Free The Feast by Margaret Kennedy Page B

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    The Giffords had expected the service to end after the Offertory. But it went on. Everybody knelt down, and Father Bott prayed for the Church Militant. Then, turning to the congregation, he muttered an Invocation unfamiliar to many of them. All the little Giffords began to rustle the pages of their prayer books. So did Beatrix, Blanche and Maud, who were eager to do everything the Giffords did, until their mother took her face out of her black gloved hands and scowled at them. Whereat the three Coves became immobile, their foreheads pressed against the ledge of the pew in front, and the tender infantile backs of their necks exposed to the world.
    ‘It’s the Communion Service,’ whispered Sir Henry.
    Hebe looked shocked and protested:
    ‘We oughtn’t to be here. We aren’t confirmed.’
    ‘I know. But you must just stay and kneel quietly.’
    He felt more than a little embarrassed himself, sinceit was years since he had heard this Service. He was not much of a church-goer, but he considered that children should be brought up with a religious background and if no one else was available to take them he accompanied them himself. He, too, had merely expected Matins, at which a decorous demeanour would be all that he need offer. He tried to remember the details of the coming ritual, and then he tried to compose his wandering thoughts to some mood of sincere gravity, as he did at funerals. For it would be indecent, he felt, to dwell upon trivial subjects at a moment which was, to his neighbours, of the highest importance.
    But at funerals he could always think about death, which dignifies life and abolishes triviality. While here no suitable topic occurred to him. His reflections during the hymn had been too detached, too flippant. He wanted to feel, if he could. He stared at the top of the pew in front of him and tried to clear his mind of the petty traffic which daily swarmed through it, as a street might be cleared for a procession. No procession arrived.
    I must think about people I love, he decided, and then could not think of any. The children … He glanced at the little creatures on either side of him. Caroline had her head buried in her arms. Luke was following the Service in his Prayer Book. Michael was twisting a button off his jacket. Hebe knelt erect, staring avidly at Father Bott. They meant very little to him. They were Eirene’s affair. Only one of them was his, and she was the lease attractive. For five years, during the war, they had been in America. And even at home he seldom saw them. Were they all right? Were they happy? Were they growing up as they ought?
    These uneasy speculations were not quite suitable. He must postpone them to a less sacred moment. He would do better to think of his own childhood, of people whom he had loved and who were gone now, of remembered places and happy moments. He looked across the years and sought a way back.
    Evangeline’s sick feelings were beginning to subside. Nothing dreadful was going to happen. That little disturbance before the Service started had been nothing: those people really deserved it. The thing she most dreaded had not befallen, in spite of the incense and the genuflections and the candles. God had prevented it.
    Her father took, it was true, no part in the Service. He sat with folded arms, looking on with an expression of grim amusement, as though he had been told in advance of some well-merited retribution which was going to overtake Father Bott. And that was bad enough, for people stared when he did not stand up for the Greed. But she was used to staring people, and if he would only keep quiet she would believe that God did really listen to prayer. She would show her gratitude. She would give up her sin, although nobody could really call it a sin because it did not hurt anyone. Perhaps it was a waste of time to grind up glass with a nail file, but surely nothing worse? Because she would never use it, she would never do anything wicked with it. And