Bad Thursday

that is, the Thursday before Easter

“Aw, thanks Wendy,” we said, as the café owner deposited a tray on our table. This held four steaming mugs of tea; our bacon sandwiches; jars of ketchup and brown sauce. It was warm for the time of year, so we’d decided to sit outside looking onto the road, which was strewn with parked cars but not too busy. 

-o-O-o-

The three of us were near neighbours who lived on the next street. Alice’s, and also mine, were small terraced houses with tiny front plots and back yards. Ben’s, at the end of the row, was surrounded on three sides by a spacious garden – definitely the boss’s house in late Victorian times. His sleek black Range Rover was usually parked on his drive.

Ben had been Chief Engineer at Bartlett’s for most of his career and, back in ‘the day’, had designed valves, pistons and pumps that had been exported all over the world. He’d married a very attractive lady, Emily, and had fathered Dean and Gerald who now had young families of their own. After a hard week at work, the golf course beckoned, with the inevitable socialising that followed.

Aged 55, Ben was looking forward to retirement. When a round of redundancies was discussed, his financial advisor suggested he should apply. A life of leisure and foreign holidays beckoned. Until, one day, Emily announced she wanted a divorce. She proved a formidable adversary along with her feisty female solicitor. Ben was forced to settle for much less than half their assets. The house was sold, leaving Ben just enough to buy his present home.  

 “You know, I feel really jealous when I see men playing with their grandchildren”, he said, stroking his neat grey beard. “It’s months since I’ve seen either Dean or Gerald or their families. When Emily said she wanted to separate, it came as a big shock. But she was right; I hadn’t been there for her or for my lads. I suspected she’d been playing away, but I’d chosen to ignore it for far too long. So really, my lads are bothering about me just as much as I bothered about them when they were growing up…” 

-o-O-o-

“Ooh, I just wish I could get myself going again,” bemoaned Alice. She’d co-owned a flower shop in town until contracting Covid in 2020. Her lack of physical energy had driven her into depression. She was now the wizened ghost of her former petite self, relying on her daughter to shop for her and to help manage her tiny garden.  This, Alice’s pre-Covid pride and joy, was covered with pots and climbing plants that gave her property a 3-dimensional feel. Her daughter had managed to keep it afloat, but the weeds, dead heads and straggly shoots bore witness to the garden having seen better days.

“She brings my grandson and granddaughter around,” said tearful Alice, “but I’m too tired and miserable to enjoy them. I feel so guilty ‘cos they must think I don’t care.”

-o-O-o-

My own story wasn’t much better, and I’ll tell you that later. Enough to say mine was a story full of regrets.

-o-O-o-

Then came a voice. “Sounds like you three need to come with me tomorrow evening.” We turned our heads to see Wendy in the doorway, where she’d been listening. She continued,

“I know what it’s like to feel your life’s a mess. All those years I wasted trying to cling onto Gareth whilst he was sewing his wild oats. Then the day he finally moved out to shack up with his fancy piece, that young Diane. Ooh, was I bitter! I’m not proud of it, but for a year afterwards I trolled her on Facebook.”

“But then a friend persuaded me to come to church – y’know, St Thomas’ just around the corner. People treated me like I really mattered. I felt that even if I owned up to what I’d done, they wouldn’t write me off.”

Tossing her auburn hair around her shoulder, Wendy sat down with her customers and gazed into their eyes.

“But in the end, it was one of the songs we sang on Good Friday that caught me”, she said. See if I can remember the words; oh yes, it started ‘How deep the father’s love for us…’aw goodness, what comes next?’

Ben and I pulled out our smartphones and in no time at all, came up with the lyrics. As mine brought it up first, I began to read:

‘How deep the Father’s love for us
How vast beyond all measure
That He would give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure.’

“Stop there!” yelled Wendy. “That’s when I burst into tears. That was me. I felt a complete wretch. Gareth made me feel rubbish. Diane made it all loads worse. But that was nothing to how bad I felt after trolling her.

“But how about that – I get to be a treasure instead of a wretch. And all because Jesus died on that cross. I can’t look at the cross without tears running down my cheeks…”   

-o-O-o-

That Good Friday evening, just before 7 o’clock, the four of us shuffled into church. We’d intended to sit in the back row, but the chairs were arranged to form an inner, and an outer circle. We tried to look as non-obvious as possible…

…to be continued

[The worship song quoted is by Stuart Townend, first 4 lines of verse 1]