Gordon, ah yes, my husband Gordon, The Reverend Gordon Isaac Barsmith BA (Hons) MST, the darling of the parish ladies.
"Oh Mrs. Barsmith," they warble, "how wonderful it must be to be married to such a fine man, so youthful, so energetic, such a brilliant preacher, you must cherish him my dear, such a privilege to be married to a man like him."
Stupid cows!
It's true, at forty he still has youthful – one might almost say boyish - looks. You know the sort of thing; fair hair, bright blue eyes, rosy cheeks and an ingenuous appearance. Of course I know what they really mean, that they'd like to get him into their beds. If I'm right then all I can say is good luck because if my experience is anything to go by they're not going to get much satisfaction out of him.
All right, I fell for it myself. I used to sit in the church listening to him preach thinking how wonderful it would be to be married to a man like that. My God if only I'd known then what I know now when he plighted his troth with me – his words not mine.
I can hear him now; "Prudence, will you join me in double harness?" I didn't know what the hell he was talking about so he had to spell it out.
He was thirty at the time and I was twenty two and we've been in "double harness" now for nine years. "Double harness" is a good description of the life of a parson's wife. The parishioners see themselves getting two for the price of one; I found that out quickly enough.
You will of course be the superintendent of the Sunday school, do the flowers in church, be president of the Women's Guild, arrange the church cleaning roster, serve in the youth club canteen, organise the annual church fete, decorate the church at Christmas and Easter, and cherish our dear Reverend Gordon, and by the way, do you play the organ?
I had them on that last one because I don't play the organ. That really annoyed them because they were stuck with old Miss Ants who is ninety two and manages about one right note in ten.
Mind you the disillusionment really started even before we got married, it was just that naively I didn't see it for what it was at the time. "Felicity," he said, "I think you had better go on the contraceptive pill because we don't want any early pregnancies, do we?"
Now that seemed odd because I'd heard him preach several times on the evils of contraception; "Setting up a barrier to frustrate God's purpose," was one phrase I can remember.
He told me I'd better not go to the local chemist to get the prescription made up because someone might see me and what I was getting, and so I had to travel about twelve miles to the next chemist.
If that didn't register at the time the honeymoon did. At the wedding people said stupid things like, "A match made in heaven." If only they knew!
Believe it or not, being such a nice church girl I was still a virgin when we got married. I wasn't sure what to expect on our first night but I'd read about being in paradise and the earth moving and stuff like that. Not with Reverend Gordon though. It took him three nights to get it up and even then it was still too flaccid to break my hymen. I had to go to the doctor to get it cut and it took another two days before I'd healed sufficiently for him to get it into me.
And that's another thing; in our nine years of married life we've never seen each other naked. True on that first night I felt incredibly shy about him seeing me undressed, but I thought he would very gently take off my nightdress and tell me how beautiful I was; not so. Whenever Gordon does try to "copulate" with me I'm still wearing my nightdress pulled up and his cock pokes out of the little slit in his pyjamas. He thinks it's unseemly for men and women to see each other naked and feel each other's naked flesh because it promotes excessive lustful desires, or so he says.
I don't know why he bothers because often he goes off the boil before he manages to ejaculate – did I write "off the boil"? More like "off lukewarm."
I'd never experienced any of those rapturous things I've read about in novels and magazines, and as for blissfully falling asleep in each others arms, if he does manage to come Gordon usually ends up farting and then turning his back on me.
I often used to wonder if the stories about ecstatic sex were true, and if they are true, why, according to Gordon, does God condemn the very thing he must have intended when he created us? I mean, if someone invents sliced bread do they condemn people for eating sliced bread?
I used to look at myself in the mirror. Before I married Gordon I was accounted a quite pretty and lively girl. When I was thirty one the image reflected back at me showed a woman with dark smudges under eyes, lacklustre hair, a slight stoop and a general air of melancholy.
Of course there were no kids, because as Gordon said, "We are wedded to the Lord and nothing must get in the way of our total devotion to Him." Apparently children are a stumbling block when it comes to serving the Lord and that despite the many sermons Gordon has preached on the text, "Let the little children come to me."
I sometimes wonder if Gordon really believes in the God he talks so much about. I sit through his services that have long grown dreary as far as I'm concerned. And that's another thing, I'm expected to attend them. It wouldn't matter if I was dying from pneumonia I'd still be expected to be there sitting in the front pew trying to look super pious.
The parson's wife is expected to be there watching her husband at work, but why? Is a plumber's wife expected to watch her husband at work, or a dentist's wife? Strange isn't it?
But what I was saying about Gordon and God; he starts the service by telling God who and what he is and what he's done. We then sing a hymn which says much the same thing. Is God so uncertain about who and what he is and what he's done that he needs to be reminded? Or perhaps he's so unsure of himself he needs the ego boost of being told how wonderful he is?
After that, Gordon tells God all about our sins, but he also says that God knows more about our sins than we do, so why do we need to tell him about them if he knows already? But to be fair Gordon always adds that God has forgiven us.
We get some readings from the bible mostly read by lay people who mumble, but it doesn't matter because nobody listens anyway.
Somewhere along the line we have to pray for Mrs. Somebody or other's blisters or boils, and for poor people all around the world, and for the church hierarchy and sometimes for rain if there's a drought. I don't know whether Mrs. What's –her-name's blisters or boils got better because of the prayer, but I do know that there are still millions of poor people, the church hierarchy doesn't get any more efficient and I've yet to see it rain because of Gordon's prayers.
Of course we get a sermon, but I've heard them so many times. In his study Gordon has along the top of his bookcases a lot of little cardboard boxes. These contain the sermons he wrote in the early days of his ministry, and the back of each box is marked Christmas, Easter, Advent, All Saints Day, Rotary, Free Masons, and so on. Now he just takes out one of these sermons for the forthcoming Sunday and preaches that. Most of them I've heard at least six times.
To give him due credit Gordon does have a very flamboyant delivery and he does look elegant in his robes, and that's what gets the women in. They're mostly middle aged and constitute about ninety percent of the congregation.
Secretly I've always wanted God to give me some assurance that he does exist, but it seems that's asking too much.
Well that's how things stood with me at age thirty two and I saw that as my fate until the day when, as Gordon would put it, "I am taken up to the Lord." How little we know of what can be in store for us; what peo0le or events can wander across our path and change the direction of our life.
* * * * * * * *
What was in store for me came in the person of Hugo Kaesler. Hugo was a theological student sent to our parish for twelve months of what was called "Practical Training." What that meant was that Gordon was supposed to teach him the trade - God help the poor lad – if there is a God. For me Hugo came into my suffocating life like a breath of fresh air.
