No life
Fishy's story
Jeremy Clarke
At the last church I joined (charismat- ic), the gulf between words and deeds was the widest, by a mile, of any church I've ever been to. Before everything fell apart, the strain on the vicar of serving as a high priest of God was so great that he lost about five stone in weight. When, towards the end, he unexpectedly shaved off his Old Testament beard, and we saw that he didn't have a chin either, many of us con- cluded that he was wasting away.
His assistant pastor, Mr Graham Fish, also suffered a breakdown around this time. It was a tribute to the unity of the church leadership, I suppose, that they both went off their heads together.
Although the vicar's was the most spec- tacular, it was the assistant pastor's break- down that upset us the most. Previously a gregarious, popular character, assistant pastor Fish became reclusive and, it was said, misanthropic. He resigned his post and the last I heard he'd turned to Art, and was executing enormous seascapes in an old barn out near the coast.
I went to see old Fishy at his barn last week. It was the first time I'd clapped eyes on him for over five years. He was wrapped in an old tartan blanket and dabbing at this huge, mostly grey, canvas. Rainwater dripped through holes in the roof into pud- dles on the floor. He didn't look up from his easel immediately, but when he did he just looked at me sadly.
I negotiated the puddles and together we inspected the seascape he was working on. It was about three yards square and provi- sionally entitled 'Tuesday in November'. I wanted to encourage him by making an appropriate comment about his picture, but the only thing I could think of was to ask him whether the tide was coming in or going out. 'Going out,' he sighed. The question I was dying to ask my old pastor, though, was whether he still had Jesus in his heart. And, if he had, then was the kangaroo loose in his paddock a pun- ishment from God? Or was he just being lovingly 'refined in the fire'? Before I could steer the conversation around to the metaphysical, though, a very old woman hobbled into his studio and asked old Fishy whether he could come and kill a cockerel for her.
She'd always left any killing to her hus- band, she explained to me, but he'd been in the ground for over ten years. She'd asked Lawrence (who was renting another of her barns for a boat-building enterprise), she said, but Lawrence had refused point- blank. So as a last resort she thought she'd try the artist-in-residence. Apparently, a much-loved old cockerel had been pecked almost to death by an up and coming youngster and wanted putting out of his misery. To both her and my sur- prise, old Fishy volunteered for the job. He'd done it before, he said. When he was a child his father used to keep racing pigeons, and after a race he would some- times help his father strangle the pigeons that weren't up to scratch. His mother cooked pigeon and chips for supper quite often on race days, he added nostalgically.
So the three of us trooped over to the farmhouse. The sight of a vicar with a depressive illness choking the chicken was too good to miss, and Lawrence, a big South African in overalls, emerged from his barn and joined us en route.
The ailing cockerel was lying in a card- board box beside the Aga. We all gathered round, and old Fishy crouched down and laid hands on the bird, whose eyes, I saw, had been pecked out. Old Fishy looked up at us, a bit disconcerted. 'I can feel the life in him,' he lamented. Then my old pastor bowed his head and said a prayer. It was just like old times-and I put my head down as well. 'Father, forgive me!' he said. I thought there would be more to follow. In prayer meetings years ago he used to go on for 20 minutes or more once he got the bit between his teeth. But that potent phrase was it. I could tell old Fishy was still shoul- dering the cross, though. That much was certain. It was just a little heavier at the moment that was all.
He picked the cockerel out of the box by its legs — he was a big, golden and red bird — and broke its neck. The old woman bent down and smoothed the limp cockerel's flank with an arthritic hand. 'Would you like him, Graham?' she said. 'He'll be good eating.' Old Fishy, who was a bit shaken up I believe, said no, but he'd like to paint him if that would be all right. 'Dead Cockerel', his first still life, and his first sale for over six months, turned out rather well and is currently hanging over the mantlepiece here at home.
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