The Unordinary Life of Parson Pickles

By D J Keiley

Pickles is a parson with a past, a past that has brought him to a tiny village. A tiny village with some odd folk! He is being punished.
Little does he know, but he is about to swept into political storm with Napoleon right in the middle.
The Unordinary Life of Parson Pickles is a very funny book where its larger than life charecters spring off the page. Georgian England at its funniest!

• Language: English
• Publisher: D J Keiley
• Release date: Jan 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9780956691613

D J Keiley

Writing is an extension of life. It allows us to convert our experiances into our dreams. Having a fine art and antiques background allows me to colour history with real experiance. I have always loved history and humour, combining them is my dream come true. I put a few facts into a set of funny situations. You never know you may just learn something!

Book preview

Chapter 1

On a rainy windy evening in 1803 Parson James Arthur Robert Pickles left the small open carriage that had brought him the nine miles from the warm fire of Bishop Prendergast’s palace, with the mission to turn round the run down parish church of St Helena of the Dewy Eye, Debton. A man of medium build and height he stood as tall as his upbringing dictated. He had arrived at his parish, home and work place for the next however many years and it was not good – not good in any way. Soaked to the skin, clutching his worldly possessions and his scruffy terrier Fang, dripping at his feet, things could not be any worse. That was until he felt the warm sensation now being washed into his silk stocking from the side of his shoe, things had got worse. Pickles remonstrated with the dog and every so gently kicked the poor mutt in the ribs as a reinforcement of the message. The warm glow of the Bishop’s fire was a faint and distant memory.

The Bishop had made Pickles an offer he could not refuse (if he had then his life could only be lived as a professional coat hook in a small doctors surgery/vets somewhere north of Orkney – he had previous stains to his copy book). He was to be given a parish with none of the ‘distractions’, as the Bishop put them, that had so far punctuated his ministry. He was given strict instruction to administer to his parish and no more, that, he was only to ‘provide pastoral and spiritual care’ and ‘guidance and no more’. How his ‘tendency to over ‘administer’ to ‘those in need’ would not be tolerated and that his ‘private hobbies’ were now, no more. Pickles had agreed to all and with the final threat of the Bishop being a permanent move to Flatside Abbey (the notorious correction facility of the Church) his resolve was bolstered as he boarded the carriage.

The journey was uneventful, the driver had been given very strict instructions and alerted to the potential danger spots en route. The Saracen’s Head in Figglet, the Griffin Inn at Broadbridge, Mrs Murphy’s Salon in Dinton (a matter that Pickles found the Bishop a little too familiar with) and the most dangerous the vicarage at St Brendan’s Hencoat where all of the delights of the previous pale into insignificance to those on offer from Parson Tobias Todhunter. Pickles tried all his best tricks to get the driver to halt at the various places, toilet, thirst horse watering, sickness, faining sleep (in the hope the driver might sneak in for a drink or two), none worked, the driver was beyond diversion and very well briefed. The only distraction if it could be called that was the old nag pulling the carriage. In truth this poor excuse for a horse would have been cut up and fed to the hounds as dog meat if the risk to the hounds had have been less than sixty forty. However the chances of those hounds ever chasing so much as a mouse would be permanently impaired if they had eaten such a rank stringy beast. He was old, lazy and grumpy but worst of all his back left leg was somehow linked to his lower intestine. This manifested itself every time he put that hoof down, as he did, the horse farted. The put put put put put put sound beating out the rhythm of the journey alerting those in the carriage to every incline and piece of heavy ground along the road. This was the closest to on board or off board entertainment. How an animal could produce such gas was beyond Pickles, a mile or so would have been amusing nine was torture. He found himself as we all do caught in the maths of the journey – eighty seven farts to the minute with the carriage travelling an average of eight miles an hour, two thousand eight hundred and twenty farts per hour that’s a lot of methane and he began calculating the volume of gas produced by the journey. Once caught in the snare of journey maths it is impossible to get out with a full set of journey statistics. This was sadly Pickles’s only outlet during the journey. When the nag got back to the stable he must have looked like a pile of brown and white sacks poured into a corner, all loose and flabby – deflated thought Pickles as they drew up to the vicarage gate.

So Pickles found himself smelling of dog pee, rain running down his nose mingling with snot and dripping in long globulous drops from the end of his nose. He had no drink, hadn’t seen a woman in hours and had not even eaten for a good while. The stone floor of the rectory was damp and cold, and he felt totally miserable. Fang was sniffing round in the darkness and Pickles indulged the only pleasure he could muster – a good hard fart. Oh yes that was better. The sound filled the room and brought with it a momentary glow of self satisfaction. It’s hard to explain the satisfaction of a fart to one’ self but it will always remain This inner glow was rudely interrupted by a shorter lower pitched fart sound. Pickles had no light as yet but he didn’t think the rectory large enough for an echo. ‘Fang was that you’? Fang was at his feet so unless he had an anus that was a skilled ventriloquist it was not Fang. He was perplexed and cocked his head like Fang when listening at the rabbit burrow.

‘We’d best light a lamp and get some light to burn off them gases’ poured from the gloom. The vesta was struck and the most hideous sort of woman things stood in the door jamb from the hall to the parlour. Years of inbreeding and desperate rural poverty had evolved a woman that could probably prove retro evolution. Her body was hideously hunched at the waist, knees and shoulders. If the bones hadn’t looked fused she could be mistaken for being ready to pounce on some poor defenceless bunny or large deer. Pickles thought she had two breasts on her bony chest but would not have been shocked to have found a row of teats similar to the fingers of leather gloves. She had a permanent squint even in low light so that her eyes were just black slits to her cheeks. The nose was upturned like a pig’s and the nostrils gave the impression in the half light of two voids with an empty cavern behind. She did have a limp (a cliché admittedly) and a shuffle at the same time, which combined to produce movement at an un-natural speed. The hideous apparition was before Pickles before he knew it.

‘Mrs Pyle at your service, I am your house keeper and the parish grave digger’.

Fuck! Pickles didn’t know what to do. The smell of Fangs pee was now enveloped by Mrs Pyle’s fuming odour. Was it fish or was it old bodies, somehow these two stenches fused to make Pickles gag involuntarily. How Pickles wished for the smell of dog piss in his nostrils.

‘Pleased to meet you madam’ stuttered Pickles still a little like a startled rabbit. His foot slid on a viscous blob on the floor where Mrs Pyle had been stood. He refused and denied to even contemplate what it might be.

‘I’z sorry bout the fart’ came back Mrs Pyle, ‘but better an empty house than a bad tenant, would’t ya sazz,’ grinned Mrs Pyle ‘my hole is a little slack as yet, cause of Mr Pyle’s birthday being yest-day and they just drop out no announcement and sometimes a little more if ya knows what I’s mean. He uses a bit of pig fat to get up there good and proper. He loves my arse, it makes him howl like a dog when he shoots his stuffin’.

Ah pig fat and God knows what else, the smell was pungent. Fuck, Fuck!! Pickles was panicking, the Bishop, did he know. Was he sat by the fire in Mrs Murphy’s Salon all warm with the glow of his recent pleasure and thinking of the horrors in store for Pickles. Did he have an idea of what was in store. Had he planted this old hag as a punishment. The answer was yes and the Bishop was exactly as Pickles imagined sipping port by the fire in Mrs Murphy’s Salon with an extra warm glow for the ‘pleasures’ in store for Pickles.

Pickles was stood in his new hall, with a foul hag in front of him stinking so that the lime wash on the wall should have blistered and bubbled. She had managed to weave being bummed by her husband as a birthday treat into the conversation within the first minute (a subject Pickles kept for his darkest and lowest moments certainly not as part of your introduction) and had prepared the coldest welcome ever on record. No lighted fire or soothing drink, no hearty meal or cosy bed chamber. No Mrs Pyle had farted, relayed her husband conquest and the after effects and managed to light the smallest rush light ever made. Pickles brain was spinning, he was struggling to come to terms with the scene before him. Then wait, reel back a minute thought Pickles SHE IS MARRIED, he screamed in his minds ear (at least he hoped it hadn’t been out loud). The idea of someone or thing out there in the village actually wanting to touch Mrs Pyle was a concept Pickles struggled with. Being in the same village was starting to feel a little too close for Pickles, so someone touching her or worse was stomach churning. No here he was faced with something that actually made Flatside Abbey look a little like a holiday camp.

‘I’s warmed ya bed and made ya some tea’ said Mrs Pyle and led poor Pickles to his room.

Pickles took off his coat and got into bed fully dressed (shoes went with Mrs Pyle for a clean!!). He pulled the cover over his face and did something he had not done since a boy, said a prayer before bedtime, then wrestled his way to sleep; not dreaming his usual tavern and busty wench dream, no he was tortured by images of sows with suckling pigs and Mrs Pyle’s face grinning back from the pig pen.

This was home and it was not a good place to be.

Chapter 2

Storms lashing a boat is a relentless noise, the false lull of the wave troughs soon countered by the maximum exposure the crest of the wave brings. The feeling of insignificance and the rule of God are at their most heightened when gripped by this relentless rhythm of weather assaulting such an insignificant intrusion to the sea. That is how we find the frigate Floral as she bobs like a cork south of Jersey and safely off St Malo, the Breton peninsula offering some shelter from the storm. She is just over the French horizon monitoring the French fleet even though peace has been in place for almost a year, there seemed little difference for some between war and peace. With daylight came respite from the storm, Floras crew relaxed and continued normal surveillance. They went about repairing the storm damage, the officers went about the surveillance. As the day moved on three French frigates came over the horizon making straight for Flora. Turning to evade the French patrol, Flora limped from the storm damage. The French were soon upon her. Splitting formation one vessel took to Flora’s starboard one to the port side, the third taking a windward position. It was only then that the officers of Flora realised this was no warding off, this was a full assault. Flora was not ready the first volley was enough and she was hit full a midships and captured, taken back to St Malo. Her crew, those left anyway, were slung in gaol along with all those British civilians rounded up in recent days. Britain and France had resumed hostilities, normal service resumed. Captain Paul Octavius Trajan Pickles junior, looked over at the miserable dishevelled man in the corner and wondered how he got to this point in his life. He was there trying hard to forget his past. He was trying to regain some order. Paul Pickles had bought a commission in the navy and worked hard to gain his own ship. Now he was back in France, a place he wanted to forget. He knew that his presence would soon be noted and his past would come flooding back.

The cell was dank, with the bonus of a window facing out to sea. Pickles could hear the gulls and smell the sea, for now at least. Opposite him was a skeleton pretending to be alive. His cell mate was an old French squire, a man of modest property that had defied the authorities. He had been in the cell for some years and the grime had given his leathery skin a grey tone. The man enthusiastically sat all day long picking his nose and eating the contents. He did it with verve and purpose that led Pickles to conclude he was mad. Paul Pickles began to fear the worst, a return to his old existence, all made worse because France stank.

Bonaparte stood looking out of the bay window behind his desk, a knock at the door brings a sycophant in military uniform holding a communicate. Bonaparte breaks the seal, the seal told him it was from the Bishop of Rouen, he reads the content. Send a message he must be brought to me and tell the Bishop I leave it in his hand till then.

Chapter 3

James Pickles woke just before dawn. He kept the blankets over his face. His logic being what he could not see won’t disturb, harm or scare him. His dream had developed to include Mr Pyle getting his birthday treat and that was enough to keep those blankets firmly about his head.

He was finally roused by the rhythmic sound of metal on bare earth. He made his way to the window and saw Mrs Pyle in the churchyard digging what looked like a grave with a pick, although somewhat squarer than would be normal for a grave. Pickles assumed some sort of monument or statue was to be placed in the churchyard and thought nothing more of it.

Pickles turned his back poured the water from the guglet on the washstand bowl and washed his face. He took off his trousers and shirt and began to wash the rest of his body.

He took in his surrounding. There was none of the noise he was used to from his rooms at the Cathedral, no bustle of street sellers or argument, no all James Pickles could hear was a blackbird singing mournfully in the graveyard and the rhythmic sound of a pick on gravel soil. Pickles was undressed and washing. ‘Would you like bacon for breakfast’ came from behind and startled Pickles, he turned half naked to see Mrs Pyle with a cast iron frying pan in hand. Pickles covered himself and stood wholly dumbstruck. A second later he gathered his thoughts and looked quizzically at the window to the churchyard. How the hell had she got from there to the door in such a short space of time. It was no more than thirty second since he heard the last stroke of the pick on the earth.

‘Ya looks as if a good breakfast might help those ribs o yours’ scoffed Mrs Pyle ‘and thanks be that Mr Pyle ain’t deformed as you is, I didn’t think they grew that small….. no not that small I has never seen’.

Dressed and very nervous Pickles made his way to the kitchen table. Mrs Pyle was at the stove and Fang had a knuckle bone that was almost bigger than him.

‘That be the last of olde Brutus the bull. He got past stud and has given us stew for best part of a month’. Mrs Pyle looked affectionately at the bone as Fang ground away at it. Perhaps that’s what keeps Mr Pyle fit to stud – a fear of being boiled down to stew thought Pickles!!

Breakfast was unbelievable, bacon yes, but chops and kidney, potato and eggs, blood pudding and chicken wings, bread and dripping the plate was piled high. ‘Lets see if we can’t cure that deformity of your now shall we’! said Mrs Pyle with a huge grin to her face. Deformity thought Pickles, she would have to be eating all day every day to cure all the bits of her that are either the wrong size or more to the point in the wrong place.

The daylight had done nothing to enhance Mrs Pyle, she still was a sight to behold and now her oily translucent skin was evident, it resembled the skin of a slug or snail and moved in a similar way. Her hands were gnarled like twigs and as brown and weathered as bark. The hair, all Pickles could say was thank God for bonnets as he would not know how to describe the oily mat that was a top Mrs Pyle’s head.

She was a little more sprightly this morning, if sprightly is the right word for someone moving in her manner, fitful is probably a better way of putting it when he actually saw her move. Pickles was also desperate to fathom how she moved when out of sight. He was becoming more and more spooked by Mrs Pyle’s ability to appear when not expected and within split seconds cover a number of yards navigating furniture and Fang unseen or heard. The journey from the graveyard to the jamb of his bedroom being the most disturbing example How did she do that? Why did she do that?

Well Pickles put that great mystery to one side. He pulled himself up and in his mind began the work of the Vicar of St Helena of the Dewy Eye. The Church gained its name after a fourteenth century girl Helena who was reputed to have seen a vision of Christ’s face on the trunk of the oak tree that stood where the Church now stands. One bright morning Helena was collecting sticks for the cooking fire. Suddenly she heard the sound of trumpets coming from the old oak in the centre of the common. That’s not usual she thought and went to investigate. The warm face of Christ appeared in the centre of the trunk and he was gazing left to the middle distance. The villagers gathered behind Helena and carried out a day and night vigil whilst Helena could see the Christ face. Pilgrims flooded in to see the tree some arriving whilst Helena was engaged with the vision others too late. Helena was from then gifted with the ability to cure the most disgusting injury or illness. She healed dripping pustulous ulcers, a broken arm was instantaneously healed even though the victim had come to have consumption cured and sadly died two days later coughing copious amounts of blood…... A hasty meeting was held and the tree felled, and the Church built along with a small gift shop selling pieces of the oak (which continued for over two hundred and fifty years – obviously some people trade theirs in or sold them back!!). The tree trunk was set aside for the main cross beam over the alter. The story goes that after seeing Christ’s face Helena’s eyes began to slightly moisten and her face was in a permanent dazed state. She could function normally but always looked as though she needed the toilet. She did however continue to heal the sick and is often depicted with a small boy on a crutch (reputedly her first miracle). The stained glass window behind the alter has her and the boy, her hands on his forehead, in her usual fixed