A Joyful Noise

A Willerby Christmas Story

Although Dawn never thought much what death would be like while she was alive, she never expected it would be quite so boring.

She’d thought it would be more dramatic – something with meaning – a flash of light, new knowledge, some sort of fulfilment at the very least.

Instead, she got pain, dreams and then this.

Mercifully she was not conscious most of the time, but she found her new existence dreadfully tedious when she was.

There was nothing to do but pace around Saint Leonard’s church and graveyard where she’d been the vicar for thirty years before her final cancer took her. Periodically – for something to do more than anything else – she tried to go further and into Willerby itself but always found she just couldn’t.

She wondered a lot about why she hadn’t gone anywhere.

She’d led a decent and uncomplicated life.

There was nothing she’d done or left undone that troubled her much.

Sometimes she wondered whether it was because her own faith hadn’t been rigorous enough. While she trusted and believed in God, she’d never found herself able to come to any sort of certainty about the deep questions.

She assumed if she did her best, was honest about her failings and shortcomings and then tried to do better, things would work out fine.

Perhaps – she thought- this uncertain, liminal existence was punishment for a faith she’d felt strongly but never had words or arguments for – for not being the sort of priest able to cleverly quote chapter and verse to make an ingenious point.

Maybe this was not enough for someone whose job it was to know scripture and gospel inside out – maybe she should have wrestled with the intellectual side of it all more than she’d bothered to. Maybe by not doing that she’d sinned in ways too profound for her to understand. Maybe by accepting her simple religion as enough she’d missed chances to do God’s work and maybe He was angry with her.

But she didn’t really believe that.

All she really knew was that she did not know why she was there.

Most of the time she was alone with only animals for company; the bats in the tower, the mice and rats in the yard and the owls, badgers, foxes and jet-black cats hunting them.

She didn’t think the wild ones were aware of her, but she knew the cats were by the way they called and fussed, and how they tried fruitlessly to rub themselves against her legs.

Occasionally she saw other ghosts; the woman who wept by the font; the boy who skipped down the nave and then vanished beneath the great stained-glass window; the angry overweight man in overalls who ranted silently at her as he jabbed and pointed with thick, rough fingers.

Some of these came and went to no pattern she could discern, while others were more predictable.

Her favourite ghosts were like this – the 1950s gardener – the 1980s postman - the group of young women in crinoline who gathered outside in the summer to chatter and coo at the living babies pushed by their mothers in prams and strollers through the churchyard.

These – she could tell easily – were good ghosts who meant no harm.

She saw the living even more rarely than she did the dead, and like most of the ghosts she found no rhyme nor reason to why she sometimes did but mostly did not. Occasionally she found herself by someone praying alone or she was inexplicably present at an otherwise unremarkable communion service, wedding, baptism or funeral.

She had little ability to interact with the living.

She found if she tried hard, she could summon a breeze strong enough to stir hair or rifle the pages of the thin-paged bibles on each pew, but that was the full extent of it and what was the point of that? The church had always been draughty, and nobody ever noticed.

Sometimes - and she liked it when this happened – she found herself amongst the happy chaos of Messy Church. These were for small children and were mostly crafting and singing songs with actions. When she’d been vicar, these were the only services Dawn really enjoyed, the only services she didn’t worry she wasn’t doing quite well enough.

Most of the time she was alone in the cool half-light gloom, wandering the church, counting the hours, wondering when she’d fade and what she’d see the next time she was summoned.

She could only be sure of consciousness at the carol service that always took place the last Sunday before Christmas Day.

She used these to track time.

Clothes and hairstyles changed. Hymns went from organ to piano and then keyboard, guitar and drums.

Here she saw babies grow to toddlerhood and then become teenagers.

Here she saw the young ease to middle age, and the middle aged lose vigour as they drifted into their final years, disappearing from the congregation as they journeyed past her to their undiscovered countries.

Naturally, there were some people she was more interested in than others.

One of these was baby Katy who she first saw sleeping in the arms of her mother and then often in the messy children’s services, grabbing at paints, glue and scissors with infectious enthusiasm and an explosive laugh that demanded others join in.

Everything she did, she did with gusto – even her singing– loud and tuneless, so gleeful it didn’t matter at all.

She sang like this as an older girl and as a teenager too – unselfconscious ear splitting inexpert descants that had those around her shaking with laughter even as they joined in.

Dawn loved Katy’s singing and wished she’d had the benefit of it while she’d been vicar – she loved how it lifted the whole church and got everyone belting out the hymns and praise songs so loudly it swept in even the shyest and quietest.

Then one Christmas Eve at the end of the service just before everyone went home, Dawn saw the latest vicar – a thin faced serious young man with a sharp haircut - take Katy aside and have a short, serious conversation with her, which he ended with a pat on her shoulder.

She didn’t hear what he said but whatever it was, it made Katy flush so red it was as if she’d been slapped across the face.

For a moment she stood stunned, frozen to the spot. Then she tilted her head up to the roof before pulling her face into a fake smile.

The next Christmas Eve, Katy did not sing.

Nor the one after that.

She wasn’t at the next three Christmas Eve carol services.

Dawn wondered whether she was away travelling or perhaps had a boyfriend she was spending the holidays with. She knew it was natural for young people to go their own way for a while at least, but knowing this didn’t stop her wondering about what the young vicar, who was always somehow too neat, too smug, too self-satisfied, had said that made her cry.

She suspected she knew.

Then, to her delight, Katy came back, with a young man her own age.

He was tall with a comfortable, kind face beneath a wild halo of curly dark hair and was wearing a beautiful dark blue suit. When he held Katy’s hand the way she leant into him made Dawn hope they’d marry before foolish youth had them second guessing themselves.

He sang well – in a loud and resonant baritone with confidence that spoke of a childhood in church.

He, Dawn saw, noticed that Katy did not sing, noticed the way she only mouthed the words, noticed the relief with which she sat down at the end of each song.

When it was all over, in the happy jostle of the pub-bound crowd, he asked about her silence.

“Why so quiet, Kat?”

Katy looked up at the vicar, then quickly looked away.

He was at the other end of the aisle, moving easily among the most prominent of his flock.

Katy shook her head, “I’ll tell you later, Marcus,” she said, “but not here, not now,” and then scurried – that was the only word for it – to the door.

Marcus stood where he was, confused, looking after her and then at the vicar.

And then it seemed very important – vital even – Dawn do something, as an inexplicable certainty arrived that all the years of waiting had been only for this moment, and were she to miss it, she might be trapped forever.

Dawn did the only thing she could do – she blew harder than she knew she could, harder than she’d ever done before, hard enough to flutter the hymn books, hard enough to blow open the bibles, hard enough to turn the heads of those still in church as they clutched at their hats and scarfs.

“What the..” said Marcus, looking around.

Dawn blew again, more softly this time, just enough to flutter the thin pages of the closest bible without turning them.

Marcus picked it up and Dawn moved to just behind him so she could look over his shoulder to see the page it was open to.

“Psalm 100,” she read to herself with words nobody else could hear.

She knew this one, and whispered it at exactly the same time Marcus read it aloud.

“Make a joyful noise to the Lord.”

Marcus nodded, picked up the Bible and carried it after Katy.

…

The next year Katy came back to church and sang, loudly, out of tune, first nervously defiant and then with more confidence, Marcus beside her singing even louder, both staring at the vicar until he lost his nerve and looked away.

Her family and her village friends sang with her at the tops of their voices too, for this had all been planned for months.

The final hymn was Hark the Herald Angel’s Sing and in the very first verse Marcus moved into the aisle where there was more room for him to dance, pulling first Katy and then her mum and dad after him, and then the everyone in the church was dancing too, clapping and swaying, laughing with delight at the unexpected miracle of it all, singing extra choruses to the triumph of the skies.

The final chorus was very ragged and so loud it all but drowned out the instruments at the front but that didn’t matter at a bit – the musicians were enjoying it as much as anyone.

And then it was over and everyone was laughing and wishing each other the merriest of Christmases, shaking hands and hugging each other.

Dawn would have loved it but - of course – she wasn’t there.