Hi There,
As you will see, this newsletter is very much longer than usual. This is a short story sent to me by writer DAVID ARMSTRONG. David is one of my favourite novelists. When I worked at ITV I was always trying to persuade the powers-that-were, that we should do TV adaptations of his brilliant crime novels – but without success.
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/a/david-armstrong/
This link will lead you to some of his books. But please do your own further research – I can’t recommend his books highly enough. He has also written an excellent book about writing – How NOT to Write a Novel (nonfiction), Allison & Busby (London, England), 2003.
And reading his books will make you understand where Jesse gets his talent from – David is his father.
I am hugely grateful to David – what a gift it was to receive the email with this short story. So thank you very much David – and to all readers – Enjoy!
Ordained
There are two questions that a midlist writer does not want to be asked, the second of which is: ‘Do I know you?’
The first question, ‘What do you do?’ will, of course, have received the excruciatingly embarrassing answer, ‘I’m a writer,’ after which, things are only going in one direction. And that is, of course, to the second question, as above: ‘Do I know you?’
Standing in the queue to board at Gate 34 of Birmingham airport, one chilly November morning, Josslyn looked up from his copy of Barchester Towers at the adjacent gate, observed the women in pink dresses and cowboy hats, and thanked the Lord that he and Sara were destined for Almeria rather than the Balearic island that the women were heading to.
Having given heavenly thanks for this putative deliverance – notwithstanding that he had not said an actual down-on-his-knees prayer for the last forty years – Josslyn added a postscript to his invocation: please, don’t let that smirking-nosed Boeing 737, that is even now just the other side of this terminal’s glass, fall from the sky into the rugged Pyrenees, a place where even the most sanguine aviator, Lord, can see that there is absolutely no place for an aeroplane to land.
And then, very much feeling that he was pushing to the absolute limit his capacity for received beneficence, he added, this time quietly and actually mouthing the words: ‘And please, if you will let there be none of that vile turbulence, I will give earnest thanks and light many candles once we have landed.’ Tom Shepherd, retired dentist, book-club founder member and friend of his wife Sara, had once assured him that no plane, had ever, ever fallen from the sky simply on account of turbulence.
Sara watched his lips moving, knew exactly what was happening, and put a comforting hand upon his knee.
Josslyn David had, of course, flown dozens of times, and not only to any number of European holiday destinations, he’d also suffered the ordeal of flights to America, (twice); Vietnam, Cambodia and India. And every single time, whether to Rhodes or Oporto, Boston, Maine or Delhi, he’d sworn that he’d never do it again.
And here he was: a bleak November morning, rehearsing the same old mantras. He watched the pilots in the nose of the thing. What were they doing? Looking at weather charts? hearing about their allotted runway, given this morning’s wind direction and strength?
Or were they thinking about what might be served for breakfast; the sexual accord they had known with their partner just a few hours previously?
The plane didn’t crash, (you’d have heard). Josslyn, strapped tightly into the aisle seat, paperback Trollope on his knee, closed his eyes even as the plane was taxiing to the runway, and kept them shut for the next 150 minutes. He broke the duration of a flight into slots. This one was easy. Five chunks of thirty-minutes. When he was just about as certain as it was possible to be, he touched Sara’s arm and, as agreed beforehand, asked her whether the first half hour had passed. It had. With eyes still shut, he pressed his feet into the cabin floor as the plane flew through the sky at five-hundred miles an hour.
‘Have we passed one hour yet?’ he murmured to Sara. ‘Yes,’ she said, and went back to her crossword. How on earth can she be doing a crossword, he smouldered. Worse, the man at the window had started watching a film as soon as he’d taken his seat. These people deserved to be in a plane that crashed. Sara squeezed his arm as the plane lurched and dropped a few feet; Josslyn pushed back into his seat, fingers tightly bound in prayer.
As soon as the tyres hit the tarmac he slipped his feet back into his unlaced shoes, leaned across and peered out of the plane’s windows.
He was bright, excited, brittle and ready to chat. With his broadest smile, he said to the man in the window-seat, ‘Good film?’
The man ignored the facetious enquiry and smiled back, ‘Buenos dias,’
Sara dug her elbow into his ribs. ‘Behave, Josslyn. Just behave.’
The disembarking passengers climbed aboard their allotted coaches. Many of them heading to the same hotel as themselves, a handsome, low-rise, four-star affair built in the former grounds of the village’s chapel.
As they boarded the coach, Josslyn took in their fellow holidaymakers; there’d be no noisy parties, thank goodness, but there weren’t going to be many tennis players amongst the group, either, alas.
Sixty-year-old couple, Josslyn and Sara, settled into a routine: a swim, breakfast, a game of tennis, some coffee, light lunch and an afternoon walk in the lemon groves. The sunshine was lovely, the daily singles sessions, nice, but a game of doubles, just like back at home in Birmingham, would be even better.
Each morning, they put their names down on the booking sheet in reception offering themselves up for a game, and every day, thus far, they’d had to play alone.
However, on Monday morning, just as they were about to leave the court, a younger couple came through the gate, racquets in hand.
‘Oh, super,’ said Sara, and called a warm and friendly, ‘Hola,’ to them. ‘You’re fancying a game, then?’ said Josslyn. The man, wearing a Bob Marley tee shirt, gestured to the racket in his hand.
It takes fewer than thirty seconds, apparently, to form one’s first impressions of a new acquaintance. Josslyn David thought this unnecessarily long. The men stood there awkwardly as the women chatted.
In tennis, it takes only a shot or two, possibly three, to tell what level of player you are up against. The forty-year-old on the other side of the net could certainly play; his partner looked OK, too. ‘We’ll be lucky to hold our own,’ said David to his wife as he called ‘Rough’ for serve, and lost.
It was the only consistent thing they did: they went down 2-6.
At the net post, drinking water, they resumed their introductions. ‘I’m Depp,’ said the Bob Marley man.
‘Sorry?’ said Josslyn.
‘Depp,’ the man repeated. ‘Like the pirate. First name’s John, became Johnny, so my chums got to calling me Depp. You know…’
Jossyln didn’t ‘know’. He’d never seen Pirates of the Caribbean and wouldn’t have known Johnny Depp if he’d been next to him at the checkout in Sainsbury’s.
‘And you?’ said Depp, nonchalantly bouncing a ball on his racquet.
‘I’m Josslyn, and this is Sara.’
‘And I’m Rain,’ said the woman at Depp’s side.
Josslyn had some age-related hearing loss, and spent the next forty minutes calling her ‘Ray’.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said.
‘Us, too,’ said Sara. ‘It’s so great that we can have a game.’
‘So, what do you do?’ asked the woman’s partner of Josslyn.
Josslyn David knew from experience that the questioner was very likely to lack any information about the writing business or what it involved. After all, why should they?
It had been Tolkien; now it was Pratchett, Hunger and Thrones. These were the million-sellers. But for the rest of the pack, simply getting just one title onto the shelves of Waterstones was an achievement tantamount to winning an Olympic Gold on the parallel bars whilst playing Bohemian Rhapsody on a piano accordion. Yes, it was hard to get a book published. And Josslyn David, some twenty-odd years previously, had finally done it.
‘I’m a clergyman,’ said Josslyn. He had absolutely no idea that he was going to say this, and Sara turned her head a fraction as she tried to conceal her look of complete astonishment.
The man said, ’Wow,’ bounced the ball several more times on his racquet and added, ‘I’ve never met a vicar before.’
‘Well, actually, I’m a curate,’ said Josslyn. ‘It’s slightly different.’
‘Right,’ said the man, his apparent interest exhausted. ‘Shall we have another knock?’ and the couple walked to the far side of the court, exchanging a few backward glances as they went.
Taking up her position on their advantage side, Sara shook her head from side to side, and with open palm, mouthed to her husband, ‘What?!’
‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘Not sure,’ and readied himself to return his opponent’s serve. The man hit the ball powerfully, down the centre line, and in by a foot.
‘Out,’ called David decisively. His opponent stood there a few moments, his look challenging the call, and then went on.
They lost the set one-six, Sara barely able to connect with a ball, and Josslyn little better. He over-cooked an easy lob with both their opponents halfway down the court, then Sara drove two balls, one after the other, into the net and finally missed her go-to backhand down the line by a country mile.
They shook hands and agreed to meet, if not the next day, then the one after that.
Sara sat on the courtside bench as Josslyn stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders.
Finally fully alone, she said, ‘A clergyman? What the f…? What are you doing Josslyn? What are you thinking? We’re here for the next ten days!’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, and it was true. He was not Zelig, Billy Liar, or Tom Ripley. He was irascible, occasionally excitable and now, apparently, entirely unpredictable midlist author, Josslyn David.
*
That evening, in the hotel restaurant they took a table near the window and waved a greeting to their tennis partners on the other side of the room.
All the guests, apart from a solitary figure at a table near the bar, were with another person; coupledom, holidaymakers’ relationship currency.
The solitary man was bent over his meal, an open volume at his side.
The Davids chose a course and had their glasses refilled with gin and tonics. It came as a surprise, an hour or so later, when the solitary figure was no longer at his table, but standing beside theirs. ‘Buenas Noches,’ he said. Sara acknowledged him with a smile. ‘Hello,’ added Josslyn.
‘I have no English,’ said the man. ‘I am Juan.’ He was well-built and wearing a surplice that could almost have been simply a linen shirt.
‘And I have no Spanish,‘ said Josslyn as he got up and extended his hand.
‘Lo siento,’ said Sara, who’d learned a dozen words of the language before they came to Spain, apologising.
The man hesitated as, in spite of his previous apology, he sought to summon a few words in English. He eventually gave in, indicated his collar and then outstretched both arms and brought them in to his chest in an attitude of supplication.
‘He’s a priest,‘ said Sara categorically.
Swaying slightly, Josslyn smiled his most beneficent smile. ‘Buenas noches,’ repeated the young priest adding, in English, ‘Goodnight, Brother.’ Josslyn sat down. Sara raised her eyebrows and smiled at her husband. ‘Touching, eh. He’s greeting you as a fellow member of the cloth. I’m sure you’ll have tons of liturgical stuff to talk about.’
*
Not surprisingly, perhaps, in a half-full hotel at the fag-end of the season, news travels fast. When tennis opponents, Rain and Depp, returned their racquets and balls to reception, they told the manager, Paulo, that they’d had a fun game with the vicar and his wife.
When Father Riminez had turned up, as usual, that evening, the hotel manager had shared this information with the priest. And when the Davids booked a court for a game the following morning, he greeted the couple with more than his usual friendliness. ‘Another lovely day, Mrs David. Senor David, good morning …’
‘Hi,’ said Josslyn.
‘I hear you met Father Juan last evening?’
‘Yes,’ said Sara. ‘What a lovely man. He often eats here?‘
‘Oh, yes, very often,’ said the manager. ‘The church is just over that hill, but his house is nearby. It was left here by agreement when the hotel was built twenty years ago. He’s unmarried, of course, so he eats with us at least three or four times a week.’
‘What a lovely arrangement,’ said Sara. ‘Yes,’ echoed Josslyn. ‘I wonder which nights he likes?’
‘It varies,’ said the manager. ‘There’s always food, of course. He just wanders in. Always has the same table. He’s a true man,’ added Paulo. ‘Very serious and spiritual. He reads his bible as he eats. He doesn’t speak English, just says ‘Hola’ to guests. After all, he sees many of them at church on a Sunday morning. Right, your tennis,’ he added briskly, and jotted their names down for a court booking later that day.
That evening, they dined early; the following night, they didn’t take their seats until the last few minutes of the restaurant’s service. Thus was Josslyn’s plan for avoiding further, almost certainly awkward interaction with the local priest. Sara suggested, instead, simply taking a taxi to the next village and eating at one of the several restaurants there. But Josslyn David was careful with his Euros. Like most writers he had never made half as much from publishing as he had once earned as a lecturer, a decent wedge landing in his bank account on the first of the month, again and again and again.
Of course, the really big hitters made decent money. They were advanced thousands, sometimes millions, irrespective of prose or plot. Their readers cared not one jot that their books were ghosted, or put together by their descendants: Le Carre’s son, Nick; Dick Francis’s, Felix; Lee Child even roped his brother in for a patch of co-writing. A big name on the cover was all that mattered.
For a couple of days, David’s plan worked; eating at six-thirty or half-past-nine might not have been ideal for their digestion, but the priest’s table remained blessedly empty by the time they’d either come, or gone.
However, on the Thursday, and first in line at the restaurant door, Josslyn’s heart sank to see Father Riminez seated at his usual table, already hunched over his starter. The Spanish priest glanced round as the maitre’d greeted the incomers, waved a hand, smiled, and turned back to his prawns.
Perhaps they might avoid further intimacy, thought Josslyn, heads barely above their plates, as they sought to create the impression of an inviolable warren.
That didn’t work either. Only half an hour later, the priest exchanged a few words with his waiter, gathered the folds of his cassock, and walked across to the English couple’s table.
In halting English, he apologised for the intrusion. The couple gestured their indulgence, and the priest spoke at greater length, and in his own tongue. He then inclined his head, clearly awaiting some sort of answer.
‘What’s he asking?’ Josslyn said quietly to Sara, but she offered no help at all.
‘I’m sorry. Lo siento,’ said Josslyn. ‘We non comprende.’
Juan smiled and raised a pacifying hand. As a waiter passed, the priest gestured to him and they exchanged a few words. The waiter explained to the couple, ’Father Juan is asking if you would speak to the congregation on Sunday. He says that most of his flock are English, anyway.’
Josslyn immediately replied, ‘Please, tell your holy Father that I wouldn’t be able to deliver a sermon in such a short time. I have nothing prepared, but do please tell him how honoured I am to be asked.’
Diners on the next table began to look restive, their second course delayed, as further words and sanguine gestures were exchanged between the two Spanish men. The waiter said, more hurriedly now, and with a sense of finality, ‘Father Juan apologies for the misunderstanding and says, “It isn’t a sermon, and absolutely not from the pulpit, but you might stand at the altar rail, and speak of anything you care to, perhaps something concerning the fellowship between our faiths.” He says it would be so much better than him reading a biblical text to a dozen English people who have no idea what he is talking about.’
The door to the kitchens swung open, a chef standing there, his face puce and sweating; the waiter made off immediately.
Father Riminez hovered. Sara sat there, slightly tipsy, and smiled warmly.
Josslyn took another hefty slug of his gin, muttering into his sleeve, ‘Fuck … Oh, fuck me.’
The absurd folly of a one-word, throwaway holiday jest had backfired. He would now, shame-facedly, simply have to acknowledge his stupidity. ‘Father Juan,’ he said, moving his head from side to side, ‘Si. Of course I will do this. It will be a pleasure.’ The priest took David’s hand in both of his own and said a heartfelt, ‘Gracias. Gracias, Father Josslyn.’ He returned Sara’s smile and walked away. ‘Vestments?’ said David to the priest’s departing back. ‘I have no vestments with me…’
‘Well, this should be interesting,’ said Sara. ‘I’ll certainly be there,’ and she returned to her cold lamb chops.
*
Father Juan introduced Josslyn in Spanish, and took a seat to the side of the altar beside a life-size plaster Virgin Mary.
David gathered the skirts of his cassock and took a step down from the shallow dais. Former seminarian, Juan Riminez, a robust soul of sixteen stones had been a decent rugby player before joining the priesthood, and the vestments that he had loaned to his fellow priest brushed the floor and fell from his shoulders like curtain drapes.
David wasn’t wholly unfamiliar with addressing small groups of people. He’d been on the mid-listers’ ‘meet the author’ circuit long enough to know how these things worked: a provincial bookshop, perhaps a library, half-a-dozen wannabe writers, two or three book-club groupies and, often, some stray, in off the street, simply attracted by the prospect of a glass of gratis wine. And then the questions: Where do you get your ideas from? How hard is it to get published? Do you write with a pen, a quill, or typewriter? ‘Only Alan Bennet still uses a typewriter, and even if he wrote with a broom-handle on vellum, he’d still be published.’
A short (very short: they never work) reading from a book that no-one’s heard of, has no idea what’s happening, what the chronology is, or who the characters are. He’d have a few token words with whoever had arranged the evening, sign two hardbacks and half-a-dozen paperbacks, books originally published so long ago now, that he could no longer remember a single thing about them, and get back in his car for the long drive home
And just how did Josslyn David know all this stuff? Because, of course, he’d spent many years on the other side of that table, asking precisely the same questions.
So, he was not intimidated by the dozen folk in front of him. There were no complete strangers, he had probably seen all of these people by the pool, or exchanged a smile with them in the restaurant or bar. But this was different, of course. The smiles here were accompanied by a quiet sense of expectation, and the only wine in this place was on the altar, and covered with a spotless, white linen cloth.
Father Juan, hands now clasped between his knees, inclined his head and smiled for his fellow priest to begin. Josslyn didn’t say Good Morning, just gave a slight nod and began.
‘When I was a kid, thirteen or fourteen, I used to steal cigarettes. It was my first job, a Saturday job, in a shop near where we lived. It was run by a middle-aged Jewish couple, and the man was infirm. I was paid to lug Corona pop from a storeroom and stack the dandelion and burdock, limeade and cola on the shelves. Many of those bottles, not that anyone would know, of course, were one mouthful of pop short. Mr Stein sat on his stool in front of the newspapers and Bounty Bars and wasn’t likely to suddenly appear at my pop-swigging side. Mrs Stein was upstairs in their flat making ‘Elevenses’ for the three of us.
‘A little gassy pop was one thing, but blue and white, flip-top-packeted Rothman’s were another. They came wrapped in paper, ten packs of twenties. I had to place them on the shelves, but only put nine packs there. I crumpled the paper around the remaining pack and dropped it in my waste bin. In the back yard, another regular task, I lit a bonfire, cigarettes in my pocket.’
Sara had heard the story often enough, but the congregation appeared to be fully engaged with the man’s tales of his youthful wrong-doing. Father Juan, sitting there with a patient smile, had absolutely no idea what his fellow priest was talking about.
‘In the Church of England,’ he went on, and now Sara held her breath, for her husband might well be aware of how many wives Henry the Eighth had had, and he almost certainly knew the name of the current Archbishop of Canterbury. But she also knew that, apart from a visit to Hereford cathedral to see the Mappa Mundi a few years previously, he had not set foot inside a church since their wedding.
‘In the Church of England,’ he repeated, ‘Unlike here in Spain, we have no confessional. No place where a whispering priest, in shadow, in darkness sits on one side, a sinner on the other.’
He gathered the folds of his cassock about him, and went on, ‘And how I envy those wrong-doers, able to free themselves from the guilt that, until then, they have been beset with.
‘Look, I’m over sixty years of age, and it’s more than forty years since I smoked stolen cigarettes. I’ve not done that much amiss since then: a paperback from Smith’s, a bottle of nice aftershave from Boots, and of course, I’ve wronged friends and doubtless hurt some of the women that I’ve known, and even loved.’
Sara tensed, wondering just how far this confessional was going. She clasped her bag and sunglasses and readied herself to leave the chapel: the joke’s over and is wearing thin; they’ve got the idea, there’s no need for anymore she intoned.
But he hadn’t finished. He glanced up as their tennis opponents from the previous day entered the chapel.
‘Yes, I’ve done a few bad things. And, I suppose, plenty of what they now call, ‘mis-steps’. And that’s why I’ve been glad to be here this morning, at Father Riminez’s invitation, to share my confessions with you all. No, there’s no dark cupboard, with a priest on one side and myself on the other. And, no matter that my ‘crimes’ were mostly petty, what a relief it is, after all these years, to finally let them go!’
He stood there silently, let slip the cassock from his upper arms, gathered it, lifted the surplice over his head and carried the appendages to Riminez.
The little congregation waited a few minutes, and when they were certain that there was to be no encore, shuffled out into the sunshine, chatting happily as they went.
David extended his hand to the priest. ‘Gracias,’ he said. ‘Gracias, Father,’
and left.
Father Riminez knelt down at the altar rail to pray.
Josslyn and Sara walked a while in silence, olive trees on one side of the path, lemons on the other.
‘It went well, eh?’ said Josslyn. ‘In spite of everything, we got away with it.’
Sara was silent for a few seconds more, and then agreed, ‘Yes, it went well. Well done you.’
‘You know, the thing is,’ he began, ‘What I said, all that stuff about confession and all. That’s never really occurred to me before. At least, not until this morning when I started to think about it.’
‘Really?’ she said.
‘Really. Honestly, until I started talking, I didn’t really have the foggiest idea what I was going to say, and then that idea of telling folk about my misdemeanours, and how they’ve stayed with me, came to me. And it was pretty good, wasn’t it?’
‘It was,’ she echoed.
‘I felt … you know, sort of slate-clean kind of idea. Maybe there is something to be said for all that stuff about sinners and priests and confessionals.’
‘Maybe there is,’ she concurred, savouring the sunshine smells of the brown grass. ‘But you didn’t confess the really big lie, did you, Brother? A step too far?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he smiled. ‘Definitely. A step too far.’ They walked on, each reflecting. ‘Anyway, I’m glad it’s done,’ he said. ‘I got away with it and I won’t be claiming priesthood again.’ He took her hand in his.
Their apartment complex came into view and she gave his fingers a gentle squeeze as she took her hand from his.
‘Josslyn?’
‘Yep?’
‘What you said just now. About confession?’
‘Yes.’
‘I want to tell you something. I guess it’s the same idea, really.’
‘You’re a nun?’
‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘It’s actually serious,’ and she paused on the path, the shadows cast by the leaves of the lemon tree playing on her tee shirt.
‘OK,’ he said, respecting her tone. ‘Go on.’
‘Last year…’
‘Yes?’
‘You did a talk in Carstairs.’
‘I did,’ he said. ‘Inaugural Book Festival. Fifty quid, petrol money and a Premier Inn down the road for the night. I’ve had worse. Why? What about it?’
‘Yes,’ you stayed over. ‘We’d had a tiff the morning you went. Do you remember? Something stupid, about the dog or Chloe’s skirt being too short, again.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I’m sorry. You know how it is. These things happen.’
‘I know. And it wasn’t the row as such. It was what you said. You swore. Nothing new there. But then you called me stupid.’
‘Did I?’ he said. ‘I don’t remember.’
’Yes, you did. You’d never, ever called me stupid before and it cut me to the quick.’
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘That must have been very hurtful, and I am sorry.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
He reached out and put his arm around her shoulder. ‘And that’s your confession? You’ve waited a year to tell me. I never knew, and I’m sorry, really.’
This time she didn’t acknowledge his contrition.
She took his arm from around her shoulder and put his hand in hers. ‘That afternoon, Tom came round to drop off the book-club choice. I like him well enough and I think he’s always, you know … I think there’s always been a flicker of … you know …’
‘No, I don’t know,’ said Josslyn, taking his hand from hers. ‘A “flicker,” a flicker of what? The man’s over seventy for crying out loud!’
‘Yes, he is. And we’re in a book-club together, something you never stop ridiculing. But he doesn’t, I know, think I’m stupid.’
‘Where’s this going?’ asked Josslyn as Father Riminez came out of the church a hundred yards away.
‘I am sorry, Josslyn. I shouldn’t … we shouldn’t have, but I was vulnerable, and I was very hurt by what you’d said, and then he was there.’
Josslyn nodded his head slowly up and down, and then shook it from side to side, his eyes closed.
The priest drew closer as Jossyln said in a frightening, measured manner. ‘You’ve fucking well had it off with Tom Shepherd. Old, divorced, knee operation, dentist Tom Shepherd. And in our house.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she repeated.
‘Where did you do it? In our bed? On the sofa, where we’ve watched Pointless and Saving Fucking Lives at Sea for the last twelve months?’ I am so fucking pissed. I never deserved this, not for saying just one word in a fucking row.’
The priest lowered his head and walked past them in considerate silence.
‘I’m sorry, Josslyn,’ she said. ‘I am really sorry to have hurt you. But you know what you were saying.’
‘Saying?’ he murmured.
‘Confessing. About confession. It’s been a burden. It’s been horrible keeping it a secret all this time, and now, already, I feel better in spite of the hurt I’ve given you. Josslyn, I’m sorry. But I do kind of thank you. Please, forgive me. Forgive me and try to understand.’
The idea of going to the confined space of their apartment was anathema: they needed an open space, and some alcohol.
In the Sunday lunchtime quiet of the restaurant bar, he had a double Gordon’s and she had a beer. They sat there in silence. When their tennis opponents came in, the younger couple greeted them warmly with, ‘Hi, there. Good speech, the bit we caught, Father. We loved it. Mind if we join you?’
‘Actually,’ said Sara, ‘Would you mind? We just need to be alone for a while. Something we have to discuss.’
‘Sorry,’ said Rain. ‘Of course.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Depp. ‘Understood. Drink? Can I get you anything?’
‘We’re fine,’ said Josslyn. ‘But there was one thing…’
‘Yes?’ said Depp.
‘Your ball …’
‘My ball?’ queried Depp.
‘Your serve, yesterday, first point. Down the line, I called it out.’
‘I know,’ he acknowledged with a grin. ‘I just had you down for a twat, even for a vicar!’
‘Bit of a twat, eh. Forgive me? Heat of the moment. I will try and do better.’
‘Forgiven,’ said Depp. ‘Good call. ’Bye, Father.’
The next newsletter will be on Friday May 16th.
Best wishes
Phil
PHILIP SHELLEY
Twitter: @PhilipShelley1
Friday May 2nd 2025
