Guest Towel

Charismata

Chapter 115: Guest Towel

Mrs. Noreen Bell of Leicester had spent thirty-two years teaching infants not to lick paint and six recent months discovering that the Church contained adults equally in need of basic physical warnings.

Tonight's warning was:

do not make a guest out of a frightened woman

She had written it on the back of the Hull sheet in green felt-tip while waiting for the kettle to boil and then decided it was not yet sharp enough.

The frightened woman in question was called Celia Dacre. Thirty-nine. Choir alto. Three nights no proper sleep. One husband at sea. One daughter at university. One semi-detached house now full of well-meaning parish traffic because Celia had made the mistake, during coffee after Eucharist, of saying to the wrong curate that the hall clock had begun repeating the peace.

By teatime every decent Christian in Leicester wanted to help.

So she was in Noreen's dining room instead.

The house wasn't dramatic.

Two dining chairs with rush seats. One sideboard carrying a dish of oranges and a stack of unopened parish magazines. One guest towel in the downstairs lavatory that Noreen now regarded with suspicion because Marsh and Ruthie had permanently damaged her confidence in respectable hospitality.

Celia sat at the table in her own cardigan with both hands around a mug of tea she had not yet managed to drink.

"I'm sorry."

Noreen answered by putting a plate of toast in front of her so firmly the butter slid.

"No guest language."

Celia blinked.

"What."

"No sorry, no thank you as if you've booked a room, no I'm being a nuisance. You are borrowing my dining room for the night because your house won't stop commenting on your life and Saint Barnabas has already nearly turned you into a pastoral initiative."

From the doorway, Curate Ben Wilkes said,

"That feels slightly unfair."

Noreen did not look round.

"Ben."

"Yes."

"Go home."

"I only came to check if—"

"That is precisely what you came to do."

He shifted. Young enough to learn. Old enough to be irritating while learning.

"Hull said local witness matters."

"I am local. I am witnessing. You are doing coat energy in my doorway."

Celia laughed then, helplessly and for the first time all day without apology braided into it.

Ben took the rebuke with as much grace as a curate in a wet cassock could manage.

"If you need anything."

"We'll ring."

"Will you."

"No. But saying so helps men leave."

He went.

Noreen waited until the front door shut before sitting opposite Celia.

"Now then. Tell me what the house is doing."

Celia stared down at the tea.

"Repeating."

"What."

"Polite things."

"Worse than nasty things."

"I know."

"Go on."

"The clock. The stairs. The landing. Just... if I say I'm fine, it comes back from somewhere else in the house like it's being read aloud by somebody who doesn't believe me. Then I start trying harder to sound normal and it gets worse."

Noreen nodded.

Leicester had not yet needed Hull in person. That didn't mean it hadn't learned.

"Who has been in and out today."

Celia gave the list: Ben. Mrs. Pearson from choir. Two women from intercessions with soup. One retired GP. Her neighbour Sheila three times, which was fine because Sheila came with cigarettes and no theology.

Noreen pulled the Hull sheet nearer and wrote:

SHEILA STAYS

Then beneath it:

CHOIR GOES HOME EARLY

"You can write on those."

"Of course I can. God gave us margins because the Church can't be trusted with clean copies."

Celia smiled into the mug this time.

Better.

The borrowed-threshold sheet sat propped against the fruit bowl.

ONE NIGHT NAMED WITNESSED RETURN IF POSSIBLE

No receiving house language. No testimony from the front. No house earns status for coping.

Noreen had read it three times before going to collect Celia. One line in particular had caught her by the throat:

DO NOT MOVE A PERSON FOR YOUR OWN PEACE

The razor.

It kept hospitality from becoming relief for bystanders.

"Your house tomorrow," Noreen said. "Can it be truer by morning."

Celia thought. Actually thought. Not the rushed gratitude answer church people usually drew from women.

"If Ben stops visiting like a weather system. If Sheila comes first. If Mrs. Pearson takes the choir list off my sideboard. If someone sits with me in the front room without telling me what any of it might mean."

"Good. That's a list."

Noreen wrote all four in green.

Then she rose, went into the downstairs lavatory, and came back holding the cream hand towel she had bought for guests three Christmases ago because it had embroidered leaves and a sort of doomed optimism.

"Look at this."

Celia, puzzled:

"It's a towel."

"Guest towel."

"All right."

"I have been looking at it all evening and feeling convicted."

That made Celia laugh again, properly this time.

"Why."

"Because I realized if I leave this out I will start treating you like an occasion."

She took the towel into the kitchen, came back with the old blue one instead, and hung it over the chair.

"There. Much better. Ugly enough to help."

Celia had begun to cry by then. Quietly. Not from breakdown. From the sudden brutality of being allowed not to arrive as a story.

Noreen passed her the toast.

"Eat first. Weep if needed. Sleep if possible. And tomorrow morning we put your house back under better company."

At 22:14 Sheila arrived with cigarettes she did not smoke and a dressing gown Celia had forgotten to pack. At 22:31 Ben rang once and, after hearing Noreen say still no, had the decency not to ring back. At 23:06 Celia fell asleep on the dining-room sofa under the old wool blanket because Noreen's spare room smelt too much of lavender and therefore too much of effort.

So the sofa it was.

Not ideal. True.

Noreen sat for a while with the green pen and the fruit bowl and the ugly towel and understood something new about the work.

Hospitable churches had always liked to imagine they were good at welcome.

Borrowed nights required something harder.

Not welcome. Manners.

In the morning Celia would go home. Return, if possible, was part of care.

And if home still lied, then Leicester would borrow another room and say less about it than England usually thought necessary.

Before bed Noreen added one line to the sheet for Hull:

IF YOU HAVE A GUEST TOWEL OUT, ASK YOURSELF WHO THIS EVENING IS FOR

Then she underlined GUEST once and took the towel upstairs out of sight.