England,
Sunday September 3, 1939
Outside, it was bright and warm, a typical English September
day. The traffic streamed down from London to the Kent beaches, amid the
all-pervasive summer smells of melted tar and the exhaust of cars.
They knelt together; Margaret in a powder blue dress and a
matching hat, just like the Queen Mother's, wordlessly mouthing her aves, her rosary tapping on the
pew in front of her. On her left knelt David, already, at eleven, studiously
bespectacled and grave. To her right, nearest the aisle, was fidgety
Christopher, seven and a half, at one moment watching the priest and the altar
boys through half-closed fingers, at another staring at the people in the row
behind.
When Christopher closed his eyes tight he found he could still
picture the altar clearly in his mind's eye. He could still see the sun shining
down through colored glass on the golden candlesticks, the chalice Father
Hauber was holding up for God to bless, the crystal decanters, one with deep
red wine and the other with water. He could still see the flickering rows of
candles.
Christopher always found it hard to believe this was the
same Father Hauber who came to tea once a month at their house, laughing his
big laugh and telling stories in his funny German voice. Though the old priest
reminded him and his brother of Friar Tuck, he could jump over the flower beds
like an athlete, and swing on the swing so high that his outstretched feet
brought the apples bouncing down from the tree.
For
this is the Chalice of my Blood . . . for you and for many unto the forgiveness of sins.
Three times a little bell chimed, with long pauses between.
The Latin flowed comfortingly over the congregation. That
Christopher didn't know what the priest was saying was unimportant. God was
here. God loved us. God loved everyone.
Clouds of incense rose and swirled in diagonal strips of sunlight,
bearing Father Hauber's prayers to heaven.
Father Hauber held the little white disc upwards and then,
with bowed heads, the congregation prayed aloud together. "Our Father, who
art in Heaven, allowed be Thy Name . . ."
Our Father, Christopher had always thought, was a prayer to
Father Hauber. It had never occurred to him that it might be to God the Father,
gray, bearded and stern, who was somewhere up there over the altar. And he knew
it was not a supplication to his own father, who never came with them on Sunday
mornings.
Dad was a Protestant, and rode his bicycle to the village
church at Haversham. Christopher was sad
for Protestants, and for Dad because, while they said they believed in God,
they could never go to Heaven. Sister Ignatius had told him that in class.
Sister Ignatius said Church of England churches weren't like real churches.
In Protestant churches there were no confessional boxes, no
stations of the cross, no little boxes for Peter's Pence, no shiny domed
tabernacle like a secret treasure chest with its little gold embroidered
curtain that opened miraculously when Father Hauber pulled a string. Dad was
okay but, much as they loved him, being Protestant set him a little apart.
This Sunday, Father Hauber's sermon was about peace. Peace
was the word he kept using, yet it seemed to make him angry. Christopher had
never seen him angry before. His voice, always loud but louder than usual today,
echoed through the rafters above them. He boomed about a "Gray Tide of
Evil," and something about Poland, while his flock sat silent and
immobile.
Christopher didn't know where Poland was, but he had often
heard about it in the past few days. His mother and father talked earnestly at
the kitchen table about the "Polish Corridor," and about some people
marching down it. He knew what a corridor was;
when he went to the Cottage Hospital to have his tonsils taken out,
there had been white corridors everywhere. In his head he saw hundreds of gray
soldiers tramping down those shiny corridors.
He could see that the priest’s forehead, above his big red
face, was shiny [1]with
perspiration. He glanced up at his mother exactly at the moment that she seemed
to be brushing something from her eye.
She caught Christopher’s eye for a second, and quickly turned away.
And then, in a mumbling monotone, they prayed for peace.
They were half-way through the prayer when Christopher noticed a man standing
just inside the altar rail. He was short and hairy-faced, in a brown robe
belted at the waist with a thick white cord. He stood quite still with his
hands hanging straight down at his sides. As Christopher watched, the man
ambled up the steps and took up a position beside the priest.
Father Hauber stopped speaking and seemed to be listening
intently to what the man had to say, stooping toward the shorter man and
cupping his ear with his hand. The conversation went on and on, while all the
people sat still. Some stayed on their knees in positions of prayer; others had
eased themselves back onto the smooth wooden benches.
Christopher tugged at his mother's sleeve, whispering
urgently. "What are they talking about, Mum? What's the man saying to
him? What --"
But his mother put her finger to her closed lips, and the
congregation waited.
Presently, Father Hauber turned and walked down to the
communion rail, leaving the altar boys and the man in brown standing awkwardly
together on the top step.
The old priest cleared his throat and then, unexpectedly,
spoke in a voice that was almost too hoarse to hear. "Brethren, I have
something to tell you . . ."
The congregation craned forward to hear him better. The one
hundred or more worshipers sat motionless in shocked silence, waiting in vain
for more news, for encouragement.
"It has been announced on the wireless that Britain is
at war with Germany. Please go home, now.
I have nothing more to tell you. Put your trust in God, and in the power
of prayer."
And then, although the mass was not really over, he rejoined
the little group at the altar and gave the final blessing.
Benidicat
vos omnipotens Deus . . .
Amen. The congregation filed down the aisle and through the
open doors into the bright street, still subdued. A little to the right of the
church gates a black Austin police car was parked discreetly. Christopher
watched an officer climb out, cradling his blue Bobby's helmet under his arm,
and walk up the steps with studied casualness and into the church.
Minutes later, watched by his waiting, bewildered
parishioners, Father Ludwig von Hauber was led gently out, carrying a large,
battered suitcase. As the old man passed by Christopher on the steps he smiled
at the boy, and rested a hand on his shoulder.
"Where's he going, Mum? Where are they taking Our
Father?" Christopher asked.
His mother did not reply, looking away from him, apparently
preoccupied with something else.
His elder brother answered instead. "Don't you see,
Chris? Don't you see, silly?
He's a German. They're going to lock him up."
"But they can't do that; they just can't!"
Slowly, the car drew away, with the priest and the officer
sitting side by side, like close friends in the back seat.
End
