand. And don't let one more person thank Lorna for coping."

When Jo returned to the hall, Alan was already stacking chairs without being asked. Sandra had found towels. Mrs. Cowell was crying quietly over the biscuits, which at least meant she had become less useful to herself.

Bev had got Lorna onto one of the lower couches in the back room, not the designated quiet space but the coat room where the church Christmas decorations lived in plastic boxes and nobody would ever call the lighting therapeutic.

Tia sat on the floor by her mother's feet. Not calmer. Less watched.

Jo took the clipboard from the windowsill and tore the rota page out.

Then another. Then the title sheet.

Night Companions.

Ministry.

Response.

All of it.

She put the scraps in the kettle bin under old tea bags and felt, for the first time that night, almost Christian again.

Outside, the estate kept its orange streetlamp weather.

Inside, Saint Mark's had lost the performance but not yet found the room.

Miriam would have to do that.