Overland literary journal

Waiting for the green man

One broad leathery purplish leaf was bent over at the tip. It resembled, in some ways, the head of a cobra. Striped veins, forest green, crept deeply through the purple. On the soft point of the leaf quivered a fresh droplet of water. Faith Starr watched with silent concentration as sunlight hit the drop, as splashes of sparkle blazed on the end of the leaf.

It was early afternoon. The year was 2009. The place was a suburb of an Australian coastal city. The garden of a church rectory.

The tall row of cannas grew all along the fence in a wilder part of the garden. During the very hot summer the floppy scarlet flags of their blooms were high on stalks above the leaves. Faith, wife of Christopher Starr, Rector of St Michael and All Angels, had planted the cannas long ago. The rectory garden was Faith’s responsibility. She had planted the blue spruces – one of them had become the parish Christmas tree, decorated every year with coloured lights, branches sheltering the crib that Christopher had bought in Assisi once upon a time. St Michael’s was one of those ‘high church’ parishes where they have incense and a great deal of old-fashioned ceremony. Faith had a great fondness for it and its traditions and its people. Established families with names that echoed the brass plates along the interior walls of the church. Young couples with babies who, in spite of the solemnity of the ceremonies, were welcome to crawl under the pews, pushing little cars and rolling teddy bears across the floor. Homeless people in tattered clothing. Tourists, too, who came to experience the dignity of the worship, the glory of the music.

That afternoon in autumn Faith was reclining on the cane garden lounge, resting before going to town to buy provisions. The bishop was coming to dine. He would stay the night.

The expectation was that the bishop was about to deliver the news that it was time for the Starrs to move on. They were in their early fifties, and there was work to be done in the regional parishes to the far north of the city. Out in the bush, in the Outback, far away in the wilderness, the climate harsh, the people parched, in need of relief, rain, and spiritual guidance. The Starrs had no children so were not encumbered by family responsibilities. It was time for a change, in the mind of the church, perhaps even in the hearts of the Starrs.

Faith was, in fact, fond of the bishop, and always looked forward to his arrival, although this particular visit carried a freight of fear and apprehension. The unknown is, after all, the unknown, and the familiar is safe. Safe enough. She would miss the people of St Michael’s, miss her garden. What about Martha? Would they be able to take Martha, who helped with the house and was known to them as ‘the Efficacious’? This had been home for so long now, and the people of the parish had become Faith’s family. It sounds very like a cliché, but this was exactly as it was.

She planned to drive into town to visit Ted, her favourite butcher, and get a free-range chicken to roast for the bishop’s dinner. There would be one of her spicy salads followed by her celebrated strawberry shortcake and homemade ice-cream. The wines were Christopher’s responsibility. He kept a wonderful cellar. Martha the Efficacious had already set the table, elaborate with white damask and heavy silver, candlesticks, and a wide Wedgwood bowl of full-blown roses, glowing pink and yellow and red and mauve. Once again there is much to describe as cliché in the lives of the Starrs, and, once again, that was the way it was: the cosy, old-fashioned, stereotypical life of the rector, the wife, the servant. Some might call it stuffy, stultifying, quaint, even something from another planet, and certainly from another time.

Thoughts of all these images and matters floated through Faith’s mind as she lay on the cane lounge and contemplated the drop of glittering water that hung on the cobra’s head. She would close her eyes for a few minutes and then she would squint. The rainbow in the droplet was momentarily withheld then released to her vision.

In spite of all her Wedgwood and roses and candlesticks, her pleasant reclining on the cane lounge, the rainbow shimmering on the water drop, the sweet devotion of Martha, something was missing.

The empty heart at the heart of the full life at the rectory was the absence of the child. There was only ever one child in question. Early in the marriage their baby daughter was born, but she was already dead. Faith appeared bravely to put the experience behind her and to get on with her life, their lives, the life of the parish, the devotion to the church, devotion to the garden. Martha forever there, in the background, in the foreground, supporting, initiating, being. Faith was praised for her generosity and kindness to others, for her ability to organise the fete and the jumble sale and the study groups and the youth groups and the coffee mornings and the choir and the garden party and the cleaning of the brasses. ‘The angel par excellence of St Michael and All Angels,’ the bishop often called her, following the claim with his deep episcopal laugh.

Faith frequently let thoughts of the baby float across her consciousness. Zoë was the child’s name. Zoë Alice Starr. They never spoke of Zoë. Lost, gone, she never was. Curiously, Zoë was not listed in the prayers for the dead that were spoken at St Michael and All Angels every Sunday. After a period of deeply private mourning, Faith picked up the pieces (as her mother would say) and sailed on with life. The baby inhabited her thoughts, but gradually Faith gave no outward sign of this fact. The baby’s ashes, contained in an antique carved ivory sphere from China, were buried in the garden, beneath a rambling rose. Félicité et Perpétue bloomed in pale pink bunches that dangled from the branches, petals falling onto the earth where Zoë lay. Faith tended the rose bush quietly and diligently. She tended every rose in the garden, lovingly, quietly, diligently. That was the way Faith was. She would dead-head the roses and Martha would call her in for lunch. A small chicken sandwich and a cup of coffee in a thin white cup.

•

One morning, a long ten years after the death of the baby, Faith woke up aware that she had, as Christopher might have said, ‘lost her faith’. It had just gone. It must have been diminishing all that time, and suddenly it was gone. Ping! None of the things she thought she had believed made any sense to her any more. Not the Gospels, not the angels and the saints, not Easter, not Christmas. Not prayer. No sense, no sense at all. She had not had a dream, not had a revelation. Nothing special had happened in her life that she could think of. It just seemed that one day she could say: ‘I believe in one God’ and so on and so forth, and mean it, and the next day the words had no significance for her at all. A strange, sweet emptiness came to occupy the place where belief had been. The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. What on earth could that mean? Somehow, there seemed to be no point in discussing this with anyone, particularly not with Christopher. To do so would be to unpick everything, to abandon everything, to let slip the established routine of life. And without the established routine, where would she be? It never even occurred to her to discuss it with Martha, and she had no special friend. No sister. Faith was alone with her unfaith, with her garden, with the earth of her baby’s grave, and the knowledge that down there among the roots of Félicité et Perpétue lay the Chinese ivory ball.

So the garden parties and the study groups and the services went on just as before. Faith (and the irony of her name did not escape her) also took part in all the church services just as she had always done. Singing the hymns and saying the prayers and taking Holy Communion. She did not even think she was a hypocrite. It was somehow as if she were desensitised to her own thoughts and feelings and behaviour. She was moving through her own life in a strange trance. Was she suffering from depression? Was she going mad? She did not ask herself these questions. She went to funerals where everyone professed to be ‘in sure and certain hope’ of the life to come. Saying Grace at meals. Wearing the gold cross Christopher gave her when they were courting. Lighting the votive lamp before the little statue of Mary bought long ago in Austria. Opening the ladies’ meetings with a prayer. Smiling. Laughing. Praying. Being.

Occasionally it occurred to her to wonder about the meaning of good and evil. She wondered about the soul of Zoë Alice. But if she didn’t believe in anything any more, what meaning did the baby’s soul have? Félicité et Perpétue grew more and more dense and blossomed like a cloud in summer. Sometimes Faith thought that perhaps her faith might return, that this place where she now found herself was in fact the dark night of the soul. She still read and loved the poetry of St John of the Cross. She might come through, come out of her dark night, be strengthened, illuminated. But she was not worried, went blithely on as the wife of the rector.

She cast her gaze on such lovely things as the sunlight on the drop of water on the tip of leaf, she inhaled the primrose perfume of Zoë’s rose, and she knew that she was observing and participating in the good. This knowledge gave her a soft melody of pleasure. She appeared to live her own life in a gesture of grace.

‘Faith takes such joy in simple things,’ Christopher would say to people, speaking with fondness and approval.

Faith sometimes felt that she moved through life as if in a fairytale, feet just above the ground, obeying magical rules, following a story that framed her and sustained her. Where once she had prayed in the private silence of her mind and heart, formal prayers, informal prayers, requests, acknowledgements, now she found herself expressing wishes and desires. And these, the wishes and desires and prayers, all seemed to be really much the same in effect. Some wishes came true, as some prayers had been answered.

A psychologist might say that the failure of God to answer the prayers for the life of Zoë Alice would be the source of the decay of her religious belief. That could be true, but Faith did not think of it. All she thought was that one day she was a believer, and the next day she was not. And yes, of course, her faith just might come back. But really, she was not concerned. God, or whatever it might be, moves in a mysterious way. One oddity in all this was that she could not stop herself from whispering quite often the prayer to St Michael. ‘Holy Michael Archangel,’ she would say, ‘defend us in the day of battle …’ Although she did not have any sense that a day of battle was imminent. The words were a lovely incantation. Perhaps she was moving to a place where words had no real meaning, or had a different or a higher meaning than she had thought.

Well, the bishop was coming, and she needed to shop for dinner.

She drove to town and parked the car and took her two calico shopping bags to the Italian fruit shop for the strawberries and greens, and to Ted the butcher for the chicken. On her way back to the car she came to a busy intersection, waited for the lights to change, one calico bag in each hand. She had just missed the green light. These lights would flash amber then red then green. Images of little red men striding out and little green men striding out appeared in the middle of the lights. Faith always imagined herself as waiting for the green man, a man, not a light or a signal, but a man. She liked the green man. When he appeared the music of his step – ticky ticky ticky – would tell the people to brave the dangers of the road.

As she waited, still as a statue, a little singing in her brain went: ‘Holy Michael Archangel, defend us in the day of battle. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host, cast down to Hell Satan and all wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.’

She stood at the kerb, wearing her stylish lemon linen coat from the jumble sale, her sensible black shoes planted neatly on the kerb, her body hemmed in by a pack of pedestrians. A great phalanx of traffic, trucks and buses as well as cars, was held in check, just, by the red lights on her right and on her left.

The last stragglers were crossing on the warning light straight ahead. The traffic was champing at the bit on either side of her. Leaping lions and sabre tooth tigers vroom vroom ready to pounce and surge. Holy Michael Archangel, defend us in the day of battle. And just as the lights did change, releasing those beasts from their captivity, just as the red man non-walked into view, there in the middle of the intersection was a scurrying young mother, baby on her hip, mobile phone to her ear.

Time was warped into one of those split seconds you sometimes hear of. The scurrying figure on the road almost tripped. The baby almost fell. The phone clattered to the ground and separated like a broken insect into two black shiny parts.

And, in that split second, a powerful lemon yellow figure, its arms outstretched in majesty, appeared before the traffic that was leaping forward on the right. With one huge magnificent gesture, the angel arrested the flow. Stopped the traffic like a great celestial policeman. For the split second the traffic stopped, the yellow angel glowed unearthly. Its wings were vast and quivering with beauty and power. On the end of each muscular angelic arm whirled a soft white calico pouch filled with heavenly magic. The woman with the baby scooped up the black particles of phone, clutched her baby tighter to her hip, scuttled headlong across the road and dissolved into the crowd. The angel itself flew back before the traffic came, withering into a shadow among the pedestrians. Dissolving into air.

Faith Starr stood where the angel might have been.

When the green man came on with his jaunty walking legs, ticky ticky ticky, the people all moved forward in safety, and time moved on. Faith Starr crossed the road with the crowd, got in her car and drove home. She worked with Martha in the kitchen, and together they produced a magnificent meal.

The bishop said the blessing in Latin and the Starrs both murmured their amens. The finest strawberry shortcake on earth was served. Over the coffee and brandy with nougat and dark chocolate leaves, the bishop delivered the anticipated bombshell, which was accepted with grace and aplomb and resignation. Time to move on, new pastures, the challenge, the need, the dedication, the call. The large and varied parish. The career. The ambition. The vocation. One day, Christopher will be a bishop himself. Imagine. Bishop Starr in all his glory and regalia. Bishop Starr’s wife, in a silk coat and lovely hat.

In the kitchen Martha the Efficacious watched the news. People were claiming to have seen an angel in the city. A woman with a baby said an angel saved her baby’s life when she dropped her mobile in the path of oncoming traffic. Martha brought this amazing little titbit of news to the table when she carried in the second pot of coffee. It lightened the mood, which had acquired an overlay of awkwardness as the company contemplated the upheaval of moving the Starrs to their new and enormous parish.

‘Perhaps it was St Michael himself. I am quite sure,’ pontificated the bishop, smiling broadly at Martha’s story, ‘that there are angels aplenty, Christopher, in the regions. You will see, Faith, there will be ministering angels doing more than stopping traffic out there in the bush. I imagine they probably take a hand in the cooking and the garden.’ He laughed his round episcopal laugh. ‘But first I expect they might help with the packing. There may be some things to leave behind? Much to take with you. Much to take. Even your beloved roses, Faith. You might take cuttings. The new rectory needs a garden. It’s a bit of a wilderness, I am afraid.’ He beamed.

For another split second, Faith thought she somehow understood that the bishop could see into her heart and mind – she couldn’t say her soul, for she didn’t believe she had a soul. Then she suddenly thought the bishop didn’t really believe in her soul or in St Michael and the angels any more than she did. She realised that somehow they were, all of them, participating in a lovely, elaborate game. Even Christopher? Yes, even Christopher. Surely not! All except Martha, who probably did believe. Things shone when Martha touched them, and she brought a kind of warmth with her presence. A deep peace, was it? She had already said she was willing to move to the new parish, and Christopher and Faith were both grateful for that. So, it must be said, was the bishop.

•

When the rectory was dark and quiet, when the bishop was snoring in the guest room, when Martha was sleeping sweetly in the small bedroom off the pantry, when Christopher’s eyes were closed, his breathing steady, Faith put on her robe and slippers and went out into the garden. She saw the tall dark shadows of the cannas in the moonlight, the beloved outline of the spruce. She breathed in the perfume of the tobacco plants and the roses. She came to the pale cascade of Félicité et Perpétue.

The ivory ball of ashes was not deep below the dewy surface of the earth. With a garden trowel Faith, kneeling, turned the soil, and soon she scraped its hard intricate surface. She lifted it from its resting place and cradled it in her hands. It was grainy with dirt, but it shone. Her tears hovered, quivered, then trickled from the corners of her eyes. She brushed the ivory ball with her fingers, held it to her lips, and she carried it with her into the house.

She would carry it with her wherever she went. She would carry it with her.

Into the wilderness.

Carmel Bird is a novelist and short story writer. Her latest novel is Child of the Twilight (HarperCollins, 2010).
© Carmel Bird
Overland 199-winter 2010, pp. 57–62

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