Bible bashers lived next door, their son (Saint) Peter helped distribute and collect the book of common prayer at the church of Saint Barnabas. Work, the benefits of which, were not limited solely to a place in heaven. The opportunity to wear liturgical garments and to help oneself to a bit of loose change from the collection plate made the job with no pay bearable.
Peter’s brother and church organist John, a quiet and undemonstrative man prone to snobbery, claimed that the instrument he played badly, although in need of a good tuning, was made by the same company that provided the pipes for the mighty Wurlitzer in the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool.
Peter’s parents Ernie and Molly, the type of Anglican’s who believed in the truthfulness of baring one’s soul, told everything to everyone and anyone, regardless of whether they wanted to know. Their hopes that Peter would one day ‘enter the clergy,’ were dashed when he replaced God with drainpipe jeans, a leather jacket, and a second-hand BSA motorcycle, to consort with a procession of young men whom they considered odd bods and ruffians.
In private, Peter the bad, ‘joked,’ that he was putting much effort into fulfilling his parents’ wishes of ‘entering the clergy,’ and that the clergy, at least some of them, were thankfully reciprocating.
Peter found that blind faith prompted many questions to chase him.
Why should the service of God demand unquestioning obedience, and the denial of one’s essence?
Why did he feel disturbed and hunted by God?
Saint Peter the good, still believed in a true living God in whom all pain is healed, and all evil is overcome. He also knew that spiritual power was not always wielded judiciously, performing miracles and destroying at the same time, which is why he lied.
He wanted, no, needed to, “have it out with the big boss, not the tea boy,” so, avoiding the intermediary offices of Father Powell, a preacher of death and damnation, Peter loaded up the sidecar and roared off toward Newborough Beach and Llanddwyn Island, where, on sunny days he lay on the sand conversing with God.
A period of abstinence disturbed only once by a passionate encounter with a tanned farmhand.
After falling off the straight and narrow in the early seventies, collecting convictions for possession and importuning following an unfortunate incident involving two plainclothes policemen and a toilet cubicle, Peter seemingly led a celibate, pious and ascetic life, until the year before his death.
Every day for the three previous decades he could be found midmorning at his well-tended allotment, digging, or kneeling to bless the cabbages.
“One of two ways you can get satisfaction on your knees.”
After a routine medical appointment that was anything but, Peter mysteriously began ‘commuting,’ to Blackpool, Liverpool, and Manchester.
Escaping suffocating small provincialism was good for him.
Sorrowful and neglected cabbages looked on as a younger, lighter, version of their cultivator skipped by without a thought for their wellbeing.
Happiness short-lived.
As John practised a barely recognisable version of ‘What Wondrous Love Is This,’ before evening prayer, Peter experienced a massive myocardial infarction that left him lying in the shadow of the crucifix, his face illuminated by physical and spiritual joys.
At the funeral, after much tedious attention-seeking, John was eventually persuaded to leave the organ alone long enough to recite Peter’s final words.
“I have known constant prayer remove the most rooted prejudice.”
Before the untuneful choir undertook to assault the mourners with the fervour of those driven insane by the thought of the soul’s meeting with monsters, John sprinted from the lectern to shower them with a riot of music played at a pace of one who wanted to meet his maker sooner rather than later.
Peter’s lovers gathered at his funeral, all convinced that in a more liberal and accepting time they would have lived happily ever after.
Later, over wine and nibbles, one of Peter’s ‘special friends,’ in a shouty voice that grated on the nerves, revealed their secret plans to purchase a bed and breakfast in Blackpool, catering for “those who meet in the shadows.”
More of a bawdy house than a boarding house.
It was just as well that Ernie and Molly had long gone ahead to prepare Peter’s path to the pearly gates, sparing them the indignity of John’s orgasmic moment musicaux.
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