Unexpected visitors never bring much joy, and a vicarage is the first place many truffle stuffed crises make their landfall. We were on the main road to a spike (an overnight hostel) and in those days we weren’t seeing as many drug users as now. Mostly we saw old style tramps who’d never come off the road. One, called Goldie, was a regular and turned up one day with what looked like a gangrenous arm. “How did you get this?” I asked. “Rats” was his one word reply. I quizzed him a bit and he seemed to be very scared of any sort of institution – including hospitals. This was a common factor with many of our visitors, so I did a deal and said “if I can get you into A&E without sitting in a waiting room will you let me take you?” He agreed this would be alright and so I phoned the Consultant, (a friend), and we arranged for Goldie to jump the queue. He was absolutely alive with lice but I bit the bullet and drove over (leaning slightly towards the open window) and the hospital kept their side of the bargain and took him straight through.
As they helped him off with layer after layer of clothes I swear I’ve never seen so much livestock on a human being. I’m beginning to itch as I write this! Then they cleaned him off with Swarfega which they apparently kept especially for these situations and cleaned up the festering bites (yes, plural) and injected him with antibiotics. Meanwhile I chatted to him about how long he’d been on the road and he told me he’d become known as Goldie because he’d gone on the road during the time in 1965 when a Golden Eagle called Goldie (Gallic shrug) had escaped from Regents Park zoo. The eagle was eventually recaptured after killing one of the American Ambassador’s ducks and attacking a couple of terriers but my Goldie had never spent a night indoors since then. That put him at least 15 years on the road. He was a nice guy, small and quiet and very self-contained. The doctors asked where he was going – he walked everywhere – and he said he was going to Gloucester; so they typed up a letter for the Royal Infirmary there and begged him to go there as soon as he arrived. He insisted that I set him down on the A38 at the exact spot I’d found him and wouldn’t hear of me driving him to Gloucester. Later I discovered he’d never shown up at Gloucester and I never heard of him or saw him again. I bought a couple of cans of insect killer from the local farm supplier on the way home.
Another regular turned up looking dreadful and blagged a few paracetamols off Madame; so she gave him the tablets and a drink with a bag of sandwiches and he set off towards Thornbury. Minutes later she got a call from the nextdoor (previous) parish warning her not to give him any paracetamol because she’d already given him some. Madame phoned ahead to Thornbury and warned them what had happened – just in case. We thought we might have killed him but he seemed to survive the onslaught of goodwill because he came back a year later.
But what I’m about to write about takes the Palme d’Or. A once in a lifetime stocking filler for a knackered Vicar looking for a Christmas sermon. Sadly, though, I’ve never used it because – once again – I don’t know how it ended but I fear it didn’t go well.
Imagine – nineteen rowdy Christmas carol services in, with three still to go and we’re chilling in front of a log fire, watching telly with a glass of wine in our hands when the doorbell rings. …..
“Hello?”
“My waters have broken”
In front of me was a young woman, pretty bedraggled and more than a bit grubby but manifestly very very pregnant. Lurking darkly in the background was a young man. It was a bitterly cold, frosty December night and so I did what all sensible middle aged men do – I shouted
“MADAME”
We had a huddled conversation in the hall along the lines of – “theresthisgirloutsideandherboyfriendandshesaysherwatershavebrokenandshelookspegnantandIdontknowwhatwecandobutwillyoucomeandjustlook!” …..”please?”
Madame immediately took charge and whisked the girl up to the bathroom, got her undressed and into a warm bath. The odd partner refused point blank to come in so I left him outside and shut the door on him. I didn’t fancy having him wandering around stealing the family silver (ho ho) while we delivered a baby! But I decided – discretion being the better part of valour – that I’d stay out of the way and hit the phone trying to find a midwife. You have no idea how difficult it can be to get a midwife to turn out at night. I rang the district; all the maternity services I could think of; and the GP surgeries and no-one was prepared to come out. Meanwhile, Madame arrived back downstairs with the young woman looking a great deal cleaner and wearing a completely different and very familiar set of clothes. The old ones we just binned.
The full story began to come out and she told us the reason they were sleeping rough was that her last baby (!) had been taken away by Social Services and the only way she could keep this baby was to have it – as she said – “In a hedge”. She’d met the young man when they were both inpatients at a mental health unit. They refused point blank to take up the offer of a bed for the night, and eventually – way after midnight – a midwife drove out from Bristol, examined her and said that her waters hadn’t broken yet. So that was that. I thought that the boyfriend was controlling and possibly abusive but we needed to keep them close enough overnight to get more help in the morning.
It was, as I said, bitterly cold but at his insistence they would sleep in a bus shelter. So we gave them blankets and sandwiches which he threw down angrily in front of us because they didn’t eat meat! He had terrible acne and didn’t look as if he cared much about either of them. So first thing in the morning I found them in the bus shelter and begged them to just wait while I tried to get more help, and after a couple of hours on the phone I found some emergency accommodation in Bath. Once again I offered to drive them but he refused so I gave them their bus fare, wrote the address on a piece of paper and they set off. They never showed up in Bath and I never found out how the story continued.
And I’ve never used the story because – I very much hope – those vulnerable lives are still being lived out there somewhere; and I also hope that they finally found someone with the resources to help them – not just me with nothing to offer but goodwill and the wrong sandwiches. No kings showed up, there were no guiding stars, no shepherds and Jesus failed to be born in a bus shelter.